In the golden book of wit and wisdom, Through the Looking-Glass, the
Unicorn rather disdainfully remarks that he had believed children to
be fabulous monsters. Alice smilingly retorts: "Do you know, I
always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one
alive before!" "Well, now that we _have_ seen each other," said the
Unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a
bargain?" "Yes, if you like," said Alice. No such ambiguous bargains
are needed to demonstrate the existence of Unicorns. That is, not
for imaginative people. A mythical monster, a heraldic animal, he
figures in the dictionary as the Monoceros, habitat, India; and he
is the biblical Urus, sporting one horn, a goat beard and a lion's
tail. He may be all these things for practical persons; no man is a
genius to his wife. But maugre that he is something more for
dreamers of dreams; though not the Hippogriff, with its liberating
wings, volplaning through the Fourth Dimension of Space; nor yet is
he tender Undine, spirit of fountains, of whom the Unicorn asked:
"By the waters of what valley has jealous mankind hidden the source
of your secrets?" (Cousin german to the Centaur of Maurice de
Guérin, he can speak in like cadence.)
Alice with her "dreaming eyes of wonder" was, after the manner of
little girls, somewhat pragmatic. She believed in Unicorns only when
she saw one. Yet we must believe without such proof. Has not the
Book of Job put this question: "Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his
band in the furrow?" As if a harnessed Unicorn would be credible. We
prefer placing the charming monster, with the prancing tiny hoofs of
ivory (surely Chopin set him to musical notation in his capricious
second Etude in F; Chopin who, if man were soulless, would have
endowed him with one) in the same category as the Chimera of "The
Temptation of St. Antony," which thus taunted the Sphinx: "I am
light and joyous! I offer to the eyes of men dazzling perspectives
with Paradise in the clouds above.... I seek for new perfumes, for
vaster flowers, for pleasures never felt before...."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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