Perhaps that "discharge" cured me at last of my torturing "soul."
Again I am like all of us. At least at this moment as I write, I
can see as it were, without any pain in my mental eye, how O-90 is
brought to the steps of the Cube; or I see her in the Gas Bell. And
if there in the Operation Department she should give my name,--I do
not care. Piously and gratefully I should kiss the punishing hand
of the Well-Doer at the last moment. I have this right in regard to
the United State: to receive my punishment. And I shall not give up
this right. No Number ought, or dares, to refuse this only personal,
and therefore, most precious, privilege.
... Quickly, metallically, distinctly, do the thoughts rap in the
head. An invisible aero carries me into the blue height of my
beloved abstractions. And I see how there in the height, in the
purest rarified air, my judgment about the only "right" bursts with
a crack, like a pneumatic tire. I see clearly that only an atavism,
the absurd superstition of the ancients, gives me this idea of
"right."
There are ideas of clay and ideas moulded of gold, or of our
precious glass. In order to know the material of which an idea is
made, one needs only to let fall upon it a drop of strong acid.
One of these acids was known to the ancients under the name of
_reductio ad absurdum_. This was the name of it, I think. But they
were afraid of this poison; they preferred to believe that they saw
_heaven_, even though it was a toy made of clay, rather than confess
to themselves that it was only a blue nothing. We on the other hand
(Glory to the Well-Doer!), we are adults and we have no need of
toys. Now if we put a drop of acid on the idea of "right".... Even
the ancients (the most mature of them) knew that the source of right
was--might! Right is a function of might. Here we have our scale: on
the one side an ounce, on the other a ton. On one side "I," on the
other "we," the United State. Is it not clear? To assume that I may
have any "right" as far as the State is concerned, is like assuming
that an ounce may equilibrate a ton in a scale! Hence the natural
distribution: tons--rights, grams--duties. And the natural road from
nothingness to greatness, is to forget that one is a gram and to
feel that one is one-millionth of a ton!
You ripe-bodied, bright Venerians; you sooty, blacksmith-like
Uranians, I almost hear your protests in this silence. But only
think, everything that is great is simple. Remember, only the four
rules of arithmetic are unshakeable and eternal! And only that
mortality will be unshakeable and eternal which is built upon those
four rules. This is the superior wisdom, this is the summit of that
pyramid around which people red with sweat, fought and battled for
centuries trying to crawl up!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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