Название: All Men are Ghosts
Автор: L. P. Jacks
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664595096
isbn:
"Before you can persuade me of all this," I said, "you will have to turn my intelligence clean inside out."
"That is precisely what I intend doing, and the first step shall be taken this very instant. Begin the exercises by repeating the Formula of Initiation. It runs as follows:
'Till another speaks to me I am nothing.'"
"Why, Panhandle," I said laughing, "that is the very formula they taught me when I first entered a Public School. And they enforced it with kicks."
"The Universe enforces it in the same manner. But let us keep to the matter in hand. Repeat the formula at once."
"Wait," I said. "The situation is growing ominous, and I will not embark upon this enterprise till I know more of what it will lead to."
"Take your own time," said Panhandle. "The rules of my system forbid me to hurry the neophyte. If what I have told you already is not enough, you shall hear more. Among the ghosts who haunt this house are beings far mightier than any I have so far described. For a long time their identification baffled me, until one night I overheard them in high debate, and found they were occupied in an attempt to account for their own existence in the scheme of things. Then I knew who they were."
"These," I said, catching him up, "must assuredly be the ghosts of the great philosophies, or systems of thought, which in their earthly state accounted for the existence of everything else, but left the problem of their own existence untouched."
"A most happy anticipation, and one that augurs well for your future success as an entertainer of ghosts. Have we not heard on high authority that no philosophy is complete until it has explained its own presence in the universe? Having neglected this at the first stage of their existence, the systems exercise their wits at the second in attempts to make good the oversight."
"Do many of them succeed?" I asked.
"Most of them fail; and for that reason their ghosts linger for ages in the neighbourhood of houses which, like my own, are hospitable to their presence. For it is a rule of the realm to which they now belong that so soon as any system succeeds in explaining its own origin it vanishes and passes on to a still higher state of existence."
"Panhandle," I said, "you have identified these ghosts beyond the possibility of cavil. A more conclusive proof could not be given."
"Beware, then, how you proceed!" said he. "It is possible that you will be haunted to-night not only by your Ideas in their severalty, but by your whole system of thought organised as one Synthetic Ghost. It will certainly question you on the subject of its creator, that being, as I have said, the central and absorbing interest of all these spirits. But again let me implore you to be on your guard against claiming to be its author. To inform such a ghost that it originates in a human intelligence, and that intelligence your own, would be treated as an outbreak of impudence deserving the highest resentment, and it is more than likely that the indignant phantom would put a lasting blight on your intellect or punish your presumption in ways yet more fearful to contemplate."
The flow of Panhandle's speech had now become extremely rapid, and my intelligence was beginning to lag in the rear. "Give me a breathing-space," I cried; "I need an interval for silent meditation." Then, in a voice so low that he could not hear me, I repeated to myself the Formula of Initiation and, after musing for a few minutes, begged him to proceed. "A light is breaking," I said, "and your warnings are taking hold."
"In this connection," he resumed, "I could relate many things that would surprise you. Just as the personalities created by genius are apt to repudiate their creators, so the great philosophies when translated to the higher state are apt to disown all connection with the persons to whom their origin is humanly attributed. The philosophy of Spencer, for example, believes its author to be absolutely inscrutable; that of von Hartmann suspects a Professor, but declares him to have been unconscious of what he was doing. Pessimism, again, ascribes its beginning to a desire on the part of the Primal Power to give away the secret of its conspiracies against its own subjects; the doctrine that mind is mechanism believes itself the outcome of a non-mechanical principle, and has become in consequence the most superstitious of all the ghosts; and a group of materialistic systems have concluded, after long debate, that all philosophies originate from Ink and a Tendency in the Ink to get itself transferred to Paper."
"It is evident," I interposed, "that even in their higher existence the systems are by no means free from illusions."
"Be cautious how you judge them," said Panhandle, "for it may be that in accounting for their origin they are less astray than yourself. None the less, you are right in declaring them defective. Fallacies perpetrated in a system at the first stage of its existence become diseases when translated to the second, and some of the ghosts in consequence live the life of invalids. The ghost of Evolution, for example, will appear before you in a deplorable condition. This ghost has recently learnt that it is suffering from an Undistributed Middle, a disease unamenable to treatment, being proof even against the Method of Eloquence, which as you know is a potent specific for most logical defects. You may easily identify the spirit by remembering what I have told you. If you encounter an apparition walking about with hands pressed hard on its Middle, and groaning heavily, know that the spectre of Evolution is before you."
"Panhandle," I said, "your revelations have awakened my uttermost curiosity, and every nerve in my body is tense with eagerness to encounter an apparition. Heaven grant that the ghost of my own philosophy may appear! And yet, in a sense, I am disappointed. You promised that you would furnish me with material for my next book. But the public has no interest in the phantoms you have described, and will not believe in their existence."
"That remains to be seen," he answered. "Meanwhile, I give you my solemn pledge that you shall see a ghost before the night is out."
He said this in a tone so ominous that I could not refrain from starting. What could he mean? A sudden thought flashed upon me, and I cried aloud:
"My dear friend, you fill me with alarm, and I am on the point of giving way! I begin to suspect that I shall never see the СКАЧАТЬ