A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (the best electronic book reader TXT) 📖

an hour. Their minds refused to acknowledge the icy winds, but the current of their thoughts became frozen.

When Branchspell, however, shone out again, though with subdued power, Maskull’s curiosity rose once more. “Your fellow countrymen, then, Spadevil, are sick with self-love?”

“The men of other countries,” said Spadevil, “are the slaves of pleasure and desire, knowing it. But the men of my country are the slaves of pleasure and desire, not knowing it.”

“And yet that proud pleasure, which rejoices in self-torture, has something noble in it.”

“He who studies himself at all is ignoble. Only by despising soul as well as body can a man enter into true life.”

“On what grounds do they reject women?”

“Inasmuch as a woman has ideal love, and cannot live for herself. Love for another is pleasure for the loved one, and therefore injurious to him.”

“A forest of false ideas is waiting for your axe,” said Maskull. “But will they allow it?”

“Spadevil knows, Maskull,” said Tydomin, “that be it today or be it tomorrow, love can’t be kept out of a land, even by the disciples of Hator.”

“Beware of love—beware of emotion!” exclaimed Spadevil. “Love is but pleasure once removed. Think not of pleasing others, but of serving them.”

“Forgive me, Spadevil, if I am still feminine.”

“Right has no sex. So long, Tydomin, as you remember that you are a woman, so long you will not enter into divine apathy of soul.”

“But where there are no women, there are no children,” said Maskull. “How came there to be all these generations of Hator men?”

“Life breeds passion, passion breeds suffering, suffering breeds the yearning for relief from suffering. Men throng to Sant from all parts, in order to have the scars of their souls healed.”

“In place of hatred of pleasure, which all can understand, what simple formula do you offer?”

“Iron obedience to duty,” answered Spadevil.

“And if they ask ‘How far is this consistent with hatred of pleasure?’ what will your pronouncement be?”

“I do not answer them, but I answer you, Maskull, who ask the question. Hatred is passion, and all passion springs from the dark fires of self. Do not hate pleasure at all, but pass it by on one side, calm and undisturbed.”

“What is the criterion of pleasure? How can we always recognise it, in order to avoid it?”

“Rigidly follow duty, and such questions will not arise.”

Later in the afternoon, Tydomin timidly placed her fingers on Spadevil’s arm.

“Fearful doubts are in my mind,” she said. “This expedition to Sant may turn out badly. I have seen a vision of you, Spadevil, and myself lying dead and covered in blood, but Maskull was not there.”

“We may drop the torch, but it will not be extinguished, and others will raise it.”

“Show me a sign that you are not as other men—so that I may know that our blood will not be wasted.”

Spadevil regarded her sternly. “I am not a magician. I don’t persuade the senses, but the soul. Does your duty call you to Sant, Tydomin? Then go there. Does it not call you to Sant? Then go no farther. Is not this simple? What signs are necessary?”

“Did I not see you dispel those spouts of lightning? No common man could have done that.”

“Who knows what any man can do? This man can do one thing, that man can do another. But what all men can do is their duty; and to open their eyes to this, I must go to Sant, and if necessary lay down my life. Will you not still accompany me?”

“Yes,” said Tydomin, “I will follow you to the end. It is all the more essential, because I keep on displeasing you with my remarks, and that means I have not yet learned my lesson properly.”

“Do not be humble, for humility is only self-judgment, and while we are thinking of self, we must be neglecting some action we could be planning or shaping in our mind.”

Tydomin continued to be uneasy and preoccupied.

“Why was Maskull not in the picture?” she asked.

“You dwell on this foreboding because you imagine it is tragical. There is nothing tragical in death, Tydomin, nor in life. There is only right and wrong. What arises from right or wrong action does not matter. We are not gods, constructing a world, but simple men and women, doing our immediate duty. We may die in Sant—so you have seen it; but the truth will go on living.”

“Spadevil, why do you choose Sant to start your work in?” asked Maskull. “These men with fixed ideas seem to me the least likely of any to follow a new light.”

“Where a bad tree thrives, a good tree will flourish. But where no tree at all can be found, nothing will grow.”

“I understand you,” said Maskull. “Here perhaps we are going to martyrdom, but elsewhere we should resemble men preaching to cattle.”

Shortly before sunset they arrived at the extremity of the upland plain, above which towered the black cliffs of the Sant Levels. A dizzy, artificially constructed staircase, of more than a thousand steps of varying depth, twisting and forking in order to conform to the angles of the precipices, led to the world overhead. In the place where they stood they were sheltered from the cutting winds. Branchspell, radiantly shining at last, but on the point of sinking, filled the cloudy sky with violent, lurid colors, some of the combinations of which were new to Maskull. The circle of the horizon was so gigantic, that had he been suddenly carried back to Earth, he would by comparison have fancied himself to be moving beneath the dome of some little, closed-in cathedral. He realised that he was on a foreign planet. But he was not stirred or uplifted by the knowledge; he was conscious only of moral ideas. Looking backward, he saw the plain, which for several miles past had been without vegetation, stretching back away to Disscourn. So regular had been the ascent, and so great was the distance, that the huge pyramid looked nothing more than a slight swelling on the face of the earth.

Spadevil stopped, and gazed over the landscape in silence. In the evening sunlight his form looked more dense, dark, and real than ever before. His features were set hard in grimness.

He turned around to his companions. “What is the greatest wonder, in all this wonderful scene?” he demanded.

“Acquaint us,” said Maskull.

“All that you see is born from pleasure, and moves on, from pleasure to pleasure. Nowhere is right to be found. It is Shaping’s world.”