"Let me tell you about the witches!" she began.
"For generations we had fared constantly worse. It was not too well
with us on the eve of the French Revolution; when the industrial
revolution got its stride we perished as men perished in the Black
Plague. Some of us fled to Africa; a few held on in Ireland and in the
mountains of Norway; more flew across the ocean to join the men and
women who were widening the American frontiers.
"But the greatest number magically killed themselves. What else was
there for them to do? Men paid less and less attention to us, and we
live by human attention.
"The idea that two and two make four, and even the later idea that
two and two unless, traveling parallel and at the same speed, make
only approximately four, worked havoc with us. Electric lighting
dispelled dark corners. The noisy suburbs spread over lonely fields
and dark woods. But the chief cause of our _débâcle_ was the growth of
the belief that the '_universe_ is not many things, but an absolute
One, of infinite aspects, but fundamentally, eternally the same'--the
monstrous, paralyzing magic of this drove the witches from the earth.
"I did not know that I was alone until the middle of the last century.
I wept for years.
"Hope was born when I felt I had the concentrated power of the Magical
Black Hundreds who perished. Perhaps I could reshape the hateful, new
world--or smash it!
"Instead of weeping I read science and philosophy. I realized I was not
only magically stronger than ever before, but that in my spirit might
reside the Essential Fallacy! Do you understand that?" asked the old
witch, and I said Yes, I understood, but I didn't.