We pay higher and higher in proportion to the service rendered till we
get to the highest services, such as becoming a Member of Parliament, and
this must not be paid at all. If a man would go yet higher and found a
new and permanent system, or create some new idea or work of art which
remains to give delight to ages—he must not only not be paid, but he will
have to pay very heavily out of his own pocket into the bargain.
Again, we are to get all men to speak well of us if we can; yet we are to
be cursed if all men speak well of us.
So when the universe has gathered itself into a single ball (which I
don’t for a moment believe it ever will, but I don’t care) it will no
sooner have done so, than the bubble will burst and it will go back to
its gases again.
Contradiction in terms is so omnipresent that we treat it as we treat
death, or free-will, or fate, or air, or God, or the Devil—taking these
things so much as matters of course that, though they are visible enough
if we choose to see them, we neglect them normally altogether, without
for a moment intending to deny their existence. This neglect is
convenient as preventing repetitions the monotony of which would defeat
their own purpose, but people are tempted nevertheless to forget the
underlying omnipresence in the superficial omniabsence. They forget that
its opposite lurks in everything—that there are harmonics of God in the
Devil and harmonics of the Devil in God.
Contradiction in terms is not only to be excused but there can be no
proposition which does not more or less involve one.
It is the fact of there being contradictions in terms, which have to be
smoothed away and fused into harmonious acquiescence with their
surroundings, that makes life and consciousness possible at all. Unless
the unexpected were sprung upon us continually to enliven us we should
pass life, as it were, in sleep. To a living being no “It is” can be
absolute; wherever there is an “Is,” there, among its harmonics, lurks an
“Is not.” When there is absolute absence of “Is not” the “Is” goes too.
And the “Is not” does not go completely till the “Is” is gone along with
it. Every proposition has got a skeleton in its cupboard.