“Try to imagine how minute was the fraction of energy released to do
that small thing! You are aware that everything is made up of
restless and revolving molecules?--everything--furniture, rocks,
water, iron, horses, men--everything that exists.”
“Yes.”
“Molecules of scores of different sizes and weights, but none of
them big enough to be seen by help of any microscope?”
“Yes.”
“And that each molecule is made up of thousands of separate and
never-resting little particles called atoms?”
“Yes.”
“And that up to recent times the smallest atom known to science was
the hydrogen atom, which was a thousand times smaller than the atom
that went to the building of any other molecule?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the radium atom from the positive pole is 5,000 times smaller
than _that_ atom! This unspeakably minute atom is called an
_electron_. Now then, out of my long affection for you and for your
lineage, I will reveal to you a secret--a secret known to no
scientist as yet--the secret of the firefly’s light and the
glowworm’s; it is produced by a single electron imprisoned in a
polonium atom.”
“Sire, it is a wonderful thing, and the scientific world would be
grateful to know this secret, which has baffled and defeated all its
searchings for more than two centuries. To think!--a single
electron, 5,000 times smaller than the invisible hydrogen atom, to
produce that explosion of vivid light which makes the summer night
so beautiful!”
“And consider,” said Satan; “it is the only instance in all nature
where radium exists in a pure state unencumbered by fettering
alliances; where polonium enjoys the like emancipation; and where
the pair are enabled to labor together in a gracious and beneficent
and effective partnership. Suppose the protecting polonium envelope
were removed; the radium spark would flash but once and the firefly
would be consumed to vapor! Do you value this old iron letterpress?”
“No, Majesty, for it is not mine.”
“Then I will destroy it and let you see. I lit the ostensible cigar
with the heat energy of a single electron, the equipment of a single
lightning bug. I will turn on twenty thousand electrons now.”
He touched the massive thing and it exploded with a cannon crash,
leaving nothing but vacancy where it had stood. For three minutes
the air was a dense pink fog of sparks, through which Satan loomed
dim and vague, then the place cleared and his soft rich moonlight
pervaded it again. He said:
“You see? The radium in 20,000 lightning bugs would run a
racing-mobile forever. There’s no waste, no diminution of it.” Then
he remarked in a quite casual way, “We use nothing but radium at
home.”
I was astonished. And interested, too, for I have friends there, and
relatives. I had always believed--in accordance with my early
teachings--that the fuel was soft coal and brimstone. He noticed the
thought, and answered it.
“Soft coal and brimstone is the tradition, yes, but it is an error.
We could use it; at least we could make out with it after a fashion,
but it has several defects: it is not cleanly, it ordinarily makes
but a temperate fire, and it would be exceedingly difficult, if even
possible, to heat it up to standard, Sundays; and as for the supply,
all the worlds and systems could not furnish enough to keep us going
halfway through eternity. Without radium there could be no hell;
certainly not a satisfactory one.”
“Why?”
“Because if we hadn’t radium we should have to dress the souls in
some other material; then, of course, they would burn up and get out
of trouble. They would not last an hour. You know that?”
“Why--yes, now that you mention it. But I supposed they were dressed
in their natural flesh; they look so in the pictures--in the Sistine
Chapel and in the illustrated books, you know.”
“Yes, our damned look as they looked in the world, but it isn’t
flesh; flesh could not survive any longer than that copying press
survived--it would explode and turn to a fog of sparks, and the
result desired in sending it there would be defeated. Believe me,
radium is the only wear.”
“I see it now,” I said, with prophetic discomfort, “I know that you
are right, Majesty.”
“I am. I speak from experience. You shall see, when you get there.”
He said this as if he thought I was eaten up with curiosity, but it
was because he did not know me. He sat reflecting a minute, then he
said:
“I will make your fortune.”
It cheered me up and I felt better. I thanked him and was all
eagerness and attention.
“Do you know,” he continued, “where they find the bones of the
extinct moa, in New Zealand? All in a pile--thousands and thousands
of them banked together in a mass twenty feet deep. And do you know
where they find the tusks of the extinct mastodon of the
Pleistocene? Banked together in acres off the mouth of the Lena--an
ivory mine which has furnished freight for Chinese caravans for five
hundred years. Do you know the phosphate beds of our South? They are
miles in extent, a limitless mass and jumble of bones of vast
animals whose like exists no longer in the earth--a cemetery, a
mighty cemetery, that is what it is. All over the earth there are
such cemeteries. Whence came the instinct that made those families
of creatures go to a chosen and particular spot to die when sickness
came upon them and they perceived that their end was near? It is a
mystery; not even science has been able to uncover the secret of it.
But there stands the fact. Listen, then. For a million years there
has been a firefly cemetery.”
Hopefully, appealingly, I opened my mouth--he motioned me to close
it, and went on:
“It is in a scooped-out bowl half as big as this room on the top of
a snow summit of the Cordilleras. That bowl is level full--of what?
Pure firefly radium and the glow and heat of hell? For countless
ages myriads of fireflies have daily flown thither and died in that
bowl and been burned to vapor in an instant, each fly leaving as its
contribution its only indestructible particle, its single electron
of pure radium. There is energy enough there to light the whole
world, heat the whole world’s machinery, supply the whole world’s
transportation power from now till the end of eternity. The massed
riches of the planet could not furnish its value in money. You are
mine, it is yours; when Madame Curie isolates polonium, clothe
yourself in a skin of it and go and take possession!”
Then he vanished and left me in the dark when I was just in the act
of thanking him. I can find the bowl by the light it will cast upon
the sky; I can get the polonium presently, when that illustrious
lady in France isolates it from the bismuth. Stock is for sale.
Apply to Mark Twain.
THAT DAY IN EDEN
(Passage from Satan’s Diary)
Long ago I was in the bushes near the Tree of Knowledge when the Man
and the Woman came there and had a conversation. I was present, now,
when they came again after all these years. They were as
before--mere boy and girl--trim, rounded, slender, flexible, snow
images lightly flushed with the pink of the skies, innocently
unconscious of their nakedness, lovely to look upon, beautiful
beyond words.
I listened again. Again as in that former time they puzzled over
those words, Good, Evil, Death, and tried to reason out their
meaning; but, of course, they were not able to do it. Adam said:
“Come, maybe we can find Satan. He might know these things.”
Then I came forth, still gazing upon Eve and admiring, and said to
her:
“You have not seen me before, sweet creature, but I have seen you. I
have seen all the animals, but in beauty none of them equals you.
Your hair, your eyes, your face, your flesh tints, your form, the
tapering grace of your white limbs--all are beautiful, adorable,
perfect.”
It gave her pleasure, and she looked herself over, putting out a
foot and a hand and admiring them; then she naïvely said:
“It is a joy to be so beautiful. And Adam--he is the same.”
She turned him about, this way and that, to show him off, with such
guileless pride in her blue eyes, and he--he took it all as just
matter of course, and was innocently happy in it, and said, “When I
have flowers on my head it is better still.”
Eve said, “It is true--you shall see,” and she flitted hither and
thither like a butterfly and plucked flowers, and in a moment laced
their stems together in a glowing wreath and set it upon his head;
then tiptoed and gave it a pat here and there with her nimble
fingers, with each pat enhancing its grace and shape, none knows
how, nor why it should so result, but in it there is a law
somewhere, though the delicate art and mystery of it is her secret
alone, and not learnable by another; and when at last it was to her
mind she clapped her hands for pleasure, then reached up and kissed
him--as pretty a sight, taken altogether, as in my experience I have
seen.
Presently, to the matter in hand. The meaning of those words--would
I tell her?
Certainly none could be more willing, but how was I to do it? I
could think of no way to make her understand, and I said so. I said:
“I will try, but it is hardly of use. For instance--what is pain?”
“Pain? I do not know.”
“Certainly. How should you? Pain is not of your world; pain is
impossible to you; you have never experienced a physical pain.
Reduce that to a formula, a principle, and what have we?”
“What have we?”
“This: Things which are outside of our orbit--our own particular
world--things which by our constitution and equipment we are unable
to see, or feel, or otherwise experience--_cannot be made
comprehensible to us in words_. There you have the whole thing in a
nutshell. It is a principle, it is axiomatic, it is a law. Now do
you understand?”
The gentle creature looked dazed, and for all result she was
delivered of this vacant remark:
“What is axiomatic?”
She had missed the point. Necessarily she would. Yet her effort was
success for me, for it was a vivid confirmation of the truth of what
I had been saying. Axiomatic was for the present a thing outside of
the world of her experience, therefore it had no meaning for her. I
ignored her question and continued:
“What is fear?”
“Fear? I do not know.”
“Naturally. Why should you? You have not felt it, you cannot feel
it, it does not belong in your world. With a hundred thousand words
I should not be able to make you understand what fear is. How then
am I to explain death to you? You have never seen it, it is foreign
to your world, it is impossible to make the word mean anything to
you, so far as I can see. In a way, it is a sleep----”
“Oh, I know what that is!”
“But it is a sleep only in a way, as I said. It is more than a
sleep.”
“Sleep is pleasant, sleep is lovely!”
“But death is a long sleep--very long.”
“Oh, all the lovelier! Therefore I think nothing could be better
than death.”
I said to myself, “Poor child, some day you may know what a pathetic
truth you have spoken; some day you may say, out of a broken heart,
‘Come to me, O Death the compassionate! steep me in the merciful
oblivion, O refuge of the sorrowful, friend of the forsaken and the
desolate!’” Then I said aloud, “But this sleep is eternal.”
The word went over her head. Necessarily it would.
“Eternal. What is eternal?”
“Ah, that also is outside of your world, as yet. There is no way to
make you understand it.”
It was a hopeless case. Words referring to things outside of her
experience were a foreign language to her, and meaningless. She was
like a little baby whose mother says to it, “Don’t put your finger
in the candle flame; it will burn you.” Burn--it is a foreign word
to the baby, and will have no terrors for it until experience shall
have revealed its meaning. It is not worth while for mamma to make
the remark, the baby will goo-goo cheerfully, and put its finger in
the pretty flame--once. After these private reflections I said again
that I did not think there was any way to make her understand the
meaning of the word eternal. She was silent awhile, turning these
deep matters over in the unworn machinery of her mind; then she gave
up the puzzle and shifted her ground, saying:
“Well, there are those other words. What is good, and what is evil?”
“It is another difficulty. They, again, are outside of your world;
they have place in the moral kingdom only. You have no morals.”
“What are morals?”
“A system of law which distinguishes between right and wrong, good
morals and bad. These things do not exist for you. I cannot make it
clear; you would not understand.”
“But try.”
“Well, obedience to constituted authority is a moral law. Suppose
Adam should forbid you to put your child in the river and leave it
there overnight--would you put the child there?”
She answered with a darling simplicity and guilelessness:
“Why, yes, if I wanted to.”
“There, it is just as I said--you would not know any better; you
have no idea of duty, command, obedience; they have no meaning for
you. In your present estate you are in no possible way responsible
for anything you do or say or think. It is impossible for you to do
wrong, for you have no more notion of right and wrong than the other
animals have. You and they can do only right; whatever you and they
do is right and innocent. It is a divine estate, the loftiest and
purest attainable in heaven and in earth. It is the angel gift. The
angels are wholly pure and sinless, for they do not know right from
wrong, and all the acts of such are blameless. No one can do wrong
without knowing how to distinguish between right and wrong.”
“Is it an advantage to know?”
“Most certainly not! That knowledge would remove all that is divine,
all that is angelic, from the angels, and immeasurably degrade
them.”
“Are there any persons that know right from wrong?”
“Not in--well, not in heaven.”
“What gives that knowledge?”
“The Moral Sense.”
“What is that?”
“Well--no matter. Be thankful that you lack it.”
“Why?”
“Because it is a degradation, a disaster. Without it one cannot do
wrong; with it, one can. Therefore it has but one office, only
one--to teach how to do wrong. It can teach no other thing--no other
thing whatever. It is the _creator_ of wrong; wrong cannot exist
until the Moral Sense brings it into being.”
“How can one acquire the Moral Sense?”
“By eating of the fruit of the Tree, here. But why do you wish to
know? Would you like to have the Moral Sense?”
She turned wistfully to Adam:
“Would you like to have it?”
He showed no particular interest, and only said:
“I am indifferent. I have not understood any of this talk, but if
you like we will eat it, for I cannot see that there is any
objection to it.”
Poor ignorant things, the command of refrain had meant nothing to
them, they were but children, and could not understand untried
things and verbal abstractions which stood for matters outside of
their little world and their narrow experience. Eve reached for an
apple!--oh, farewell, Eden and your sinless joys, come poverty and
pain, hunger and cold and heartbreak, bereavement, tears and shame,
envy, strife, malice and dishonor, age, weariness, remorse; then
desperation and the prayer for the release of death, indifferent
that the gates of hell yawn beyond it!
She tasted--the fruit fell from her hand.
It was pitiful. She was like one who wakens slow and confusedly out
of a sleep. She gazed half vacantly at me, then at Adam, holding her
curtaining fleece of golden hair back with her hand; then her
wandering glance fell upon her naked person. The red blood mounted
to her cheek, and she sprang behind a bush and stood there crying,
and saying:
“Oh, my modesty is lost to me--my unoffending form is become a shame
to me!” She moaned and muttered in her pain, and dropped her head,
saying, “I am degraded--I have fallen, oh, so low, and I shall never
rise again.”
Adam’s eyes were fixed upon her in a dreamy amazement, for he could
not understand what had happened, it being outside his world as yet,
and her words having no meaning for one void of the Moral Sense. And
now his wonder grew: for, unknown to Eve, her hundred years rose
upon her, and faded the heaven of her eyes and the tints of her
young flesh, and touched her hair with gray, and traced faint sprays
of wrinkles about her mouth and eyes, and shrunk her form, and
dulled the satin luster of her skin.
All this the fair boy saw: then loyally and bravely he took the
apple and tasted it, saying nothing.
The change came upon him also. Then he gathered boughs for both and
clothed their nakedness, and they turned and went their way, hand in
hand and bent with age, and so passed from sight.