So I ran quickly, for a cedar pole. The porcupine was lying still, with
subsiding halo. He stirred faintly. So I turned him and hit him hard
over the nose; or where, in the dark, his nose should have been. And it
was done. He was dead.
And in the moonlight, I looked down on the first creature I had ever
shot.
“Does it seem mean?” I asked aloud, doubtful.
Again Madame hesitated. Then: “No!” she said resentfully.
And I felt she was right. Things like the porcupine, one must be able to
shoot them, if they get in one’s way.
One must be able to shoot. I, myself, must be able to shoot, and to
kill.
For me, this is a _volta face_. I have always preferred to walk round my
porcupine, rather than kill it.
Now, I know it’s no good walking ’round. One must kill.
I buried him in the adobe hole. But some animal dug down and ate him;
for two days later there lay the spines and bones spread out, with the
long skeletons of the porcupine-hands.
The only nice thing about him--or her, for I believe it was a female, by
the dugs on her belly--were the feet. They were like longish, alert
black hands, paw-hands. That is why a porcupine’s tracks in the snow
look almost as if a child had gone by, leaving naked little human
foot-prints, like a little boy.
So, he is gone: or she is gone. But there is another one, bigger and
blacker-looking, among the west timber. That too is to be shot. It is
part of the business of ranching: even when it’s only a little
half-abandoned ranch like this one.
Wherever man establishes himself, upon the earth, he has to fight for
his place, against the lower orders of life. Food, the basis of
existence, has to be fought for even by the most idyllic of farmers. You
plant, and you protect your growing crop with a gun. Food, food, how
strangely it relates man with the animal and vegetable world! How
important it is! And how fierce is the fight that goes on around it.
The same when one skins a rabbit, and takes out the inside, one realises
what an enormous part of the animal, comparatively, is intestinal, what
a big part of him is just for food-apparatus; for _living on_ other
organisms.
And when one watches the horses in the big field, their noses to the
ground, bite-bite-biting at the grass, and stepping absorbedly on, and
bite-bite-biting without ever lifting their noses, cropping off the
grass, the young shoots of alfalfa, the dandelions, with a blind,
relentless, unwearied persistence, one’s whole life pauses. One suddenly
realises again how all creatures devour, and _must_ devour the lower
forms of life.
So Susan, swinging across the field, snatches off the tops of the little
wild sunflowers as if she were mowing. And down they go, down her black
throat. And when she stands in her cowy oblivion chewing her cud, with
her lower jaw swinging peacefully, and I am milking her, suddenly the
camomiley smell of her breath, as she glances round with glaring,
smoke-blue eyes, makes me realise it is the sunflowers that are her ball
of cud. Sunflowers! And they will go to making her glistening black
hide, and the thick cream on her milk.
And the chickens, when they see a great black beetle, that the Mexicans
call a _toro_, floating past, they are after it in a rush. And if it
settles, instantly the brown hen stabs it with her beak. It is a great
beetle two or three inches long: but in a second it is in the crop of
the chicken. Gone!
And Timsy, the cat, as she spies on the chipmunks, crouches in another
sort of oblivion, soft, and still. The chipmunks come to drink the milk
from the chickens’ bowl. Two of them met at the bowl. They were little
squirrely things with stripes down their backs. They sat up in front of
one another, lifting their inquisitive little noses and humping their
backs. Then each put its two little hands on the other’s shoulders, they
reared up, gazing into each other’s faces; and finally they put their
two little noses together, in a sort of kiss.
But Miss Timsy can’t stand this. In a soft, white-and-yellow leap she is
after them. They skip with the darting jerk of chipmunks, to the
wood-heap, and with one soft, high-leaping sideways bound Timsy goes
through the air. Her snow-flake of a paw comes down on one of the
chipmunks. She looks at it for a second. It squirms. Swiftly and
triumphantly she puts her two flowery little white paws on it, legs
straight out in front of her, back arched, gazing concentratedly yet
whimsically. Chipmunk does not stir. She takes it softly in her mouth,
where it dangles softly, like a lady’s tippet. And with a proud,
prancing motion the Timsy sets off towards the house, her white little
feet hardly touching the ground.
But she gets shooed away. We refuse to loan her the sitting-room any
more, for her gladiatorial displays. If the chippy must be “butchered to
make a Timsy holiday”, it shall be outside. Disappointed, but still
high-stepping, the Timsy sets off towards the clay oven by the shed.
There she lays the chippy gently down, and soft as a little white cloud
lays one small paw on its striped back. Chippy does not move. Soft as
thistle-down she raises her paw a tiny, tiny bit, to release him.
And all of a sudden, with an elastic jerk, he darts from under the white
release of her paw. And instantly, she is up in the air and down she
comes on him, with the forward-thrusting bolts of her white paws. Both
creatures are motionless.
Then she takes him softly in her mouth again, and looks round, to see if
she can slip into the house. She cannot. So she trots towards the
wood-pile.
It is a game, and it is pretty. Chippy escapes into the wood-pile, and
she softly, softly reconnoitres among the faggots.
Of all the animals, there is no denying it, the Timsy is the most
pretty, the most fine. It is not her mere _corpus_ that is beautiful; it
is her bloom of aliveness. Her “infinite variety”; the soft, snow-flakey
lightness of her, and at the same time her lean, heavy ferocity. I had
never realised the latter, till I was lying in bed one day moving my
toe, unconsciously, under the bedclothes. Suddenly a terrific blow
struck my foot. The Timsy had sprung out of nowhere, with a hurling,
steely force, thud upon the bedclothes where the toe was moving. It was
as if someone had aimed a sudden blow, vindictive and unerring.
“Timsy!”
She looked at me with the vacant, feline glare of her hunting eyes. It
is not even ferocity. It is the dilation of the strange, vacant
arrogance of power. The power is in her.
And so it is. Life moves in circles of power and of vividness, and each
circle of life only maintains its orbit upon the subjection of some
lower circle. If the lower cycles of life are not _mastered_, there can
be no higher cycle.
In nature, one creature devours another, and this is an essential part
of all existence and of all being. It is not something to lament over,
nor something to try to reform. The Buddhist who refuses to take life is
really ridiculous, since if he eats only two grains of rice per day, it
is two grains of life. We did not make creation, _we_ are not the
authors of the universe. And if we see that the whole of creation is
established upon the fact that one life devours another life, one cycle
of existence can only come into existence through the subjugating of
another cycle of existence, then what is the good of trying to pretend
that it is not so? The only thing to do is to realise what is higher,
and what is lower, in the cycles of existence.
It is nonsense to declare that there _is_ no higher and lower. We know
full well that the dandelion belongs to a higher cycle of existence than
the hartstongue fern, that the ant’s is a higher form of existence than
the dandelion’s, that the thrush is higher than the ant, that Timsy the
cat, is higher than the thrush, and that I, a man, am higher than Timsy.
What do we mean by higher? Strictly, we mean more alive. More vividly
alive. The ant is more vividly alive than the pine-tree. We know it,
there is no trying to refute it. It is all very well saying that they
are both alive in two different ways, and therefore they are
incomparable, incommensurable. This is also true.
But one truth does not displace another. Even apparently contradictory
truths do not displace one another. Logic is far too coarse to make the
subtle distinctions life demands.
Truly, it is futile to compare an ant with a great pine-tree, in the
absolute. Yet as far as _existence_ is concerned, they are not only
placed in comparison to one another, they are occasionally pitted
against one another. And if it comes to a contest, the little ant will
devour the life of the huge tree. If it comes to a contest.
And, in the cycles of _existence_, this is the test. From the lowest
form of existence, to the highest, the test question is: _Can thy
neighbour finally overcome thee?_
If he can, then he belongs to a higher cycle of existence.
This is the truth behind the survival of the fittest. Every cycle of
existence is established upon the overcoming of the lower cycles of
existence. The real question is, wherein does _fitness_ lie? Fitness for
what? Fit merely to survive? That which is only fit to survive will
survive only to supply food or contribute in some way to the existence
of a higher form of life, which is able to do more than survive, which
can really _vive_, live.
Life is more vivid in the dandelion than in the green fern, or than in a
palm tree.
Life is more vivid in a snake than in a butterfly.
Life is more vivid in a wren than in an alligator.
Life is more vivid in a cat than in an ostrich.
Life is more vivid in the Mexican who drives the wagon, than in the two
horses in the wagon.
Life is more vivid in me, than in the Mexican who drives the wagon for
me.
We are speaking in terms of _existence_: that is, in terms of species,
race, or type.
The dandelion can take hold of the land, the palm tree is driven into a
corner, with the fern.
The snake can devour the fiercest insect.
The fierce bird can destroy the greatest reptile.
The great cat can destroy the greatest bird.
The man can destroy the horse, or any animal.
One race of man can subjugate and rule another race.
All this in terms of _existence_. As far as existence goes, that
life-species is the highest which can devour, or destroy, or subjugate
every other life-species against which it is pitted in contest.
This is a law. There is no escaping this law. Anyone, or any race,
trying to escape it, will fall a victim: will fall into subjugation.
But let us insist and insist again, we are talking now of existence, of
species, of types, of races, of nations, not of single individuals, nor
of _beings_. The dandelion in full flower, a little sun bristling with
sun-rays on the green earth, is a nonpareil, a nonsuch. Foolish,
foolish, foolish to compare it to anything else on earth. It is itself
incomparable and unique.
But that is the fourth dimension, of _being_. It is in the fourth
dimension, nowhere else.
Because, in the time-space dimension, any man may tread on the yellow
sun-mirror, and it is gone. Any cow may swallow it. Any bunch of ants
may annihilate it.
This brings us to the inexorable law of life.
1. Any creature that attains to its own fullness of being, its own
_living_ self, becomes unique, a nonpareil. It has its place in the
fourth dimension, the heaven of existence, and there it is perfect, it
is beyond comparison.
2. At the same time, every creature exists in time and space. And in
time and space it exists relatively to all other existence, and can
never be absolved. Its existence impinges on other existences, and is
itself impinged upon. And in the struggle for existence, if an effort on
the part of any one type or species or order of life, can finally
destroy the other species, then the destroyer is of a more vital cycle
of existence than the one destroyed. (When speaking of existence we
always speak in types, species, not individuals. Species exist. But even
an individual dandelion has _being_.)
3. The force which we call _vitality_, and which is the determining
factor in the struggle for existence, is, however, derived also from the
fourth dimension. That is to say, the ultimate source of all vitality is
in that other dimension, or region, where the dandelion blooms, and
which men have called heaven, and which now they call the fourth
dimension: which is only a way of saying that it is not to be reckoned
in terms of space and time.
4. The primary way, in our existence, to get vitality, is to absorb it
from living creatures lower than ourselves. It is thus transformed into
a new and higher creation. (There are many ways of absorbing: devouring
food is one way, love is often another. The best way is a pure
relationship, which includes the _being_ on each side, and which allows
the transfer to take place in a living flow, enhancing the life in both
beings.)
5. No creature is fully itself till it is, like the dandelion, opened in
the bloom of pure relationship to the sun, the entire living cosmos.
So we still find ourselves in the tangle of existence and being, a
tangle which man has never been able to get out of, except by
sacrificing the one to the other.
Sacrifice is useless.
The clue to all existence is being. But you can’t have being without
existence, any more than you can have the dandelion flower without the
leaves and the long tap root.
Being is _not_ ideal, as Plato would have it: nor spiritual. It is a
transcendant form of existence, and as much material as existence is.
Only the matter suddenly enters the fourth dimension.
All existence is dual, and surging towards a consummation into being. In
the seed of the dandelion, as it floats with its little umbrella of
hairs, sits the Holy Ghost in tiny compass. The Holy Ghost is that which
holds the light and the dark, the day and the night, the wet and the
sunny, united in one little clue. There it sits, in the seed of the
dandelion.
The seed falls to earth. The Holy Ghost rouses, saying: “_Come!_” And
out of the sky come the rays of the sun, and out of earth comes dampness
and dark and the death-stuff. They are called in, like those bidden to a
feast. The sun sits down at the hearth, inside the seed; and the dark,
damp death-returner sits on the opposite side, with the host between.
And the host says to them: “_Come! Be merry together!_” So the sun looks
with desirous curiosity on the dark face of the earth, and the dark damp
one looks with wonder on the bright face of the other, who comes from
the sun. And the host says: “_Here you are at home! Lift me up, between
you, that I may cease to be a Ghost. For it longs me to look out, it
longs me to dance with the dancers._”
So the sun in the seed, and the earthy one in the seed take hands, and
laugh, and begin to dance. And their dancing is like a fire kindled, a
bonfire with leaping flame. And the treading of their feet is like the
running of little streams, down into the earth. So from the dance of the
sun-in-the-seed with the earthy death-returner, green little flames of
leaves shoot up, and hard little trickles of roots strike down. And the
host laughs, and says: “_I am being lifted up! Dance harder! Oh wrestle,
you two, like wonderful wrestlers, neither of which can win._” So
sun-in-the-seed and the death-returner, who is earthy, dance faster and
faster and the leaves rising greener begin to dance in a ring
above-ground, fiercely overwhelming any outsider, in a whirl of swords
and lions’ teeth. And the earthy one wrestles, wrestles with the
sun-in-the-seed, so the long roots reach down like arms of a fighter
gripping the power of earth, and strangles all intruders, strangling any
intruder mercilessly. Till the two fall in one strange embrace, and from
the centre the long flower-stem lifts like a phallus, budded with a bud.
And out of the bud the voice of the Holy Ghost is heard crying: “_I am
lifted up! Lo! I am lifted up! I am here!_” So the bud opens, and there
is the flower poised in the very middle of the universe, with a ring of
green swords below, to guard it, and the octopus, arms deep in earth,
drinking and threatening. So the Holy Ghost, being a dandelion flower,
looks round, and says: “_Lo! I am yellow! I believe the sun has lent me
his body! Lo! I am sappy with golden, bitter blood! I believe death out
of the damp black earth has lent me his blood! I am incarnate! I like my
incarnation! But this is not all. I will keep this incarnation. It is
good! But oh! if I can win to another incarnation, who knows how
wonderful it will be! This one will have to give place. This one can
help to create the next._”
So the Holy Ghost leaves the clue of himself behind, in the seed, and
wanders forth in the comparative chaos of our universe, seeking another
incarnation.
And this will go on for ever. Man, as yet, is less than half grown. Even
his flower-stem has not appeared yet. He is all leaves and roots,
without any clue put forth. No sign of bud anywhere.
Either he will have to start budding, or he will be forsaken of the Holy
Ghost: abandoned as a failure in creation, as the ichthyosaurus was
abandoned. Being abandoned means losing his vitality. The sun and the
earth-dark will cease rushing together in him. Already it is ceasing. To
men, the sun is becoming stale, and the earth sterile. But the sun
itself will never become stale, nor the earth barren. It is only that
the _clue_ is missing inside men. They are like flowerless, seedless fat
cabbages, nothing inside.
Vitality depends upon the clue of the Holy Ghost inside a creature, a
man, a nation, a race. When the clue goes, the vitality goes. And the
Holy Ghost seeks for ever a new incarnation, and subordinates the old to
the new. You will know that any creature or race is still alive with the
Holy Ghost, when it can subordinate the lower creatures or races, and
assimilate them into a new incarnation.
No man, or creature, or race can have vivid vitality unless it be moving
towards a blossoming: and the most powerful is that which moves towards
the as-yet-unknown blossom.
Blossoming means the establishing of a pure, _new_ relationship with all
the cosmos. This is the state of heaven. And it is the state of a
flower, a cobra, a jenny-wren in spring, a man when he knows himself
royal and crowned with the sun, with his feet gripping the core of the
earth.
This too is the fourth dimension: this state, this mysterious other
reality of things in a perfected relationship. It is into this perfected
relationship that every straight line curves, as if to some core,
passing out of the time-space dimension.
But any man, creature, or race moving towards blossoming will have to
draw immense supplies of vitality from men, or creatures below,
passionate strength. And he will have to accomplish a perfected relation
with all things.
There will be conquest, always. But the aim of conquest is a perfect
relation of conquerors with conquered, for a new blossoming. Freedom is
illusory. Sacrifice is illusory. Almightyness is illusory. Freedom,
sacrifice, almightyness, these are all human side-tracks, cul-de-sacs,
bunk. All that is real is the overwhelmingness of a new inspirational
command, a new relationship with all things.
Heaven is always there. No achieved consummation is lost. Procreation
goes on for ever, to support the achieved revelation. But the torch of
revelation itself is handed on. And this is all important.
Everything living wants to procreate more living things.
But more important than this is the fact that every revelation is a
torch held out, to kindle new revelations. As the dandelion holds out
the sun to me, saying: “_Can you take it!_”
Every gleam of heaven that is shown--like a dandelion flower, or a green
beetle--quivers with strange passion to kindle a new gleam, never yet
beheld. This is not self-sacrifice: it is self-contribution: in which
the highest happiness lies.
The torch of existence is handed on, in the womb of procreation.
And the torch of revelation is handed on, by every living thing, from
the protococcus to a brave man or a beautiful woman, handed to
whomsoever can take it. He who can take it, has power beyond all the
rest.
The cycle of procreation exists purely for the keeping alight of the
torch of perfection, in any species: the torch being the dandelion in
blossom, the tree in full leaf, the peacock in all his plumage, the
cobra in all his colour, the frog at full leap, woman in all the mystery
of her fathomless desirableness, man in the fulness of his power: every
creature become its pure self.
One cycle of perfection urges to kindle another cycle, as yet unknown.
And with the kindling from the torch of revelation comes the inrush of
vitality, and the need to consume and _consummate_ the lower cycles of
existence, into a new thing. This consuming and this consummating means
conquest, and fearless mastery. Freedom lies in the honourable yielding
towards the new flame, and the honourable mastery of that which shall
be new, over that which must yield. As I must master my horses, which
are in a lower cycle of existence. And they, they are relieved and
_happy_ to serve. If I turn them loose into the mountain ranges, to run
wild till they die, the thrill of real happiness is gone out of their
lives.
Every lower order seeks in some measure to serve a higher order: and
rebels against being conquered.
It is always conquest, and it always will be conquest. If the conquered
be an old, declining race, they will have handed on their torch to the
conqueror: who will burn his fingers badly, if he is too flippant. And
if the conquered be a barbaric race, they will consume the fire of the
conqueror, and leave him flameless, unless he watch it. But it is always
conquest, conquered and conqueror, for ever. The Kingdom of heaven is
the Kingdom of conquerors, who can serve the conquest for ever, after
their own conquest is made.
In heaven, in the perfected relation, is peace: in the fourth dimension.
But there is getting there. And that, for ever, is the process of
conquest.
When the rose blossomed, then the great Conquest was made by the
Vegetable Kingdom. But even this conqueror of conquerors, the rose, had
to lend himself towards the caterpillar and the butterfly of a later
conquest. A conqueror, but tributary to the later conquest.
There is no such thing as equality. In the kingdom of heaven, in the
fourth dimension, each soul that achieves a perfect relationship with
the cosmos, from its own centre, is perfect, and incomparable. It has no
superior. It is a conqueror, and incomparable.
But every man, in the struggle of conquest towards his own consummation,
must master the inferior cycles of life, and never relinquish his
mastery. Also, if there be men beyond him, moving on to a newer
consummation than his own, he must yield to their greater demand, and
serve their greater mystery, and so be faithful to the kingdom of heaven
which is within him, which is gained by conquest and by loyal service.
Any man who achieves his own being will, like the dandelion or the
butterfly, pass into that other dimension which we call the fourth, and
the old people called heaven. It is the state of perfected relationship.
And here a man will have his peace for ever: whether he serve or
command, in the process of living.
But even this entails his faithful allegiance to the kingdom of heaven,
which must be for ever and for ever extended, as creation conquers
chaos. So that my perfection will but serve a perfection which still
lies ahead, unrevealed and unconceived, and beyond my own.
We have tried to build walls round the kingdom of heaven: but it’s no
good. It’s only the cabbage rotting inside.
Our last wall is the golden wall of money. This is a fatal wall. It cuts
us off from life, from vitality, from the alive sun and the alive earth,
as _nothing_ can. Nothing, not even the most fanatical dogmas of an
iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and
inspiration, as money can.
We are losing vitality: losing it rapidly. Unless we seize the torch of
inspiration, and drop our moneybags, the moneyless will be kindled by
the flame of flames, and they will consume us like old rags.
We are losing vitality, owing to money and money-standards. The torch in
the hands of the moneyless will set our house on fire, and burn us to
death, like sheep in a flaming corral.