to his own soul! Alone, alone, with his own soul alone. God is God and man is man and the man in the street is a louse."
Whatever your relativity, that's the starting point and the finishing point: a man alone with his own soul: and the dark God beyond him.
A man by himself.
Begin then.
Let the men in the street—ugh, horrid millions, crawl the face of the earth like lice or ants or some other ignominy.
The man by himself.
That was one of the names of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The man by himself.
That is the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega, the one absolute: the man alone by himself, alone with his own soul, alone with his eyes on the darkness which is the dark god of life. Alone like a pythoness on her tripod, like the oracle alone above the fissure into the unknown. The oracle, the fissure down into the unknown, the strange exhalations from the dark, the strange words that the oracle must utter. Strange, cruel, pregnant words: the new term of consciousness.
This is the innermost symbol of man: alone in the darkness of the cavern of himself, listening to soundlessness of inflowing fate. Inflowing fate, inflowing doom, what does it matter? The man by himself—that is the absolute—listening—that is the relativity—for the influx of his fate, or doom.
The man by himself. The listener.
But most men can't listen any more. The fissure is closed up. There is no soundless voice. They are deaf and dumb, ants, scurrying ants.
That is their doom. It is a new kind of absolute. Like riff-raff, which has fallen out of living relativity, on to the teeming absolute of the dust-heap, or the ant-heap. Sometimes the dust-heap becomes huge, huge, huge, and covers nearly all the world. Then it turns into a volcano, and all starts again.
"It has nothing to do with me," said Richard to himself. I hope, dear reader, you like plenty of conversation in a novel: it makes it so much lighter and brisker.
"It has nothing to do with me," said Richard to him-
