Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/325

 Back to the central self, the isolate, absolute self.

"Now," thought Richard to himself, waving his front paws with gratification: "I must sound the muezzin and summon all men back to their central, isolate selves."

So he drew himself up, when—urch!! He was sluthering over the brim of the ointment pot into the balm of humanity once more.

"Oh, Lord, I nearly did it again," he thought as he clambered out with a sick heart. "I shall do it once too often. The bulk of mankind haven't got any central selves: haven't got any. They're all bits."

Nothing but his fright would have struck this truth out of him. So he crouched still, like a fly very tired with crawling out of the ointment, to think about it.

"The bulk of people haven't got any central selves. They're all bits."

He knew it was true, and he felt rather sick of the sweet odour of the balm of human beatitudes, in which he had been so nearly lost.

"It takes how many thousand facets to make the eye of a fly—or a spider?" he asked himself, being rather hazy scientifically. "Well, all these people are just facets: just bits, that fitted together make a whole. But you can fit the bits together time after time, yet it won't bring the bug to life."

The people of this terrestial sphere are all bits. Isolate one of them, and he is still only a bit. Isolate your man in the street, and he is just a rudimentary fragment. Supposing you have the misfortune to have your little toe cut off. That little toe won't at once rear on its hind legs and begin to announce: I'm an isolated individual with an immortal soul." It won't. But your man in the street will. And he is a liar. He's only a bit, and he's only got a minute share of the collective soul. Soul of his own he has none: and never will have. Just a share in the collective soul, no more. Never a thing by himself.

Damn the man in the street, said Richard to himself. Damn the collective soul, it's a dead rat in a hole. Let humanity scratch its own lice.

Now I'll sound my muezzin again. The man by himself. "Allah bismallah! God is God and man is man and has a soul of his own. Each man to himself! Each man back