Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/135

 you the opportunity to clothe your neighbours as He clothes the lilies in the field.

And you, ye butchers and dealers in cooked meats, you took baskets of meat and sausages and polonies on your heads, and went from door to door, and knocked or rang, and begged everybody just to help themselves to whatever they fancied.

And all you who sell boots, furniture, tobacco, bags, spectacles, jewels, carpets, whips, ropes, tin-war, china, books, false teeth, vegetables, medicines, or whatever else one can think of—all of you, touched by the breath of God, poured out into the street, a prey to the generous panic born of grace divine, and gave away all you possessed; after which, either coming together or standing on the threshold of your emptied shops and warehouses, you declared to one another with glowing eyes, "Now, brother, I have eased my conscience."

In a few days it became evident that there was nothing left to give away. But there was also nothing left to buy. The Absolute had pillaged and completely cleaned out every place of business.

Meanwhile, far away from the cities, there poured from the machines millions of metres of wool and linen, Niagaras of lump sugar, all the teeming, magnificent and inexhaustible profusion of the divine over-production of every kind of goods. Some feeble efforts to divide and distribute this flood of