Growing Up In The West. John Muir

from the farm in the island to the one near Blackness. Yes, he had felt just the same then looking at the new countryside – though he had clean forgotten about it: that everything was a little out of position, that things needn’t have been as they were at all. The sea needn’t have swept in just there, the hills needn’t have been just that shape; and the same with the farmhouses: they were set down just anywhere, and one of them was planted in a position that it made you uncomfortable even to look at: it was about two-thirds up the side of a hill, when of course it should have been either at the top or the bottom. But then he had got accustomed to all those things, and in time it seemed quite natural that they should be as they were and where they were. They seemed at last even to have a sort of plan; yet if he were to go back now and look at them again he would find that that was pure fancy. Still it was a dashed uncomfortable thought. Made a fellow wonder where he was.

      Terrible to think too of those millions of years stretching in front, for what with things moving about as they did and even taking different shapes (according to Geordie), how on earth could a fellow know where he was? Even those historical Johnnies that they taught you about at school, Cromwell and Henry the Eighth and Napoleon and so on, would never be able to stick to their places for good; they would all have to shift, no matter how hard they fought against it. In a million years they might be anywhere, out of history altogether maybe, for how could the schools go on teaching history as far back as that? Everything on the earth now would be forgotten, things changed so fast. Maybe even Christianity would be forgotten, perhaps even Christ Himself, or at least He might become one of those nature myths Geordie was always blethering about. Even that was possible. And then there were earthquakes to be taken into account; always something else when you thought you had provided for everything. Suppose Palestine were to subside and be covered by the sea? That was quite possible. And he saw on the sunken reef of Calvary a luminous Cross covered with jewelled sea creatures and glimmering phosphorescently in dark blue waters. A phrase he had heard somewhere, ‘sea gods’, came into his mind. Would Christ become a sea god then instead of a nature myth? And he saw fleets of submarines circling round the silver-dripping Cross, fleets filled with strange-faced pilgrims from a distant age: worshippers of the amphibious god. Queer thoughts that came into a fellow’s head. Well, he wouldn’t like to be the last Johnny left to be frozen out. At the thought he almost felt inclined to turn back and seek Geordie’s company.

      When he reached the tea-room in Strathblane he was glad to find the tables crowded, glad that he had to sit down at a table where two young men were eating. And when he ventured a ‘Lovely day’ he was grateful that the two young men said something friendly in return, for he had a sense of having come back from such a vast and watery distance that the very look on his face, the very air he carried with him, might well scare any decent fellow. He basked in the friendly over-crowded atmosphere of the tea-room, drank in like an immaterial refreshment the jokes flying about, almost reverently masticated the thick floury buttered scones, as though they were friendly and helpful substances humbly offering themselves to him, voluntarily sacrificing themselves to prove that the earth was a great and kindly living thing and not a plain of boulders and rocks.

      Comforted, he went out into the garden, sat down in a deck-chair, and lit a cigarette. For a long time he lay in a dense cloud of animal comfort, his mind blank. The crystalline evening light fell in a calm and frozen cataract on the little garden, the thick rhododendron leaves rose into it rigid and shining, the roses gleamed lustrously as though wet with spray. Steadily the slanting cataract fell, but on the uplands to the east, on the high level fields, its fall quickened to a race of light, a wind of pale fire flying over the sward, which it turned golden as it ran onwards to the invisible walls and roofs of Glasgow. There too it would bring radiance and peace, and even if there were some house of sickness or pain there, it too would be drowned in that serenity; the little stubborn point of pain must dissolve in shame amid such peace. It was like paradise. All this talk about natural selection and protoplasm didn’t seem very real now. Dried milk. He got up, said good night to the waitress, and set out.

      He climbed the slope to the gate of the field in which lay the little loch. He looked up; he could scarcely believe his eyes: that dashed horse was at this gate now! Could he never get away from it? He walked straight up to the gate; he looked for a moment deep into the white star in the middle of the horse’s brow; it was remote and pure as a planet in the sky, and it gave him a queasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. Then he lifted his walking-stick and said in a quivering voice: ‘Get out, damn you! Get out of this!’ He swung his stick, the horse tossed its head, shied, turned round, and, flinging up its hind hoofs, slowly trotted away. Mansie climbed over the gate with his legs trembling. The horse was not far enough away yet for his taste, so he picked up a stone and walked towards it. ‘Get out!’ he shouted again, making to fling the stone, but now the horse finally cantered away quite casually without looking at him. Mansie felt very tired; yet he walked on rapidly without looking to right or left, took his way mechanically through gates and down lanes and round corners, until he found himself at Killermont, where a lighted tramcar was waiting. This business of Tom’s might turn out to be serious, he kept thinking. Have to see whether anything can be done. Maybe a specialist should be called in. He longed for Wednesday, so that he might talk with Helen about it, for he saw in a flash that she alone could help him. He hurried home almost in a panic. But Tom was neither better nor worse. He had had a quiet day.

      NINETEEN

      Warum? Wofür? Wodurch? Wohin? Wo? Wie?

      NIETZSCHE

      A MAN OF our time who is converted from a Christian creed to one of the modern faiths takes without knowing it several centuries at one leap. He launches himself out of a world in which the church bells are still ringing, reminding him of the brevity of his life and the need for salvation, and in the twinkling of an eye he is standing in a landscape from which thousand- year-old lights and shadows have been wiped clean away, a shadowless landscape where every object is new, bright, pure and naked; and while he is contemplating it the medieval bells, still ringing, die away to a thin, antiquarian jangle in his ears. The astonishing thing is that he should be able to execute this feat without becoming dizzy. Yet often it is accomplished with trance-like ease, as though he were flying; and that is because during the brief time he is in the air he has been metamorphosed with chemical rapidity and thoroughness, and so it is a new man, perfectly adapted to his new surroundings, who lands at his mark. He has experienced a change of heart. And although between the creed, say, of a Baptist, the most narrowly individualistic of all creeds, and that of a Socialist, which is communistic through and through, there lies the gulf between the religious and the secular, as well as several centuries of human thought, the convert behaves in the most natural manner as though he were merely stepping out of one room into another furnished more to his taste.

      The difference between the world he has left and the one he enters now is perhaps simply the difference between Why and How. And perhaps he has had no choice. For if a man lives in a large modern city where existence is insecure, and change is rapid, and further change imperative; where chaos is a standing threat, and yet in the refluent ballet of becoming every optimistic idea seems on tip-toe to be realised; where at the very lowest one must put one’s best foot forward to keep up with the march of invention and innovation: the How challenges at every turn and one is irresistibly driven into its arms. Once there, however, one finds that the Why has become an importunate and niggardly claim, holding one back; and so without scruple, indeed with a sense of following the deepest dictates of conscience, one casts it off, and with it apparently all concern for the brevity of one’s life, the immortality of one’s soul, salvation, and God. Strange how easily all this can be done!

      To fulfil itself the Why must conduct us to the definite end of its seeking; but the How leads on and on through the endless mutations of endless appearance, as if it were set upon circumnavigating a world into which one dimension too many has entered, so that it can never completely describe its circle. Nevertheless the How goes on striving towards horizon after horizon, each of which, like a door, merely throws open another circular chamber, and after that another, and after that another; it casts horizon after horizon behind it like great spent coins, interesting now only to the antiquarian. At first the convert finds nothing but delight in the potentialities of this new world where he can lose himself a thousand times and always find himself again; but as time goes on infinity