Part 38 (2/2)

Nick: At any rate the answer to swords and ploughshares is rust unto rust. And when a man lets his Things rust, he slips back into prehistory.

Enoch: Only into the prehistory of Things. Only into the prehistory of h.o.m.o faber. h.o.m.o sapiens-which is to say man when he has acquired moral possibilities-has no prehistory, he has history only. Technology progresses. A flint hammer becomes a bomb. A cave becomes a skysc.r.a.per. This is h.o.m.o faber progressing-man the maker. We call the Things we don't remember his making, prehistory; and the Things we seem to remember, because he described them for us, history. But h.o.m.o sapiens doesn't progress. He is always the same. He was modern from the very beginning. We date him from the moment he learned that killing, which didn't bother him, and being killed, which did, were really the same act That moment is when human history began. It began when h.o.m.o faber became h.o.m.o sapiens-when manufacturing man became moral man. Having made, he thought about what he had made, and what he ought to do and ought not to do about what he had made. Moral man has no prehistory, because before history there was no man, there were only beasts. One never speaks of the history of beasts, though some, like the beavers and the birds, are very fine manufacturers of their own environment.

Nick: A beast can't mae a telescope.

Enoch: It's only a beast who does. A telescope is the eye sharpened. But it is only the eye. It isn't something other-it's the beast extended. The naked eye is the telescope's prehistory. You won't discover the nature of man in the little bundles he carries with him always-they're only his mess of pottage. His birthright is something else.

Nick: His birthright is personal-you can't deny that

Enoch: It belongs to him personally, he personally must act on it, but in itself it's an abstraction. His birthright is a message against killing; against killing as a theory and a methodology. Of course you can't prove that the message is there, the way the telescope can prove the distant stars are there. That's because we don't know whether the message proceeds out of ourselves, the way the telescope proceeds out of ourselves.

Nick: Watch it you're on the margin!

Enoch: The margin of what?

Nick: Arguing for G.o.d.

Enoch: G.o.d is an abstraction that can't be proved.

Nick: G.o.d is a person who was never born.

Enoch: Now you're on the margin. You're about to make out a G.o.d as tangible as a mess of pottage. I call that idolatry.

Nick: So do I, and gladly. But a G.o.d like a mess of pottage isn't tangible enough-he's too mushy. I want a G.o.d I can touch with a clang! That's why I've had to settle for G.o.ds. There's one Allegra knows about, in the tree, a G.o.ddess with a hide as firm as metal. We haven't seen her, but we've felt her. We've struck her. She's there, all right.

Enoch: Mess of pottage.

Nick: Better than a pot of message.

-I still laugh when I think of that! They used to talk like that on summer nights sometimes, always like that, and it's queer that afterward Nick was quick to leave tree and me, and Enoch was just as quick to buy his little black gun. And all in spite of how they talked. I remember what they said, but I can't remember how except through a kind of membrane. I don't know what the membrane is, maybe time, maybe only having had to listen to them through the baby's crying. It never cries now, and looks smooth and healthy, and sometimes even bleats out a noise that sounds like me-me-me, which Siegfried says stands for Mrs. Mealie. It's still not awfully good-looking but Siegfried (the cook) thinks it shows high intelligence and is going to begin talking very early. I don't know whether he means it or not, he's very sly and says things just to ingratiate himself. He hasn't mentioned his wife again but now what he wants is to bring his oldest boy to live here, there's a school nearby that's offering scholars.h.i.+ps to refugee children of a certain age. He promises he would keep him in the kitchen and quiet and out of sight, but I've had to decide against it, it's the old story of the camel and the Arab's warm tent, pretty soon it would be his wife and the two other boys (who I understand are practically only babies -you can imagine what a nuisance that would be), and there wouldn't be room for us to breathe in. Mrs. Mealie wouldn't like it either. They're awfully pushy people, I have to admit you used to be right about that aspect. Of course Enoch is different. When I told Enoch about Siegfried, you know what he said?-Moses was really an Egyptian, Jesus was really a Samaritan, so Siegfried must be really a Jew.

Me: But they're all Jews, I know that much. Siegfried especially.

Enoch: Especially Siegfried, since he's absolutely indistinguishable from any other Viennese of his cla.s.s. Nothing is what it seems-that's the first rule of tyranny-and if it seems to be what it is, then it ought to be disproved by logical schemes grounded in false premises. Better yet, it ought to be abolished by force.

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