 Of the Pathetic Fallacy by John Ruskin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Shaleefa Mulcham. Of the Pathetic Fallacy by John Ruskin. Taken from Modern Painters, volume 3, part 4, 1856. Paragraph 1 German dullness and English vectation have of late much multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians, namely objective and subjective. No words can be more exquisitely and in all points useless, and I merely speak of them that I may at once and for ever get them out of my way and out of my readers, but to get that done they must be explained. The word blue, say certain philosophers, means the sensation of colour which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky or at a bell tension. Now, say thy father, as if this sensation can only be felt when the eye is turned to the object, and as it therefore knows such a sensation as produced by the object where nobody looks at it, therefore the thing when it is not looked at is not blue, and thus, say they, there are many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as on themselves. To be sweet, a thing must have a taster. It is only sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the capacity of taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of sweetness. And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as effected by them, shall be called subjective. And the qualities of things which they always have, irrespective of any other nature as roundness or squareness, shall be called objective. From these ingenious views, the step is very easy to a father opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in themselves, but only what they are to us, and that the only real truth of them is their appearance to or effect upon us, from which position, with a hearty desire for mystification, and much egotism, selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a philosopher may easily go so far as to believe and say that everything in the world depends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that nothing therefore exists, but what he sees or thinks of. Paragraph 2 Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of exploding, it will not explode if you put no match to it, but it has always the power of so exploding, and is therefore called an explosive compound, which it very positively vendors surely is, whatever philosophy may say to the country. In like manner, a genshin does not produce the sensation of bloom as if you don't look at it, but it has always the power of doing so, its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its maker, and therefore the genshin and the sky are always thoroughly blue, whatever philosophy may say to the country, and if you do not see them blue when you look at them, it is not their fault, but yours. Paragraph 3 Hence I would say to these philosophers, if instead of using the sonorous phrase, it is objectively so, you will use a plain old phrase, it is so, and if instead of the sonorous phrase, it is subjectively so, you will say in plain old English, it does so, or it seems so to me, you will, on the whole, be more intelligible to your fellow creatures, and besides, if you find that the thing which generally does so to other people, as a genshin looks blue to most men, does not so to you, on any particular occasion, you will not fall into the impertinence of saying that the thing is not so, or did not so, but you will say simply, what you will be all the better for speedily finding out, that something is a matter with you. If you find that you cannot explode the gunpowder, you will not declare that all gunpowder is subjective, and all explosion imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare yourself to be an ill-made match, which, on the whole, though there may be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is nevertheless the wisest conclusion you can come to until further experiment. Paragraph 4 Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question, namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper and reappearances of things to us, and the extraordinary or false appearances when we are under the influence of motion or contemplative fancy. False appearances, I say, as being entirely unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us. For instance, the spent-thrift Grogas bursting through the mould, naked and shivering with this cup of gold. This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The Grogas is not a spent-thrift, but a hardy plant. Its yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain Grogas? It is an important question. For all throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful or ultimately pleasurable which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being so. Paragraph 5 It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the Grogas, it is the fallacy of willful fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will be believed, or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy, we shall have to speak presently. But in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke, they rode her in across the rolling foam, the cruel, crawling foam. The foam is not cruel, neither does it cruel. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterise as the pathetic fallacy. Paragraph 6 Now, we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which we allow it as one eminently poetical because passionate. But I believe, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness, that it is only the second order of poets who are much delight in it. Officers note, I admit two orders of poets, but no third, and by these two orders I mean the creative, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, and reflective or perceptive, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson. But both of these must be first rate in their range, though their range is different, and with poetry's second rate in quality, no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best, much more than we can ever eat or enjoy in the length of life, and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo poets, that they believe there is some good in what they have written, that they hope to do better in time, etc. Some good. If there is not all good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste of their time, and those who sincerely love poetry know the touch of the master's hand on the court too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this, all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonality to good thoughts, and in general adds to the weight of human rareness in a most woeful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way. And it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember, and point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones, where we still uncover temporarily the world. End of Authors' Note Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the Bank of Acheron as dead leaves flutter from a bow, he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feeblness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair. Without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that these are souls and those are leaves, he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when Colrich speaks of the one red leaf, the last of its clan, the dances as often as dance it can. He has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false idea about the leaf. He fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not, confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some beauty even in the morbid passage. But taking instance in Homer and Pope, without the knowledge of Ulysses, Alpana, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the Cersian Palace, and has been left dead, unmasked by his leader, or companions, in the haze of their departure. They cross at the sea to the simmering land, and Ulysses summons of the shades from Tadras. The first, which appears, is that of the lost Alpana. Ulysses, amazed, and in the exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet, Ors's note, well said old Mole, canst work in the ground so fast, and of Ors's note, addresses the spirit with the simple startled words, Alpana, how comes to thou and the de-sheddery darkness, has thou come faster on foot than I, my black ship? Which Pope renderseth thus? O say, what angry power Alpana led to glide in shades and wander with the dead, how could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, outfly the nimble sail and leave the lagging wind? I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimblers of the sail or the laziness of the wind. And yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other instances? Paragraph 7 For a very simple reason, they are not a pathetic fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouths of the wrong passion, a passion which never could possibly have spoken them. Agonise curiosity! Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter, and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in any way what was not a fact. The delay in the first three lines and conceding the last drar upon as instantly like the most frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the passage. Ulysses nod! It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite and surative keyts. He wept, and his right ears, when trickling down the golden bow he held. Thus, with half-shot, suffused eyes he stood, while from beneath some comrers bows hard by, with solemn step an awful goddess came. And there was purport in her looks for him, which he with eager guess began to read. Perplexed the while, melodiously he said, how came so thou over the unfooted sea, and of Ors's node? Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Cool Ridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without further questioning, I will endeavour to stave the main bearings of this matter. Paragraph 8 The temperament, which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said above, set of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them. Born away, or overclouded, or overdettled by emotion. And it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion, which hasn't used it. For it is no credit to a man that is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them. And it is in general a sign of higher capacity, and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish partly the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander condition, when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions, and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white-hot perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating. Even if he melts, losing none of his weight. So then, we have the three ranks, the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the brim rose is very accurately the brim rose, because he does not love it. Then secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the brim rose is anything else than a brim rose, a star, or a sun, or a fairish shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the brim rose is forever nothing else than itself, a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many, however, the associations and passions may be that grow out around it. And in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as a man who are not poet at all, and the poet of the second order, and the poet of the first. Only however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which ought to throw him off his balance. Some by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild metaphor, resembling that of the weaker men overborn by weaker things. Paragraph 9. He in a sword untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of professor's inspiration. Paragraph 10. I separate these classes in order that their character may be clearly understood, but of course they are united, each to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of alterability, that is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, out of all things besides and around, that which immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is made up, his thoughts have an accustomed current, his ways are steadfast, it is not this or that new side which will at once unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock with deep moss upon it, but there is too much moss of him to be moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once carried off his feet. He wants to do something he did not want to do before. He views all the universe in a new light through his tears. He is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and go to him. Therefore, the high grade of poet might even be sought to a great extent impassive, as shallow people think Dante Stan, receiving indeed all feelings to the fool, but having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene and watches the feeling as it were from far off. Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself and can look around calmly at all moments for the imager's word that will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves subdued by the feelings and the way to say right, or at least rightest choosing to be so. And therefore admit certain expressions and mode of thought which are in some sort diseased or fools. Paragraph 11 Now, so long as we see that a feeling is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by the confessed fallacy of sight which has induced it. We are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsleys above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes called, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being forever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cold blood. An inspired writer, in full and patiocity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of raging waves of the sea foaming out of their own shame. But it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of raging waves, remorseless floods, ravenous bellows, et cetera. And it is one of the signs of the highest power in writer to check all such habits of thought and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which, if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one. To keep to the ways, I forget who it is who represents a man in despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea, whose changing mound and foam that passed away might mock the eye that questioned where I lay. Observe, there is not a single false or even overcharged expression. Mound of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true. Changing is as familiar as may be, foam that passed away strictly literal, and a whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy, which I know not any other verse in the range of poetry that all together equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word wave is used too generally of ripples and rakers and bendings in line drapery or grass. It does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word mound is a heavy, large, dark definite. There is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the term changing has a peculiar force also. Most people think of waves as rising and falling, but if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that waves do not rise and fall. They change. Change both plays and form, but they do not fall. One wave goes on and on and still on, now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something and changes. One knows not how. Becomes another wave. The close of the line insists on this image and paints it still more perfectly. Foam that passed away. Not merely melting, disappearing, but passing on, out of sight on the career of the wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact, as far as he may, before our rise, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact, the image of the green mounds that do not change, and the wide and written stones that do not pass away. And then to follow out also the associated images of the calm life with a quiet grave, and the despairing life with a fading foam, that no man move his bones, as for Samaria, for King has cut off like the foam upon the water. But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the word mock is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for deceive or defeat, without implying any impersonation of the waves. Paragraph 12 It may be well perhaps to give one or two more instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which thus limit their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hero together what he can from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen, looking from the skin gate of Troy over the Gretian host, and telling Priam, the names of its captains, says at last, I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks, but too I cannot see. Caster and Pollocks, in one mother bore with me. Have they not followed from fair-less Daemon? Or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in me? Then Homer. So she spoke, but them already, the life-giving earth possessed therein like a Daemon in the dear fatherland. Note here the hypothetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No, though Caster and Pollocks be dead, yet the earth is our mother still. Fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than these. Make what you will of them. Paragraph 13 Take another very notable instance, from Casimir de Lavigne's terrible ballad that will let the Constance. I must quote a few lines out of it here and there to enable the reader who has not the book by him to understand its close. Vite Anna Vite, o miroir. Pluit Vite Anna, l'eur savanz, et je vais au ball ce soir chez l'ambassadeur de France. Yp ond si'n fwy, ys ond fanee, seineu. Ys ond diair, mon dieu, com tu pas. Que du réseau qui retien meschevue, les glans d'azur et tombante avec gas, plus haut, plus bas, ffoul comprenais rien, que sur mon front se servir et un sel vous me piquez mal à droite. Asse bien. Bien cher Anna, je t'aime, je suis belle. Cel lui convain je voudrais oublier Anna Marob. Il ysera, j'espère. Afy profane, es la mon coulier? Quoi, si'n crain d'or ben i par le Saint-Pierre? Il ysera, dieu, si'n presse ma main. Ond ni'n ponson a pain je respire. Pair anse'n modio am ond tondre de main, com ond ffer jeu Anna pour tout lui dire. Vite un cou d'oeil o miroir, le terniire. Jel asurans convam adori ce soir chez l'ambassadeur de France. Prid y foyau, Constance s-admirei. Dieu, sur serob i volu nit'n sel, o fe guri? Can l'esbar l'on i ffrais? Tu perdra i ansi. Quoi, morir i si'n bell. Llorib le fe ronge, avec ffolupte, se'i bras ond sen, i lantur, i se'i lef, i s'n pique ddevo'r sabote. Di, se'i 18 ans, i lant i sondu rhef. Adieu bal, plesii ramur. Ond di zee poor Constance. I ond dansé jus co jour chez l'ambassadeur de France. Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say. What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There day dance till the morning at the ambassadors of France. Make what you will of it. If the reader will look through the ballot, of which I have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not from beginning to end of it a single poetical so-called expression, except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be. There is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing. The poet stands by, impassive, as a statue, recording her words just as they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death for an instant his own emotions conquer him. He records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire knaws with voluptiousness, without pity. It is soon past. The fate is fixed forever. And he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity. They said, poor Constance. Paragraph 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament. For be it clearly and constantly remembered, that greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acudinous of feeling and command of it. A poet is great, first a proportion to the strength of his fashion, and then that strength being granted in proportion to his government of it. There being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and therefore a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to a stunned thought, full of strange voices. Yeah, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the sadders of Lebanon saying, Since thou art gone down to the grave, no fellow has come up against us. So still more, the sword of depressence of deity cannot be born without this great astonishment. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Paragraph 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not cause enough for it, and beyond all other ignoblness is a mere effectation of it in the hardness of heart. Simply bet writing may almost always, as above noticed, be known by its adaptation of these fanciful metaphorical expressions as a sort of current coin. Yet there is even a worse, at least a more harmful condition of writing than this in which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but by some master, skillful in handling yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and steadied fancy, as if we should try to make an old laver stream look red hot again by covering it with dead leaves or white hot with whorefrost. When young is lost in veneration as he dwells on the character of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be overborn by the feeling so far as to exclaim, Where shall I find him? Angels tell me where? You know him? He is near you, point him out. Shall I see glories beaming from his brow or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers? This emotion has worthy cause and is thus true and right, but now hear the cold hearted pope say to a shepherd girl, Wherever you walk, cool gale shall fan the glade, Trees where you sit shall crowd into shade, Your praise the bird shall chant in every grove, and wind shall waft it to the powers above, but would you sing and rival off your strain? The wandering forests soon should dance again. The moving mountains hear the powerful call, and headlong streams hang listening and therefore. This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for the language of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy, definite absurdity, rooted in affectation and cordially asserted in the tease of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself, but it must be strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress. Three years had Barbara in a grave been laid, when thus his moan he made. O move thou cottage from beyond yon oak, or let the ancient tree a brooted lie, that in some other way yon smoke may mount into the sky. If still beyond yon pine trees ragged bow, headlong the waterfall must come, o let it then be dumb. Be anything sweet stream, but that which thou art now. Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening, but with what different relation to the mind that contemplates them. Here in the extremity of the agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible in a vague impression that a miracle might be raw to give relief even to a less sore distress. That nature is kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong. It knows not well what is possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall. One might think it could do as much as that. Paragraph 16 I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy, that so far as it is a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet, it is a sign of the incapacity of his human side or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school. Even the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs. Always, however, implying necessarily some degree of weakness in the character. Paragraph 16 Take two most exquisite instances for Master Hans. The Jesse of Shenstone and the Alan of Wordsworth have both been betrayed and deserted. Jesse, at the cause of a most touching complaint, says, If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, where bloom the jasmans that could once allure, I hope not to find delight in us, they say. For we are spotless, Jesse. We are pure. Compare with this some of the words of Alan. Ah, why? said Alan, saying to herself. Why do not words and kiss and solemn pledge and nature that is kind in woman's breast and reason, said a man as wise and good and fear of him who is a righteous judge? Why do not these prevail for human life to keep two hearts together that began their springtime with one love and that have need of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet to grant or be received? While that poor bird, oh, comment him, thou who has to me been faceless, hear him. Though a lowly creature, one of God's simple children, that yet know not of the universe of parent, how he sings, as if he wished the firmament of heaven should listen and give back to him the voice of his triumphant constancy and love, the proclamation that he makes, how far his darkness doth transcend our fickle light. The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. But of the two characters imagined, Jesse is weak as an Ellen, exactly insofar as something appears to her to be in nature, which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her. They would do so if she saws them rightly. Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not, for an instance, admit any veracity in the thought. As if, she says, I know he means nothing of the kind, but it does verily seem as if. The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's characters are throughout consistent in this clear, though passionate, strength. Officers note, I cannot quip this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy which I have just come upon in moored, for a great speculation had failed. And ever he muttered and maddened, and ever wanded with despair, and out he walked with the wind like a broken, wordling wail, and the flying gourd of the ruined woodlands drove through the air. There has fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate. The red rose cries, She is near, she is near. The wide rose weeps, she's late. The large spur listens, I hear, I hear. The lily whispers, I wait. And if authors note, it is I hope now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, fee will so far as it is fallacious, and therefore that a dominion of truth is entire over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind. And off off to pathetic fallacy by John Ruskin. On Getting Up on Cold Mornings by Lee Hunt. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. An Italian author, Giulio Codara, a Jesuit, has written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insisting that those troublesome and abominable little animals were created for our annoyance, and that they were certainly not inhabitants of paradise. We of the North may dispute disputes of theology, but on the other hand, it is as clear as snow on the housetops that Adam was not under the necessity of shaving, and that when Eve walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon ice three inches thick. Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold morning. You have only they tell you to take the resolution, and the thing is done. This may be very true, just as a boy at school has only to take a fool. But we have not at all made up our minds upon it, and we find it a very pleasant exercise to discuss the matter candidly before we get up. This, at least, is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords an excellent answer to those who ask how lying in bed can be indulged in by a reasoning being, rational creature. How? Why would the argument calmly at work in one's head and the clothes over one's shoulder? Oh, it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. If these people would be more charitable, they would get on with their argument better. But they are apt to reason so ill and to assert so dogmatically that one could wish to have them stand round one's bed of a bitter morning and lie before their faces. They ought to take a fool of themselves and lie before their faces. They ought to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. If their will is never pulled aside by the enticing arms of imagination, so much the luckier for the stagecoachman. Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in proportion to his ability of keeping early hours, the work given to his faculties, et cetera, will at least concede their due merits to such representations as the following. In the first place, says the injured but calm appealing, I have been warm all night and find my system in a state perfectly suitable to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature that the poets refining upon the tortures of the damned make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold, from fire to ice. They are hailed out of their beds, says Milton, by harpy-footed furies, fellows who come to call them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster as are exposed to them is so unnatural to such a creature that the poets refining upon the tortures of the damned into the air of the room are stone cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth as if in the open air like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways and see the window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. It is very cold this morning, is it not? Very cold so. Very cold indeed, isn't it? Very cold indeed, sir. More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather? Here the servant's wit and good nature are put to a considerable test and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer. Why, sir, I think it is. Good creature! There is not a better or a more truth-telling servant going. I must rise, however. Get me some warm water. Here comes a fine interval between the departure of the servant and the arrival of the hot water, during which, of course, it is of no use to get up. The hot water comes. Is it quite hot? Yes, sir. Perhaps too hot for shaving. I must wait a little. No, sir, it will just do. There is an overnice propriety sometimes in an officious zeal of virtue, a little troublesome. Oh, the shirt! You must air my clean shirt. Linnon gets very damp this weather. Yes, sir. Here another delicious five minutes. A knock at the door. Oh, the shirt! Very well. My stockings, I think the stockings had better be aired too. Very well, sir. Here another interval. At length everything is ready, except myself. I now, continues our incumbent, a happy word, by the by, for a country vicar, I now cannot help thinking a good deal. Who can? Upon the unnecessary and villainous custom of shaving. It is a thing so unmanly. Here I nestle closer. So effeminate. Here I recoil from an unlucky step into the colder part of the bed. No wonder that the queen of France took part with the rebels against that degenerate king, her husband, the face like her own. The emperor Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture. At Michelangelo's, at Titian's, at Shakespeare's, at Fletcher's, at Spencer's, at Chaucer's, at Alfred's, at Plato's. I could name a great man for every tick of my watch. Look at the Turks, a grave and Otoio's people. Think of Harun al Rashid and bedridden Hassan. Think of worthy Montague, the worthy son of his mother, above the prejudice of his time. Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress and appearance are so much finer than our own. Lastly, think of the razor itself, how totally opposed to every sensation of the bed, how cold, how edgy, how hard, how utterly different from anything like the warm and circling amplitude which sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses. Add to this benumd fingers, which may help you to cut yourself, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer full of ice. And he that says there is nothing to oppose in all this, only shows that he has no merit in opposing it. Thompson, the poet who exclaims in his seasons falsely luxurious, will not man awake, used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of rising, but then he could also imagine the good of lying still, and his exclamation, it must be allowed, was made upon summertime, not winter. We must proportion the argument to the individual character. A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four pence, but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man may say, what shall I think of myself if I don't get up? But the more humble one will be content to wave this prodigious notion of himself out of respect to his kindly bed. The mechanical man shall get up without any adieu at all, and so shall the barometer. An ingenious liar in bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold weather, and sophisticate much on the advantages of an even temperature of body, of the natural propensity, pretty universal, to have one's way, and of the animals that roll themselves up and sleep all the winter. As to longevity, he will ask whether the longest life is of necessity the best, and with a hoban is the handsomest street in London. End of On Getting Up on Cold Mornings by Lee Hunt. Recording by Philippa. Our friend, The Dog, by Maurice Metterlink. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Maline. Our friend, The Dog, by Maurice Metterlink. Translated by Alexander Texiera de Matos. I have lost, within these last few days, a little bulldog. He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death. The friend who had presented me with him had given him, perhaps by Antiforces, the startling name of Pelaeus. Why rechrysin him? For how can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or an imaginary hero? Pelaeus had a great bulging, powerful forehead, like that of Socrates or Verlain, and the name of a man or an imaginary hero. And under a little black nose, blunt as a churlish ascent, a pair of large hanging and symmetrical chops, which made his head a sort of massive, obstinate, pensive and three-cornered menace. He was beautiful after the manner of a beautiful natural monster that has complied strictly with the laws of its species. And what a smile of a tent of obligingness, of incorruptible innocence, of affectionate submission, of boundless gratitude and total self-abandonment lit up, at the least caress, that adorable mask of ugliness. Whence exactly did that smile emanate? From the ingenious and melting eyes? From the ears pricked up to catch the words of man? From the forehead that unwrinkled to appreciate and love? Or from the stump of a tail that wriggled at the other end to testify to the intimate and impassioned joy that filled his small being happy once more to encounter the hand or the glance of the God to whom he surrendered himself? Peleus was born in Paris and I had taken him to the country. His bonifat paws, shapeless and not yet stiffened, carried slackly through the unexplored pathways of his new existence, and his glorious head, flat-nosed and, as it were, rendered heavy with thought. For this thankless and rather sad head, like that of an overworked child, was beginning the overwhelming work that oppresses every brain at the start of life. He had in less than five or six weeks to get into his mind taking shape within it an image and a satisfactory conception of the universe. Man, aided by all the knowledge of his own elders and his brothers, takes thirty or forty years to outline that conception, but the humble dog has to unravel it for himself in a few days. And yet, in the eyes of a God who should know all things, would it not have the same weight and the same value as our own? It was a question then of studying the ground that was scratched and dug up and which sometimes reveals surprising things, of casting at the sky, which is uninteresting, for there is nothing there to eat, one glance that does away with it for good and all, of discovering the grass, the admirable and green grass, the springy and cool grass, a field for races and sports, a friendly and boundless bed in which lies hidden the good and wholesome couch grass. It was a question also of taking promiscuously a thousand urgent and curious observations. It was necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain to learn to calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into space to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away and that you are unable to fly you there to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to sleep and the patches of shade in which you shiver to remark with stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses that water is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous while fire is beneficent at a distance but terrible when you come too near to observe that the meadows, the farm yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant creatures with threatening horns, creatures good natured perhaps and at any rate silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them a little curiously without taking offence but who keep their real thoughts to themselves. It was necessary to learn as the result of painful and humiliating experiment that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods to recognize that the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine dwelling although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the cook who is a considerable but jealous power to learn that doors are important and capricious volitions which sometimes lead to felicity but which most often are closed, mute and stern, haughty and heartless remain deaf to all entreaties to admit once and for all that the essential good things of life the indisputable blessings generally imprisoned in pots and stupans are almost always inaccessible to know how to look at them with laboriously acquired indifference and to practice to take no notice of them saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house and then what is one to think of the table on which so many things happen that cannot be guessed of the derisive chairs on which one is forbidden to sleep of the plates and dishes that are empty by the time that one can get at them of the lamp that drives away the dark how many orders, dangers prohibitions, problems enigmas has one not to classify in one's overburdened memory and how to reconcile all this with other laws, other enigmas wider and more imperious which one bears within one's cell within one's instinct which spring up and develop from one hour to the other which come from the depths of time and the race invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain the word of the master himself or the fear of death thus for instance to quote only one example when the hour of sleep has struck for men you have retired to your hole surrounded by the darkness the silence and the formidable solitude of the night all is sleep in the master's house you feel yourself very small and weak in the presence of the mystery you know that the gloom is peopled with foes who hover and lie and wait you suspect the trees the passing wind and the moon beams you would like to hide yourself by holding your breath but still the watch must be kept you must at the least sound issue from your retreat face the invisible and bluntly disturb the imposing silence of the earth at the risk of bringing down the whispering evil or crime upon yourself alone whoever the enemy be even if he be man that is to say the very brother of the god whom it is your business to defend you must attack him blindly fly at his throat fasten your perhaps sacrilegious teeth into human flesh disregard the spell of a hand and voice similar to those of your master never be silent never attempt to escape never allow yourself to be tempted or bribed and lost in the night without help prolong the heroic alarm to your last breath there is the great ancestral duty the essential duty stronger than death which not even man's will and anger are able to check all our humble history linked with that of the dog in our first struggles against every breathing thing tends to prevent his forgetting it and when in our safer dwelling places of today we happen to punish him for his untimely zeal he throws us a glance of astonished reproach as though to point out to us that we are in the wrong and that if we lose sight of the main clause in the Treaty of Alliance which he made with us at the time when we lived in caves forests and fens he continues faithful to it in spite of us and remains nearer to the eternal truth of life which is full of snares and hostile forces but how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this duty and how complicated it has become since the days of the silent caverns and the great deserted lakes it was also simple then so easy and so clear the lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill and all that approached all that moved on the horizon of the plains or woods was the unmistakable enemy but today you can no longer tell you have to acquaint yourself with the civilization of which you disapprove to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible things thus it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no longer belongs to the master that his property conforms to unintelligible limits it becomes necessary therefore first of all to know exactly where the sacred domain begins and ends whom are you to suffer whom to stop there is the road by which everyone even the poor has the right to pass why you do not know it is a fact which you deplore but which you are bound to accept fortunately on the other hand here is the fair path which none may tread this path is faithful to the sound traditions it is not to be lost sight of for by it enter into your daily existence the difficult problems of life would you have an example you are sleeping peacefully in a ray of the sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls the earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one another on the edge of the shelves the copper stew pans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white walls the motherly stove hums a soft tune and dandles three sauce pans blissfully dancing and from the little hole that lights up its inside defyse the good dog who cannot approach by constantly putting out at him its fiery tongue the clock bored in its oak case before striking the August hour of mealtime swings its great guilt navel to unfro and the cunning flies tease your ears on the glittering table lay a chicken a hare three partridges besides other things which are called fruits peaches, melons, grapes and which are all good for nothing the cook guts a big silver fish and throws the entrails instead of giving them to you into the dust bin ah, the dust bin inexhaustible treasury receptacle of windfalls the jewel of the house you shall have your share of it an exquisite and surreptitious share but it does not do to seem to know where it is you are strictly forbidden to rummage in it man in this way prohibits many pleasant things and life would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the orders of the pantry the cellar and the dining-room luckily he is absent minded and does not long remember the instructions which he lavishes he is easily deceived you achieve your ends and do as you please he is easily deceived you achieve your ends and do as you please provided you have the patience to await the hour you are subject to man and he is the one God but you nonetheless have your own personal exact and imperturbable morality which proclaims aloud that illicit acts become most lawful through the very fact that they are performed without the master's knowledge therefore let us close the watchful eye that has seen let us close the watchful eye that has seen let us close the watchful eye that has seen let us pretend to sleep and to dream of the moon hark a gentle tapping at the blue window that looks out on the garden what is it? nothing a bow of hawthorn that has come to see what we are doing in the cool kitchen trees are inquisitive and often excited but they do not count one has nothing to say to them they are irresponsible and have no principles but what is that? I hear steps up ears open nose on the alert it is the baker coming up the rails while the postman is opening a little gate in the hedge of lime trees they are friends it is well they bring something you can greet them and wag your tail discreetly twice or thrice with a patronising smile another alarm what is it now? a carriage pulls up in front of the steps the problem is a complex one before all it is of consequence to heap copious insults on the horses great proud beasts who make no reply meantime you examine out of the corner of your eye the person's alighting they are well clad and seem full of confidence they are probably going to sit at the table of the gods the proper thing is to bark without acrimony with a shade of respect so as to show that you are doing your duty but that you are doing it with intelligence nevertheless you cherish a lurking suspicion and behind the guest's backs stealthily you sniff the air persistently and in a knowing way in order to discern any hidden intentions but halting footsteps resound outside the kitchen this time it is the poor man dragging his crutch the unmistakable enemy the hereditary enemy the direct descendant of him who roamed outside the bone-cramped cave which you suddenly see again in your racial memory drunk with indignation your bark broken your teeth multiplied with hatred and rage you are about to seize their reconcilable adversary by the britches when the cook armed with her broom the ancillary and force-worn scepter comes to protect the trader and you are obliged to go back to your hall where with eyes filled with impotent and slanting flames you growl out frightful but futile curses thinking within you that this is the end of all things and that the human species has lost its notion of justice and injustice is that all? not yet for the smallest life is made up of enumerous duties and it is a long work to organize a happy existence upon the borderland of two such different worlds as the world of beasts and the world of men how should we fare while remaining within our own sphere a divinity not an imaginary one like to ourselves because the offspring of our own brain but a god actually visible ever present ever active and as foreign as superior to our being as we are to the dog we now to return to Peleus know pretty well what to do and how to behave on the master's premises but the world does not end at the house door and beyond the walls and beyond the hedge there is a universe of which one has not the custody where one is no longer at home where relations are changed how are we to stand in the street in the fields in the marketplace in the shops in consequence of difficult and delicate observations we understand that we must take no notice of passersby obey no calls but the masters be polite with indifference to strangers who pet us next we must conscientiously fulfill certain obligations of mysterious courtesy toward our brothers the other dogs respect chickens and ducks not appear to remark the cakes at the pastry cooks which spread themselves insolently within reach of the tongue show to the cats who on the steps of the houses provoke us by hideous grimaces a silent contempt but one that will not forget and remember that it is lawful and even commendable to chase and strangle mice rats, wild rabbits and generally speaking all animals we learn to know them by secret marks that have not yet made their peace with mankind all this and so much more was it surprising that Peleus often appeared pensive in the face of those numberless problems and that his humble and gentle look was often so profound and grave laden with cares and full of unreadable questions alas he did not have time to finish the long and heavy task which nature lays upon the instinct that rises in order to approach a brighter region an ill of a mysterious character which seems specially to punish the only animal that succeeds in leaving the circle in which it is born an indefinite ill that carries off hundreds of intelligent little dogs came to put an end to the destiny and the happy education of Peleus and now all those efforts to achieve a little more light all that ardour and loving that courage and understanding all that affectionate gaiety and innocent ffawning all those kind and devoted looks which turn to man to ask for his assistance against unjust death all those flickering gleams which came from the profound abyss of a world that is no longer ours all those nearly human lives that are no longer ours all those nearly human little habits lie sadly in the cold ground under a flowering elder tree in a corner of the garden man loves the dog but how much more ought he to love it if he considered in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature the sole exception which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing in order to draw closer to us the partitions that separate the species we are alone absolutely alone on this chance planet and amid all the forms of life that surround us not one accepting the dog has made an alliance with us a few creatures fear us most are unaware of us and not one loves us in the world of plants we have dumb and motionless slaves but they serve us in spite of themselves they simply endure our laws and our yoke they are impotent prisoners victims incapable of escaping but silently rebellious and so soon as we lose sight of them they hasten to betray us and return to their former wild and mischievous liberty the rose and the corn had they wings would fly at our approach like the birds among the animals we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference cowardice or stupidity the uncertain and craven horse who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing the passive and dejected ass who stays with us only because he knows not what to do nor where to go but who nevertheless under the cudgel retains the idea that lurks behind his ears the cow and the ox happy so long as they are eating and docile because for centuries they have not had a thought of their own the affrighted sheep who knows no other master than terror the hen who is faithful to the poultry yard because she finds more maze and wheat there than in the neighboring forest I do not speak of the cat to whom we are nothing more than a too large and un-eatable prey the ferocious cat whose side-long contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes she at least curses us in her mysterious heart but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree they do not love us do not know us do not notice us they are unaware of our life our death our departure our return our sadness our joy our smile they do not even hear the sound of our voice so soon as it no longer threatens them and when they look at us it is with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse in whose eye still hovers the infatuation of time or with the dull stupor of the ruminants who look upon us as a momentary and useless accident of the pasture for thousands of years they have been living at our side as foreign to our thoughts our affections our habits as though the least fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe in the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures we have succeeded only by dint of patience in making them take two or three illusory steps and if tomorrow leaving their feelings toward us untouched nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons we're with to conquer us I confess that I should distrust the hasty vengeance of the horse the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the maddened meekness of the sheep I should shun the cats as I should shun the tiger and even the good cow solemn and somnolent would inspire me with but a wary confidence as for the hen with her round quick eye as when discovering a slug or a worm I am sure that she would devour me without a thought now in this indifference and this total want of comprehension in which we are living in this incomunicable world where everything has its object her medically contained within itself where every destiny is self-circumscribe where there exist among the creatures no other relations than those of executioners and victims eaters and eaten where nothing is able to leave its steel bound sphere where death alone establishes cruel relations of crimes where death alone establishes cruel relations of crimes where death alone establishes a cause and effect between neighboring lives where not the smallest sympathy has ever been made a conscious leap from one species to another one animal alone among all that breathes upon the earth has succeeded in breaking through the prophetic circle in escaping from itself to come bounding toward us definitely to cross the enormous zone of darkness ice and silence which isolates each category of existence in nature's unintelligible plan this animal our good familiar dog simple and unsurprising as may today appear to us what he has done in thus perceptibly drawing nearer to a world in which he was not born and for which he was not destined has nevertheless performed one of the most unusual and improbable acts when was this recognition of man by beast this extraordinary passage from darkness to light affected did we seek out the poodle the collie or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals or did he come spontaneously to us we cannot tell so far as our human animal stretch he is at our side as at present but what are human animals we have no witness the fact remains that he is there in our houses as ancient as rightly placed as perfectly adapted to our habits as though he had appeared on this earth such as he is now at the same time as ourselves we have not to gain his confidence or his friendship he is born our friend while his eyes are still closed already he believes in us even before his birth he has given himself to man but the word friend does not exactly depict his affection at worship he loves us and reveres us as though we had drawn him out of nothing he is before all our creature full of gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye he is our intimate and impassioned slave whom nothing discourages whom nothing repels whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair he has solved in an admirable and touching manner the terrifying problem which human wisdom would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe he has loyally religiously irrevocably recognized man's superiority and has surrendered himself to him body and soul without afterthought without any intention to go back reserving of his independence his instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the continuation of the life prescribed by nature with an unquestioning certainty an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists he betrays for our benefit the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs and without scruple denies his race his kin his mother and his young but he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence the very instinct of his race the entire unconsciousness of his species it appears think only of us dream only of being useful to us to serve us better to adapt himself better to our different needs he has adopted every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties the aptitudes which he places at our disposal is he to aid us in the pursuit of game in the plains his legs lengthen inordinately his muzzle tapers his lungs widen he becomes swifter than the deer does our prey hide under wood? the docile genius of the species for stalling our desires presents us with the basset a sort of almost footless serpent which steals into the closest thickets do we ask that he should drive our flocks the same compliant genius grants him the requisite size intelligence energy and vigilance do we intend him to watch and defend our house his head becomes round and monstrous in order that his jaws may be more powerful more formidable and more tenacious are we taking him to the south his hair grows shorter and lighter so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a hotter sun are we going up to the north his feet grow larger the better to tread the snow his fur thickens and does not compel him to abandon us is he intended only for us to play with to amuse the leisure of our eyes to adorn or enliven the home he clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance he makes himself smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside or even consents should our fancy demand it to appear a little ridiculous to please us you shall not find in nature's immense crucible a single living thing that has shown a like suppleness a similar abundance of forms the same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes this is because in the world which we know among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species there exists not one accepting that of the dog to give us a thought to the presence of man it will perhaps be said that we have been able to transform almost as profoundly some of our domestic animal our hens, our pigeons our ducks, our cats our horses, our rabbits for instance yes, perhaps although such transformations are not comparable with those undergone by the dog and although the kind of service the animal's renderous remains so to speak invariable in any case whether this impression be purely imaginary or correspond with the reality it does not appear that we feel in these transformations the same unfailing and preventing goodwill the same sagacious and exclusive love for the rest it is quite possible that the dog or rather the inaccessible genius of his race troubles scarcely at all about us and that we have merely known how to make use of various aptitudes offered by the abundant chances of life it matters not as we know nothing of the substance of things we must needs cling to appearances and it is sweet to establish that at least in appearance there is on the planet where like unacknowledged kings we live in solitary state a being that loves us however the case may stand with these appearances it is nonetheless certain that in the aggregate of intelligent creatures that have rights, duties a mission and a destiny the dog is a really privileged animal he occupies in this world a preeminent position enviable among all he is the only living being that is found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible unexceptionable and definite God he knows to what to devote the best part of himself he knows to whom above him to give himself he has not to seek for a perfect superior and infinite power in the darkness amid successive lies, hypotheses and dreams that power is there for him and he moves in its light he knows the supreme duties which we all do not know he has a morality which surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself and which he can practice without scruple and without fear he possesses truth in its fullness he has a certain and infinite ideal and it was thus that the other day before his illness I saw my little Palaeus sitting at the foot of my writing table his tail carefully folded under his paws his head a little on one side the better to question me at once attentive and tranquil as a saint should be in the presence of God he was happy with the happiness which we perhaps shall never know since it sprang from the smile and the approval of a life incomparably higher than his own there studying drinking in all my looks and he replied to them gravely as from equal to equal to inform me no doubt that at least through the eyes the most immaterial organ that transformed into affectionate intelligence the light which we enjoyed he knew that he was saying to me all that love should say and when I saw him thus young, ardent and believing bringing me in some way from the depths of unwaired nature quite fresh news of life and trusting and wonder struck as though he had been the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we were still in the first days of the world's existence I envied the gladness of his certainty compared it with the destiny of man still plunging on every side into darkness and said to myself that the dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two end of our friend the dog by Maurice Metrolink translated by Alexander Txera de Matos recorded by Roger Malin