The New Word: 14. Metastrophe: The Magic Crystal
Pure Verihood.—1. The Art of Speech.—2. The Sign.—3. The Shape.—4. The Symbol.—5. Ideal Dynamite. SO far the whirl-swirl is a mathematical figure. That is to say it is a word, like Euclid's triangle. It is Pure Verihood. To be more than a word it must take shape. Verihood must put on falsehood ere it can dwell among us. The outline must be gained in battle. It is my business to write this word more distinctly, knowing that what we gain in clearness we must lose in verihood. So, even a work of an idealist tendency cannot be quite true, because literature cannot be quite true. We can only draw the round by drawing a series of overlapping straight lines. We can only paint light by painting the shadows cast by light. We can only give to our God the figure of an Idol. Is not that why the perfect Idealist uttered his cryptic saying,—"They who know do not tell; they who tell do not know." I These words which I am writing, and you are reading, these black marks upon white paper, are only signs for sounds, as the crotchets and quavers The language of clothes still lingers in our palaces and churches, our courts and barracks. The language of the arms and hands is only frozen by the long northern nights. Letters themselves are half-breeds, degenerate pictures merging into signs. Writing flowered in the sculptural hieroglyphs of Egypt, as afterwards in the illuminated missals of the monks. But it began in rude notches on a stick, and rude knots on a thread, serving, as knots on handkerchiefs still serve the children, as reminders. The picture that reminds us is a Sign. Before I draw the outline of the whirl-swirl, I will draw its sign. II The Cross is the rude picture of a knot. As such it is the sign of Matter; and the Man on the cross signifies the thought that Matter is Evil. The Cross by itself is pure ugliness. The Man on the III From the language of Measure we rise to that of Matter; the Sign grows to a shape. Let us begin from the real thing from which the likeness is to be withdrawn, namely the waterspout. How does a waterspout behave? The story of the waterspout, as it is told in books, shows it to be a brief-lived tree. A cloud is whirling downwards, and thrusting out its whirlpoint towards the sea, like a sucking mouth. The sea below whirls upward, thrusting out its whirlpoint towards the cloud. The two ends meet, and the water swept up in the sea-whirl passes on into the It is the pure Shape, reached by the same road by which the mathematician reaches his flats and lines. It is the grin without the cat. It is the ideal whirl-swirl. It is strength turning inside out. Such is the true beat of strength, the first beat, the What is a real skin? It is Matter. It is indeed a network through whose pores encompassing strength flows in and out. The heat waves reach the blood, the light waves break through the eyeball into the brain; others, more subtle, to which we have not yet given names, doubtless touch the invisible membranes of undiscovered cells within. The mathematical skin is Time. The whirl-swirl ebbs and flows between the turning-point within and the returning-point without, and the moment at which the swirl changes into the whirl is its outline. To be real, the outline must be gained in battle. And since the battle must go on all round at once, it must be waged against another whirl-swirl, greater than the first one, and inclosing it. If the cloud had inclosed the water, or the ethereon the ether, the inner whirl-swirl would have been shaped into a ball. Consider this idea. Consider this inner strength, coming and going, turning and returning, millions of beats in every tick of secular time, while, throbbing through the network woven by their meeting, the over-strength comes and goes faster than flashes in a diamond. It is no longer a mere word. It is a magic crystal, I have drawn near to certain old familiar words, which once were good and beautiful. But they are become so deeply tarnished by evil use, so bent and battered, that I dare not use them; for if I were to, I should feel that I was no longer trying to write truly. On the other hand it seems to me that as fast as some words are becoming ugly and meaningless, other words long deemed ugly and meaningless are becoming beautiful and full of meaning. The old confused cries of the savage are changing into prophecies; and one fairy tale succeeds another. The earth is turning eastwards, and certain stars are going down below the horizon, while other bright forgotten Signs are rising on us out of the deep. Yet it is still the same earth and the same heaven. This is the virtue of the magic crystal in which each one sees himself. It is a touchstone of words. It is, as I have said, itself a word. How shall I find courage to offer it to those great learners who have built the glorious temple they call Science, wherein I see them standing like archbishops at the altar, talking with God; while I am no more than the little ragamuffin who has been put outside to clean the steps? I have not listened to them as I ought. Even in the last age there was a boy outside on the steps, looking on, and thinkingTHE MAGIC CRYSTAL
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