The Pilgrim's Regress (8 page)

‘Who are you?' he said.

‘My name is Reason,' said the virgin.

‘Make out her passport quickly,' said the giant in a low voice. ‘And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes.'

‘Not yet,' said Reason. ‘I will ask you three riddles before I go, for a wager.'

‘What is the pledge?' said the giant.

‘Your head,' said Reason.

There was silence for a time among the mountains.

‘Well,' said the giant at last, ‘what must be, must be. Ask on.'

‘This is my first riddle,' said Reason. ‘What is the colour of things in dark places, of fish in the depth of the sea, or of the entrails in the body of man?'

‘I cannot say,' said the giant.

‘Well,' said Reason. ‘Now hear my second riddle. There was a certain man who was going to his own house and his enemy went with him. And his house was beyond a river too swift to swim and too deep to wade. And he could go no faster than his enemy. While he was on his journey his wife sent to him and said, “You know that there is only one bridge across the river: tell me, shall I destroy it that the enemy may not cross; or shall I leave it standing that you may cross?” What should this man do?'

‘It is too hard for me,' said the giant.

‘Well,' said Reason. ‘Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule do you tell a copy from an original?'

The giant muttered and mumbled and could not answer, and Reason set spurs in her stallion and it leaped up on to the giant's mossy knees and galloped up his foreleg, till she plunged her sword into his heart. Then there was a noise and a crumbling like a landslide and the huge carcass settled down: and the Spirit of the Age became what he had seemed to be at first, a sprawling hummock of rock.

BOOK
FOUR

BACK TO THE ROAD

Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like: but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things: full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

BACON

I

Let Grill be Grill

T
HE GUARDS HAD FLED.
Reason dismounted from her horse and wiped her sword clean on the moss of the foot hills which had been the giant's knees. Then she turned to the door of the pit and struck it so that it broke and she could look into the darkness of the pit and smell the filth.

‘You can all come out,' she said.

But there was no movement from within: only, John could hear the prisoners wailing together and saying:

‘It is one more wish-fulfilment dream: it is one more wish-fulfilment dream. Don't be taken in again.'

But presently Master Parrot came to the mouth of the pit and said, ‘There is no good trying to fool us. Once bit twice shy.' Then he put out his tongue and retired.

‘This psittacosis is a very obstinate disorder,' said Reason. And she turned to mount the black horse.

‘May I come with you, lady?' said John.

‘You may come until you are tired,' said Reason.

II

Archtype and Ectype

I
N MY DREAM
I saw them set off together, John walking by the lady's stirrup: and I saw them go up the rocky valley where John had gone on the night of his capture. They found the pass unguarded and it gave back an echo to the horse's hoofs and then in a moment they were out of the mountain country and going down a grassy slope into the land beyond. There were few trees and bare, and it was cold: but presently John looked aside and saw a crocus in the grass. For the first time for many days the old sweetness pierced through John's heart: and the next moment he was trying to call back the sound of the birds wheeling over the Island and the green of the waves breaking on its sand—for they had all flashed about him but so quickly that they were gone before he knew. His eyes were wet.

He turned to Reason and spoke.

‘You can tell me, lady. Is there such a place as the Island in the West, or is it only a feeling of my own mind?'

‘I cannot tell you,' said she, ‘because you do not know.'

‘But you know.'

‘But I can tell you only what
you
know. I can bring things out of the dark part of your mind into the light part of it. But now you ask me what is not even in the dark of your mind.'

‘Even if it were only a feeling in my own mind, would it be a bad feeling?'

‘I have nothing to tell you of good and bad.'

‘I mean this,' said John. ‘And this you can tell me. Is it true that it must always end in brown girls, or rather, that it really
begins
from brown girls? They say it is all a pretence, all a disguise for lust.'

‘And what do you think of that saying?'

‘It is very like that,' said John. ‘Both are sweet. Both are full of longing. The one runs into the other. They
are
very alike.'

‘Indeed they are,' said the lady. ‘But do you not remember my third riddle?'

‘About the copy and the original? I could not understand it.'

‘Well, now you shall. The people in the country we have just left have seen that your love for the Island is very like your love for the brown girls. Therefore they say that one is a copy of the other. They would also say that you have followed me because I am like your mother, and that your trust in me is a copy of your love for your mother. And then they would say again that your love for your mother is a copy of your love for the brown girls; and so they would come full circle.'

‘And what should I answer them?'

‘You would say, perhaps one is a copy of the other. But which is the copy of which?'

‘I never thought of that.'

‘You are not yet of an age to have thought much,' said Reason. ‘But you must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third?'

‘What would the third be?'

‘Some have thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the Landlord.'

‘But surely they have considered that and rejected it. Their sciences have disproved it.'

‘They could not have, for their sciences are not concerned at all with the general relations of this country to anything that may lie East of it or West of it. They indeed will tell you that their researches have proved that if two things are similar, the fair one is always the copy of the foul one. But their only reason to say so is that they have already decided that the fairest things of all—that is the Landlord, and, if you like, the mountains and the Island—are a mere copy of
this
country. They pretend that their researches lead to that doctrine: but in fact they assume that doctrine first and interpret their researches by it.'

‘But they have reasons for assuming it.'

‘They have none, for they have ceased to listen to the only people who can tell them anything about it.'

‘Who are they?'

‘They are younger sisters of mine, and their names are Philosophy and Theology.'

‘Sisters! Who is your father?'

‘You will know sooner than you wish.'

And now the evening was falling and they were near a little farm, so they turned in there and asked a night's lodging of the farmer, which was readily given them.

III

Esse is Percipi

N
EXT MORNING THEY
continued their journey together. In my dream I saw them go through a country of little hills where the road was always winding to conform to the lie of the valleys: and John walked at the lady's stirrup. The fetter of his hands had broken at the moment when she killed the giant, but the handcuffs were still on his wrists. One half of the broken chain hung down from each hand. There was a greater mildness in the air this day and the buds were fully formed in the hedges.

‘I have been thinking, lady,' said John, ‘of what you said yesterday and I think I understand that though the Island is very like the place where I first met the brown girl, yet she might be the shadow and the Island the reality. But there is one thing that troubles me.'

‘What is that?' said Reason.

‘I cannot forget what I have seen in the giant's prison. If we are really like that inside, whatever we imagine must be abominable however innocent it looks. It may be true in general that the foul thing is not always the original and the fair thing not always the copy. But when we have to do with human imaginations, with things that come out of
us,
surely then the giant is right? There at least it is much more likely that whatever seems good is only a veil for the bad—only a part of our skin that has so far escaped the giant's eyes and not yet become transparent.'

‘There are two things to be said about that,' replied the lady, ‘and the first is this. Who told you that the Island was an imagination of yours?'

‘Well, you would not assure me that it was anything real.'

‘Nor that it was not.'

‘But I must think it is one or the other.'

‘By my father's soul, you must
not
—until you have some evidence. Can you not remain in doubt?'

‘I don't know that I have ever tried.'

‘You must learn to, if you are to come far with me. It is not hard to do it. In Eschropolis, indeed, it is impossible, for the people who live there have to give an opinion once a week or once a day, or else Mr. Mammon would soon cut off their food. But out here in the country you can walk all day and all the next day with an unanswered question in your head: you need never speak until you have made up your mind.'

‘But if a man wanted to know so badly that he would die unless the question was decided—and no more evidence turned up.'

‘Then he would die, that would be all.'

They went on in silence for a while.

‘You said there were two things to say,' said John. ‘What was the second?'

‘The second was this. Did you think that the things you saw in the dungeon were
real
: that we really are like that?'

‘Of course I did. It is only our skin that hides them.'

‘Then I must ask you the same question that I asked the giant. What is the colour of things in the dark?'

‘I suppose, no colour at all.'

‘And what of their shape? Have you any notion of it save as what could be seen or touched, or what you could collect from many seeings and touchings?'

‘I don't know that I have.'

‘Then do you not see how the giant has deceived you?'

‘Not quite clearly.'

‘He showed you by a trick what our inwards
would
look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal—these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes that you saw in the dungeon are the lie.'

‘But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.'

‘A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.'

‘I cannot forget the man with the cancer.'

‘What you saw was unreality. The ugly lump was the giant's trick: the reality was pain, which has no colour or shape.'

‘Is that much better?'

‘That depends on the man.'

‘I think I begin to see.'

‘Is it surprising that things should look strange if you see them as they are not? If you take an organ out of a man's body—or a longing out of the dark part of a man's mind—and give to the one the shape and colour, and to the other the self-consciousness, which they never have in reality, would you expect them to be other than monstrous?'

‘Is there, then, no truth at all in what I saw under the giant's eyes?'

‘Such pictures are useful to physicians.'

‘Then I really am clean,' said John. ‘I am not—like those.'

Reason smiled. ‘There, too,' she said, ‘there is truth mixed up with the giant's conjuring tricks. It will do you no harm to remember from time to time the ugly sights inside. You come of a race that cannot afford to be proud.'

As she spoke John looked up, in doubt of her meaning: and for the first time since he came into her company he felt afraid. But the impression lasted only for a moment. ‘Look,' said John, ‘here is a little inn. Is it not time that we rested and ate something?'

IV

Escape

I
N THE WARMTH
of the afternoon they went on again, and it came into John's mind to ask the lady the meaning of her second riddle.

‘It has two meanings,' said she, ‘and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.'

‘How is that?'

‘You heard what they said. If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true.'

‘I see. And what is the cure for this?'

‘You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'