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- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
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- text
- was not I, Babbalanja, now speaking, that committed them. Nevertheless,
my lord, this very day I may do some act, which at a future period may
seem equally senseless; for in one lifetime we live a hundred lives. By
the incomprehensible stranger in me, I say, this body of mine has been
rented out scores of times, though always one dark chamber in me is
retained by the old mystery.”
“Will you never come to the mark, Babbalanja? Tell me something direct
of the stranger. Who, what is he? Introduce him.”
“My lord, I can not. He is locked up in me. In a mask, he dodges me. He
prowls about in me, hither and thither; he peers, and I stare. This is
he who talks in my sleep, revealing my secrets; and takes me to unheard
of realms, beyond the skies of Mardi. So present is he always, that I
seem not so much to live of myself, as to be a mere apprehension of the
unaccountable being that is in me. Yet all the time, this being is I,
myself.”
“Babbalanja,” said Media, “you have fairly turned yourself inside out.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Mohi, “and he has so unsettled me, that I begin to
think all Mardi a square circle.”
“How is that, Babbalanja,” said Media, “is a circle square?”
“No, my lord, but ever since Mardi began, we Mardians have been
essaying our best to square it.”
“Cleverly retorted. Now, Babbalanja, do you not imagine, that you may
do harm by disseminating these sophisms of yours; which like your devil
theory, would seem to relieve all Mardi from moral accountability?”
“My lord, at bottom, men wear no bonds that other men can strike off;
and have no immunities, of which other men can deprive them. Tell a
good man that he is free to commit murder,—will he murder? Tell a
murderer that at the peril of his soul he indulges in murderous
thoughts,—will that make him a saint?”
“Again on the verge, Babbalanja? Take not the leap, I say.”
“I can leap no more, my lord. Already I am down, down, down.”
“Philosopher,” said Media, “what with Azzageddi, and the mysterious
indweller you darkly hint of, I marvel not that you are puzzled to
decide upon your identity. But when do you seem most yourself?”
“When I sleep, and dream not, my lord.”
“Indeed?”
“Why then, a fool’s cap might be put on you, and you would not know
it.”
“The very turban he ought to wear,” muttered Mohi.
“Yet, my lord, I live while consciousness is not mine, while to all
appearances I am a clod. And may not this same state of being, though
but alternate with me, be continually that of many dumb, passive
objects we so carelessly regard? Trust me, there are more things alive
than those that crawl, or fly, or swim. Think you, my lord, there is no
sensation in being a tree? feeling the sap in one’s boughs, the breeze
in one’s foliage? think you it is nothing to be a world? one of a herd,
bison-like, wending its way across boundless meadows of ether? In the
sight of a fowl, that sees not our souls, what are our own tokens of
animation? That we move, make a noise, have organs, pulses, and are
compounded of fluids and solids. And all these are in this Mardi as a
unit. Daily the slow, majestic throbbings of its heart are perceptible
on the surface in the tides of the la-goon. Its rivers are its veins;
when agonized, earthquakes are its throes; it shouts in the thunder,
and weeps in the shower; and as the body of a bison is covered with
hair, so Mardi is covered with grasses and vegetation, among which, we
parasitical things do but crawl, vexing and tormenting the patient
creature to which we cling. Nor yet, hath it recovered from the pain of
the first foundation that was laid. Mardi is alive to its axis. When
you pour water, does it not gurgle? When you strike a pearl shell, does
it not ring? Think you there is no sensation in being a rock?—To exist,
is to be; to be, is to be something: to be something, is—”
“Go on,” said Media.
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