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- 5407
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
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- 5331
- text
- 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.
“And what is it, to be something?” said Yoomy artlessly. “Bethink
yourself of what went before,” said Media.
“Lose not the thread,” said Mohi.
“It has snapped,” said Babbalanja.
“I breathe again,” said Mohi.
“But what a stepping-off place you came to then, philosopher,” said
Media. “By the way, is it not old Bardianna who says, that no Mardian
should undertake to walk, without keeping one foot foremost?”
“To return to the vagueness of the notion I have of myself,” said
Babbalanja.
“An appropriate theme,” said Media, “proceed.”
“My lord,” murmured Mohi, “Is not this philosopher like a centipede?
Cut off his head, and still he crawls.”
“There are times when I fancy myself a lunatic,” resumed Babbalanja.
“Ah, now he’s beginning to talk sense,” whispered Mohi.
“Surely you forget, Babbalanja,” said Media. “How many more theories
have you? First, you are possessed by a devil; then rent yourself out
to the indweller; and now turn yourself into a mad-house. You are
inconsistent.”
“And for that very reason, my lord, not inconsistent; for the sum of my
inconsistencies makes up my consistency. And to be consistent to one’s
self, is often to be inconsistent to Mardi. Common consistency implies
unchangeableness; but much of the wisdom here below lives in a state of
transition.”
“Ah!” murmured Mold, “my head goes round again.”
“Azzageddi aside, then, my lord, and also, for the nonce, the
mysterious indweller, I come now to treat of myself as a lunatic. But
this last conceit is not so much based upon the madness of particular
actions, as upon the whole drift of my ordinary and hourly ones; those,
in which I most resemble all other Mardians. It seems like going
through with some nonsensical whim-whams, destitute of fixed purpose.
For though many of my actions seem to have objects, and all of them
somehow run into each other; yet, where is the grand result? To what
final purpose, do I walk about, eat, think, dream? To what great end,
does Mohi there, now stroke his beard?”
“But I was doing it unconsciously,” said Mohi, dropping his hand, and
lifting his head.
“Just what I would be at, old man. ‘What we do, we do blindly,’ says
old Bardianna. Many things we do, we do without knowing,—as with you
and your beard, Mohi. And many others we know not, in their true
bearing at least, till they are past. Are not half our lives spent in
reproaches for foregone actions, of the true nature and consequences of
which, we were wholly ignorant at the time? Says old Bardianna, ‘Did I
not so often feel an appetite for my yams, I should think every thing a
dream;’—so puzzling to him, seemed the things of this Mardi. But
Alla-Malolla goes further. Says he, ‘Let us club together,
fellow-riddles:—Kings, clowns, and intermediates. We are bundles of
comical sensations; we bejuggle ourselves into strange phantasies: we
are air, wind, breath, bubbles; our being is told in a tick.’”
“Now, then, Babbalanja,” said Media, “what have you come to in all this
rhapsody? You everlastingly travel in a circle.”
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