This abrupt jerk to the particular set of nerves in them all that responded to dramatic events included in its field of operations, as may be easily supposed, both the moth and the fly who just then were peering out of the life-crack of the club of Herakles with concentrated interest. It also included the club itself who in following the rush of events at this particular crisis had the advantage of its vibratory contact with the Sixth Pillar in the Corridor of Pillars. This contact, based on a long series of experiences so homely and natural that they might almost be called domestic, was in its way as much of a philosophical discovery as any conceivable one made by the Atlantean sage, and neither the moth, whose silky wings quivered with the agitation of its emotion, nor the fly, whose great black head bulged with the intensity of its rumination, could do more than quietly accept such a verdict when they heard the club murmur aloud to itself what it had just caught from the massive Being that bore the signature of a son of Hephaistos, namely the words: “Hear therefore what the sage saith, “When the messenger flies or gallops, or drives, or runs, hope nothing, fear nothing, expect nothing, talk of nothing, till he’s standing on the ground at your gate.”
This messenger was indeed running at a speed that made some of the women who watched him fear he would fall dead the moment he delivered his message. And what was his message? This question, which was pulsing and heart-beating in that whole vast mass of people, did not disturb Odysseus in the slightest degree.
His plan of using the Prophet’s daughter as a shaft of irresistible power resembling the shaft that originally separated the Heavens from the Earth had completely failed. Well! That had failed. That was over and done with. That was finished, closed, shut, settled, rounded off; but in its frustration, in its defeat, in its absolute overness, it left the great battlefield of creation and destruction open for something fresh from the root up!
Yes! the field was free for something that had not so far crossed the mind of any living creature, whether that creature were a god or a man or a beast or a bird or a fish or a reptile or a worm or an insect! Yes, the greatest gift the Earth had given to Odysseus at his birth was his power of accepting a crushing disaster and of starting freshly again, as the phrase runs, “from scratch”.
Another great gift from the universal mother of men, who by many among us is called Nature rather than the Earth, of which this old hero was possessed, was the power of detaching himself from the agitations, confusions, emotions, desperations, terrors and exultations that might be absorbing and upsetting his immediate companions and not only of keeping his own spirit in the midst of the craziest hurly-burly and hullabaloo absolutely calm and unmoved, but of being capable under these conditions of so isolating his mind that he could go on coolly planning for the future, and calmly pondering on the future, and amusing himself by imagining what he would like best to happen in the future, with as much serenity as if he’d had nothing but lonely forests and untraversed seas around him for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
It had become clear to everybody now that behind the man who was running so fast, and who now was near enough to be recognizable as no other than our young friend Nisos, there was another man, quite different in appearance, attired in a manner wholly foreign to Ithaca and even to the main-land of Hellas, who clearly was finding it difficult to keep up with the younger man. Suddenly this first runner—“And it is Nisos!” thought Pontopereia, unable to stop herself from squeezing the king’s arm in her excitement, “and he’s coming straight to us!”—turned, saw how far off the other was, and stood still, so as to be overtaken.
It was indeed one of those curious occasions when the innate natures of the spectators at an important event reveal themselves to themselves, if not to anyone else, with what sometimes are quite surprising results.
“Can you see Enorches any longer?” enquired the moth of the fly. “I feel so dreadfully sure that the dear man may be wanting someone like me to make him happy about his beautiful speech and tell him how rich and clear his noble voice sounded.”
“May the Great Hornet sting your confounded Enorches!” responded the fly crossly. “Why can’t you, you little priest worshipper, look at the drama of life from a scientific distance?”
There was something so infinitely unpleasant to the moth, and so blighting and bleaching and blistering and blasting to her whole life-instinct, about this appalling “scientific distance” to which the fly was alluding, that she found it hard to be even polite to him.
“Well, my pretty?” he went on teasingly, for the difference of sex between them put her seriousness into one ballot-box and his into another, “why don’t you answer my plain question about a rational view of life taken from an astronomical scientific distance?”
This was too much for the moth, and she lost every silken flake of her natural sweet and obedient temper. “Why,” she screamed at him, “don’t I look at life from the view-point of the furthest star in the firmament? I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you why! Because I happen to be a Living Being on the Earth!”
The Fly sighed heavily. “How impossible it is,” he thought, “to exchange rational ideas with a female! And yet they are clever. It would be absurd to deny it. They are extremely clever. They may even be called wise. But their wisdom follows a completely different track from our wisdom. It skips about from point to point, matching things. We look at life as a whole.”
“You know exactly where the world comes to an end then?” shrieked the moth, making the fly feel as though she had read his thoughts. “What if it has trailing edges that lead to completely different ends? What if there’s a jumping-off place, from which a person can leap into another world altogether?”
“Listen, pretty fool!” protested the Fly sternly: and once more there came to their ears the voice of the Sixth Pillar conversing gravely with the club of Herakles; on whose head Odysseus was leaning rather heavily at that moment as he watched Nisos approach with that fantastically attired foreigner.
“The Sage avers that if the difference between one man and another with regard to their bodies is so great that it passeth understanding, considering that all have a head and a neck and shoulders and trunk and arms and legs and hands and feet and eyes and ears, the difference between them in regard to their minds is so great that it bars any approach to an attempt to understand it.”
“You heard that, sweetheart?” commented the Fly with satisfaction. “And if we can say as much as that about the difference in body and mind between creatures of the same species, what about the difference when you consider varieties of species? I tell you, little one, there’s no more good in my hoping that out of the various tribes of Flies one will arise destined to conquer the world than in these people here thinking that some Hellenic or Achaian or Bœotian tribe will conquer the world. I tell you, darling little idiot, no species and no portion of a species will ever conquer the world. It’s one of the tricks of Nature to put such ideas into people’s heads so as to make great wars arise between race and race and between species and species. Such wars between one swarm and another swarm are deliberately worked up by Nature so as to thin out earth’s population. Will you never learn, you lovely little goose-girl, that if a moth of your tribe wants her folks to rule the world there is only one thing for her to do?”