te amid the terrible circle of Unknowns,
behold in this the heroic stupidity of the sane ... a stupidity which
has already outlived the Gods.

"Man, alas, is the only animal who hasn't known enough to die. His
undeveloped senses have permitted him to survive in the manner of the
oyster. The mysteries, dangers, and delights of the sea do not exist for
the oyster. Its senses are not stirred by typhoons, impressed by
earthquakes or annoyed by its own insignificance. Similarly, man!

"The complacent egomania of man, his tyrannical indifferences, his
little list of questions and answers which suffices for his wisdom,
these are the chief phenomena or symptoms of his sanity. He alone has
survived the ages by means of a series of ludicrous adjustments, until
today he walks on two legs--the crowning absurdity of an otherwise
logical Nature. He has triumphed by specializing in his weaknesses and
insuring their survival; by disputing the simple laws of biology with
interminable banalities labelled from age to age as religions,
philosophies and laws.

"Unable, despite his shiftiness, to lie the fact of his mortality
and decomposition out of existence, he has satisfied his mania for
survival by the invention of souls. And so behold him--spectacle of
spectacles--a chatty little tradesman in an immemorial hat drifting
good-naturedly through a nightmare.

"It is for this ability to exist unnaturally that he has invented the
adjective sane. But here and there in the streets of cities walk the
damned--creatures denied the miracle of sanity and who move bewilderedly
through their scene, staring at the flying days as at the fragments of
another world. They are conscious of themselves only as vacuums within
which life is continually expiring.

"Alas, the damned! From the depths of their non-existence they
contemplate their fellowman and perceive him a dwarf prostrate forever
before solacing arrangements of words; an homunculus riding
vaingloriously on the tiny river of ink that flows between monstrous
yesterdays and monstrous tomorrows; a baboon strutting through a
mirage."

The history of Mallare's madness begins thus. And the pages continue.
The writing on them seems at a glance part of a decoration in black and
white. The letters are beautifully formed and shaded. They resemble
laboring serpents, dainty pagodas, vines bearing strange fruits and
capricious bits of sculpture.

To the end Mallare fancied himself aware of the drift