s. In all that weltering chaos
we can see no spot so large as a man's hand on which we may plant our
foot.

Whether a man believes in a human-like God or no is a small thing.
Whether he looks into the mental and physical world and sees no relation
between cause and effect, no order, but a blind chance sporting, this is
the mightiest fact that can be recorded in any spiritual existence. It
were almost a mercy to cut his throat, if indeed he does not do it for
himself.

We, however, do not cut our throats. To do so would imply some desire
and feeling, and we have no desire and no feeling; we are only cold. We
do not wish to live, and we do not wish to die. One day a snake curls
itself round the waist of a Kaffer woman. We take it in our hand, swing
it round and round, and fling it on the ground--dead. Every one looks
at us with eyes of admiration. We almost laugh. Is it wonderful to risk
that for which we care nothing?

In truth, nothing matters. This dirty little world full of confusion,
and the blue rag, stretched overhead for a sky, is so low we could touch
it with our hand.

Existence is a great pot, and the old Fate who stirs it round cares
nothing what rises to the top and what goes down, and laughs when the
bubbles burst. And we do not care. Let it boil about. Why should we
trouble ourselves? Nevertheless the physical sensations are real.
Hunger hurts, and thirst, therefore we eat and drink: inaction pains
us, therefore we work like galley-slaves. No one demands it, but we set
ourselves to build a great dam in red sand beyond the graves. In the
grey dawn before the sheep are let out we work at it. All day, while the
young ostriches we tend feed about us, we work on through the fiercest
heat. The people wonder what new spirit has seized us now. They do not
know we are working for life. We bear the greatest stones, and feel a
satisfaction when we stagger under them, and are hurt by a pang that
shoots through our chest. While we eat our dinner we carry on baskets
full of earth, as though the devil drove us. The Kaffer servants have a
story that at night a witch and two white oxen come to help us. No wall,
they say, could grow so quickly under one man's hands.

At night, alone in our cabin, we sit no more brooding over the fire.
What should we think of now? All is emptiness. So we take the old
arithmetic; and the multiplication table, which with so much pains we
learnt long ago and forgot directly, we learn now i