on his tail, arched forward in air, and
oscillating unhappily, like some tiny pendulum ticking. Ticking,
ticking in mid-air, arched away from his planted tail. Till at last,
after a long minute and a half, he touches the twig again, and
subsides into twigginess. The only thing is, the dead beech-twig can't
pretend to be a wagging caterpillar. Yet how the two commune!
However--we have our exits and our entrances, and one man in his time
plays many parts. More than he dreams of, poor darling. And I am
entirely at a loss for a moral!

Well, then, we are born. I suppose that's a safe statement. And we
become at once conscious, if we weren't so before. _Nem con._ And our
little baby body is a little functioning organism, a little developing
machine or instrument or organ, and our little baby mind begins to
stir with all our wonderful psychical beginnings. And so we are in
bud.

But it won't do. It is too much of a Pisgah sight. We overlook too
much. _Descendez, cher Moise. Vous voyez trop loin._ You see too far
all at once, dear Moses. Too much of a bird's-eye view across the
Promised Land to the shore. Come down, and walk across, old fellow.
And you won't see all that milk and honey and grapes the size of
duck's eggs. All the dear little budding infant with its tender
virginal mind and various clouds of glory instead of a napkin. Not at
all, my dear chap. No such luck of a promised land.

Climb down, Pisgah, and go to Jericho. _Allons_, there is no road yet,
but we are all Aarons with rods of our own.

CHAPTER II

THE HOLY FAMILY

We are all very pleased with Mr. Einstein for knocking that eternal
axis out of the universe. The universe isn't a spinning wheel. It is a
cloud of bees flying and veering round. Thank goodness for that, for
we were getting drunk on the spinning wheel.

So that now the universe has escaped from the pin which was pushed
through it, like an impaled fly vainly buzzing: now that the multiple
universe flies its own complicated course quite free, and hasn't got
any hub, we can hope also to escape.

We won't be pinned down, either. We have no one law that governs us.
For me there is only one law: _I am I._ And that isn't a law, it's
just a remark. One is one, but one is not all alone. There are other
stars buzzing in the center of their own isolation. And there is no
straight path between them. There is no straight path between you and
me, dear reader, so don't blame me if my words fly