The Absolute at Large quotes

“I? Well, now …” G. H. Bondy deliberated. “Upon my word, I couldn’t say.

Perhaps there is a God, but He’s on some other planet. Not on ours.

Oh, well, that sort of thing doesn’t fit in with our times at all. Tell me, what makes you drag that into it?”

If in old times God could appear in a well or in an oak-tree, and sometimes even like a woman, as with the ancient Greeks, why should He not appear on a dredge? Why should He shun machinery?

A machine is often cleaner than a nun, and Brych keeps everything here as bright and shining as if it was on a sideboard.

However, that’s by the way. And let me tell you, God is not so infinite as the Catholics assert. He is about six hundred metres in diameter, and even then is weak towards the edges. He is at His strongest on the dredge.

It gives orders to the Board of Directors in writing. It sends its clients fervent epistles about showing love by works. What’s the result? The Industrial Bank shares are mere waste paper: it would take a kilo of them to buy a bit of cheese.

That’s what happens when God starts meddling with banking.

“The Oberlander firm, a textile factory in Upice, is bombarding us with despairing telegrams. A month ago they put in a Karburator in place of a boiler. Splendid, the machines are going strong: all’s well.

And marriage, above all things, is impossible without thoughts that are not disclosed. It is unthinkable, Ellen. And even if you find the holiest of men, don’t marry him as long as you can read his thoughts.

A little illusion is the only bond between mortals that never breaks.

Saint Ellen, you must not marry.”

Blahous, I must take my leave. I should like to spend many a year with you and describe your whole career … for is not the life of a university lecturer rich and exciting, after its fashion? Give my regards to your landlady at least.

Everything there is, is worth observing.

And that is why I should like to accompany each new Karburator on its way. I should become acquainted with fresh people every day, and so would you, and that is always worth while.

“If someone made or created all this, then we must admit that it is a terrible waste. If anyone wanted to show his power as a Creator, there was no need to create such an insane quantity of things.

Excess is chaos, and chaos is something like insanity or drunkenness.

Yes, the human intellect is staggered by the over-profusion of this creative achievement. There is simply too much of it. It’s boundlessness gone mad.

Thus there ruled in the world a state of boundless plenty of all that men could need.

But men need everything, everything but boundless plenty.

That’s how it is, Bondy. And in the third place, like the crudest of doctrinaire Communists, He has done away with the currency and thereby with one stroke paralysed the circulation of commodities.

He did not know that the laws of the market are stronger than the laws of God.

He did not know that production without trade is utterly senseless. He knew nothing whatever. He behaved like … like a … well, to put it shortly, as if He would destroy with one hand what He made with the other.

The fallen snow rose in sharp needle-points and whirled through the air. White clouds blew down from the trees, swirled madly above the ground, spun about, and soared up to the darkened heavens.

It was snowing upwards from the earth to the sky.

In the depths of the forest the branches were creaking and groaning; a tree broke and fell with a crash, shattering the undergrowth. But abrupt noises like these were sundered and swept away on the whistling, booming, shrieking, rending, distracted howl of the wind.

“Rejzek,” cried Keval mournfully, “I simply can’t think up anything natural.

When I think it over, everything is a miracle really. Whatever is, is a sort of magic.

”

Meanwhile Lieutenant Bobinet … but no.

Let us abandon any attempt to psychologize great men, to express the titanic idea in the germ from which it sprang.

We are not equal to the task, and if we were, we should perhaps be disappointed.

Marshal Jollivet wished to punish the commander of the unfortunate battery by reducing him in rank on the spot. But Bobinet restrained him, saying,

“Let him alone, Marshal. After all, this is the mud of France!”

Bobinet and the Old Pensioner.—Bobinet was once driving out incognito to Chartres. On the way a tyre burst, and while the chauffeur was putting on a new one, a one-legged pensioner came up and asked for alms.

The whole world thus entered upon a period which, though anything but peaceful, was to be glorious in history. Every quarter of the globe literally blazed with heroic feats of arms.

Seen from Mars, our earth must certainly have shone like a star of the first magnitude, from which the Martian astronomers doubtless concluded that we were still in a condition of glowing heat.

You can well believe that chivalrous France and her representative, the Emperor Toni Bobinet, did not play a minor role. Perhaps, too, such remnants of the Absolute as had not yet escaped into space were at work here, awakening a spirit of exaltation and fervour.

To occupy Denmark as the key to the North Sea area.

And since territorial keys have usually to be smeared with blood, France fitted out three armies which won for her tremendous glory.

The fourth army occupied Asia Minor as the key to the East.

The seventh army laid siege to Sebastopol.

By New Year’s Eve, 1944, the Emperor Bobinet had all his keys in the pocket of his artillery breeches.

It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives us a peculiar satisfaction if it is “the biggest” of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began.

During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is “the highest temperature reached since the year 1881,” and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better.

The negroes of the Congo basin had hurled themselves upon Europe, while the rest of Africa was in the throes of the fluctuating conflicts of its one hundred and eighty-six different Emperors, Sultans, Kings, Chiefs and Presidents.

Such is history, you see.

Each one of those hundred millions of warring pygmies had had his childhood, his loves, his plans;

Therefore I say: Do not rob the people of that time of their only boast—that what they went through was the Greatest War.

We, however, know that in a few decades we shall succeed in arranging an even greater war, for in this respect also the human race is progressing ever upward and on.

General Hampl brought his troops to a halt before the city and sent forward a trumpeter and a herald with the demand that all noncombatants should leave their houses. No one came out, however. The houses were empty.

The Little Square was empty.

The Great Square was empty.

The Great Square was empty.

The whole city was empty.

General Hampl twirled his moustache and made his way to the City Hall. It was open. He entered the Council Chamber. He took his seat in the Burgomaster’s Chair.

“Oh well,” G. H. Bondy demurred, “there really was peace here. They’re quite decent chaps, these Papuans or whatever you call them. It’s only just recently that they’ve begun to be … rather disagreeable. I don’t quite understand them. What are they really after?”

“Nothing special,” said the Captain. “They only want to eat us.”

“Are they as hungry as all that?” asked Bondy in amazement.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Bondy thoughtfully.

“Everyone has his hobby,” growled the Captain. “The local hobby here is to eat up the stranger and dry his head in smoke.”

“What, smoke it as well?” Mr. Bondy exclaimed with horror.

“On the contrary,” said G. H. Bondy (obviously pleased at being able to talk for once with an independent and experienced human being),

“I assure you that it is the true God. But I’ll tell you something else. This true God is far too big.”

“I do indeed. He is infinite. That’s just where the trouble lies. You see, everyone measures off a certain amount of Him and then thinks it is the entire God.

“I do indeed. He is infinite. That’s just where the trouble lies. You see, everyone measures off a certain amount of Him and then thinks it is the entire God.

Each one appropriates a little fringe or fragment of Him and then thinks he possesses the whole of Him.

See?”

he is only as silly as that in the matter of religion or English politics. If he believed that God was something as substantial and essential as underwear, he would allow other people to provide themselves with Him just as they pleased.

But he hasn’t sufficient commercial confidence in Him; and so he forces Dash’s God or Dash’s Truth on everybody with curses, wars, and other unreliable forms of advertisement.

I am a business man and I understand competition, but this sort of …”

“He died for his faith,” whispered Bondy dreamily. “You have forcibly restrained him from devouring me. He fell for the national ideal of cannibalism.

In Europe people have been devouring each other from time immemorial out of idealism.

You are a decent man, Captain, but it’s quite possible that you’d devour me on behalf of any fundamental principle of navigation. I’ve lost confidence even in you.”

“That’s how ’tis,” Mrs. Prouzova answered.

“Oh, what’s the use?” said Grandfather Blahous.

“Yes, that’s it,” added Mrs. Blahous, peeling another potato.

“Nobody knows. What I say is, it was all fixed up with the Pope and the Jews and the whole lot of them. Those … those … Kalburators!” shouted Grandfather Blahous, in great excitement. “I’d like to say it to their faces!

Why, did anybody need a new Lord God? The old one was good enough for us country people.

There was just enough of Him, and He was good, and honest and upright. He didn’t show himself to anybody, but we had peace instead …”

And look at Tony Vlcek. He always swore by those foxfates that you fertilize with, and if anyone didn’t believe in them, he’d keep on going for him like mad. And my son, the Professor, tells me it’s the same wherever you go.

If anyone sets his mind on anything, he must have everybody else believe in it. And he won’t let anyone alone. That’s how it’s all come about.

”

…

And the earth shook with the clash of armies, and thinkers in every camp confidently asserted that “a brighter day was dawning.”