The World Below quotes

“Applied science,” said the Professor, “is always incredible to the vulgar mind.”

“You know, George, they really did go—disappeared absolutely—and there’s only one door to the room, and we sat round it. There’s no kid about that,” young Danby added—perhaps recognising that his father lacked somewhat in the amenities of social intercourse.

Bryant leant forward, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

“Templeton went like a Pirate Chief,” he said, smiling slightly.

It was the first time he had spoken.

Yet I slept at last, and waked again, feeling both cold and hunger, and ate and slept, and waked and ate and slept again, till I became aware that all the food was gone, and still the night continued.

Then fear came, indeed.

Had Templeton come to this, and had he fired his foolish pistols into the mocking stillness of a perpetual and lifeless night?

Had Templeton come to this, and had he fired his foolish pistols into the mocking stillness of a perpetual and lifeless night?

An ordinary English night is full of joyous, furtive, or defiant sound. A tropic night is full of life and movement, and noon is the time of quietness.

The owl hoots even above the silence of the Arctic snow.

As it did so, the creature screamed again. It was a cry of the most utter terror, abject and hellish beyond any possibility of words to tell it.

And the forest answered.

It answered in a hundred voices that screamed, and clamoured, and questioned, and replied.

I fell among moss, of a coarse growth, like seaweed, but very soft and yielding. It was of a sage-green colour, and of a very pleasant odour, which I cannot describe.

A new scent is, like a new colour, beyond imagination.

I burrowed deeply into the softness of the moss, and feared and wondered.

had made facile and contradictory theories of its interior, none of which the few known facts supported; and because they found some increase in the temperature for a trivial distance downward, had been content to conclude, without attempt at verification, that this heat increased indefinitely.

How diligently they searched the secrets of the most distant stars, while they had scarcely scratched the surface of the one on which their lives depended!

So I thought, but instinct conquered. I was a creature born to the wind and rain, and not to the hidden depths beneath me.

For in the language of thought it is evident that proper names can have no place.

The clumsy device of names is a necessity of articulate speech, which Adam first discovered when he attempted language.

Consequently, when I write of the “Dwellers” I use the best word I can apply to the idea she gave me, which was that of a dominant race, by whom the earth—or that part of it—was held as men hold civilised lands today, and without …

There was a subtle implication of a shadow beyond, against which they were leagued in common, but it was too formless for me to understand it. …

Had dogs continued, I wondered, through five hundred millenniums?

The two creatures which trotted at the rear of the column, and which now paused at her signal, were shaggy, web-footed, with the flapped gills with which I was already familiar, obviously amphibious, with seals’ eyes, and of the bulk of a walrus.

Why should I think of dogs? But the identity of a dog is not the result of a physical pattern, or how should we call a Great Dane by the same name as a Skye Terrier?

Not for the first time or the last, I wondered less at the differences of this strange world than at its similarities to the one behind me.

Round the neck of each of these creatures hung a bag containing food, intended (as I learnt later) for their own eating.

Grace of line and harmony of colour—everywhere I found them, as in the world I had left.

Surely beauty is more fundamental than righteousness! Or may the two be one only?

If there were any difference in the new world, it was only that nature produced her effects with greater economy of material, massing her colours, and content to display a few varieties of plant or tree only, where I had been used to the combinations …

Indeed, it was this derisive glance which first made me realise at all adequately the appearance I must present in my tattered clothes to these creatures whose bodies were so much more easily cared for, and sufficient for their environment.

I thought that I had met with the humorist of the new world, and did not guess that I was on the threshold of tragedy.

My companions rested undisturbed, and it did not appear even to realise their presence, at which I was puzzled for a moment, thinking that they must be as strange to it as myself, and not understanding that the calm indifference of their minds, and the …

“

For yourself, it came to me, as I saw your mind when you fell, that you have a brave spirit in a body of deplorable weakness.

It is full also of strange passions, which you can scarcely control yourself, and for that reason the lowest creatures can defy you. But I saw the spirit that is imprisoned within you, and for that I respect you.

… so that, in theory, we may be brought into yet closer bondage, but in practice that is a thing which is barely possible, and as new laws are made, others fall into disuse and forgetfulness, because it is beyond human capacity to observe so many.

We do not want more laws, but we have started a machine in which we ourselves are involved, so that we have no power to stop it.

Many of us despise the laws that we have already—so far as we understand them—and break them whenever we can do so to our own advantage, and with sufficient secrecy.

This is repulsive to me, because I cannot conceive of a reasoning spirit being reduced to a baser servitude.

Fear is good, and it would be a poor kind of body which did not give you that warning.

But your body is not content with warning, it attempts control, and if you refuse obedience, you do so with difficulty. I think that this arises because your mind is not sure of itself, and your body lacks respect for its weakness.

Certainly I would not be like you. It would be as though we should be eaten by our own dogs. But when I see how your mind endures amidst such surroundings I am unable to despise you.

I seem as one who swims with a friendly tide, and can make no boast, though she outdistance one who fights onward amidst contrary and contending currents.

Therefore, I think God may judge you the prize at last, though He has given you a body that is lower than that of a sea-dog, and a mind that has no power to control it, and that walks in circles.

The movements overhead were louder now, and I had the impression that something was about to spring down from the darkness.

The fear of the unknown was upon me, which is of all fears the most dreadful.

I think we do less than justice to the alchemists of the dark ages of Europe, and to their opponents also. We are accustomed to regard them as charlatans, and to brand those as superstitious fools who burnt them.

There is a folly of credulity, but there is a folly of incredulity, which is far greater.

If they asked their patrons for money which would enable them to turn lead into gold, the scientist of today is approaching the same point of research which they must have reached when the possibility dawned upon them.

… other hand, it was realised by those among whom the alchemists practised that they were the repositories of an esoteric knowledge, the extent and power of which could be only dimly imagined, and of which there was no guarantee that it would be used beneficently.

Even now, a scientist will present his fellow-men with a more nutritious infants’ food, or a deadlier poison-gas, than has been previously invented, with the same fatuous complacency.

The evil eye may have been fact or imagination. I do not know. It is no more inherently improbable than wireless telegraphy.

The evil eye may have been fact or imagination. I do not know. It is no more inherently improbable than wireless telegraphy.

But it is the unknown that terrifies.

I do not suppose that the Killers were exceptionally intelligent. All the evidence is against it. Yet this episode of the closing door, because it was beyond my understanding, was more daunting than would have been a far more urgent danger of a familiar kind.

But it is the unknown that terrifies.

I do not suppose that the Killers were exceptionally intelligent. All the evidence is against it.

Yet this episode of the closing door, because it was beyond my understanding, was more daunting than would have been a far more urgent danger of a familiar kind.

She says, ‘Do not move. Put your hand on your neck with the palm outward. He will not think of other weapons until he has tried the strangling-cord. It is forbidden to use the weapons of others, and his sense is small.’ ”

Deadly peril and quick thought are comrades ever.

At the instant, something soft and slimy flicked my face, and drew backward. It was round my neck the next moment, but my hand was there already.

… attracted me, but, from whatever cause, I was aware of an attachment to this creature, who, I told myself, was less like a man than a seal, and had no sex as we understand it, such as I had never felt for any earthly woman.

As I lay there, at the gate of sleep, the slim webbed hand that pressed my foot was the dearest thing that any world contained, and half-a-million years had no power to divide us.

And then—for one incautious instant—she let me see her mind, and I knew how she regarded me.

“

The Dwellers can be very merciful.

”

“

How can they be stopped, but by a law of their own making? And that is the last law which they would consider.

“The result is that we are oppressed by a weight of laws, to which we render a partial and bewildered obedience, aware that there are many of which we have not even heard;

It is the habit of mankind to depreciate the appliances of its ancestors, when it has superseded them with other contrivances.

In our time, bows and arrows have become symbolic of futility among engines of war.

She answered frankly, “It is likely enough. Though I should at least know what was happening.

You seem to me to live in yours like a stranger, without control or confidence, and not knowing what goes on within it.

“But I agree with you the more easily because I am already feeling the need of the water in which I most naturally live, and I am also conscious of the loss of the energy I have given you, which, in about two months from …

I have told something of the outward repulsiveness of the Killers, with their worm-pink skins that were both tough and slimy, but of the interiors of these foul bodies I cannot write.

An axe-stroke has no reticence.

I thought it was from that nauseous sight that a sudden faintness threatened, and I struggled against it, stepping back, and leaning on the axe, and turning to my companion for her to snare my triumph.

“You can rest while you will. I think your last stroke was enough to still them. You made it work that time!”

She always spoke of my body thus, as something separate from myself, as we might praise a friend who carved well with a blunted chisel.

“I am sorry that I failed you. The Killer rose on your farther side, and I could not reach it till it had made its throw. I have much yet to learn of the ways of fighting—do you not understand me?

There have been those, from the Egyptian civilisation to our own times, who have believed a dream to be in the nature of an occult visitation, from which future events can be foretold or avoided.

But even they would admit that a dream must be remembered on waking if it is to be of any utility, and that is just where so few dreams are entirely satisfactory.

When I waked I recollected vividly that I had dreamed of the making of a fire a short distance outside the door, which had stood open while I made it.

“In any case,” I continued, “the fault is mine, and if we meet the Dwellers, I will tell them.”

“The act was yours, but the cause was ours,” she answered⁠—“and the Dwellers will soon be here, that is a very certain thing, and it is our part to decide how we shall meet them.”

By now the building rose a solid oblong of bright flame in a windless air, and the heat was terrible.

“

It is not self-evident that every civilised community should continue.

But your contention is clearly not that she consented, but that such consent is not necessary. By whom were you appointed a judge, and under what compulsion, if any?”

It should be the greatest difficulty in putting an unjust law into operation that no judges of good character should be found who would consent to enforce it.

A judge who solemnly administers a law which he knows in his heart to be unjust is baser than one who takes bribes from a litigant.

In the one case he is bribed by an individual to do injustice at some risk to his own position; in the other he is bribed by the State to do injustice, with an assurance that it can be perpetrated with impunity.

I was conscious not only of my own insignificance, but of a vulgarity also, which was not personal to myself, but belonging to the race from which I came.

I clothed them in imagination with the garments to which I was accustomed, and their significance and their dignity at once departed.

But for what were they delaying? As the time passed I was increasingly convinced that they were aware of the Amphibians, and were awaiting their arrival;

The dusk was already falling over the valley, as my companion’s mind laughed its relief, and the tension ended.

“I think,” she said, “that this is the beginning of the next adventure.”

“

It appears to me that you first elect your own preference, and then call upon your mind to furnish arguments to support it.

It is not bound to do this, and it knows that you rely upon it to suggest any serious danger or difficulty which might impel you to alter your decision, but, no less, it understands your wish, and that if there be any sufficient arguments …

But I knew that the rags I wore in this new world exposed me to the contempt of every eye that beheld them.

To be modest is to be inconspicuous. It is to follow the mode.

By that test my present clothes reached the last extreme of indecency.

In the end, public opinion was too strong for me.

All my life I had made myself grotesque in the ugliest garments by which the human form can be hidden, because my fellow-men required it.

Here I was conscious of a different verdict, and the slave crouched instinctively to the crack of a new whip. On a sudden impulse, I resolved to leave them.

In the end, public opinion was too strong for me. All my life I had made myself grotesque in the ugliest garments by which the human form can be hidden, because my fellow-men required it.

Here I was conscious of a different verdict, and the slave crouched instinctively to the crack of a new whip.

On a sudden impulse, I resolved to leave them.

But I was not looking for beauty.

The need for beauty is continual, and for food is intermittent only. Yet the last is the more urgent while it remains unsatisfied.

It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so that he cannot live long without it. I remembered our compact that I should be self-supporting in future.

But I was not looking for beauty. The need for beauty is continual, and for food is intermittent only. Yet the last is the more urgent while it remains unsatisfied.

It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so that he cannot live long without it.

I remembered our compact that I should be self-supporting in future. I knew the swiftness with which my companion considered it natural to travel.

… it ceased its protest, and we went forward in silence, soothed to drowsiness of thought by this monotony of multitudinous sounds, till the trees ceased, and I was suddenly conscious that my companion was left behind, and that her thought was urgent to call me.

Thoughts that pass from mind to mind are swifter than speech, a thousand times, and more luminous.

So it was that we had mutually realised in a moment that which would have been beyond the ready apprehension of human intercourse.

They changed, but did not flicker, nor sparkle. We walked on lakes of frozen fire, that faded as we advanced to the quiet green of an English sunset when the mists are windless.

Here, I thought, might be the place of the birth of sunsets.

Sometimes the approaching wall would show a violet colour of an intensity which I had neither seen nor imagined, but this colour was never beneath our feet, nor could we reach it closely, for as we approached, it always changed and faded, if fading it …

It was a point without magnitude. I cannot say that it was embedded in, or that it lay upon, the surface.

I cannot say that it was red or yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle.

We stood there for a long time. I had no thoughts that I can translate to words. I have none now.

We stood there for a long time.

I had no thoughts that I can translate to words. I have none now.

At last, we continued our way to the farther side of the platform, where we found a new reason for pausing. Beneath us lay the penultimate terrace which we had noticed to be so much wider than the others.

Her form was as straight and graceful as had been that of the other, nor did it give an impression of great size in a room which was proportioned to it.

It was not she that was large, but we that were small.

Her body was slim and perfect in its proportions, and her face was flawless, yet where the other had given an impression of youth, there was here an atmosphere of age incalculable. I cannot say from what it came, unless from one thing only.

Her body was slim and perfect in its proportions, and her face was flawless, yet where the other had given an impression of youth, there was here an atmosphere of age incalculable. I cannot say from what it came, unless from one thing only.

Her eyes were intolerably tired.

As she entered the room she had an object about the size of a football perched on her left shoulder. There was a table in the centre, of a transparent blue substance.

“

Is it by your power to cause the deaths of others? Then a disease-germ (as you have yourself admitted) may be greater than you.

“Is it by conduct? But you have shown me that you work violence, fraud, and cruelty among yourselves, and against the creatures around you.

“

As are the vermin which you trap and kill without mercy, so, and less than so, and rightly less than so, must you be to the Dwellers.

“You are not of their world. You came unasked. You may bring strange disease. You may produce discord in a thousand ways.

It is curious fact that such animals as we may allow to associate with us in any intimacy must share to some extent this difference, be it height or depth, which divides us from the rest of our creation.

A lion cannot sin: but a dog can.

“—But perhaps I weary you with details which are beyond your interest?”

“

You are old and weary of life, but we are not old, and we shall never weary.

Life is ours, and we have learnt by your failure. But we will not resign our customs either in the Choosing of Males, or in the Rites of the Preparations. Shall our daughters be less than we?

“We have conquered cold. We have defeated darkness. We have tamed heat till it licks our feet like a fawning dog. We have resisted corruption.

But there is a night of the soul that falls across the procession of unending years, against which, one by one, we fight a battle that is always lost.

“… And every year our race declines, and our women-children are fewer.

“We have conquered cold. We have defeated darkness.

We have tamed heat till it licks our feet like a fawning dog.

We have resisted corruption. But there is a night of the soul that falls across the procession of unending years, against which, one by one, we fight a battle that is always lost.

“And if they be, they must have been in every grade of difference, and in others beyond thought or counting.

Can we, who are the thoughts of God, imagine what He had not thought?

Must it not be, if we think it?”

“How can it matter, till we want to get out?” she answered. “

Why will you always worry over troubles you haven’t got?

We wanted to find the place, and here it is. We wanted to get into it, and here we are. Even though we should worry later, when we may want to get out, we ought to be glad now.

It was a strange sensation.

Even in a library of dead books there is an atmosphere of knowledge, and of the presence of many forgotten, ghostly minds.

Each room has its own aroma. You may wander with closed eyes into the divinity section, but you will know at once that you are not in that of fiction or biography.

The atmosphere in a room devoted to sporting books is different from that of one which is occupied with medical subjects. That is so with dead books; but these were living.

Living books on either side, clamouring to be read, and we could not read them.

Their desire met ours, but we had no key to their treasures.

The blue lightnings, under no visible controls, grouped and advanced through the air to meet their new adversary.

Swiftly as an eyelid winks, a glow of petunia-red appeared and faded on the polished sheathes.

Instantly, the lightnings separated, and drew back. They reminded me, grotesquely enough, of a pack of dogs that had brought a beast to bay which they would not leave, but lacked the strength to pull down.

She answered, “

Why not both? And if both, why should you suppose that the smaller will control the greater?

” And when she saw that her thought confused my mind for a moment, she went on, “You know that I have a body which is entirely mine, and which is clear of any alien life;

… reverse surface of the interior, and stranger things on which I am entirely silent, because we did not actually see them, and they are too incredible to be lightly added to a narrative which must appear fictitious, in any case, to the obtuse and unimaginative.

It is not everyone who can realise that the human mind has no real power of invention, nor that it is impossible to add to that which is infinite.

We went down in vision for five hundred miles by one continuing spiral, seeing glimpses of inexplicable things on many levels, until we came to a place in which were two colonies of the older Dwellers, each attempting to postpone the weariness of years by …