he same sense of
primal solitude as the forest, but it is less silent; the sea tears
among the rocks as if it would destroy the land, but when its rage
is over the sea laughs, and leaps, and caresses, and the day after
fawns upon the land, drawing itself up like a woman to her lover, as
voluptuously. Nowhere on earth only in the desert, is there silence;
even in the tomb there are worms, but in some parts of the desert
there are not even worms, the body dries into dust without decaying.
Owen imagined the resignation of the wanderer who finds no water at
the spring, and lies down to die amid the mighty indifference of
sterile Nature; and breaking the silence, somewhat against his will,
he communicated his thoughts to Beclere, that an unhappy man who
dare not take his life could not do better than to lose himself in
the desert. Death would come easily, for seeing nothing in front of
him but an empty horizon, nothing above him but a blank sky, and for
a little shelter a sand dune, which the wind created yesterday and
will uncreate to-morrow he would come to understand all that he need
know regarding his transitory and unimportant life. Does Nature care
whether we live or die? We have heard often that she cares not a jot
for the individual.... But does she care for the race--for mankind
more than for beastkind? His intelligence she smiles at, concerned
with the lizard as much as with the author of "The Ring." Does she
care for either? After all, what is Nature? We use words, but words
mean so little. What do we mean when we speak of Nature? Where does
Nature begin? Where does she end? And God? We talk of God, and we do
not know whether he sleeps, or drinks, or eats, whether he wears
clothes or goes naked; Moses saw his hinder parts, and he used to be
jealous and revengeful; but as man grows merciful God grows merciful
with him, we make him to our own likeness, and spend a great deal of
money on the making.
"Yes, God is a great expense, but government would be impossible
without him."
Beclere's answer jarred Owen's mood a little, without breaking it,
however, and he continued to talk of how words like "Nature," and
"God," and "Liberty" are on every lip, yet none is able to define
their meaning. Liberty he instanced as a word around which poems
have been written, "yet no poet could tell what he was writing
about; at best we can only say of liberty that we must surrender
something to gain something; in other words, libert
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