But the young people grow stronger in time and little by little go away, while the old people never go away. They are the weak people, and they have never been anything but weak and old as well. They could not go away even if they wanted to. They are old from staying always in the same place, being too weak to make changes. They are the people whose minds are the sky, and the people who make the weather. They are always grumbling a little—how cold it is to-day, or how wet it was yesterday. But they are glad, after all, to be where they are. And the strong people whose minds are the earth put up with it all because they need a place to stay in while they are still young. For if they started out on their travels too soon they would last no time at all. The object of the strong people is to last for a considerable time, while the weak people do not think about lasting. And this is why the world suits them so well: it is only a moment long, though they make this moment seem like forever. And this is why they need the earth; for it would be most unpleasant to live their moment out in a mere sky, all confusion and falling over one another, with nothing to stand on. It's nice for them to have the earth to stand on, and to have the strong people about to make things interesting. The sky, as we are beginning to understand, is round, and it's nice for it to have a centre to fall in upon. Otherwise it would be a miserable tangle of weak people treading one another to death. As it is, they tread on the earth and die feeling themselves everlasting.
So you see how important it was for them to prove that the earth was round, and to keep it from being taken away from under their feet. And the strong people gave in to them for the time being, since they were not quite ready to go anywhere, all their talk about the future being, up to a certain point, only talk. Indeed, it fitted in with their plans to confine themselves to talk for the present, for they did not mean to start out— quite apart from not being yet strong enough to start out— until they had chosen from among themselves a First One. And before they could choose a First One it was necessary for everyone to be well acquainted with everyone else. It was necessary to thrash out all disagreements and develop a common point of view about things, so that any one of them might, without discredit to the others, become a First One—it being a matter of expediency who was actually chosen. For among strong people there can be no inferiors. But there can be difficulties which one person is capable of dealing with better than another from accidental advantages of position. This is expediency. In expediency there are no petty personal considerations, only the general good.
It happened, then, that a certain man among the strong people, called 'Tooth', one day saw his way clear to going on a really long journey. Thus he became the First One; and no one was jealous, because he did not come back. Why he should have been the First One, and not someone else, was simply a question of geography. At a certain point the earth went straight on. Exactly where this point was could only be revealed after all the strong people had each taken a fixed position—any fixed position; then one of them would find that his position moved. The strong people did not, of themselves, move—that was what the weak people did, and that was the explanation of roundness. When Tooth found himself moving he knew that he was the First One. And all the other strong people knew that he was the First One, since he was not there any more. They had, in fact, chosen him to be their First One. Had not each one of them taken up his respective position and left just that position for him? This was the way the strong people did things.
So far as Tooth was concerned, he was not moving; he was merely holding his own. But there could be no doubt that he was going somewhere. He was taking advantage of an energy not his own. His own energy he preserved; he was strong. He was moving straight on—not horizontally, not vertically. Horizontal and vertical motions were illusions of round motion, horizontal motion being towards a spot where one already was, vertical motion being away from a spot one had never really been at. His motion was still motion. The earth that he was moving on was really flat. It had an end. Its beginning was the strong people. Its end was an energy not his own, nor the energy of any of the other strong people. Its end must be a woman. The strong people were all men. The weak people were men and women mixed. After a time Tooth sat down; if he sat down, there could be no mistake about his not moving.
He sat down and his muscles stood out. How strong he looked! How strong he felt! "Ah, my strength," he thought, "how beautiful I am." This was not the beauty of the weak people, who all admired one another. He admired himself. He needed no one to tell him that he was beautiful. He sat quite still and saw nothing but himself, his beautiful strength, beautiful because it absorbed all his attention. But he knew he was moving by the feeling in him of wanting to tell someone else about his beauty and his strength—not one of the strong, people, who were all as beautiful and strong as he was, nor any of the weak people, who did not know personally what either beauty or strength was (since they knew things only as ideas); but someone different from himself, someone beautiful, and strong also, and yet different. There would be admiration between them, but it would not be mutual; it would be rather like each one being surprised that there should be the other. He knew he was moving by the surprise he was beginning to feel at her. He was, in fact, already in her presence and she was already saying, "I am beautiful and strong."
She was beautiful, and she was strong, but her muscles did not stand out, and there was very little to see of her. She was a spirit. "Ho!" he cried, "I am beautiful and strong." Their insistence astonished each of them, and there was nothing to do but laugh at each other. They were obviously not going to argue about it. "Come," she said, "you are a body and I am a spirit, so let us be friends." Tooth was still sitting down, so he got up; he wanted to show that he knew that he had arrived somewhere. He was beautiful and strong, but he was not stupid—he had no imagination to be stupid with. The weak people had imaginations, the strong people had wills. The strong people always knew what they were about, since they were always doing what they wanted to do. But the weak people, who never did anything, were always thinking about things that never actually happened; and so they were always in a confused state of mind. They knew this, and, of course, didn't like it. So they said, "We are poor confused creatures, but this is because we are not God, Who alone knows about everything." They were poor confused creatures, of course, because they were poor confused creatures. By 'God' they really meant the strong people, though they were naturally too proud to admit it.
The peculiar thing is that, although by 'God' they really meant the strong people, they did not admit the existence of people stronger than themselves. "Everyone," they said, "is weak, except God." By 'God' they really meant nobody; that is, they meant that they refused to recognize any difference between the strong people and themselves. She didn't come into the question. They didn't want to know very much about themselves or whatever there might be besides themselves. And so not only did she not come into the question, but even the strong people were kept out of the question. There was, in fact, no question. They just said 'God' instead of asking questions, and this was supposed to make everything right for the moment; and for the moment it did. The strong people, on the other hand, did ask questions; this is what having wills meant. And all their questions resolved themselves into one question; any particular question amounted to asking "What next?" and all the questions resolved themselves into the single question "What last of all?" And so with them she naturally did come into the question; for she was last of all. And the strong people always knew what they were about, since they were always doing what they wanted to do; they wanted to go as far as they could, and so they went, knowing as they went along just how far this was.
"I suppose this is the end of the earth," Tooth said in a tone that showed that, no matter how surprised he felt at her being there, he felt no surprise at his being there. "Yes," she answered placidly, "this is where things are done, once and for always. I've done all my own work already." He looked about sceptically, for he could not see any signs of work. It was only a place,
and an empty place. There wasn't even nature there. They were standing on something, but it wasn't even rubble. It was plain that he did not take seriously the idea of her having done any work. This did not offend her, because theirs was a quarrel-proof relationship: they did not depend on each other in any way. He had certainly got there by her energy, but equally by his own will. Their meeting might be described as the perfect accident.
"If you stand where I'm standing, you'll see better what I mean," she said to him, as if it were more to his advantage than hers that he should be convinced that she had indeed been doing something. So she disappeared, and he stood where she had been standing. Nor did he himself move in putting himself in her place; it was the energy of her disappearance that put him there. Similarly, he had arrived at the end of the earth by the energy of her appearance at a point that had previously been, as far as he was concerned, anywhere. Of course, standing in her place, he saw the whole situation clearly. He saw the earth, a point round which a world had been built, a point that was only the beginning of the earth but which the weak people had made into a whole—a beginning and an end and therefore a round earth. He saw the beginning of the earth, and how its end was not the same as its beginning, but another point: the earth, in fact, was a stretch of time. The weak people, in fact, had not even got to the beginning of the earth; they lived before the beginning. For once one was at the beginning it was impossible not to go to the end. The earth was a stretch of time. It was the strong people themselves one after the other, making a bridge between nowhere and somewhere—anywhere.
And he now saw the bridge, and the work that she had been doing—first of all the changing of the nowhere at which the earth started into something that flowed like water under a bridge. A bridge has to be over something. The water under the bridge was the woman herself accompanying the strong people from nowhere to somewhere. Standing in her place, he saw clearly that she had been the water. She had come along secretly under the bridge. He saw that water was a thing under land. She had come along, waiting until the strong people should find out how many they were. There was an infinite number of weak people, but the strong people were numbered. He now saw that their number was the parts of the body. Each of them was a body, but also a part of the body. And the parts also had parts. He was a part, a Tooth. But Tooth, instead of having parts, had other teeth, each almost the same as himself. It might seem that this was also true of Nails; but a Nail was not so independent, so numerical a part of the body as a Tooth. Nails were the Teeth of Hands, but their identity was largely lost in Fingers, which in themselves were only theatrical creatures. He was a Tooth, and that is why he was the First One. It was his fate to be a Tooth; it could not similarly be said of any Nail that it was its fate to be a Nail. There was really greater likeness between Hair and himself, though his sympathy was with Nails. But Hair was almost too independent and numerical; antipathy rather than sympathy existed between Hair and himself. Hair was the Last One.
She had come along and been water until the strong people should be numbered. Before the strong people knew how many they were, the end of the earth had been anywhere—in the water. When Tooth became the First One and Hair the Last One, the end of the earth changed from anywhere to somewhere. The water itself had come to an end and got up on the bridge: she was the end of the bridge, the shore at the other end, and perhaps she had also been the shore at the end where the bridge started. But all that was her business—her work. She might be round, but the earth—the bridge—was flat. In any case, her roundness was not achieved by motion, like the roundness of the weak people, but by size. There was only one of her, and she was big, and her bigness was somehow determined by the number of the strong people. She was at least their equal; what she was at most did not come into the question. Understanding now what she had meant by saying that she had done all her own work already, he got out of her place back into his own, and she again appeared before him. His own work, of course, was to destroy the bridge and yet save all the other strong people. And he must do this by her energy rather than his own. And this was love, not love as the weak people meant it—hoping against hopelessness. In this kind of love there was neither hope nor hopelessness; he merely waited for something to happen. This kind of love was loyalty to himself. The other kind was a sigh of envy—all the more foolish in that the weak people didn't know exactly what they were envious of, what they loved. The strong people certainly inspired envy in them, yet it certainly was not the strong people they loved? "We are poor confused creatures," they said with a sigh of envy, "but we do love God." The strong people inspired them with envy, but exactly what they loved so enviously was a mystery to them. And they preferred it to be a mystery. They didn't really want to go into the matter.
But how to set about loving her to her face? Tooth had obviously loved her, as all the other strong people had loved her, from the beginning. But now he had to love her in a way to bring about the destruction of the bridge, instead of, as before, in a way to bring about the creation and completion of the bridge. Loving her at first meant keeping away from her, thinking of her as behind. But all this time she had been coming along at an even pace, and now she was in front, since their number was complete; they were at their end, and she was their end. But how could he keep away from her now, mixed up with her as he was, except by destroying her? And how could he destroy her without belying the quality of their friendship, which was based on a mutual sense of humour? For if, in loving her face to face, he grew too serious about it all, then his desire to destroy her would amount to mere envy, and if envy came into it she would undoubtedly have nothing to do with him, as not being her equal; he knew that he was her equal only because she made herself his equal. He would find himself destroying, instead of her, the God of the weak people—himself and all the other strong people, in fact; which would be a pretty joke indeed. The weak people were always destroying themselves. They were so serious that they didn't understand the difference between humour and joking. By only a very fine margin of logic was there any difference between joking and humour—hoping against hopelessness, and waiting to see what would happen. She too was waiting to see what would happen. By a very fine margin of logic the whole thing was not merely a joke, a tearful wash-out. Both he and she felt that there was an interesting point to be made. To make an interesting point was the long and short of humour; and their friendship was based on a sense of humour. Humour was not joking. Humour was lying, and admitting that one was lying, for an object. Joking was lying without an object. The strong people were, of course, not strong at all: that was their lie. But in calling themselves strong they had an object—to exist for a certain time. The weak people, though they called themselves poor confused creatures, had no object. They no sooner came into being than out they went. It was all a joke.
Her side of it was that she made their object hers. She was something that did not exist, as they existed, and yet was. She had no need of existing because she always was, and yet she existed in their way—as a person—in so far as she made their object hers. And why should she do this? The answer could only be that she had a sense of humour. Indeed, the humour of it all came from her. They had only will, which was honesty —admitting their lie, and apologizing for it by having an object in making it. She met them half-way and supplied the humour for herself and them. She had to meet them half-way —which meant making their object hers—since there was nothing that she could hold against them. They were lying, but they admitted that they were lying. And they were not lying by way of philosophy, but for an object, which they also admitted. And this object was somewhat futile, which they also admitted: they might succeed in existing for a certain time, but they must cease to exist when the time was up. If there was a joke in the whole thing, it was a joke against her. A joke was either against the other fellow or oneself. The weak people's joke was entirely at their own expense, since no other fellow came into the story with them—God was nobody. With the strong people the joke—if there was a jok
e—was against her: that she had to let them exist for a time, having been met halfway by them in every possible objection she might reasonably raise. So what could she do but be humorous about it all? There was an interesting point to be made, and it did her no damage to have it made, and it certainly was gratifying to them.
If Tooth remembered that her object was the same as his, loving her face to face would not be difficult. Since she had assisted him in his object up to now, she could not refuse to assist him in the final transformation of his object (the object, that is, of all the strong people) into an achievement. She must assist him in destroying herself. No, more than this: she must destroy herself. He stood at the end of the bridge, all the other strong men coming up behind him, and faced her resolutely. As he did this, he was not only Tooth, but Teeth. And the rest of the strong men came up close behind; first the Right Hand, then the Left Hand, each with its Nails, and, last of all, Hair. They joined themselves to him, so that he was not only a body, but the body. Every part of the body went with another part. Hand went with Mouth, and, since Mouth was only a hollow, there were two Hands—one to be Hand, the other to represent Mouth. And there were Arms and Legs, and Stomach and Brain. And as Stomach was only a hollow, Brain was also Brains, to represent Stomach.
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