But I Am I. And

A Vast Silence Reigned Over The Land. The Land Itself Was A Desolation, Lifeless, Without Movement, So Lone And Cold That The Spirit Of It Was Not Even That Of Sadness. There Was A Hint In It Of Laughter, But Of Laughter More Terrible Than Any Sadness-a Laughter That Was Mirthless As The Smile Of The Sphinx, A Laughter Cold As The Frost And Partaking Of The Grimness Of Infallibility. It Was The Masterful And Incommunicable Wisdom Of Eternity Laughing At The Futility Of Life And The Effort Of Life. It Was The Wild, The Savage, Frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

The Aim Of Life Was Meat. Life Itself Was Meat. Life Lived On Life. There Were The Eaters And The Eaten. The Law Was: Eat Or Be Eaten. He Did Not Formulate The Law In Clear, Set Terms And Moralize About It. He Did Not Even Think The Law; He Merely Lived The Law Without Thinking About It At All.

Of Her Own Experience She Had No Memory Of The Thing Happening; But In Her Instinct, Which Was The Experience Of All Mothers Of Wolves, There Lurked A Memory Of Fathers That Had Eaten Their New-born And Helpless Progeny.

There Are, Broadly Speaking, Two Types Of Drinkers. There Is The Man Whom We All Know, Stupid, Unimaginative, Whose Brain Is Bitten Numbly By Numb Maggots; Who Walks Generously With Wide-spread, Tentative Legs, Falls Frequently In The Gutter, And Who Sees, In The Extremity Of His Ecstasy, Blue Mice And Pink Elephants.... The Other Type Of Drinker Has Imagination, Vision. Even When Most Pleasantly Jingled He Walks Straight And Naturally, Never Staggers Nor Falls, And Knows Just Where He Is And What He Is Doing. It Is Not His Body But His Brain That Is Drunken.

There Are Things Greater Than Our Wisdom, Beyond Our Justice. The Right And Wrong Of This We Cannot Say, And It Is Not For Us To Judge.