The Street of the Eye

THE STREET OF THE EYE and nine other tales by GERALD BULLETT
LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED
First Published in 1923 Made and Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London
To ROSALIND — THESE FICTIONS
One of these stories, THE MOLE, appeared in ‘The London Mercury.’ To the editor of this journal I tender thanks.
THE STREET OF THE EYE
‘STORIES of the supernatural,’ said Saunders, ‘serve at least one useful purpose: they test a man’s intellectual capacity. Not a very sure test, you may say; but for purposes of rough classification it is sure enough. Incertitude, a sense of imminent surprise, is after all the very salt of life. Denounce the habit of classification as bitterly as you like—and I know well the intellectual perils that attend it—it is none the less true that we do, when we meet a man, like to be able to place him, roughly, in this category or that. And most men, by the way, submit to the process very meekly. You subtle folk’—here Saunders bowed to me in genial irony—‘in attributing to the mass of mankind your own mental complexity flatter them grossly. I have heard you yourself discourse on the folly of the old religious psychology which divided mankind, arbitrarily, into sheep and goats. As philosophy, of course, it is nonsense, and the fathers of the church must have known that as well as you and I do; but as a formula for rough-and-ready justice, it serves. If you are pulling your weight in the boat you are a good man; if you are not pulling your weight you are a bad man—that is a definite and verifiable verdict based on rational calculation. The fun begins when having made our calculation, and acted on it, new factors begin to appear which knock all our arithmetic silly. But in our dealings with men how rarely, on the whole, that happens! You do not agree? Well, you are permitted to disagree so long as you believe me to be sincere in my opinion. All modern thought, I know, is moving away from my idea as fast as, according to you, it is moving away from my church; but I fancy that, in practice, the world will continue to adhere to it. If I were to say that all men are types, that would be not so much a falsehood as a wanton exaggeration of a truth. I know all that can be urged, and justly urged, against pigeon-hole classification; but what impresses and startles me is how easily the greater number of one’s fellow-creatures fit into the pigeon-holes. Unique souls, no doubt; but the human soul is a mystery which I don’t profess to understand and which you profess not to believe in. It is the ordinary workaday mentality of a man that can be labelled with some approach to accuracy. And the supernatural story, as I say, is something of a test. Tell a group of new acquaintances some fairly well authenticated ghost-story, and they will fall apart and regroup in their special classes like a company of soldiers forming up into platoons. There will be the credulous fools on the one hand, ready to believe anything without question; there will be the materialist fools on the other hand, snorting in angry contempt. Between the two—truth is generally found midway between extremes—between the two, preserving a delicate balance between scepticism and credulity, doubting the story, perhaps, but admitting the possibility, will be the wise men. I need hardly add, my dear fellow, that it is among these wise philosophers that I myself am to be found. There you have three well-defined types, and it is noteworthy that I am a bright specimen of the exemplary type. If you wish to be saved you have only to look at me and do your best.’