“Oh, don’t go on! you’ll only make your poor head ache!”
“Do you think the something would care very much what happened in its optical delusion’s ghost’s dream’s dream’s dream? Yet the innermost of the three dreams would seem to be perfectly real, and the apparent reality would be due to part of the previous experience of the something, which would be filtered—or, rather, reflected—through the whole series.”
“That will do. Please don’t go on. I don’t understand a word of it, and it’s no use. Oh, do let us talk good.”
“You are going to understand it, fat-headed one. You think that you exist; that everything is real. How do you know that it is so? When you dream, you imagine that the dream is quite real; but you wake up and find that you are wrong. Now suppose the something one day had a thought, that went through a million optical delusions, a billion ghosts, and a trillion dreams——”
“It’s not a bit of good,” interpolated Mary. “I can’t imagine numbers like that.”
“That thought might ultimately take the form of this world, of which I, Thomas, the beetle, am a considerable part. There is nothing impossible about that. It may be so, and I am inclined to think that it is so, because something inside me seems to be struggling to get back to its origin. But if it is so it must be perfectly clear to you that nothing matters, because nothing is real, and nothing will be real till it gets back again to the—the something!”
“I don’t understand it,” said Mary; “are you quite sure that it doesn’t confuse you at all to think that way?”
“Absolutely sure,” said Thomas, which was untrue.
“And how do you get back again to the something?”
“That,” said Thomas drily, “I will show you in a few minutes if, as I said before, you do not mind waiting.”