Once the geniuses found their task simple. Now it grows difficult. Famous masters, famous illusions, famous objectives lose their value. Their capacity for solace dwindles. The illusion of God grows dim. The illusions that bore the names Zeus, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohamet are fading. The knees of the race have stiffened with vanity and prayer grows difficult. The great Heavens overladen with their angel choirs and hierarchies tumble about the ears of people. Slowly the reservoirs of faith in consoling myths dry up. Epigrams have almost sponged away one of the immemorial deeps of the soul.
The geniuses cast about inventing new masters, masters who will reward and punish and establish paths to traverse and goals to achieve. As the activities increase and as people vanish deeper under the self-growing fungus of finance, industry, government, they develop a paradoxical vanity. A vanity by which they seek to preserve themselves. A vanity becomes necessary that will save them from the knowledge of their inferiority to life.... Their age-old illusion of Gods on High drifts away. The new illusion slowly unfolds. Again the reasoning is simple.
The race speaks.... "There is no longer a God or a Heaven of futures. The words eternity and infinity are bottomless and no longer hold us or guide us. But we must have a master, one who will enable us to dream of His recompense since we still dare not adventure in dreams of our own. And this master must assure us as our old master did—that there are great purposes in life, great rewards. We will make a minor change in our theology. Once it was our desire to think of ourselves as having been created in the image of God—a Superior. This was when we were strong, when we walked the earth and wore our destinies like gay feathers in our caps. Now we have grown diffused and weak. The world is no longer simple enough for us to understand and ignore. We dare not ignore our disappearance from life. Therefore in order to compensate for this disappearance we will create a God in our image and worship Him. The deeper we sink, the further we vanish, the higher, nobler and more powerful will we make our new God. Come, illusion mongers, we desire a new God. We desire a new Heaven. Make us a Heaven of quicksilver in which we may see not Jehovah who is a myth but our own image glorified, which is closer to reality, and which our dawning intelligence may more easily swallow. In this heaven let us see our civic virtues magnified. We want for a master an idealization of ourselves, whom we may serve in hope of rewards."
Thus the vanished ones stare aloft and slowly the heavenly mirror spreads itself for them—a mirror of identifications and explanations. It is all clear—or at least it grows clear—in this mirror; who we are and what we are.... A beautiful image marches across its face. It is the image of the vanished ones, ennobled and deified—become a new illusion, become a God-like creature with flashing eyes. A marvelous, unsurpassable creature whose every gesture is perfection, whose every grimace is unsurpassable perfection. A reassuring God. Whatever their moods, their despairs, their manias—they have only to look up and see them ennobled and deified in the mirror-heaven.
Gazing aloft the vanished ones raise their voices in a cheer of triumph.
"We are confused. We have disappeared. Our activities have devoured us. But we are not afraid. For behold, whatever we do, we remain God. See our reflection. We are always and consistently perfect. Our stupidities, hysterias, bewilderments shine back at us out of this new Heaven as God-like attributes. Wisdom and victory smile at us eternally out of our mirror. Let the city devour itself and become a jungle of names. Let life lose itself in the labyrinth of activities. Let the buildings devour life until it becomes less than a tiny warmth under huge ribs of steel. These things are no longer insupportable. There is an answer always to 'Who are we and what are we?' We are God. By worshipping ourselves we may now dispel the dawning knowledge of our insufficiency. The old God is dead. He was an illusion. The new God alone now has the power to punish and reward. We will kneel with fanatical servitude before the image of our virtues and punish ourselves with a terrible justice in order to appear God-like in our own eyes."
Slowly the new heaven above the city grows and the vanished ones with the eyes of Narcissus stare enchanted into its quicksilver depths.
12
In the days that followed her walk with Lindstrum in the park, Doris Basine abandoned herself to her passion for the man. Her body desired him. She dreamed of their coming together as of some transcendental climax.