Once his eight-year boy, planted sturdily before him, demanded a plain explanation of the folly of his father’s contemporaries.
“Why,” he asked frowning, “did the people want to find out God’s secrets?”
Theodore thought of Ada and the countless millions like her, leaned his chin on his hand and smiled grimly.
“Some of us didn’t,” he answered. “Some of us—many of us—had no interest in the secrets of God. We made use of them when others found them out, but we, ourselves, were quite content to be ignorant. Ignorant in all things.”
“I know,” the child assented, puzzled by his father’s smile. “The good ones didn’t want to—the good ones like you and Mummy. But the others—all the wicked ones—why did they? It was stupid of them.”
“They wanted to find out,” said Theodore, “and there have always been people like that. From the beginning, the very beginning of things—ever since there were men on the earth. The desire to know burned them like a fire. There is an old story of a woman who brought great trouble into the world because she wanted to know. She was given a box and told never to open it; but she disobeyed because she was filled with a great curiosity to know what had been put inside it. Her longing tormented her night and day and she could think of nothing else; till at last she opened the box and horrible creatures flew out.”
The boy, interested, demanded more of Pandora and the horrible creatures. “Is it a true story?” he asked when his father had given such further details as he managed to remember and invent.
“Yes,” Theodore told him, “I believe it is a true story. It was so long ago that we cannot tell exactly how it happened: I may not have told it you quite rightly, but on the whole it is a true story.... And the wicked people—our wicked people who brought ruin on the world—were much like Pandora and her box. It was the same thing over again; they wanted to know so strongly that they forgot everything else; they had only the longing to find out and it seemed as if nothing else mattered.”
“Weren’t they afraid?” the boy asked doubtfully, still puzzled by his father’s odd smile. “Afraid of what would happen to them?”
“No,” Theodore answered. “Until it was too late and they saw what they had done, I don’t think many were afraid. Here and there, before the end, some began to be frightened, but most of them didn’t see where they were going.”