“Not quite,” he gasped, as he crawled out. “Let me drag my isolate and absolute individual self out of this mess.”
Which is the history of relativity in man. All is relative as we go flop into the ointment: or the treacle or the flame. But as we crawl out, or flutter out with a smell of burning, the absolute holds us spellbound. Oh to be isolate and absolute, and breathe clear.
So that even relativity is only relative. Relative to the absolute.
I am sorry to have to stand, a sorry sight, preening my wings on the brink of the ointment-pot, thought Richard. But from this vantage ground let me preach to myself. He preached, and the record was taken down for this gramophone of a novel.
No, the self is absolute. It may be relative to everything else in the universe. But to itself it is an absolute.
Back to the central self, the isolate, absolute self.
“Now,” thought Richard to himself, waving his front paws with gratification: “I must sound the muezzin and summon all men back to their central, isolate selves.”
So he drew himself up, when—urch!! He was sluthering over the brim of the ointment pot into the balm of humanity once more.
“Oh, Lord, I nearly did it again,” he thought as he clambered out with a sick heart. “I shall do it once too often. The bulk of mankind haven’t got any central selves: haven’t got any. They’re all bits.”
Nothing but his fright would have struck this truth out of him. So he crouched still, like a fly very tired with crawling out of the ointment, to think about it.