“I deem it my duty to testify that Number D-503 is ill and is unable to regulate his emotions. Moreover, I am sure that he was led by natural indignation—”
“Yes! Yes!” I exclaimed, “I even shouted ‘catch her!’”
From behind me: “You did not shout anything.”
“No, but I wanted to. I swear by the Well-Doer, I wanted to!”
For a second I was bored through by the gray, cold, drill-eyes. I don’t know whether he believed that what I said was the truth (almost!), or whether he had some secret reason for sparing me for a while, but he wrote a short note, handed it to
one of those who had held me and again I was free. That is, I was again included in the orderly, endless, Assyrian rows of Numbers.
The quadrangle, the freckled face and the temple with the map of blue veinlets disappeared forever around the corner. We walked again—a million-headed body; and in each one of us resided that humble joyfulness with which in all probability molecules, atoms and phagocytes live.
In the ancient days the Christians understood this feeling; they are our only (though very imperfect) direct forerunners. The greatness of the “Church of the United Flock” was known to them. They knew that resignation is virtue, and pride—a vice; that “We” is from God, “I” from the devil.
I was walking, keeping step with the others yet separated from them. I was still trembling from the emotion just felt, like a bridge over which a thundering ancient steel train has passed a moment before. I felt myself. To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?
Apparently I am no longer a phagocyte which quietly, in a business-like way devours microbes (microbes with freckled faces and blue temples); apparently I am myself a microbe, and she too,