“I looked into the faces of the most intellectual, the least emotional, and most observing people I have ever seen, and yet no pen, no brush, no imagination could reproduce that scene. Considering the intelligence and the unemotional character of this vast audience, the evidence of surprise was really alarming. For once, these people acted almost like we fools of the ‘upper crust.’”
Humph! it makes me crawl.
“The sitting was adjourned.”
I’m glad of it, for it makes me shiver. But it seems to me, considering the cool intellectuality of the Shadowas, that Leo Bergin is drawing that rather long. Let’s see! These Shadowas are a very intellectual, a very thoughtful, a very cultivated and civilised people. But let us reason this out. They were utilitarian; amiable as their environment, and learned, in what was necessary for their happiness, or within their reach. Yes, but nine-tenths of the universe—of the outer world—was shut off from them. They, for 21,000 years, had been on one side—the inside—of a great tube. Practically back of them, the world lifted abruptly up; front of them, they could but see above the rim of the bowl of which they were well toward the bottom.
The field of observation was narrow, the visible facts of Nature were few. At the near opening of the “tube” there was eternal ice and snow, an endless expanse of frozen mystery; while at the other, there could sometimes be seen many weird clusters of stars, but, usually, only clouds and storms, and desert and mountains, and dangerous whirlpools.
They had no telescopes; their point of view was too narrow for the study of astronomy, and, as all thoughts, all ideas, all conceptions of all natural objects must be formed from observation—from sensuous impressions—how could they draw anything like correct conclusions regarding the outside worlds? Intellectuality does not always, if ever, mean universal, or even very great, knowledge.
Well, then, maybe Leo was even drawing it mildly. Maybe, a vision so strange, a view of a known thing from so surprisingly unexpected a standpoint, at a time, too, when the public imagination was at a high tension, presenting so strange a phenomenon, would affect the fine but impressive mind more than it would the less thoughtful. Maybe, I say, Leo is right, but it seems a little lofty.
But let’s back to Leo’s notes. He says:—
“After lunch”—that sounds familiar—“the meeting recommenced, and the people, having conversed fully and freely over the matter, seemed in their normal condition.
“Oseba turned the globe slowly, explained the nature of the earth and of the sun, why the days were ‘thusly’; then the ‘outside’ conditions, and why it was not all eternal frost, as they had imagined. He showed the map of land and water, how there were on the outside of our planet, or Oliffa, 1,400,000,000 of people—a few of them very decent fellows—and suggested the enormous importance of communicating with them.