“Indeed?”
“Why then, a fool’s cap might be put on you, and you would not know it.”
“The very turban he ought to wear,” muttered Mohi.
“Yet, my lord, I live while consciousness is not mine, while to all appearances I am a clod. And may not this same state of being, though but alternate with me, be continually that of many dumb, passive objects we so carelessly regard? Trust me, there are more things alive than those that crawl, or fly, or swim. Think you, my lord, there is no sensation in being a tree? feeling the sap in one’s boughs, the breeze in one’s foliage? think you it is nothing to be a world? one of a herd, bison-like, wending its way across boundless meadows of ether? In the sight of a fowl, that sees not our souls, what are our own tokens of animation? That we move, make a noise, have organs, pulses, and are compounded of fluids and solids. And all these are in this Mardi as a unit. Daily the slow, majestic throbbings of its heart are perceptible on the surface in the tides of the la-goon. Its rivers are its veins; when agonized, earthquakes are its throes; it shouts in the thunder, and weeps in the shower; and as the body of a bison is covered with hair, so Mardi is covered with grasses and vegetation, among which, we parasitical things do but crawl, vexing and tormenting the patient creature to which we cling. Nor yet, hath it recovered from the pain of the first foundation that was laid. Mardi is alive to its axis. When you pour water, does it not gurgle? When you strike a pearl shell, does it not ring? Think you there is no sensation in being a rock?—To exist, is to be; to be, is to be something: to be something, is—”
“Go on,” said Media.
“And what is it, to be something?” said Yoomy artlessly. “Bethink yourself of what went before,” said Media.
“Lose not the thread,” said Mohi.
“It has snapped,” said Babbalanja.
“I breathe again,” said Mohi.
“But what a stepping-off place you came to then, philosopher,” said Media. “By the way, is it not old Bardianna who says, that no Mardian should undertake to walk, without keeping one foot foremost?”