"I don't know," I replied.
"If you think of it, there is no end to anything," Moleskin went on. "If you could go up above the stars, there is surely a place above them, and another place in turn above that again. You cannot think of a place where there is nothing, and as far as I can see there is no end to anything. You can't think of the last day as they talk about, for that would mean the end of time. It's funny to think of a man sayin' that there'll be no time after such and such a time. How can time stop?"
I tried to explain to Joe that time and space did not exist, that they were illusions used for practical purposes.
"No man can understand these things," said Joe, as I fumbled through my explanation of the non-existence of time and space. "I have often looked at the little brooks by the roadside and saw the water runnin', runnin', always lookin' the same, and the water different always. When I looked at the little brooks I often felt frightened, because I could not understand them. All these things are the same, and no man can understand them. Why does a brook keep runnin'? Why do the stars come out at night? Is there a God in Heaven? Nobody knows, and a man may puzzle about these things till he's black in the face and grey in the head, but he'll never get any further."
"English Bill may know more about these things than we do," I said.
"How could a dead man know anything?" asked Joe, and when I could not explain the riddle, he borrowed a shilling from me and lost it at the gaming-table.
That was Joe all over. One moment he was looking for God in Nature, and on the next instant he was looking for a shilling to stake on the gaming-table. Once in an argument with me he called the world "God's gamblin' table," and endeavoured to prove that God threw down men, reptiles, nations, and elements like dice to the earth, one full of hatred for the other and each filled with a desire for supremacy, and that God and His angels watched the great struggle down below, and betted on the result of its ultimate issue.
"Of course the angels will not back Kinlochleven very heavily," he concluded.