Suddenly I knew why I had come. "My father," I said, though he was but a heathen, "I want to see Life through your eyes."
He looked into me, and through me, and beyond me into vacancy, and as he looked the spark of laughter in his eyes danced, and flickered up into a tiny fire. "You are older now," said he. "Sit down. I will tell you first of the Game of the Little Gods, and then you shall see Life through my eyes."
"The Little Gods?" I asked, squatting on the floor. It was the only seat he had to offer me.
"The Great God," my heathen priest explained, unheeding me and smiling into vacancy, "the Great God created us men in his own image—and soon found us, as objects of His constant contemplation, distinctly wearisome. If He could have laughed, it would not have mattered much, but Amusement is beneath the ken of a Great God. Therefore our inconsistencies, our pettinesses, our hopeless contradictions, quickly wearied Him, as they would us if we had to take them seriously, forever. And so," drawled my heathen tutor, "the Great God, at last, in self-defense, created some Little Gods to take charge of the everyday affairs of men. So far as they are Gods, of course, these Little Gods are Eternal and Impartial, far raised above Love and Aversion, Pity and Scorn, Admiration and Derision, and all our other small emotions. To them all things are equal. But so far as they are Little, and not Great, they are capable of Amusement. And so," said he, "those lucky Little Gods while away Eternity by playing games, wherein we men are counters. But we men too," he added, smiling through me into vacancy, "if we are wise, can gain amusement by looking on at the games we're part of."
"I," said I, "have never noticed anything which looked like games—"
"No?" he said, half mockingly. "You never watched a strong man strive his utmost and grasp at last what he strove for, a handful of ashes and dry leaves? Never saw a woman love with all her heart, till she broke it, loving? Never saw Tragedy or Comedy or Farce wherein the players were not actors? Have all Life's contradictions—"
"But they've always taught me," I objected, "that in those seeming contradictions, an inscrutable Wisdom was working for the ultimate good of those—"
"My son," said my old heathen priest, stretching his old legs out on his stony slab, "go and see for yourself. This is the hour when I take one of my naps. See for yourself."