He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The south? Italy? What
then? Was it a way out? It was only a way in again. Birkin stood high
in the painful air, looking at the peaks, and the way south. Was it any
good going south, to Italy? Down the old, old Imperial road?
He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease to care. Best
cease to care. Whatever the mystery which has brought forth man and the
universe, it is a non-human mystery, it has its own great ends, man is
not the criterion. Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non-human
mystery. Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe.
'God cannot do without man.' It was a saying of some great French
religious teacher. But surely this is false. God can do without man.
God could do without the ichthyosauri and the mastodon. These monsters
failed creatively to develop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed
with them. In the same way the mystery could dispense with man, should
he too fail creatively to change and develop.
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