“Still I don’t intend to deny it. … I am no dogmatist. Positively the phantasms are marching straight for my tower! Well, it may be safer to run away, on the chance. But as for losing feeling,” continued he, rising and cramming a few mouldy crusts into his wallet, “that, like everything else, is past proof. Why—if now, when I have some sort of excuse for fancying myself one thing in one place, I am driven mad with the number of my sensations, what will it be when I am eaten, and turned to dust, and undeniably many things in many places. … Will not the sensations be multiplied by—unbearable! I would swear at the thought, if I had anything to swear by! To be transmuted into the sensoria of forty different nasty carrion crows, besides two or three foxes, and a large black beetle! I’ll run away, just like anybody else … if anybody existed. Come, Bran!
“Bran! where are you; unlucky inseparable sensation of mine? Picking up a dinner already off these dead soldiers? Well, the pity is that this foolish contradictory taste of mine, while it makes me hungry, forbids me to follow your example. Why am I to take lessons from my soldier-phantasms, and not from my canine one? Illogical! Bran! Bran!” and he went out and whistled in vain for the dog.
“Bran! unhappy phantom, who will not vanish by night or day, lying on my chest even in dreams; and who would not even let me vanish, and solve the problem—though I don’t believe there is any—why did you drag me out of the sea there at Ostia? Why did you not let me become a whole shoal of crabs? How did you know, or I either, that they may not be very jolly fellows, and not in the least troubled with philosophic doubts? … But perhaps there were no crabs, but only phantasms of crabs. … And, on the other hand, if the crab-phantasms give jolly sensations, why should not the crow-phantasms? So whichever way it turns out, no matter; and I may as well wait here, and seem to become crows, as I certainly shall do.—Bran! … Why should I wait for her? What pleasure can it be to me to have the feeling of a four-legged, brindled, lop-eared, toad-mouthed thing always between what seem to be my legs? There she is! Where have you been, madam? Don’t you see I am in marching order, with staff and wallet ready shouldered? Come!”
But the dog, looking up in his face as only dogs can look, ran toward the back of the ruin, and up to him again, and back again, until he followed her.
“What’s this? Here is a new sensation with a vengeance! O storm and cloud of material appearances, were there not enough of you already, that you must add to your number these also? Bran! Bran! Could you find no other day in the year but this, whereon to present my ears with the squeals of—one—two—three—nine blind puppies?”
Bran answered by rushing into the hole where her new family lay tumbling and squalling, bringing out one in her mouth, and laying it at his feet.
“Needless, I assure you. I am perfectly aware of the state of the case already. What! another? Silly old thing!—do you fancy, as the fine ladies do, that burdening the world with noisy likenesses of your precious self, is a thing of which to be proud? Why, she’s bringing out the whole litter! … What was I thinking of last? Ah—the argument was self-contradictory, was it, because I could not argue without using the very terms which I repudiated. Well. … And—why should it not be contradictory; Why not? One must face that too, after all. Why should not a thing be true and false also? What harm in a thing’s being false? What necessity for it to be true? True? What is truth? Why should a thing be the worse for being illogical? Why should there be any logic at all? Did I ever see a little beast flying about with ‘Logic’ labelled on its back? What do I know of it, but as a sensation of my own mind—if I have any? What proof is that that I am to obey it, and not it me? If a flea bites me I get rid of that sensation; and if logic bothers me, I’ll get rid of that too. Phantasms must be taught to vanish courteously. One’s only hope of comfort lies in kicking feebly against the tyranny of one’s own boring notions and sensations—every philosopher confesses that—and what god is logic, pray, that it is to be the sole exception? … What, old lady? I give you fair warning, you must choose this day, like any nun, between the ties of family and those of duty.”
Bran seized him by the skirt, and pulled him down towards the puppies; took up one of the puppies and lifted it towards him; and then
