Tuesday, March 4, 2008

But then perhaps all whammies are predetermined

Anyone else, when you're reading a book, just all of a sudden realize you're about to hit a really key paragraph?

From A Passage to India.
He had spoken in the little room near the Courts where the pleaders waited for clients; clients, waiting for pleaders, sat in the dust outside. These had not received a car from Mr. Turton. And there were circles even beyond these - people who wore nothing but a loincloth, people who wore not even that, and spend their lives in knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll - humanity grading a drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation can embrace it.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. So at all events thought old Mr. Grasford and young Mr. Sorley, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always traveled third on the railways, and never came up to the club. In our Father's house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart.

And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No, but young Mr. Sorley, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals. Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorley's mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversations. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorley? No, no this is going to far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.

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