The American Story

APOLOGUE

THE AMERICAN STORY, from its beginning on the empty stage of a New World until now, is entirely improbable. Every attempt to account for it rationally leaves you with a feeling that something important, perhaps the most important thing of all, has been left out. Yet you cannot say what that was. Many will say freedom did it; but the story of freedom itself is not clear. Nothing is ever quite as we see it. For all its seeming reality we cannot be sure that a thousand years hence it may not all have dissolved in myth. If you believe there is Divine agency in human affairs that makes it easier, for then you may imagine it was as if—

Mankind’s Advocate had been speaking continuously since last the Great Dipper was in a spilling position. A long silence was broken by the sound of the Supreme Voice, saying:

“They have done badly with the world they possess.”

“Very badly,” admitted Mankind’s Advocate.

“And worse,” said the Supreme Voice, “since they have known good from evil.”

“Would that they had been endowed with wisdom too,” said Mankind’s Advocate.

“You have learned to speak as they speak,” said the Supreme Voice. “You know very well that wisdom does not exist. Therefore we cannot impart it. Wisdom is the fumbling substitute for perfect knowledge.”

“Knowledge of good and evil,” said Mankind’s Advocate, “made them both better and worse. It should not have come first.”

“What should have come first?” the Supreme Voice asked.

“Knowledge of matter” said Mankind’s Advocate.

“How could knowledge of matter have saved them from their follies?” asked the Supreme Voice.

“If the secrets of matter are revealed to them” said Mankind’s Advocate, “they will learn that what works is law. In law there is truth. In truth there is neither good nor evil.”

“If they possessed the secrets of matter” the Supreme Voice asked, “what would keep them from thinking they were gods, not men?”

“Mortality,” said Mankind’s Advocate.

After another long silence the Supreme Voice said: “And now you ask for a new world. What reason is there to suppose they would do better with a new world—the same people?”

Mankind’s Advocate answered: “They will not be the same people. As the mountains select mountain people and the valleys select valley people and the deserts still others, so a new world will select its own people—those in flight from evil, from oppression, from the glory of war. They will begin all over again and they will have no history.”

“They find no benefit in history?” asked the Supreme Voice.

“History,” said Mankind’s Advocate, “is their fatal luggage. They were better when they had no history. Now they fight endless wars about what they remember.”

The Supreme Voice said: “Creation works by laws of form, rhythm and essence. A tree is not created. Only the principles and conditions pertaining to trees. And so with men and beasts and all living things. This cannot be apprehended by the finite mind. Therefore, given all else you ask and then a new world, still your people will never know what they are doing or why.”

“Only the mystics,” said Mankind’s Advocate.

The Supreme Voice said: “Given more knowledge, then all the more, unless they do better with a new world than they have done with the one they have, they shall be added to the discontinued series. Do you accept that condition?”

Mankind’s Advocate said: “But they will spare you the trouble. They will destroy themselves.”

By that time the Great Dipper was full again.