[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

universality of his learning.
Arthwait being thus well out of harm's
way, Vesquit and Abdul set to work on the
less arduous of the preparations. Four black
cats were needed for the four points of the
compass, and it was desirable to massacre
a goat upon the altar, which would be no
less than the corpse itself. Vesquit,
declaring that the body was to be sent to
England, had a dummy shipped off in a
coffin, and kept Gates on ice, which may or
may not have been a great comfort to him.
Abdul had no difficulty in procuring the
cats which, much to their dissatisfaction,
were caged in Arthwait's study, and fed on
human flesh, which Vesquit easily procured
from the dissecting-rooms of the local
hospitals.
But the goat was a more serious matter.
An ordinary goat will not do; it had to
qualify in certain respects; Abdul
succeeded in his quest only after a series of
intrigues with the lowest ruffians in Naples,
which brought him into more vulgar and
unpleasant dangers than he had
contemplated "when he first put that
uniform on." It was, however, at least
temporarily, a very amusing situation for
the goat. The requisite bat, which must be
fed on a woman's blood, was easily
arranged for, a courageous country girl
offering to accommodate with a toe, for a
consideration. The nails from a suicide's
coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were
of course no trouble; for Vesquit never
travelled without these household
requisites.
There were many other details to
arrange; the consideration of a proper
place for the operation gave rise to much
mental labour. It is, generally speaking,
desirable to choose the locality of a recent
battle; and the greater the number of slain
the better. (There should be some very
desirable spots in the vicinity of Verdun for
black magicians who happen to flourish
after the vulgar year 1917). But the
Grimoires were written in other times with
other manners; now-a-days there is risk of
disturbance if one sets up one's
paraphernalia of goats and cats at a cross-
roads, in the hope of helping oneself out
with a recently-interred suicide, or a
ceremonially annihilated vampire; where
the peasant of the fourteenth century
would have fled shrieking, the motorist of
the twentieth century stops to observe, or,
more likely, runs you over; so that unless
your property includes a private
battlefield, it is a point of valour to choose
a more retired site for one's necromancy
than the stricken field of the Marne. Cross-
roads, again, are not so thickly planted
with suicides and vampires as in happier
days. Reflecting solidly and ably upon these
points of modern degeneracy, Vesquit
made up his mind to compromise, and
accept the most agreeable substitute, a
profaned chapel; it was easy to rent a villa
with a chapel attached, and, to a man of
Vesquit's ability, the work of a moment to
profane it.
This he accordingly arranged through
Abdul Bey.
The mind of this youth was very forcibly
impressed by the preparations of the old
coroner. He had been brought up in the
modern school, and could laugh at
superstition with the best of us; but there
were traces of hereditary faith in Islam,
and he was not sceptical enough to spoil
the magic of Vesquit.
No man knew better than the
necromancer that all this insane
ceremonial was irrational. But it [179] so
happens that everything on this planet is,
ultimately, irrational; there is not, and
cannot be, any reason for the causal
connexion of things, if only because our use
of the word "reason" already implies the
idea of causal connexion. But, even if we
avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume
said that causal connexion was not merely
unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in
shallower waters still, one cannot assign a
true reason why water should flow down
hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth.
Attempts to explain these simple matters
always progress into a learned lucidity, and
on further analysis retire to a remote
stronghold where every thing is irrational
and unthinkable.
If you cut off a man's head, he dies.
Why? Because it kills him. That is really the
whole answer. Learned excursions into
anatomy and physiology only beg the
question; it does not explain why the heart
is necessary to life to say that it is a vital
organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the
trick that is played on every inquiring mind.
Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light
is necessary to sight. No confusion of that
issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical
centres, and foci, and lenses, and
vibrations is very different to Edwin
Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering
English language.
Knowledge is really confined to
experience. The laws of Nature are, as
Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as
Huxley said, the generalization of observed
facts.
It is, therefore, no argument against
ceremonial magic to say that it is "absurd"
to try to raise a thunderstorm by beating a
drum; it is not even fair to say that you
have tried the experiment, found it would
not work, and so perceived it to be
"impossible." You might as well claim that,
as you had taken paint and canvas, and not
produced a Rembrandt, it was evident that
the pictures attributed to his painting were
really produced in quite a different way.
You do not see why the skull of a
parricide should help you to raise a dead
man, as you do not see why the mercury in
a thermometer should rise and fall, though
you elaborately pretend that you do; and
you could not raise a dead man by the aid
of the skull of a parricide, just as you could
not play the violin like Kreisler; though in
the latter case you might modestly add
that you thought you could learn.
This is not the special pleading of a
professed magician; it boils down to the
advice not to judge subjects of which you
are perfectly ignorant, and is to be found,
stated in clearer and lovelier language, in
the Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley.
Dr. Victor Vesquit, to whom the whole
of these ideas was perfectly familiar,
proceeded with his quaint preparations
unperturbed by the least doubt of their
efficacy.
He had found that they worked; and he
cared no more for the opinion of those
who, whatever their knowledge in other
branches of science might be, were not
experts in necromancy, than does Harry
Vardon when it is proved to him, with the
utmost scientific precision, that he cannot
possibly hit a golf ball so long as he swings
as he does, and uses that mechanically
defective grip.
It is also to be remarked that the
contrary holds good; no method of doing
anything has yet been found which cannot
be bungled by the inept.
So, as the Persian poet says: "Who hath
the How is careless of the Why."
It was early in the course of Dr.
Vesquit's preliminaries that (what Arthwait
called the "antilan-thanetical
douleskeiarchy") the secret service which
had been established reported to him a
complete [181] change in the routine of the
people of the Butterfly net. On the seventh
of January Iliel reported that the first point
of the work was in all probability attained;
all that was now necessary was to
concentrate upon the real crux of the case, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]