At this, he replied that he had become used to it because it was the people of my colour who had begun by addressing people of his colour in this way, saying ‘you’ and ‘your’ to them.
‘Let us assume,’ I said to him, ‘that there was a certain town, and in this town lived a great many murderers. Would you therefore address each citizen of the town as “you murderers” or say “among you murderers”? And,’ said I further, ‘I have read that in your country live many wise men. Am I to address everyone in your country as “you wise men”?’
‘I have seldom met anyone of your type,’ he said, thinking to compliment me.
With this I recognized him and told him that he seemed to be the twin brother of my employer — the wise Master of a Thousand Tongues. And then I said bluntly: ‘The Antichrist walks in your country also. And that is worse than syphilis.’
He seemed not to understand. He said nothing. As, however, he was concerned to reconcile me he searched, very much as the Antichrist would, not for a subject that we might both like but for one that he thought I would hate. And he said: ‘The worst are the half-breeds.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘the worst are those who would think and say such a thing. For we are all people, and when people come together with each other it is natural and the will of God that everything should happen between them that can occur between human beings. They can speak to one another, they can hate one another, they can love one another and they can sleep with one another. Love between a red man and a yellow woman is natural. For if nature didn’t wish this love to exist it would prevent them from bearing fruit. Since children spring from such a love these children are neither better nor worse than any others. When, however, two women or two men of the same colour love each other, this process goes against nature, even though people must obey the particular ways of their own bodies. There certainly exist within creation many phenomena that are subject not to the general laws of creation but to others of a special and remarkable kind. We have no right to condemn them. Neither do we have the right to see them as natural. That would be as if those who were born blind were considered to have the same sight as those who are not blind, merely because it is Nature itself that made them blind and not an accident. In this world, however, where the Antichrist blinds even those who can see, it comes to pass that people say: “An unnatural love between two white men is better and nobler than a natural love between a white man and a yellow woman.” And this is a twofold sin. For the infirm must bear their infirmities humbly, and a cripple cannot direct how the healthy should run. I know a man who has sexual intercourse with goats, but won’t give his hand to a Chinese man.’ Another person who heard me speak thusly came to me and said he could understand everything that I was thinking. For, although he came from a distant land, namely Japan, he was also in the service of a Master of a Thousand Tongues. And, like myself, he went everywhere that there was unrest in the world.
‘I’m older than you,’ said he. ‘I offer you this advice: never again speak as you did just now. In reality, there are other cares in your country, in mine, in all the countries where people live. There is a great outcry of the tormented of all races and within each race. To those who are poor and downtrodden, the colour of people’s skin is immaterial. He who has nothing to eat feels hungry. He who is beaten bleeds. The educated folk who say “We want to be masters in our own country” are actually already masters in their own countries. All they want to do is drive out of their countries those people who share the mastery with them. It is only the masters who come to these conferences; and we, who are sent here by the masters. There’s no point in getting too excited. Look at what happened to me. I was a soothsayer. I was never able to tell a lie. Only since I have been hired and paid to report the truth do I lie. And one day you also will act just as I do. Even if you refuse to lie, you will find your truths so disfigured that you would rather have lied yourself. Fare thee well!’ This he said and left me.
THE RED EARTH
Erasmus loved many of the things that we love; literature and philosophy, books and artworks, languages and peoples, and without distinction among them all, the whole of mankind … And there was only one thing on earth that he truly … hated — fanaticism.
Then I went to the country where, so I had been told, there was no longer an outcry from the poor and downtrodden; people were concerned to let truth, justice and reason shine forth; gold, the metal of the Antichrist, had been conquered; and people had a natural respect for every single human life, and each was sacred.
So I came to the capital city of this land. It is an old town, a pretty, expansive city with many hundreds of old churches. If one looks down upon this city from a high vantage point one sees the green arches and cupolas scattered like giant jewels between flat and pointed roofs. Each century seems to have contributed to the making of this city’s jewels.
I visited many of these cupolas and the churches over which they vault their arches, and I saw that in many of the churches people no longer prayed and that the bells had been removed from the belfries and the crosses from the cupolas and from the walls inside.
‘We have placed God at a distance,’ I was told by a number of people. ‘Let others copy us if they please! We have, as you can see for yourself, not only abolished wealth, gold, the emperor and the executioner but swept Heaven clean of all the filth that had collected there during the course of history. Now the earth is clean and the sky is empty.’
And so the deed was done. They had taken up two brooms in their hands, one for sweeping the earth and one for sweeping the heavens. And they had even given the brooms names. The one was called Revolution, and the other was called Human Reason.
Yet there were many in this land who did not approve of one or the other or even both of these brooms.
Some of these people could truly believe that the earth was now clean because they could see the earth.
But as they could not see Heaven they mistrusted the broom that was called Human Reason.
‘If you mistrust your own reason,’ the sweepers informed them, ‘it’s because you don’t have enough of it.’
‘But maybe,’ replied the others, ‘you trust reason so much because you yourselves possess so little of it. And perhaps you have more than us, but it’s possible there exists something other than human reason, namely a divine reason. And your own superior reason is no better than our poor reason at recognizing this divine reason. You think you know, but we believe.’
‘And even if you are right,’ replied the sweepers, ‘and even if there is really a divine reason that is superior to ours, we still cannot let it prevail any longer. For you must remember that our last oppressors appealed to this unknowable divine reason and that they oppressed us in its name.’