VI
(
He flies beneath him, outstretched like a swimmer; his vast-spreading wings, wholly concealing him, seem like one huge cloud.)
Anthony. "Whither do I go? But a little while ago I beheld in a glimpse the form of the Accurst. Nay!—'tis a cloud that upbears me! Perhaps I am dead, and am ascending to God....
"How freely I respire. The immaculate air seems to vivify my soul. No sense of weight!—no more suffering.
"Far below me the lightning breaks,—the horizon broadens, widens,—the rivers cross each other. That blond-bright spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean!
"And other oceans appear!—vast regions of which I knew nothing! There are the countries of the blacks, which seem to smoke like brasiers!—then is the zone of snows always made dim by fog! Would I might behold those mountains where the sun, each evening, sinks to rest!"
The Devil. "The sun never sinks to rest; the sun never rests!"
(
Anthony is not surprised at this voice. It seems to him an echo of his own thought—a response made by his own memory.
Meanwhile the earth gradually assumes the shape of a ball; and he beholds it in the midst of the azure, turning upon its poles, and revolving with the sun.)
The Devil. "So it does not form the centre of the universe! Pride of man! humiliate thyself!"
Anthony. "Now I can scarcely distinguish it. It mingles confusedly with other glowing worlds. The firmament itself is but one tissue of stars."
(
And they still rise.)
"No sound!—not even the hoarse cry of
eagles! Nothing? I listen for the
harmony of the spheres."
The Devil. "Thou wilt not hear them! Nor wilt thou behold the antichtonus of Plato,—or the central furnace of Philolaüs,—or the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens of the Jews, with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"
Anthony. "Yet from below the vault seemed solid as a wall!—on the contrary I penetrate it, I lose myself in it!"
(
And he beholds the moon,—like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.)
The Devil. "Formerly it was the sojourn of souls! Even the good Pythagoras adorned it with magnificent flowers, populated it with birds!"
Anthony. "I can see only desolate plains there, with extinct craters yawning under a black sky!
"Let us go towards those milder-beaming stars, that we may contemplate the angels who uphold them at arms' length, like torches!"
The Devil (
bears him into the midst of the stars):
"They attract at the same time that they repel each other. The action of each one results from that of others, and contributes thereunto,—without the aid of any auxiliary, by the force of a law, the virtue of order alone!"
Anthony. "Yes!... yes! My intelligence grasps the great truth! It is a joy greater than all tender pleasures! Breathless I find myself with astonishment at the enormity of God!"
The Devil. "Even as the firmament ever rises as thou dost ascend, so with the expansion of thy thought will He become greater to thee; and after this discovery of the universe thou wilt feel thy joy augment with the broadening and deepening of the infinite."
Anthony. "Ah! higher!—higher still!—- forever higher!"
(
Then the stars multiply, scintillate. The Milky Way develops in the zenith like a monstrous belt, with holes at intervals; through these rents in its brightness stretches of prolonged darkness are visible. There are rains of stars, long trains of golden dust, luminous vapours that float and dissolve.
At times a comet suddenly passes by; then the tranquillity of innumerable lights recommences.
Anthony, with outstretched arms, supports himself upon the Devil's horns, and thus occupies all the space between them.
He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams. And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below, are close to him. He distinguishes the intercrossing of the lines of their orbits, the complexity of their courses. He beholds them coming from afar,—and, like stones suspended in a sling, describe their circles, form their hyperbolas.
He perceives, all within the field of his vision at once, the Southern Cross and the Great Bear, the Lynx and the Centaur, the nebula of Dorado, the six suns in the constellation of Orion, Jupiter with his four satellites, and the triple ring of the monstrous Saturn!—all the planets, all the stars that men will discover in the future. He fills his eyes with their light; he over-burthens his mind with calculation of their distances: then, bowing his head, he murmurs):
"What is the purpose of all that?"
The Devil. "There is no purpose. How could God have a purpose? What experience could have instructed him?—what reflection determined him?
Anthony: What is the purpose of all that? The Devil: There is no purpose.
"Before the beginning he could not have acted;—and now his action would be useless."
Anthony. "Yet he created the world, at one time, by his word only."
The Devil. "But the beings that people the earth come upon it successively. So also, in heaven, new stars arise—different effects of varying causes."
Anthony. "The varying of causes is the will of God!"
The Devil. "But to admit several acts of will in God is to admit various causes, and therefore to deny his unity.
"His will is inseparable from his essence. He can have but one will, having but one essence; and inasmuch as he externally exists, he acts eternally.
"Contemplate the sun! From its surface leap vast jets of flame, casting forth sparks that disperse beyond to become worlds here-after;—and further than the last, far beyond those deeps where thou seest only night, whirl other suns,—and behind them others again, and beyond those yet others ... without end!"
Anthony. "Enough! Enough! I fear!—I will fall into the
abyss!"
The Devil (
pauses, and rocks Anthony gently in the midst of space).
"Nothingness is—not—there is no
void! Everywhere and forever bodies move upon the immovable deeps of space! Were there boundaries to space, it would not be space, but a body only: it is limitless!"
Anthony (
stupefied by wonder):
"Limitless!"
The Devil. "Ascend skyward forever and forever,—yet thou wilt not attain the summit. Descend below the earth for billions of billions of centuries: never wilt thou reach the bottom. For there is no summit, there is no bottom;
there is no Above, no Below—nor height, nor depth as signified by the terms of human utterance. And Space itself is comprised in God, who is not a portion thereof of such or such a size,—but is Immensity itself!"
Anthony (
slowly):
"Matter..., then,... must be a part of God?"
The Devil. "Why not? Canst thou know the end of God?"
Anthony. "Nay: on the contrary, I prostrate, I crush myself beneath his mightiness!"
The Devil. "And yet thou dost pretend to move him! Thou dost speak to him,—thou dost even adorn him with virtues,—with goodness, justice, mercy,—in lieu of recognising that all perfections are his!
"To conceive aught beyond him is to conceive God above God, the Being above the Being. For He is the only being, the only substance.
"If the Substance could be divided, it would not be the Substance, it would lose its nature: God could not exist. He is therefore indivisible as infinite;—and if he had a body, he would be composed of parts, he would not be One—he would not be infinite. Therefore he is not a Person!"
Anthony. "What? my prayers, my sobs, my groans, the sufferings of my flesh, the transports of my love,—have all these things gone out to a lie,—to emptiness, unavailingly—like the cry of a bird, like a whirl of dead leaves?"
(
Weeping):
"Oh, no!—there is Some One above all things,—a great Soul, a Lord, a Father whom my heart adores and who must love me!"
The Devil. "Thou dost desire that God were not God;—for did he feel love, or anger, or pity,—he would abandon his perfection for a greater or a lesser perfection. He can stoop to no sentiment, nor be contained in any form."
Anthony. "One day, nevertheless, I shall see him!"
The Devil. "With the blessed, is it not?—when the finite shall enjoy the infinite in some restricted place, containing the Absolute!"
Anthony. "Matters not!—there must be a
paradise for the good, as there is a hell for the wicked."
The Devil. "Can the desire of thy mind create the law of the universe? Without doubt evil is indifferent to God,—forasmuch as the Earth is covered with it!
"Is it through impotence that he endures it, or through cruelty that he maintains it?
"Dost thou fancy that he is eternally readjusting the world, like an imperfect machine?—that he is forever watching the movements of all beings, from the flight of a butterfly to the thought of a man?
"If he have created the universe, his providence is superfluous. If Providence exists, then creation is defective.
"But evil and good concern only thee—even like night and day, pleasure and pain, death and birth, which are relative only to one corner of space, to a special centre, to a particular interest. Since the Infinite is permanent, the Infinite is;—and that is all."
(
The Devil's wings have been gradually expanding: now they cover all space.)
Anthony (
now perceives nothing: a great faintness comes upon him):
"A hideous cold freezes me, even to the depths of my soul! This is beyond the extreme of pain! It is like a death that is deeper than death! I roll in the immensity of darkness; and the darkness itself enters within me. My consciousness bursts beneath this dilation of nothingness!"
The Devil. "Yet the knowledge of things comes to thee only through the medium of thy mind. Even as a concave mirror, it deforms the objects it reflects; and thou hast no means whatever of verifying their exactitude."
"Never canst thou know the universe in all its vastness; consequently it will never be possible for thee to obtain an idea of its cause, to have a just notion of God, nor even to say that the universe is infinite,—for thou must first be able to know what the Infinite is!"
"May not Form be, perhaps, an error of thy senses,—Substance a figment of thy imagination?"
"Unless, indeed, that the world being a perpetual flux of things, appearance, on the contrary, be wholly true; illusion the only reality."
"But art thou sure thou dost see?—art thou even sure thou dost live? Perhaps nothing exists!"
(
The Devil has seized Anthony, and, holding him at arms' length, glares at him with mouth yawning as though to devour him):
"Adore me, then!—and curse the phantom thou callest God!"
(
Anthony lifts his eyes with a last effort of hope.
The Devil abandons him.)
- just back from Thor's Helmet and looks like I am 2 jumps away... well in the system now and called over my Mamba from the carrier 
