“And you are not you—you have no
body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.
I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your
dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment
you will have realized this, then you will banish
me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the
nothingness out of which you made me....
“I am perishing already—I am failing—I
am passing away. In a little while you will
be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless
solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for
you will remain a thought, the only existent thought,
and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible.
But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself
and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!
“Strange! that you should not have suspected
years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for
you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities.
Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected
that your universe and its contents were only dreams,
visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so
frankly and hysterically insane—like all
dreams: a God who could make good children as
easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who
could have made every one of them happy, yet never
made a single happy one; who made them prize their
bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his
angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his
other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless
lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries
and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice
and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented
hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness
multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell;
who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;
who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who
created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle
the responsibility for man’s acts upon man,
instead of honorably placing it where it belongs,
upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine
obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship
him!...
“You perceive, now, that these things are all
impossible except in a dream. You perceive that
they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations
of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in
a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of
it. The dream-marks are all present; you should
have recognized them earlier.
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you;
there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly
life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a
grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but
you. And you are but a thought—a
vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought,
wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!”
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and
realized, that all he had said was true.
Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small
and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could
see it in the mirror. He said, “This doubles
the distance and softens it, and it is twice as lovely
as it was before.”
