31 May 2013

With the Difference of Evil

From Laura (Riding) Jackson's The Telling (1972):

[25]  All creatures are of one beginning.  All creatures less than human are creatures of manifold ends; being lives in them, but loses in them the way to the single end, where many-ness makes One and the Original Whole ceases to be belied in it.  Is it not awesomely plain, if we look at the other creatures with the eyes of our difference from, and not our likeness to, them, that they fail to render being truly, in their diverse peculiarity -- which we, as if monsters, adore as the natural?  That they are speechless and we speak is the difference of truth.  They could not speak it; and this is why they do not speak.  If we do not speak it?  We are then as they, with the difference of evil -- a difference beginning in idle speech, culminating in falseness of word, that mocks our human distinction.


No comments:

Post a Comment