But this poor old earth-brain of mine, which
I have had to put on once more as an old woman puts on a nightcap, is
like my eyes and ears. It can now only understand what is of the
earth--what _you_ can understand, Gogo, who are still of the earth. I
forget, as one forgets an ordinary dream, as one sometimes forgets the
answer to a riddle, or the last verse of a song. It is on the tip of the
tongue; but there it sticks, and won't come any farther.
Remember, it is only in your brain I am living now--your earthly brain,
that has been my only home for so many happy years, as mine has
been yours.
How we have nestled!
* * * * *
But this I know: one must have had them all once--brains, ears, eyes,
and the rest--on earth. 'Il faut avoir passe par la!' or no
after-existence for man or beast would be possible or even conceivable.
One cannot teach a born deaf-mute how to understand a musical score,
nor a born blind man how to feel color. To Beethoven, who had once heard
with the ear, his deafness made no difference, nor their blindness to
Homer and Milton.
Can you make out my little parable?
* * * * *
Sound and light and heat, and electricity and motion, and will and
thought and remembrance, and love and hate and pity, and the desire to
be born and to live, and the longing of all things alive and dead to get
near each other, or to fly apart--and lots of other things besides! All
that comes to the same--'C'est comme qui dirait bonnet blanc et blanc
bonnet,' as Monsieur le Major used to say.
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