travel books: a million years for us to discover. Which means that even if we go on another million years before we discover anything else, it will have been waiting for us all that time. Two million years. Really it does seem as if we had everything in this world, if only we looked for it properly. We! I haven't discovered much. .. Except the combination of Sylvia and Westaways... Those sheep we've put in that field so as to keep the grass short for mashie-shots. Splendid idea, but what do the sheep think about it? Well, of course they think they are there because I take an interest in them. But I don't. Only in the field. Supposing God only takes an interest in the world; not in us. Awful thought. But it might be. After all, the interest must end somewhere. We have a million bacteria alive in us. So they say. Terrible liars, scientists. Well, naturally these bacteria think that they are It. And if one little bacterium, living happily in the world of Ormsby, and bowling along a country vein going to meet his Sylvia, suddenly began to wonder whether God only took an interest in Ormsby and not in himself, well, he might be right, mightn't he? In spite of the bacterium-theologian. And the bacterium-scientist, with a laboratory in the left-hand corner of Ormsby's liver, would be quite wrong in saying dogmatically that Ormsby was the only inhabited world. Just as we may be wrong about all the other worlds. Just as, to God, the world may be the individual, with a soul to which each of us makes his infinitesimal contribution. Odd people, scientists. Almost as odd as fundamentalists, or whatever you call them. Of course geologians have entirely proved the absurdity of the book of Genesis .,. and yet an omnipotent God who couldn't make books

Books > Old Books > Two People (1932)

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a million years for us to discover. Which means that even if we go on another million years before we discover anything else, it will have been waiting for us all that time. Two million years. Really it does seem as if we had everything in this world, if only we looked for it properly.
We! I haven't discovered much. .. Except the combination of Sylvia and Westaways...
Those sheep we've put in that field so as to keep the grass short for mashie-shots. Splendid idea, but what do the sheep think about it? Well, of course they think they are there because I take an interest in them. But I don't. Only in the field. Supposing God only takes an interest in the world; not in us. Awful thought. But it might be. After all, the interest must end somewhere. We have a million bacteria alive in us. So they say. Terrible liars, scientists. Well, naturally these bacteria think that they are It. And if one little bacterium, living happily in the world of Ormsby, and bowling along a country vein going to meet his Sylvia, suddenly began to wonder whether God only took an interest in Ormsby and not in himself, well, he might be right, mightn't he? In spite of the bacterium-theologian. And the bacterium-scientist, with a laboratory in the left-hand corner of Ormsby's liver, would be quite wrong in saying dogmatically that Ormsby was the only inhabited world. Just as we may be wrong about all the other worlds. Just as, to God, the world may be the individual, with a soul to which each of us makes his infinitesimal contribution.
Odd people, scientists. Almost as odd as fundamentalists, or whatever you call them. Of course geologians have entirely proved the absurdity of the book of Genesis .,. and yet an omnipotent God who couldn't make

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a world, and shove fossil remains, and strata, and anything else He liked, into it, for His own purposes, is hardly an omnipotent God. So what's the truth about anything? God knows - and that's the only answer...
Reginald took out his watch for the twenty-first time. Another mile and one more minute to do it in. Well, the train might have been a minute or two late. Sylvia wouldn't worry about that. Bless her. I'm going to meet you, Sylvial Hooray! You utterly lovely, unfathomable wonder. There must be a God.