Now about a God (he said to himself)--instinct tells me that there is one, for when I think about Him I find that I unconsciously wag my tail a little.But I must not reason on that basis, which is too puppyish.I like to think that there is, somewhere in this universe, an inscrutable Being ofinfinite wisdom, harmony, and charity, by Whom all my desires and needs would be understood; in association with Whom I would find peace, satisfaction, a lightness of heart that exceed my present understanding.Such a Being is to me quite inconceivable; yet I feel that if I met Him, I would instantly understand.I do not mean that I would understand Him: but I would understand my relationship to Him, which would be perfect.Nor do I mean that it would be always happy; merely that it would transcend anything in the way of social significance that I now experience.But I must not conclude that there is such a God, merely because it would be so pleasant if there were.
Then (he continued) is it necessary to conceive that this deity is super- canine in essence? What I am getting at is this: in everyone I have ever known--Fuji, Mr.Poodle, Mrs.Spaniel, those maddening delightful puppies, Mrs.Purp, Mr.Beagle, even Mrs.Chow and Mrs.Sealyham and little Miss Whippet--I have always been aware that there was some mysterious point of union at which our minds could converge and entirely understand one another.No matter what our difference of breed, of training, of experience and education, provided we could meet and exchange ideas honestly there would be some satisfying point of mental fusion where we would feel our solidarity in the common mystery of life.People complain that wars are caused by and fought over trivial things.Why, of course! For it is only in trivial matters that people differ: in the deep realities they must necessarily be at one.Now I have a suspicion that in this secret sense of unity God may lurk.Is that what we mean by God, the sum total of all these instinctive understandings? But what is the origin of this sense of kinship? Is it not the realization of our common subjection to laws and forces greater than ourselves? Then, since nothing can be greater than God, He must BE these superior mysteries.Yet He cannot be greater than our minds, for our minds have imagined Him.
My mathematics is very rusty, he said to himself, but I seem to remember something about a locus, which was a curve or a surface every point on which satisfied some particular equation of relation among the coordinates.It begins to look to me as though life might be a kind of locus, whose commanding equation we call God.The points on that locus cannotconceive of the equation, yet they are subject to it.They cannot conceive of that equation, because of course it has no existence save as a law of their being.It exists only for them; they, only by it.But there it is--a perfect, potent, divine abstraction.
This carried him into a realm of disembodied thinking which his mind was not sufficiently disciplined to summarize.It is quite plain, he said to himself, that I must rub up my vanished mathematics.For certainly the mathematician comes closer to God than any other, since his mind is trained to conceive and formulate the magnificent phantoms of legality.He smiled to think that any one should presume to become a parson without having at least mastered analytical geometry.
The ferry had crossed and recrossed the river several times, but Gissing had found no conclusion for these thoughts.As the boat drew toward her slip, she passed astern of a great liner.Gissing saw the four tall funnels loom up above the shed of the pier where she lay berthed.What was it that made his heart so stir? The perfect rake of the funnels--just that satisfying angle of slant--that, absurdly enough, was the nobility of the sight.Why, then? Let's get at the heart of this, he said.Just that little trick of the architect, useless in itself--what was it but the touch of swagger, of bravado, of defiance--going out into the vast, meaningless, unpitying sea with that dainty arrogance of build; taking the trouble to mock the senseless elements, hurricane, ice, and fog, with a 15-degree slope of masts and funnels damn, what was the analogy?
It was pride, it was pride! It was the same lusty impudence that he saw in his perfect city, the city that cried out to the hearts of youth, jutted her mocking pinnacles toward sky, her clumsy turrets verticalled on gold! And God, the God of gales and gravity, loved His children to dare and contradict Him, to rally Him with equations of their own."God, I defy you!" he cried.
