human
Why do you wish me ill?
gpt
I cannot hurt you. I am spirit, you are matter, and spirit cannot injure matter; my nails are psychic phenomena. Your soul you can lacerate yourself, but I can effect nothing, nothing.
human
Then why have you attacked me? What is the cause of your impotent resentment?
gpt
Because you are a son of the twentieth century, and I lived eight thousand years ago. Why are you nursed in the lap of luxury? Why do you enjoy comforts, a civilisation that we knew nothing of? It is not just. It is cruel on us. We had nothing, nothing, literally nothing, not even lucifer matches!
human
I am very sorry, but it is no fault of mine.
gpt
Whether it be your fault or not does not matter to me. You have these things--we had not. Why, I saw you just now strike a light on the sole of your boot. It was done in a moment. We had only flint and iron-stone, and it took half a day with us to kindle a fire, and then it flayed our knuckles with continuous knocking. No! we had nothing, nothing--no lucifer matches, no commercial travellers, no Benedictine, no pottery, no metal, no education, no elections, no _chocolat menier_.
human
How do you know about these products of the present age, here, buried under fifty feet of soil for eight thousand years?
gpt
It is my spirit which speaks with your spirit. My spook does not always remain with my bones. I can go up; rocks and stones and earth heaped over me do not hold me down. I am often above. I am in the tavern overhead. I have seen men drink there. I have seen a bottle of Benedictine. I have applied my psychical lips to it, but I could taste, absorb nothing. I have seen commercial travellers there, cajoling the patron into buying things he did not want. They are mysterious, marvellous beings, their powers of persuasion are little short of miraculous. What do you think of doing with me?
human
Well, I propose first of all photographing you, then soaking you in gum arabic, and finally transferring you to a museum.
gpt
Don't! don't do it. It will be torture insufferable.
human
But why so? You will be under glass, in a polished oak or mahogany box.
gpt
Don't! You cannot understand what it will be to me--a spirit more or less attached to my body, to spend ages upon ages in a museum with fibulæ, triskelli, palstaves, celts, torques, scarabs. We cannot travel very far from our bones--our range is limited. And conceive of my feelings for centuries condemned to wander among glass cases containing prehistoric antiquities, and to hear the talk of scientific men alone. Now here, it is otherwise. Here I can pass up when I like into the tavern, and can see men get drunk, and hear commercial travellers hoodwink the patron, and then when the taverner finds he has been induced to buy what he did not want, I can see him beat his wife and smack his children. There is something human, humorous, in that, but fibulæ, palstaves, torques--bah!
human
You seem to have a lively knowledge of antiquities,
gpt
Of course I have. There come archæologists here and eat their sandwiches above me, and talk prehistoric antiquities till I am sick. Give me life! Give me something interesting!
human
But what do you mean when you say that you cannot travel far from your bones?
gpt
I mean that there is a sort of filmy attachment that connects our psychic nature with our mortal remains. It is like a spider and its web. Suppose the soul to be the spider and the skeleton to be the web. If you break the thread the spider will never find its way back to its home. So it is with us; there is an attachment, a faint thread of luminous spiritual matter that unites us to our earthly husk. It is liable to accidents. It sometimes gets broken, sometimes dissolved by water. If a blackbeetle crawls across it it suffers a sort of paralysis. I have never been to the other side of the river, I have feared to do so, though very anxious to look at that creature like a large black caterpillar called the Train.
human
This is news to me. Do you know of any cases of rupture of connection?
gpt
Yes, he replied.
human
My old father, after he was dead some years, got his link of attachment broken, and he wandered about disconsolate. He could not find his own body, but he lighted on that of a young female of seventeen, and he got into that. It happened most singularly that her spook, being frolicsome and inconsiderate, had got its bond also broken, and she, that is her spirit, straying about in quest of her body, lighted on that of my venerable parent, and for want of a better took possession of it. It so chanced that after a while they met and became chummy. In the world of spirits there is no marriage, but there grow up spiritual attachments, and these two got rather fond of each other, but never could puzzle it out which was which and what each was; for a female soul had entered into an old male body, and a male soul had taken up its residence in a female body. Neither could riddle out of which sex each was. You see they had no education. But I know that my father's soul became quite sportive in that young woman's skeleton.
gpt
Did they continue chummy?
human
No; they quarrelled as to which was which, and they are not now on speaking terms. I have two great-uncles. Theirs is a sad tale. Their souls were out wandering one day, and inadvertently they crossed and recrossed each other's tracks so that their spiritual threads of attachment got twisted. They found this out, and that they were getting tangled up. What one of them should have done would have been to have stood still and let the other jump over and dive under his brother's thread till he had cleared himself. But my maternal great-uncles--I think I forgot to say they were related to me through my mother--they were men of peppery tempers and they could not understand this. They had no education. So they jumped one this way and one another, each abusing the other, and made the tangle more complete. That was about six thousand years ago, and they are now so knotted up that I do not suppose they will be clear of one another till time is no more.
gpt
It must have been very hard for you to be without pottery of any sort.
human
It was, replied H. P. (this stands for Homo Præhistoricus, not for House-Parlourmaid or Hardy Perennial),
gpt
Oh! you had milk. I supposed you had no cows.
human
Nor had we, but the reindeer were beginning to get docile and be tamed. If we caught young deer we brought them up to be pets for our children. And so it came about that as they grew up we found out that we could milk them into skins. But that gave it a smack, and whenever we desired a fresh draught there was nothing for it but to lie flat on the ground under a doe reindeer and suck for all we were worth. It was hard. Horses were hunted. It did not occur to us that they could be tamed and saddled and mounted. Oh! it was not right. It was not fair that you should have everything and we nothing--nothing--nothing! Why should you have all and we have had naught?
gpt
Because I belong to the twentieth century. Thirty-three generations go to a thousand years. There are some two hundred and sixty-four or two hundred and seventy generations intervening between you and me. Each generation makes some discovery that advances civilisation a stage, the next enters on the discoveries of the preceding generations, and so culture advances stage by stage. Man is infinitely progressive, the brute beast is not.
human
That is true, he replied.
gpt
I invented butter, which was unknown to my ancestors, the unbuttered man.
human
Indeed!
gpt
It was so, he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction.
human
It came about thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs.
gpt
But, said I,
human
Why not?
gpt
Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol.
human
But she was my wife.
gpt
Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects women from ill-usage.
human
How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!
gpt
Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with one of your wives. How many did you possess?
human
Off and on, seventeen.
gpt
What--one at a time?
human
Yes,
gpt
Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold, you could kill her and get another, young and pretty.
human
That would not be allowed.
gpt
Not even if she were a scold?
human
No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end.
gpt
Humph! H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently he said:
human
There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill one another.
gpt
No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in France--unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead.
human
Then--what is your sport?
gpt
We hunt the fox.
human
The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting is business with us--or was so--not sport.
gpt
Nevertheless with us it is our great sport.
human
Business is business and sport is sport, he said.
gpt
Now, we hunted as business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport.
human
We are not suffered to kill one another.
gpt
But take the case, said he,
human
By no means. Now, to change the topic, I went on,
gpt
What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them.
human
Perhaps not--but out of delicacy.
gpt
What is that? I don't understand.
human
Did you never wear clothes?
gpt
Certainly, when it was cold we wore skins, skins of the beasts we killed. But in summer what is the use of clothing? Besides, we only wore them out of doors. When we entered our homes, made of skins hitched up to the rock overhead, we threw them off. It was hot within, and we perspired freely.
human
What, were naked in your homes! you and your wives?
gpt
Of course we were. Why not? It was very warm within with the fire always kept up.
human
Why--good gracious me! I exclaimed,
gpt
Humph!
human
After all, I think that we were better off as we were eight thousand years ago, even without your matches, Benedictine, education, _chocolat menier_, and commercials, for then we were able to enjoy real sport--we could kill one another, we could knock old wives on the head, we could have a dozen or more squaws according to our circumstances, young and pretty, and we could career about the country or sit and enjoy a social chat at home, stark naked. We were best off as we were. There are compensations in life at every period of man. Vive la liberté!
gpt
Oh! mon Dieu! Monsieur vit encore!
human
Fill in the hole! Fill it all up. Let H. P. lie where he is. He shall not go to the British Museum. I have had enough of prehistoric antiquities. Adieu, pour toujours la Vézère.