“I hung for an instant between two pictures of the universe;
then the ripple pushed over the burning bush and I ran towards my friend.
In that moment a door closed behind me.
I slammed it shut on Moses and Jehovah.
I was not to knock on that door again, until in a Nazi prison camp.
I lay huddled against it half crazed with terror and despair.“
“ – I remember when I first learnt that a planet sweep out equal areas in equal times–
it seemed to me that armies would stop fighting –
I mean – I must have been about your age –
that they would see how ridiculous a waste of time – “
“Did they, sir? Did they, really?”
“Did who?”
“The armies.”
Slowly the difference between the adult and the child re-established itself.
“No. They didn’t. I’m afraid not.
If you do that sort of thing you become that sort of animal.
The universe is wonderfully exact, sonny.
You can’t have your penny and your bun.
Conservation of energy holds good mentally as well as physically.”
“But, sir –“
“What?”
Understanding came to me.
His law spread.
I saw it holding good at all times and in all places.
That cool allaying rippled outward.
The burning bush resisted and I understood instantly how we lived a contradiction.
This was a moment of such importance to me that I must examine it completely.
For an instant out of time, the two worlds existed side by side.
The one I inhabited by nature, the world of miracle drew me strongly.
To give up the burning bush,
the water from the rock,
the spittle on the eyes was to give up a portion of myself,
a dark and inward and fruitful portion.
Yet looking at me from the bush was the fat and freckled face of Miss Pringle.
The other world, the cool and reasonable was home to the friendly face of Nick Shales.
I do not believe that rational choice stood any chance of exercise.
I believe that my child’s mind was made up for me as a choice between good and wicked fairies.
Miss Pringle vitiated her teaching.
She failed to convince, not by what she said but by what she was.
Nick persuaded me to his natural scientific universe by what he was not by what he said.
I hung for an instant between two pictures of the universe;
then the ripple pushed over the burning bush and I ran towards my friend.
In that moment a door closed behind me.
I slammed it shut on Moses and Jehovah.
I was not to knock on that door again, until in a Nazi prison camp.
I lay huddled against it half crazed with terror and despair.
Here?
Not here.
(pp. 195-196)
