The Great God Pan | Page 3

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This book prepared by: Brandi Weed [email protected]

THE GREAT GOD PAN
by
ARTHUR MACHEN

I
THE EXPERIMENT

"I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you
could spare the time."
"I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very
lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely
safe?"
The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's
house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone

with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a
sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with
it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the
long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills,
and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure
white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his
friend.
"Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one;
any surgeon could do it."
"And there is no danger at any other stage?"
"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give you my word.
You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have
devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I
have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal,
and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do
tonight."
"I should like to believe it is all true." Clarke knit his brows, and looked
doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. "Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that
your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a
mere vision after all?"
Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a
middle-aged man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as
he answered Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.
"Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following
after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchard, the fields
of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river.
You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you
that all these things -- yes, from that star that has just shone out in the
sky to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
dreams and shadows; the shadows that hide the real world from our
eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision,

beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,'beyond them all as
beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted
that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this
very night from before another's eyes. You may think this all strange
nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what
lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan."
Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.
"It is wonderful indeed," he said. "We are standing on the brink of a
strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is
absolutely necessary?"
"Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling
rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would
escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred. I
don't want to bother you with 'shop,'Clarke; I might give you a mass of
technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave
you as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read,
casually, in out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides
have been made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a
paragraph the other day about Digby's theory,