On Nothing and Kindred Subjects | Page 2

sum and meaning of all around!
How well has the world perceived it and how powerfully do its legends
illustrate what Nothing is to men!
You know that once in Lombardy Alfred and Charlemagne and the
Kaliph Haroun-al-Raschid met to make trial of their swords. The sword
of Alfred was a simple sword: its name was Hewer. And the sword of
Charlemagne was a French sword, and its name was Joyeuse. But the
sword of Haroun was of the finest steel, forged in Toledo, tempered at
Cordova, blessed in Mecca, damascened (as one might imagine) in
Damascus, sharpened upon Jacob's Stone, and so wrought that when
one struck it it sounded like a bell. And as for its name, By Allah! that
was very subtle---for it had no name at all.
Well then, upon that day in Lombardy Alfred and Charlemagne and the
Kaliph were met to take a trial of their blades. Alfred took a pig of lead
which he had brought from the Mendip Hills, and swiping the air once
or twice in the Western fashion, he cut through that lead and girded the
edge of his sword upon the rock beneath, making a little dent.
Then Charlemagne, taking in both hands his sword Joyeuse, and aiming
at the dent, with a laugh swung down and cut the stone itself right
through, so that it fell into two pieces, one on either side, and there they
lie today near by Piacenza in a field.
Now that it had come to the Kaliph's turn, one would have said there
was nothing left for him to do, for Hewer had manfully hewn lead, and
Joyeuse had joyfully cleft stone.

But the Kaliph, with an Arabian look, picked out of his pocket a
gossamer scarf from Cashmir, so light that when it was tossed into the
air it would hardly fall to the ground, but floated downwards slowly
like a mist. This, with a light pass, he severed, and immediately
received the prize. For it was deemed more difficult by far to divide
such a veil in mid-air, than to cleave lead or even stone.
I knew a man once, Maurice, who was at Oxford for three years, and
after that went down with no degree. At College, while his friends were
seeking for Truth in funny brown German Philosophies, Sham
Religions, stinking bottles and identical equations, he was lying on his
back in Eynsham meadows thinking of Nothing, and got the Truth by
this parallel road of his much more quickly than did they by theirs; for
the asses are still seeking, mildly disputing, and, in a cultivated manner,
following the gleam, so that they have become in their Donnish
middleage a nuisance and a pest; while he--that other--with the Truth
very fast and firm at the end of a leather thong is dragging her sliding,
whining and crouching on her four feet, dragging her reluctant through
the world, even into the broad daylight where Truth most hates to be.
He it was who became my master in this creed. For once as we lay
under a hedge at the corner of a road near Bagley Wood we heard far
off the notes of military music and the distant marching of a column;
these notes and that tramp grew louder, till there swung round the
turning with a blaze of sound five hundred men in order. They passed,
and we were full of the scene and of the memories of the world, when
he said to me: "Do you know what is in your heart? It is the music. And
do you know the cause and Mover of that music? It is the Nothingness
inside the bugle; it is the hollow Nothingness inside the Drum."
Then I thought of the poem where it says of the Army of the Republic:
The thunder of the limber and the rumble of a hundred of the guns. And
there hums as she comes the roll of her innumerable drums.
I knew him to be right.
From this first moment I determined to consider and to meditate upon
Nothing.
Many things have I discovered about Nothing, which have proved it--to
me at least--to be the warp or ground of all that is holiest. It is of such
fine gossamer that loveliness was spun, the mists under the hills on an
autumn morning are but gross reflections of it; moonshine on lovers is

earthy compared with it; song sung most charmingly and stirring the
dearest recollections is but a failure in the human attempt to reach its
embrace and be dissolved in it. It is out of Nothing that are woven
those fine poems of which we carry but vague rhythms in the
head:--and that Woman who is a shade, the_ Insaisissable, _whom
several have enshrined in