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01 - Before Adam by Jack London · Before Adam

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Before Adam. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Tom Weiss, Tom's audiobooks dot com. Before Adam by
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  Speaker 1: Jack London. These are our ancestors, and their history is
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  Speaker 1: our history. Remember that as surely as we one day
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  Speaker 1: swung down out of the trees and walked upright, just
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  Speaker 1: as surely on a far earlier day did we crawl
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  Speaker 1: up out of the sea and achieve our first adventure
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  Speaker 1: on land. Chapter one Pictures pictures, pictures, Often before I learned?
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  Speaker 1: Did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that
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  Speaker 1: thronged my dreams? For they were pictures the like of
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  Speaker 1: which I had never seen in real wakea day life.
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  Speaker 1: They tormented my child, making of my dreams a procession
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  Speaker 1: of nightmares, and a little later convincing me that I
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  Speaker 1: was different from my kind, a creature, unnatural and a cursed.
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  Speaker 1: In my days only did I attain any measure of happiness.
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  Speaker 1: My nights mark the reign of fear. And such fear
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  Speaker 1: I make bold to state that no man of All
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  Speaker 1: the men who walk the earth with me, ever, suffer
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  Speaker 1: fear of like and degree. For my fear is the
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  Speaker 1: fear of long ago, the fear that was rapid in
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  Speaker 1: the younger world and in the youth of the younger world.
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  Speaker 1: In short, the fear that reigns supreme in that period
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  Speaker 1: known as the mid Pleistocene. What do I need? I see,
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  Speaker 1: explanation is necessary before I can tell you of the
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  Speaker 1: substance of my dreams. Otherwise little could you know of
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  Speaker 1: the meaning of the things I know so well as
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  Speaker 1: I write this, All the beings and happenings of that
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  Speaker 1: other world rise up before me in vast phantasmaia, And
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  Speaker 1: I know that to you they would be rhymeless and reasonless.
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  Speaker 1: What to you the friendship of lop Ear, the warm
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  Speaker 1: lure of the swift One, the lust and atavism of
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  Speaker 1: Red Eye, a screaming in coherence and no more, and
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  Speaker 1: a screaming in coherence likewise, the doings of the fire
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  Speaker 1: people and the tree people, and the gibbering councils of
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  Speaker 1: the Horde. For you know not the peace of the
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  Speaker 1: cool caves in the cliffs, the circus of the drinking
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  Speaker 1: places at the end of the day. You have never
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  Speaker 1: felt the bite of the morning wind in the tree tops,
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  Speaker 1: nor is the taste of young bark sweet in your mouth.
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  Speaker 1: It would be better, I dare say, for you to
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  Speaker 1: make your approach as I made mine. Through my childhood
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  Speaker 1: as a boy, I was very like other boys in
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  Speaker 1: my waking hours. It was in my sleep that I
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  Speaker 1: was different from my earliest recollection. My sleep was a
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  Speaker 1: period of terror. Rarely were my dreams tinctured with happiness.
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  Speaker 1: As a rule, they were stuffed with fear, and with
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  Speaker 1: a fear so strange an alien that it had no
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  Speaker 1: conerable quality. No fear that I experienced in my waking
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  Speaker 1: life resembled the fear that possessed me in my sleep.
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  Speaker 1: It was of a quality and kind that transcended all
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  Speaker 1: my experiences. For instance, I was a city boy, a
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  Speaker 1: city child, rather to whom the country was an unexplored domain.
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  Speaker 1: Yet I never dreamed of cities, nor did a house
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  Speaker 1: ever occur in any of my dreams, nor, for that matter,
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  Speaker 1: did any of my human kind ever break through the
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  Speaker 1: wall of my sleep. I, who had seen trees only
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  Speaker 1: in parts and illustrated books, wandered in my sleep through
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  Speaker 1: interminable forests. And further, these dream trees were not a
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  Speaker 1: mere blur on my vision. They were sharp and distinct.
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  Speaker 1: I was on terms of practiced intimacy with them. I
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  Speaker 1: saw every branch in twig, I saw and knew every
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  Speaker 1: different leaf. Well, do I remember the first time in
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  Speaker 1: my waking life that I saw an oak tree? As
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  Speaker 1: I looked at the leaves and branches and gnarls, it
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  Speaker 1: came to me with distressing vividness that I had seen
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  Speaker 1: that same kind of tree many in countless times in
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  Speaker 1: my sleep. So I was not surprised still later on
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  Speaker 1: in my life to recognize instantly the first time I
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  Speaker 1: saw them. Trees such as the spruce, the ewe, the birch,
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  Speaker 1: and the laurel. I had seen them all before, and
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  Speaker 1: was seeing them even then every night in my sleep. This,
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  Speaker 1: as you have already discerned, violates the first law of dreaming,
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  Speaker 1: namely that in one's dreams one sees only what he
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  Speaker 1: has seen in his waking life, or combinations of the
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  Speaker 1: things he has seen in his waking life. But all
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  Speaker 1: my dreams violated this law. In my dreams I never
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  Speaker 1: saw anything of which I had knowledge in my waking life.
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  Speaker 1: My dreamlight and my waking life were lives apart, with
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  Speaker 1: not one thing in common save myself. I was the
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  Speaker 1: connecting link that somehow lived both lives. Early in my
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  Speaker 1: childhood I learned that nuts came from the grocer, berries
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  Speaker 1: from the fruit man. But before ever that knowledge was
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  Speaker 1: mine in my dreams I picked nuts from trees, or
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  Speaker 1: gathered them, and ate them from the ground underneath trees.
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  Speaker 1: And in the same way I ate berries from vines
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  Speaker 1: and bushes. This was beyond any experience of mine. I
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  Speaker 1: shall never forget the first time I saw blueberries served
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  Speaker 1: on the table. I had never seen blueberries before, and
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  Speaker 1: yet at the sight of them there leaped up in
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  Speaker 1: my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wandered through
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  Speaker 1: swampy land, eating my fill of them. My mother set
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  Speaker 1: before me a dish of the berries. I filled my spoon,
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  Speaker 1: but before I raised it to my mouth, I knew
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  Speaker 1: just how they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It
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  Speaker 1: was the same tang that I had tasted a thousand
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  Speaker 1: times in my sleep. Snakes. Long before I had heard
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  Speaker 1: of the existence of snakes, I was tormented by them
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  Speaker 1: in my sleep. They lurked for me in the forest glades,
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  Speaker 1: leaped up, striking under my feet, squirmed off through the
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  Speaker 1: dry grass or across naked patches of rock, or pursued
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  Speaker 1: me into the tree tops, encircling the trunks with their
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  Speaker 1: great shining bodies, driving me higher and higher, or farther
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  Speaker 1: and farther out on swaying and crackling branches, the ground
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  Speaker 1: a dizzying distance beneath me. Snakes with their forked tongues,
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  Speaker 1: their beady eyes and glittering scales, their hissing, and their rattling.
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  Speaker 1: Did I not already know them far too well on
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  Speaker 1: that day of my first circus, when I saw this
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  Speaker 1: snake charmer lift them up? They were old friends of mine,
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  Speaker 1: enemies rather that peopled my knights with fear. Ah, those
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  Speaker 1: endless sparse and their horror haunted gloom. For what eternities
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  Speaker 1: have I wandered through them, A timid, haunted creature, starting
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  Speaker 1: at the least sound frightened of my own shadow, keyed up,
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  Speaker 1: ever alert and vigilant, ready on the instant to dash
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  Speaker 1: away in mad fight for my life. For I was
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  Speaker 1: the prey of all manner of fierce life that dwelt
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  Speaker 1: in that forest and It was in ecstasies of fear
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  Speaker 1: that I fled before the hunting monsters. When I was
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  Speaker 1: five years old, I went to my first circus. I
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  Speaker 1: came home from it sick, but not from peanuts and
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  Speaker 1: pink lemonade. Let me tell you. As we entered the
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  Speaker 1: animal tent, a hoarse roaring shook the air. I tore
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  Speaker 1: my hand loose for my father's and dashed wildly back
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  Speaker 1: through the entrance. I collided with people, fell down, and
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  Speaker 1: all the time I was screaming with terror. My father
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  Speaker 1: caught me and soothed me. He pointed to the crowd
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  Speaker 1: of people, all careless of the roaring, and cheered me
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  Speaker 1: with assurances of safety. Nevertheless, it was in fear and trembling,
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  Speaker 1: and with much encouragement on his part, that I at
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  Speaker 1: last approached the lion's cage. Ah. I knew him on
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  Speaker 1: the instant, the beast, the terrible one, and on my
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  Speaker 1: inner vision flashed the memories of my dreams. The midday
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  Speaker 1: sun shining on tall grass, the wild bull grazing quietly,
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  Speaker 1: the sudden parting of the grass, before the swift rush
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  Speaker 1: of the tawny one, his leap to the bull's back,
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  Speaker 1: the crashing and the bellowing and the crunch crunch of bones,
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  Speaker 1: or again the cool quiet of the water hole, the
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  Speaker 1: wild horse up to his knees and drinking softly. And
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  Speaker 1: then the tawny one, always the tawny one, the leap,
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  Speaker 1: the screaming and the splashing of the horse, and the
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  Speaker 1: crunch crunch of bones, and yet again the somber twilight
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  Speaker 1: and the sad silence of the end of the day.
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  Speaker 1: And then the great full throat It roar sudden, like
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  Speaker 1: a trump of doom. It swift upon it, the insane
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  Speaker 1: shrieking and chattering among the trees, And I too am
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  Speaker 1: trembling with fear, and am one of the many shrieking
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  Speaker 1: and chattering among the trees. At the sight of him,
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  Speaker 1: helpless within the bars of his cage, I became enraged.
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  Speaker 1: I gritted my teeth at him, danced up and down,
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  Speaker 1: screaming an incoherent mockery and making antique faces. He responded,
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  Speaker 1: rushing against the bars and roaring back at me with
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  Speaker 1: his impotent wrath. Ah, he knew me too, and the
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  Speaker 1: sounds I made were the sounds of old time, and
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  Speaker 1: intelligible to him. My parents were frightened the child is ill,
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  Speaker 1: said my mother. He is hysterical, said my father. I
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  Speaker 1: never told them, and they never knew already had I
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  Speaker 1: developed reticence concerning this quality of mine, this semi disassociation
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  Speaker 1: of personality, as I think I am justified in calling it.
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  Speaker 1: I saw the snake charmer, and no more of the
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  Speaker 1: circus did I see. That night. I was taken home,
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  Speaker 1: nervous and overwrought, sick with the invasion of my real
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  Speaker 1: life by that other life of my dreams. I have
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  Speaker 1: mentioned my reticence. Only once did I confide the strangeness
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  Speaker 1: of it all to another. He was a boy, my chum,
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  Speaker 1: and we were eight years old. From my dreams, I
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  Speaker 1: reconstructed for him pictures of that vanished world in which
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  Speaker 1: I do believe I once lived. I told him of
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  Speaker 1: the terrors of that early time of lop Ear, and
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  Speaker 1: the pranks we played, of the gibbering councils, and of
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  Speaker 1: the fire people and their squatting places. He laughed at
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  Speaker 1: me and jeered, and told me tales of ghosts of
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  Speaker 1: the dead that walk at night, but mostly did he
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  Speaker 1: laugh at my feeble fantasy. I told him more, and
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  Speaker 1: he laughed the harder I swore in all earnestness that
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  Speaker 1: these things were so, and he began to look upon
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  Speaker 1: me queerly. Also, he gave amazing garblings of my tales
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  Speaker 1: to our playmates, until all began to look upon me queerly.
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  Speaker 1: It was a bitter experience, but I learned my lesson.
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  Speaker 1: I was different from my kind. I was abnormal, with
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  Speaker 1: something they could not understand, and the telling of which
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  Speaker 1: would cause only misunderstanding. When the stories of ghosts and
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  Speaker 1: goblins went around, I kept quiet. I smiled grimly to myself.
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  Speaker 1: I thought of my nights of fear, and knew that
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  Speaker 1: mine were the real things, real as life itself, not
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  Speaker 1: attenuated vapors and surmise shadows. For me, no terrors resided
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  Speaker 1: in the thought of bugaboos and wicked ogres, the fall
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  Speaker 1: through leafy branches and the dizzying heights, The snakes that
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  Speaker 1: struck at me as I dodged and leaped away in
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  Speaker 1: chattering flight, The wild dogs that hunted me across the
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  Speaker 1: open spaces to the timber These were terrors, concrete and
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  Speaker 1: actual happenings, and not imaginings, things of the living flesh
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  Speaker 1: and of sweat and blood. Ogres and bugaboos, and I
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  Speaker 1: had been had bedfellows compared with these terrors that made
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  Speaker 1: their bed with me through my childhood, and that still
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  Speaker 1: bed with me now as I write this full of years,
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  Speaker 1: end of chapter one, Chapter two, I have said that
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  Speaker 1: in my dreams I never saw a human being. Of
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  Speaker 1: this fact I became aware very early, and yet poignantly
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  Speaker 1: the lack of this fact. I became aware very early
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  Speaker 1: and felt poignantly the lack of my own kind as
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  Speaker 1: a very little child, even I had a feeling in
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  Speaker 1: the midst of the horror of my dreaming that if
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  Speaker 1: I could find but one man, only one human, I
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  Speaker 1: should be saved. For my dreaming, that I should be
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  Speaker 1: surrounded no more by haunting terrors. This thought obsessed me
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  Speaker 1: every night of my life for years. If only I
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  Speaker 1: could find that one human and be saved. I must
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  Speaker 1: iterate that I had this thought in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: my dreaming, and I take it as an evidence of
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  Speaker 1: the merging of my two personalities, as evidence of a
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  Speaker 1: point of contact between the two dissociated parts of me.
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  Speaker 1: My dream personality lived in the long ago before ever
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  Speaker 1: man as we know him came to be, and my
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  Speaker 1: other and Waca day personality projected itself to the extent
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  Speaker 1: of the knowledge of man's existence, into the substance of
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  Speaker 1: my dreams. Perhaps the psychologists of the book will find
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  Speaker 1: fault with my way of using the phrase dissociation of personality.
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  Speaker 1: I know their use of it, yet am compelled to
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  Speaker 1: use it in my own way in default of a
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  Speaker 1: better phrase. I take shelter behind the inadequacy of the
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  Speaker 1: English language. And now to the explanation of my use
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  Speaker 1: or misuse of the phrase. It was not till I
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  Speaker 1: was a young man at college that I got any
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  Speaker 1: clue to the significance of my dreams and to the
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  Speaker 1: cause of them. Up to that time they had been
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  Speaker 1: meaningless and without apparent causation. But in college I discovered
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  Speaker 1: evolution and psychology, and learned the explanation of various strange
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  Speaker 1: mental states and experiences. For instance, there was the falling
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  Speaker 1: through space stream, the commonest dream experience, one practically known
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  Speaker 1: by firsthand experience to all men. This, my professor told me,
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  Speaker 1: was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote
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  Speaker 1: ancestors who lived in trees, with them being treued dwellers.
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  Speaker 1: The liability of falling was an ever present menace. Many
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  Speaker 1: lost their lives that way. All of them experienced terrible falls,
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  Speaker 1: saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground. Now,
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  Speaker 1: a terrible fall averted in such fashion was productive of shock.
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  Speaker 1: Such shock was productive of molecular changes in the cerebral cells.
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  Speaker 1: These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of
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  Speaker 1: progeny became in short racial memories. Thus, when you and
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  Speaker 1: I asleeper dozing officeleep all through space that are wake
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  Speaker 1: to sicken consciousness just before we strike, we are merely
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  Speaker 1: remembering what happened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has
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  Speaker 1: been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the race.
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  Speaker 1: There is nothing strange in this, any more than there
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  Speaker 1: is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely
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  Speaker 1: a habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity.
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  Speaker 1: That is all. It will be noted in passing that
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  Speaker 1: in this falling dream, which is so familiar to you
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  Speaker 1: and me and all of us, we never strike bottom.
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  Speaker 1: To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal
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  Speaker 1: ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith true The shock of
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  Speaker 1: their fall was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they
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  Speaker 1: died immediately before they could have progeny. You and I
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  Speaker 1: are descended from those that did not strike bottom. That
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  Speaker 1: is why you and I, in our dreams never strike bottom.
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  Speaker 1: And now we come to dissociation of personality. We never
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  Speaker 1: have this sense of falling when we are wide awake.
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  Speaker 1: Our wake to day personality has no experience of it. Then,
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  Speaker 1: and here the argument is irresistible. It must be another
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  Speaker 1: and distinct personality that falls when we are asleep, and
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  Speaker 1: that has had experience of such falling, that has, in short,
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  Speaker 1: a memory of past day race experiences, just as our
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  Speaker 1: wake to day personality has a memory of our wake
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  Speaker 1: to day experiences. It was at this stage in my
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  Speaker 1: reasoning that I began to see the light, and quickly
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  Speaker 1: the light burst upon me with dazzling brightness, illuminating and
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  Speaker 1: explaining all that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturally
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  Speaker 1: impossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep, it was
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  Speaker 1: not my waged day personality that took charge of me.
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  Speaker 1: It was another and distinct personality possessing a new and
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  Speaker 1: totally different fund of experiences, and to the point of
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  Speaker 1: my dreaming, possessing memories of those totally different experiences. What
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  Speaker 1: was this personality when had it itself lived a waga
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  Speaker 1: day life on this planet in order to collect this
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  Speaker 1: fund of strange experiences. These were questions that my dreams
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  Speaker 1: themselves answered. He lived in the long ago, when the
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  Speaker 1: world was young, in that period that we called the
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  Speaker 1: mid Pleistocene. He fell from the trees, but did not
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  Speaker 1: strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at the roaring of
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  Speaker 1: the lions. He was pursued by beasts of prey, struck
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  Speaker 1: at by deadly snakes. He chattered with his kind and counsel,
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  Speaker 1: and he received rough usage at the hands of the
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  Speaker 1: fire people in the day that he fled before them.
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  Speaker 1: But I hear you objecting, why is it that these
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  Speaker 1: racial memories are not ours as well? Seeing that we
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  Speaker 1: have a big other personality that falls through space while
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  Speaker 1: we sleep, And I may answer with another question, why
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  Speaker 1: is to have a calf? And my own answer to
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  Speaker 1: this is that it is a freak. And so I
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  Speaker 1: answer your question, I have this other personality and these
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  Speaker 1: complete racial memories because I am a freak. But let
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  Speaker 1: me be more explicit. The commonest race memory we have
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  Speaker 1: is the falling through space dream. This other personality is
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  Speaker 1: very vague about the only memory it has is that
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  Speaker 1: of falling. But many of us have sharper, more distinct
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  Speaker 1: other personalities. Many of us have the flying dream, they're pursuing,
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  Speaker 1: monster dream, color dreams, suffocation dreams, and the reptile and
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  Speaker 1: vermin dreams. In short while, this other personality is vestigial
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  Speaker 1: in all of us. In some of us it is
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  Speaker 1: almost obliterated, while in others of us it is more pronounced.
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  Speaker 1: Some of us have stronger and completer race memories than others.
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  Speaker 1: It is all a question of varying degree of possession
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  Speaker 1: of the other personality. In myself, the degree of possession
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  Speaker 1: is enormous. My other personality is almost equal in power
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  Speaker 1: with my own personality. And in this manner, I am,
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  Speaker 1: as I said, a freak, a freak of heredity. I
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  Speaker 1: do believe that it is the possession of this other personality,
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  Speaker 1: but not so strong a one as mine, that has
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  Speaker 1: in some few others given rise to belief in personal
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  Speaker 1: reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible to such people the
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  Speaker 1: most convincing hypothesis when they have visions of scenes they
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  Speaker 1: have never seen in the flesh memories of acts and
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  Speaker 1: events dating back in time. The simplest explanation is that
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  Speaker 1: they have lived before, but they make the mistake of
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  Speaker 1: ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their other personality.
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  Speaker 1: They think it is their own personality, that they have
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  Speaker 1: only one personality, and from such a p they can
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  Speaker 1: conclude only that they have lived previous lives. But they
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  Speaker 1: are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of
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  Speaker 1: myself roaming through the forest of the younger world, and
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  Speaker 1: yet it is not myself that I see, but one
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  Speaker 1: that is only remotely a part of me, As my
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  Speaker 1: father and my grandfather are parts of me less remote
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: This other self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of my progenitors in the early line of my race, himself,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the progeny of a line that long before his time
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: developed fingers and toes and climbed up into the trees.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I must, again, at the risk of boring, repeat that
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I am, in this one thing to be considered a freak.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Not alone do I possess racial memory to an enormous extent,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: but I possess the memories of one particular and far
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: removed progenitor and Yet while this is most unusual, there
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: is nothing over remarkable about it. Follow my reasoning, an
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: instinct is a racial memory. Very good, then you and
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I and all of us receive these memories from our
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: fathers and mothers, as I received them from their fathers
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and mothers. Therefore, there must be a medium whereby these
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: memories are transmitted from generation to generation. The medium is
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: what Weismann terms the germ plasm. It carries the memories
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of the whole evolution of the race. These memories are
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: dim and confused, and many of them are lost. But
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: some strains of germ plasm carry an excessive prateage of memories,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: are to be scientific more atavistic than others. Strange, and
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: such a strain as mine, I am a freak of heredity,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: anatavistic nightmare. Call me what you will, But here I
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: am real and alive, eating three hearty meals a day.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And what are you going to do about it? And now,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: before I take up my tale, I want to an
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: anticipate the doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone to
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: scoff and who would otherwise surely say that the coherence
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: of my dreams is due to overstudy and the subconscious
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: projection of my knowledge of evolution into my dreams. In
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the first place, I have never been a zealous student.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I graduated last of my class. I cared more for athletics,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and there is no reason I should not confess it
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: more for billiards. Further, I had no knowledge of evolution
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: until I was at college, whereas in my childhood and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: youth I had already lived in my dreams all the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: details of that other, long ago life. I will say, however,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that these details were mixed and incoherent until I came
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: to know the science of evolution. Evolution was the key.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It gave the explanation, gave sanity to the pranks of
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: this atavistic brain of mind that modern and normal parked
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: back to a past so remote as to be contemporaneous
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: with the raw beginnings of mankind. For in this past
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I know of man as we today know him did
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: not exist. It was in this period of his being
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: that I must have lived and had my being. End
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: of Chapter two, Chapter three. The commonest dream of my
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: early childhood was something like this. It seemed that I
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: was very small, and that I lay curled up in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: a sort of nest of twigs and bows. Sometimes I
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: was lying on my back. In this position. It seemed
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: that I spent many hours watching the play of sunlight
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: on the porliage and the stirring of the leaves by
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the wind. Often the nest itself moved back and forth
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: when the wind was strong. But always while so lying
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: in the nest, I was mastered as of tremendous space
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: beneath me. I never saw it. I never peered over
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the edge of the nest to see, but I knew
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and fear that space that lurked just beneath me, and
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: that ever threatened me like a maw of some old
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: devouring monster. This dream, in which I was quiescent, and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: which was more like a condition than an experience of action.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: I dreamed very often in my early childhood. But suddenly
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: there would rush into the very midst of it, strange
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: forms and ferocious happenings, the thunder and crashing of storm,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: and unfamiliar landscapes such as in my wake, a day
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: life I had never seen. The result was confusion and nightmare.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I could comprehend nothing of it. There was no logic
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: of sequence, you see, I did not dream consecutively one moment,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I was a wee babe of the younger world, lying
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: in my tree ness. The next moment, I was a
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: grown man of the younger world, locked in combat with
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the hideous red eye. And the next moment, I was
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: creeping carefully down to the water hole in the heat
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of the day. Events years a part of their occurrence
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in the younger world occurred with me within the space
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: of several minutes or seconds. It was all a jumble.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: But this jumble I shall not inflict upon you. It
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: was not until I was a young man and had
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: dreamed many thousand times that everything straightened out and became
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: clear and plain. Then it was that I got the
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: clue of time and was able to piece together events
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and actions in their proper order. Thus was I able
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to reconstruct the vanished younger world as it was at
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: the time I lived in it, or at the time
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: my other self lived in it. The distinction does not matter,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: for I, too, the modern man, have gone back and
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: lived that early life in the company of my other self.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: For your convenience, since this is to be no sociological screed,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I shall frame together the different events into a comprehensive story.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: For there is a certain thread of continuity and happening
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: that runs through all the dreams. There is my friendship
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: with Loppier, for instance. Also there is the enmity of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Red Eye and the love of the swift One. Taking
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: it all in all a fairly coherent and interesting story,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I am sure you will agree. I do not remember
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: much of my mother. Possibly the earliest recollection I have
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of her, and certainly the sharpest, is the following. It
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: seemed I was lying on the ground. I was somewhat
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: older then than during the nest days, but still helpless.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I rolled about in the dry leaves, playing with them
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and making crooning, rasping noises in my throat. The sun
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: shone warmly, and I was happy and comfortable. I was
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: in a little open space. Around me, on all sides
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: were bushes and fern like gross and overhead, and all
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: about were the trunks and branches of forest trees. Suddenly
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I heard a sound. I sat upright and listened. I
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: made no movement. The little noises died down in my throat,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: and I sat as one petrified. The sound drew closer.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: It was like the grunt of a pig. Then I
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: began to hear the sounds caused by the moving of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: a body through the brush. Next, I saw the ferns
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: agitated by the passage of the body. Then the ferns
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: parted and I saw gleaming eyes, a long snout, and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: white tuss It was a wild boar. He peered at
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: me curiously. He grunted once or twice, and shifted his
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: weight from one fore leg to the other, at the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: same time moving his head from side to side and
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: swaying the ferns. Still, I sat as one, petrified, my
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: eyes unblinking as I stared at him, fear eating at
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: my heart. It seemed that this movelessness and silence on
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: my part was what he expected of me. I was
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: not to cry out in the face of fear. It
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: was a dictative instinct, and so I sat there and
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: waited for I knew not what. The boar thrust the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: ferns aside and stepped into the open. The curiosity went
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: out of his eyes, and they gleamed cruelly. He tossed
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: his head at me threateningly and advanced a step. This
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: he did again, and yet again. Then I screamed or shrieked.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I could not describe it, but it was a shrill
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: and terrible cry, and it seems that it, too, at
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: this stage of the proceedings, was the thing expected of me.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: From not far away came an answering cry. My sounds
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: seemed momentarily to disconcert the bore, And while he hold
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: it and shifted his weight with indecision, an apparition burst
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: upon us. She was like a large orangutang my mother,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: or like a chimpanzee, and yet in sharp and definite
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: ways quite different. She was heavier a build than they,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and had less hair. Her arms were not so long,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and her legs were stouter. She wore no clothes, only
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: her natural hair. And I could tell you she was
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: a fury when she was excited, and like a fury
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: she dashed upon the scene. She was gritting her teeth,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: making frightful grimaces, snarling, uttering sharp and continuous cries that
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: sounded like ha ha. So suddenly formidable was her appearance
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: that the boar involuntarily bunched himself together on the defensive
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and bristled as she swerved toward him. Then she swerved
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: toward me. She had quite taken the breath out of him.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I knew just what to do in that moment of
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: her about the waist and holding on handed foot. Yes,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: by my feet, I could hold on by them as
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: readily as by my hands. I could feel in my
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: tense grip. The pull of the hair was her skin,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and her muscles moved beneath her efforts. As I say,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I leaped to meet her, and on the instant she
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: leaped straight up into the air, catching an overhanging branch
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: with her hands. The next instant, with clashing tusks, the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: boar drove past underneath. He had recovered from his surprise
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and sprung forward, emitting a squeal that was almost a trumpety.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: At any rate, it was a call where it was
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: followed by the rushing of bodies through the ferns and
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: brushed from all directions from every side. Wild hogs dashed
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: into the open space, a score of them. But my
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: mother swung over the top of a thick limb a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: dozen feet from the ground, and still holding on to her,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: we perched there in safety. She was very excited. She
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: chattered and screamed and scolded down at the bristling tooth,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: gnashing circle that had gathered beneath. I, too trembling, peered
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: down at the angry beasts, and did my best to
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: imitate my mother's cries. From the distance, came similar cries,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: only pitched deeper into a sort of roaring vase. These
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: grew momentarily louder, and soon I saw approaching my father.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: At least by all evidence of the times, I had
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: driven to conclude that he was my father. He was
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: not of extremely prepossessing father, as fathers go. He seemed
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: half man and half ape, and yet not ape and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: not yet man. I failed to describe him. There was
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: nothing like him today on the earth, under the earth,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: nor in the earth. He was a large man in
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: his day, and he must have weighed all of one
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty pounds. His face was broad and flat,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: and the eyebrows overhung the eyes. The eyes themselves were small,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: deep set, and close together. He had practically no nose
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: at all. It was squat and broad, apparently without any bridge,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: while the nostrils were like two holes in the face,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: opening outward instead of down. The forehead slanted back in
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: the eyes, and the hair began right at the eyes
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and ran up over the head. The head itself was
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: preposterously small, and was supported on an equally preposterous thick,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: short neck. There was an elemental economy about his body,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: as there was about all our bodies. The chest was deep,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: it is true, cavernously deep. But there were no full
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: swelling muscles, no wide spreading shoulders, no clean limbed straightness,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: no generous symmetry about lying. It represented strength, that body
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of my father's strength without beauty, ferocious primordial strength made
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to clutch and grip and rend and destroy. His hips
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: were thin, and the legs, lean and hairy, were crooked
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: in stringy muscled. In fact, my father's legs were more
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: like arms. They were twisted in gnarly and with scarcely
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the semblance of the full meaty cat, such as Grace's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: your leg and mind. I remember. He could not walk
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: on the flat of his foot. This was because it
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: was a prehensile foot, more like a hand than a foot.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: The great toe, instead of being in line with the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: other toes, opposed them like a thumb, and its opposition
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: to the other toes was what enabled him to get
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: a grip with his foot. This was why he could
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: not walk on the flat of his foot. But his
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: appearance was no more unusual than the matter of his
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: coming there to my mother and me as we perched
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: above the angry wild pigs. He came through the trees,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: leaping from limb to limb, and from tree to tree,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And he came swiftly. I can see him now in
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: my wake a day life as I write this, swinging
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: along through the trees, a forehanded, hairy creature, howling with rage,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: pausing now again to beat his chest with his clenched fist,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: leaping ten and fifteen foot gaps, catching a branch with
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: one hand, and swinging on across another gap to catch
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: with his other hand, and go on, never hesitating, never
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: at a loss as to how to proceed on his
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: arboreal way. And as I watched him, I felt in
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: my own being, in my very muscles themselves, the surge
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: and thrill of desire to go, leaping from bow to bow.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: And I felt also the guarantee of the latent power
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: in that being and in those muscles of mine. And
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: why not little boys watched their fathers swing axes and
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: fell trees, and feel in themselves that some day they
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: too will swing axes and fell trees. And so with me.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: The life that was in me was constituted to do
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: what my father did, and it whispered to me secretly
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: and ambitiously of aerial paths and far as flights. At
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: last my father joined us. He was extremely angry. I
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: remember the outthrust of his protruding under lip as he
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: glared down at the wild pigs. He snarled something like
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a dog, And I remember that his eye teeth were large,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: like fangs, and that they impressed me tremendously. His conduct
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: served only the more to infuriate the pigs. He broke
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: off twigs and small branches and flung them down upon
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: our enemies. He even hung by one hand tantalizing just
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: beyond reach, and mocked them as they gnashed their tusts
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: with impotent rage. Not content with this, he broke off
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: a stout branch, and, holding on with one hand and foot,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: jabbed the infuriated beasts and as sides and whacked them
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: across their noses. Needless to say, my mother and I
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: enjoyed the sport, but one ti fires of all good things,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and in the end, my father, chuckling maliciously the while,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: led the way across the trees. Now it was that
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: my ambitions ebbed away, and I became timid, holding tightly
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: to my mother as she climbed and swung through space.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: I remember when the branch broke with her weight. She
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: had made a wide leap, and with a snap of wood,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: I was overwhelmed with the sickening consciousness of falling through space.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: The pair of us, the forest, and the sunshine on
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the rustling leaves vanished from my eyes. I had a
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: fading glimpse of my father abruptly arresting its progress to look,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: and then all was blackness. The next moment, I was
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: awake in my sheeted bed, sweating, trembling, nauseating. The window
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: was up and a cool air was blowing through the room.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: The night lamp was burning calmly. And because of this
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I take it that the wild pigs did not get us,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: that we never fetched bottom. Else I should not be
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: here now, a thousand centuries after to remember the event.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: And now put yourself in my place for a moment.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Walk with me a bit in my tender childhood bed
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: with me a knight, and imagine yourself dreaming such incomprehensible horrors.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Remember I was an inexperienced child. I had never seen
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a wild boar in my life. For that matter, I
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: had never seen a domesticated pig. The nearest approach to
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: one I had seen was breakfast, vacant, sizzling in its back,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: and yet here real as life. Wild boars dashed through
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: my dreams, and I, with fantastic parents, swung through the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: lofty tree spaces. Do you wonder that I was frightened
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and oppressed by my nightmare written nights? I was a curse,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and worst of all, I was afraid to tell. I
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: do not know why, except that I had a feeling
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: of guilt, though I knew no better of what I
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: was guilty. So it was through long years that I
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: suffered in silence until I came to Man's estate and
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: learned the why and wherefore of my dreams. End of
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Chapter three recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks dot Com.