by Rog Phillips
and all otherthings, exist as thoughts in my mind. There is nothing except whatexists in my mind. Therefore, by that token, _I_ am God!"
"But," Upt chuckled, "by the same token I can insist that _I_ am God andyou are just a product of my own creation."
"Yes," Ont agreed. "So it presents a dilemma. To resolve it, it isnecessary to postulate a Supreme Mind, and to say that all things arejust thoughts in God's Mind. That makes us both the same then and thereis no argument about who is God!"
* * * * *
Harold kicked a lump of moist earth absently.
"It seems to me, Gordon," he said cautiously, "that you are biting theair with your teeth. If there are intelligent beings on Mars they willbe aware of us, and make themselves known. If for no other reason theywill do that to keep us from destroying them."
Gordon stood up and arched his back. He placed the garden trowel andgloves in the hip pocket of his coveralls and tapped his pipe on theheel of his shoe.
"You are assuming," he said, "that such beings can find a way tocommunicate with us. But have you thought of the possibility that iftheir abilities to reason are undetectable to us, by the same token theymight not be aware we are intelligent? A mad bull in a pasture can thinkafter a fashion, but would you try to reason with him? You would run ifhe charged you, and if he caught up with you and mauled you it wouldnever occur to you to say, 'Look here, old boy. Let's talk this thingover first.'"
Both men laughed. Gordon started walking along the row he was standingin, toward the house. Harold kept pace.
"I see your point," he agreed.
"There are so many things we assume unconsciously when we speculate onthe possibilities of intelligent life on Mars," Gordon went on, stoopingover to pull a weed he had missed in his earlier weeding. "Rate ofthinking is most probably a function of the material organism. Someother thinking creature might think faster or slower--perhaps so much sothat we couldn't follow them even if we could tune in on their thoughtsdirectly. Imagine a mind so ponderous that it takes a year for it tothink as much as we do in a minute! Speed wouldn't necessarily have tobe a function of size, either. Something incredibly small might takeages to think a simple thought. Have you ever heard the German talecalled The Three Sleepers, Harold?"
"No, I haven't," Harold replied.
* * * * *
"Well, in a small town in Germany there were three men so fat that theycould barely walk. They spent nearly all their time sleeping. The onlytrouble was that every day or so someone would disturb them by singingor walking by, or some other trivial thing that is always happening in asmall town, no matter how dead it is.
"One time when they were disturbed three days running they got mad anddecided to go to the hills. They looked in the hills until they found anice dry cave. There they relaxed with deep sighs of contentment andwent to sleep. Day after day, week after week, they slept undisturbed.
"Then one day a dog wandered into the cave, saw the three breathingmountains of flesh and heard the din of their deep snoring; and, scaredhalf to death, let out a shrill yip and skedaddled.
"A week later one of the three sleepers stirred, opened his eyesbriefly, and muttered, 'What was that noise?' Then he promptly went backto sleep.
"Ten days later the second sleeper stirred, muttered, 'Damfino,' andwent back to sleep.
"Nearly a month later the third sleeper opened his eyes suddenly, staredat the roof of the cave for a moment, and said, 'I think it was a dog.'Then he went back to sleep. The way the story goes nothing ever camenear the cave again, so they are still there, fast asleep--still fat,too, I suppose."
"I see what you're driving at," Harold said, chuckling over the story."We assume that any intelligent being whatever, if it exists, thinks atthe same RATE we do; but it might not."
"That's right," Gordon admitted. "And there are even more subtleassumptions we make unconsciously. For one, we assume that a thinkingcreature must think in the same way we do. We might not even be able torecognize thinking when we meet it, on another planet. No--" he held uphis hand to silence the question on Harold's lips, "--I don't knowexactly what I mean. I'll put it this way. We have steam engines andgasoline engines. We also have electric motors. Suppose we havesteam-engine thought. How would we recognize electric-motor thinking?
"Or perhaps a little closer to what I'm trying to express, we havearithmetic and algebra. Suppose with our arithmetic minds with noslightest inkling of the existence of a variable, we run into an algebramind? We might mistake it for something far removed from thinking orintelligence. We go on the assumption that anything that doesn't stompup, give a salute, and solemnly announce 'How', is unintelligent."
"It might just be more interested in its own thoughts than in thevisitors from Earth," Harold suggested.
"It might," Gordon said. "Or it might be intensely curious and studyingthe Earthmen very closely with senses other than sight and hearing."
* * * * *
"But," Ont added thoughtfully, "although the conclusion that we are allthoughts in the mind of the Creator is logically unshakeable, it isn'tvery satisfying, from a logical point, because it makes God nothing morethan the compromising of a cute dilemma. It places the Creator in thesame light as the final decision to locate the Capitol of the UnitedStates at Washington."
"Where's that?" Upt asked quickly.
"I don't know," Ont said testily. "That's just something I picked up outof the blue, so to speak. Inspirational thought. For all I know it'sjust a figment of my imagination."
"I've had inspirational thoughts too," Upt said excitedly. "I haven'tspoken of them to you because I was afraid you might think I wasbecoming disorganized in my thoughts."
"I've done a lot of thinking about the inspirational stuff I get now andthen," Ont said matter-of-factly. "If it came all the time I would beinclined to think it was the Voice of the Supreme Being Itself! But itdoesn't come that way."
"Neither does mine," Upt said. "I often think there must be angels thathover over us at times and bless us with their wise thoughts, perhapslooking into us to see if we are 'ready' yet. When I seem to sense thesepowerful thoughts about me I try to feel humble and worshipful. I hopein that way one of them will see fit to reveal himself to me someday."
"They might," Ont said hopefully. "I wouldn't mind actually talking toone of them myself. But speaking of that, we don't know for sure thatthese inspirational thoughts aren't actually our own. They SEEMdifferent, but that may be because they arise in some part of our deepsubconscious thought processes. I've been trying to extend my sense ofawareness in order to reach into my subconscious mind and actually plumbit to its depths. One thing I've found is that most of my REAL thinkinggoes on there, and only rises to the surface of consciousness when it iscompleted! That lends probability to the theory that ALL such voices ofinspiration are merely my own subconscious mind giving me the endproducts of carefully thought out trains of reasoning it had dreamedup."
"I think I'll try that line of development myself," Upt said. "I'd neverthought of it. Maybe inspiration is only subconscious thought rising tothe surface of consciousness. Maybe it is. But if so, I'll be verydisappointed. I'd hoped sometime to be able to commune with someintelligence infinitely superior to mine and really learn the truenature of things."
* * * * *
"I sincerely hope I'm wrong about it," Ont said. "I too would like tobelieve that there is more in reality than just us. I wonder if otherkinds of entities are possible? I mean thinking beings with differentforms, different senses, perhaps different types of thinking. It may bethey exist and we aren't equipped to detect them. They may be around usall the time, aware of us and our puerile thoughts, but so superior tous in every way that they don't think it worth while even to considerour feeble cogitations."
"I wouldn't call YOUR cogitations feeble, Ont," Upt exclaimedadmiringly.
"That is a point of relativity," Ont said, somewhat
flattered. "It doesseem in vain, though. We spend our existence in solving the problems ofreality, and when we have solved them we have no need of the solution.It gives us a feeling of satisfaction to gain the theoretical basis ofreality from our point of view. But I for one would feel much better ifwe could be of service to some entity who is unable to accomplish thathimself, but might be able to comprehend it if we taught him."
"All very noble," Upt said skeptically. "But I can't even imagine
