BLINDMAN TWO

Those who spend their time in the mind-stuff of the conceptual miss out on the flesh and blood of life, the brute matter, the warm wet guts of the kill. Those who spend their lives thinking of ideas, working through thoughts; perhaps they are philosophers, novelists, artists; these know nothing of what it is to be human, and less of what it is to live. Humans are beasts, hunters, killers; their lives are best spent as warriors and murderers. When a man spends his life in quiet study he may as well never have lived at all, if he never knew what it was like to slaughter a beast or a man. Brute matter, the bloody flesh, entrails, gore--this is the world, these are the things through-and-through human; and humans are vicious monsters. When we work through the things of the intellect we do not know what it is to be alive, to be in the world, to feel crisp cold air in the lungs as we hunt down our prey, to feel the arrow leave the bow, to feel the power of deadly contest. Men are monsters, and are best left to be so. The man who spends his time pushing air through the lungs and making words, vain thoughts marching through his bewildered head--this man never knew what it is to be alive, never knew Life, and certainly cannot know Death. You will no doubt say that the great philosophers, the best novelists put a stamp on the world that will not in a long time fade; while the warrior lives and dies in his work, hardly remembered a decade after. But what in this world is not undone by patient Time?--what on this earth, whether philosophy or novel, is not currently perishing into nothing, or will do so eventually? No--the warrior's work is Real, and the philosopher ponders stars and knows not Truth--both shall eventually fade to naught. But the warrior brushes up against the solid facts of the world, knows their taste and substance; and nothing the philosopher does shall not be taken from him, even from his name once he is gone, in all eventuality. When we crush skulls with hammers, when we send the spear home to rend the heart, when we feel the solid things, the things of matter and flesh; when we taste the blood, when the gore enters all our senses and we are drunk on the ecstasy of the kill--this is when we know Life, when we know Death, when we know ourselves and the nature of the world. But men go on living their lives quietly dreaming vain dreams, thinking vain thoughts, supposing there is wisdom in study--while truly speaking wisdom never stopped a spear short of its goal, or won a deadly contest between killers. And we are killers all--or at least we all ought to be.