Perelandra

Memory passes through the womb and hovers in the air. The Muse is a real thing. A faint breath, as Virgil says, reaches even the late generations. Our mythology is based on a solider reality than we dream: but it is also at an almost infinite distance from that base. And when they told him this, Ransom at last understood why mythology was what it was—gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of filth and imbecility. His cheeks burned on behalf of our race when he looked on the true Mars and Venus and remembered the follies that have been talked of them on Earth. Then a doubt struck him. “But do I see you as you really are?” he asked. “Only Maleldil sees any creature as it really is,” said Mars. “How do you see one another?” asked Ransom. “There are no holding places in your mind for an answer to that.” “Am I then seeing only an appearance? Is it not real at all?” “You see only an appearance, small one. You have never seen more than an appearance of anything—not of Arbol, nor of a stone, nor of your own body. This appearance is as true as what you see of those.” “But . . . there were those other appearances.” “No. There was only the failure of appearance.” “I don’t understand,” said Ransom. “Were all those other things—the wheels and the eyes—more real than this or less?” “There is no meaning in your question,” said Mars. “You can see a stone, if it is a fit distance from you and if you and it are moving at speeds not too different. But if one throws the stone at your eye, what then is the appearance?” “I should feel pain and perhaps see splintered light,” said Ransom. “But I don’t know that I should call that an appearance of the stone.” “Yet it would be the true operation of the stone. And there is your question answered. We are now at the right distance from you.” “And were you nearer in what I first saw?” “I do not mean that kind of distance.” “And then,” said Ransom, still pondering, “there is what I had thought was your wonted appearance—the very faint light, Oyarsa, as I used to see it in your own world. What of that?”