The Judgment of the Birds

Abstract

IS A COMMONPLACE OF ALL RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and live for a time in the wilderness. If he is of the proper sort, he will return with a message. It may not be a message from the god he set out to seek, but even if he has failed in that particular, he will have had a vision or seen a marvel and these are always worth listening to and thinking about. The world, I have come to believe, is a very queer place, but we have been part of this queerness for so long that we tend to take it for granted. We rush to and fro like mad hatters upon our peculiar errands, all the time imagining our surroundings to be dull and ourselves quite ordinary creatures. Actually, there is nothing in the world to encourage this idea, but such is the mind of man, and this is why he finds it necessary from time to time to send emissaries into the wilderness in the hope of learning of great events or plans in store for him that will resuscitate his waning taste for life. His vast news services, his world-wide radio network, he knows with a last remnant of healthy distrust, will be of no use to him in this matter. No miracle can withstand a radio broadcast, and it is certain that it would be no miracle if it could. One must seek, then, what only the solitary approach can give a natural revelation. Let it be understood at the outset that I am not the sort of man