
purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. It must have been
thousands of years since her race had died, mystically: that is, since the
relation between the senses and the outspoken mind had broken, leaving the
experience all in one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years ago, that
which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these Africans: the
goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation and productive happiness must
have lapsed, leaving the single impulse for knowledge in one sort, mindless
progressive knowledge through the senses, knowledge arrested and ending in the
senses, mystic knowledge in disintegration and dissolution, knowledge such as
the beetles have, which live purely within the world of corruption and cold
dissolution. This was why her face looked like a beetle's: this was why the
Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the principle of
knowledge in dissolution and corruption.
    There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: after that point
when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold
like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with life and hope, we lapse
from pure integral being, from creation and liberty, and we fall into the long,
long African process of purely sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery
of dissolution.
    He realised now that this is a long process - thousands of years it takes,
after the death of the creative spirit. He realised that there were great
mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful mysteries, far beyond the
phallic cult. How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans gone
beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin recalled again the female
figure: the elongated, long, long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks,
the long, imprisoned neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle's. This was
far beyond any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond the scope
of phallic investigation.
    There remained this way, this awful African process, to be fulfilled. It
would be done differently by the white races. The white races, having the Arctic
north behind them, the vast abstraction of ice and snow, would fulfil a mystery
of ice-destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas the West
Africans, controlled by the burning death-abstraction of the Sahara, had been
fulfilled in sun-destruction, the putrescent mystery of sun-rays.
    Was this then all that remained? Was there left now nothing but to break off
from the happy creative being, was the time up? Is
