80

BLACKTHORN

The price of existence is eternal warfare.³⁹

Speaking as an Irishman, I prefer to say: The price of eternal warfare is existence.

And melancholy as existence is, the price is well worth paying.

Is there a Government? Then I'm agin it! To Hell with the bloody English!

"O FRATER PERDURABO, how unworthy are these sentiments!"

"D'ye want a clip on the jaw?"⁴⁰

COMMENTARY (Π)

Frater P. continues the subject of Chapter 79.

He pictures himself as a vigorous, reckless, almost rowdy Irishman. He is no thin-lipped prude, to seek salvation in unmanly self-abnegation; no Creeping Jesus, to slink through existence to the tune of the Dead March in Saul; no Cremerian Callus to warehouse his semen in his cerebellum.

"New Thoughtist" is only Old Eunuch writ small.

Paragraph 2 gives the very struggle for life, which disheartens modern thinkers, as a good enough reason for existence.

Paragraph 5 expresses the sorrow of the modern thinker, and paragraph 6 Frater P.'s suggestion for replying to such critics.

NOTES

(39) ISVD, the foundation scil. of the universe = 80 = P, the letter of Mars.

(40) P also means "a mouth".