from The Once and Future King-- the Badger's Tale of Creation
When God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the
serpents and the mammals and even the duck-billed platypus would eventually
emerge, he called the embryos to Him and saw that they were good. The
embryos stood in front of God with their feeble hands clasped politely over
their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down respectfully, and
God addressed them.
He said, "Now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the same,
and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be. When you
will grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to grant you
another gift as well. You may alter any parts of yourselves into anything
which you think would be useful to you in later life. For instance, at the
moment you cannot dig. Anybody who would like to turn his hands into a pair
of spades or garden forks is allowed to do so. Or, to put it another way, at
present you can only use your mouths for eating. Anybody who would like to
use his mouth as an offensive weapon, can change it by asking, and be a
corkindrill or a sabre-toothed tiger. Now then, step up and choose your
tools, but remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to
stick to."
All the embryos thought the matter over politely, and then, one by one,
they stepped up before the eternal throne. They were allowed 2 or 3
specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as flying machines and
their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers, or spoons, while others
selected to use their bodies as boats and their hands as oars. We badgers
thought very hard and decided to ask 3 boons. We wanted to change our skins
for shields, our mouths for weapons, and our arms for garden foks. These
boons were granted. Everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of
us on very queer ones. For instance, one of the desert lizards decided to
swap his whole body for blotting paper, and lots of toads who lived in the
drouthy antipodes decided simply to be a water-bottle. The asking and
granting took up 2 long days - they were the fifth and the sixth, so far as I
remember - and at the very end of the sixth day, just before it was time to
knock off for Sunday, they had got through all the embryos except one. This
embryo was Man.
"Well, Our little Man," said God. "You have waited till the last, and
slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all the
time. What can we do for you?"
"Please God," said the embryo, "I think that You made me in the shape
which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves, and that it should be
rude to change. If I am to have a choice I will stay as I am. I will not
alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior
tools, and I will stay a defenseless embryo all my life, doing my best to
make myself a few feeble implements out of thw wood, iron, and the other
materials which You have seen fit to be put before me. If I want a boat I
will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put
together a chariot to do it for me. Probably I have been very silly refusing
to take advantage of Your kind offer, but I have done my best to think it
over very carefully, and now hope that the feeble decision of this small
innocent will find favor with Yourselves."
"Well done!" exclaimed the creator in delighted tones. "Here, all you
embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our first Man.
He is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you, and We have
great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion over the Fowls of
the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes of the Sea. Now let the
rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock off for
the week-end. As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life,
though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but
all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you
will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows
and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly
hopeful. Run along then, and do your best. And listen, Man, before you go,
God bless you." (
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