The opportunity
John Stewart Collis
John Balfour, aged 22, after two years employment at an estate agent in the town of Westforth, received notice that his services were no longer required. In short, he was declared redundant.
Redundant. There's a word for you, thought Balfour. What's it really mean? He looked it up in the dictionary, and was struck with the word superfluous'. Thats not me, he considered, I'm not superfluous. But he was 'unemployed'. Another word to conjure with. What did it mean? That he was not working, or 'out of work'. He decided to look up 'work' also in the dictionary and see what it meant exactly, and he was interested in the opening definitions — 'Application of effort to a purpose, force in action, doing something . . . Am I incapable of doing something? He asked himself. No; that's not me either.
But he was now reckoned as 'one of the unemployed', a condition that was still regarded with a certain disdain not unmingled with pity. However, John Balfour was not in the least put out by this. He was in the highest spirits. He saw a great opportunity opening before him. If he was regarded as a sad object by society, that was not the attitude of the State. Far from frowning on his situation the State encouraged and even promoted it and paid him quite a handsome fee for not being employed. As an unmarried man he regarded himself as well off: in fact he had attained the status of a man of leisure. Here was his opportunity. He had not done well at school, for he was not clever in the appropriate manner. Schooling had seemed to him a curious business. A man, called a schoolmaster, got hold of a pump, fixed it to his head, and pumped all sorts of facts into it — most of which were left to rot there, since they were not correlated. At one stage he had wanted to ask questions about things he wished to know, but he found that he was required to answer questions about things he did not want to know. He had heard of an eccentric Russian teacher of children, called Tolstoy, who had approved of a remark given by a mother, in a Russian comedy, complaining about the geography lessons — 'Why teach my son all the countries, the coachman will drive him where he may have to go?' Yes indeed, Tolstoy had declared, that was well said: 'What need was there for me to know where the river and town of Barcelona are situated, when for 23 years I have not once had occasion to use that knowledge? John Balfour took the point; but such nonsense was soon knocked out of him and he had surrendered to the pumping system without protest, and had left school with some information but no comprehension of Knowledge.
Now came his opportunity: for he was not fundamentally a stupid man. He was aware that there was such an activity as real solid reading, that there was such a person as a reader, an artist in reading. The conditions at home with his parents, and a brother and sister, made privacy impossi ble, and he had put no effort into a serious attempt to read properly. Since in recent years illiteracy had made such rapid strides, his parents' house had no books (nor even any bookshelves) — for it was understood that radio and television could painlessly take their place.
Balfour could now put this matter right, and try himself out. Westforth was one of the ugliest towns in England, but it happened to possess a remarkably good library: that is to say it had that one little bit of actual communism which is only to be found outside the communistic regimes.
John Balfour entered the library. He was at first confronted with a room devoted to newspapers, weeklies and magazines, and to the depressing sight of listless men turning over the pages in a kind of stupor. But adjacent to this room was another which was devoted to books. From a shelf marked Literature he took down a volume. By good chance (for luck favours the brave) it was a book by Quiller-Couch on various writers. He read a chapter on Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. He asked the librarian if that novel was on the shelves, and after he had filled in the necessary form for bookvouchers, he was given it. The room was quite spacious, and he found a chair in a corner where he could read in perfect peace. The story gripped him at once, and he read on with growing excitement until the library was due to close — which seemed to come terribly soon, for time had passed so quickly. He took the book home with him without much intention of reading it there. Next day, and every day, he resumed his place in the same seat in the library. He revelled in Jude, he suffered with Jude. What a tragedy! But like all true tragedy its effect was exhilarating. Jude had failed — but he would not fail.
After this he read more books by Hardy, then Dickens, then Charlotte Bronte — evidently there was no end to this delirous joy. He had made the discovery which comes to all who choose to educate themselves — that one thing leads to another, one book to another, one subject to another. He found himself launched into the classics.
The weeks passed as he sat entranced, while he gave himself up to this new experience. He had not only discovered literature, he had discovered in himself the faculty of imagination, and that imagination was a tool, it was a key with which he could open doors, and he found that books were doors leading into realms of excitement and beauty and alarm which he could make his own. It soon occurred to him that literature was not confined to story-telling. How about History? That should not be beyond him. He found H. G. Wells's History of the World (not the large Outline) and saw that it was the very thing he needed, a bird's-eye view of the whole. He decided to read one chapter a day.
He looked across, rather apprehensively, at the shelves marked Science, and, under A, took down a book an Archaeology. Heavens! — here were magicians in another guise: men who dug into the earth to ex cavate artefacts by which they could reconstruct cities lost in the jungle or buried in the desert; or, peering into dungeoned caverns came upon relics of forgotten kings. He looked under the head of Astrophysics, and found ministers of another mystery, kings of infinite space who could interpret the radiations from the stars as if reading in a book! He looked up Geology and found the savants saying that fields are fallen mountains and mountains the seeds of future continents. He looked up Physics and was told that everything was chiefly composed of holes. Steady! he said to himself. Keep calm. Sort these things out quietly bit by bit. I have time in hand. Never need I use the word `pastime' again, no thought of 'passing the time,' I can never have enough of it to grasp these things which are as fantastic as any of the fantasies, as fabulous as the fables.
The Public Library of Westforth became the locus of a strange phenomenon. Throughout the day people came in and out; few stayed for long; many were stupefied in the torpor of a despairing lassitude. But in his corner sat John Balfour, quietly, with intense concentration, pursuing his way. He was 'gainfully employed' — in the use of that instrument which separates mankind from the animals, that birthright which if wrongfuly used makes him lower than any of the creatures, if rightly raises him high above them. All unknowing, he was a model of that profound philosophy which holds that it is Spirit that creates our condition; it is Spirit that overcomes the world.
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