115
SCHOOL, OR LESSON OF THE GODS
posium is not to work out any canons but to accelerate thought, which sub-
sequently will determine the truth or come close to it.”
A young man walked up to the second little table and announced the be-
ginning of the report. The boy began to speak.
He spoke confidently and enthusiastically for twenty-five or thirty
minutes. His speech seemed to me total childish fantasy. A fantasy not
based on any scientific theories or even the elementary knowledge of a high
school astronomy course. The boy said approximately the following.
“If you look at the sky at night, there are a whole lot of stars shining
there. There are different kinds of stars. There are very little stars and bigger
ones. But the very little stars can be big, too. We only think they’re little at
first. But they are very big. Because when an airplane flies high up, it’s little,
but when we go up to it on the ground, it looks big, and lots of people can fit
inside it. Each star could fit a lot of people. Only there aren’t any people on
stars right now. But they shine at night. The big ones shine and so do the
little ones. They shine so that we will look at them and think about them.
The stars want us to do everything as well on them as on Earth. They envy
the Earth a little. They want the same kinds of berries and trees to grow on
them as we have and to have the same kind of streams and little fish. The
stars are waiting for us, and each is trying to shine so that we notice it. But
we still can’t fly to them because we have a lot to do at home. But when
we’ve finished up everything at home and everywhere and things are fine all
over the Earth, we’ll fly to the stars. Only we won’t fly on a plane or rocket,
because it takes a long time to fly on a plane, and it’s long and boring on a
rocket. Also, not everyone will fit on a plane or rocket, and rockets won’t
hold all kinds of freight. And trees won’t fit, or a stream. When we’ve made
everything all over the Earth good, we, the whole Earth, will fly to the first
star. A few other stars will want to fly to Earth themselves and press up to it.
They’ve already sent us little bits, and their little bits have pressed up to the
Earth. At first, people thought these were comets, but these are bits of stars
that wanted very much to press up to the beautiful Earth. They were sent by
the stars that are waiting for us. We can fly up to a distant star as the whole
Earth, and whoever wants to can stay on the star, so that it would be hand-
