Grendel by John Gardner
You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existant by which they learn to define themselves. The exile, captivity, death they shrink from-- the blunt facts of their mortality, their abandonment-- thats what you make them recognize, embrace! You ARE mankind, or man's condidtion: inseparable as the mountain-climber and the mountain. If you withdraw, you will be instantly replaced. Brute existants, you know, are a dime a dozen. No sentimentall trash, then. If man's the irrelevance that interests you, stick with him! scare him to glory! It's all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen.
I was sure he was lying. Or anyway half-sure. Flattering me into tormenting them because he, in his sullen hold, loved viciousness. I said, "let them find some other 'brute existent,' whatever that is. I refuse."
"Do!" He said leering scornfully. "Do something else, by all means! alter the future! make the world a better place in which to live! Help the poor! Feed the hungry. Be kind to idiots! What a challenge!"
I was sure he was lying. Or anyway half-sure. Flattering me into tormenting them because he, in his sullen hold, loved viciousness. I said, "let them find some other 'brute existent,' whatever that is. I refuse."
"Do!" He said leering scornfully. "Do something else, by all means! alter the future! make the world a better place in which to live! Help the poor! Feed the hungry. Be kind to idiots! What a challenge!"