The Resurrection of Adam

Extract

The popular game of archaeology is played with bucket and spade. Some things are dug up, and others are buried away out of sight. It is an easy game, for the exhumations and interments proceed simultaneously. The rubbish removed from one spot has to be tipped somewhere else; so that a hole and a mound are engineered in a single process. While you are discovering new wonders in the hole, you are covering up old wonders under the mound. In the hole you find Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros merckii, Ran gif er tarandus, Ursus spelaeus and other worthies, whose names and dignified bearing invite you to give them a place in or near the middle line of your genealogical tree. Under the mound you bury Parentes protoflasti, Pomum noxiale, Proditor multiformis, Opus salutis, Virgo mater, Agmina coelitum, Apostolorum chorus, Prophetarum numerus, Martyrum exercitus, Sumtna Trias, Verbum incarnatum, Salutaris hostia and every other legendary name that has hitherto made your ancestral stock a laughing stock.

Being only a game, archaeology cannot be expected to lead to any profitable end, or to arrive at any natural conclusion. If art is long, sport is longer. The only way of getting to the end of it is to call ‘Time.’ And even time cannot end sport; it merely marks an interval, after which every game begins again. The only end of sport is recreation. A really good game wrecks creation over and over again; and over and over again re-creates creation.