Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

PAN'S PIPES
the threat that runs through all the winning music
of the world, to hold back the hand from the rose
because of the thorn, and from life because of death :
this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable
citizens who flee life's pleasures and responsibilities,
and keep, with upright hat, upon the midway of
custom, avoiding the right hand and the left, the
ecstasies and the agonies, how surprised they would
be if they could hear their attitude mythologically
expressed, and knew themselves as tooth -chattering
ones, who flee from Nature because they fear the
hand of Nature's God ! Shrilly sound Pan's pipes ;
and behold the banker instantly concealed in the
bank parlour ! For to distrust one's impulses is to
be recreant to Pan.
There are moments when the mind refuses to be
satisfied with evolution, and demands a ruddier pre-
sentation of the sum of man's experience. Some-
times the mood is brought about by laughter at the
humorous side of life, as when, abstracting ourselves
from earth, we imagine people plodding on foot, or
seated in ships and speedy trains, with the planet all
the while whirling in the opposite direction, so that,
for all their hurry, they travel back-foremost through
the universe of space. Sometimes it comes by the
spirit of delight, and sometimes by the spirit of
terror. At least, there will always be hours when
we refuse to be put ofl* by the feint of explanation,
nicknamed science ; and demand instead some pal-
pitating image of our estate, that shall represent the
troubled and uncertain element in which we dwell,