The Point of View Read online

listenedwith great interest to my description of the difference in our physicalworlds, especially the variations in our perceptions of form and color.

  "What a field for an artist!" he ejaculated at last. "Unfortunately, itis a field that must remain forever untapped, because even though anartist examined a thousand viewpoints and learned innumerable newcolors, his pigments would continue to impress his audience with thesame old colors each of them had always known." He sighed thoughtfully,and then proceeded. "However, the device is apparently quite safe touse. I shall therefore try it briefly, bringing to the investigation acalm, scientific mind which refuses to be troubled by the trifles thatseem to bother you."

  He donned the attitudinizor, and I must confess that he stood the shockof the first trial somewhat better than I did. After a surprised "Oof!"he settled down to a complacent analysis of my point of view, while Isat somewhat self-consciously under his calm appraisal. Calm, that is,for about three minutes.

  Suddenly he leaped to his feet, tearing the device from a face whosenormal ruddiness had deepened to a choleric angry color. "Get out!" heroared. "So _that's_ the way van Manderpootz looks to you! Moron! Idiot!Imbecile! Get out!"

  * * * * *

  It was a week or ten days later that I happened to be passing theUniversity on my way from somewhere to somewhere else, and I fell towondering whether the professor had yet forgiven me. There was a lightin the window of his laboratory over in the Physics Building, so Idropped in, making my way past the desk where Carter labored, and thecorner where Miss Fitch sat in dull primness at her endless task oftranscribing lecture notes.

  Van Manderpootz greeted me cordially enough, but with a curiousassumption of melancholy in his manner. "Ah, Dixon," he began, "I amglad to see you. Since our last meeting, I have learned much of thestupidity of the world, and it appears to me now that you are actuallyone of the more intelligent contemporary minds."

  This from van Manderpootz! "Why--thank you," I said.

  "It is true. For some days I have sat at the window overlooking thestreet there, and have observed the viewpoints of the passers-by. Wouldyou believe"--his voice lowered--"would you believe that only seven andfour-tenths percent are even aware of the _existence_ of vanManderpootz? And doubtless many of the few that are, come from among thestudents in the neighborhood. I knew that the average level ofintelligence was low, but it had not occurred to me that it was as lowas that."

  "After all," I said consolingly, "you must remember that theachievements of van Manderpootz are such as to attract the attention ofthe intelligent few rather than of the many."

  "A very silly paradox!" he snapped. "On the basis of that theory, sincethe higher one goes in the scale of intelligence, the fewer individualsone finds, the greatest achievement of all is one that _nobody_ hasheard of. By that test you would be greater than van Manderpootz, anobvious _reductio ad absurdum_."

  He glared his reproof that I should even have thought of the point, thensomething in the outer laboratory caught his ever-observant eye.

  "Carter!" he roared. "Is that a synobasical interphasometer in thepositronic flow? Fool! What sort of measurements do you expect to makewhen your measuring instrument itself is part of the experiment? Take itout and start over!"

  He rushed away toward the unfortunate technician. I settled idly back inmy chair and stared about the small laboratory, whose walls had seen somany marvels. The latest, the attitudinizor, lay carelessly on thetable, dropped there by the professor after his analysis of the massviewpoint of the pedestrians in the street below.

  I picked up the device and fell to examining its construction. Of coursethis was utterly beyond me, for no ordinary engineer can hope to graspthe intricacies of a van Manderpootz concept. So, after a puzzled butadmiring survey of its infinitely delicate wires and grids and lenses, Imade the obvious move. I put it on.

  My first thought was the street, but since the evening was well along,the walk below the window was deserted. Back in my chair again, I satmusing idly when a faint sound that was not the rumbling of theprofessor's voice attracted my attention. I identified it shortly as thebuzzing of a heavy fly, butting its head stupidly against the pane ofglass that separated the small laboratory from the large room beyond. Iwondered casually what the viewpoint of a fly was like, and ended byflashing the light on the creature.

  For some moments I saw nothing other than I had been seeing right alongfrom my own personal point of view, because, as van Manderpootzexplained later, the psychons from the miserable brain of a fly are toofew to produce any but the vaguest of impressions. But gradually Ibecame aware of a picture, a queer and indescribable scene.

  Flies are color-blind. That was my first impression, for the world was adull panorama of greys and whites and blacks. Flies are extremelynearsighted; when I had finally identified the scene as the interior ofthe familiar room, I discovered that it seemed enormous to the insect,whose vision did not extend more than six feet, though it did take inalmost a complete sphere, so that the creature could see practically inall directions at once. But perhaps the most astonishing thing, though Idid not think of it until later, was that the compound eye of theinsect, did not convey to it the impression of a vast number of separatepictures, such as the eye produces when a microphotograph is takenthrough it. The fly sees one picture just as we do; in the same way asour brain rights the upside-down image cast on our retina, the fly'sbrain reduces the compound image to one. And beyond these impressionswere a wild hodge-podge of smell-sensations, and a strange desire toburst through the invisible glass barrier into the brighter lightbeyond. But I had no time to analyze these sensations, for suddenlythere was a flash of something infinitely clearer than the dimcerebrations of a fly.

  For half a minute or longer I was unable to guess what that momentaryflash had been. I knew that I had seen something incredibly lovely, thatI had tapped a viewpoint that looked upon something whose very presencecaused ecstasy, but whose viewpoint it was, or what that flicker ofbeauty had been, were questions beyond my ability to answer.

  I slipped off the attitudinizor and sat staring perplexedly at thebuzzing fly on the pane of glass. Out in the other room van Manderpootzcontinued his harangue to the repentant Carter, and off in a cornerinvisible from my position I could hear the rustle of papers as MissFitch transcribed endless notes. I puzzled vainly over the problem ofwhat had happened, and then the solution dawned on me.

  The fly must have buzzed between me and one of the occupants of theouter laboratory. I had been following its flight with the faintlyvisible beam of the attitudinizor's light, and that beam must haveflickered momentarily on the head of one of the three beyond the glass.But which? Van Manderpootz himself? It must have been either theprofessor or Carter, since the secretary was quite beyond range of thelight.

  It seemed improbable that the cold and brilliant mind of van Manderpootzcould be the agency of the sort of emotional ecstasy I had sensed. Itmust therefore, have been the head of the mild and inoffensive littleCarter that the beam had tapped. With a feeling of curiosity I slippedthe device back on my own head and sent the beam sweeping dimly into thelarger room.

  It did not at the time occur to me that such a procedure was quite asdiscreditable as eavesdropping, or even more dishonorable, if you comeright down to it, because it meant the theft of far more personalinformation than one could ever convey by the spoken word. But all Iconsidered at the moment was my own curiosity; I wanted to learn whatsort of viewpoint could produce that strange, instantaneous flash ofbeauty. If the proceeding was unethical--well, Heaven knows I waspunished for it.

  So I turned the attitudinizor on Carter. At the moment, he was listeningrespectfully to van Manderpootz, and I sensed clearly his respect forthe great man, a respect that had in it a distinct element of fear. Icould hear Carter's impression of the booming voice of the professor,sounding somewhat like the modulated thunder of a god, which was not farfrom the little man's actual opinion of his master. I perceived Carter'sopinion of himself
, and his self-picture was an even more mouselikeportrayal than my own impression of him. When, for an instant, heglanced my way, I sensed his impression of me, and while I'm sure thatDixon Wells is not the imbecile he appears to van Manderpootz, I'mequally sure that he's not the debonair man of the world he seemed toCarter. All in all, Carter's point of view seemed that of a timid,inoffensive, retiring, servile little man, and I wondered all the morewhat could have caused that vanished flash of beauty in a mind like his.

  There was no trace of it now. His attention was completely taken up bythe voice of van Manderpootz, who had passed from a personal appraisalof Carter's stupidity to a general lecture on the fallacies of theunified field theory as presented by his rivals Corveille and Shrimski.Carter was listening with an almost worshipful regard, and I could feelhis surges of