The Elementary Particles Read Online Free PDF Page A

what he already knew: that perfect morality is unique and universal. Nothing is added to it and nothing changes over the course of time. It is not dependent on history, economics, sociology or culture; it is not dependent on anything. Not determined, it determines; not conditioned, it conditions. It is, in other words, absolute.
    Everyday morality is always a blend, variously proportioned, of perfect morality and other more ambiguous ideas, for the most part religious. The greater the proportion of pure morality in a particular system, the happier and more enduring the society. Ultimately, a society governed by the pure principles of universal morality could last until the end of the world.
    Michel liked all of the heroes in
Pif,
but his favorite was Black Wolf, the Lone Indian. He was a synthesis of the noblest qualities of the Apache, the Sioux and the Cheyenne. Black Wolf roamed the prairies ceaselessly with his horse Chinook and his wolf Toopee, instinctively coming to the aid of the weak. Black Wolf continually commented on the transcendent ethic which underpinned his actions. Often, he referred to poetic proverbs from the Lakota and the Cree; sometimes, more prosaically, to the “law of the prairie.” Years later, Michel still considered him Kant’s ideal hero: always acting “as if he were by his maxims a legitimating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” Some episodes—like “The Leather Bracelet,” in which the extraordinary character of the old Cheyenne chief searches for the stars—broke free of the straitjacket of the “adventure story” for a world that was more poetic, more moral.
    He was less interested in television. Every week, however, his heart in his mouth, he watched
The Animal Kingdom
. Graceful animals like gazelles and antelopes spent their days in abject terror while lions and panthers lived out their lives in listless imbecility punctuated by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughtered weaker animals, dismembered and devoured the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity was that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites were hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn were a breeding ground for viruses. Snakes moved among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. The pompous, half-witted voice of Claude Darget, filled with awe and unjustifiable admiration, narrated these atrocities. Michel trembled with indignation. But as he watched, the unshakable conviction grew that nature, taken as a whole, was a repulsive cesspit. All in all, nature deserved to be wiped out in a holocaust—and man’s mission on earth was probably to do just that.
    In April 1970
Pif
gave away a free gift which was to become famous: Sea Monkeys. Each copy came with a sachet of
poudre de vie
—the eggs of a tiny marine crustacean,
Artemia salina,
which had spent thousands of years in suspended animation. The process of bringing them back to life was complicated: water had to be allowed to settle for three days, then warmed. Only then was the powder added and the water stirred gently. In the days that followed, the bowl had to be kept near a source of light; warm water had to be added regularly to compensate for evaporation and the water stirred to keep it oxygenated. Some weeks later, the bowl was swarming with a multitude of translucent crustaceans, indisputably alive if faintly revolting. Not knowing what to do with them, Michel ended up tipping them into the river Morin.
    The complete adventure story in the same issue concerned the boyhood of Rahan, and told how he had come to his vocation as a lone hero in Palaeolithic Europe. When still a child, he had seen his tribe wiped out by an erupting volcano. As he knelt by his dying father, Crâo the Wise, the old man gave him a necklace of three hawk’s talons. Each talon symbolized one of the qualities of “those who walked