“Where, then, does the movement go to when the staff ceases to swing,” asked the king.
“It goes to the finer particles of the air, and passes on and on. There is an endless chain. It is as if there were numberless staffs, larger and smaller, and when one falls it either raises itself or passes on its rising to another or to others. There is an endless chain of movement to and fro, and as one ceases another comes. But, O king, I wish to take thee behind this long chain and to place thee where thou mayest not say, I will do this or that; but where thou canst say, This whole chain of movement shall be or shall not. For as thou regardest this staff swinging thou seest that it moves as much up as it does down, as much to right as to left. And if the movements which it goes through came together it would be at rest. Its motion is but stillness separated into equal and opposite motions. And in what thou callest rest there are vast movements. It shall be thine, O king, to strike nothingness asunder and make things be. Nay, O king, I have not given thee these beings in the valley for thee to move by outward deeds, but I have given them to thee such that thou canst strike their apathy asunder and let them live. And know, O king, that even as those beings are whom thou hast found, so are all things in the valley down to the smallest. The smallest particle there is in the valley lies, unless it were for me, without motion. Each particle has the power of feeling pain and of feeling pleasure, but by the law of the valley these are equal. Hence of itself no particle moves. But I make it move, and all things in the valley sooner or later move back to whence they came. The streams which gather far off in the valley I lead along to where they fall into the depths between us. There they shiver themselves into the smallest fragments, and each fragment I cause to return whence it first came. And, O king, in all this movement, since it ends where it began, there is no more pleasure than pain. It is but the apathy of rest broken asunder. But the particles will not go through this round of themselves. I bear the pain to make them go through, each one the round I appoint it.”
“How then,” exclaimed the king, thinking of the pain he had felt in directing the movements of the children, “canst thou bear all this pain?”