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¶ "The great city is the center of the Flight ... It is built like a fortress against the heavens . . . The houses stick to the ground by means of asphalt lest they should sink into the earth when the heavens thrust against them. From roof to roof the wires stretch like barbed-wire entanglements. Now the streets are mere crevasses between the houses, emergency exits for those who flee. But in many places they are broad. These are the ways of advance prepared for the attack against the heavens. And the factory chimneys are like the barrels of guns . . ."
¶ "Only this endures in the Flight: discussion. Discussion is prior to whatever is being discussed. It is the mechanism of the Flight. Within it everything can make a sudden appearance, everything is reduced by it to a dead level. When something is lost in the discussion, one fails to notice it . . ."
Is there any hope for the men of the Flight? Picard has no answer, except his own faith. Concluding, he tries to express for his century what Francis Thompson said for the 19th, George Herbert and John Donne for the 17th, and the Psalmist centuries before.* Writes Max Picard: "Whithersoever they may flee, there is God . . . Ever more desperately they flee, but God is already in every place, waiting for them to come."
* "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me." —Psalms 139: 7-10.