e candle against a great wind. Soon, soon the candle is blown
out: and the immense Perhaps rolls its waters above our heads.

The aboriginal malice against which the Gods struggle is never
overcome. But who can resist asking the question--supposing that
drama once ended, that eternal duality once reconciled, would
annihilation be the last word or would something else, something
undreamed of, something unguessed at, something "impossible,"
irrational, contrary to every philosophy that has ever sprung from
the human brain, take the place of what we call life and substitute
some new organ of research for the vision which we have called
complex?

Who can say? The world is still young and the immortal Gods are
still young; and our business at present is with life rather than
beyond-life. Confused and difficult are the ways of our mortality;
and after much philosophizing we seem to be only more conscious
than ever that the secret of the world is in something else than
wisdom.

The secret of the world is not in something that one can hold in
one's hand, or about which one can say "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!"
The secret of the world is in the whole spectacle of the world, seen
under the emotion of one single moment. But the memory of such
a moment may be diffused over all the chances and accidents of
our life and may be restored to us in a thousand faint and shadowy
intimations. It may be restored to us in broken glimpses, in little
stirrings and ripples on the face of the water, in rumours and
whispers among the margin-reeds, in sighings of the wind across
the sea-bank. It may be restored to us in sudden flickerings of
unearthly light thrown upon common and familiar things. It may
be restored to us when the shadow of death falls upon the path we
have to follow. It may be restored to us when the common ritual
and the ordinary usages of life gather to themselves a sudden
dignity from the presence of great joy or of tragic grief. For the
stream of life flows deeper than any among us realize or know;
deeper, and with more tragic import; deeper, and with more secret
hope. We are all born, even the most lucky among us, under a
disastrous eclipse. We all contain something of that perilous
ingredient which belongs to the unplumbed depths. Deep calls
unto deep within us; and in the circle of our mortal personality an
immortal drama unrolls itself. Waves of unredeemed chaos roll
upward from the abysses of our souls, and like a brack