too noble to survive; for Germany and America
are baser than she. Hark, Hark to Niagara! Force, at all costs! Do you
hear it? Do you see it? I can see it, though it is dark. It is a river
of mouths and teeth, of greedy outstretched hands, of mirthless
laughter, of tears and of blood. I am there, you are there; we are
hurrying over the fall; we are going up in spray."

"Yes," I cried as one cries in a nightmare, "and in that spray hangs the
rainbow."

He caught at the phrase. "It is true. The rainbow hangs in the spray! It
is the type of the Ideal, hanging always above the Actual, never in it,
never controlling it. We poets make the rainbow; we do not shape the
world."

"We do not make the rainbow," I said. "The sun makes it, shining against
it. What is the sun?"

"The sun is the Platonic Good; it lights the world, but does not warm
it. By its illumination we see the river in which we are involved; see
and judge, and condemn, and are swept away. That we can condemn is our
greatness; by that we are children of the sun. But our vision is never
fruitful. The sun cannot breed out of matter; no, not even maggots by
kissing carrion. Between Force and Light, Matter and Good, there is no
interchange. Good is not a cause, it is only an idea."

"To illuminate," I said, "is to transform."

"No! it is only to reveal! Light dances on the surface; but not the
tiniest wave was ever dimpled or crisped by its rays. Matter alone moves
matter; and the world is matter. Best not cry, best not even blaspheme.
Pass over the fall in silence. Perhaps, at the bottom, there is
oblivion. It is the best we can hope, we who see."

And he was gone! Had there been anyone? Was there a real voice? I do not
know. Perhaps it was only the roar of Niagara. When I returned to the
hotel, I heard that this very afternoon, while I was sunning myself on
one of the islands, a woman had thrown herself into the rapids and been
swept over the fall. Niagara took her, as it takes a stick or a stone.
Soon it will take the civilisation of America, as it has taken that of
the Indians. Centuries will pass, millenniums will pass, mankind will
have come and gone, and still the river will flow and the sun shine, and
they will communicate to one another their stern immortal joy, in which
there is no part for ephemeral men.

IV

"THE MODERN PULPIT"

It is a bright July morning. As I sit in the garden I look out, over a
tangle of wild roses, to a calm sea a