with other nebula re-form into
a fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why. My wife
wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she can't
explain what the human mind is. My father-in-law thinks that it is God's
hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is. Nollie is silent. And
Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks. What do you think,
monsieur?" The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high,
veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in
French, which Fort followed with difficulty.

"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time
and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--always
trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing. For me this
world, and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and
trees--little separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little
lives run their course, and are spilled or powdered back into this
Creative Artist, whence issue ever fresh attempts at art. I agree with
Monsieur Laird, if I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame
Laird, if I understand her. You see, I think mind and matter are one, or
perhaps there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth
and decay and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious
growth--an artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms;
decay and death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing
of the tide, which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night
which comes between two days. But the next day is never the same as the
day before, nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the
world and of ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist,
are never renewed in the same form, are never twice alike, but always
fresh-fresh worlds, fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.
I do not see anything depressing in that. To me it would be depressing
to think that I would go on living after death, or live again in a new
body, myself yet not myself. How stale that would be! When I finish a
picture it is inconceivable to me that this picture should ever
become another picture, or that one can divide the expression from
the mind-stuff it has expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of
Everything, is ever in fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a
fountain who throws up new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back
into the