it is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back,
what it was that happened.

The way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one.

A man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is
running to save his life.

A man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, or
two million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or
running to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a city
or a nation.

This is Conversion--entering into the World's Womb, the world's vision
or expectation and being born again.

* * * * *

It is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of
the flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have
seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard
the dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children.

And I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasons
dancing before the Lord.

And I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that the
people I see about me have not one of them been left out.

I believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. I
believe in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, and
turning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel.

And I believe in focusing men upon men.

I believe in Conversion.

Of course it would all be different--focusing men upon men, if men were
cogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones.

I stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and
whalebone inside.

But what of it?

It does not get true.

While I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man,
it gets true.

What is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actual
mechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. A
look colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissues
in his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new face
upon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become,
as it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen a
great country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look I
have been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man who
was not there before.

Such things have happened.

Beatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing.

A man