descends to you? Would you be a
potter's vessel to contain the murky floods of the lowlands--when you
may become an alabaster bowl held to the source of all purity and power?

Do you know that a woman with a dream in her eyes may hold forth her
arms and command heaven as no man, as no mere artist, can do? Do you
know that her arms shall be filled with glory, according to her dream?

Did I say that you must go into the wilderness alone?... There is one to
add his call to yours. There is the other half of your circle. He seldom
comes first. Pan comes first to test you. By the very spirit that gives
you the different love of Nature, you shall know your Lord when he
comes. He is searching, too. Perhaps you shall know him by the Quest in
his eyes. He, too, is looking for the white presences.... You must know
the world--so that you may not be bewildered. You must not be caught in
the brown study of Pan.

This earthy one is very subtle. He will try to take you first. He will
try to rub the dreaming and the Quest from your eyes. He will stand
between you and the white presences yonder in the hills. Sometimes he is
very near to those who try to be simple. There are many who call him a
God still. You must never forget that bad curve of him below the
shoulders. Forever, the artists lying to themselves have tried to cover
that bad curve of Pan as it sweeps down into the haunches of a goat. Pan
is the first devil you meet when you reach that rectitude of heart which
dares to be mother of souls.

Whole races of artists have lied about Pan, because they listened to the
haunting music of his pipes. It calls sweetly, but does not satisfy. How
many Pan has called and left them sitting among the rocks with mindless
eyes and hands that fiddle with emptiness!... Pan is so sad and
level-eyed. He does not explain. He does not promise--too wise for that.
He lures and enchants. He makes you pity him with a pity that is red as
the lusts of the flesh.

You may come to know that red in the breast. It is the red that drives
away the dream of peace.... Yet the pity of him deludes you. You look
again and again, and the curve of his back does not break the dream as
before. You think that because you pity him, you cannot fall; and all
the pull of the ground tells you that your _very thought of falling_ is
a breath from the old shames--your dead, but as yet unburied heritage,
from generations that learned the lie to self.

You touch the hair of t