.

"And," said I, at a loss what to say, "are there no such things
possible?"

"All things are possible to the imagination."

"To create?"

"Most certainly! Is not creation the act of bringing into existence? and
does not your Hamlet exist as immortally as your Shakspeare? The only
true existence, is it not that of the Idea? Have you not seen the pines
transfigured?"

"And if I imagined a race of fairies inhabiting the Blue Mountain,
should I find them?"

"If you _imagined_ them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it
works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is
needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own
insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power,
finds between himself and that Power, which to him, as to you the other
day, assumes a personality, an immense distance, and fills the space
with a race half divine, half human. It was the necessity for the fairy
which created the fairy. You do not feel the same distance between
yourself and a Creator, and so you do not call into existence a creative
race of the same character; but has not your own imagination furnished
you with images to which you may give your reverence? It may be that you
diminish that distance by degrading the Great First Cause to an image of
your personality, and so are not so wise as the Arab, who at once admits
it to be unattainable. Each man shapes that which he looks up to by his
desires or fears, and these in their turn are the results of his degree
of development."

"But God, is not He the Supreme Creator?"

"Is it not as we said, that you measure the Supreme by yourself? Can you
not comprehend a supreme law, an order which controls all things?"

In my meditations this doubt had often presented itself to me, and I had
as often put it resolutely aside; but now to hear it urged on me in this
way from this mysterious presence troubled me, and I shrank from further
discussion of the topic. I earnestly desired a fuller knowledge of the
nature of my colloquist.

"Tell me," said I, "do you not take cognizance of my personality?--do
you read my past and my future?"

"Your past and future are contained in your present. Who can analyze
what you are can see the things which made you such; for effect contains
its cause;--to see the future, it needs only to know the laws which
govern all things. It is a simple problem: you being given, with the
inevitable tendencies to wh