the paradox of him. He, so warm
in spirit, was dominated by that cold and forbidding philosophy,
materialistic monism. I used to refute him by telling him that I
measured his immortality by the wings of his soul, and that I should
have to live endless aeons in order to achieve the full measurement.
Whereat he would laugh, and his arms would leap out to me, and he would
call me his sweet metaphysician; and the tiredness would pass out of his
eyes, and into them would flood the happy love-light that was in itself
a new and sufficient advertisement of his immortality.

Also, he used to call me his dualist, and he would explain how Kant, by
means of pure reason, had abolished reason, in order to worship God. And
he drew the parallel and included me guilty of a similar act. And when I
pleaded guilty, but defended the act as highly rational, he but pressed
me closer and laughed as only one of God's own lovers could laugh. I
was wont to deny that heredity and environment could explain his own
originality and genius, any more than could the cold groping finger of
science catch and analyze and classify that elusive essence that lurked
in the constitution of life itself.

I held that space was an apparition of God, and that soul was a
projection of the character of God; and when he called me his sweet
metaphysician, I called him my immortal materialist. And so we loved and
were happy; and I forgave him his materialism because of his tremendous
work in the world, performed without thought of soul-gain thereby, and
because of his so exceeding modesty of spirit that prevented him from
having pride and regal consciousness of himself and his soul.

But he had pride. How could he have been an eagle and not have pride?
His contention was that it was finer for a finite mortal speck of life
to feel Godlike, than for a god to feel godlike; and so it was that he
exalted what he deemed his mortality. He was fond of quoting a fragment
from a certain poem. He had never seen the whole poem, and he had tried
vainly to learn its authorship. I here give the fragment, not alone
because he loved it, but because it epitomized the paradox that he was
in the spirit of him, and his conception of his spirit. For how can a
man, with thrilling, and burning, and exaltation, recite the following
and still be mere mortal earth, a bit of fugitive force, an evanescent
form? Here it is:

"Joy upon joy and gain upon gain
Are the destined rights of