d, instead of in secure
possession of it. And about the nature of that quest I make no facile
assumption. I do not pretend that what I have called the growth of the
soul from within is a smooth and easy process, a quiet unfolding of
leafy green in a bright and windless air. If I recognize the delight
of expansion, I recognize also the pain of repression--the thwarted
desire, the unfulfilled hope, the passion vain and abortive. I do not
say even whether or no, in this dim travail of the spirit, pleasure
prevails over pain, evil over good. The most I would claim is to have
suggested a meaning for our life in terms of Good; and my view, I half
hoped, would have appealed in particular to you, because what I have
offered is not an abstract formula, hard to interpret, hard to
relate to the actual facts of life, but an attempt to suggest the
significance of those facts themselves, to supply a key to the
cryptogram we call experience. And in proportion as we really believed
this view to be true, it would lead us not away from but into life,
not shutting us up, as has been too much the bent of philosophy, like
the homunculus of Goethe's 'Faust,' in the crystal phial of a set and
rigid system, to ring our little chiming bell and flash our tiny light
over the vast sea of experience, which all around us foams and floods,
myriad-streaming, immense, and clearly seen, yet never felt, through
that transparent barrier; but rather, like him when he broke the
glass, made free of the illimitable main, to follow under the yellow
moon the car of Galatea, her masque of nymphs and tritons, her gliding
pomp of cymbals and conchs, away through tempest and calm, by night or
day, companioned or alone, to the haunts of the far Cabeiri, and the
home where the Mothers dwell."

As I concluded, I looked across at Audubon, to see if I had made any
impression upon him. But he only smiled at me rather ironically
and said, "Is that meant, may I ask, for an account of everyday
experience?"

"Rather," I replied, "for an interpretation of it."

"It would need a great deal of interpretation," he said, "to make
anything of the kind out of mine."

"No doubt," I said; "yet I am not without hope that the interpretation
may be true; and that some day you may recognize it to be so yourself.
Meantime, perhaps, I, who look on, see more of the game than you
who play it; and surely in moments of leisure like this you will not
refuse to listen to my poor attempt to