ial,
tedious, monotonous and vain!

"As soon as I had recovered myself, I looked up and saw written over
the door the inscription:

"'_Ear hath not heard_.'

"And going round to the side facing the river, I saw there inscribed:

"'_Turris Artis_?'

"Whereupon, full of perplexity, I made my way down towards the third
tower, reflecting, as I went; in a curious passion at once of hope and
fear, 'Neither this, then, nor that, neither Eye nor Ear, has given me
what I sought. Each is a symbol; but this, as it seems, a more perfect
symbol than that; for it, at least, is Beauty, and the other was only
Power. But is there, then, nothing but symbols? Or shall I, in one of
these towers, shall I perhaps find the thing that is symbolized?'

"By this time I had reached the third tower, and over the door facing
me I saw written:

"'_I am the Heart; come into me and feel_.'

"I entered without hesitation, and this time I was met by an experience
even stranger and more delightful than before, but also, I fear, more
indescribable. At first, I was aware of nothing but a pure feeling,
which was not of any particular sense, (as, before, of sight and
hearing,) but was rather, I think, the general feeling of Life itself,
the kind of diffused sensation of well-being one has in health,
underlying all particular activities. In this sensation I seemed, as
before, to be lapped, as in an element; but this time the feeling
did not pass. On the contrary, I found, when I came to myself, that I
actually was in the river, leaping along with the other souls in such
an ecstasy of physical delight as I have never felt before or since.
Such, at least, was my first impression; but gradually it changed
into something which I despair of rendering in words, for indeed I
can hardly render it in my own thoughts. Conceive, however, that as,
according to the teaching of science, every part of matter is affected
by every other, insomuch that, as they say, the fall of an apple
disturbs the balance of the universe; so, in my experience then, (and
this, I believe, is really true) all souls were intimately connected
by spiritual ties. Nothing that happened in one but was somehow or
other, more or less obscurely, reflected in the rest, so that all were
so closely involved and embraced in a network of fine relations that
they formed what may be compared to a planetary system, sustained
in their various orbits by force of attraction and repulsion,
distingu