eating foot,
as it turns the wheel. If you can find incense, in the vase,
afterwards,--well: but it is curious how far mere form will carry you
ahead of the philosophers. For instance, with regard to the most
interesting of all their modes of force--light;--they never consider how
far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and
nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. The
German philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by
telling us, there was no such thing as light at all, unless we chose to
see it: now, German and English, both, have reversed their engines, and
insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though
nobody could ever see it. The fact being that the force must be there,
and the eyes there; and 'light' means the effect of the one on the
other;--and perhaps, also--(Plato saw farther into that mystery than any
one has since, that I know of),--on something a little way within the
eyes; but we may stand quite safe, close behind the retina, and defy the
philosophers.

SIBYL. But I don't care so much about defying the philosophers, if only
one could get a clear idea of life, or soul, for one's self.

L. Well, Sibyl, you used to know more about it, in that cave of yours,
than any of us. I was just going to ask you about inspiration, and the
golden bough, and the like; only I remembered I was not to ask anything.
But, will not you, at least, tell us whether the ideas of Life, as the
power of putting things together, or 'making' them; and of Death, as the
power of pushing things separate, or 'unmaking' them, may not be very
simply held in balance against each other?

SIBYL. No, I am not in my cave to-night; and cannot tell you anything.

L. I think they may. Modern Philosophy is a great separator; it is
little more than the expansion of Moliere's great sentence, 'Il s'ensuit
de la, que tout ce qu'il y a de beau est dans les dictionnaires; il n'y
a que les mots qui sont transposes.' But when you used to be in your
cave, Sibyl, and to be inspired, there was (and there remains still in
some small measure), beyond the merely formative and sustaining power,
another, which we painters call 'passion'--I don't know what the
philosophers call it; we know it makes people red, or white; and
therefore it must be something, itself; and perhaps it is the most truly
'poetic' or 'making' force of all, creating a world of its own out of a
glan