We Do Not Hear Nor See
Nor Smell Nor Feel The Earth, Which He Is, Physically And Mentally, In
Such
Per-period, the years that run to millions, that it has "entered
the soul"; an environment with which he is
Physically and mentally, in
such perfect harmony that it is like an extension of himself into the
surrounding space. Sky and cloud and wind and rain, and rock and soil
and water, and flocks and herds and all wild things, with trees and
flowers - everywhere grass and everlasting verdure - it is all part of
men, and is me, as I sometimes feel in a mystic mood, even as a
religious man in a like mood feels that he is in a heavenly place and
is a native there, one with it.
Another less obvious cause of my feeling is that the love of our kind
cannot exist, or at all events not unmixed with contempt and various
other unpleasant ingredients, in people who live and have their being
amidst thousands and millions of their fellow-creatures herded
together. The great thoroughfares in which we walk are peopled with an
endless procession, an innumerable multitude; we hardly see and do not
look at or notice them, knowing beforehand that we do not know and
never will know them to our dying day; from long use we have almost
ceased to regard them as fellow-beings.
I recall here a tradition of the Incas, which tells that in the
beginning a benevolent god created men on the slopes of the Andes, and
that after a time another god, who was at enmity with the first,
spitefully transformed them into insects.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 232 of 244
Words from 62855 to 63132
of 66164
