Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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The Mind Is Forced Back Upon Itself, And Becomes
Filled With An Endless Chain Of Thoughts Which Wander Through The
Vastness of the star-bespangled spheres; for here, the only things to
see, the only things to love, and upon
Which the eye may gaze, and
from which the beating heart may gather some feelings of repose, are
the glittering bands of brilliant stars shining in the azure vault of
heaven. From my heated couch of sandy earth I gazed helplessly but
rapturously upon them, wondering at the enormity of occupied and
unoccupied space, revolving thoughts of past, present, and future
existencies, and of how all that is earthly fadeth away. But can that
be the case with our world itself, with the sun from which it obtains
its light and life, or with the starry splendours of the worlds beyond
the sun? Will they, can they, ever fade? They are not spiritual;
celestial still we call them, but they are material all, in form and
nature. We are both; yet we must fade and they remain. How is the
understanding to decide which of the two holds the main spring and
thread of life? Certainly we know that the body decays, and even the
paths of glory lead but to the grave; but we also know that the mind
becomes enfeebled with the body, that the aged become almost idiotic
in their second childhood; and if the body is to rise again, how is
poor humanity to distinguish the germ of immortality?
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