First Published in 1906
Matter is but the eternal dressing of the imagination; the world theunconscious self-delusion of a Spirit. Everything springs from Love,and Love is the dreaming God.
Two figments of that endless sweet obsession stood alone—high on aslope of Alp this time. Born of a dream to flesh, they thought theyowed themselves to flesh—a sacred debt. Truth seemed as plain to themas pebbles in a brook, which lie round and firm for all their apparentshaking under ripples. There, actual to their eyes, were the whitemountains, the hoary glaciers, the pine woods and foamy freshets ofeighteenth century Le Prieuré. Here, actual in the ears of each, wasthe whisper of the deathless confidence which for ever and ever helpson love’s succession. They loved, and therefore they lived.
Man has been for ten thousand ages at the pains to prove love adelusion, and still he greets a baby, and a kitten, and the nestingsong of birds, and a hawthorn bush in flower, as freshly as if each,in its latest expression, were the newest product of his wisdom. Butlove is no delusion, save in the shadows which it builds itself forhabitation. “Of dust thou art,” said the older God, “and unto dustreturnest.” Y