CONCLUSION 



voyages must often enough have been the hope of finding 

 riches and favored lands, but deeper still lay the imperious 

 desire of getting to know our own earth. To riches men have 

 seldom attained, to the Fortunate Isles never ; but through all we 

 have won knowledge. 



The great Alexander, the conquering king, held sway over 

 the greater part of the world of his day; the bright young 

 lord of the world remained the ideal for a thousand years, 

 the hero above all others. But human thought, restless and 

 knowing no bounds, found even his limits too narrow. He 

 grew and grew to superhuman dimensions, became the son of 

 a god, the child of fortune, who in popular belief held sway 

 from the Pillars of Hercules, the earth's western boundary, 

 to the trees of the sun and moon at the world's end in the east ; 

 to whom nothing seemed impossible; who descended to the 

 bottom of the sea in a glass bell to explore the secrets of the 

 ocean; who, borne by tamed eagles, tried to reach Heaven, 

 and who was fabled by Mohammedans and Christians to have 

 even attempted to scale the walls of Paradise itself — there to 

 be checked for the first time. "Thus far and no farther." 

 No man that is bom of woman may attain to the land of heart'^ 

 desire. 



The myth of Alexander is an image of the human spirit 

 itself, seeking without intermission, never confined by any 

 bounds, eternally striving towards height after height, deep 

 after deep, ever onward, onward, onward . . . 



The world of the spirit knows neither space nor time. 



FINIS 



383 



