THE WING. 87 



supplies each muscle with that inexhaustible energy which no other 

 being possesses, and which belongs only to the elements. 



The clumsy image of Antaeus regaining strength each time he 

 touched the earth, his mother, does but rudely and weakly render an 

 idea of this reality. The bird does not need to seek the air that he 

 may be reinvigorated by touching it; the air seeks and flows into 

 him — it incessantly kindles within him the burning fires of life. 



It is this, and not the wing, which is so marvellous. Take the 

 pinions of the condor, and follow in its track, when, from the summit 

 of the Andes and their Siberian glaciers, it swoops down upon the 

 glowing .shore of Peru, traversing in a minute all the temperatures and 

 all the climates of the globe, breathing at one breath the frightful mass 

 of air — scorched, frozen, it matters not. You would reach the earth 

 stricken as by thunder. 



The smallest bird in this matter shames the strongest quadniped. 

 Place me, says Toussenel, a chained lion in a balloon, and his harsh 

 roaring will be lost in space. Far more powerful in voice and respira- 

 tion, the little lark mounts upward, trilling its song, and makes itself 

 heard when it can be seen no longer. Its light and joyous strain, 

 uttered without fatigue, and costing nothing, seems the bliss of an 

 invisible spirit which would fain console the earth. 



Strength makes joy. The happiest of beings is the bird, because 

 it feels itself strong beyond the limits of its action ; because, cradled, 

 sustained by the breath of heaven, it floats, it rises without effort, like 

 a dream. The boundless strength, the exalted faculty, obscure among 

 inferior beinfrs, in the bird clear and vital, of deriving at will its 

 vigour from the maternal source, of drinking in life at full flood, is a 

 divine intoxication. 



The tendency of every human being — a tendency whoUy rational, 

 not arrogant, not impious. — is to liken itself to Nature, the gi'eat 

 Mother, to fashion itself after her image, to crave a share of the 

 unwearied wings with which Eternal Love broods over the world. 



Human tradition is fixed in this direction. Man does not wish to 

 be a man, but an angel, a winged deity. The winged genii of Persia 



