A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



mortal that I am, it was told me in effluence, but 

 not till long afterward did I find it written on the 

 deep pages of my experience, like the embroidery 

 of God in the Milky Way and in the marsh. I 

 have tried many times since to get that secret into 

 words, but words are so brittle that they break 

 down helplessly with the weight of a truth that is 

 like an atmosphere. There are some secrets, like 

 the ether, for which words have not been invented. 

 One day when I thought I had caught the feat of 

 fitting the ether to syllables, I wrote down, &quot; Be 

 fore freedom can be, obedience is.&quot; It had all the 

 ethereal disadvantages of an abstraction trying to 

 perform a concrete trick. How barren the prop 

 osition was beside the Psalm that had sung itself 

 into my comprehension through all those months. 

 How far away from the ineffable eloquence which 

 had said without words : &quot; Behold, all things but 

 man are under law, and man must come volunta 

 rily under it before he can be part of the scheme. 

 To him alone it is allowed to return. So do we 

 live and obey and die that he may learn the les 

 son.&quot; 



Upon a man s capacity to emit a glow-worm ray 

 of his own will depend the darkness of his cell and 

 the limitations of it. There are men and women 

 who have so perverted their natures that they live 

 entirely through their superficies, and that kind 

 of life which furnishes continual external stimula 

 tion converts them, in time, to hollow resounding 

 shells, silent, indeed, unless they are beat upon. 

 We all know men the greater part of whose lives 



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