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words for it, but he felt that whatever he touched was 

 God. No myth or religion had any value to him. There 

 were no symbols for him to use. The deities he surmised 

 or smelt or tasted in the air or upon the earth had neither 

 name nor shape. Had he been able to think, he was the 

 man to put our generation on the way to a new myth- 

 ology. For all I know, he had the vision, the power of 

 the seer, without the power of the prophet. A little more 

 and perhaps he would have invaded Christendom as St. 

 Paul invaded Heathendom. Yet I think he was not 

 wholly the loser by being unable to think. The eye 

 untroubled by thought sees things like a mirror newly 

 burnished; at night, for example, the musing man can see 

 nothing before him but a mist, but if he stops thinking 

 quickly the roads, the walls, the trees become visible. 

 So this man saw with a clearness as of Angelico, and in 

 his memory violets and roses, trees and faces were as clear 

 as if within his brain were another sun to light them. 

 He had but to close his eyes to see these things, an 

 innumerable procession of days and their flowers and their 

 birds in the sky or .on the bough. And this he had at no 

 cost. He employed only such labour as was needed to 

 make his bread and occasionally clothes and a pipe. Nor 

 did he merely ask alms of Nature and Civilization. He 

 paid back countless charities to flower and bird and child 

 and poorer men, and there was nothing against him of 

 pain or sorrow or death inflicted. And as he was without 

 religion so he was without patriotism. He had no 

 country, knew nothing of men and events. Asked by 

 a person who saw him idle and did not observe his defect, 

 whether he would not like to do something for his country, 

 he replied : " I have no country like you, sir. I own 



