AUTUMN 211 



though their senses be brilliant they see not beyond 

 their small horizons. To us the Past and the Future 

 are open, like measureless countries of diversified 

 aspect, lying beyond our horizon; yet we may see 

 them and are free to range over them at will. It 

 may even happen that the autumnal spectacle of the 

 cessation of life on the earth, nature's yearly tragedy, 

 brought thus suddenly and sharply before the mind's 

 eye, may cause us to realise for the first time what 

 this freedom of the mind really means. It multiplies 

 our years and makes them so many that it is a 

 practical immortality. A vivid consciousness of it, 

 coming thus suddenly, puts the soul in a proud 

 temper, and we all at once begin to abhor the sickly 

 teachings of those who see in nature's mutations, in 

 cloud and wind and rain and the fall of the leaf, and 

 the going out of ephemeral life, nothing but mournful 

 messages, dreary symbols, reminders of our mortality. 

 It is a false, debilitating doctrine which they preach 

 and sing ; an ancient fable, a tale of a bogie invented 

 a thousand years ago to frighten unruly children and 

 make them good. We are rather of the psalmist's 

 virile mind, when he said that those who had com- 

 passed him round, and had come to him like bees, 

 were extinct as the fire under the thorns; and then 

 triumphantly cried, " / shall not die, but live ! " 



Let us imagine a god, or immortal being of some 

 kind, in a reverie, seated on some great hill — Caburn, 

 or Firle, or Cissbury — seeing as in a vision the " in- 



