156 A Walk from 



Thus, for four thousand years, the soul of man dashed 

 its wings against the prison-bars of time, peering into 

 the night through the cold, relentless gratings for some 

 fugitive ray of the existence of which it had such strong 

 and sleepless presentiment. It is a mystery. It may 

 seem irreverent to approach it even with a conjecture. 

 Human reason should be humble and silent before it, 

 and close its questioning lips. It may not, however, 

 transcend its prerogative to say meekly, perhaps. Per- 

 haps, then, for two-thirds of the duration that the sun 

 has measured off to humanity; that life and immortality 

 which the soul groped after were veiled from its vision, 

 until all its mental and spiritual faculties had been 

 trained and strengthened to the ability to grasp and 

 appropriate the great fact when it should be revealed. 

 Perhaps it required all the space of forty centuries to 

 put forth feelers and fibres capable of clinging to the 

 revelation with the steady hold of faith. Perhaps it 

 was to prove, by long, decisive probation, what the 

 unaided human mind could do in constructing its 

 idealisms of immortality. Perhaps it was permitted 

 to erect a scaffolding of conceptions on which to receive 

 the great revelation at the highest possible level of 

 thought and instinctive sentiment to which man could 

 attain without supernatural light and help. If this 

 last perhaps is preferable to the others, where was this 



