i88 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



and suffer less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more 

 flexible engine with which to carry into execution the 

 design of the will.'* 



The bones, he quaintly says, should be 'firmer, somewhat 

 larger.' He desires beautiful shape and movement. ' I 

 believe,' he says, * in the human form ; let me find some- 

 thing, some method, by which that form may achieve 

 the utmost beauty.' For the soul he desires a larger, 

 more continuous, more illuminated life than that which 

 it now meets with haphazard, a new and higher set of 

 ideas on which it should work. He believes in what he 

 can touch, but that guides him to another beauty as a 

 shadow guides us to the substance. Sometimes he himself 

 seems to use a power which has nothing to do with hearing 

 or touch or sight. He could *feel ' the existence of the 

 man buried on the Downs, and the coexistence with that 

 man leads him to think that death does not affect the 

 personality. The idea of extinction, not that of continua- 

 tion, after death requires a ' miracle.' A man lay dead 

 in an outhouse at Coate, and as he passed it, it seemed to 

 him that the man was still alive. He ' cannot understand 

 time ... by no possible means could I get into time if I 

 tried. I am in eternity now, and must there remain. 

 Haste not, be at rest, this Now is eternity. 'f Like 

 Traherne, he saw the corn as ' orient and immortal wheat '; 

 for as he moved about he felt in the midst of immortal 

 things — ' the sweetness of the day, the fulness of the earth, 

 the beauteous earth, how shall I say it ?' In ' The Open 

 Air ' he says that to him, as a boy, the earth was that 

 radiant vision which it would be to one set suddenly down 

 upon it ; and ' the freshness is still there.' In London, as 

 on the Downs, he felt out into the depths of the ether, and 

 ' touched the supernatural, the immortal.' He asserts 

 no belief in alleged miracles, or that there have been 

 miracles ; but ' they would be perfectly natural,' so great 

 is the soul ; and he can conceive ' soul works by simple 

 will or thought a thousand times greater.' He feels on 



* The Story of My Heart. \ Ibid. 



