192 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



of the mind penetrates the soHd earth, grasps in part the 

 mystery of its vast extension upon either side, bearing 

 its majestic mountains, its deep forests, its grand oceans, 

 and almost feels the life which in ten million forms revels 

 upon its surface. Returning upon itself, the mind joys in 

 the knowledge that it, too, is a part of this wonder — akin 

 to the ten million creatures, akin to the very earth 

 itself. How grand and holy is this life ! how sacred the 

 temple which contains it I . . . 



' This little petty life of seventy years, with its little 

 petty aims and hopes, its despicable years and con- 

 temptible seasons, is no more the life with which the mind 

 is occupied. ... It is a grand and ennobling feeling to 

 know that at this moment illimitable time extends on 

 either hand. . . . 



* The sight of that splendid disc carries the soul with it 

 till it feels as eternal as the sun.'* 



He continues : 



' Would that it were possible for the heart and mind 

 to enter into all the life that glows and teems upon the 

 earth — to feel with it, hope with it, sorrow with it, and 

 thereby to become a grander, nobler being. Such a being, 

 with such a sympathy and larger existence, must hold in 

 scorn the feeble, cowardly, selfish desire for an immortality 

 of pleasure only, whose one great hope is to escape pain. 

 No. Let me joy with all living creatures; let me suffer with 

 them all — the reward of feeling a deeper, grander life would 

 be amply sufficient. . . . Let me have wider feelings, more 

 extended sympathies ; let me feel with all living things, 

 rejoice and praise with them. Let me have deeper know- 

 ledge, a nearer insight, a more reverent conception. Let 

 me see the mystery of life — the secret of the sap as it rises 

 in the tree — the secret of the blood as it courses through 

 the vein. . . . Never did vivid imagination stretch out 

 the powers of Deity with such a fulness, with such in- 

 tellectual grasp, vigour, omniscience, as the human mind 

 could reach to, if only its organs, its means, were equal 



* ' Nature and Eternity' {Lon^marCs Maf^azine, May, 1895). 



