The Mountain and the Sea 



263 



has no fingers, nor any parts or members. The sea itself is neither 

 new nor old, and has no past nor future — only an eternal Now. It 

 has not even Here nor There, for all places are one to it; the very 

 navigator has to locate himself, not by any fact, but by a mathe- 

 matical abstraction, computed by tangents and cosines. The sea has 

 no measure, for there is no unit to measure it by — no part to be ap- 

 plied to another part, and then to another, and the number of appli- 

 cations counted. Individuality, separateness, are illusions in the 

 sea; the only reality is The One. There is one wave, and another 

 wave, but presently they are the same wave, and then no wave. The 

 drop of spray flashes a moment a separate unit, and then sinks back 

 again into the undivided One. Since the world was, the sea is; but 

 the spirit of God still broods on the face of the waters, changeless 

 forever. Not the grasp of thought, but only the rapt vision of the 

 Plotinist can apprehend the vastness of the sea. Its lessons are not 

 written in a book, but whispered in mystic oracles. Its language, to 

 humans, is the occult speech of the Orient. Its creed is not Christi- 

 anity, but Theosophy or esoteric Brahminism. Its God is the In- 

 scrutable; its destiny Nirvana. 



And so we have the seashore to rest and forget; the sea to muse 

 and dream; the mountains to work, to think, to feel, to grow, to be 

 inspired and uplifted. And then the office and the shop, to grind 

 once more our little cog in the great mill of life. 



