MYSTERIES. 
155 
it is able to live on land as well as water. Why! 
what is it? You look as though you were under 
a spell, and your thoughts at least had left this 
world!” 
" I did not know that any being had quite 
such a history. It thrills me ! I was think- 
ing of the wonderful analogy between these 
modes of animal development and our intellectual 
growth — of how we change, and the wistful long- 
ing with which we all think of the probabilities 
of another change, that shall usher us, with new 
forms, into a new element. I was wondering if 
larval batrachians might not know something of 
our unrest. When some mature one touches 
them in springing up to heights they cannot 
reach, may not their still immature forms thrill 
with prophetic longings for a greater power, and a 
wider sphere, as do our souls under the touch of 
some master mind — as do the greatest intellects 
under the awe of some fresh revelation of more 
than mortal wisdom ? — If, in fact, we are not all 
'permanent larva’ — man’s whole body, like the 
tadpole’s tail and the siredon’s gills, merely an 
appendage to fit him to his present surround- 
ings?” 
"You are probably,” she replied, "repeating 
the emotions passed through by some ancient 
poet, when he first learned of the changes in a 
butterfly’s life, and made it from thenceforth a 
