"How many times have I asked myself why Nature was so sad, and why, when she is proudest then saddest of all...."
Iamblicus answered by a smile—
"Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the appearance of reality. Nature, that sleeping Cybele, never lifts her eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face to face...."
The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure. More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them—
"Julian, to what should one compare the universe of all those stars? One might liken it to a fisherman's net thrown into the sea. God fills the universe as the water fills the net, which moves, but which cannot retain the waters; and the universe desires, but cannot keep God in her meshes. The net is drawn, but God remains. If the universe made no stir God would create nothing—would not issue from the calm that surrounds Him. For whither should He sweep, and to what end? Yonder, in the realm of the eternal Mothers, in the soul of Calm, dwell the seeds, the Forms, the Ideas, of all that is, has been, and shall be. The germ of hearth-cricket and of atom, together with the germ of the Olympian god."
Then Julian cried aloud, and his voice rang in the silence of Nature like a cry of mortal pain—
"But who then is He; why does He not answer when we call Him? What is His name? I wish to know, I desire to know Him, to hear Him—to see Him—why does He escape my thought? Where is He? Where does He dwell?"
"My poor boy! What matters thought to Him? What means it? He has no name. He is such, that we can say that He must exist, but it is impossible for us to say what He is. But do you think that you can suffer love, or curse Him, without singing His praises? The All-Creator is Himself, having no likeness to His creations. When you say, 'He is not,' you are exalting Him as much as if you said 'He is.' One can affirm nothing about Him, because He is above existence, reality, and life. That is why I have said to you that He is the negation of the universe and of your thought. Deny, renounce all that exists for us here, and yonder, in the soundless profundity of darkness, as in the light, you shall find Him still. Give Him friends, family, country, heaven, earth, yourself, your reason, then you will no longer see light, you shall yourself be it. You will not say, 'He and I,' because you will feel that He and you are 'one'; and your soul will smile at your body as at a phantasm of the desert. You shall become silence, you shall no more find utterance. And if at that moment the world should crumble away, you would be happy: for what would the world signify to you, since you shall be with Him? Your soul shall not desire, because He has no desires; it shall no longer live, because He is above living; it shall no longer think, because He is above thought. Thought is the search for light. He seeks not, because He is Himself the light. He penetrates the whole soul—He laps it in Himself. And then, impartial and solitary, it rests above reason higher than goodness, higher than beauty, reposes in the infinite, on the breast of God the Father of Light. The Soul becomes God, or, to put it better, it remembers that in the night of ages it has been, is, and shall be, God.... Such, my son, is the life of the Olympians; such is the life of the wise and heroic among men; renunciation of the universe, contempt of earthly passions, the flight of the Soul towards God, whom at last it sees face to face."
Iamblicus ceased speaking. Julian fell at his feet without daring to touch them, and kissed the earth where they rested. Then he raised his head and gazed into those strange green eyes, in which dwelt the wisdom of the serpent. They appeared calmer and deeper than the sky, and as if exhaling a miraculous power.
Julian murmured—