Now about these Shadows. Yes, there are forces about one,—vague, working soundlessly, imperceptibly, softening one as the action of air softens certain surfaces of rock while hardening others. The magnetism of another faith about you necessarily polarizes that loose-quivering needle of desire in a man that seeks source of attraction in spite of synthetic philosophy. The general belief in an infinite past and future interpenetrates one some how. When you find children who do wrong are always warned, “Ah! your future birth will be unhappy;” when you find two lovers drinking death together, and leaving behind them letters saying, “This is the influence of our last birth, when we broke our promise to become husband and wife;” and last, but not least, when some loving woman murmurs, laughingly: “In the last life thou wert a woman and I a man, and I loved thee much; but thou didst not love me at all,”—you begin to doubt if you do not really believe like everybody else.
About the training of the senses. The idea is admirable, but alas!—a very clever Frenchman five years ago, in the Revue Politique et Littéraire, almost exhausted it. He represented a man who had cultivated his eye so that he could see the bacteria in the air, and the grain of metals,—also being able to adjust his eyes to distance. He had trained his ear so as to hear all sounds of growth and decomposition. He had trained his nose to smell all substances supposed to have no smell. He made a diagram of the five senses thus:—
The way impressions come to—
YOU
ME
I translated it for the T.-D.
For a little while, good-bye and best happiness.
Lafcadio Hearn.