There is something nearer the mystery than the mind, and that something is the instinct. Certainly we are nearer to our origin than to our end, and instinct almost explains the origin because it is still near at hand, but the mind cannot explain the end because it is still so far away! Whence come we? The crawling beast may suspect.—Whither go we? How can the beast tell, when he cannot fly?
The bond that binds us fast to earth is not cut. Man bears forever the scar of his birth. He has, therefore, always before him evidence of how he is connected with infinity behind him; but how he is connected, by death, with the life everlasting, before him, he does not see.
Instinct, like a glow-worm, lights up the depths from which man comes forth, but intelligence casts no light into the boundless expanse on high, wherein it loses itself, just at the point where God begins.—Ah! how mysterious is God!
Yes, between the intelligence and man’s origin, instinct stretches like a bridge. Between the intelligence and man’s end, there is a yawning chasm. The reason cannot cross it. There is no way but to leap. Man finds it easy to imagine what lies below; his own weight draws him down to a point where he can understand it.
To understand what is above, it is essential to have a power of lightening one’s self, a wing which man has not. Here instinct acts upon the mind in a direction opposed to mental effort.
To some minds this faculty of rising sometimes comes, but man’s conceptions depend upon his experiences, and the time has passed when reliance was placed upon the “wise men,” upon those whose conceptions far outran their experiences. Perhaps it is better so. Perhaps every man ought to form his ideas for himself and no one will know anything for good and all until he has earned the right.
Sometimes, for a moment, especially in dreams, but occasionally in his waking hours, man knows. He has profound intuition; but nothing is more fleeting than this sudden glimpse of eternity.
The best of us are blind men haunted by the memory of a flash of light.
Which of us has not known, by personal experience, how a man can fly away from himself? The sense of mystery, scarcely detected, has escaped us, but who has not been conscious of it for a second?
Truth, like love, reveals itself for a second only, but we must believe in it—forever.