The Man remained silent for a space. Then, as in horror of doubting, he questioned:—
"Wherefore should ye fear—if nothingness be the end?"
"What is nothingness?" the Souls responded. "Only in the language of delusion is there an end. That which thou callest the end is in truth but the very beginning. The essence of us cannot cease. In the burning of worl ds it cannot be consumed. It will shudder in the cores of great stars;—it will quiver in the light of other suns. And once more, in some future cosmos, it will reconquer knowledge—but only after evolutions unthinkable for multitude. Even out of the nameless beginnings of form, and thence through every cycle of vanished being,—through all successions of exhausted pain,—through all the Abyss of the Past,—it must climb again."
The Man uttered no word: the Souls spoke on:—
"For millions of millions of ages must we shiver in tempests of fire: then shall we enter anew into some slime primordial,—there to quicken, and again writhe upward through all foul dumb blind shapes. Innumerable the metamorphoses!—immeasurable the agonies!... And the fault is not of any Gods: it is thine!"
"Good or evil," muttered the Man,—"what signifies either? The best must become as the worst in the grind of the endless change."
"Nay!" cried out the Souls; "for the strong there is a goal,—the goal that thou couldst not strive to gain. They will help to the fashioning of fairer worlds;—they will win to larger light;—they will tower and soar as flame to enter the Zones of the Divine. But thou and we go back to slime! Think of the billion summers that might have been for us!—think of the joys, the loves, the triumphs cast away!—the dawns of the knowledge undreamed,—the glories of sense unimagined,—the exultations of illimitable power!... think, think, O fool, of all that thou hast lost!"
Then the Souls of the Man turned themselves into worms, and devoured him.