"My body was in its duty and happy there. Yes. Actuality, but of another order, an order we are coming into. The order of intensified, guided, realized memory and imagination."
"And of reason?"
"And of reason. Profoundly so. It is reason that is guiding. Reason has its higher levels, grows comprehensive, knows longer sequences, completer syntheses. And from the decks of ships we were in the desert watching the stars, shepherds on the hills and shepherds on the plains, shepherds and villagers and wanderers of far days!" She lifted hand and arm in a curious and commanding gesture. "Watching the skies above Queen Rain and King Wind! In desert and plain and upon hills and on seas, thousands and thousands of us strewn in time!"
For an appreciable moment, to some degree, those listening to her became aware of, made, as it were, junction with their own far wandering, far wondering, savage and barbarian self. It was evident that Drew made junction. They touched the mind struggling there, and the lifted gaze. The sense was one of enormous, calm pervasion. They entered into, they aided, their own early man, where he marked the heavens, and around them was the wistfulness of early lands.
Marget spoke on. "Then while I worked we were building pyramids and mountains of the god. We were watching and watching, patterning and naming, comparing, all the skies, the moon, and the planets and the times of the sun, and the white path through the heavens and the great named princes—everywhere, swarthy folk and pale folk! Now we were many and many. Then in us rose the Devoted, the Searchers of the skies, seeking from city roofs and temple roofs knowledge of the Whole for the Whole."
Their interior self opened its wings and used its eyes. As space expanded, so did time. They were there in the October sunshine, on the summer-house steps, but likewise they attended, and in some vast, liberated way they were that collective effort, that process. They might carry the method over into all processes. There swam across the mind other words—"commerce"—"government"—"family"—many and many a word.
Marget's voice went on. "Now one has made a telescope. Our theories change; we stand on dead theories and study on. Thousands of us studying, thousands building knowledge, learning vision! We gaze, we watch, we turn to desks and write and figure, we reason, we divine, we better our instruments, we gather results and make fortunate guesses, we hearken to intuition. We stand on a mossy stone in space and study the Promised Land, the universe that is ours, the ever perpetuating, the ever bettering! Time widens. Here are mountain summits and the observatories of this day, and the clockwork and the pierced dome, and the great eye that we have made, and the photograph. Mind sits at the knee of Great Mind and learns its alphabet. And all the thousands that were and are and will be are one Astronomer, and it is I, still working to know!" She ceased to speak, and sat wrapped in the golden light.
Said Robert Dane: "We follow where you step. You make us follow you."
"I do not make you. You walk with me because you can walk. We walk. It is your Self as it is mine."
"We move and we feel, then, where you are. You live there more fully and keenly than we, but we can breathe and feel and see. Go on! We would have your life, as you have ours."