“I behold a world of love; the men have women's arms entwined about them; some upon the verge of precipices—friends are running to the rescue. There are many wandering like strangers, who know not their road, and they look upward. Spirit, how many, many eyes are looking up as if to God! Ah, now I see some strike their neighbors down into the dust; I see some wallowing like swine; I see that there are men and women brutal.”
“Are they quite brutal—look more closely still.”
“No, I see prickly sorrow growing out of crime, and penitence awakened by a look of love. I see good gifts bestowed out of the hand of murder, and see truth issue out of lying lips. But in this plain, O Spirit, I see regions—wide, bright regions—yielding fruit and flower, while others seem perpetually vailed with fogs, and in them no fruit ripens. I see pleasant regions where the rock is full of clefts, and people fall into them. The men who dwell beneath the fog deal lovingly, and yet they have small enjoyment in the world around them, which they scarcely see. But whither are these women going?”
“Follow them.”
“I have followed down the mountains to a haven in the vale below. All that is lovely in the world of flowers makes a fragrant bed for the dear children; birds singing, they breathe upon the pleasant air; the butterflies play with them. Their limbs shine white among the blossoms, and their mothers come down full of joy to share their innocent delight. They pelt each other with the lilies of the valley. They call up at will fantastic masks, grim giants play to make them merry, a thousand grotesque loving phantoms kiss them; to each the mother is the one thing real, the highest bliss—the next bliss is the dream of all the world beside. Some that are motherless, all mother's love. Every gesture, every look, every odor, every song, adds to the charm of love which fills the valley. Some little figures fall and die, and on the valley's soil they crumble into violets and lilies, with love-tears to hang in them like dew.
“Who dares to come down with a frown into this happy valley? A severe man seizes an unhappy, shrieking child, and leads it to the roughest ascent of the mountain. He will lead it over steep rocks to the plain of the mature. On ugly needle-points he makes the child sit down, and teaches it its duty in the world above.”
“Its duty, mortal! Do you listen to the teacher?”
“Spirit, I hear now. The child is informed about two languages spoken by nations extinct centuries ago, and something also, O Spirit, about the base of an hypothenuse.”
“Does the child attend?”
“Not much; but it is beaten silly, and its knees are bruised against the rocks, till it is hauled up, woe-begone and weary, to the upper plain. It looks about bewildered; all is strange—it knows not how to act. Fogs crown the barren mountain paths. Spirit, I am unhappy; there are many children thus hauled up, and as young men upon the plain; they walk in fog, or among brambles; some fall into pits; and many, getting into flower-paths, lie down and learn. Some become active, seeking right, but ignorant of what right is; they wander among men out of their fog-land, preaching folly. Let me go back among the children.”