"If you imagined them, yes! But the imagination is not voluntary; it works to supply a necessity; its function is creation, and creation is needed only to fill a vacuum. The wild Arab, feeling his own insignificance, and comprehending the necessity for a Creating Power, finds between himself and that Power, which to him, as to you the other day, assumes a personality, an immense distance, and fills the space with a race half divine, half human. It was the necessity for the fairy which created the fairy. You do not feel the same distance between yourself and a Creator, and so you do not call into existence a creative race of the same character; but has not your own imagination furnished you with images to which you may give your reverence? It may be that you diminish that distance by degrading the Great First Cause to an image of your personality, and so are not so wise as the Arab, who at once admits it to be unattainable. Each man shapes that which he looks up to by his desires or fears, and these in their turn are the results of his degree of development."
"But God, is not He the Supreme Creator?"
"Is it not as we said, that you measure the Supreme by yourself? Can you not comprehend a supreme law, an order which controls all things?"
In my meditations this doubt had often presented itself to me, and I had as often put it resolutely aside; but now to hear it urged on me in this way from this mysterious presence troubled me, and I shrank from further discussion of the topic. I earnestly desired a fuller knowledge of the nature of my colloquist.
"Tell me," said I, "do you not take cognizance of my personality?—do you read my past and my future?"
"Your past and future are contained in your present. Who can analyze what you are can see the things which made you such; for effect contains its cause;—to see the future, it needs only to know the laws which govern all things. It is a simple problem: you being given, with the inevitable tendencies to which you are subject, the result is your future; the flight of one of your rifle-balls cannot be calculated with greater certainty."
"But how shall we know those laws?" said I.
"You contain them all, for you are the result of them; and they are always the same,—not one code for your beginning, and another for your continuance. Man is the complete embodiment of all the laws thus far developed, and you have only to know yourself to know the history of creation."
This I could not gainsay, and my mind, wearied, declined to ask further. I returned to camp and went to sleep.
Several days passed without any remarkable progress in my knowledge of this strange being, though I found myself growing more and more sensitive to the presence of it each day; and at the same time the incomprehensible sympathy with Nature, for I know not what else to call it, seemed growing stronger and more startling in the effects it produced on the landscape. The influence was no longer confined to twilight, but made noon-day mystical; and I began to hear strange sounds and words spoken by disembodied voices,—not like that of my dæmon, but unaccompanied by any feeling of personal presence connected therewith. It seemed as if the vibrations shaped themselves into words, some of them of singular significance. I heard my name called, and the strangest laughs on the lake at night. My dæmon seemed averse to answering any questions on the topic of these illusions. The only reply was,—"You would be wiser, not knowing too much."