or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking;
or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life
and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington,
he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.
The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness
of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning;
but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.
Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that
the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.
His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush
of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children,
when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child
kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit
fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.
They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it
again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong
enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough
to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning,
"Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike;
it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired
of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy;
for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be
a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg.
If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead
of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not
be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose.
It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they