"Certainly, your Majesty. There is a realm of thought in which hearing
and sight do not exist, where there is pure thought and nothing more."

"But are not the thoughts that there abound projected from the realm of
death into that of life, and is that any better than monastic
self-mortification?"

"It is just the contrary. They praise death, or at all events extol it,
because after it life is to begin. I am not one of those who deny a
future life. I only say, in the words of my Master, 'Our knowledge is of
life and not of death,' and where my knowledge ceases my thoughts must
cease. Our labors, our love, are all of this life. And because God is in
this world and in all that exist in it, and only in those things, have
we to liberate the divine essence wherever it exists. The law of love
should rule. What the law of nature is in regard to matter, the moral
law is to man."

"I cannot reconcile myself to your dividing the divine power into
millions of parts. When a stone is crushed, every fragment still remains
a stone; but when a flower is torn to pieces, the parts are no
longer flowers."

"Let us take your simile as an illustration, although in truth no
example is adequate. The world, the firmament, the creatures that live
on the face of the earth, are not divided--they are one; thought regards
them as a whole. Take for instance the flower. The idea of divinity
which it suggests to us, and the fragrance which ascends from it, are
yet part and parcel of the flower; attributes without which it is
impossible for us to conceive of its existence. The works of all poets,