it makes within the fraction of one second,--thrills to us out of
endlessness;--and the force of infinity dwells in its lightest tremor;
the weight of eternity presses behind its faintest shudder. To that
phantom-Touch, the tinting of a blossom or the dissipation of a
universe were equally facile: here it caresses the eye with the charm
and illusion of color; there it bestirs into being a cluster of giant
suns. All that human mind is capable of conceiving as possible
(and how much also that human mind must forever remain incapable of
conceiving?) may be wrought anywhere, everywhere, by a single tremor
of that Abyss....

* * * * *

Is it true, as some would have us believe, that the fear of the
extinction of self is the terror supreme?... For the thought of
personal perpetuity in the infinite vortex is enough to evoke sudden
trepidations that no tongue can utter,--fugitive instants of a horror
too vast to enter wholly into consciousness: a horror that can be
endured in swift black glimpsings only. And the trust that we are one
with the Absolute--dim points of thrilling in the abyss of It--can
prove a consoling faith only to those who find themselves obliged to
think that consciousness dissolves with the crumbling of the brain....
It seems to me that few (or none) dare to utter frankly those
stupendous doubts and fears which force mortal intelligence to
recoil upon itself at every fresh attempt to pass the barrier of the
Knowable. Were that barrier unexpectedly pushed back,--were knowledge
to be suddenly and vastly expanded beyond its present limits,--perhaps
we should find ourselves unable to endure the revelation....

* * * * *