untroubled than the marble face which it leaves as its visible symbol;
and sleep, "the minor mystery of death," ([Greek: hypnos ta mikra tou
thanutou mystêria][4]) has a deeper significance than is revealed in any
external token. So what is sneeringly called the credulity of human
nature is its holy faith, and, in spite of all the hard facts which you
may charge upon it, is the glory of man. It introduces us into that
region where "nothing is unexpected, nothing impossible."[5] It was the
glory of our childhood, and by it childhood is made immortal. Myth
herself is ever a child,--a genuine child of the earth, indeed,--but
received among men as the child of Heaven.

Upon the slightest material basis have been constructed myths and
miracles and fairy-tales without number; and so it must ever be. Thus
man asserts his own inherent strength of imagination and faith over
against the external fact. Whatsoever is facile to Imagination is also
facile to Faith. Easy, therefore, in our thoughts, is the transition
from the Cinder-wench in the ashes to the Cinderella of the palace; easy
the apotheosis of the slave, and the passage from the weary earth to the
fields of Elysium and the Isles of the Blessed.

This flight of the Imagination, this vision of Faith,--_these_, reader,
are only for the _epoptæ_. It matters not, that, by naked analysis, you
can prove that the palaces of our fancy and the temples of our faith are
but the baseless fabric of a dream. It may be that the greater part of
life is made up of dreams, and that wakefulness is merely incidental as
a relief to the picture. It may be, indeed, in the last analysis, that
the _ideal_ is the highest, if not the only _real_.

For the sensible, palpable fact can, by the nature of things, exist for
us only in the Present. But, my dear reader, it is just here, in this