Written tradition, systems of culture, modes of thought, have
for me no existence. If ever they took any hold of my mind it
must have been very slight; they have long ago been erased.

>From earth and sea and sun, from night, the stars, from day,
the trees, the hills, from my own soul--from these I think. I
stand this moment at the mouth of the ancient cave, face to face with
nature, face to face with the supernatural, with myself. My naked mind
confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all;
I see other and higher conditions than existence; I see not only the
existence of the soul, immortality, but, in addition, I realise a soul-life
illimitable; I realise the existence of a cosmos of thought; I
realise the existence of an inexpressible entity infinitely
higher than deity. I strive to give utterance to a Fourth Idea.
The very idea that there is another idea is something gained.
The three found by the Cavemen are but steppingstones: first
links of an endless chain. At the mouth of the ancient cave,
face to face with the unknown, they prayed. Prone in heart to-
day I pray, Give me the deepest soul-life.

CHAPTER IV

THE wind sighs through the grass, sighs in the sunshine; it has
drifted the butterfly eastwards along the hill. A few yards
away there lies the skull of a lamb on the turf, white and
bleached, picked clean long since by crows and ants. Like the
faint ripple of the summer sea sounding in the hollow of the
ear, so the sweet air ripples in the grass. The ashes of the
man interred in the tumuius are indistinguishable; they have
sunk away like rain into the earth; so his body has disappeared.