This world, and our racial adventure, are magical still.



XX


Yet although for high-spirited marchers the march is sufficient,
there still is that other way of looking at it that we dare not
forget. Our adventure may satisfy /us:/ does it satisfy Nature?
She is letting us camp for awhile here among the wrecked graveyards
of mightier dynasties, not one of which met her tests. Their bones
are the message the epochs she murdered have left us: we have learned
to decipher their sickening warning at last.


Yes, and even if we are permitted to have a long reign, and are not
laid away with the failures, are we a success?

We need so much spiritual insight, and we have so little. Our
telescopes may some day disclose to us the hills of Arcturus, but
how will that help us if we cannot find the soul of the world? Is
that soul alive and loving? or cruel? or callous? or dead?

We have no sure vision. Hopes, guesses, beliefs--that is all.

There are sounds we are deaf to, there are strange sights invisible
to us. There are whole realms of splendor, it may be, of which
we are heedless; and which we are as blind to as ants to the call
of the sea.