A cloud's a lot of vapour,
The sky's a lot of air,
And the sea's a lot of water
That happens to be there.

You cannot get further down than that. When you have got as far down as
that all is over. Luckily God still keeps his mysteries going for you,
and you can't get rid, even in that mood, of the certitude that you
yourself exist and that things outside of you are outside of you. But
when you get into that modern mood you do lose the personality of
everything else, and you forget the sanctity of river heads.

You have lost a great deal when you have forgotten that, and it behoves
you to recover what you have lost as quickly as possible, which is to be
done in this way: Visit the source of some famous stream and think about
it. There was a Scotchman once who discovered the sources of the Nile,
to the lasting advantage of mankind and the permanent glory of his
native land. He thought the source of the Nile looked rather like the
sources of the Till or the Tweed or some such river of Thule. He has
been ridiculed for saying this, but he was mystically very right. The
source of the greatest of rivers, since it was sacred to him, reminded
him of the sacred things of his home.

When I consider the sources of rivers which I have seen, there is not
one, I think, which I do not remember to have had about it an influence
of awe. Not only because one could in imaginings see the kingdoms of the
cities which it was to visit and the way in which it would bind them all
together in one province and one story, but also simply because it was
an origin.