Three days without food, and three nights without sleep! Why, you would
have to raise myself from the dead!"

"And canst thou," said the diviner, with great dignity, "canst thou hope
that thou wouldst be worthy of a revelation from a higher world--that for
thee the keys of the grave should unlock their awful treasure, and the
dead return to life, when thou scruplest to mortify thy flesh and.
loosen the earthly bonds that cumber and chain the spirit? I tell thee,
that only as the soul detaches itself from the frame, can its inner and
purer sense awaken, and the full consciousness of the invisible and divine
things that surround it descend upon its powers."

"And what," said Radclyffe, startled more by the countenance and voice
than the words themselves of the soothsayer; "what would you then do,
supposing that I perform this penance?"

"Awaken to their utmost sense, even to pain and torture, the naked nerves
of that Great Power thou callest the Imagination; that Power which
presides over dreams and visions, which kindles song, and lives in the
heart of Melodies; which inspired the Magian of the East and the Pythian
voices--and, in the storms and thunder of savage lands originated the
notion of a God and the seeds of human worship; that vast presiding Power
which, to the things of mind, is what the Deity is to the Universe
itself--the creator of all. I would awaken, I say, that Power from its
customary sleep where, buried in the heart, it folds its wings, and lives
but by fits and starts, unquiet, but unaroused; and by that Power thou
wouldst see, and feel, and know, and through it only thou wouldst exist.
So that it would be with thee, as if the body were not: as if thou wert
already all-spiritual, all-living. So thou wouldst learn in life that
which may be open to thee after death; and so, soul might now, as