too, were a link in the chain of influences which I half felt was being
forged around me, it opened at the first part of "Euterpe," where
Herodotus is speculating upon the phenomena of the Nile. Twenty-two
hundred years,--I thought,--and we are still wondering, the Sphinx is
still silent, and we yet in the darkness! Alas, if this riddle be
insoluble, how can we hope to find the clue to deeper problems? If
there are places on our little earth whither our feet cannot go,
curtains that our hands cannot withdraw, how can we expect to track
paths through realms of thought,--how to voyage in those airy,
impalpable regions whose existence we are sure of only while we are
there voyaging?

"Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbem Occuluitque caput, quod
adhuc latet."

Lost through reckless presumption, might not earnest humility recover
that mysterious lurking-place? Might not one, by devoted toil, by utter
self-sacrifice, with eyes purified by long searching from worldly and
selfish pollution,--might not such a one tear away the veil of
centuries, and, even though dying in the attempt, gain one look into
this arcanum? Might not I?--The unutterable thought thrilled me and
left me speechless, even in thinking. I strained my forehead against
the darkness, as if I could grind the secret from the void air. Then I
experienced the following mental sensation,--which, being purely
mental, I cannot describe precisely as it was, but will translate it as
nearly as possible into the language of physical phenomena.

It was as if my mind--or, rather, whatever that passive substratum is
that underlies our volition and more truly represents ourselves--were a
still lake, lying quiet and indifferent. Presently the sense of some