The caddis worm leaves the water, and takes on wings and flies in the upper air; the walking mud becomes amorous of the winged sunlight, and behaves itself in an abandoned manner.

The Earth (during its infancy) flies round the Sun from which it sprang, and the mud flies round the pond from which it sprang.

The earth swims in space, the fish swim in the sea, the bird swims in the air, and the soul of man in the ocean of Equality—towards which all the other streams run.

* * * * *

Here, into this ocean, everything debouches; all interest in life begins anew. The plantain in the croft looks different from what it did before.

Do you understand? To realise Freedom or Equality (for it comes to the same thing)—for this hitherto, for you, the universe has rolled; for this, your life, possibly yet many lives; for this, death, many deaths; for this, desires, fears, complications, bewilderments, sufferings, hope, regret—all falling away at last duly before the Soul, before You (O laughter!) arising the full grown lover—possessor of the password.

The path of Indifference—action, inaction, good, evil, pleasure, pain, the sky, the sea, cities and wilds—all equally used (never shunned), adopted, put aside, as materials only; you continuing, love continuing—the use and freedom of materials dawning at last upon you.

O laughter! the Soul invading, looking proudly upon its new kingdom, possessing the offerings of all pleasures, forbidden and unforbidden, from all created things—if perchance it will stoop to accept them; the everlasting life.

* * * * *

From that day forward objects turn round upon themselves with an exceedingly innocent air, but are visibly not the same;

Fate is leveled, and the mountains and pyramids look foolish before the glance of a little child; love becomes possessed of itself, and of the certainty of its own fruition (which it never could have before).

* * * * *

Here the essence of all expression, and the final surrender of Art—for this the divine Artists have struggled and still struggle;

For this the heroes and lovers of all ages have laid down their lives; and nations like tigers have fought, knowing well that this life was a mere empty blob without Freedom.

Where this makes itself known in a people or even in the soul of a single man or woman, there Democracy begins to exist.

Of that which exists in the Soul, political freedom and institutions of equality, and so forth, are but the shadows (necessarily thrown); and Democracy in States or Constitutions but the shadow of that which first expresses itself in the glance of the eye or the appearance of the skin.

Without that first the others are of no account, and need not be further mentioned.