What else (than this) are the dreams of all people and of eras and ages upon the earth?

What else are the glowing dreams of boyhood, and the toys of age, and the promises floating ever on before—dim mirages to wayworn travelers? (faint not, O faint not!)

What else the sound of Christmas hymns across the snow—the tender and plaintive songs of centuries, dreams of the Better Land—coming down from before all history?

What the obstinate traditions of races and explorations by sea and land; the instinct of the chase; searches for the Earthly paradise, Utopias of social reformers, Eldorados and fabled Islands, stirrings of adventure and conquest; pilgrimages, myths, and the tireless quest of the Sangreal?

The unquenchable belief in the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone; the feverish ardor of modern science, like a dog with its nose on the trail?

What else the marvelous dreams of the little creatures walking the earth—the dreams of religion—the skies peopled, and the vast cosmogonies of the gods, the huge and impending Otherworld, the mystic scroll of the Zodiac?

The dim-lit chambers of rock-temples and pyramids and cathedrals—the ark, the host, and the holy of holies?

The proclamations and gospels of all lands, the giving of fire from the mosque at Jerusalem, the lighting of innumerable candles; the far-away songs of the priests by the Nile-strand, standing by the empty sarcophagus with the words, “Osiris is risen”; the midnight naked dances of the Therapeutæ upon the sands, the processions of salvation armies and revivalists?

The daily life of each man and woman, the ever expected Morrow, the endless self-seeking, the illusive quests (faint not, O faint not!), the bog-floundering after fatuous wisps, the tears disappointments and obstinate renewals of hope—

All routes and roads and the myriad moving of feet to and fro over the earth—

What are they but Transparencies of one great fact—symbols of the innumerable paths.

By which the soul returns to paradise?