by which their magnitudes might be indicated and still flee onward, onward, downward, upwardalways, always - never could that Self of me reach nearer to any verge, never speed farther from any centre. For, in that Silence, all vastitude and height and depth and time and direction are swallowed up: relation therein could have no meaning but for the speck of my fleeting consciousness — atom of terror pulsating alone through atomless, soundless, nameless, illimitable potentiality.

And the idea of that potentiality awakens another quality of horror - the horror of infinite Possibility. For this Inscrutable that pulses through substance as if substance were not at all—so subtly that none can feel the flowing of its tides, yet so swiftly that no lifetime would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which it makes within the fraction of one second thrills to us out of endlessness; - and the force of infinity dwells in its lightest tremor; the weight of eternity presses behind its faintest shudder. To that phantom Touch, the tinting of a blossom or the dissipation of a universe were equally facile: here it caresses the eye with the charm and illusion of color; there it bestirs into being a cluster of giant suns. All the human mind is capable of conceiving as possible (and how much also that human mind. must forever remain incapable of conceiving?) may be wrought anywhere, everywhere, by a single tremor of that Abyss...

Is it true, as some would have us believe, that the fear of the extinction of self is the terror supreme? ... For the thought of personal perpetuity in the infinite vortex is enough to evoke sudden trepidation that no tongue can utter fugitive instants of a horror too vast to enter wholly into consciousness: a horror that can be endured in swift black glimpsings only. And the trust that we are one with the Absolute dim points of thrilling in the abyss of It can prove a consoling faith only to those who find themselves obliged to think that consciousness dissolves with the crumbling of the brain.... It seems to me that few (or none) dare to utter frankly those stupendous doubts and fears which force mortal intelligence to recoil upon itself at every fresh attempt to pass the barrier of the Knowable. Were that barrier unexpectedly pushed back-were knowledge to be suddenly and vastly expanded beyond its present limits-perhaps we should find ourselves unable to endure the revelation....

Mr. Percival Lowell's astonishing book, "Mars," sets one to thinking about the results of being able to hold communication with the habitants of an older and a wiser world - some race of beings more highly evolved than we, both intellectually and morally, and able to interpret a thousand mysteries that still baffle our science. Perhaps, in such event, we should not find ourselves able to comprehend the methods, even could we borrow the results, of wis

dom older than all our civilization by myriads or hundreds of myriads of years. But would not the sudden advent of larger knowledge from some elder planet prove for us, by reason of the present moral condition of mankind, nothing less than a catastrophe? might it not even result in the extinction of the human species?...

The rule seems to be that the dissemination of dangerous higher knowledge, before the masses of a people are ethically prepared to receive it, will always be prevented by the conservative instinct; and we have reason to suppose (allowing for individual exceptions) that the power to gain higher knowledge is developed only as the moral ability to profit by such knowledge is evolved. I fancy that if the power of holding intellectual converse with other worlds could now serve us, we should presently obtain it. But if, by some astonishing chance-as by the discovery, let us suppose, of some method of ether-telegraphy - this power were prematurely acquired, its exercise would in all probability be prohibited.... Imagine, for example, what would have happened during the Middle Ages to the person guilty of discovering means to communicate with the people of a neighboring planet! Assuredly that inventor and his apparatus and his records would have been burned; every trace and memory of his labors would have been extirpated. Even to-day the sudden discovery of truths unsupported by human experience, the sudden revelation of facts to

tally opposed to existing convictions, might evoke some frantic revival of superstitious terrors - some religious panic-fury that would strangle science, and replunge the world in mental darkness for a thousand years.

IV

THE MIRROR MAIDEN

In the period of the Ashikaga Shogunate the shrine of Ogawachi-Myōjin, at Minami-Isé, fell into decay; and the daimyō of the district, the Lord Kitahataké, found himself unable, by reason of war and other circumstances, to provide for the reparation of the building. Then the Shinto priest in charge, Matsumura Hyōgo, sought help at Kyoto from the great daimyō Hosokawa, who was known to have influence with the Shōgun. The Lord Hosokawa received the priest kindly, and promised to speak to the Shōgun about the condition of Ogawachi-Myōjin. But he said that, in any event, a grant for the restoration of the temple could not be made without due investigation and considerable delay; and he advised Matsumura to remain in the capital while the matter was being arranged. Matsumura therefore brought his family to Kyoto, and rented a house in the old Kyōgoku quarter.

This house, although handsome and spacious, had been long unoccupied. It was said to be an unlucky house. On the northeast side of it there was a well; and several former tenants had drowned themselves in that well, without any known cause. But Matsumura, being a Shinto priest, had no fear of evil spirits; and he soon made himself very comfortable in his new home.