d. All
sense of proportion seems lost. After being accustomed for many years
to think of himself as in some sense a figure of importance in the
universe, a man finds himself unimportant, insignificant, a little
creature scarce perceptible a mile away. I came once upon some human
bones lying exposed on the side of an old earthwork on the summit of a
hill; heavy rains had loosened the soil, and there lay these painful
relics in the cold eye of day. Two thousand years ago, or more, spears
had clashed upon this hillside, living men had gone to final rest amid
their blood; and it came upon me with a sense of insult how little man
and all his battles counted for in the limitless arena of the world.
The brute violence of winds and tempests had swept these hills for
centuries; and he whose lordship of the world is so loudly trumpeted,
had lain prone beneath this violence, unremembered even by his fellows.
I understood in that moment that affecting doctrine of the nothingness
of man, which coloured mediaeval thought so strangely: like the monk of
the cloister I also had before me my _memento mori_. But in truth I
did not need the bones of dead warriors to humble me; the mere space
and stillness of the world sufficed. My ear ached for some sound more
rational than the cry of blind winds, my eye for some narrower stage
than this tremendous theatre, where an army might defile unnoticed. In
such a mood the desire of neighbourship grows keen. One is cheered
even by the comradeship of his own shadow. It becomes necessary to
talk aloud merely to gain assurance that one lives. So ghost-like
appears man's march across the fields of Time, that some active
expression of physical sensation becomes imperative, in order to
recover evidence of one's physical existence; and thrice welcome, like
the violence offered to the half-drowned, is any kind of buffet which
breaks the dream, and sets the nerves tingling in the certainty of
contact with men who breathe and live.

The easy and ostensible remedy for such a state of mind is immediate
retreat to the reassuring hum of cities: the more difficult but real
remedy is the reassurance of one's own identity. Many people take the
first course without admitting it; alleging the lack of intercourse or
convenience in country life, whereas the real truth is that contact
with the steadfast indifference of Nature has proved wounding to their
egoism. A vain man cannot maintain his sense of self-im