any poetry that is being written. The things that are hidden--the
things that are spiritual and wondering--are the ones that appeal to
him. The idle, foolish look of a magnet fascinates him. He gropes in
his own body silently, harmlessly with the X-ray, and watches with awe
the beating of his heart. He glories in inner essences, both in his
life and in his art. He is the disciple of the X-ray, the defier of
appearances. Why should a man who has seen the inside of matter care
about appearances, either in little things or great? Or why argue
about the man, or argue about the man's God, or quibble with words?
Perhaps he is matter. Perhaps he is spirit. If he is spirit, he is
matter-loving spirit, and if he is matter, he is spirit-loving matter.
Every time he touches a spiritual thing, he makes it (as God makes
mountains out of sunlight) a material thing. Every time he touches a
material thing, in proportion as he touches it mightily he brings out
inner light in it. He spiritualizes it. He abandons the glistening
brass knocker--pleasing symbol to the outer sense--for a tiny knob on
his porch door and a far-away tinkle in his kitchen. The brass knocker
does not appeal to the spirit enough for the modern man, nor to the
imagination. He wants an inner world to draw on to ring a door-bell
with. He loves to wake the unseen. He will not even ring a door-bell
if he can help it. He likes it better, by touching a button, to have a
door-bell rung for him by a couple of metals down in his cellar
chewing each other. He likes to reach down twelve flights of stairs
with a thrill on a wire and open his front door. He may be seen riding
in three stories along his streets, but he takes his engines all off
the tracks and crowds them into one engine and puts it out of sight.
The more a thing is out of the sight of his eyes the more his soul
sees it and glories in it. His fireplace is underground. Hidden water
spouts over his head and pours beneath his feet through his house.
Hidden light creeps through the dark in it. The more might, the more
subtlety. He hauls the whole human race around the crust of the earth
with a vapor made out of a solid. He stops solids--sixty miles an
hour--with invisible air. He photographs the tone of his voice on a
platinum plate. His voice reaches across death with the platinum
plate. He is heard of the unborn. If he speaks in either one of his
worlds he takes two worlds to speak with. He will not be shut in with
o