l men, cannot afford, in these
pages or anywhere else, to say anything that will permanently offend
librarians. I do hope I have not. It is only through knowing so many
good ones that I know enough to criticise the rest. If I am right, it is
because I am their spokesman. If I am wrong, I am not a well-informed
person, and I do not count anywhere in particular on anything. The best
way, I suspect, for a librarian to deal with me is not to try to
classify me. I ought to be put out of the way on this subject, tucked
back into any general pigeon-hole of odds and ends of temperament. If I
had not felt that I could be cheerfully sorted out at the end of this
page, filed away by everybody,--almost anybody,--as not making very much
difference, I would not have spoken so freely. There is not a librarian
who has read as far as this, in this book, who, though he may have had
moments of being troubled in it, will not be able to dispose of me with
a kind of grateful, relieved certainty. However that may be, I can only
beg you, Oh, librarians, and all ye kindly learned ones, to be generous
with me, wherever you put me. I leave my poor, naked, shivering,
miscellaneous soul in your hands.

Book II

Possibilities

I

The Issue

I dreamed I lived in a day when men dared have visions. I lay in a great
white Silence as one who waited for something.

And as I lay and waited, the Silence groped toward me and I felt it
gathering nearer and nearer about me.

Then it folded me to Itself.

I made Time my bedside.

And it seemed to me, when I had rested my soul with years, and when I
had found Space and had stretched myself upon it, I awoke.

I lay in a great white empty place, and the whole world like solemn
music came to me.

And I looked, and behold in the shadow of the earth, which came and
went, I saw Human Lives being tossed about. On the solemn rhythmic
music, back and forth, I saw them lifted across Silence.

And I said to my Spirit, "What is it they are doing?"

"They are living," the Spirit said.

So they floated before me while The Great Shadow came and went.

* * * * *

"O my Soul, hast thou forgotten thy days in the world, when thou didst
watch the processional of it, when the faces--day-lighted,
night-lighted, faces--trooped before thee, and thou didst look upon them
and delight in them? What didst thou see in the world?"

"I saw Two Immeasurable Hands in it," said my Sou