s love. On and on
it flowed, until at last it grew eyes to me, and I could see. Lo! before
me was the multitude of the brothers and sisters whom I
loved--individually--a many, many--not a mass;--I loved every individual
with that special, peculiar kind of love which alone belonged to that
one, and to that one alone. The sight dazzled the eyes which love itself
had opened. I said to myself, 'Ah, how radiant, how lovely, how divine
they are! and they are mine, every one--the many, for I love them!'

"Then suddenly came a whisper--not to my ear--I heard it far away, but
whether in some distant cave of thought, away beyond the flaming walls
of the universe, or in some forgotten dungeon-corner of my own heart, I
could not tell. 'O man,' it said, 'what a being, what a life is thine!
See all these souls, these fires of life, regarding and loving thee! It
is in the glory of thy love their faces shine. Their hearts receive it,
and send it back in joy. Seest thou not all their eyes fixed upon thine?
Seest thou not the light come and go upon their faces, as the pulses of
thy heart flow and ebb? See, now they flash, and now they fade! Blessed
art thou, O man, as none else in the universe of God is blessed!'

"It was, or seemed, only a voice. But therewith, horrible to tell, the
glow of another fire arose in me--an orange and red fire, and it went
out from me, and withered all the faces, and the next moment there was
darkness--all was black as night. But my being was still awake--only if
then there was bliss, now was there the absolute blackness of darkness,
the positive negation of bliss, the recoil of self to devour itself, and
forever. The consciousness of being was intense, but in all the universe
was there nothing to enter that being, and make it other than an
absolute loneliness. It was, and forever, a loveless, careless,
hopeless monotony of self-knowing--a hell with but one demon, and no
fire to make it cry: my self was the hell, my known self the demon of
it--a hell of which I could not find the walls, cold and dark and empty,
and I longed for a flame that I might know there was a God. Somehow I
only remembered God as a word, however; I knew nothing of my whence or
whither. One time there might have been a God, but there was none now:
if there ever was one, He must be dead. Certainly there was no God to
love--for if there was a God, how could the creature whose very essence
was to him an evil, love the Creator of him? I had