that Mankind, as we know
it, must be the highest form of creation, simply because it is the
highest form WE can see! How absurd it is to be so controlled by our
limited vision, when we cannot even perceive the minute wonders that a
butterfly beholds, or pierce the sunlit air with anything like the
facility possessed by the undazzled eyes of an upward-soaring bird!
Nay, we cannot examine the wing of a common house-fly without the aid
of a microscope--to observe the facial expression of our own actors on
the stage we look through opera-glasses--to form any idea of the
wonders of the stars we construct telescopes to assist our feeble and
easily deluded sight; and yet--yet we continue to parcel out the
infinite gradations of creative Force and Beauty entirely to suit our
own private opinions, and conclude that WE are the final triumph of the
Divine Artist's Supreme Intelligence! Alas! in very truth we are a
sorry spectacle both to our soberly thinking selves and the Higher
Powers, invited, as it were, to spend our life's brief day in one of
God's gardens as His friends and guests, who certainly are not expected
to abuse their Host's hospitality, and, ignoring Him, call themselves
the owners and masters of the ground! For we are but wanderers beneath
the sun; a "generation" which must most surely and rapidly "pass away"
to make room for another; and as the work of the Universe is always
progressive, that other will be of nobler capacity and larger
accomplishment. So while we are here, let us think earnestly of the few
brief chances remaining to us--they grow fewer every hour. On one side
is the endless, glorious heritage of the purely aspiring, Immortal
Spirit; on the other the fleeting Mirage of this our present Existence;
and, midway between the two, the swinging pendulum of HUMAN WILL, which
decides our fate. God does not choose for us, or compel our love--we
are free to fashion out our own futures; but in making our final choice
we cannot afford to waste one moment of our precious, unreturning time.

MARIE CORELLI.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Romance of Two Worlds, by Marie Corelli

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