intellectual and spiritual, as well as what are termed physical
effects. The deeper view of intuition is justified. And Thales, by
virtue of the whole trend and outcome of his speculations, may
claim an honoured place in the ranks of the nature-mystics.

CHAPTER XVII

THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH

We have found that the constant movement and change
manifested in the circulation of the waters of the globe
impressed the mind of Thales and largely determined the course
of his speculation. When his great successor, Heracleitus,
passed from water to fire, in his search for the _Welt-stoff_, he
by no means became insensible to the mystic appeal of running
water. "All things are flowing." Such was the ancient expression
of the universal flux; and it is plainly based on the analogy of a
stream. If Heracleitus was not its author, at any rate it became
his favourite simile. "We cannot step" (he said) "into the same
river twice, for fresh and ever fresh waters are constantly
pouring into it." And yet, in a sense, though the waters change,
the river remains. Hence the statement assumed a form more
paradoxical and mystical--"We step into the same river, and we
do not step into it; we are, and we are not."

Moving water, then, has the power of stimulating emotion and
prompting intuition; and this power is manifested in exceptional
degree when the source from which the water issues, and the
goal to which it flows, are unknown. These conditions are best
satisfied in the case of streams that flow in volume through
subterranean caverns. The darkness contributes its element of
undefined dread, and the hollow rumblings make the darkness
to be felt. What more calculated to fill the mind of the child of
nature with a sense of life and will behind the phenomena? The
weird reverberations are interpreted by him as significant
utterances of mighty, unseen powers, and the caves and chasms
are invested with the awe due to entrances into the gloomy
regions where reign the monarchs of the dead.

True, it may be said, for the child of nature. But are such
experiences possible for the modern mind? Yes, if we can
pierce through the varied disguises which the intuitional
material assumes as times and manners change. Coleridge, for
instance, is thrown into a deep sleep by an anodyne. His
imagination takes wings to itself; images rise up before him,
and, without conscious effort, find verbal equivalents. The
enduring substance of the vision i