g, mysteriously diplomatising, in scheme within
scheme, hover as formerly a faint shadow, the hope of Royalty.

BOOK 2.III.

THE TUILERIES

Chapter 2.3.I.

Epimenides.

How true that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call
dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The leaf
that lies rotting in moist winds,' says one, 'has still force; else how
could it rot?' Our whole Universe is but an infinite Complex of Forces;
thousandfold, from Gravitation up to Thought and Will; man's Freedom
environed with Necessity of Nature: in all which nothing at any moment
slumbers, but all is for ever awake and busy. The thing that lies
isolated inactive thou shalt nowhere discover; seek every where from
the granite mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation, to the passing
cloud-vapour, to the living man; to the action, to the spoken word of
man. The word that is spoken, as we know, flies-irrevocable: not less,
but more, the action that is done. 'The gods themselves,' sings Pindar,
'cannot annihilate the action that is done.' No: this, once done, is
done always; cast forth into endless Time; and, long conspicuous or soon
hidden, must verily work and grow for ever there, an indestructible new
element in the Infinite of Things. Or, indeed, what is this Infinite of
Things itself, which men name Universe, but an action, a sum-total
of Actions and Activities? The living ready-made sum-total of these
three,--which Calculation cannot add, cannot bring on its tablets; yet
the sum, we say, is written visible: All that has been done, All that
is doing, All that will be done! Understand it well, the Thing thou
beholdest, that Thing is an Action, the product and expression of
exerted Force: the All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb
To do. Shoreless Fountain-Ocean of Force, of power to do; wherein
Force rolls and circles, billowing, many-streamed, harmonious; wide
as Immensity, deep as Eternity; beautiful and terrible, not to be
comprehended: this is what man names Existence and Universe; this
thousand-tinted Flame-image, at once veil and revelation, reflex such as
he, in his poor brain and heart, can paint, of One Unnameable dwelling
in inaccessible light! From beyond the Star-galaxies, from before the
Beginning of Days, it billows and rolls,--round thee, nay thyself art of
it, in this point of Space where thou now standest, in this moment which
thy clock measures.

Or apart from all Tra