in blood, and all things are always the same."

And there was silence again, and then again there was a voice, but it
had not the same tone; it seemed that it was not the same voice.

"If all things are always the same, it is because they are always
heroic. If all things are always the same, it is because they are
always new. To each man one soul only is given; to each soul only is
given a little power--the power at some moments to outgrow and swallow
up the stars. If age after age that power comes upon men, whatever
gives it to them is great. Whatever makes men feel old is mean--an
empire or a skin-flint shop. Whatever makes men feel young is great--a
great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God
there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new
things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and improvements and
change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the
old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that
many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not
feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of
change who does not feel upon his neck the vast weight of the
weariness of the universe. But we who do the old things are fed by
nature with a perpetual infancy. No man who is in love thinks that any
one has been in love before. No woman who has a child thinks that
there have been such things as children. No people that fight for
their own city are haunted with the burden of the broken empires. Yes,
O dark voice, the world is always the same, for it is always
unexpected."

A little gust of wind blew through the night, and then the first voice
answered--

"But in this world there are some, be they wise or foolish, whom
nothing intoxicates. There are some who see all your disturbances like
a cloud of flies. They know that while men will laugh at your Notting
Hill, and will study and rehearse and sing of Athens and Jerusalem,
Athens and Jerusalem were silly suburbs like your Notting Hill. They
know that the earth itself is a suburb, and can feel only drearily
and respectably amused as they move upon it."

"They are philosophers or they are fools," said the other voice. "They
are not men. Men live, as I say, rejoicing from age to age in
something fresher than progress--in the fact that with every baby a
new sun and a new moon are made. If our ancient humanity were a single
man, it might perhaps be tha