attributed to the Christ, it might have been.
The amount of beauty stored in it is more enormous than in any other.

To the materialist the beauty is meaningless. To the mathematician it
has the value of a zero from which the periphery has gone. But at the
Pillars of Hercules early geographers put on their maps: _Hic deficit
orbis_--Here ends the world. They had no suspicion that beyond that
world there stretched another twice as great. Materialists may be
equally naif. On the other hand, they may not be. The theory of
reincarnation is one that transcends the limits of experience.

Of the many tenets of the belief there are but two with which the
matter-of-fact agrees. One of them concerns the conservation of
energy, the other the negation of death. Theory and practice unite in
admitting that the supply of energy is invariable. Constantly it is
transformed and as constantly transposed, but whether it enter into
fungus or star, into worm or man, the loss of a particle never occurs.
Death consequently is but the constituent of a change. When it comes,
that which was living assumes a state that has in it the potentiality
of another form. A tenement has crumbled and a tenant gone forth.
Though just where is the riddle.

In the thousand and one nights that were less astronomic than our own,
it was thought that the riddle was answered. Poets had erected an
edifice of verse and called it Creation. In the strophes of the epic
the earth was a flat and stationary parallelogram. About the earth,
and uniquely for its benefit, sun, moon and stars paraded. Above was a
deity one or multiple. Below were places of vivid discomfort. To the
latter, or to the former, the soul of man proceeded. There were no
other resorts. Creation had its limits.

Poets younger yet more gray have presented a different conception. In
the glare of a million million of suns they have sent the earth
spinning like a midge. Beyond the uttermost horizon they have strewn
other systems, other worlds; beyond the latter, more. Wherever
imagination in its weariness would set a limit, there is space begun.

There too is energy. Throughout the stretch of universes the same
force pulsates that is recognizable here. A deduction is obvious.
Throughout infinity are sentient beings, perhaps our brothers, perhaps
ourselves.

The obvious, very frequently, is misleading. But the dream of
precipitation into that wonderful tornado of worlds has the merit of
more colourful