that were all! But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the
screech of the night wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and
the rooted cedar of the hills; in the random deadly levin or the fury of
headlong floods, we recognise the "dread foundation" of life and the
anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open war against her children, and
under her softest touch hides treacherous claws. The cool waters invite
us in to drown; the domestic hearth burns up in the hour of sleep, and
makes an end of all. Everything is good or bad, helpful or deadly not in
itself, but by its circumstances. For a few bright days in England the
hurricane must break forth and the North Sea pay a toll of populous
ships. And when the universal music has led lovers into the path of
dalliance, confident of Nature's sympathy, suddenly the air shifts into
a minor, and death makes a clutch from his ambuscade below the bed of
marriage. For death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are
fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child
too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse. It is no wonder,
with so traitorous a scheme of things, if the wise people who created
for us the idea of Pan thought that of all fears the fear of him was the
most terrible, since it embraces all. And still we preserve the phrase:
a panic terror. To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently
for the threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to
hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life
because of death: this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable
citizens who flee life's pleasures and responsibilities and keep, with
upright hat, upon the midway of custom, avoiding the right hand and the
left, the ecstasies and the agonies, how surprised they would be if they
could hear their attitude mythologically expressed, and knew themselves
as tooth-chattering ones, who flee from Nature because they fear the
hand of Nature's God! Shrilly sound Pan's pipes; and behold the banker
instantly concealed in the bank parlour! For to distrust one's impulses
is to be recreant to Pan.

There are moments when the mind refuses to be satisfied with evolution,
and demands a ruddier presentation of the sum of man's experience.
Sometimes the mood is brought about by laughter at the humorous side of
life, as when, abstracting ourselves from earth, we imagine people
plodding on foot, or seated in ships a