of the dead gold calf. You have insulted the
dignity of man.'

"I waited, but the townsman was silent.

"'Is that not so?' I urged.

"'You have your point of view; we have ours. You have your religion
and we ours,' said the townsman obstinately. 'And _you_ use words, do
you not? You have your terminology; you have your idols, just as we
have. If not, then how do you use your words?'

"Then I answered him: 'When I found myself upon the world I soon came
under the sway of your words. Progress tempted me; commerce promised
me happiness. I obeyed commandments and moral precepts, and eagerly
swallowed rules of life. I prostrated myself before the great high
public idols, I bowed to the little household gods, and cherished
dearly your little proverb-idols and maxim-idols. The advice of
Polonius to his son and such literature was to me the ancient wisdom.
I became an idolater, and my body a temple of idolatry.'

"'How then did you escape?' asked my companion.

"'In this wise,' I answered. 'In my temple, as in ancient Athens, in
the midst of the idols was an altar to the Unknown God, which altar
from the first was present. That altar was to the mystery and beauty
of life.

"'By virtue of this altar I discovered my idolatry, and I recognised
the forces of death to which I had bound myself. I broke away and
escaped, and in place of all my idols I substituted my aspiring human
heart, and it beat like a sacred presence in the clear temple of my
being.

"'Then words I degraded from their fame, and trampling them under my
feet, I sang triumphantly to the limitless sky.'

"'But still you use words,' said the townsman, 'you irreconcilables.'

"'Yes. When we had degraded their fame and humbled them so that they
came to us fawningly, asking to be used, we exalted them to be our
servants. Now we are masters over them, and not they over us. They are
content to be used, if but for a moment, and then forgotten for ever.
We use them to reproduce in other minds the thoughts that are in our
own. Woe if they ever get out of hand and become our masters again!
They are our exchange metals. Woe if ever again we melt down those
metals and recast them as idols!

"'Come with me into the country,' I urged; and the townsman, as if
foreseeing release from the bondage of his soul, allowed my flowing
life to float him away from the haunts of his idolatry. Then as we
passed from under the canopy of smoke and entered into the bright
outside un