What a fund of universal unconscious
scepticism must underlie the world's opinions! For we are all alike
in our worship of genius that has passed through the fire. Nor can
this universal instinctive consent be explained otherwise than as the
welling up of a spring whose sources lie deep in the conviction that
great as this world is, it masks a greater wherein its wisdom is
folly and which we know as blind men know where the sun is shining,
certainly, but not distinctly.
This should in itself be enough to prove that such a world exists,
but there is still another proof in the fact that so many come among
us showing instinctive and ineradicable familiarity with a state of
things which has no counterpart here, and cannot, therefore, have
been acquired here. From such a world we come, every one of us, but
some seem to have a more living recollection of it than others.
Perfect recollection of it no man can have, for to put on flesh is to
have all one's other memories jarred beyond power of conscious
recognition. And genius must put on flesh, for it is only by the
hook and crook of taint and flesh that tainted beings like ourselves
can apprehend it, only in and through flesh can it be made manifest
to us at all. The flesh and the shop will return no matter with how
many pitchforks we expel them, for we cannot conceivably expel them
thoroughly; therefore it is better not to be too hard upon them.
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