sunken Polynesian continent, hieroglyphs as useless as those of
Memphis, nothing. Nothing! They have been tried, and were found an illusion.
Think then, to-day, now looking from this apex
of the pavement promontory outwards from our own land to the utmost bounds
of the farthest sail, is there any faith or culture at this hour which can
stand in this fierce heat? From the various forms of Semitic, Aryan, or
Turanian creed now existing, from the printing-press to the palm-leaf volume
on to those who call on the jewel in the lotus, can aught be gathered which
can face this, the Reality? The indistinguishable noise, non-resolvable,
roars a loud contempt.

Turn, then, to the calm reasoning of Aristotle; is there
anything in that? Can the half-divine thought of Plato, rising
in storeys of sequential ideas, following each other to the
conclusion, endure here? No! All the philosophers in Diogenes
Laertius fade away: the theories of medimval days; the organon
of experiment; down to this hour--they are useless alike. The
science of this hour, drawn from the printing-press in an endless web of
paper, is powerless here; the indistinguishable noise echoed from the
smoke-shadowed walls despises the whole. A thousand footsteps, a thousand
hoofs, a thousand wheels roll over and utterly contemn them in complete
annihilation. Mere illusions of heart or mind, they are tested and thrust
aside by the irresistible push of a million converging feet.

Burning in the sky, the sun shines as it shone on me in the
solitary valley, as it burned on when the earliest cave of India
was carved. Above the indistinguishable roar of the many feet I
feel the presence of the sun, of the immense forces of the
universe, and beyond these the sense of the eternal now, of the
immortal. Full well aware that all has failed, yet, side by