side with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an
unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet
something to be found, something real, something to give each separate
personality sunshine and flowers in its own existence now. Something to
shape this million-handed labour to an end and outcome, leaving accumulated
sunshine and flowers to those who shall succeed. It must be dragged forth by
might of thought from the immense forces of the universe.

To prepare for such an effort, first the mind must be cleared of
the conceit that, because we live to-day, we are wiser than the
ages gone. The mind must acknowledge its ignorance; all the
learning and lore of so many eras must be erased from it as an
encumbrance. It is not from past or present knowledge, science
or faith, that it is to be drawn. Erase these altogether as they are erased
under the fierce heat of the focus before me. Begin wholly afresh. Go
straight to the sun, the immense forces of the universe, to the Entity
unknown; go higher than a god; deeper than prayer; and open a new day. That
I might but have a fragment of Caesar's intellect to find a fragment of this
desire!

>From my home near London I made a pilgrimage almost daily to an
aspen by a brook. It was a mile and a quarter along the road,
far enough for me to walk off the concentration of mind
necessary for work. The idea of the pilgrimage was to get away
from the endless and nameless circumstances of everyday
existence, which by degrees build a wall about the mind so that
it travels in a constantly narrowing circle. This tether of the
faculties tends to make them accept present knowledge, and
present things, as all that can be attained to. This is all--
there is nothing more--is the iterated preaching of house-life.