I always feel that the instinct for beauty is perhaps the surest
indication of some essence of immortality in the soul; and indeed
there are moments when it gives one the sense of pre-existence, the
feeling that one has loved these fair things in a region that is
further back even than the beginnings of consciousness. Blake,
indeed, in one of his wild half-inspired utterances, went even
further, and announced that a man's hopes of immortality depended
not upon virtuous conduct but upon intellectual perception. And it
is hard to resist the belief, when one is brought into the presence
of perfect beauty, in whatever form it may come, that the deep
craving it arouses is meant to receive a satisfaction more deep and
real than the act of mere contemplation can give. I have felt in
such moments as if I were on the verge of grasping some momentous
secret, as if only the thinnest of veils hung between me and some
knowledge that would set my whole life and being on a different
plane. But the moment passes, and the secret delays. Yet we are
right to regard such emotions as direct messages from God; because
they bring with them no desire of possession, which is the sign of
mortality, but rather the divine desire to be possessed by them;
that the reality, whatever it be, of which beauty is the symbol,
may enter in and enthral the soul. It remains a mystery, like all
the best things to which we draw near. And the joy of all mysteries
is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there
are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward
way; that we are at the threshold and not near the goal; and then,
like the glow of sunset, rises the hope that the grave, far from
being the gate of death, may be indeed the gate of life.