the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing."
The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. "Sitting as
a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Philae) moulds clay, and gives
the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris." Hence the
Genesitic "breath." Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being "by
whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is
fabricated." We find him next in Jeremiah's "Arise and go down
unto the Potter's house," etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans
(ix. 20), "Hath not the potter power over the clay?" No wonder
that the first Hand who moulded the man-mud is a _lieu commun_ in
Eastern thought. The "waste of agony" is Buddhism, or
Schopenhauerism pure and simple, I have moulded "Earth on Earth"
upon "Seint Ysidre"'s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440):--

Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouzt,
Erthe out of Erthe hath gete a dignity of nouzt,
Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt
How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc.

The "Camel-rider," suggests Ossian, "yet a few years and the
blast of the desert comes." The dromedary was chosen as Death's
vehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouin's
corpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will lie among his
kith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of:--

How poor, how rich; how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is Man!

The Haji now passes to the results of his long and anxious
thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of