"Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not; end and beginning are dreams,
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever;
Death has not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems.

"These thoughts are better understood in the East," continued Ah Ben,
"where the people give less time to _religion_ and more to the
_philosophy_ of life. And what are dreams but a part of our inner
existence? None the less mysterious because we are so familiar with
them. There are numerous authenticated records of dreams that have
carried a man through an apparently long life, but which have really
occupied less than a second of time as counted with us; through all
the minutiae and details of youth, courtship, marriage, a military
career, war with all its horrors, the details of the last battle
where death was inevitable, and where the last shot was fired and
heard that brought the great change--of _awakening_, and the sudden
perception that the entire phantasmagoria had been caused by the
slamming of the door, which the exhausted sleeper had only that
second opened as he dropped into a chair beside it. The facts in this
case are proven; no perceptible time having elapsed. Time--time is
nothing. Time is only what we make it. An hour in a dungeon might be
an eternity, while a million years in the Levachan of the Hindoo
would seem but a summer's day."




8