"They do not speak as mortals speak,
Nor sing as others sing;
Their words are gleams of starry light,
Their songs the glow of sunset light,
Or meteors on the wing."
I once begun a book--the ending and publishing of it are in the dim and
remote future, and perhaps in the limbo of all things unfinished. It was
or is "The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal," a sage who dwells for
ever in the world, chiefly to observe the evolution of all things absurd,
grotesque, quaint, illogical--in short, of all that is strictly human.
And on him I bestowed a Florentine legend which is perhaps of great
antiquity, since there is a hint in it of an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi
ben Mozeltoff or the learned Gedauler Chamar--I forget which--besides
being found in poetic form in my own great work on Confucius.
That money is the life of man, and that treasure buried in the earth is a
sin to its possessor, forms the subject of one of Christ's parables. The
same is true of all talent unemployed, badly directed, or not developed
at all. The turning-point of evolution and of progressive civilisation
will be when public opinion and state interests require that every man
shall employ what talent he has, and every mere idler be treated as a
defaulter or criminal. From this truly Christian point of view the many
tales of ghosts who walk in agony because of buried gold are strangely
instructive.