SIBYL. But was all that fine dream only about this?
L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this? It is small,
if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the
ideas of smallness and largeness pass away. The making of this
pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been
telling you, and just as incomprehensible. It was not, I suppose,
as swift, but quite as grand things are done as swiftly. When
Neith makes crystals of snow, it needs a great deal more
marshaling of the atoms, by her flaming arrows, than it does to
make crystals like this one; and that is done in a moment.
EGYPT. But how you DO puzzle us! Why do you say Neith does it? You
don't mean that she is a real spirit, do you?
L. What _I_ mean, is of little consequence. What the Egyptians
meant, who called her "Neith,"--or Homer, who called her
"Athena,"--or Solomon, who called her by a word which the Greeks
render as "Sophia," you must judge for yourselves. But her
testimony is always the same, and all nations have received it: "I
was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His
delight; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my
delights were with the sons of men."
MARY. But is not that only a personification?
L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or what
right have you to do so? Cannot you accept the image given you, in
its life; and listen, like children, to the words which chiefly
belong to you as children: "I love them that love me, and those
that seek me early shall find me"?
(They are all quiet for a minute or two; questions begin to appear
in their eyes.)
I cannot talk to you any more to-day. Take that rose-crystal away
with you, and think.