HE: "I have sometimes seen it clearly, that when the disappointed quest
was over, all this journeying would turn out to be but the beginning of
a much greater adventure, and that I should set out towards another
place where every sense should be fulfilled, and where the fear of
mutation should be set at rest."
MYSELF: "No one denies that such a picture in the mind haunts men their
whole lives through, though, after they have once experienced loss and
incompletion, and especially when they have caught sight a long way off
of the Barrier which ends all our experience, they recognise that
picture for a cheat; and surely nothing can save it? That which reasons
in us may be absolute and undying; for it is outside Time. It escapes
the gropings of the learned, and it has nothing to do with material
things. But as for all those functions which we but half fulfil in life,
surely elsewhere they cannot be fulfilled at all? Colour is for the eyes
and music is for the ears; and all that we love so much comes in by
channels that do not remain."
He: "Yet the Desire can only be for things that we have known; and the
Desire, as you have said, is a proof of the thing desired, and, but for
these things which we know, the words 'joy' and 'contentment' and
'fulfilment' would have no meaning."
MYSELF: "Why yes; but, though desires are the strongest evidence of
truth, yet there is also desire for illusions, as there is a waking
demand for things attainable, and a demand in dreams for things
fantastic and unreal. Every analogy increasingly persuades us, and so
does the whole scheme of things as we learn it, that, with our passing,
there shall also pass speech and comfortable fires and fields and the
voices of our children, and that, when they pass, we lose them for
ever."
He: "Yet these things would not be, but for the mind which receives
them; and how can we make sure what channels are necessary for the mind?
and may not the mind stretch on? And you, since you reject my guess at
what may be reserved for us, tell me, what is the End which we shall
attain?"