CHAPTER XXII.
WHAT a happy age is this far-off one! No skeletons of mythology are here deadening or vitiating one-seventh of these people's lives. How different are their faces to those of my century!—where nine-tenths are stamped the hideous seal of hypocrisy.
Oh! that I might be permitted to remain! Sighing longingly, I look upon the beautiful scene before me.
While thinking how delightful to live in a town so bright—so pure within as without—a voice answers my spirit's request:
"You remain! Have you forgotten how the potter's clay thought it, also, ought to have a place of honor with the refined porcelain, because that had once been but clay? No, you must now leave this age. Return to your own, where so very much has to be done. Use well and courageously your little power to aid in crumbling those skeletons of myths. Arouse cowards, whose growing reason has taught them disbelief in creeds—which sufficed well enough for humankind when its nature was little higher than that of the ape—yet who have neither the courage nor the honor to own and act up to the great truths so surely evolved in their inner minds. Show them the happiness—the independence the real nobility—of acting truly; even though only a few should fully understand the honesty of their lives in so doing. Obey well. You will be rewarded by never losing sight of the light from this age, and thus fit yourself to be one of us. Away to your work!"
