Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him, They desire he should like them, and touch them, and speak to them, and stay with them. Behaviour lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncombed head, and laughter, and naïveté, Slow-stepping feet, and the common features, and the common modes and emanations.... He sees the divine that is in men, and how all the gods are latent in the race, and with them ever more besides. Even in the midst of their absurd littleness, which he fully recognises, he calls men to the reality of themselves, away from the religions of the priests to their own souls. He understands doubt very well, but he has faith, faith in an ultimate happiness for each and all. * * * * * He endeavours to express his sense of eternity, and of the friendliness of the world to him:-- Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first Nothing--the vapour from the Nostrils of Death--I know I was even there, I waited unseen and always, and slept while God carried me through the lethargic mist, And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugged close--long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen, For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings, They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me, My embryo has never been torpid--nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb, The long slow strata piled to rest it on, Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me, Now I stand on this spot with my Soul.[173] Thus it seems to him that he has existed potentially from the beginning; that all the ages in succession have cared for him, and that now the whole world is full of his kin and lovers. He beholds the universe as gloriously infinite in its assured purpose: God has appointed a meeting-place where He waits for every soul. The way of the soul is eternal progress, and each one must follow that road. My pupils, he exclaims, shall become masters and excel me! They shall be wholesome, hearty, natural fellows, attracted to me because I neither write for money nor indoors.[174] My religion is the worship of the soul. I am calm and composed, and satisfied about God, whom I do not in the least understand. Death and decay seem wholesome to him; they are the way of life by which he himself came to the present hour, wherein he realises the mystic reality, the life eternal, and the ineffable idea of happiness as the central purpose of the Universe:--