It passes, and once more thou art a grain of dust, a woman, a child.... But why need’st thou care! For this instant, thou art above, thou art outside all that is passing, temporary. This thy instant will never end. Stay! and let me share in thy immortality; shed into my soul the light of thy eternity! _November 1879._ THE MONK I used to know a monk, a hermit, a saint. He lived only for the sweetness of prayer; and steeping himself in it, he would stand so long on the cold floor of the church that his legs below the knees grew numb and senseless as blocks of wood. He did not feel them; he stood on and prayed. I understood him, and perhaps envied him; but let him too understand me and not condemn me; me, for whom his joys are inaccessible. He has attained to annihilating himself, his hateful _ego_; but I too; it’s not from egoism, I pray not. My _ego_, may be, is even more burdensome and more odious to me, than his to him. He has found wherein to forget himself ... but I, too, find the same, though not so continuously. He does not lie ... but neither do I lie. _November 1879._ WE WILL STILL FIGHT ON What an insignificant trifle may sometimes transform the whole man! Full of melancholy thought, I walked one day along the highroad. My heart was oppressed by a weight of gloomy apprehension; I was overwhelmed by dejection. I raised my head.... Before me, between two rows of tall poplars, the road darted like an arrow into the distance. And across it, across this road, ten paces from me, in the golden light of the dazzling summer sunshine, a whole family of sparrows hopped one after another, hopped saucily, drolly, self-reliantly! One of them, in particular, skipped along sideways with desperate energy, puffing out his little bosom and chirping impudently, as though to say he was not afraid of any one! A gallant little warrior, really! And, meanwhile, high overhead in the heavens hovered a hawk, destined, perhaps, to devour that little warrior. I looked, laughed, shook myself, and the mournful thoughts flew right away: pluck, daring, zeal for life I felt anew. Let him, too, hover over me, _my_ hawk.... We will fight on, and damn it all! _November 1879._ PRAYER Whatever a man pray for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces to this: ‘Great God, grant that twice two be not four.’ Only such a prayer is a real prayer from person to person. To pray to the Cosmic Spirit, to the Higher Being, to the Kantian, Hegelian, quintessential, formless God is impossible and unthinkable. But can even a personal, living, imaged God make twice two not be four? Every believer is bound to answer, _he can_, and is bound to persuade himself of it. But if reason sets him revolting against this senselessness? Then Shakespeare comes to his aid: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’ etc.