"That I am not able to do, my wise master!" said the voice of the young Icelander, within the partition; "but could I wake lifeless nature, and force her to solve the mysteries I gaze upon, would she answer aught else than what the dead have ever answered the living, what the dead Vola[11] answered Odin in our ancient poems, what the spirit of Samuel answered Saul in the presence of the Witch of Endor:--'Thou shalt die! to-morrow thou shalt die!'" "Well," resumed the philosopher, "were the answer not much more cheering, if it were but truth could a philosopher, a Leccar Brother, a priest of nature and truth demand or wish it otherwise? You _will_ have flattery, you _will_ all of you be cheated and deceived--therefore you cling so fast to that flattering lie, but hate and persecute truth as ungodliness, heresy, or devilry--therefore are popes and bishops, like the prophets and evangelists of old, still able to lead the whole human race blindfold round in an eternal circle of error from one age to another until they have their eyes opened, and see that they stand where their blind fathers stood, by the closed book of nature, which amid their dreaming they have forgotten to open through the lapse of ages. Look! there thou standest, my pupil! and art ready to despair, because all that fair jugglery hath vanished and been blown away by my breath as it were a spider's web, or bubbles of air! and thou seest nought but one enormous lifeless body which I call nature.--But look! the lifeless body wakes! 'Tis deity, and yet our slave,--obedient to the mightier manifestation of deity within us. Only through our means can nature's deity awake to consciousness and self-knowledge. In us, and in our will alone lives the only true God we should obey. Courage, Laurentius!--courage! Truth must make its way--the slumbering and disguised god of nature must be wakened and unveiled. It must open to us its vast recesses, it must restore to us what it hath robbed and hidden--the philosopher's stone must be found, even though its workings should seem to us eternal death and petrifaction."