And this is in a sense a perfectly fair way of looking at the matter. These gods and creeds ARE only projections of the human mind. But all the same it misses, does this view, the essential fact. It misses the fact that there is no shadow without a fire, that the very existence of a shadow argues a light somewhere (though we may not directly see it) as well as the existence of a solid form which intercepts that light. Deep, deep in the human mind there is that burning blazing light of the world-consciousness--so deep indeed that the vast majority of individuals are hardly aware of its existence. Their gaze turned outwards is held and riveted by the gigantic figures and processions passing across their sky; they are unaware that the latter are only shadows--silhouettes of the forms inhabiting their own minds. (1) The vast majority of people have never observed their own minds; their own mental forms. They have only observed the reflections cast by these. Thus it may be said, in this matter, that there are three degrees of reality. There are the mere shadows--the least real and most evanescent; there are the actual mental outlines of humanity (and of the individual), much more real, but themselves also of course slowly changing; and most real of all, and permanent, there is the light "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world"--the glorious light of the world-consciousness. Of this last it may be said that it never changes. Every thing is known to it--even the very IMPEDIMENTS to its shining. But as it is from the impediments to the shining of a light that shadows are cast, so we now may understand that the things of this world and of humanity, though real in their degree, have chiefly a kind of negative value; they are opaquenesses, clouds, materialisms, ignorances, and the inner light falling upon them gradually reveals their negative character and gradually dissolves them away till they are lost in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think Jefferies, when he asked that question with which I have begun this chapter, was in some sense subconsciously, if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His frequent references to the burning blazing sun throughout The Story of the Heart seem to be an indication of his real deep-down attitude of mind. (1) See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave, Republic, Book vii.