But there are those who have studied by the light of imagination and these know well that the inner life of thought, of experiment, and of wonder, though it may often be over-clouded, is the only life which can henceforth give them content. They know that it was not when they were most immersed in the affairs of the day but rather when the whole world appeared for a little while to be pulsating with an almost uncontainable splendour, that they were most alive. For the best mood we have ever known, though it be lost for long, is yet the clearest revelation of our true selves, and it is then that we learn most nearly what marvels life may hold. If we read with imagination the Dialogues of Plato we dwell for a while among those ardent Greeks for whom the universe was changed by the words of the poet-philosopher. So too when we read the letter that was written by Plotinus to Flaccus, perhaps the serenest height the human soul has ever attained, we become ourselves the recipients. In either case we feel that we have lived in the presence of a princely soul. It is an inspiration to realise that we are of the one race with these and may look out on the same beauty of earth and heaven. Yet the magic of the mind is not enduring and to dream overlong of a bygone beauty is to make sorrowful the present. What imaginative reader of Plato but has desired with a fruitless ardour that he might in truth have been numbered with those who walked on the daisied lawns of the Academy, might in truth have heard the voice of the hardly human initiate, have seen him face to face, have responded to the influence of his presence? who but would willingly translate his life to another century if he could but hear Plotinus endeavouring to describe in human language an ecstasy which makes of man a god?