... A hopeful dream, the poem of an autumn afternoon, the building of a sphinx or a pyramid--these are not subject to time or conditions. They remain. So the Children who are the hope of the world are not dismayed at the medley of illusions emanating from the so-called ruling class. Emperors and premiers do not get very much done either way; they themselves abandon their own works over night. They are deserving of profound sympathy. They only spread out more manful chaos to be set straight by the master craftsmen--the artists, humorists, vitalists, mystics.... Beauty is the sun-bright flash of the Infinite. With duty raised to a joy, and pain forgot, the Singers come, the Builders, the Quickeners of man. The Unforgettables of the so-called past were of this stock. Their leisure is deep--of a sort that sustains the finitudes. All the good goals of yesterday are to be counted as mile-posts. Direction is more important than any imaginable goal; unvarying tendency is more direct and splendid than any creed; the white path of the quester is more precious than a stationary heaven. The modern children cannot stop on this side of the horizon because they are creators. Life is their religion. Their rites are broad and deep as man, as ancient and reverent as time, as new as dawn. They do not reject the Vedas. They re-fashion the Upanishads in their own hearts. They study the travels and hopes of Jesus, listen for the divine songs of Orpheus, penetrate the glitter of numbers with Pythagoras, find satisfaction in the Mohammedan thinkers who connected Aristotle with Moses. These names do not belong to the past. The many Buddhas are perpetually modern. Kabir lives to-day in Tagore. Heracleitus and Plato are still living springs. In just the same sense, the children of the New Race are old as the Pelasgian Zeus, though in point of time they are here for work and play in 1920. But their vitality, reality, beauty, power and achievement--these are affairs of all time. * * * * * 19 IMAGINATION Many mystics have lost touch entirely with the deep sunken abutments of the spiritual edifice--the footings in matter. They are deeply wise in the mysteries and unfoldments of contemplation, but lose their way like mindless lambs in the world. We idealise a practical mysticism which dares to walk the earth in the heat of the day, dares to contemplate the stars as outposts of the heavenly kingdom, launching the vision at last, not only to the Holy City, but to the Throne of Itself.... Talks with Shuk at Stonestudy had a tendency to make us see the big Unseen politics and diplomacies and rulerships of the planet. Here are a few paragraphs from one of his letters which show the quality: