The next section is one long wail over the contradictions, the mysteries, the dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all existence, and the arcanum of grief which, Luther said, underlies all life. As with Euripides “to live is to die, to die is to live.” Hâjî Abdû borrows the Hindu idea of the human body. “It is a mansion,” says Menu, “with bones for its beams and rafters; with nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for cement; with skin for its outer covering; filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with impurities; a mansion infested by age and sorrow; the seat of malady; harassed with pains; haunted with the quality of darkness (Tama-guna), and incapable of standing.” The Pot and Potter began with the ancient Egyptians. “Sitting as a potter at the wheel, Cneph (at Philæ) moulds clay, and gives the spirit of life to the nostrils of Osiris.” Hence the Genesitic “breath.” Then we meet him in the Vedas, the Being “by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated.” We find him next in Jeremiah’s “Arise and go down unto the Potter’s house,” etc. (xviii. 2), and lastly in Romans (ix. 20), “Hath not the potter power over the clay?” No wonder that the first Hand who moulded the man-mud is a _lieu commun_ in Eastern thought. The “waste of agony” is Buddhism, or Schopenhauerism pure and simple, I have moulded “Earth on Earth” upon “Seint Ysidre”’s well-known rhymes (A.D. 1440):— Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouzt, Erthe out of Erthe hath gete a dignity of nouzt, Erthe upon Erthe hath sett all his thouzt How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouzt, etc. The “Camel-rider,” suggests Ossian, “yet a few years and the blast of the desert comes.” The dromedary was chosen as Death’s vehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouin’s corpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will lie among his kith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of:— How poor, how rich; how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is Man! The Hâjî now passes to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of Milton:— Till old experience doth attain To something of prophetic strain.