These are almost the words of Theophile Gautier's defence of mountaineers: "Ils sont la volonté protestante contre l'obstacle aveugle, et ils plantent sur l'inaccessible le drapeau de l'intelligence humaine." If the climber wants a further statement of his creed let it be that of Mr. Belloc, when he first saw the Alps from the ridge of the Jura. "Up there, the sky above and below them, the great peaks made communion between that homing, creeping part of me which loves vineyards, and dances, and a slow movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at home in Heaven.... These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, these few fifty miles and these few thousand feet; there is something more. Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean humility, the fear of death, the terror of height or of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception, whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this constant and perpetual quarrel which feeds the spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man. Since I could now see such a wonder, and it could work such things in my mind, therefore some day I should be part of it. That is what I feel. That it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for I am afraid of slipping down."* * _The Path to Rome._