THERE is that which works secretly (call it what you will), everywhere transmuting the ugly into the beautiful, the seeming evil into acknowledged good, the mean and worthless into the rare and precious; moving upon the face of vasty deeps, upon inchoate planets; toiling in unknowable abysses, whirling in star-dust and nebulæ, and no less in the veiled darkness of the holiest place—the soul of man. And here, indeed, this pervasive life principle, this informing Mind, this toiling servant of universes and men (call it what you will), seeks chiefly to manifest its supernal powers. Give it entrance in any fashion; open to it the smallest crevice; entertain its mysterious presence ever so briefly, and in that lodgment it begins at once its wonder-working transmutations. For observe: this unseen, and often unsuspected, worker takes of the common things of life, of its base and ignoble things and turns them into shapes of imperishable beauty. And observe, also: this is accomplished without tumult of manufacture; neither smoke of his burning furnace, nor clang of hammer, nor noise of breaking stone is heard, though one listen with the fine ear of the magician in the fable. And observe for a third time (for all of this has to do with the tale that is told): that the blind desire of the one who is thus wrought upon in some mysterious fashion relates itself to the will of Him who works, so that they are in a way one and indissoluble. For such is the law of growth in all the universe, and such will it ever be.