THE UNCONQUERABLE HOPE

Once, long ago, when an earthquake rent the hills, and mountains became valleys, and the earth itself opened and divided, letting in the sea, a new island was formed far away upon an unvisited ocean. Out of an inland province of a vast continent this island was made, all the land upon it having been submerged, and all the peoples that dwelt to north and to south, to east and to west, having been drowned.

There survived upon the island a few men and women who remained undisputed masters of the land, and they lived there and bred there. No one visited them, for the island was remote, unknown; and they visited no one, for they had never seen the sea before, they had not even known of its existence, and they did not know how to fashion a boat.

The island became fertile, and men and women married, and bore sons and daughters. The people in the island multiplied and grew rich. But all the while they lived without the invention of the boat, and they thought their island was the whole world, not knowing of the other lands that lay beyond the sea.

The original people died in their time, and their sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and the newer, later, survived and gave birth to newer and later still. And the story of the origin of the island was handed down from generation to generation.

The story was a matter of fact. It became history, it became legend and tradition, it became a myth, it became almost the foundation of religion. For a thousand years a lost family of mankind dwelt on that island on the unvisited sea, and none of their kindred ever came out of its barren sea-horizons to claim them.

And then, lest these children of men should utterly forget, a child was born who should understand. As happens once in many centuries, a wise man arose, and he interpreted the legends and traditions, and refreshed in the memory of this people the significance of their origin.

He taught them the mystery of the sea, and of the beyond, that hitherto unimaginable beyond, so that men yearned to cross the ocean.

Then the ignorant rose up and slew that man, thinking him an evil one, luring men to their death. And those who had understood him sorrowed greatly. His life had been pure, white, without reproach, and the light that shone in his eyes was the same that burned in the stars.

But though the ignorant could destroy his body, they could not destroy the fair life that he had lived, that wonderful example of how men may stand in the presence of the eternal mysteries.

There arose followers who dedicated themselves to the truth he had revealed, that truth boundless and infinite as the sea itself. And they lit a fire like the sacred fire in the temples of the fire-worshippers, and that fire should never be extinguished until some sign rose out of the horizon, illumining and dissolving the mystery.

“Who knows,” they say, “but that we are the descendants of kings? There is that in us that is foreign to this land, something not indigenous to this soil, of which this island is not worthy. It cometh from afar and had elsewhere its begetting. In us are latent unnamed powers, senses that in this island cannot be used. Our eyes are unnecessarily bright, our hearts superfluously strong. This Earth cannot satisfy us, it cannot afford scope enough, we cannot try ourselves upon it. This is the hope that we keep holy, that out of the heavens or across the sea our kindred, our masters, or our gods will claim us and take us to a new land where our hearts’ meaning may completely show itself outwardly to the sky; where our latent senses will find the things that can be sensed, and our faculties that which can be made, where our hearts and wills may be satisfied, and we may find wings with which to soar over all seas.”

Behold these dedicates, with their torch of remembrance kindled in the night of ignorance, these living eternally in the presence of the mystery! They pine upon shores, looking over the unbridgeable abyss, yearning their souls towards that ultimate horizon, with limbs vainly strong, eyes vainly keen, hearts ready for an adventure they may not undertake. At their feet wails the sea with never-ending sadness. In their minds are haunting tunes, the echoes of the wailing of the waves. They cry, and no one hears; they sing, and no one responds; they are like those who have loved once and lost, and who may never be comforted.

These nurse in their hearts the unconquerable hope.

So is it with us upon the world, we irreconcilable ones; we stand upon many shores and strain our eyes to see into the unknown. We are upon a deserted island and have no boats to take us from star to star, not only upon a deserted island but upon a deserted universe, for even the stars are familiar; they are worlds not unlike our own. The whole universe is our world and it is all explained by the scientists, or is explicable. But beyond the universe, no scientist, not any of us, knows anything. On all shores of the universe washes the ocean of ignorance, the ocean of the inexplicable. We stand upon the confines of an explored world and gaze at many blank horizons. We yearn towards our natural home, the kingdom in which our spirits were begotten. We have rifled the world, and tumbled it upside-down, and run our fingers through all its treasures, yet have not come upon the charter of our birth. We explored Beauty till we came to the shore of a great sea; we explored music, and came upon the outward shore of harmony and earthly truth, and found its limits.

Some spoke of our limitations, but it is our glory that our hearts know no limitations except those which are the defects of the world. The world is full of limitations, but our hearts scorn them, being full of boundless power.

Some day for us shall come into that blank sky-horizon which is called the zenith, a stranger, a man or a god, perhaps not like ourselves, yet having affinities with ourselves, and correlating ourselves to some family of men or gods of which we are all lost children. We shall then know our universal function and find our universal orbit.

As yet the True Sun stands in the antipodes, the great light is not vouchsafed. In the night of ignorance our little sun is shining and stars gleam upon our sky-horizons. But when the True Sun shines their brightness will be obscured, and we shall know a new day and a new night, a new heaven and a new earth.

It is written, “When He appears we shall be like Him.”