She did not think of her universe as a raft to which
the limpets stuck for life in the surge of a supersensual chaos;
she conceived herself and her family as the centre and flower of
an ordered universe which she knew to be unity because she had
made it after the image of her own fecundity; and this creation
of hers was surrounded by beauties and perfections which she knew
to be real because she herself had imagined them.
Even the masculine philosopher admired and loved and celebrated
her triumph, and the greatest of them sang it in the noblest of
his verses: --
"Alma Venus, coeli subter labentia signa
Quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferenteis
Concelebras . . . . . . .
Quae quondam rerum naturam sola gubernas,
Nec sine te quidquam dias in luminis oras
Exoritur, neque fit laetum neque amabile quidquam;
Te sociam studeo!"
Neither man nor woman ever wanted to quit this Eden of their
own invention, and could no more have done it of their own accord
than the pearl oyster could quit its shell; but although the
oyster might perhaps assimilate or embalm a grain of sand forced
into its aperture, it could only perish in face of the cyclonic
hurricane or the volcanic upheaval of its bed. Her supersensual
chaos killed her.
Such seemed the theory of history to be imposed by science on
the generation born after 1900.
Pages:
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672