"I am a maker of myths, one who fashions out of perishable things a thought which, through its informing truth, exists independently of time. I think of man as of one who is blind, dumb, and without hands. Sitting alone in this physical darkness a thought comes to him of what his life might have been if he had been born whole; and he imagines himself as a man with hands, a voice, and sight, creating a whole world out of his pleasure. This other man, who moves like a creature of light through the dim passages of his mind, becomes, as it were another self; but through his greater power, a being of joy living eternally, a strong, triumphant, beautiful figure; and consequently external from, and different to, the man. And the blind, dumb, handless man, bowing his head in the darkness, says: 'It is God.'
"For the gods which we have imagined are immortal men, and man a mortal God. They differ from us in nothing but the gladness and eternity of their actions. They move delightfully on the wings of the wind; through the great tumult of waters their feet are swift and sure; their voices have a music that is like the fierce motion of dancing, yellow flames. God is simply our own selves, made whole, and removed from the devouring years. God is our weakness searching after strength, our blindness, thirsting after light; our desire seeking for a voice, and we worship him. We worship him because he is ourselves; but we seek him, always, as if conscious of our own weakness and worthlessness, beyond ourselves, in the external world, Our God is hidden in the deeps of the sea; in the shadows of the forests; in that blue heaven beyond the stars. He is very subtile, moving on stealthy feet, through unknown ways. We seek him, but we find him not. He is swifter than we are, and when we pursue him he flies away into the darkness; and when we cry out that we have lost him he comes close to us again, filling our hearts with a silent sweetness. So it is ever with us; when we seek to clasp him he eludes us; but in the silence of night we imagine that he is not very far away and that a little thing would suffice to allure him to us, to reveal him to sight.
"Once in a country of hills and valleys lived a shepherd who called to the nymph Echo, and she answered him from her cave in the hillside with his own voice. Then he girded himself, and taking a staff in his hand set out to seek her; and coming to the place whence she had answered him, he called again, and she replied from a higher peak. When he had called from the next peak he was answered from the valley and descended into its deep forests; and men saw him no more, for he died there, and the beasts devoured him.