The sun had set. The edges of the flaming clouds had sunk into ashes. The sea had become pale, light, flocculent as the sky; the sky deep and diaphanous as the sea. Upon the road a cart was passing by; a young man and woman were in it--two lovers, perhaps. The woman was singing a melancholy love song. When they had passed all things were plunged into silence again, and became sadder still. With hastened strides, the oriental night swept over the earth. Julian murmured:
"How many times have I asked myself why Nature was so sad, and why, when she is proudest then saddest of all...."
"Yes... Yes... Look, she longs to say why; and cannot speak. She is dumb. She sleeps, and seeks to remember in her dreams, but Matter weighs down her eyelids. Only vaguely can she see Him. Everything in the universe, stars and sea, and earth, animals, plants, and people are dreams of Nature, thinking of God. What she so contemplates, is born and dies. She creates by contemplation, as a dream creates, with effortless ease, and no obstacle to her thought. That is why her works are so beautiful, so free, so purposeless, and so divine. The play of the dreams of Nature is like the play of clouds, without end or beginning. Outside that contemplation of hers nothing in the world exists; and the deeper that contemplation is, the more silent. Believe me, Will, Action, Effort, are only enfeebled and deflected contemplations of God. Nature, in her grandiose indolence, creates forms like the geometrician, for whom nothing exists except what he sees on the paper before him. She brings forms, one after another, out of the womb of her dream. But her mute meditation is only the appearance of reality. Nature, that sleeping Cybele, never lifts her eyelids, and never finds words. Man, he only, has found utterance. The human soul is Nature having lifted the lashes of her eyes, awakened and ready to see God, no longer in half-slumber, but really and face to face...."
The first stars were shining in the firmament; now they vanished, and now sparkled again into sight, like diamonds set in the dark azure. More stars, and yet more, kindled their new lights, till the array became incalculable. Iamblicus lifted his finger towards them--