Fire, As We Have Learned To Our

Many Of Us Who Walk To And Fro Upon Our Usual Tasks Are Prisoners Drawing Mental Maps Of Escape.

Mind Is Locked In Matter Like The Spirit Ariel In A Cloven Pine. Like Ariel, Men Struggle To Escape The Drag Of The Matter They Inhabit, Yet It Is The Spirit That They Fear.

Animals Are Molded By Natural Forces They Do Not Comprehend. To Their Minds There Is No Past And No Future. There Is Only The Everlasting Present Of A Single Generation, Its Trails In The Forest, Its Hidden Pathways In The The Air And In The Sea. There Is Nothing In The Universe More Alone Than Man. He Has Entered Into The Strange World Of History.

Every Time We Walk Along A Beach Some Ancient Urge Disturbs Us So That We Find Ourselves Shedding Shoes And Garments Or Scavenging Among Seaweed And Whitened Timbers Like The Homesick Refugees Of A Long War... Mostly The Animals Understand Their Roles, But Man, By Comparison, Seems Troubled By A Message That, It Is Often Said, He Cannot Quite Remember Or Has Gotten Wrong... Bereft Of Instinct, He Must Search Continually For Meanings... Man Was A Reader Before He Became A Writer, A Reader Of What Coleridge Once Called The Mighty Alphabet Of The Universe.

In The Desert, An Old Monk Had Once Advised A Traveler, The Voices Of God And The Devil Are Scarcely Distinguishable.