And what in the end might Khalid discover for us or for himself, at least, in his explorations of the Spirit-World? What Colony of the chosen sons of the young and puissant Spirit, on some distant isle beyond the seven seas, might he found? To what far, silent, undulating shore, where “a written language is the instrument only of the lofty expressions and aspirations of the soul” might he not bring us? What Cape of Truth in the great Sea of Mystery might we not be able to circumnavigate, if only this were possible of the language of man?
“Not with glass,” he exclaims, “not with tear-bottles, not with purple, not with a written language, am I now concerned, but rather with what those in Purple and those who make this written language their capital, can bring within our reach of the treasures of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I would fain find a land where the soul of man, and the heart of man, and the mind of man, are as the glass of my ancestors’ tear-bottles in their enduring quality and beauty. My ancestors’ tear-bottles, and though buried in the earth ten thousand years, lose not a grain of their original purity and transparency, of their soft and iridescent colouring. But where is the natural colour and beauty of these human souls, buried in bunks under hatches? Or of those moving in high-lacquered salons above? …
“O my Brothers of the clean and unclean species, of the scented and smelling kind, of the have and have-not classes, there is but one star in this vague dusky sky above us, for you as for myself. And that star is either the last in the eternal darkness, or the first in the rising dawn. It is either the first or the last star of night. And who shall say which it is? Not the Church, surely, nor the State; not Science, nor Sociology, nor Philosophy, nor Religion. But the human will shall influence that star