Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/71

 Virtue, Truth, and Beauty, taken from the music of the spheres, calls us from this dark oppressive earth, and announces to us the nearness of a more melodious existence. Why, and from whence were these super-earthly wants and longings created in us, if only, like swallowed diamonds, slowly to cut through our earthy shell. Why was a being endowed with wings of light chained to this dirty clump of earth, if it were to rot in its birth-clod, without ever being freed from it by means of its ethereal wings?"

Wilhelmi said, "I also like to dream the dream of a second life in the sleep of this first one. But may not our beautiful spiritual powers have been given to us for the enjoyment and preservation of the present life?"

"For its preservation?" I said. "Then an angel has been locked in the body to be the mute servant and fire-lighter, butler, cook, and porter of the stomach? Would not brutish souls have sufficed to drive man-bodies to the fruit-tree and the spring? Shall the pure ethereal flame only dry and bake the bodily patent stove with life-warmth, while it now slakes and dissolves it? For every tree of knowledge is the poison-tree of the body, and every mental refinement a slow-poison chalice. But, on the contrary, want is the iron key of freedom, the stomach is the manure-filled hot-house or manufactory of human blood, and the various animal instincts are but the earthy, soiled steps to the Grecian temple of our spiritual elevation.

"For enjoyment you said also. That means, we received the palate and appetite of a god, with the food for an animal. That portion of us which is of earth, and creeps on worm-folds, may and can, like the earthworm, be fed and fattened on earth. Exertion, bodily pain, the burning hunger of necessity, and the tumult of our senses exclude