Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/359

 Edith will say. Has not the wisdom of the ages settled that a man can become great or famous only by his wife's permission?

According to the view of things above adverted to, the different stages in the history of our race are not successive only, but are also co-existent and co-extensive with each other. Just as in a given block of marble, there is contained, not one only, but every possible statue, though, of the whole number, only one at a time can be made evident to our senses; so, in a given region of space, any number of worlds can co-exist, each with its own population conscious of only that world, or set of phenomena, to which their ego is attuned. Impenetrability, resistance, etc., are thus but relative properties, effective only among the correlated set of phenomena that constitutes a given world. As the sound-waves from an orchestra freely intersect, and yet retain their integrity; so the phenomena of these various co-existent worlds occupy the same space without interference,—without, indeed, the dwellers in the one so much as suspecting the presence around them of beings conversant with infinitely diversified systems of phenomena.

I should not like Edith, without due preliminary explanation, to become aware of the strange imaginings that pass at times through my mind, even when happy by her side. This is especially the case when I listen to certain music of hers,—music to which I was always highly susceptible, and which now sounds like a re-echo of the divine harmonies once heard in the house of Utis. Is it not possible, I sometimes muse, that that wild plunge over the edge of the cataract was, after all, a