Page:The Quest Volume 13 (1921-22).djvu/109

 the shape of what one 'seeth' or 'createth' and to unite one's self with it, even so are men henceforth driven helplessly on the way to transforming themselves magically into machines, until at last they will stand here naked as a never slowing-down, ceaselessly pounding, heaving and groaning piece of clock-work—as that which they always wanted to invent—a joyless perpetuum mobile.

"We, however, we Brethren of the Moon, shall then be the heirs of 'Eternal Being'—of the one unchangeable consciousness that saith, not 'I live,' but 'I am,' that knoweth 'Even when the all breaketh—I remain.'

"How else could it be—if shapes were not simply dreams—that we can at will change at any time one body for another, that we should be able to appear among men in a human form, among spectres as a shade and among thoughts as an idea,—all this through the power of the secret of how to divest ourselves of our shape as if it were a toy picked up in a dream? Even as a man who is half asleep, may suddenly become conscious of his dreaming, thereby putting the illusive conception of time into a new present. And thus he gives another more desirable direction to the off-flow of his dream, as if jumping with both feet at once into a new body, seeing that the body is in reality nothing but a contraction of the all-pervading ether laden with the illusion of tangible solidity."

"Magnifice dictum" enthusiastically exclaimed Dr. Haselmayer with his sweet girlish voice. "But why really should not we let the mortals participate in this bliss of transfiguration? Would that be so very bad?"

"Bad!" his lordship broke in at the top of his