Page:The Quest Volume 13 (1921-22).djvu/119

 the earth, as they have often cast such a throw before against the sun, though it has missed its aim and flown back, as the boomerang returns to the hand of the Australian hunter when it has failed to hit the victim.

"But to what purpose, I ask myself, is this great display of power, when the final doom of mankind through the army of machines seems sealed and decided?

"And then the scales fall from my eyes; but I am still blind and can only grope my way.

"Do you not too feel how the imponderable, which death cannot catch, surges to a stream compared with which the oceans are as a pail of swill?

"What is the enigmatic power that sweeps away overnight everything small and makes a beggar's heart as wide as an apostle's? I have seen a poor schoolmistress adopt an orphan without any ado—and then fear seized me.

"Where is the power of machinery if mothers rejoice instead of tearing their hair when their sons fall? And may it not be a prophetic hieroglyph which nobody can decipher at present, when in the shops may be seen a picture of a crucifix in the Vosges from which the wood has been shot away while the Son of Man remains standing?

"We hear the wings of the Angel of Death humming over the lands. But are you sure it is not the wings of another and not those of Death we hear? Of one of those who can say 'I' to every stone, to every flower and to every animal within and without space and time?

"Nothing can be lost, they say. Whose hand then gathers all that enthusiasm which is liberated