But they do not know the scientific
reasons as completely as we do. With them this is knowledge based largely
upon tradition, 'ancestral voices' echoing down through periods of time
so vast that our most ancient legends seem but tales of yesterday.
Whatever may be the measure of man's antiquity on the earth, I am certain
that here intellectual life has existed for millions upon millions of
years, and its history stretches back beyond the time when the brake of
tidal friction had so far destroyed the rotation of the planet that its
surface became permanently divided between the reigns of day and night."
I listened with amazement and could not help exclaiming:
"But, Edmund, how could you learn all this in so short a time?"
"Because," he replied, smiling, "the language of the mind, unhampered by
dragging words and blundering sentences, plays back and forth with the
quickness of thought. There is another thing, too, which I have learned,
a thing so amazing that it daunts me. I have found, I believe, the
explanation of that minor note of infinite sadness which, as I told you,
I always feel, even in the most joyous-seeming paeans of their color
music.
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