Towards democracy

8 Towards Democracy

will you strip yourself naked as you came into the world, and come before me, and regard unafraid the flashing ot my sword? will you lose your life, to Me?

O child of mine!

See! you are in prison, and I can give you space;

You are choked down below there, by the dust of your own raising, and I can give you the pure intoxicating air of the mountains to breathe ;

I can make you a king, and show you all the lands of the earth ;

And from yourself to yourself I can deliver you, and can come, your enemy, and gaze long and long with yells of laughter into your eyes!

vI

The caddis worm leaves the water, and takes on wings and flies in the upper air; the walking mud becomes amorous of the winged sunlight, and behaves itself in an abandoned manner.

The Earth (during its infancy) flies round the Sun from which it sprang, and the mud flies round the pond from which it sprang.

The earth swims in space, the fish swim in the sea, the bird swims in the air, and the soul of man in the ocean of Equality—towards which all the other streams run.

Here, into this ocean, everything debouches ; all interest in life begins anew. The plantain in the croft looks different from what it did before.