Physicists affirm that not a single particle of matter nor a single
tremor of energy is lost, but that each is transformed and transmitted
and persists. And can it be that any form, however fugitive it may be,
is lost? We must needs believe--believe and hope!--that it is not, but
that somewhere it remains archived and perpetuated, and that there is
some mirror of eternity in which, without losing themselves in one
another, all the images that pass through time are received. Every
impression that reaches me remains stored up in my brain even though it
may be so deep or so weak that it is buried in the depths of my
subconsciousness; but from these depths it animates my life; and if the
whole of my spirit, the total content of my soul, were to awake to full
consciousness, all these dimly perceived and forgotten fugitive
impressions would come to life again, including even those which I had
never been aware of. I carry within me everything that has passed before
me, and I perpetuate it with myself, and it may be that it all goes into
my germs, and that all my ancestors live undiminished in me and will
continue so to live, united with me, in my descendants. And perhaps I,
the whole I, with all this universe of mine, enter into each one of my
actions, or, at all events, that which is essential in me enters into
them--that which makes me myself, my individual essence.
And how is this individual essence in each several thing--that which
makes it itself and not another--revealed to us save as beauty? What is
the beauty of anything but its eternal essence, that which unites its
past with its future, that element of it that rests and abides in the
womb of eternity? or, rather, what is it but the revelation of its
divinity?
And this beauty, which is the root of eternity, is revealed to us by
love; it is the supreme revelation of the love of God and the token of
our ultimate victory over time.
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