[TO THE EDITOR OF TUE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The surprise which many
of your correspondents express in recording their occasional consciousness of vastness and isolation is a curious evidence of the merciful care which has limited our ordinary faculties to the immediate necessities of daily life. We all know, in theory, that every individual comes from the infinite, walks a narrow, precipitous path, surrounded by vastness, and disappears in the infinite ; yet only the prophet, the poet, the madman, and here and there a religious teacher, either cares or dares to look over the edge into the gulf below. We all know that even if others can share our joy, no other can really share our pain and agony, either of body or of soul; yet, happily for ourselves, we rarely recognise our isolation. The facts are as easy to see as the stars, and the experience with a few is as common as looking out of window; but for the many, so long as they do not utterly forget the facts, it is probably better that their powers of perception should not only be concentrated, but limited, to the exigencies of the transitory moment. Yet for each and all, although for a longer or shorter space of time, we may "glance and nod and bustle by," there comes some moment before we die when our soul falls apart, isolated from the body, and from all that is embodied in the forms of this world. When that moment comes, we must recognise the value of a religion which, beginning from the Second Commandment, teaches us to regard God, not only as the creator of the earthly appearances we leave behind, but as a spirit, and a spirit of truth and love.-.--I am, Sir, &c., C. M. DOBELL.
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