In a very entertaining work, over which we have roared in childhood, it
is stated that a point has no parts and no magnitude. Humility is the
luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or
a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the
cosmic things are what they really are--of immeasurable stature. That
the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own
foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off
for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting
forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as
incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like
gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on
their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other.
Between one stake of a paling and another there are new and terrible
landscapes; here a desert, with nothing but one misshapen rock; here a
miraculous forest, of which all the trees flower above the head with the
hues of sunset; here, again, a sea full of monsters that Dante would not
have dared to dream. These are the visions of him who, like the child in
the fairy tales, is not afraid to become small.
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