What
it is that decides the awakening of the will I hardly know; it is all a
secret growth, I think; but the older that the spirit is, in the sense
of spiritual experience, the earlier in mortal life that choice is made;
and this is only another proof of one of the things which Amroth showed
me, that it is, after all, imagination which really makes the difference
between souls, and not intellect or shrewdness or energy; all the real
things of life--sympathy, the power of entering into fine relations,
however simple they may be, with others, loyalty, patience, devotion,
goodness--seem to grow out of this power of imagination; and the reason
why the souls of whom I am going to speak were so content to dwell where
they were, was simply that they had no imagination beyond, but dwelt
happily among the delights which upon earth are represented by sound and
colour and scent and comeliness and comfort. This was a perpetual
surprise to me, because I saw in these fine creatures such a faculty of
delicate perception, that I could not help believing again and again
that their emotions were as deep and varied too; but I found little by
little, that they were all bent, not on loving, and therefore on giving
themselves away to what they loved, but in gathering in perceptions and
sensations, and finding their delight in them; and I realised that what
lies at the root of the artistic nature is its deep and vital
indifference to anything except what can directly give it delight, and
that these souls, for all their amazing subtlety and discrimination, had
very little hold on life at all, except on its outer details and
superficial harmonies; and that they were all very young in experience,
and like shallow waters, easily troubled and easily appeased; and that
therefore they were being dealt with like children, and allowed full
scope for all their little sensitive fancies, until the time should come
for them to go further yet.
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