"
Next he told her how man's last marine ancestor quit one day the sea
never again to return to the deep, crossed the sands of the beach and
entered the forest; and how upon him, this living sea-shell, soft to
impressions, the Spirit of the Forest fell to work, beginning to shape
it over from sea uses to forest uses.
A thousand thousand ages the Spirit of the Forest worked at the
sea-shell.
It remodelled the shell as so much clay; stood it up and twisted and
branched it as young pliant oak; hammered it as forge-glowing iron;
tempered it as steel; cast it as bronze; chiselled it as marble;
painted it as a cloud; strung and tuned it as an instrument; lit it up
as a life tower--the world's one beacon: steadily sending it onward
through one trial form after another until at last had been perfected
for it that angelic shape in which as man it was ever afterwards to
sob and to smile.
And thus as one day a wandering sea-shell had quit the sea and entered
the forest, now on another day of that infinite time there reappeared
at the edge of the forest the creature it had made. On every wall of
its being internal and external forest-written; and completely
forest-minded: having nothing but forest knowledge, forest feeling,
forest dreams, forest fancies, forest faith; so that in all it could
do or know or feel or dream or imagine or believe it was
forest-tethered.
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