And many
of their women, whose beauty was more than human, gained a human soul by
loving one of the race of men. But the reverse occurred also, and often a
love-sick youth lost his immortality because he left the haunts of his
kind to dwell with the fair, soulless denizens of the running streams or
of the forest airs.'
'I didn't know that you spoke figuratively,' said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
'What else is the world than a figure? Life itself is but a symbol. You
must be a wise man if you can tell us what is reality.'
'When you begin to talk of magic and mysticism I confess that I am out of
my depth.'
'Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible
means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic
powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to
their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that
the seen is the measure of the unseen.'
'Will you tell us what the powers are that the adept possesses?'
'They are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century,
which is in my possession.
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