Awakened once to them; seeing, through the veil of sense and fact, the spiritual truth of which they are but the accidental garment, concealing the very thing which they make palpable, the philosopher may neglect the fact for the doctrine, the shell for the kernel, the body for the soul, of which it is but the symbol and the vehicle.

What matter, then, to the philosopher whether these names of men, Hector or Priam, Helen or Achilles, were ever visible as phantoms of flesh and blood before the eyes of men?
What matter whether they spoke or thought as he of Scios says they did?
What matter, even, whether he himself ever had earthly life?
The book is here--the word which men call his.

Let the thoughts thereof have been at first whose they may, now they are mine.

I have taken them to myself, and thought them to myself, and made them parts of my own soul.

Nay, they were and ever will be parts of me; for they, even as the poet was, even as I am, are but a part of the universal soul.