He was thinking of such books as Carlyle's "Past and Present"-- Emerson's "Essays" and the works of Ruskin.

But he remembered in good time that for an old "basket-maker" to be familiar with such literary masterpieces might seem strange to a wide-awake "journalist," therefore he checked himself in time.
"Oh, I don't know! I believe I was thinking of 'Pilgrim's Progress'!" he said.
"'Pilgrim's Progress'?
Ah! A fine book--a grand book! Twelve years and a half of imprisonment in Bedford Jail turned Bunyan out immortal! And here am I--_not_ in jail--but free to roam where I choose,--with twenty pounds! By Jove! I ought to be greater than Bunyan! Now 'Pilgrim's Progress' was a 'novel,' if you like!" "I thought,"-- submitted Helmsley, with the well-assumed air of a man who was not very conversant with literature--"that it was a religious book ?" "So it is.

A religious novel.

And a splendid one! But humanity's gone past that now--it wants a wider view--a bigger, broader outlook.

Do you know--" and here he stopped in the middle of the rugged winding street, and looked earnestly at his companion--"do you know what I see men doing at the present day ?--I see them rushing towards the verge--the very extreme edge of what they imagine to be the Actual--and from that edge getting ready to plunge--into Nothingness!" Something thrilling in his voice touched a responsive chord in Helmsley's own heart.
"Why--that is where we all tend!" he said, with a quick sigh--"That is where _I_ am tending!--where _you_, in your time, must also tend--nothingness--or death!" "No!" said Reay, almost loudly--"That's not true! That's just what I deny! For me there is no 'Nothingness'-- no 'death'! Space is full of creative organisms.