Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/262

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242
Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook

set free to roam; and being full and satisfied they did not roam far; and at night the horn sounded them back to an ample meal, and continued to sound while again they ate and were satisfied.

So at last, by association, the horn came to have such a beneficent meaning that the mere sound of it sufficed to bring them back at nightfall to their appointed place of rest. They might roam for miles and miles during the day, but night and the sound of the horn brought them all back safe to fold. And when that habit had become established, they did not cease to return even though the swineherd no longer supplied the food which had first given music its charm to those savage breasts.

And, similarly, I doubt not, that, though all hope of material profit or reward be withdrawn from man's mind, that call of the horn which he has heard of old will still bring his spirit to the resting-place at the appointed time; nor will he wish either to shorten his days or debase his pleasures because the horn has ceased to provide the meal which it once taught him to expect.

Do not let anything I have said be taken as suggesting that the spiritual forces of man's nature may not be conserved, transmuted, re-assimilated, or re-distributed, as surely and with as little waste as are the material elements of life which pass through disintegration and decay into new forms. The processes by which such changes are wrought