Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for
the boy.
What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such
little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the illusion
of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself Antiquity--to
every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of childhood cannot make
Abraham old again in the mind of a man of thirty-five; but the beginning
of every life is older than Abraham. _There_ is the abyss of time. Let
a man turn to his own childhood--no further--if he would renew his sense
of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.
For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it rushes;
but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an apprehension
not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an illusive
apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history--a real apprehension
when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If there is no
historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the renewed and
unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind.
And it is of this--merely of this--that "ancient" history seems to
partake.
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