But, oh this beginning!  Would there were none, since, with the beginning, all thought and memories alike cease.  When we thus dream back into childhood, and from childhood into infinity, this bad beginning continually flies further away.  The thoughts pursue it and never overtake it; just as a child seeks the spot where the blue sky touches the earth, and runs and runs, while the sky always runs before it, yet still touches the earth—­but the child grows weary and never reaches the spot.

But even since we were once there—­wherever it may be, where we had a beginning, what do we know now?  For memory shakes itself like the spaniel, just come out of the waves, while the water runs in, his eyes and he looks very strangely.

I believe I can even yet remember when I saw the stars for the first time.  They may have seen me often before, but one evening it seemed as if it were cold.  Although I lay in my mother’s lap, I shivered and was chilly, or I was frightened.  In short, something came over me which reminded me of my little Ego in no ordinary manner.  Then my mother showed me the bright stars, and I wondered at them, and thought that she had made them very beautifully.  Then I felt warm again, and could sleep well.

Furthermore, I remember how I once lay in the grass and everything about me tossed and nodded, hummed and buzzed.  Then there came a great swarm of little, myriad-footed, winged creatures, which lit upon my forehead and eyes and said, “Good day.”  Immediately my eyes smarted, and I cried to my mother, and she said:  “Poor little one, how the gnats have stung him!” I could not open my eyes or see the blue sky any longer, but my mother had a bunch of fresh violets in her hand, and it seemed as if a dark-blue, fresh, spicy perfume were wafted through my senses.  Even now, whenever I see the first violets, I remember this, and it seems to me that I must close my eyes so that the old dark-blue heaven of that day may again rise over my soul.

Still further do I remember, how, at another time, a new world disclosed itself to me—­more beautiful than the star-world or the violet perfume.  It was on an Easter morning, and my mother had dressed me early.  Before the window stood our old church.  It was not beautiful, but still it had a lofty roof and tower, and on the tower a golden cross, and it appeared very much older and grayer than the other buildings.  I wondered who lived in it, and once I looked in through the iron-grated door.  It was entirely empty, cold and dismal.  There was not even one soul in the whole building, and after that I always shuddered when I passed the door.  But on this Easter morning, it had rained early, and when the sun came out in full splendor, the old church with the gray sloping roof, the high windows and the tower with the golden cross glistened with a wondrous shimmer.  All at once the light which streamed through the lofty windows began to move and