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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"

I do
not think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about
such a possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an
enlargement of our faculties in some future state than as an expectation
to be fulfilled for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have
fallen into trances,--as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many
others,--and learned some things which they could not tell in our human
words.
Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite
secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that
carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are
women's faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them
that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a
revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces
of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,--and I
just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something
of the same quality,--which I was sure had their prototypes in the world
above ours.


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