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Gustav Fechner



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On a certain sunny spring morning I went out to walk. The fields were green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising,here and there a man appeared : a light as of transfiguration lay on all things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was  only one moment of her existence, and yet as my look embracedher more and more it seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so clear and true a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so at one with herself, turning her whole living face to Heaven, and carrying me along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky, -- only to find them nowhere … :
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