The Philosopher's Stone Page #5

The Philosopher's Stone is a mystical story by Hans Christian Andersen about a philosopher in search of a powerful mythical stone that is said to hold the power to transform any metal into gold and grant eternal life. The journey is complex with several moral dilemmas which highlight Andersen's themes of greed, human nature, and the quest for eternal life.

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father. "Even in my father's house," she repeated. "Yes, the place
in which this jewel is to be found is earth, and I shall bring more
than the promise of it with me. I feel it glow and swell more and more
in my closed hand. Every grain of truth which the keen wind carried up
and whirled towards me I caught and treasured. I allowed it to be
penetrated with the fragrance of the beautiful, of which there is so
much in the world, even for the blind. I took the beatings of a
heart engaged in a good action, and added them to my treasure. All
that I can bring is but dust; still, it is a part of the jewel we
seek, and there is plenty, my hand is quite full of it."

She soon found herself again at home; carried thither in a
flight of thought, never having loosened her hold of the invisible
thread fastened to her father's house. As she stretched out her hand
to her father, the powers of evil dashed with the fury of a
hurricane over the Tree of the Sun; a blast of wind rushed through the
open doors, and into the sanctuary, where lay the Book of Truth.

"It will be blown to dust by the wind," said the father, as he
seized the open hand she held towards him.

"No," she replied, with quiet confidence, "it is indestructible. I
feel its beam warming my very soul."

Then her father observed that a dazzling flame gleamed from the
white page on which the shining dust had passed from her hand. It
was there to prove the certainty of eternal life, and on the book
glowed one shining word, and only one, the word BELIEVE. And soon
the four brothers were again with the father and daughter. When the
green leaf from home fell on the bosom of each, a longing had seized
them to return. They had arrived, accompanied by the birds of passage,
the stag, the antelope, and all the creatures of the forest who wished
to take part in their joy.

We have often seen, when a sunbeam burst through a crack in the
door into a dusty room, how a whirling column of dust seems to
circle round. But this was not poor, insignificant, common dust, which
the blind girl had brought; even the rainbow's colors are dim when
compared with the beauty which shone from the page on which it had
fallen. The beaming word BELIEVE, from every grain of truth, had the
brightness of the beautiful and the good, more bright than the
mighty pillar of flame that led Moses and the children of Israel to
the land of Canaan, and from the word BELIEVE arose the bridge of
hope, reaching even to the unmeasurable Love in the realms of the
infinite.
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