Du Bois reaches for a folk image: the seventh son, born already gifted with prophecy. Transposed onto the racial drama of the United States, the gift is bitter — the inner vision is bought by exile from full recognition. The Veil does not separate two equal worlds; it separates a world that grants self-consciousness from one that withholds it.
In the book's most luminous passage, Du Bois describes the life of the mind that the Veil cannot reach. With Shakespeare, Balzac, Dumas, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius he moves freely; none scorns him; none condescends. The Veil is not transcended by political reform alone but by claiming, here and now, the universal inheritance of culture as one's rightful birthright.
The book closes with the prophecy that one day America will "rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free." Until then, the Veil is the medium through which Black Americans see clearly what the country refuses to see about itself — its denials, its self-flattery, the gap between its founding language and its operating practice. Second-sight is the recompense for the wound it names.
The metaphor of the Veil opens Chapter I and closes Chapter XIV, framing every essay in between. The "above the Veil" passage is from Chapter VI, "Of the Training of Black Men."
