It is evident that such an affirmation of the reality of spiritual ideals, which have now an existence of their own, should lead us farther. If they mean so much, why cannot they mean more? If they subsist in themselves, they must be what they _are_. They are to us meaning and value of infinite significance. But such and other spiritual characteristics are _not things_, and, as we have seen, not mere projections of our own individual selves. There is nothing short of personality and over-personality by which they can be even partially designated and determined. We are forced to this conclusion if they are to be objects of communion and union: and we are forced [p.155] further to gather the Many into the One. That was what was done on all lower planes. Why stop short here, because infinitely much happens when the Many find their points of union and meaning in the One?[52] We have said that infinitely much happens when the Many find their meaning in the One. A need of the nature has arisen which demands this, and it has arisen at its _highest possible level alone_. Such a nature will never become absolutely certain of the meaning and value of all that has led up to this until the One obtains a self-subsistence. If this effort fails, the whole effort of development towards unity and inwardness fails. And when such a chain of effort snaps at its highest link of spiritual development, everything that had entered into the process at all the levels below it snaps along with it in so far as it had any validity whatever in the light of what is higher than itself.