[35] Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this love (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate the spiritual) have entered their protest as against the mere obscenity into which the thing fell--for instance in the days of Martial--but have missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is, however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with their disintegration. [36] In the _later_ Egyptian centuries vivisection apparently became an approved practice. [37] The derivation of the word "wicked" seems uncertain. May it be suggested that it is connected with "wick" or "quick," meaning _alive_? [38] For further on the same subject see the last chapter, _infra_, on "The New Morality." EXFOLIATION "Creation's incessant unrest, exfoliation." WHITMAN. I think it may perhaps be agreed, once for all, that the human mind is incapable of really defining even the smallest fact of nature. The simplest thing, or event, baffles us at the last. It is like trying to look at the front and back of a mirror at the same time. The utmost squinting avails not. The ego and the non-ego dance eluding through creation. To catch them both in any mortal object and pin them there, surpasses our powers. And yet they are there. Montaigne quotes somewhere the words of S. Augustine: _Modus quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus ... omnino mirus est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse homo est_. "The manner whereby spirits adhere to bodies is altogether wonderful, and cannot be conceived of by men; and yet this _is_ man." Man himself contains, or rather is, the reconcilement of this and numberless other contradictions. We actually every day perform and exhibit miracles which the mental part of us is utterly powerless to grapple with. Yet the solution, the intelligent solution and understanding of them _is_ in us; only it involves a higher order of consciousness than we usually deal with--a consciousness possibly which includes and transcends the ego and the non-ego, and so can envisage both at the same time and equally--a fourth-dimensional consciousness to whose gaze the interiors of solid bodies are exposed like mere surfaces--a consciousness to whose perception some usual antitheses like cause and effect, matter and spirit, past and future, simply do not exist. I say these higher orders of consciousness are in us waiting for their evolution; and, until they evolve, we are powerless really to understand anything of the world around us.