To those who are in prison, whose being is prisoner within the walls of unliving fact, there are only two forms of triumph: the triumph of inertia, or the triumph of the Will. There is no flowering possible. And the experience _en route_ to either triumph, is the experience of sensationalism. Stone walls need not a prison make: that is, not an _absolute_ prison. If the great sun has shone into a man’s soul, even prison-walls cannot blot it out. Yet prison-walls, unless they be a temporary shelter are deadly things. So, if we are imprisoned within walls of accomplished fact, experience, or knowledge, we are prisoned indeed. The living sun is shut out finally. A false sun, like a lamp, shines. All absolutes are prison-walls. These “laws” which science has invented, like conservation of energy, indestructibility of matter, gravitation, the will-to-live, survival of the fittest: and even these absolute facts, like--the earth goes round the sun, or the doubtful atoms, electrons, or ether--they are all prison-walls, unless we realise that we don’t know what they mean. We don’t know what we mean, ultimately, by _conservation_, or _indestructibility_. Our atoms, electrons, ether, are caps that fit exceeding badly. And our will-to-live contains a germ of suicide, and our survival-of-the-fittest the germ of degeneracy. As for the earth going round the sun: it goes round as the blood goes round my body, absolutely mysteriously, with the rapidity and hesitation of life. But the human ego, in its pettifogging arrogance, sets up these things for you as absolutes, and unless you kick hard and kick in time, they are your prison walls forever. Your spirit will be like a dead bee in a cell. Once you are in prison, you have no experience left, save the experience of reduction, destruction going on inwardly. Your sentimentalism is only the smell of your own rottenness. This reduction within the self is sensationalism. And sensationalism, of course, is progressive. You can’t have your cake and eat it. To get a sensation, you eat your cake. That is, to get a sensation, you reduce down some part of your complex psyche, physical and psychic. You get a flash, as when you strike a match. But a match once struck can never be struck again. It is finished--sensationalism is an exhaustive process. The resolving down is progressive. It can apparently go on _ad infinitum_. But in infinity it means what we call utter death, utter nothingness, opposites released from opposition, and from conjunction, till there _is_ nothing left at all, only nullity itself. Sensationalism progresses in the individual. This is the doom of it. This is the doom of egoistic sex. Egoistic sex-excitement means the reacting of the sexes against one another in a purely reducing activity. The reduction progresses. When I have finally reduced one complexity, one unit, I must proceed to the next, the lower. It is the progressive activity of dissolution within the soul.