Creation, therefore, is the meaning of life, its secret, its innermost kernel. While Rolland almost always chooses an artist for his hero, he does not make this choice in the arrogance of the romance writer who likes to contrast the melancholy genius with the dull crowd. His aim is to draw nearer to the primal problems of existence. In the work of art, transcending time and space, the eternal miracle of generation out of nothing (or out of the all) is made manifest to the senses, while simultaneously its mystery is made plain to the intelligence. For Rolland, artistic creation is the problem of problems precisely because the artist is the most human of men. Everywhere Rolland threads his way through the obscure labyrinth of creative work, that he may draw near to the burning moment of spiritual receptivity, to the painful act of giving birth. He watches Michelangelo shaping pain in stone; Beethoven bursting forth in melody; Tolstoi listening to the heart-beat of doubt in his own laden breast. To each, Jacob's angel is revealed in a different form, but for all alike the ecstatic force of the divine struggle continues to burn. Throughout the years, Rolland's sole endeavor has been to discover this ultimate type of artist, this primitive element of creation, much as Goethe was in search of the archetypal plant. Rolland wishes to discover the essential creator, the essential act of creation, for he knows that in this mystery are comprised the root and the blossoms of the whole of life's enigma. As historian he had depicted the birth of art in humanity. Now, as poet, he was approaching the same problem in a different form, and was endeavoring to depict the birth of art in one individual. In his _Histoire de l'opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti_, and in his _Musiciens d'autrefois_, he had shown how music, "blossoming throughout the ages," begins to form its buds; and how, grafted upon different racial stems and upon different periods, it grows in new forms. But here begins the mystery of creation. Every beginning is wrapped in obscurity; and since the path of all mankind is symbolically indicated in each individual, the mystery recurs in each individual's experience. Rolland is aware that the intellect can never unravel this ultimate mystery. He does not share the views of the monists, for whom creation has become trivialized to a mechanical effect which they would explain by talking of primitive gases and by similar verbiage. He knows that nature is modest, and that in her secret hours of generation she would fain elude observation; he knows that we are unable to watch her at work in those moments when crystal is joining to crystal, and when flowers are springing out of the buds. Nothing does she hide more jealously than her inmost magic, everlasting procreation, the very secret of infinity.