Thus, at the end of our journey, we are able, by this final process
of drastic elimination, to reduce the world in which we live to a
congeries of living souls. Some of these souls possess what we
name animate bodies, others possess what we name inanimate
bodies. For us, these words, animate and inanimate, convey but
slight difference in meaning. Between a stone, which is part of the
body of the earth, and a leaf which is part of the body of a plant,
and a lock of hair which is part of the body of a man, there may be
certain unimportant chemical differences, justifying us in using the
terms animate and inanimate. But the essential fact remains that all
we see and taste and touch and smell and hear, all, in fact, that
makes up the objective universe which surrounds us, is a portion
of some sort of living body, corresponding to some sort of living
soul.
Our individual soul-monad, then, able to communicate with other
soul-monads, whether mortal or immortal, through the medium of
omnipresent soul-monads of the universal ether finds itself
dominated, as all the rest are dominated, by one inescapable circle
of unfathomable space. Under the curve of this space we all of us
live, and under the curve of this space those that are mortal among
us, die. When we die, if it be our destiny not to survive death, our
souls vanish into nothingness; and our bodies become a portion of
the body of the earth. But if we have entered into the eternal vision
we have lost all fear of death; for we have come to see that the
thing which is most precious to us, the fact that love remains
undying in the heart of the universe, does not vanish with our
vanishing. Once having attained, by means of the creative vision
of humanity and by means of the grace of the immortals, even a
faint glimpse into this mystery, we are no longer inclined to lay
the credit of our philosophizing upon the creative spirit in our
individual soul. The apex-thought of the complex vision has given
us our illuminated moments. But the eternal vision to which those
moments led us has filled us with an immense humility.
And in the last resort, when we turn round upon the amazing
spectacle of life it is of the free gift of the gods, or of the magical
love hidden in the mystery of nature, that we are led to think,
rather than of any creative activity in ourselves. The word
"creative" like the word "objective mystery," has served our
purpose well in the preceding pages. But now, as we seek to
simplify our conclusion to the uttermost, it becomes necessary to
reject much of the manifold connotation which hangs about this
word; although in this case also, the stage of thought which it
covers is a real movement of the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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