to use this image of a horizontal pyramid of
flames it will be seen how important a part is played by this
apex-thought in concentrating the energies of the complex vision so
that it can "drive" or "burn" or "pierce" its way into the surrounding
mystery.

For this image of an arrow-head of focussed flame which is in
constant danger of being dispersed as the flames recede from one
another and are blown backwards is only a symbolic way of
indicating how difficult it is to pierce with our complicated
instrument of research the vast mystery which surrounds us.

All this is mere pictorial metaphor; but in visualizing the human
soul as a moving arrow-head, composed of flickering flames that
only now and then combine into a sharp point, while at other times
the wind drives them apart and bends them back, I am suggesting
that the ultimate reality of things is a state of confused movement
continually becoming a state of concentrated movement. I am
suggesting that the secrets of life only yield themselves up to a
movement of desperation. I am suggesting that the spirit of
creation is also the spirit of destruction, and that the real object
of the energy of creation is to pierce with its burning light the
darkness of the objective mystery.

As proof of the necessity of keeping this apex-thought in constant
poise, let me reiterate one or two of the philosophical disasters
which result from a cessation of its rhythmic function. When the
reason, for instance, usurps the whole field and acts in isolation
from the imagination and the intuition, it tends to persuade us to
deny the very existence of that deepest and most vivid reality of
all, the handle of our spear-head, the base of our pyramid, the
mysterious entity within us, which we have come, following the
traditions of the centuries, to name the "soul." And not only does
the soul disappear when the reason thus isolates itself, but another
primary revelation of the complex vision, I mean that half-created,
half-discovered object of the senses popularly called "matter,"
disappears with it.

Man's self-consciousness is thus left suspended "in vacuo" with no
concrete reality within it and no concrete reality outside it; and
"thought-in-the-abstract" becomes the only truth.

But not only can reason thus set itself up in isolated usurpation
against such other activities as imagination, intuition, will or taste;
it can also divide itself against itself and emerge in completely
co