ntradictory functions. In the form of mathematical logic, for
instance, it can dispose most drastically of that living organic
world which in the form of experimental science it assumes to be
the only truth. Again it may happen that reason will arbitrarily ally
itself with one or the other of the other attributes and on the
strength of such an alliance seek to obliterate all the rest. Thus
while it is impossible to avoid the admission that of all these basic
attributes reason is the most important, because without it all the
rest would be inarticulate and dumb, it remains true that to hold
reason in balanced relation to all the rest and to hold its own
contradictory tendencies in balanced relation to one another is an
undertaking of such extraordinary difficulty that if it were not for
the complex vision's possession of that co-ordinating power which
I have named its apex-thought, one might well pardon the mood of
those persons who use reason to drug reason and who steer their
boat into some unruffled backwater of dogma or mysticism.

The necessity of such an infinitely delicate poise or balance or
rhythm in these high matters, the necessity of keeping all these
conflicting attributes at this exquisite point of suspense between
abysses of contradiction, is a necessity which compels us to
recognize that philosophy is nothing more or less than the supreme
art, and the most difficult of all arts.

Certainly, it seems as though thought has to become in a profound
sense rhythmical, has to take to itself the nature of music, before it
can become the truth. For the truth does not seem to be a mere
picture of the system of things, reflected in the mirror of the mind.
The truth seems to be the very system of things itself, become
conscious and volitional, changing, growing, living, destroying,
creating. Thus it comes about that the thought which plunges into
the universe must of necessity, even in that very act, remould and
re-fashion the universe. Thus Nature perpetually recreates herself
by the passion of her children and is forever re-born as the child of
her own offspring.

But if the supreme difficulty of the art of life lies in the
maintenance of this rhythm between these primary attributes, it
must never be forgotten that these "attributes" are, after all, only
_aspects_ of the soul. The soul _is_ each of them, not _in_ each of
them. They are not "faculties" through which the soul acts. They
are never absolutely disti