ression of the personal centrifugal tendency in all
living souls; an expression which, when it goes far enough,
becomes _impersonal_, because, by expressing what is common to
all, it reaches the point where the particular becomes the
universal.

It thus becomes manifest that the true nature of art will only be
incidentally and occasionally manifested, and manifested among
us with great difficulty and against obstinate resistance, until the
hour comes when, to an extent as yet hardly imaginable, the
centripetal tendency of the possessive instinct in the race shall
have relinquished something of its malicious resistance to the
out-flowing force which I have named "love." And this yielding of the
centripetal power to that which we call centrifugal can only take
place in a condition of human society where the idea of
communism has been accepted as the ideal and, in some effective
measure, realized in fact.

For every work of art which exists is the rhythmic articulation, in
terms of any medium, of some personal vision of life. And the
more entirely "original" such a vision is, the more closely--such is
the ultimate _paradox_ of things--will it be found to approximate
to a re-creation, in this particular medium, of that "eternal vision"
wherein all souls have their share.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NATURE OF LOVE

The secret of the universe, as by slow degrees it reveals itself to
us, turns out to be personality. When we consider, further, the
form under which personality realizes, itself, we find it to consist
in the struggle of personality to grapple with the objective
mystery. When, in a still further movement of analysis, we
examine the nature of this struggle between the soul and the
mystery which surrounds the soul, we find it complicated by the
fact that the soul's encounter with this mystery reveals the
existence, in the depths of the soul itself, of two conflicting
emotions, the emotion of love and the emotion of malice.

The word "love" has been used so indiscriminately in its surprising
history that it becomes necessary to elucidate a little the particular
meaning I give to it in connection with this ultimate duality. A
strange and grotesque commentary upon human life, these various
contradictory feelings that have covered their "multitude of sins"
under this historic name!

The lust of the satyr, the affectionate glow of the domestic
habitue, the rare exalted passion of the lover, the cold, clear
attractio