ts will towards, is first the
"eternal idea of the soul," the idea of the rhythmic harmony of
"mind" and "matter" fused and lost in one another, and then "the
eternal idea of the body," the idea of the rhythmic projection of
this invisible harmony upon the visible fabric of the world.

Thus we arrive at the only definition of the nature of love which is
satisfactory to the deepest moments of feeling experienced by the
human soul. In such moments the soul gathers itself together on
the verge and brink of the unknown. Something beyond the power
of our will takes possession then of all that we are. In our
momentary and transitory movement of the complex vision we are
permitted to pass across the ultimate threshold.

We enter then that mysterious rhythm which I have called "The
Eternal Vision"; and in place of our desire for personal
immortality, in place of our desire for the possession of any person
or thing, in place of our contemplation of "forces" and "energies"
and "evolution" or "dissolution," in place of our struggle for
"existence" or for "power," we become suddenly aware that in the
outflowing and reciprocal inter-action of the emotion of love there
is something that reduces all these to insignificance, something
that out of the very depths of the poisonous misery of the world
and the irony of the world and the madness of the world utters its
defiant Rabelaisian signal, "Bon espoir y gist au fond."

CHAPTER IX.

THE NATURE OF THE GODS

We must now return to our original definition of the true
philosophical instrument of research in order to see if we can
secure from it a clearer notion as to the nature of the Gods. Such
an instrument is, as we have seen, the apex-thought of the complex
vision using all its attributes in rhythmic unison. For the complex
vision using all its attributes in unison is only another name for the
soul using the body and using something more than the body.

If the soul could use no attributes except those given to it by the
body, it might, or it might not, arrive at the idea of the "sons of the
universe." It certainly could not enter into any relation with such
immortal beings. But since it has arrived at such a conception "it is
impossible for it ever to fall entirely away from what it has
reached." For the same unfathomable duality which gave birth to
the sons of the universe has given birth to men; and between these
two, between the ideal figures who cannot perish and the
gen