o easy road.

Since, therefore, the reality of these invisible companions though
implied in all our intercourse with one another, is only visualized
as actual and authentic when our subjective vision is at its highest
point, and since when our subjective vision is at its highest point it
conveys the sensation, rightly or wrongly, that what we call our
"universe" is _their_ universe also, it is not without justification
that we use the anthropomorphic expression "the sons of the
universe" to describe these invisible companions.

This expression, the sons of the universe, this idea of an objective
standard of all ideas, is something that we attain with difficulty
and not something that we just pick up as we go along. The
"objective," in this sense, is the supreme attainment of the
"subjective." And although when we have found these companions
they become real and actual, we must not forget that, in the long
process of escaping from the subjectivity of ourselves into the
objectivity of their existence, it was our own subjective vision
with the rhythmic ecstasy of its apex-thought which led us to the
brink of this discovery. Thus the expression "the sons of the
universe" finds its justification. For they are the objective
discovery, as well as the objective implication, of all our human
and subjective visions. We and they together create the universe
and together become the "children" of the world we create.

And although the universe when thus created remains the creation
of man, assisted by the gods, it now presents itself to us, in its
acquired and attained objectivity, as a pre-existent thing which is
rather our parent than our creation. This objective reality of it,
with the inevitable implication that it existed before we came on
the scene at all, and will exist after we have disappeared from the
scene, is a truth towards which our subjective vision has led us,
but which, when once we reach it, seems to become independent
of our subjective vision.

Here again, therefore, in connection with the universe as in
connection with the gods, the creation of our subjectivity is found
to be something independent of our subjectivity and something
that, all the while, has been implicit in the energy of our subjective
vision. And precisely as the subjective vision of man creates the
companions of men and then discovers them to be an objective
reality, so the subjective vision of man creates the universe and
then discovers th