unfathomable as receding into depths beyond the point where the
vision of man stops and beyond the point where the vision of the
immortals stops, we do not contradict the statement that the vision
of man and the vision of the immortals create the universe. They
create the universe in so far as they discover the universe; but the
universe must be thought of as always capable of being further
discovered and further created. Perhaps the most adequate way of
putting the situation would be to image the objective mystery as a
kind of colourless screen across which a coloured picture is slowly
moved. This coloured picture is the universe as we know it.
Without the white screen as a background there could be no picture.
All the colours of the picture are latent and potential in the
whiteness of the screen; but they require the focussed lime-light of
the magic-lantern to call them forth. The lantern from which the
light comes, half-creates, so to speak, and half-discovers the
resultant colours.

When we say, therefore, that the universe, although created by the
complex vision, recedes into unfathomable depths beyond the
reach of the complex vision, what we mean is that the boundary
line between the moving colour-picture, which is the universe, and
the original whiteness of the screen across which the picture is
moved, which is the objective mystery, is capable of endless
recession. The blank whiteness of the part of the screen over
which the picture has not yet moved is capable of revealing every
kind of colour as soon as the focussed lime-light of the complex
vision reaches it. The colours are in the whiteness of the screen as
well as in the lime-light which is thrown upon the screen; but
neither the lantern which throws the light nor the screen upon
which the light is thrown, can, in isolation from one another,
produce colour.

The universe, therefore, is half-created and half-discovered by the
complex vision; and it may be said to go on beyond the point
where the complex vision stops, although strictly speaking what
goes on beyond the stopping place of the complex vision is not the
universe as we know it but a potential universe as we may come to
know it; a universe, in fact, which is at present held in suspense in
the unfathomable depths of the objective mystery.

This potential universe, this universe which will come into
existence as soon as the complex vision discovers it and creates it,
this universe across which ga