conditions which seem to be necessary before the magic of the
apex-thought is roused.

This preparing of the ground, this deliberate concentration of the
soul's energies, is the first movement of the will in answer to the
attraction of the eternal vision discerned so far only as a remote
ideal. The second movement of the will has been already implied
in the first, and is only a lifting into clear consciousness of what
led the soul to make its initial effort. I speak of the part played by
the will in the abysmal struggle between love and malice. This
struggle was really implicit, in the beginning, in the effort the will
made to focus the multiform energies of the complex vision. But
directly some measure of insight into the secret of life has
followed upon this effort, or directly, if the soul's good fortune has
been exceptional, its great illuminative moment has been reached,
the will finds itself irresistibly plunged into this struggle, finds
itself inevitably ranged, on one side or the other, of the ultimate
duality.

That the first effort of the will was largely what might be called an
intellectual one, though its purpose was to make use of all the
soul's attributes together, is proved by the fact that it is possible
for human souls to be possessed of formidable insight into the secret
of life and yet to use that insight for evil rather than for good.

But the second movement of the will, of which I am now speaking,
reveals without a shadow of ambiguity on which side of the
eternal contest the personality in question has resolved to
throw its weight. If, in this second movement, the will answers,
with a reciprocal gathering of itself together, the now far clearer
attraction of the vision attained by its original effort, it will be
found to range itself on the side of love against the power of
malice.

If, on the contrary, having made use of its original vision to
understand the secret of this struggle, it allies itself with the power
of malice against love, it will be found to produce the spectacle of
a soul of illuminated intellectual insight deliberately concentrated
on evil rather than good.

But once irrevocably committed to the power of that creative
energy which we call love, the will, though it may have
innumerable lapses and moments of troubled darkness, never
ceases from its abysmal struggle. For this is the conclusion of the
whole matter. When we speak of the eternal duality as consisting
in a str