ividual soul-monad, then, able to communicate with other
soul-monads, whether mortal or immortal, through the medium of
omnipresent soul-monads of the universal ether finds itself
dominated, as all the rest are dominated, by one inescapable circle
of unfathomable space. Under the curve of this space we all of us
live, and under the curve of this space those that are mortal among
us, die. When we die, if it be our destiny not to survive death, our
souls vanish into nothingness; and our bodies become a portion of
the body of the earth. But if we have entered into the eternal vision
we have lost all fear of death; for we have come to see that the
thing which is most precious to us, the fact that love remains
undying in the heart of the universe, does not vanish with our
vanishing. Once having attained, by means of the creative vision
of humanity and by means of the grace of the immortals, even a
faint glimpse into this mystery, we are no longer inclined to lay
the credit of our philosophizing upon the creative spirit in our
individual soul. The apex-thought of the complex vision has given
us our illuminated moments. But the eternal vision to which those
moments led us has filled us with an immense humility.

And in the last resort, when we turn round upon the amazing
spectacle of life it is of the free gift of the gods, or of the magical
love hidden in the mystery of nature, that we are led to think,
rather than of any creative activity in ourselves. The word
"creative" like the word "objective mystery," has served our
purpose well in the preceding pages. But now, as we seek to
simplify our conclusion to the uttermost, it becomes necessary to
reject much of the manifold connotation which hangs about this
word; although in this case also, the stage of thought which it
covers is a real movement of the mind.

But the creative activity in the apex-thought of our complex vision
is, after all, only a means, a method, a gesture which puts us into
possession of the eternal vision. When once the eternal vision has
been ours, the memory of it does not associate itself with
any energy of our own. The memory of these eternal moments
associates itself with a mood in which the creative energy rests
upon its own equipoise, upon its own rhythm; a mood in which the
spectacle of the universe, the magic of Nature, the love in all
living souls, the contact of mortality with immortality, become
things which blend themselves together; a mood