the ordinary mental and
psychical level of humanity. The clew lies in
that word "creation."

II

The words "to create" are often understood
by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of
evolving something out of nothing. This is
clearly not its meaning; we are mentally obliged
to provide our Creator with chaos from which
to produce the worlds. The tiller of the soil,
who is the typical producer of social life, must
have his material, his earth, his sky, rain, and
sun, and the seeds to place within the earth.
Out of nothing he can produce nothing. Out
of a void Nature cannot arise; there is that
material beyond, behind, or within, from which
she is shaped by our desire for a universe. It
is an evident fact that the seeds and the earth,
air, and water which cause them to germinate
exist on every plane of action. If you talk to
an inventor, you will find that far ahead of
what he is now doing he can always perceive
some other thing to be done which he cannot
express in words because as yet he has not
drawn it into our present world of objects.
That knowledge of the unseen is even more
definite in the poet, and more inexpressible
until he has touched it with some part of that
consciousness which he shares with other men.
But in strict proportion to his greatness he
lives in the consciousness which the ordinary
man does not even believe can exist,--the
consciousness which dwells in the greater
universe, which breathes in the vaster air, which
beholds a wider earth and sky, and snatches
seeds from plants of giant growth.

It is this place of consciousness that we
need to reach out to. That it is not reserved
only for men of genius is shown by the fact
that martyrs and heroes have found it and
dwelt in it. It is not reserved for men of genius
only, but it can only be found by men of
great soul.

In this fact there is no need for discouragement.
Greatness in man is popularly supposed
to be a thing inborn. This belief must be a
result of want of thought, of blindness to facts
of nature. Greatness can only be attained by
growth; that is continually demonstrated to us.
Even the mountains, even the firm globe itself,
these are great by dint of the mode of growth
peculiar to that state of materiality,--accumulation
of atoms. As the consciousness inherent
in all existing forms passes into more
advanced forms of life it becomes more active,
and in proportion it acquires the power
of growth by assimilation i