This discussion of Nature has shown us how the origin of things is a Contemplation : we may now take the matter up to the higher Soul ; we find that the Contemplation pursued by this, its instinct towards knowing and enquiring, the birth pangs set up by the knowledge it attains, its teeming fullness, have caused it — in itself, all one object of Vision — to produce another Vision (that of the Kosmos) : it is just as a given science, complete in itself, becomes the source and cause of what might be called a minor science in the student who attains to some partial knowledge of all its divisions. But the visible objects and the objects of intellectual contemplation of this later creation are dim and helpless by the side of the content of the Soul.
The primal phase of the Soul — inhabitant of the Supreme and, by its participation in the Supreme, filled and illuminated — remains un-
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changeably There ; but in virtue of that first participation, that of the primal participant, a secondary phase also participates in the Supreme, and this secondary goes forth ceaselessly as Life streaming from Life ; for energy runs through the Universe and there is no extremity at which it dwindles out. But, travel as far as it may, it never draws that first part of itself from the place whence the outgoing began : if it did, it would no longer be everywhere (its continuous Being would be broken and) it would be present at the end, only, of its course.
None the less that which goes forth cannot be equal to that which remains.
In sum, then : —
The Soul is to extend throughout the Universe, no spot void of its energy : but, a prior is always different from its secondary, and energy is a secondary, rising as it must from contemplation or act ; act, however, is not at this stage existent since it depends upon contemplation : there- fore the Soul while its phases differ must, in all of them, remain a con- templation and what seems to be an act done under contemplation must be in reahty that weakened contemplation of which we have spoken : the engendered must respect the Kind, but in weaker form, dwindled in the descent.
All goes softly since nothing here demands the parade of thought or act upon external things : it is a Soul in vision and, by this vision, creating its own subsequent — this Principle (of Nature), itself also con- templative but in the feebler degree since it lies further away and cannot reproduce the quality or experiences of its prior — a Vision creates the Vision.
(Such creative contemplation is not inexplicable) for no limit exists either to contemplation or to its possible objects, and this explains how the Soul is universal ; where can this thing fail to be, which is one identical thing in every Soul ? Vision is not cabined within the bournes of magnitude.
This, of course, does not mean that the Soul is present at the same strength in each and every place and thing — any more than that it is at the same strength in each of its own phases.
The Charioteer (the Leading Principle of the Soul, in the Phaedrus Myth) gives the two horses (its two dissonant faculties) what he has seen and they, taking that gift, showed that they were hungry for what made that vision ; there was something lacking to them : if in their desire they acted, their action aimed at what they craved for — and that was vision, and an object of vision.
Action, thus, is set towards contemplation and an object of contem- plation, so that even those whose life is in doing have seeing as their object ; what they have not been able to achieve by the direct path, they hope to come at by the circuit.
Further : suppose they succeed ; they desired a certain thing to come about, not in order to be unaware of it but to know it, to see it present before the mind : their success is the laying up of a vision. We act for the sake of some good ; this means not for something to remain outside ourselves, not in order that we may possess nothing but that we may hold the good of the action. And hold it, where ? Where but in the mind ?
Thus once more, action is brought back to contemplation ; for (mind or) Soul is a Reason-Principle and anything that one lays up in the Soul can be no other than a Reason-Principle, a silent thing, the more certainly such a principle as the impression made is the deeper.
This vision achieved, the acting instinct pauses ; the mind is satisfied and seeks nothing further ; the contemplation, in one so conditioned, remains absorbed within as having acquired certainty to rest upon. The brighter the certainty, the more tranquil is the contemplation as having acquired the more perfect unity ; and — for now we come to the serious treatment of the subject —
In proportion to the truth with which the knowing facult}'’ knows, it comes to identification with the object of its knowledge.
As long as duality persists, the two lie apart, parallel as it were to each other ; there is a pair in which the two elements remain strange to
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one another, as when Ideal-Principles laid up in the mind or Soul remain idle.
Hence the Idea must not be left to lie outside but must be made one identical thing with the soul of the novice so that he finds it reaUy his own.
The Soul, once domiciled within that Idea and brought to likeness with it, becomes productive, active ; what it always held by its primary nature it now grasps with knowledge and applies in deed, so becoming, as it were, a new thing and, informed as it now is by the purely intellec- tual, it sees (in its outgoing act) as a stranger looking upon a strange world. It was, no doubt, essentially a Reason-Principle, even an Intel- lectual Principle ; but its function is to see a (lower) realm which these do not see.
For, it is not a complete thing : it has a lack ; it is incomplete in regard to its Prior ; yet it, also, has a tranquil vision of what it produces. What it has once brought into being it produces no more, for all its productiveness is determined by this lack : it produces for the purpose of Contemplation, in the desire of knowing aU its content : when there is question of practical things it adapts its content to the outside order.
The Soul has a greater content than Nature has and therefore it is more tranquil ; it is more nearly complete and therefore more contem- plative. It is, however, not perfect, and is all the more eager to penetrate the object of contemplation, and it seeks the vision that comes by observation. It leaves its native realm and busies itself elsewhere ; then it returns, and it possesses its vision by means of that phase of itself from which it had parted. The self-indweUing Soul inclines less to such experiences.
The Sage, then, is the man made over into a Reason-Principle : to others he shows his act but in himself he is Vision : such a man is already set, not merely in regard to exterior things but also within himself, towards what is one and at rest : all his faculty and life are inward-bent.
Certain Principles, then, we may take to be established — some self- evident, others brought out by our treatment above : —
All the forms of Authentic Existence spring from vision and are a vision. Everything that springs from tliese Authentic Existences in their vision is an object of vision — manifest to sensation or to true knowledge or to surface-awareness. All act aims at this knowing ; all impulse is towards knowledge, all that springs from vision exists to pro- duce Ideal-Form, that is a fresh object of vision, so that universally, as images of their engendering principles, they all produce objects of vision. Ideal-forms. In the engendering of these sub-existences, imitations of the Authentic, it is made manifest that the creating powers operate not for the sake of creation and action but in order to produce an object of vision. This same vision is the ultimate purpose of all the acts of the mind and, even further downward, of all sensation, since sensation also is an effort towards knowledge ; lower still. Nature, producing similarly its subsequent principle, brings into being the vision and Idea that we know in it. It is certain, also, that as the Firsts exist in vision all other things must be straining towards the same condition ; the starting point is, universally, the goal.
When living things reproduce their Kind, it is that the Reason- Principles within stir them ; the procreative act is the expression of a contemplation, a travail towards the creation of many forms, many objects of contemplation, so that the universe may be filled full with Reason-Principles and that contemplation may be, as nearly as possible, endless ; to bring anything into being is to produce an Idea-Form and that again is to enrich the universe with contemplation : all the failures, alike in being and in doing, are but the swerving of visionaries from the object of vision : in the end the sorriest craftsman is still a maker of forms, ungracefully. So Love, too, is vision with the pursuit of Ideal- Form.
From this basis we proceed : —
In the advancing stages of Contemplation rising from that in Nature, to that in the Soul and thence again to that in the Intellectual-Principle itself — the object contemplated becomes progressively a more and more
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intimate possession of the Contemplating Beings, more and more one thing with them ; and in the advanced Soul the objects of knowledge, well on the way towards the Intellectual-Principle, are close to identity with their container.
Hence we may conclude that, in the Intellectual-Principle Itself, there is complete identity of Knower and Known, and this not by way of domiciliation, as in the case of even the highest soul, but by Essence, by the fact that, there, no distinction exists between Being and Knowing ; we cannot stop at a principle containing separate parts ; there must always be a yet higher, a principle above all such diversity.
The Supreme must be an entity in which the two are one ; it will, therefore, be a Seeing that lives, not an object of vision like things existing in something other than themselves : what exists in an outside element is some mode of living-thing ; it is not the Self-Living.
Now admitting the existence of a living thing that is at once a Thought and its object, it must be a Life distinct from the vegetative or sensitive life or any other life determined by Soul.
In a certain sense no doubt all lives are thoughts — but qualified as thought vegetative, thought sensitive and thought psychic.
What, then, makes them thoughts ?
The fact that they are Reason-Principles. Every life is some form of thought, but of a dwindling clearness like the degrees of life itself. The first and clearest Life and the first Intelligence are one Being. The First Life, then, is an Intellection and the next form of Life is the next Intellection and the last form of Life is the last form of Intellection. Thus every Life, of the order strictly so called, is an Intellection.
But while men may recognise grades in life they reject grade in thought ; to them there are thoughts (fuU and perfect) and anything else is no thought.
This is simply because they do not seek to establish what Life is.
The essential is to observe that, here again, all reasoning shows that whatever exists is a bye-work of visioning : if, then, the truest Life is such by virtue of an Intellection and is identical with the truest Intellection, then the truest Intellection is a living being ; Contempla-
tion and its object constitute a living thing, a Life, two inextric- ably one.
The duality, thus, is a unity ; but how is this unity also a plurality ?