r.

The words "creation" and "creative" axe thus made descriptive in
this book of the simple and undeniable fact that everything which
the mind touches is modified and changed by the mind; and that
ultimately the universe which any mind beholds is an universe
half-created by the mood of the mind which beholds it. And since the
mood of any mind which contemplates the universe is dependent
upon the relative "overcoming" in that particular soul of the emotion
of malice by love, or of the emotion of love by malice, it becomes
true to say that any universe which comes into existence is
necessarily "created" by the original struggle, in the depths of some
soul or other, of the conflicting emotions of love and malice.

And since the ideal of the emotion of love is life, and the ideal of
the emotion of hate is death, it becomes true to say that the emotion
of love is identical with the creative energy in all souls, while the
emotion of malice is identical with the force which resists creation
in all souls.

Why then do I drop completely, or at least considerably modify, this
stress upon the soul's "creative" power in my final chapter? I am led
to do so by the fact that such creative power in the soul is, after all,
only a preparation for the eternal vision. Creative energy implies
effort, tension, revolution, agitation, and the pain of birth. All
these things have to do with preparing the ground for the eternal
vision, and with the final gesture of the soul, by which it enters
into that ultimate rhythm. But once having entered into that vision--
and in these things time is nothing--the rhythm which results is a
rhythm upon which the soul rests, even as music rests upon music, or
life rests upon life.

And the eternal vision, thus momentarily attained, and hereafter
gathered together from the deep cisterns of memory, liberates us,
when we are under its influence, from that contemplative or creative
tension whereby we reached it. It is then that the stoical pride of the
soul, in the strength of which it has endured so much, undergoes the
process of an immense relaxation and relief. An indescribable
humility floods our being; and the mood with which we contemplate
the spectacle of life and death ceases to be an individual mood and
becomes an universal mood. The isolation, which was a necessary
element in our advance to this point, melts away when we have
reached it. It is not that we lose our personality, it is that we merge