or hate it.
It can neither reject it nor accept it. It can neither worship it nor
revolt against it. It is only _imaginable_ in the illegitimate sense of
metaphor and analogy. It is simply the stopping-place of the
complex vision; that stopping-place beyond which anything is
possible and nothing is thinkable.

This thing, which is at once everything and nothing, this thing
which is _no thing_ but only the unutterable limit where all things
pass beyond thought, cannot be accepted by the complex vision as
the parent of the universe. The universe has therefore no parent, no
origin, no cause, no creator. Eternally it re-creates itself and
eternally it divides itself into that ultimate duality which makes
creation possible.

That monistic tendency of human thought, which is itself a
necessary projection of the monistic reality of the individual soul,
cannot, except by an arbitrary act of faith, resolve this ultimate
duality into unity. Such a primordial "act of faith" it can and must
make with regard to the objective reality of other souls. But such
an "act of faith" is not demanded with regard to the unutterable
mystery behind the universe. We have not, strictly speaking, even
the right to use the expression "an unutterable mystery." All we
have a right to do is just to titter the final judgment--"beyond this
limit neither thought nor imagination can pass."

What the complex vision definitely denies to us, therefore, is the
right to regard this thing, which is _no_ thing, with any emotion at
all. The expression "unutterable mystery" is a misleading one
because it appears to justify the emotions of awe and reverence.
We have no right to regard this thin simulacrum, this mathematical
formula, this stopping-place of thought, with any feelings of awe
or reverence. We have not even a right to regard it with humorous
contempt; for, being nothing at all, it is beneath contempt.

Humanity has a right to indulge in that peculiar emotional attitude
which is called "worship" towards either side of the ultimate
duality. It has a right to worship, if it pleases--though to do so
several attitudes of the complex vision must be outraged and
suppressed--the resistant power of malice. It has even a right to
worship the universe, that turbulent arena of these primal
antagonists. What it has no right to worship is the "unutterable
mystery" _behind the universe_; for the simple reason that the
universe is unfathomable.

Human thought ha