and who, instead of talking
wittily, behaves wittily, may think of those naive intimations which
refined speakers designate only by their namelessness.

And this namelessness itself has an equivocal significance. The more
modest and modern one is, the more fashionable does it become to put
an immodest interpretation upon it. For the old gods, on the contrary,
all life had a certain classic dignity whereby even the immodest
heroic art is rendered lifelike. The mass of such works and the great
inventive power displayed in them settles the question of rank and
nobility in the realm of mythology.

This number and this power are all right, but they are not the
highest. Where does the longed-for ideal lie concealed? Or does the
aspiring heart evermore find in the highest of all plastic arts only
new manners and never a perfected style?

Thinking has a peculiarity of its own in that, next to itself, it
loves to think about something which it can think about forever. For
that reason the life of the cultured and thinking man is a constant
study and meditation on the beautiful riddle of his destiny. He is
always defining it in a new way, for just that is his entire destiny,
to be defined and to define. Only in the search itself does the human
mind discover the secret that it seeks.

But what, then, is it that defines or is defined? Among men it is the
nameless. And what is the nameless among women?--The Indefinite.

The Indefinite is more mysterious, but the Definite has greater magic
power. The charming confusion of the Indefinite is more romantic, but
the noble refinement of the Definite has more of genius. The beauty of
the Indefinite is perishable, like the life of the flowers and the
everlasting youth of mortal feelings; the energy of the Definite is
transitory, like a genuine storm and genuine inspiration.

Who can measure and compare two things which have endless worth, when
both are held together in the real Definiteness, which is intended to
fill all gaps and to act as mediator between the male and female
individual and infinite humanity?

The Definite and the Indefinite and the entire abundance of their
definite and indefinite relations--that is the one and all, the most
wonderful and yet the simplest, the simplest and yet the highest. The
universe itself is only a toy of the Definite and the Indefinite; and
the real definition of the definable is an allegorical miniature of
the life and activity of ever-flowing