d and matter are one, or perhaps
there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay
and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth--an
artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and
death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide,
which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes
between two days. But the next day is never the same as the day before,
nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of
ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in
the same form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds,
fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything. I do not see
anything depressing in that. To me it would be depressing to think that
I would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself yet
not myself. How stale that would be! When I finish a picture it is
inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another picture,
or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has
expressed. The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is ever in
fresh effort to achieve new things. He is as a fountain who throws up
new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the water, flow into
the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped drops. But I cannot
explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself
in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of
nothing at all--just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be
one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it happens to be this
and not that, the all and not the nothing."

He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
rest on something beyond. The man in khaki, who had risen and was
standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:

"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view. The
idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all? Things
are; and we have just to take them." Fort had the impression of
something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
risen and come close to the fire.

"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with the
created. God exists outside ourselves. Nor can I admit that there is no
defnite purpose and fu