ts which exist independently of his own personality.
It is true that the realm of Art is not without its methods of analysis,
but the analysis is that of the artist's own feeling and of the causes
which give rise to it. These are found to contain in themselves certain
principles which are fundamental to all Art, but these principles are the
laws of the creative action of mind rather than those of the limitations of
matter. Now if we may transfer this familiar analogy to our conception of
the working of the All-Originating Mind we may picture it as the Great
Artist giving visible expression to His feeling by a process which, though
subject to no restriction from antecedent conditions, yet works by a Law
which is inseparable from the Feeling itself--in fact the Law _is_ the
Feeling, and the Feeling _is_ the Law, the Law of Perfect Creativeness.

Some such Self-contemplation as this is the only way in which we can
conceive the next, or Fifth, stage of Spirit's Self-recognition as taking
place. Having got as far as it has in the four previous stages, that is to
the production of intellectual man as its correspondence, the next step in
advance must be on the lines I have indicated--unless, indeed, there were a
sudden and arbitrary breaking of the Law of Continuity, a supposition which
the whole Creative Process up to now forbids us to entertain. Therefore we
may picture the Fifth stage of the Self-contemplation of Spirit as its
awakening to the recognition of its own Artistic Ability, its own absolute
freedom of action and creative power--just as in studio parlance we say
that an artist becomes "free of his palette." But by the always present Law
of Reciprocity, through which alone self-consciousness can be attained,
this Self-recognition of Spirit in the Absolute implies a corresponding
objective fact in the world of the Relative; that is to say, the coming
into manifestation of a being capable of realizing the Free Creative
Artistry of the Spirit, and of recognizing the same principle in himself,
while at the same time realizing also the _relation_ between the Universal
Manifesting Principle and its Individual Manifestation.

Such, it appears to me, must be the conception of the Divine Ideal embodied
in the Fifth Stage of the progress of manifestation. But I would draw
particular attention to the concluding words of the last paragraph, for if
we miss the _relation_ between the Universal Manifesting Principle and its
Individ