consequently no enjoyment, could accrue; and therefore by the law of
continuous progression the required Reciprocal should manifest as a being
awakening to the consciousness of the principle by which he himself comes
into existence.

Such an awakening cannot proceed from a comparison of one set of existing
conditions with another, but only from the recognition of a Power which is
independent of all conditions, that is to say, the absolute Self-dependence
of the Spirit. A being thus awakened would be the proper correspondence of
the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life at a stage not only above mechanical motion
or physical vitality, but even above intellectual perception of existing
phenomena, that is to say at the stage where the Spirit's Enjoyment
consists in recognizing itself as the Source of all things. The position in
the Absolute would be, so to speak, the awakening of Spirit to the
recognition of its own Artistic Ability. I use the word "Artistic" as more
nearly expressing an almost unstatable idea than any other I can think of,
for the work of the artist approaches more closely to creation _ex nihilo_
than any other form of human activity. The work of the artist is the
expression of the self that the artist is, while that of the scientist is
the comparison of facts 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