to be blind to all others. One must lose one's own soul to
gain the world, and none who enter and return from the paradise
of selfless ecstasy will question that it is gained. It may
be that personality is a hindrance and a barrier, and that we
are only truly in harmony with the secret of our own existence
when we cease to set ourselves over against the world.
Nevertheless, the sense of individuality is a possession for
which the most of mankind would pay the price, if it must be
paid, even of eternal suffering. The delicious hour of fusion
with the universe is precious, so it seems to us now, just
because we can return from it to our own nest, and, close and
warm there, count up our happiness. The fragmentariness and
multiplicity of life are, then, the saving of the sense of
selfhood, and we must indeed

"Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled."


IV
THE BEAUTY OF FINE ART


IV
A. THE BEAUTY OF VISUAL FORM

I

IN what consists the Beauty of Visual Form? The older writers