order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has
overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one who, having
penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him-
though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves
the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not with trace,
but with the very Truth in the view of which all the rest is but of
secondary concern.

    There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown;
it was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a
reach towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation
towards adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the
holies: to look otherwise is to fail.

    Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers
how the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign
may enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.

    Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of
that invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by
principle they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have
contact with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within
the scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving
something, that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained
only by those that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.

    It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the
lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to
utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes
not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is
not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the
order of being; it is in the Supreme.

    There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man
outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being.
The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from
that heightened self we pass still higher- image to archetype- we have
won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the
virtue within until we know ourselves all order once more; once more
we are lightened of the burden and move by virtue towards
Intellectual-Principle and through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.

    This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men,
liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no
pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

                        THE END
.