THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

The Stress of the Hidden SpiritTHE world is a great game of hide andseek in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behindmatter. The apparent masquerades as real, the real is seen dimlyas if it were an unsubstantial shadow. The grandeur of the visibleuniverse and its laws enslaves men's imaginations. “This is amighty machine,” we cry, “but it moves of its own force andneeds neither guide nor maker; for its motion is eternal.” Blindedby a half-truth we fail to see that, instead of a machine withouta maker, there is really only an existence and no machine.The Hindus have many images by which they seek to conveytheir knowledge of the relation between God and the world, butthe idea of the machine does not figure largely among them. Itis a spider and his web, a fire with many sparks, a pool of saltwater in which every particle is penetrated by the salt. The worldis a waking dream, an embodied vision, a mass of knowledgearranged in corporeal appearances expressing so many ideas whichare each only a part of one unchanging truth. Everything becomes,nothing is made. Everything is put out from latency, nothingis brought into existence. Only that which was, can be, not thatwhich was not. And that which is, cannot perish; it can onlylose itself. All is eternal in the eternal Spirit.What was from of old? The Spirit. What is alone? TheSpirit. What shall be forever? The Spirit. All that is in Spaceand Time, is He; and whatever there may be beyond Spaceand Time, that too is He. Why should we think so? Becauseof the eternal and invariable unity which gives permanence tothe variability of the many. The sum of Matter never changesby increase or diminution, although its component parts arecontinually shifting, so is it with the sum of energy in the world,so is it with the Spirit. Matter is only so much mobile energyvibrating intensely into form. Energy is only so much Spiritmanifesting the motion that we call energy. Spirit is Force, SpiritExistence, — matter and energy are only motions in Spirit.