Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/19

 in an electric storm. We deplore the futility of an abstract idea, an intellectual image. We would leave nothing for the soul and mind. Even such ideals as are purely spiritual we would materialize to serve a passing and questionable need. The Sufi, for instance, has evolved a theory of colors with which to guide his path of vision. It makes very pleasant reading in the book of mysticism. To him colors denote different states of soul, and point the way to different goals—to a union, partial or complete, with humanity or divinity, or a progressive union from one to the other, and so forth. How futile to us these arbitrary denotations. But the Sufi, who sees colors with closed eyes, can distinguish all the variations of a chromatic circle as it develops from a point in vermillion. And he finds ineffable joy in beholding the development and verifying, as it were, his progress in the path of union and vision. "The soul gives sight to the eyes," says a Sanskrit aphorism, "and he who gives