Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/76

60 sentences run on, but the positive element of the book is the relation of the sentences in the story. This relation reveals a will of personality in its author which establishes its harmony with the personality of the reader. If the book were a collection of disjointed words of no movement and meaning, then we should be justified in saying that it was a product of chance, and in that case it would have no response from the personality of the reader. In like manner the world through all its changes is not to us a mere runaway evasion, and because of its movements it reveals to us something which is eternal.

For revealment of idea, form is absolutely necessary. But the idea which is infinite cannot be expressed in forms which are absolutely finite. Therefore forms must always move and change, they must necessarily die to reveal the deathless. The expression as expression must be definite, which it can only be in its form; but at the same time, as the expression of the infinite, it must be indefinite, which it can only be in its movement. Therefore when the world takes its shape it always transcends its shape; it carelessly runs out of itself to say that its meaning is more than what it can contain.

The moralist sadly shakes his head and says