The necessity of such an infinitely delicate poise or balance or rhythm in these high matters, the necessity of keeping all these conflicting attributes at this exquisite point of suspense between abysses of contradiction, is a necessity which compels us to recognize that philosophy is nothing more or less than the supreme art, and the most difficult of all arts.
Certainly, it seems as though thought has to become in a profound sense rhythmical, has to take to itself the nature of music, before it can become the truth. For the truth does not seem to be a mere picture of the system of things, reflected in the mirror of the mind. The truth seems to be the very system of things itself, become conscious and volitional, changing, growing, living, destroying, creating. Thus it comes about that the thought which plunges into the universe must of necessity, even in that very act, remould and re-fashion the universe. Thus Nature perpetually recreates herself by the passion of her children and is forever re-born as the child of her own offspring.
But if the supreme difficulty of the art of life lies in the maintenance of this rhythm between these primary attributes, it must never be forgotten that these "attributes" are, after all, only _aspects_ of the soul. The soul _is_ each of them, not _in_ each of them. They are not "faculties" through which the soul acts. They are never absolutely distinct from one another. There is something of each of them in every one of them, and every attempt which they make to establish themselves in an independent existence is only an attempt of the soul itself to live a perverted and a discordant, instead of a natural and a harmonious life.
The rarity and difficulty of that high art which brings all these orchestral players into harmony is sufficient cause to account for the scarcity of genuine philosophical thought in this confused world. The human soul, looking desperately round for some calm yet passionate light to save its hours from ruinous waste, turns away in bitter disillusion from the thin dust and the swollen vapour that are offered it.
Out of the logical laboratories of the abstract reason this thin dust is offered; and out of the ideal factories of the wish for superficial comfort this iridescent vapour is poured forth. That burning secret of life, that lovely and terrible reality for which the soul pines is not to be found in any mere outward fact or in any mere subjective intuition.