The Law is for All

104 The Law is for All invented for the convenience of including all actual triangles, or vice versa. Once the idea Triangle has arisen, actual triangles are related to it as above stated.) One does not want even a comparatively brief extension of these “actual” states; Wedded Love, though licensed for a lifetime, is usually intolerable after a month; and marrons glacés pall after the first five or six kilograms have been consumed. But the “Happiness,” eternal and formless, is not less enjoyable because these forms of it cease to give pleasure. What happens is that the Idea ceases to find its image in those particular images; it begins to notice the limitations, which are not itself and indeed deny itself, as soon as its original joy in its success at having become conscious of itself wears off. It becomes aware of the external imperfection of marrons glacés; they no longer represent its infinitely varied nature. It therefore rejects them, and creates a new form of itself, such as Nightgowns with pale yellow ribbons or Amber Cigarettes. In the same way a poet or painter, wishing to express Beauty, is impelled to choose a particular form; with luck, this is at first able to recompose in him what he feels; but sooner or later he finds that he has failed to include certain elements of himself, and he must needs embody these in a new poem or picture. He may know that he can never do more than present a part of the possi­ ble perfection, and that in imperfect imagery; but at least he may utter his utmost within the limits of the mental and sensory instruments of his similarly inadequate symbol of the Absolute, his vehicle of human incarnation. These suffer from the same defects as the other forms; ulti­ mately, “Happiness” wearies itself in the effort to invent fresh images, and becomes disheartened and doubtful of itself. Only a few people have wit enough to proceed to generalization from the failure of a few familiar figures of itself, and recognize that all “actual” forms are imperfect; but such people are apt to turn with disgust from the whole procedure, and to long for the “eternal” state. This state is however incapable of realization, as we know; and the Soul understanding this, can find no good but in “Cessa­ tion” of all things, its creations no more than its own tendencies to create. It therefore sighs for nibbana.