the foot of a cliff; but the easiest way — also the speediest, most 
direct, least obstructed, the way of minimum effort—would be 
simply to jump. I should hâve destroyed my will in the act of 
fulfilling it, or what I mistook for it; for the true will has no goal ; 
its nature being to Go. Similarly a paraboia is bound by one law 
which fixes its relations with two straight lines at every point ; yet 
it has no end short of infinity, and it continually changes its direc¬ 
tion. The initiate who is aware Who he is can always check his 
conduct by reference to the déterminants of his curve, and calculate 
his past, his future, his bearings and his proper course at any 
assigned moment 5 he can even comprehend himself as a simple 
idea. He may attain to measure fellow-parabolas, ellipses that 
cross his path, hyperbolas that span ail space with their twin wings. 
Perhaps he may corne at long last, leaping beyond the limits of his 
own law, to conceive that sublimely stupendous outrage to Reason, 
the Cône! Utterly inscrutable to him, he is yet well aware that 
he exists in the nature thereof, that he is necessary thereto, that he 
is ordered thereby, and that therefrom he is sprung, frcm the 
loins of so fearful a Father! His own infinity becomes zéro in 
relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly 
exists at ail. Trillions multiplied by trillions of trillions of such as 
he coula not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he 
came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some 
mysterious power. Yet breadth is equally a nothing in the presence 
of the Cône. His first conception must evidently be a frantic 
spasm, formless, insane, not to be classed as articulate thought. 
Yet, if he develops the faculties of his mind, the more he knows 
of it the more he sees that its nature is identical with his own 
whenever comparison is possible. 
The True Will is thus both determined by its équations, and 
free because those équations are simply its own name, spelt out 
fully. His sense of being under bondage cornes from his inability 
to read it; his sense that evil exists to thwart him arises when he 
begms to learn to read, reads wrong, and is obstinate that his error 
is an improvement. 
We know one thing only. Absolute existence, absolute motion, 
absolute direction, absolute simultaneity, absolute truth, ail such 
— 342 —