in.] THE GEOMETRICAL ORDER 209 



reality and intellectuality are turned in the same direction. 

 When a poet reads me his verses, I can interest myself 

 enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself into 

 his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken 

 into phrases and words. I sympathize then with his 

 inspiration, I follow it with a continuous movement which 

 is, like the inspiration itself, an undivided act. Now, I 

 need only relax my attention, let go the tension that there 

 is in me, for the sounds, hitherto swallowed up in the sense, 

 to appear to me distinctly, one by one, in their materiality. 

 For this I have not to do anything; it is enough to withdraw 

 something. In proportion as I let myself go, the successive 

 sounds will become the more individualized; as the phrases 

 were broken inco words, so the words will scan in syllables 

 which I shall perceive one after another. Let me go 

 farther still in the direction of dream: the letters them- 

 selves will become loose and will be seen to dance along, 

 hand in hand, on some fantastic sheet of paper. I shall 

 then admire the precision of the interweavings, the mar- 

 velous order of the procession, the exact insertion of the 

 letters into the syllables, of the syllables into the words and 

 of the words into the sentences. The farther I pursue 

 this quite negative direction of relaxation, the more ex- 

 tension and complexity I shall create; and the more the 

 complexity in its turn increases, the more admirable will 

 seem to be the order which continues to reign, undisturbed, 

 among the elements. Yet this complexity and extension 

 represent nothing positive; they express a deficiency of 

 will. And, on the other hand, the order must grow with 

 the complexity, since it is only an aspect of it. The more 

 we perceive, symbolically, parts in an indivisible whole, 

 the more the number of the relations that the parts have 

 between themselves necessarily increases, since the same 

 undividedness of the real whole continues to hover over 



