MAN AND WOMAN 177 



height of the ideal we find that it has curved round, 

 and that we are at that moment at the very base and 

 foundation. What is attracting us forward in the 

 farthest distance in front is the very thing that is 

 urging us forward from behind. Pinnacle and 

 foundation, source and end, meet. 



The love which attracted the man and woman 

 together and which they keep striving to attain in 

 higher and higher degree, is the same as the creative 

 impulse which comes surging up from the very 

 Heart of Nature. Direct and without ever a break 

 it has come out of the remotest past and deepest 

 deeps. Few seem aware of this, and yet it is an 

 obvious fact and a fact which vastly increases our 

 sense of intimacy with Nature. It was due to the 

 same impulse which has brought the man and 

 woman together that they themselves were brought 

 into being. Their parents had b^en attracted by 

 the same vision of love and impelled by the same 

 impulse. Their parents' parents had been similarly 

 attracted and impelled, and so on back and back 

 through the whole long line of ancestry, through 

 half a million years to primitive men, back beyond 

 them again through the long animal ancestry for 

 scores of millions of years to the beginning of life. 

 Even then there is no break. Direct from the very 

 Fountain Source of Things this creative impulse has 

 come bursting up into their hearts. At the moment 

 of union they are straight along the direct line of 

 the whole world-development, so far as this planet 

 is concerned. The elemental in the natural im- 

 pulse is the most ultimately elemental, for it derives 

 itself straight from the pure Origin of Things. As 



