Neither the blood nor the spirit spoke in them, only the
law, the abstraction of the average. The infinite is positive and
negative. But the average is only neutral. And the monks trod backward
and forward down the line of neutrality.
Meanwhile, on the length of mountain-ridge, the snow grew
rosy-incandescent, like heaven breaking into blossom. After all, eternal
not-being and eternal being are the same. In the rosy snow that shone in
heaven over a darkened earth was the ecstasy of consummation. Night and
day are one, light and dark are one, both the same in the origin and in
the issue, both the same in the moment, of ecstasy, light fused in
darkness and darkness fused in light, as in the rosy snow above
the twilight.
But in the monks it was not ecstasy, in them it was neutrality, the
under earth. Transcendent, above the shadowed, twilit earth was the rosy
snow of ecstasy. But spreading far over us, down below, was the
neutrality of the twilight, of the monks. The flesh neutralizing the
spirit, the spirit neutralizing the flesh, the law of the average
asserted, this was the monks as they paced backward and forward.
Pages:
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55