This is the way of the tiger; the tiger is supreme. His head is
flattened as if there were some great weight on the hard skull,
pressing, pressing, pressing the mind into a stone, pressing it down
under the blood, to serve the blood. It is the subjugate instrument of
the blood. The will lies above the loins, as it were at the base of the
spinal column, there is the living will, the living mind of the tiger,
there in the slender loins. That is the node, there in the spinal cord.
So the Italian, so the soldier. This is the spirit of the soldier. He,
too, walks with his consciousness concentrated at the base of the spine,
his mind subjugated, submerged. The will of the soldier is the will of
the great cats, the will to ecstasy in destruction, in absorbing life
into his own life, always his own life supreme, till the ecstasy burst
into the white, eternal flame, the Infinite, the Flame of the Infinite.
Then he is satisfied, he has been consummated in the Infinite.
This is the true soldier, this is the immortal climax of the senses.
This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger who has devoured all
living flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the cage of its
own infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that which is
nothingness to it.
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