PARTISAN REVIEW
happiness in a Lethean bath that would erase the memory of
all
religious and philosophical systems; all scientific knowledge, arts, and
poetry could be washed away from the soul without a trace; and then,
to re-emerge on the shore, naked as the first man, naked, light and
joyful, stretching freely and lifting to the sky my naked arms, re–
calling from the past only one thing-how burdensome and stifling
were those clothes, how light and free one is without them. Why
this feeling has taken root in me I do not know. Perhaps we could
not feel the· burden of the splendid vestments so long as they were
whole and beautiful and comfortably fitted our bodies; but, in these
last years, as they have become tom and hang down in rags, we
long to throw them off altogether.
M.G.
III.
ToM.
0.
Gershenzon:
I am not an architect of systems, my dear M.O., nor on the
other hand am I one of those frightened creatures who think every–
thing that is said is a lie. I am accustomed to wandering in the "forest
of symbols," and the symbolism of the word is just as clear to me
as that of the kiss of love. Inner experience has a verbal meaning,
and seeks
it~
languishing without
it,
for it is from the abundance
of the heart that the mouth speaks. People cannot give each other a
better gift than that reassuring clairvoyance of their words even if
they express only their forebodings or gropings for a higher, more
spiritual awareness. One thing should be guarded against-giving
these communications, these confessions a compulsive character,
i.e.,
making them into the property of reason. Reason is compulsive by
nature; but the spirit breathes where it wills. Words must be spiritual
-symbols of the individual's inner experience, and in truth, children
of freedom. Just as the poet's song does not compel but moves, so
words should move the minds of the listeners, and not subject them
to convictions, as to a proven theorem.
Metaphysics has been afflicted with pride and lust for power,
tragically afflicted for having separated itself from the womb of
integral spiritual knowledge. Having left its paternal home of primi–
tive religion, it inevitably strove to make itself over in the image of
science and to thirst for the scepter of that greatest of all compulsive
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