A CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN TWO CORNERS
jectivity, having become a universal and objective value, for long years
flowered in its eternal truth there, on the heights. What is taking place
is philogeny
in
reverse, so to speak: having reached its peak, the move–
ment is now retracing its steps, following the same way as the one it
ascended, stage after stage. That is why each revolution is a rebirth
of the old: the monarchy is supplanted by a common council-parlia–
ment; parliamentarianism will yield its place to a still earlier form–
federation, and so it will go on until we reach the original
point
of
departure. But the old forms are now animated by a new spirit. The
community in ascent was poor, chaotic, and closed; in descent it is har–
moniously organized and infused with a general meaning. As for the
starting point to which everything must return, it is individuality. In–
dividuality will contain in itself all the acquired fulness. Centuries will
pass, and faith once again will be simple and personal, labor will be joy–
ous individual creation, and property
will
be intimate communion
with
the object; but faith, and labor, and property will be immutable and
sacred
within
the individual, and outside they will be immeasurably
enriched, like a tree grown from a seed. I repeat, the task now is to
make it possible for individuality once again to became truly individual,
and yet be experienced as universal; that man, like Mary, should recog–
nize in each of his manifestations both his child and God.
However, values are not yet everything; against values one can
fight. But how can one fight against those poisons of culture, which
have entered into our blood and infected the very sources of spiritual
life? There are nets of theories, made of steel, woven by centuries of
experience; they captivate the reason imperceptibly and surely; there are
the well-trodden paths of consciousness where laziness insinuates itself;
there is the routine of thinking and the routine of conscience, there
is the routine of perception, there are the stereotypes of feeling and the
countless cliches of speech. They lie in wait for spiritual seeds at th(t
very moment of conception, envelop them at once and, as though in
amorous embrace, lure them on to well-beaten tracks. Finally, there are
the countless results of knowledge, terrible
in
their multiplicity and in–
exorableness; they inundate the
mind,
establishing themselves within it as
objective truth without waiting till hunger summons those among them
which are really needed; and the spirit, crushed by
their
weight, withers
in
its overcrowded quarters, powerless either to appropriate them in an
authentic manner or to expel them. Consequently, I speak not of freedom
from theory, but of freedom of theory, or more accurately, of freedom,
directness, and freshness of contemplation-so that the wisdom of the
fathers should not intimidate the faint-hearted, that it should not encour-
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