This number and this power are all right, but they are not the highest.  Where does the longed-for ideal lie concealed?  Or does the aspiring heart evermore find in the highest of all plastic arts only new manners and never a perfected style?

Thinking has a peculiarity of its own in that, next to itself, it loves to think about something which it can think about forever.  For that reason the life of the cultured and thinking man is a constant study and meditation on the beautiful riddle of his destiny.  He is always defining it in a new way, for just that is his entire destiny, to be defined and to define.  Only in the search itself does the human mind discover the secret that it seeks.

But what, then, is it that defines or is defined?  Among men it is the nameless.  And what is the nameless among women?—­The Indefinite.

The Indefinite is more mysterious, but the Definite has greater magic power.  The charming confusion of the Indefinite is more romantic, but the noble refinement of the Definite has more of genius.  The beauty of the Indefinite is perishable, like the life of the flowers and the everlasting youth of mortal feelings; the energy of the Definite is transitory, like a genuine storm and genuine inspiration.

Who can measure and compare two things which have endless worth, when both are held together in the real Definiteness, which is intended to fill all gaps and to act as mediator between the male and female individual and infinite humanity?

The Definite and the Indefinite and the entire abundance of their definite and indefinite relations—­that is the one and all, the most wonderful and yet the simplest, the simplest and yet the highest.  The universe itself is only a toy of the Definite and the Indefinite; and the real definition of the definable is an allegorical miniature of the life and activity of ever-flowing creation.

With everlasting immutable symmetry both strive in different ways to get near to the Infinite and to escape from it.  With light but sure advances the Indefinite expands its native wish from the beautiful centre of Finiteness into the boundless.  Complete Definiteness, on the other hand, throws itself with a bold leap out of the blissful dream of the infinite will into the limits of the finite deed, and by self-refinement ever increases in magnanimous self-restraint and beautiful self-sufficiency.

In this symmetry is also revealed the incredible humor with which consistent Nature accomplishes her most universal and her most simple antithesis.  Even in the most delicate and most artistic organization these comical points of the great All reveal themselves, like a miniature, with roguish significance, and give to all individuality, which exists only by them and by the seriousness of their play, its final rounding and perfection.

Through this individuality and that allegory the bright ideal of witty sensuality blooms forth from the striving after the Unconditioned.