May it not be that the Universe, our Universe—­who knows if there are others?—­began with a zero of spirit—­and zero is not the same as nothing—­and an infinite of matter, and that its goal is to end with an infinite of spirit and a zero of matter?  Dreams!

May it be that everything has a soul and that this soul begs to be freed?

Oh tierras de Alvargonzalez, en el corazon de Espana, tierras pobres, tierras tristes, tan tristes que tienen alma!

sings our poet Antonio Machado in his Campos de Castilla.[50] Is the sadness of the field in the fields themselves or in us who look upon them?  Do they not suffer?  But what can an individual soul in a world of matter actually be?  Is it the rock or the mountain that is the individual?  Is it the tree?

And nevertheless the fact always remains that spirit and matter are at strife.  This is the thought that Espronceda expressed when he wrote: 

    Aqui, para vivir en santa calma,
    o sobra la materia, o sobra el alma.[51]

And is there not in the history of thought, or of human imagination if you prefer it, something that corresponds to this process of the reduction of matter, in the sense of a reduction of everything to consciousness?

Yes, there is, and its author is the first Christian mystic, St. Paul of Tarsus, the Apostle of the Gentiles, he who because he had never with his bodily eyes looked upon the face of the fleshly and mortal Christ, the ethical Christ, created within himself an immortal and religious Christ—­he who was caught up into the third heaven and there beheld secret and unspeakable things (2 Cor. xii.).  And this first Christian mystic dreamed also of a final triumph of spirit, of consciousness, and this is what in theology is technically called the apocatastasis or restitution.

In 1 Cor. xv. 26-28 he tells us that “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for he hath put all things under his feet.  But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.  And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all”:  hina he ho theos panta en pasin—­that is to say, that the end is that God, Consciousness, will end by being all in all.

This doctrine is completed by Paul’s teaching, in his Epistle to the Ephesians, with regard to the end of the whole history of the world.  In this Epistle, as you know, he represents Christ—­by whom “were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Col. i. 16)—­as the head over all things (Eph. i. 22), and in him, in this head, we all shall be raised up that we may live in the communion of saints and that we “may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ,