If any two creatures grew into one
    They would do more than the world has done,

said Browning in The Flight of the Duchess; and Christ has told us that where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is He in the midst of them.

Heaven, then, so it is believed by many, is society, a more perfect society than that of this world; it is human society fused into a person.  And there are not wanting some who believe that the tendency of all human progress is the conversion of our species into one collective being with real consciousness—­is not perhaps an individual human organism a kind of confederation of cells?—­and that when it shall have acquired full consciousness, all those who have existed will come to life again in it.

Heaven, so many think, is society.  Just as no one can live in isolation, so no one can survive in isolation.  No one can enjoy God in heaven who sees his brother suffering in hell, for the sin and the merit were common to both.  We think with the thoughts of others and we feel with the feelings of others.  To see God when God shall be all in all is to see all things in God and to live in God with all things.

This splendid dream of the final solidarity of mankind is the Pauline anacefaleosis and apocatastasis.  We Christians, said the Apostle (I Cor. xii. 27) are the body of Christ, members of Him, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone (Eph. v. 30), branches of the vine.

But in this final solidarization, in this true and supreme Christination of all creatures, what becomes of each individual consciousness? what becomes of Me, of this poor fragile I, this I that is the slave of time and space, this I which reason tells me is a mere passing accident, but for the saving of which I live and suffer and hope and believe?  Granting that the human finality of the Universe is saved, that consciousness is saved, would I resign myself to make the sacrifice of this poor I, by which and by which alone I know this finality and this consciousness?

And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit of the tragedy, the very heart of it—­the sacrifice of our own individual consciousness upon the altar of the perfected Human Consciousness, of the Divine Consciousness.

But is there really a tragedy?  If we could attain to a clear vision of this anacefaleosis, if we could succeed in understanding and feeling that we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment in surrendering ourselves utterly to Him?  Would the stream that flows into the sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the salt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to return to the cloud which drew its life from the sea? is not its joy to feel itself absorbed?

And yet....

Yes, in spite of everything, this is the climax of the tragedy.