ENTERING INTO THE SPIRIT
OF IT.
We all know the meaning of this phrase in our everyday life. The Spirit
is that which gives life and movement to anything, in fact it is that which
causes it to exist at all. The thought of the author, the impression of the
painter, the feeling of the musician, is that without which their works
could never have come into being, and so it is only as we enter into the
IDEA which gives rise to the work, that we can derive all the enjoyment
and benefit from it which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter into the
Spirit of it, the book, the picture, the music, are meaningless to us: to
appreciate them we must share the mental attitude of their creator. This is
a universal principle; if we do not enter into the Spirit of a thing, it is dead
so far as we are concerned; but if we do enter into it we reproduce in
ourselves the same quality of life which called that thing into existence.
Now if this is a general principle, why can we not carry it to a higher
range of things? Why not to the highest point of all? May we not enter into
the originating Spirit of Life itself, and so reproduce it in ourselves as a
perennial spring of livingness? This, surely, is a question worthy of our
careful consideration.