Have you never felt
when you have been swept into the interaction of some group of persons
that you were being employed as a part of a figure that without you
would be incomplete? The figure is formed.... For an instant it remains,
gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a
judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played
some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment,
as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet
expressed that same individuality more nobly than any poor assertion of
your own small lonely figure could afford. You have been used and now
you are alone again.... You were caught up and united to your fellowmen.
God appeared to you--not, as you had expected, in a vision cut off from
the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was
only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your
individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified.
And the vision of the figure remains....
When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was
conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some
affair whose uncertainty had worried me.
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