LOVE IS ALL

which résides within the body ; for it is far truer to say that the body résides within the souL

There is a very ancient and widely-used figure — ^the Tree of Life. Of that Tree, Love is the sap. The sap contains the créative principle within itself , and f ashions the tree as its protecting body. It causes stem, J^ranch, twig, leaf, flower, fruit, to appear in due order. The tree-form has discrète and separate parts, but the sap is continuons within. The outward tree is subject to change ; the leaf fades, the branch withers, the fruit f ails to the ground ; to thèse changes the sap is not subject. We remember how Shelley sang,

Fate — ^Time — Occasion — Chance-— and Change, to thèse Ail things are subject — but Etemal Love.

The sap has its own motion, that ceaseless ebb and flow, constriction and expansion, inhalation and exhalation — a rhythmic movement which appears to be the deepest characteristic of Uf e ; but it is immune from seasonal changes, and has inhérent power to create a succession of new forms, as if it were part of an exhaustless energy.

If, in imagination, we attribute consciousness to the tree in ail the parts thereof , there woidd clearly be a différent quality of consciousness in the leaf, or in the branch, from that in the sap. The leaves would be self-consdous in their séparation from eachother, their partial opposition to each other (since one leaf may stand in another's light) ; but no such consciousness

THE TREE OP LIFË I7d

would be possible to the sap, since it is not divided in itself , but is continuons throughout the whole. By virtue of this self-consciousness, a leaf could say, " I am hère, and not there " ; ail that the sap could say would be " I am." " Hère " and " there" hâve no significance for it; we, from an outsider's point of view, may locaUze it now in the great trunk, now in the leaf-tip, but inwardly to itself, pervading the whole as it does, locality has no significance. Because it is everywhere, it is not consdous of being anywhere in particular. The leaf may say, " I was not, and soon I shall not be " ; but ail that the sap can say is " I am." The leaf has no présent ; it cannot catch itself, as it were, suspended on the fleeting moment ; it has only a past and a future. The sap, on the other hand, has neither a f ading past nor a dawning future, but only a présent ; its consciousness is of an enduring Now.

This " I am" -consciousness is the love-consciousness. Love is the I AM. Love is the selfexistent Ufe in man. It is a kind of cosmic egoism. We hâve a hint of this when, in moments of love-rapture, we lose consciousness of locaUty and of boundary. We are not consdous of hère or there ; we just are, It is not vacuity, it is fulness. We are consdous of being ndther hère nor there, not because we are nowhere, but because we are everywhere, and ail the star* peopled spaces are within us. We say that we are out of ourselves ; it would be truer to say