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He it is who is using the positive, success-bringing types of thought that are continually working for him for the accomplishment of his ends. The things that he sees in the ideal, his strong, positive, and therefore creative type of thought, is continually helping to actualise in the realm of the real.
What religion has to offer is to be expressed not in dogmas, but only in points of view; not in institutions, but in directions for guidance. For this purpose it is not necessary that Egidy's disciples should form themselves into a church, for that even contradicts the spirit of this religion; their master rather tells them "to organise nothing, to actualise nothing."
Not, then, to sit and idly fold the hands, expecting it to actualise itself, but to take hold of the first thing that offers itself to do, that lies sufficiently along the way, to do this faithfully, believing, knowing, that it is but the step that will lead to the next best thing, and this to the next; this is the second and the completing stage of all accomplishment.
It is your business to actualise within the world of time and space perhaps by great endeavours in the field of heroic action, perhaps only by small ones in field and market, tram and tube, office and drawing-room, in the perpetual give-and-take of the common life that more real life, that holy creative energy, which this world manifests as a whole but indifferently.
To make the best of whatever present conditions are, to form and clearly to see one's ideal, though it may seem far distant and almost impossible, to believe in it, and to believe in one's ability to actualise it this is the first essential.
We speak of our Christian civilisation, and the common man, especially in times like these, asks what it is, where it is and God knows that we have been for many hundred years wandering in the wilderness. He is thinking that the Kingdom of God on earth that the true teachings of Jesus predicated, and that he laboured so hard to actualise, needs some speeding up.
Remember the proverb, 'The way to ruin is paved with good intentions. The proposal to actualise humanity in itself, to become wholly human, is of just the same disastrous character, and to it belong the intentions of becoming good, noble, loving, and so forth."
This summons to life to go on, and these conditions imposed upon it, might then very plausibly be attributed to a Deity existing beyond the world, as is done in religious tradition; and such a doctrine, if M. Bergson should happen to be holding it in reserve, would perhaps help to explain some obscurities in his system, such, for instance, as the power of potentiality to actualise itself, of equipoise to become suddenly emphasis on one particular part, and of spirit to pursue an end chosen before it is conceived, and when there is no nature to predetermine it.
Alas! that our lives should be lived so much at random instead of being so fashioned that it might be said over the completed structure at the last, "Whose architect and craftsman is God." The Christian is called upon by his Master to live out and actualise God's ideal thought concerning him.
In artistic experience, then, in the artist's perennial effort to actualise the ideal which Keats expressed, we may find a point of departure for our exploration of the contemplative life.
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