there is the Aphrodite-worship. The flesh, the senses, are now
self-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation.
They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of the
flesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a
phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy.
The mind, all the time, subserves the senses. As in a cat, there is
subtlety and beauty and the dignity of the darkness. But the fire is
cold, as in the eyes of a cat, it is a green fire. It is fluid,
electric. At its maximum it is the white ecstasy of phosphorescence, in
the darkness, always amid the darkness, as under the black fur of a cat.
Like the feline fire, it is destructive, always consuming and reducing
to the ecstasy of sensation, which is the end in itself.
There is the I, always the I. And the mind is submerged, overcome. But
the senses are superbly arrogant. The senses are the absolute, the
god-like. For I can never have another man's senses. These are me, my
senses absolutely me. And all that is can only come to me through my
senses. So that all is me, and is administered unto me. The rest, that
is not me, is nothing, it is something which is nothing. So the Italian,
through centuries, has avoided our Northern purposive industry, because
it has seemed to him a form of nothingness.
It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the supreme manifestation of
the senses made absolute. This is the
Tiger, tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night
of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkness. But the
_essential_ fate, of the tiger is cold and white, a white ecstasy.
It is seen in the white eyes of the blazing cat. This is the supremacy
of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a
magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.
This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the
transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the tiger in the
night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes up
in me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstacy I am
Infinite, I become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One White
Flame which is the Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator,
the Everlasting God. In the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and
devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire, I am infinite.
This is the way of the tiger; the tiger is supreme. His head is
flattened as if there were some great weight on the hard skull,
pressing, pressing, pressing the mind into a stone, pressing it down
under the blood, to serve the blood. It is the subjugate instrument of
the blood. The will lies above the loins, as it were at the base of the
spinal column, there is the living will, the living mind of the tiger,
there in the slender loins. That is the node, there in the spinal cord.
So the Italian, so the soldier. This is the spirit of the soldier. He,
too, walks with his consciousness concentrated at the base of the spine,
his mind subjugated, submerged. The will of the soldier is the will of
the great cats, the will to ecstasy in destruction, in absorbing life
into his own life, always his own life supreme, till the ecstasy burst
into the white, eternal flame, the Infinite, the Flame of the Infinite.
Then he is satisfied, he has been consummated in the Infinite.
This is the true soldier, this is the immortal climax of the senses.
This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger who has devoured all
living flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the cage of its
own infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that which is
nothingness to it.
The eyes of the tiger cannot see, except with the light from within
itself, by the light of its own desire. Its own white, cold light is so
fierce that the other warm light of day is outshone, it is not, it does
not exist. So the white eyes of the tiger gleam to a point of
concentrated vision, upon that which does not exist. Hence its
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