The Creative Synthesis

Say we are presented with several images, that are seemingly unrelated.  There are three methods of engaging them intellectually.  First, we can, without thought, say they are unrelated.  Second, we can pretend that we see relations in them that aren’t actually there.  Third, we can discover a deeper unity that wasn’t initially seen.  This last act is what modernist poets like T.S. Eliot ask us to do in poems like “The Wasteland," where the sections of the poem are seemingly unconnected, but are actually connected in a more obscure way.
 

The common principle serves as the light that shines on the images that it gathers together.  Darkness remains in the unthoughtful, unconnected mind.  The intellect is the principle of the person, which finds principles in things and thereby draws them together.  The intellect is the principle of principles.  It is the metaprinciple.  In mathematics there are functions, and these functions produce numbers.  The spirit is on the face of the deep when we encounter the numbers, and come up with the function.  This is a process of induction.  It is, along with deduction, the process by which we come to understand reality.


There are also received ideas, when one takes another's word for it that one thing is the principle of the other.  There is no spirit in this case, but merely acceptance of the movement of another spirit.  We must all move our spirits, and in doing so become human.  We are all meant to be creative, and to discover meaning ourselves.  We can accept principles from others, but must always try to see the truth of them for ourselves.