CHAPTER IX

Psychic Values and Introgenesis

A work of art must have the faculty to assimilate: it is a power of assimilation, accumulated and transmitted to “lifeless” nature ~ often only in token, symbolic form.

A work of art utilizes energies that come from the outside - light for the sculpture, muscular energy for music), acts through them, and remains unchanged.

The work of art has acquired the power of psychic assimilation from the creative psyche, and remains unchanged itself.

The concept of the creative artist - that is, his psychic energy - was brought to his work; the work retains this energy, acts upon thousands, evokes an image and a mood within them, transfigures the mental realm of the observer according to the idea of the artist. The artist himself may no longer be alive - or, what is equivalent, live in another world of ideas - but his work, without diminution, is continuously effective. It is really like a miracle in which five thousand had enough bread, yet the baskets are still full.

The law of the preservation of energy is correct only in the imaginarily separate sphere of inorganic nature. The vital processes connote an appreciation or a depreciation (at death) of assimilation value, that is, of the quantity of energy in the world. And concerning this, the introgenic energy of an idea has the possibility through stone, through printer’s ink or whatever else, by means of a one-time addition of mechanical energy, to produce a result that disappears only as slowly as the decomposition of the material in which it is preserved, and meanwhile causes an extremely significant introgenic effect in someone receptive to it.

On observation of this distinctive characteristic of introgenic activity by the vital processes, and even more, of physical activity, as opposite to other forms of energy we are compelled to apply moral value-judgements, and to contend; whatever is lost in introgenic worth by dying, is consequently all the more precious in life; whatever pos-sesses the ability to procreate itself - and thereby parti-cipates in the “immortality of the seed” - is of increasing value to the introgenic wealth of the world.

Yet all this, as said earlier, is overshadowed by comparison with the introgenic ability of those endowed with the talent for spiritual creativity.