For overhead there is always the strange radiance of the mountains,there is the mystery of the icy river rushing through its pink shoalsthe darkness of the pine-woods, there is always the faint tang of iothe air, and the rush of hoarse-sounding water.And the ice and the upper radiance of snow are brilliant with timelessimmunity from the flux and the warmth of life. Overhead they transcendall life, all the soft, moist fire of the blood. So that a man must needs liveunder the radiance of his own negation.B There is a strange, clear beauty of form about the men of the Bavarianglands, about both men and women. They are large and clear andhandsome in form, with blue eyes very keen, the pupil small, tightened,the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice. Their large, full-moul-ded limbs and erect bodies are distinct, separate, as if they were perfectlychiselled out of the stuff of life, static, cut off. Where they are everythingis set back, as in a clear frosty airTheir beauty is almost this, this strange, clean-cut isolation, as if eachone of them would isolate himself still further and for ever from the restof his fellowsYet they are convivial, they are almost the only race with the souls ofartists. Still they act the mystery plays with instinctive fullness of inter-pretation, they sing strangely in the mountain fields, they love make-belief and mummery, their processions and religious festivals are pro.foundly impressive, solemn, and rapt.It is a race that moves on the poles of mystic sensual delight. Everygesture is a gesture from the blood, every expression is a symbolicFor learning there is sensuous experience, for thought there is mythand drama and dancing and singing. Everything is of the blood, of thesenses. There is no mind. The mind is a suffusion of physical heat, it isnot separated, it is kept submergedAt the same time, always, overhead, there is the eternal, negative radi-ance of the snows. Beneath is life, the hot jet of the blood playing elaborately. But above is the radiance of changeless not-being. And life passesaway into this changeless radiance. Summer and the prolific blue-and-white flowering of the earth goes by, with the labour and the ecstasy ofman,disappears, and is gone into brilliance that hovers overhead, the ra-diant cold which waits to receive back again all that which has passedfor the moment into being

The issue is too much revealed. It leaves the peasant no choice. Thefate gleams transcendent above him, the brightness of eternalunthinkable not-being. And this our life, this admixture of labour and owarm experience in the flesh, all the time it is steaming up to the changeless brilliance above, the light of the everlasting snows. This is the eternallove, or vengeance or cruelty, or whether it is work or sorrow or rellgtofWhether it is singing or dancing or play-acting or physical transpolthe issue is always the same at last, into the radiant negation of eternityHence the beauty and completeness, the finality of the highland peamaitHis figure, his limbs, his face, his motion, it is all formed in beauty, and itis all completed. There is no flux nor hope nor becoming, all is, once andfor all. The issue is eternal, timeless, and changeless. All being and allpassing away is part of the issue, which is eternal and changeless. There-fore there is no becoming and no passing away. Everything is, now andfor ever. Hence the strange beauty and finality and isolation of the Bav-arian peasantIt is plain in the crucifixes. Here is the essence rendered in sculpture ofwood. The face is blank and stiff, almost expressionless. One realizeswith a start how unchanging and conventionalized is the face of the liv.ing man and woman of these parts, handsome, but motionless as pureform. There is also an underlying meanness, secretive, cruel. It is all partof the beauty, the pure, plastic beauty. The body also of the Christus isiffand conventionalized, yet curiously beautiful in proportion, and inthe static tension which makes it unified into one clear thing. There is nomovement, no possible movement. The being is fixed, finally. The wholebody is locked in one knowledge, beautiful, complete. It is one with thenails. Not that it is languishing or dead. It is stubborn, knowing its ownundeniable being, sure of the absolute reality of the sensuous experience.Though he is nailed down upon an irrevocable fate, yet, within that fatehe has the power and the delight of all sensuous experience. So he ac-cepts the fate and the mystic delight of the senses with one will, he ismplete and final. His sensuous experience is supreme, a consumma-tion of life and death at onceIt is the same at all times, whether it is moving with the scythe on thehill-slopes, or hewing the timber, or steering the raft down the riverwhich is all effervescent with ice; whether it is drinking in the Gasthaus,or making love, or playing some mummer's part, or hating steadily andcruelly, or whether it is kneeling in spellbound subjection in the incense-filled church, or walking in the strange, dark, subject-procession to blessthe fields, or cutting the young birch-trees for the feast of Froheneich-nam, it is always the same, the dark, powerful mystic, sensuous experi-chce is the whole of him. he is mindless and bound within the absolutehess of the issue, the unchangeability of the great icy not-being whichholds good for ever, and is supreme