Page Content (OCR)
[p. 171] assimilate. Our general expression: That "everything" in Intermediateness is not a thing, but is an endeavor to become something--by breaking away from its continuity, or merging away, with all other phenomena--is an attempt to break away from the very essence of a relative existence and become absolute--if it have not surrendered to, or become part of, some higher attempt: That to this process there are two aspects: Attraction, or the spirit of everything to assimilate all other things--if it have not given in and subordinated to--or have not been assimilated by--some higher attempted system, unity, organization, entity, harmony, equilibrium And repulsion, or the attempt of everything to exclude or disregard the unassimilable. Universality of the process: Anything conceivable: A tree. It is doing all it can to assimilate substances of the soil and substances of the air, and sunshine, too, into tree-substance: obversely it is rejecting or excluding or disregarding that which it cannot Cow grazing, pig rooting, tiger stalking: planets trying, or acting, to capture comets; rag pickers and the Christian religion, and a cat down headfirst in a garbage can; nations fighting for more territory, sciences correlating the data they can, trust magnates organizing, chorus girl out for a little late supper--all of them stopped somewhere by the unassimilable. Chorus girl and the broiled lobster. If she eats not shell