The contemplative way of life which we have
been trying to describe includes, on the one hand,
maximum appreciation and awareness of sensuous
experience, and, on the other, the largest practical
achievement and intellectual rigor. These two sides
of life, the appreciative and the efficient, it unifies
in such a way that each promotes the other. It is
a dynamic, creative way of living. We call it con-
templative because we have no other term to des-
ignate it. We would prefer another term if we
had one, because contemplation is so commonly
associated with passivity.

Now this way of life, which is both active and
appreciative, intellectually accurate but at the same
time receptive to the concrete fullness of sense, this
way of life appears most completely in love. In-
deed there is no other form known to man in which
this contemplative life can be developed to such a
high degree. Love yields the most full-orbed life
precisely because it does bring about this unification
of opposites and provides that delicate and difficult
balance which we have been tracing throughout the
foregoing chapters; in love at its best we find on
the one hand that striving for knowledge freed of

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