It is not the personal rapture of the spiritual marriage, but rather the "divine fecundity" of one who is a parent of spiritual children; which seems to them the goal of human transcendence, and evidence of a life truly lived on eternal levels, in real union with God.

"In the fourth and last degree of love the soul brings forth its children," says Richard of St.Victor.[53] "The last perfection to supervene upon a thing," says Aquinas, "is its becoming the cause of other things."[54] In a word, it is creative.

And the spiritual life as we see it in history is thus creative; the cause of other things.
History is full of examples of this law: that the man or woman of the spirit is, fundamentally, a life-giver; and all corporate achievement of the life of the spirit flows from some great apostle or initiator, is the fruit of discipleship.

Such corporate achievement is a form of group consciousness, brought into being through the power and attraction of a fully harmonized life, infecting others with its own sharp sense of Divine reality.

Poets and artists thus infect in a measure all those who yield to their influence.