Neville tells his audience that his creative power is now entirely 'turned up' into his imagination -- an automatic transformation that cannot be induced, quite unlike the deliberate physical renunciation practiced by the early church father Origen, who castrated himself to be able to teach women without confusion. He says that if only he could share his recent visions with them, they would understand what these experiences allow him to create; though outwardly unchanged -- indeed feeling younger and stronger than he has in years -- he insists he is no longer the same being he was.