Isaiah's promise used for the recovery of misspent life. Neville had thought his wasted and violent energy simply gone - 'in all my wanderings I thought it was lost' - and found instead that it had been embodied: every unlovely thought, every violent reaction, had gone to feed and energise a monstrous creature. When the creature melted, nothing had been destroyed; all the energy it embodied returned to him who gave it, and he says he has never felt such power in his life. So the enemies are not lost and not to be fought, they are there to be changed, and what looked like waste is recoverable in full.