But meanwhile, whatever happens, as long as we live we possess the reality of the soul. This is, and always has been, the rallying-ground of heroic and sensitive personalities, struggling with the demons of circumstance and chance. This is that unconquerable "mind-within-themselves" into which the great Stoics of Antiquity withdrew at their will, and were "happy," beyond the reach of hope and fear. This is the citadel from the security of which all the martyrs for human liberty have mocked their tormentors. This is the fortress from which the supreme artists of the world have looked forth and moulded the outrage of life's dilemma into monumental forms of imaginative beauty. This is the sanctuary from which all human personalities, however weak and helpless, have been permitted to endure the cruelty and pitilessness of fate.

After all, it does not so greatly matter that we are unable to do more than know that this thing, this indescribable "something," really exists. Perhaps it is because its existence is more real than anything else that we are unable to define it. Perhaps we can only define those attributes which are the outward aspects of our real being. Perhaps it is simply because the soul is nothing less than our very self, that our analytical power stops, helpless, in its presence. We are what it is; and for this very cause it perpetually evades and escapes us.

The reality of the soul, therefore, is the first revelation of the complex vision. The second revelation is the objective reality of the outward visible universe. Left to itself, in its isolated activity, our logical reason is capable of throwing doubt upon this revelation also. For it is logically certain that what we are actually conscious of is no more than a unified stream of various mental impressions, reaching us through our senses, and never interrupted except in moments of unconscious sleep.

It is therefore quite easy for the logical reason, functioning in its isolation from the other attributes, to maintain that this stream of mental impressions is all that there is, and that we have no right to call the universe real and objective, except in the ambiguous sense of a sort of permanent illusion. But as soon as the complex vision, in its totality, contemplates the situation, the thing takes on a very different aspect. The pure reason may be as sceptical as it pleases about the static solidity of what is popularly called "matter." It may use the term energy, or movement, or ether, or force, or electricity, or any other name to describe that permanent sensation of outward reality which our complex vision reveals.

But one thing it has no right to do. It has no right to utter the word "illusion" with regard to this objective universe. The apparent solidity of matter may be rationally resolved into energy or movement, just as the apparent objectivity of matter may be rationally resolved into a stream of mental impression. But the complex vision still persists in asserting that this permanent sensation of outward reality, which, except in dreamless sleep, is never normally interrupted, represents and bears witness to the real existence, outside ourselves, of "something" which corresponds to such a sensation. It is just at this point that the soul—helped by instinct, imagination, and intuition—makes its great inevitable plunge into the act of primordial faith.

This act of primordial faith is the active belief of the soul not only in an objective universe outside itself, but also in the objective existence of other individual souls. Without this primordial act of faith the individual soul can never escape from itself. For the pure reason not only reduces the whole universe to an idea in the mind; but it also reduces all other minds to ideas in our mind. In other words the logical reason imprisons us fatally and hopelessly in a sort of cosmic nut-shell of our own mentality.

And there would, actually, be no escape from this appalling imprisonment, according to which the individual soul becomes a solitary circle, the centre and circumference of all possible existence, if it were not that the soul possesses other organs of research, in addition to reason and self-consciousness. Directly we temper reason with these other activities the whole situation has a different look. It is a thing of small consequence what word we use to describe that external cause of the flowing stream of mental impressions. The important point is that we are compelled to assume, as representing a real outward fact, this permanent sense of objectivity from which there is no escape.

And as the existence of the objective universe is established by a primordial act of faith, so it is also established that these alien bodily personalities, whose outward appearance stands and falls with the objective universe, possess "souls," or what we have come to name "complex visions," comparable with our own. And this is the case not only with regard to other human beings, but with regard to all living entities whether human or non-human. As to how the "souls" of plants, birds, and animals, or of planets or stars, differ in their nature from human souls we can only vaguely conjecture. But to refuse some degree of consciousness, some measure of the complex vision, to any living thing, is to be false to that primordial act of faith into which the original revelation of the complex vision compels us to plunge.

The inevitableness of this act of faith may be perhaps more vividly realized when we remember that it includes in its revelation the objective reality of our own physical body. Our evidence for the real outward existence of our own body is no surer and no more secure than our evidence for the outward existence of other "bodies."

They stand or fall together. If the universe is an illusion then our own physical body is an illusion also.

And precisely as the "stuff" out of which the universe is made may be named "energy" or "ether" or "force" or "electricity," rather than "matter," so also the "stuff" out of which the body is made may be named by any scientific term we please. The term used is of no importance as long as the thing represented by it is accepted as a permanent reality.

We are now able to advance a step further in regard to the revelation of the complex vision. Granting, as we are compelled to grant, that the other "souls" in the universe possess, each of them, its own "vision" of this same universe; and assuming that each "vision" is so coloured by the individuality of the "visionary" as to be, in a measure, different from all the rest, it becomes obvious that in a very important sense there is not only one universe, but many universes. These many universes, however, are "caused," or evoked, or created, or discovered, by the encounter of various individual souls with that one "objective mystery" which confronts them all.

What a naive confession it is of the limitation of the human mind that we should be driven, after all our struggles to articulate the secret of life, to accept, as our final estimate of such a secret just the mysterious "something" which is the substratum of our own soul, confronted by that other mysterious "something" which is the substratum of all possible universes! With the complex vision's revelation that the objective universe really exists comes the parallel revelation that time and space really exist. Here, for the third time, are we faced with critical protests from the isolated activity of the logical reason.

Metaphysic reduces both time and space to categories of the mind. Mathematical speculation hints at the existence of some mysterious fourth-dimensional space. Bergsonian dialectic regards ordinary "spatial" time as an inferior category; and finds the real movement of life in a species of time called "duration," which can only be detected by the interior feeling of intuition.

But while we listen with interest to all these curious speculations, the fact remains that for the general vision of the combined energies of the soul the world in which we find ourselves is a world entirely dependent upon what must be recognized as a permanent sensation of "ordinary" space and "ordinary" time. And as we have shown in the case of the objective existence of what we call Nature, when any mental impression reaches the level of becoming a permanent sensation of all living souls it ceases to be possible to speak of it as an illusion.

It is well that we should become clearly conscious of this "reality-destroying" tendency of the logical reason, so that whenever it obsesses us we can undermine its limited vision by an appeal to the complex vision. Shrewdly must we be on our guard against this double-edged trick of logic, which on the one hand seeks to destroy the basis of its own activity, by disintegrating the unity of the soul, and on the other hand seeks to destroy the material of its own activity by disintegrating the unity of the "objective mystery."

The original revelation of the complex vision not only puts us on our guard against this disintegrating tendency of the pure reason, but it also explains the motive-force behind this tendency. This motive-force is the emotion of malice, which naturally and inevitably seeks to hand us over to the menace of nothingness; in the first place of nothingness "within" us, and in the second place of nothingness "without" us. That the logic of the pure reason quickly becomes the slave of the emotion of malice may be proved by both introspection and observation. For we note, both in ourselves and others, a peculiar glow of malicious satisfaction when such logic strikes its deadliest blows at what it would persuade us to regard as the illusion of life.

Life, just because its deepest secret is not law, determined by fate, but personality struggling against fate, is always found to display a certain irrationality. And the complex vision becomes false to itself as soon as it loses touch with this world-deep irrationality.

We have now therefore reached the conception of reality as consisting of the individual soul confronted by the objective mystery. That this objective mystery would be practically the same as nothing, if there were no soul to apprehend it, must be admitted. But it would not be really the same as nothing; since as soon as any kind of soul reappeared upon the scene the inevitable material of the objective mystery would at once re-appear with it. The existence of the objective mystery as a permanent possibility of material for universe-building is a fact which surrounds every individual soul with a margin of unfathomable depth.

At its great illuminated moments the complex vision reduces the limitlessness of space to a realizable sensation of liberty, and the "flowingness" of time to an eternal now; but even at these moments it is conscious of an unfathomable background, one aspect of which is the immensity of space and the other the flowingness of time.

The revelation of the complex vision which I have thus attempted to indicate will be found identical with the natural conclusions of man in all the ages of his history. The primeval savage, the ancient Greek, the mediaeval saint, the eighteenth century philosopher, the modern psychologist, are all brought together here and are all compelled to confess the same situation.

That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body, and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as living gods exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving earth. In this view of the sun and the moon and the stars such a savage was perfectly within his right, because always along with it even to the most anthropomorphic, there came the vague sense of unfathomableness.

The natural Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the unfathomableness of the ultimate mystery.

But the revelation of the complex vision saves us from the logical boredom of the word "infinite." The idea of the infinite is merely a tedious mathematical formula, marking the psychological point where the mind finds its stopping-place. All that the complex vision can say about "infinite space" is that it is a real experience, and that we can neither imagine space with an end nor without an end.

The "Infinite" is the name which logic gives to this psychological phenomenon. The fact that the mind stops abruptly and breaks into irreconcilable contradictions when it is confronted with unfathomable space is simply a proof that space without an end is as unimaginable as space with an end. It is no proof that space is merely a subjective category of the human mind. One, thing, however, it is a proof of. It is a proof that the universe can never be satisfactorily explained on any materialistic hypothesis.

The fact that we all of us, at every hour of our common day, are surrounded by this unthinkable thing, space without end, is an eternal reminder that the forms, shapes and events of habitual occurrence, which we are inclined to take so easily for granted, are part of a staggering and inscrutable enigma.

The reality of this thing, actually there, above our heads and under our feet, lodges itself, like an ice cold wedge of annihilating scepticism, right in the heart of any facile explanation. We cannot interpret the world in terms of what we call "matter" when what we call "matter" has these unthinkable horizons. We may take into our hands a pebble or a shell or a grain of sand; and we may feel as though the universe were within our grasp. But when we remember that this little piece of the earth is part of a continuous unity which recedes in every direction, world without end, we are driven to admit that the universe is so little within our grasp that we have to regard it as something which breaks and baffles the mind as soon as the mind tries to take hold of it at all.

The reason does not advance one inch in explaining the universe when it utters the word "evolution" and it does not advance one thousandth part of an inch—indeed it gives up the task altogether— when it informs us that infinite space is a category of the human mind. We must regard it, then, as part of the original revelation of the complex vision, that we are separate personal souls surrounded by an unfathomable mystery whose margins recede into unthinkable remoteness.

The ancient dilemma of the One and the Many obtrudes itself at this point; and we are compelled to ask how the plurality of these separate souls can be reconciled with the unity of which they form a part. That they cannot be regarded as absolutely separate is clear from the fact that they can communicate with one another, not only in human language but in a thousand more direct ways. But granting this communication between them, does the mere existence of myriads of independent personalities, living side by side in a world common to all, justify us in speaking of the original system of things as being pluralistic rather than monistic?

Human language, at any rate, founded on the fact that these separate souls can communicate with one another, seems very reluctant to use any but monistic terms. We say "the system of things," not "the systems of things." And yet it is only by an act of faith that human language makes the grand assumption that the complex vision of all these myriad entities tells the same story.

We say "the universe"; yet may it not be that there are as many "universes" as there are conscious personalities in this unfathomable world? If there were no closer unity between the separate souls which fill the universe than the fact that they are able, after one primordial act of faith, to communicate with one another, these monistic assumptions of language might perhaps be disregarded and we might have a right to reject such expressions as "system of things" and "cosmos" and "universe" and "nature."

But it still remains that they are connected, in space and in time, by the medium, whatever it may be, which fills the gulfs between the planets and the stars. As long as these separate souls are invariably associated as they are, with physical bodies, and as long as these physical bodies are composed of the same mysterious force which we may call earth, fire, water, air, ether, electricity, energy, vibration, or any other technical or popular name, so long will it be legitimate to use these monistic expressions with which human language is, so to speak, so deeply stained. As a matter of fact we are not left with only this limited measure of unity. There are also certain psychological experiences—experiences which I believe I have a right to regard as universal—which bring these separate souls into much closer connection.

Such experiences can be, and have been, ridiculously exaggerated. But the undeniable fact that they exist is sufficient to prove that in spite of the pluralistic appearance of things, there is still enough unity available to prevent the Many from completely devouring the One. The experiences to which I am referring are experiences which the complex vision owes to the intuition. And though this experience has been made unfair use of, by both mystics and metaphysicians, it cannot be calmly disregarded.

The intuition, which is, as I have already pointed out, the feminine counterpart to the imagination, is found, with regard to this particular problem, uttering so frequent and impressive an oracle that to neglect its voice, would be to nullify and negate the whole activity of the intuition and deny it its place among the ultimate energies of vision.

There is always more difficulty in putting into words a revelation which the complex vision owes to intuition than in regard to any other of its attributes. Reason in his matter, and sensation and imagination also, have an unfair advantage when it comes to words. For human language is compelled to draw its images from sensation and its logic from reason. But intuition—the peculiarly feminine attribute of the soul—finds itself dealing with what is barely intelligible and with what is profoundly irrational. Thus it naturally experiences a profound difficulty in getting itself expressed in words at all.

And, incidentally, we cannot avoid asking ourselves the curious question whether it may not be that language, which is so dependent upon the peculiarly masculine attributes of reason and sensation, has not become an inadequate medium for the expression of what might be called the feminine vision of the world? May we not indeed go so far as to hazard the suggestion that when this fact, of the masculine domination of language, has been adequately recognized, there will emerge upon the earth women-philosophers and women-artists who will throw completely new light upon many problems? The difficulty which women experience in getting expressed in definite terms, whether in philosophy or art, the co-ordinated rhythm of their complex vision, may it not be largely due to the fact that the attribute of intuition which is their most vital organ of research has remained so inarticulate? And may not the present wave of psychological "mysticism," which just now is so prominent a psychic phenomenon, be due to the vague and, in many cases, the clumsy attempt, which women are now making to get their intuitive contribution into line with the complex vision of the rest?

When the universe is referred to as "Nature," may it not be that it is this very element, this strange wisdom of the abysmal "Mothers," which humanity thinks of as struggling to utter its unutterable secret?

How, then, for the sake of its contribution to the ultimate rhythm, does the complex vision articulate this mysterious oracle from the feminine principle in life, as it brokenly and intermittently lifts up its voice?

One aspect of this oracle's voice is precisely what we are concerned with now. I mean the problem of the relation of the One to the Many. The merely logical conception of unity is misleading because the wavering mass of impression which makes up our life has a margin which recedes on every side into unfathomableness. This conception has two aspects. In the first place it implies continuity, by which I mean that everything in the world is in touch with everything else.

In the second place it implies totality, by which I mean that everything in the world can be considered as one rounded-off and complete "whole." According to this second aspect of the case, we think of the world as an integral One surrounded by nothingness, in the same way that the individual soul is surrounded by the universe.

The revelation of the complex vision finds the second of these two aspects entirely misleading. It accepts the conception of continuity, and rejects the conception of totality. It rejects the conception of "totality," because "totality," in this cosmic sense, is a thing of which it has no experience; and the revelation of the complex vision is entirely based on experience. The margins of the world, receding without limit in every direction, prevent us from ever arriving at the conception of "totality."

What right have we to regard the universe as a totality, when all we are conscious of is a mass of wavering impression continued unfathomable in every direction? In only one sense, therefore, have we a right to speak of the unity of the system of things; and that is in the sense of continuity. Since this mass of impression, which we name the universe, is on all sides lost in a margin of unfathomableness, it is, after all, only a limited portion of it which comes into the scope of our consciousness. It is one of the curious exaggerations of our logical reason that we should be tempted to "round off" this mystery. The combined voices of imagination and intuition protest against such an enclosed circle.

The same revelation of the complex vision which gives objective reality to what is outside our individual soul insists that this objective reality extends beyond the limited circle of our consciousness. The device by which the logical reason "rounds off" the conception of continuity by the conception of totality is the device of the mathematical formula of "infinity."

The imaginative movement by which the complex vision of the soul plunges into the abysses of stellar space, seeking to fathom, at least in a mental act, immensity beyond immensity, and gulf beyond gulf, is a definite human experience. It is the actual experience of the soul itself, dropping its plummet into immensity, and finding immensity unfathomable. But as soon as the logical reason dominates the situation, in place of this palpable plunge into a real concrete experience, with its accompanying sensation of appalling wonder and terrible freedom, we are offered nothing but a thin, dry, barren mathematical formula called "infinity," the mere mention of which freezes the imagination at its source.

What, in fact, the complex vision reveals to us is that all these arid formulae, such as infinity, the Absolute Being, and the Universal Cause, are conceptions projected into the real and palpable bosom of unfathomable life by the very enemy and antagonist of life, the aboriginal emotion of inert malice. This is why so often in the history of the human race the conception of "God" has been the worst enemy of the soul. The conception of "God" by its alliance with the depressing mathematical formula of "infinity" has indeed done more than any other human perversion to obliterate the beauty and truth of the emotional feeling which we name "religion."

The revelation of the complex vision makes it clear to us that the idea of "God," in alliance with the idea of "Infinity," is a projection, into religious experience, of the emotion of inert malice. As soon as the palpable unfathomableness of space is reduced to the barren notion of a mathematical "infinity" all the free and terrible beauty of life is lost. We have pressed our hands against our prison-gates and found them composed of a material more rigid than adamant, the material of "thought-in-the-abstract."

Now although our chief difficulty in regard to this insistent problem of the One and the Many has been got rid of by eliminating from the notion of the One all idea of totality, it is still true that something in us remains unsatisfied while our individual soul is thought of as absolutely isolated from all other souls. It is here, as I have already said, that the peculiarly feminine attribute of intuition comes to our rescue. The fact that we can communicate together by human and sub-human language, does not, though it implies a basic similarity in our complex vision, really satisfy us.

A strange unhappiness, a vague misery, a burden of unutterable nostalgia, troubles the loneliness of our soul. And yet it is not, this vague longing, a mere desire to break the isolating circle of the "I am I" and to invade, and mingle with, other personalities. It is something deeper than this, it is a desire to break the isolation of all personalities, and to enter, in company with all, some larger, fuller, freer level of life, where what we call "the limits of personality" are surpassed and transcended.

This underlying misery of the soul is, in fact, a constant recognition that by the isolated loneliness of our deepest self we are keeping at a distance something—some unutterable flow of happiness—which would destroy for us all fears and all weariness, and would end for ever the obscene and sickening burden of the commonplace. It is precisely at this point that the intuition comes to the rescue; supplying our complex vision with that peculiar "note," or "strain of music," without which the orchestral harmony must remain incomplete.

In seeking to recall those great moments when the "apex-thought" of the complex vision revealed to us the secret of things, we find ourselves remembering how, when in the presence of some supreme work of art, or of some action of heroic sacrifice, or of some magical effect of nature, or of some heart-breaking gesture of tragic emotion in some simple character, we have suddenly been transported out of the closed circle of our personal life into something that was at once personal and impersonal. At such a moment it seems as if we literally "died" to ourself, and became something "other" than ourself; and yet at the same time "found" ourself, as we had never "found" ourself before.

What the complex vision seems to reveal to us about this great human experience is that it is an initiation into an "eternal vision," into a "vision of the immortals," into a mood, a temper, a "music of the spheres," wherein the creative mystery of the emotion of love finds its consummation. The peculiar opportunity of an experience of this kind, its temporal "occasion," shall we say, seems to be more often supplied by the intuition, than by any other attribute of the complex vision.

Intuition having this power, it is not surprising that many souls should misuse and abuse this great gift. The temptation to allow the intuition to absorb the whole field of consciousness is to certain natures almost irresistible. And yet, when intuition is divorced from the other aspects of the rhythm of life, its tendency towards what might be called "the passion of identity" very easily lapses into a sort of spiritual sensuality, destructive to the creative freedom of the soul. Woe to the artist who falls into the quagmire of unbalanced intuition! It is as if he were drugged with a spiritual lust.

To escape from self-loathing, to escape from the odious monotony and the indecent realism of life—what a relief! How desirable to be confronted no longer by that impassable gulf between one's own soul and all other living souls! How desirable to cross the abyss which separates the "something" which is the substance of our being from the "something" which is the substance of the "objective mystery"!

And yet, according to the revelation of the complex vision, this "spiritual ecstasy" is a perversion of the true art of life. The true art of life finds in "the vision of the immortals," and in "the vision of the immortals" alone, its real escape from evil. This "passion of identity," offered us by the vice, by the madness of intuition, is not in harmony with the great moments of the soul. Its "identity" is but a gross, mystical, clotted "identity"; and its "heaven" is not the "heaven" of the Christ.

If the "ecstasy of identity," as the unbalanced attribute of intuition forces it upon us, were in very truth the purpose of life, how grotesque a thing life would be! It would then be the purpose of life to create personality, only in order to drown it in the impersonal. In other words it would be the purpose of life to create the "higher" in order that it should lose itself in the lower. At its very best this "ecstasy of identity" is the expression of what might be called the "lyrical" element in things. But the secret of life is not lyrical, as many of the prophets have supposed, but dramatic, as all the great artists have shown. For the essence of life is contradiction. And contradiction demands a "for" and an "against," a protagonist and an antagonist. What the revelation of the complex vision discloses is the inherent duality of all things. Pleasure and pain, night and day, man and woman, good and evil, summer and winter, life and death, personality and fate, love and malice, the soul and the objective mystery, these are the threads out of which the texture of existence is woven; and there is no escape from these, except in that eternal "nothingness" which itself is the "contradiction" or "opposite" of that "all," which it reduces to chaos and annihilation. Thus runs the revelation of the complex vision.

This integral soul of ours, made of a stuff which for ever defies analysis; this objective mystery, made of a stuff which for ever defies analysis; these two things perpetually confront one another in a struggle that only annihilation can end. The vision of the eternal implies the passing of the transitory. For what cannot cease from being beautiful has no real beauty; and what cannot cease from being true has no real truth. The art of life according to the revelation of the complex vision, consists in giving to the transitory the form of the eternal. It is the art of creating a rhythm, a music, a harmony, so passionate and yet so calm, that the mere fact of having once or twice attained it is sufficient "to redeem all sorrows."

The assumption that death ends it all, is an assumption which the very nature of love calls upon us to make; for, if we did not make it make it, something different from love would be the object and purpose of our life. But the revelation of the complex vision, in our supreme moments, discloses to us that love itself is the only justification for life; and therefore, by making the assumption that the soul perishes, we put once and for all out of our thought that formidable revival of love, the idea of personal immortality.

For the idea of personal immortality, like the idea of an Absolute God, is a projection of the aboriginal "inert" malice. It must be remembered that the revelation of the complex vision, by laying stress upon the creative energy of the soul in its grappling with the objective mystery, implies an element of indeterminism, or free choice, in regard to the ultimate nature of the world. Man, in a very profound sense, perpetually creates the world according to his will and desire. Nor can he ever know at what point, in the struggle between personality and destiny, the latter is bound to win. Such a point may seem to be reached; until some astounding "act of faith" on the part of the soul flings that "point" into a yet further remoteness. And this creative power in the soul of man may apply in ways which at present our own race has hardly dared to contemplate. It may apply, for instance, to the idea of personal immortality.

Personal immortality may be a thing which the soul, by a concentrated act of creative will, can secure for itself, or can reject for itself. It may be, if we take the whole conscious and subconscious purpose of a man's life, a matter of choice.

But when a man makes a choice of such a kind, when a man concentrates his energy upon surviving the death of his body, he is deliberately selecting a "lower" purpose for his life in place of a "higher." In other words, instead of concentrating his will upon the evocation of the emotion of love, he is concentrating his will upon self-realization or self-continuance. What he is really doing is even worse than this. For since what we call "emotion" is an actual projection into the matrix of the objective mystery, of the very substance and stuff of the soul, when the will thus concentrates upon personal immortality, it takes the very substance of the soul and perverts it to the satisfaction of inert malice. In other words it actually transforms the stuff of the soul from its positive to its negative chemistry, and produces a relative victory of malice over love.

The soul's desires for personal immortality is one of the aspects of the soul's "possessive" instinct. The soul desires to "possess" itself—itself as it exactly is, itself in its precise and complete "status quo"—without interruption for ever. But love has a very different desire from this. Love is not concerned with time at all— for time has a "future"; and any contemplation of a "future" implies the activity of something in the soul which is different from love, implies something which is concerned with outward events and occurrences and chances. But love is not concerned with outward events, whether past or future. Love desires eternity and eternity alone. Or rather it does not "desire" eternity. It is eternity. It is an eternal Now, in which what will happen and what has happened are irrelevant and unimportant.

All this offers us an intelligible explanation of a very bewildering phenomenon in human life. I mean the instinctive disgust experienced by the aesthetic sense when men, who otherwise seem gentle and good, display an undue and unmeasured agitation about the fate of their souls.

Love never so much as even considers the question of the fate of the soul. Love finds, in the mere act of loving, a happiness so profound that all such problems seem tiresome and insignificant. The purpose of life is to attain the rhythmic ecstasy of all love's intrinsic potentialities. This desire for personal immortality is not one of love's intrinsic potentialities. When a human soul has lost by death the one person it has loved, the strength of its love is measured by the greater or less emphasis it places upon the problem of the lost one's "survival."

The disgust which the aesthetic sense experiences when it encounters a certain sort of mystical and psychic agitation over the question as to whether the lost one "lives still somewhere" is a disgust based upon our instinctive knowledge that this particular kind of inquiry would never occur to a supreme and self-forgetful love. For this enquiry, this agitation, this dabbling in "psychic evidences," is a projection of the baser nature of the soul; is, in fact, a projection of the "possessive instinct," which is only another name for the original inert malice.

In the "ave atque vale" of the Roman poet, there is much more of the absolute quality of great love than in all these psychic dabblings. For in the austere reserve of that passionate cry there is the ultimate acceptance, by Love itself, of the tragedy of having lived and loved at all. There is an acceptance of that aspect of the "vision of the immortals" which implies that the possessive instinct has no part or lot in the eternal.

The inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of "saving" other people's souls, and the inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise "good" men under the motive of saving their own souls, have, each of them, the same evil origin. Love sweeps aside, in one great wave of its own nature, all these doubts and ambiguities. It lifts the object of its love into its own eternity; and in its own eternity the ultimate tragedy of personal separation is but one chord of its unbroken rhythm.

The tragedy of personal separation is not a thing which love realizes for the first time when it loses the object of its love. It is a thing which is of the very nature of the eternity in which love habitually dwells. For the eternity in which love habitually dwells is its vision of the tragedy of all life.

This, then, is the original revelation of the complex vision. The soul is confronted by an ultimate duality which extends through the whole mass of its impressions. And because this duality extends through every aspect of the soul's universe and can be changed and transformed by the soul's will, it is inevitable that what the world has hitherto named "philosophy" and has regarded as the effort of "getting hold" of a reality which exists already, should be named by the complex vision the "art of life" and should be regarded as the effort of reducing to harmony the unruly impulses and energies which perpetually transform and change the world.

CHAPTER V.

THE ULTIMATE DUALITY

What we are really, all of us, in search of, whether we know it or not, is some concrete and definite symbol of life and the "object" of life which shall gather up into one living image all the broken, thwarted, devious, and discordant impressions which make up our experience. What we crave is something that shall, in some permanent form and yet in a form that can grow and enrich itself, represent and embody the whole circle of the joy and pain of existence. What we crave is something into which we can throw our personal joys and sorrows, our individual sensations and ideas, and know of a certainty that thrown into that reservoir, they will blend with all the joys and sorrows of all the dead and all the living.

Such a symbol in order to give us what we need must represent the ultimate reach of insight to which humanity has attained. It must be something that, once having come into existence, remains independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing moods. It must be something of clearer outlines and more definite lineaments than those vague indistinct ecstasies, half-physiological and half-psychic, which the isolated intuition brings us.

Such a symbol must represent the concentrated struggle of the human soul with the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of fate, its long struggle with the deadly malice in itself and the deadly malice in nature.

There is only one symbol which serves this purpose; a symbol which has already by the slow process of anonymous creation and discovery established itself in the world. I mean the symbol of the figure of Christ.

This symbol would not have sufficed to satisfy the craving of which I speak if it were only a "discovery" of humanity. The "God-man" may be "discovered" in nature; but the "Man-god" must be "created" by man.

We find ourselves approaching this symbol from many points of view, but the point of view which especially concerns us is to note how it covers the whole field of human experience. In this symbol the ultimate duality receives its "eternal form" and becomes an everlasting standard or pattern of what is most natural and most rhythmic. As I advance in my analysis of the relation of the ultimate duality to this symbolic figure of Christ, it becomes necessary to review once more, in clear and concise order, the various stages of thought by means of which I prove the necessity of some sort of universal symbol, and the necessity of moulding this symbol to fit the drama of One ultimate duality.

A summary of the stages of thought through which we have already passed will thus be inevitable; but it will be a summary of the situation from the view-point of a different angle.

Philosophy then is an attempt to articulate more vividly the nature of reality than such "reality" can get itself articulated in the confused pell-mell of ordinary experience. The unfortunate thing is that in this process of articulating reality philosophy tends to create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far away from reality that its conclusions when they are confronted with the pell-mell of ordinary experience appear remote, strange, fantastic, arbitrary, and even laughable.

This philosophical tendency to create an artificial world which when confronted with the real world appears strange and remote is due to the fact that philosophers, instead of using as their instrument of research the entire complex vision, use first one and then another of its isolated attributes. But there must come moments when, in the analysis of so intricate and elaborate a thing as "reality" by means of so intricate and elaborate an instrument, as the complex vision, the most genuine and the least artificial of philosophies must appear to be following a devious and serpentine path.

These moments of difficulty and obscurity are not, however—as long as such a philosophy attaches itself closely to "reality" and flows round "reality" like a tide flowing round submerged rocks or liquid metal flowing round the cavities of a mould—a sign that philosophy has deserted reality, but only a sign that the curves and contours and jagged edges of reality are so intricate and involved that only a very fluid element can follow their complicated shape. But these moments of difficulty and obscurity, these vague and impalpable links in the chain, are only to be found in the process by which we arrive at our conclusion. When our conclusion has been once reached it becomes suddenly manifest to us that it has been there, with us, all the while, implicit in our whole argument, the secret and hidden cause why the argument took the form it did rather than any other. The test of any philosophy is not that it should appeal immediately and directly to what is called "common-sense," for common-sense is no better than a crude and premature synthesis of superficial experiences; a synthesis from which the supreme and culminating experiences of a person's life have been excluded. For in our supreme and culminating experiences there is always an element of what might be called the "impossible" or of what must be recognized as a matter of faith or imagination. It is therefore quite to be expected that the conclusions of a philosophy like the philosophy of the complex vision, which derives its authority from the exceptional and supreme experiences of all souls, should strike us in our moments of "practical common-sense" as foolish, impossible, ridiculous and even insane. All desperate and formidable efforts towards creation have struck and will strike the mood of "practical common-sense" as ridiculous and insane. This is true of every creative idea that has ever emanated from the soul of man.

For the mood of "practical common-sense" is a projection of the baser instinct of self-preservation and is penetrated through and through with that power of inert malice which itself might be called the instinct of self-preservation of the enemy of life. "Practical common-sense" is the name we give to that superficial synthesis of our baser self-preservative instincts, which, when it is reinforced and inspired by "the will of malice" out of the evil depths of the soul, is the most deadly of all antagonists of new life.

We need suffer, therefore, no surprise or pain if we find the conclusions of the philosophy of the complex vision ridiculous and "impossible" to our mood of practical common-sense. If on the contrary they did not seem insane and foolish to such a mood we might well be profoundly suspicious of them. For although there are very few certainties in this world, one thing at least is certain, namely that for any truth or reality to satisfy the creative spirit in us it must present itself as something dangerous, destructive, ridiculous and insane to that instinct in us which resists creation.

But although "the appeal to common-sense" is no test of the truth of a philosophy, since common-sense is precisely the thing in us which has a malicious hostility to the creative spirit, yet no philosophy can afford to disregard an appeal to actual experience as long as actual experience includes the rare moments of our life as well as all the rest. Here is indeed a true and authentic test of philosophic validity. If we take our philosophical conclusions, so to speak, in our hands, and plunge with them into the very depths of actual experience, do they grow more organic, more palpable and more firm, or do they melt away into the flowing waters?

Who is not able to recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some "iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable and unfathomable, something that can destroy as well as create, it is not of much avail against the winds and storms of destiny.

For a philosophy to be a true representation of reality, for it to be that reality itself, become conscious and articulate, it is necessary that it should prove most vivid and actual at those supreme moments when the soul of man is driven to the ultimate wall and is at the breaking-point.

The truth of a philosophy is not to be tested by what we feel about it in moods of practical common-sense; for in these moods we have, for some superficial reason, suppressed more than half of the attributes of our soul. The truth of a philosophy can only be tested in those moments when the soul, driven to the wall, gathers itself together for one supreme effort. But there is, even in less stark and drastic hours, an available test of a sound and organic philosophy which must not be forgotten. I refer to its capacity for being vividly and emphatically summed up and embodied in some concrete image or symbol.

If a philosophy is so rationalistic that it refuses to lend itself to a definite and concrete expression we are justified in being more than suspicious of it.

And we are suspicious of it not because its lack of simplicity makes it intricate and elaborate, for "reality" is intricate and elaborate; but because its inability to find expression for its intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple. For the remote conclusions of a purely logical and rationalistic philosophy are made to appear much less simple than they really are by reason of their use of remote technical terms.

What the soul demands from philosophy is not simplicity but complexity, for the soul itself is the most complex thing we know. The thin, rigid, artificial outlines of purely rationalistic systems can never be expressed in ritual or symbol or drama, not because they are too intricate, but because they are not intricate enough.

A genuine symbol, or ritualistic image, is a concrete living organic thing carrying all manner of magical and subtle associations. It is an expression of reality which comes much nearer to reality than any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life. It has the creative and destructive power of life. It has the formidable mysteriousness of life, and with all this it has the clear-cut directness of life's terrible and exquisite tangibility.

When suddenly confronted, then, in the mid-stream of life, by the necessity of expressing the starting-point, which is also the conclusion, of the philosophy of the complex vision, what synthetic image or symbol or ritualistic word are we to use in order to sum up its concrete reality?

The revelation of life, offered to us by the complex vision, is, as we have seen, no very simple or logical affair. We axe left with the spectacle of innumerable "souls," human, sub-human and super-human, held together by some indefinable "medium" which enables them to communicate with one another. Each one of these "souls" at once creates and discovers its own individual "universe" and then by an act of faith assumes that the various "universes" created and discovered by all other souls are identical with its own.

That they are identical with its own the soul is led to assume with more and more certainty in proportion as its communion with other souls grows more and more involved. This identity between the various "universes" of alien souls is rendered more secure and more objective by the fact that time and space are found to be essential peculiarities of all of them alike. For since time and space are found to enter into the original character of all these "universes," it becomes a natural and legitimate conclusion that all these "universes" are in reality the same "universe."

We are left, then, with the spectacle of innumerable souls confronting a "universe" which in their interaction with one another they have half-created and half-discovered. There is no escape from the implication of this phrase "half-discovered." The creative activity of the complex vision perpetually modifies, clarifies and moulds the mystery which surrounds it; but that there is an objective mystery surrounding it, of which time and space are permanent aspects, cannot be denied.

The pure reason's peculiar power of thinking time and space away, or of lodging itself outside of time and space, is an abstraction which leads us out of the sphere of reality; because, in its resultant conception, it omits the activity of the other attributes of the complex vision.

The complex vision reveals to us, therefore, three aspects of objective mystery. It reveals to us in the first place the presence of an objective "something" outside the soul, which the soul by its various energies moulds and clarifies and shapes. This is that "something" which the soul at one and the same moment "half-discovers" and "half-creates." It reveals to us, in the second place, the presence of an indefinable objective "something" which is the medium that makes possible the communion of one soul with another and with "the invisible companions."

This is the medium which holds all these separate personalities together while each of them half-creates and half-discovers his own "universe."

In the third place it reveals to us the presence, in each individual soul, of a sort of "substratum of the soul" or something beyond analysis which is the "vanishing point of sensation" and the vortex-point or fusion-point where the movement which we call "matter" loses itself in the movement which we call "mind."

In all these three aspects of objective mystery, revealed to us by the united activities of the complex vision, we are compelled, as has been shown, to use the vague and obscure word "something." We are compelled to apply this unilluminating and tantalizing word to all these three aspects of "objective mystery," because no other word really covers the complex vision's actual experience.

The soul recognizes that there is "something" outside itself which is the "clay" upon which its energy works in creating its "universe," but it cannot know anything about this "something" except that it is "there"; because, directly the soul discovers it, it inevitably moulds it and recreates it. There is not one minutest division of time between this "discovery" and this "creation"; so all that one can say is that the resultant objective "universe" is half-created and half-discovered; and that whatever this mysterious "something" may be, apart from the complex vision, it at any rate has the peculiarity of being forced to submit to the complex vision's creative energy.

But not only are we compelled to apply the provoking and unilluminating word "something" to each of these three aspects of objective mystery which the complex vision reveals; we are also compelled to assume that each one of these is dominated by time and space.

This implication of "time and space" is necessitated in a different way in each of these three aspects of what was formerly called "matter." In the first aspect of the thing we have time and space as essential characteristics of all the various "universes," reduced by an act of faith to one "universe," of the souls which fill the world.

In the second aspect of it we have time and space as essential characteristics of that indefinable "medium" which holds all these souls together, and which by holding them together makes it easier to regard their separate "universes" as "one universe," since they find their ground or base in one universal "medium."

In the third aspect of it we have time and space as essential characteristics of that "substratum of the soul" which is the vanishing-point of sensation and the fusion-point of "mind" and "matter."

We are thus inevitably led to a further conclusion; namely, that all these three aspects of objective reality, since they are all dominated by time and space, are all dominated by the same "time" and the same "space." And since it is unthinkable that three coexistent forms of objective reality should be all dominated by the same time and space and remain absolutely distinct from one another, it becomes evident that these three forms of objective mystery, these three indefinable "somethings," are not separate from one another but are in continual contact with one another.

Thus the fact that all these three aspects of objective reality are under the domination of the same time and space is a further confirmation of the truth which we have already assumed by an act of faith, namely that all the various "universes," half-discovered and half-created by all the souls in the world, are in reality "one universe."

The real active and objective existence of this "one universe" is made still more sure and is removed still further from all possibility of "illusion," by the fact that we are forced to regard it as being not only "our" universe but the universe also of those "invisible companions" whose vision half-creates it and half-discovers it, even as our own vision does. It is true that to certain types of mind, for whom the definite recognition of mystery is repugnant, it must seem absurd and ridiculous to be driven to the acknowledgment of a thing's existence, while at the same time we have to confess complete inability to predicate anything at all about the thing except that it exists.

It must seem to such minds still more absurd and ridiculous that we should be driven to recognize no less than three aspects of this mysterious "something."

But since they are included in the same time and space, and since, consequently, they are intimately connected with one another, it becomes inevitable that we should take the yet further step and regard them as three separate aspects of one and the same mystery. Thus we are once more confronted with the inescapable trinitarian nature of the system of things; and just as we have three ultimate aspects of reality in the monistic truth of "the one time and space," in the pluralistic truth of the innumerable company of living souls and the dualistic truth of the contradictory nature of all existence; so we have three further ultimate aspects of reality, in the incomprehensible "something" which holds all souls together; in the incomprehensible "something" out of which all souls create the universe; and in the incomprehensible "something" which forms the substratum both of the souls of the invisible "companions of men" and of the soul of every individual thing.

The supreme unity, therefore, in this complicated world, thus revealed to us by the activity of the complex vision is the unity of time and space. This unity is eternally reborn and eternally re-discovered every time any living personality contemplates the system of things. And since "the sons of the universe" must be regarded as continually contemplating the system of things, struggling with it, moulding it, and changing it, according to their pre-existent ideal, we are compelled to assume that time and space are eternal aspects of reality and that their eternal necessity gives the system of things its supreme unity.

No isolated speculation of the logical reason, functioning apart from the other attributes of the complex vision, can undermine this supreme unity of time and space. The "a priori unity of apperception" is an unreality compared with this reality. The all-embracing cosmic "monad," contemplating itself as its eternal object, is an unreality compared with this reality.

We are left with a pluralistic world of individual souls, finding their pattern and their ideal in the vision of the "immortal gods" and perpetually rediscovering and recreating together "a universe" which like themselves is dominated by time and space and which like themselves is for ever divided against itself in an eternal and unfathomable duality.

The ultimate truth of the system of things according to the revelation of the complex vision is thus found to consist in the mystery of personality confronting "something" which seems impersonal. Over both these things, over the personal soul and over the primordial "clay" or "energy" or "movement" or "matter" out of which the personal soul creates its "universe," time and space are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this original "plasticity" except that it is "plastic" and that time and space rule over it, it is in a strict sense illegitimate to say that this primordial "clay" or "world stuff" is in itself divided into a duality. We know nothing, and can never know anything about it, beyond the bare fact of its existence. Its duality comes from the duality in us. It is we who create the contradiction upon which its life depends. It is from the unfathomable duality in the soul of the "companions of men" that the universe is brought forth.

The ultimate duality which perpetually creates the world is the ultimate duality in all living souls and in the souls of "the sons of the universe." But although it is we ourselves who in the primal act of envisaging the world endow it with this duality, it would be an untrue statement to say that this duality in the material universe is an "illusion." It is no more an illusion than the objective material world itself is an illusion. Both are created by the inter-action between the mystery of personality and the mystery of what seems the impersonal. Thus it remains perfectly true that what we sometimes call "brute matter" possesses an element of malignant inertness and malicious resistance to the power of creation. This malice of the impersonal, this malignant inertness of "matter," is an ultimate fact; and is not less a fact because it depends upon the existence of the same malice and the same inert resistance in our own souls.

Nor are we able to escape from the conclusion that this malignant element in the indefinable "world-stuff" exists independently of any human soul. It must be thought of as dependent upon the same duality in the souls of "the sons of the universe" as that which exists in the souls of men. For although the primordial ideas of truth and nobility and beauty, brought together by the emotion of love, are realized in the "gods" with an incredible and immortal intensity, yet the souls of the "gods" could not be souls at all if they were not subject to the same duality as that which struggles within ourselves.

It follows from this that we are forced to recognize the presence of a potentiality of evil or malice in the souls of "the sons of the universe." But although we cannot escape from the conclusion that evil or malice exists in the souls of the immortals as in all human souls, yet in their souls this evil or malice must be regarded as perpetually overcome by the energy of the power of love. This overcoming of malice by the power of love, or of evil by "good," in the souls of "the sons of the universe," must not be regarded as a thing once for all accomplished, but as a thing eternally re-attained as the result of an unceasing struggle, a struggle so desperate, so passionate and so unfathomable, that it surpasses all effort of the mind to realize or comprehend it.

It must not, moreover, be forgotten that what the complex vision reveals about this eternal struggle between love and malice in the souls of "the sons of the universe" and in the souls of all living things, is not that love and malice are vague independent elemental "forces" which obsess or possess or function through the soul which is their arena, but rather that they themselves are the very stuff and texture and essence of the individual soul itself.

Their duality is unfathomable because the soul is unfathomable. The struggle between them is unfathomable because the struggle between them is nothing less than the intrinsic nature of the soul. The soul is unthinkable without this unfathomable struggle in its inherent being between love and malice or between life and what resists life. We are therefore justified in saying that "the universe" is created by the perpetual struggle between love and malice or between life and what resists life. But when we say this we must remember that this is only true because "the universe" is half-discovered and half-created by the souls of "the sons of the universe" and by the souls of all living things which fill the universe. This unfathomable duality which perpetually re-creates Nature, does not exist in Nature apart from living things, although it does exist in nature apart from any individual living thing.

All those aspects of the objective universe which we usually call "inanimate," such as earth, water, air, fire, ether, electricity, energy, movement, matter and the like, including the stellar and planetary bodies and the chemical medium, whatever it may be, which unites them, must be regarded as sharing, in some inscrutable way, in this unfathomable struggle. We are unable to escape from this conception of them, as thus sharing in this struggle, because they are themselves the creation and discovery of the complex vision of the soul; and the soul is, as we have seen, dependent for its every existence upon this struggle.

In the same way, all those other aspects of the universe which are "animate" but sub-human, such as grass, moss, lichen, plants, sea-weed, trees, fish, birds, animals and the like, must be regarded as sharing in a still more intimate sense in this unfathomable struggle. This conception has a double element of truth. For not only do these things depend for their form and shape and reality upon the complex vision of the soul which contemplates them; but they are themselves, since they are things endowed with life, possessed of some measure or degree of the complex vision.

And if the souls of men and the Souls of the "sons of the universe" are inextricably made up of the very stuff of this unfathomable struggle, between life and what resists life, we cannot escape from the conclusion that the souls of plants and birds and animals and all other living things are inextricably made up of the stuff of the same unfathomable struggle. For where there is life there must be a soul possessed of life. Life, apart from some soul possessed with life, is an abstraction of the logical reason and a phantom of no more genuine reality than the "a priori unity of apperception" or "the universal self-conscious monad."

What we call reality, or the truth of the system of things, is nothing less than an innumerable company of personalities confronting an objective mystery; and while we are driven to regard the "inanimate," such as earth and air and water and fire, as the bodily expressions of certain living souls, so are we much more forcibly driven to regard the "animate," wherever it is found, as implying the existence of some measure of personality and some degree of consciousness.

Life, apart from a soul possessing life, is not life at all. It is an abstraction of the logical reason which we cannot appropriate to our instinct or imagination. A vague phrase, like the phrase "life-force," conveys to us whose medium of research is the complex vision, simply no intelligible meaning at all. It is on a par with the "over-soul"; and, to the philosophy of the complex vision, both the "life-force" and the "over-soul" are vague, materialistic, metaphorical expressions which do not attain to the dignity of a legitimate symbolic image.

They do not attain to this, because a legitimate symbolic image must appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sense by the possession of something concrete and intelligible.

Any individual personal soul is concrete and intelligible. The personal souls of "the sons of the universe" are concrete and intelligible. But the "over-soul" and the "life-force" are neither concrete nor intelligible and therefore cannot be regarded as legitimate symbols. One of the most important aspects of the method of philosophical enquiry which the philosophy of the complex vision adopts is this use of legitimate symbolic images in place of illegitimate metaphorical images.

This use of concrete, tangible, intelligible images is a thing which has to pay its price. And the price which it has to pay is the price of appearing childish, absurd and ridiculous to the type of mind which advocates the exclusive use of the logical reason as the sole instrument of philosophical research. This price of appearing naive, childish and ridiculous has to be paid shamelessly and in full.

The type of mind which exacts this price, which demands in fact that the concrete intelligible symbols of the philosophy of the complex vision should be regarded as childish and ridiculous, is precisely the type of mind for whom "truth" is a smoothly evolutionary affair, an affair of steady "progress," and for whom, therefore, the mere fact of an idea being "a modern idea" implies that it is "true" and the mere fact of an idea being a classical idea or a mediaeval idea implies that it is crude and inadequate if not completely "false."

To the philosophy of the complex vision "truth" does not present itself as an affair of smooth and steady historical evolution but as something quite different from this—as a work of art, in fact, dependent upon the struggle of the individual soul with itself, and upon the struggle of "the souls of the sons of the universe" with themselves. And although the struggle of the souls of "the sons of the universe" towards a fuller clarifying of the mystery of life must be regarded as having its concrete tangible history in time and space, yet this history is not at all synonymous with what is usually called "progress."

An individual human soul, the apex-thought of whose complex vision has attained an extraordinary and unusual rhythm, must be regarded as having approached nearer to the vision of "the sons of the universe" although such an one may have lived in the days of the patriarchs or in the Greek days or in the days of mediaevalism or of the renaissance, than any modern rationalistic thinker who is obsessed by "the latest tendencies of modern thought."

The souls of "the immortals" must certainly be regarded as developing and changing and as constantly advancing towards the realization of their hope and premonition. But this "advance" is also, as we have seen, in the profoundest sense a "return," because it is a movement towards an idea which already is implicit and latent. And in the presence of this "advance," which is also a "return," all historic ages of individual human souls are equal and co-existent.

All real symbols are "true," wherever and whenever they are invoked, because all real symbols are the expression of that rare unity of the complex vision which is man's deepest approximation to the mystery of life. The symbol of the cross, for instance, has far more truth in it than any vague metaphorical expression such as the "over-soul." The symbolic ritual of the Mass, for instance, has far more truth in it than any metaphorical expression such as the "life-force." And although both the Cross and the Mass are inadequate and imperfect symbols with regard to the vision of "the sons of the universe," because they are associated with the idea of an historic incarnation, yet in comparison with any modern rationalistic or chemical metaphor they are supremely true.

The philosophy of the complex vision, just because it is the philosophy of personality, must inevitably use images which appear to the rationalistic mind as naive and childish and ridiculous. But the philosophy of the complex vision prefers to express itself in terms which are concrete, tangible and intelligible, rather than in terms which are no more than vague projections of phantom logic abstracted from the concrete activity of real personality.

In completing this general picture of the starting point of the philosophy of the complex vision there is one further implication which ought to be brought fully into the light. I refer to a doctrine which certain ancient and mediaeval thinkers adopted, and which must always be constantly re-appearing in human thought because it is an inevitable projection of the human conscience when the human conscience functions in isolation and in disregard of the other attributes. I mean the doctrine of the essentially evil, character of that phenomenon which was formerly called "matter" but which I prefer to call the objective mystery.

According to this doctrine—which might be called the eternal heresy of puritanism—this objective mystery, this world-stuff, this eternal "energy" or "movement," this "flesh and blood" through which the soul expresses itself and of which the physical body is made, is "evil"; and the opposite of this, that is to say "mind" or "thought" or "consciousness" or "spirit" is alone "good."

According to this doctrine the world is a struggle between "the spirit" which is entirely good and "the flesh" which is entirely evil. To the philosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted, an attempt of the conscience to arrogate to itself the whole field of experience and to negate all the other attributes, especially emotion and the aesthetic sense.

Such a doctrine negates the whole activity of the complex vision because it assumes the independent existence of "flesh and blood" as opposed to "mind." But "flesh and blood" is a thing which has no existence apart from "mind," because it is a thing "half-created" as well as "half-discovered" by "mind."

It negates the aesthetic sense because the aesthetic sense requires the existence of "the body" or of "flesh and blood" or of what we call "matter," and cannot exert its activity without the reality of this thing.

It negates emotion, because the emotion of love demands, for its full satisfaction, nothing less than "the eternal idea of flesh and blood." And since love demands the "eternal idea of flesh and blood," "flesh and blood" cannot be "evil."

This doctrine of the evil nature of "matter" is obviously a perversion of what the complex vision reveals to us about the eternal duality. According to this doctrine, which I call the puritan heresy, the duality resolves itself into a struggle between the spirit and the flesh. But according to the revelation of the complex vision the true duality is quite different from this. In the true duality there is an evil aspect of "matter" and also an evil aspect of "mind."

In the true duality "spirit" is by no means necessarily good. For since the true duality lies in the depths of the soul itself, what we call "spirit" must very often be evil. According to the revelation of the complex vision, evil or malice is a positive force, of malignant inertness, resisting the power of creation or of love. It is, as we have seen, the primordial or chaotic weight which opposes itself to life.

But "flesh and blood" or any other definite form of "matter" has already in large measure submitted to the energy of creation and is therefore both "good" and "evil." That original shapeless "clay" or "objective mystery" out of which the complex vision creates the universe certainly cannot be regarded as "evil," for we can never know anything at all about it except that it exists and that it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision. And in so far as it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision it certainly cannot be regarded as entirely evil, but must obviously be both good and evil; even as the complex vision itself, being the vision of the soul, is both good and evil.

According to the philosophy of the complex vision then, what we call "mind" is both good and evil and what we call "matter" being intimately dependent upon "mind" is both good and evil. We are forced, therefore, to recognize the existence of both spiritual "evil" and spiritual "good" in the unfathomable depths of the soul. But just because personality is itself a relative triumph of good over evil it is possible to conceive of the existence of a personality in whom evil is perpetually overcome by good, while it is impossible to conceive of a personality in whom good is perpetually overcome by evil.

In other words, all personalities are relatively good; and some personalities namely those of "the immortals" are, as far as we are concerned, absolutely good. All personalities including even the personalities of "the immortals" have evil in them, but no personality can be the embodiment of evil, in the sense in which "the sons of the universe" are the embodiment of good.

I thus reach the conclusion of this complicated summary of the nature of the ultimate duality and the necessity of finding a clear and definite symbol for it.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ULTIMATE IDEAS

It now becomes necessary to consider in greater detail those primary human conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness, which I have already referred to as the soul's "ultimate ideas." Let no one think that any magical waving of the wand of modern psychology can explain away these universal human experience. They may be named by different appellations; but considering the enormous weight of historical tradition behind these names it would seem absurd and pedantic to attempt to re-baptize them at this late hour.

Human nature, in its essentials, has undergone no material change since we have any record of it; and to use any other word than "beauty" for what we mean by beauty, or than "goodness" for what we mean by goodness, would seem a mere superstition of originality. The interpretation offered, in what follows, of the existence of these experiences is sufficiently startling to require no assistance from novelty of phrasing to give it interest and poignancy. That our souls are actually able to touch, in the darkness which surrounds us, the souls of super-human beings, and that the vision of such super-human beings is the "eternal vision" wherein the mystery of love is consummated, is a doctrine of such staggering implications that it seems wise, in making our way towards it, to use the simplest human words and to avoid any "stylistic" shocks.

It seems advisable also to advance with scrupulous leisureliness in this formidable matter and at certain intervals to turn round as it were, and survey the path by which we have come. The existence of super-human beings, immeasurably superior to man, is in itself a harmless and natural speculation. It is only when it presents itself as a necessary link in philosophical discussion that it appears startling. And the mere fact that it does appear startling when introduced into philosophy shows how, lamentably philosophy has got itself imprisoned in dull, mechanical, mathematical formulae; in formulae so arid and so divorced from life, that the conception of personality, applied to man or to the gods, seems to us as exciting as an incredible fairy story when brought into relation with them.

As the souls of men, then, each with its own complex vision, move side by side along the way, or across one another's path, they are driven by the necessity of things to exchange impressions with regard to the nature of life. In their communications with one another they become aware of the presence, at the back of their consciousness, of an invisible standard of truth, of beauty, of goodness. It is from this standard of beauty and truth and goodness, from this dream, this vision, this hope, that all these souls seem to themselves to draw their motive of movement. But though they seem to themselves to be "moving" into an indetermined future still to be created by their wills, they also seem to themselves to be "returning" towards the discovery of that invisible standard of beauty, truth and goodness, which has as their motive-impulse been with them from the beginning. This implicit standard, this invisible pattern and test and arbitrament of all philosophizing, is what I call "the vision of the immortals." Some minds, both philosophical and religious, seem driven to think of this invisible pattern, this standard of truth and beauty, as the parent of the universe rather than as its offspring. I cannot bring myself to take this view because of the fact that the ultimate revelation of the world as presented, to man's complex vision is essential and unfathomably dualistic.

A "parent" of the universe can only be thought of as a stopping-place of all thought. He can only be imagined—for strictly speaking he cannot be thought of at all—as some unutterable mystery out of which the universe originally sprang. From this unutterable mystery, to which we have no right to attribute either a monistic or a pluralistic character, we may, I suppose, imagine to emerge a perpetual torrent of duality.

Towards this unutterable mystery, about which even to say "it is" seems to be saying too much, it is impossible for the complex vision to have any attitude at all. It can neither love it nor hate it. It can neither reject it nor accept it. It can neither worship it nor revolt against it. It is only imaginable in the illegitimate sense of metaphor and analogy. It is simply the stopping-place of the complex vision; that stopping-place beyond which anything is possible and nothing is thinkable.

This thing, which is at once everything and nothing, this thing which is no thing but only the unutterable limit where all things pass beyond thought, cannot be accepted by the complex vision as the parent of the universe. The universe has therefore no parent, no origin, no cause, no creator. Eternally it re-creates itself and eternally it divides itself into that ultimate duality which makes creation possible.

That monistic tendency of human thought, which is itself a necessary projection of the monistic reality of the individual soul, cannot, except by an arbitrary act of faith, resolve this ultimate duality into unity. Such a primordial "act of faith" it can and must make with regard to the objective reality of other souls. But such an "act of faith" is not demanded with regard to the unutterable mystery behind the universe. We have not, strictly speaking, even the right to use the expression "an unutterable mystery." All we have a right to do is just to titter the final judgment—"beyond this limit neither thought nor imagination can pass."

What the complex vision definitely denies to us, therefore, is the right to regard this thing, which is no thing, with any emotion at all. The expression "unutterable mystery" is a misleading one because it appears to justify the emotions of awe and reverence. We have no right to regard this thin simulacrum, this mathematical formula, this stopping-place of thought, with any feelings of awe or reverence. We have not even a right to regard it with humorous contempt; for, being nothing at all, it is beneath contempt.

Humanity has a right to indulge in that peculiar emotional attitude which is called "worship" towards either side of the ultimate duality. It has a right to worship, if it pleases—though to do so several attitudes of the complex vision must be outraged and suppressed—the resistant power of malice. It has even a right to worship the universe, that turbulent arena of these primal antagonists. What it has no right to worship is the "unutterable mystery" behind the universe; for the simple reason that the universe is unfathomable.

Human thought has its stopping-place. The universe is unfathomable. Human thought has a definite limit. The universe has no limit. The universe is "unutterably mysterious"; and so also is the human soul; but as far as the soul's complex vision is concerned there can be no reality "behind the appearances of things" except the reality of the soul itself. Thus there is no "parent" of man and of the universe. But "the immortal companions" of men are implied from man's most intimate experiences of life. For if there were no invisible watchers, no arbiters, no standards, no tests, no patterns, no ideals; our complex vision, in regard to certain basic attributes, would be refuted and negated.

Every soul which exists must be thought of as possessing the attribute of "emotion" with its duality of love and malice, the attribute of "taste" with its duality of beauty and hideousness, of conscience with its duality of good and evil, and the attribute of "reason" with its duality of the true and the false. Every one of these basic attributes would be reduced to a suicidal confusion of absolute sceptical subjectivity if it could not have faith in some objective reality to which it can appeal.

Such an appeal, to such an objective reality, it does, as a matter of fact, continually make, whether it makes it consciously or sub-consciously. And just as the soul's basic attributes of emotion, taste, conscience, and reason indicate an implicit faith in the objective reality of the ideas of beauty and nobility and truth; so the soul's basic attribute of self-consciousness indicates an implicit demand that the objective reality of these ideas should be united and embodied in actual living and self-conscious "souls" external to other "souls."

The most dangerous mistake we can make, and the most deadly in its implications, is to reduce these "companions of men" to a monistic unity and to make this unity what the metaphysicians call "absolute" in its embodiment of these ultimate ideas.

In comparison with the fitful and moody subjectivity of our individual conceptions of these ideas the vision of the immortals may be thought of as embodying them absolutely. But in itself it certainly does not embody them absolutely; otherwise the whole movement of life would end. It is unthinkable that it should ever embody them absolutely. For it is in the inherent nature of such a vision that it should be growing, living, inexhaustible. The most withering and deadly of all conceivable dogmas is the dogma that there is such a thing as absolute truth, absolute beauty, absolute good and absolute love.

The attraction of such a dogma for the mind of man is undoubtedly due to the spirit of evil or of malice. For nothing offers a more frozen resistance to the creative power than such a faith. Compared with our human visions of these ideas the vision of these "companions of men" must be thought of as relatively complete. And complete it is, with regard to its general synthesis and orientation. But it is not really complete; and can never be so. For when we consider the nature of love alone, it becomes ridiculous to speak of an absolute or complete love. If the love of these "companions of men" became at any moment incapable of a deeper and wider manifestation, at that very moment the whole stream of life would cease, the malice of the adversary would prevail, and nothingness would swallow up the universe. It is because we are compelled to regard the complex vision, including all its basic attributes, as the vision of a personal soul, that it is a false and misleading conception to view these "companions of men" as a mere ideal.

An ideal is nothing if not expressed in personality. Subjectively every ideal is the ideal of "some one," an ideal of a conscious, personal, and living entity. Objectively every ideal must be embodied in "some one": and must be a standard, a measure, a rhythm, of various energies synthesized in a living soul. This is really the crux of the whole matter. Vaguely and obscurely do we all feel the pressure of these deep and secret impulses. Profoundly do we feel that these mysterious "ideas," which give life its dramatic intensity, are part of the depths of our own soul and part of the depths of the souls of the immortals. And yet though they are so essentially part of us and part of the universe, they remain vague, obscure, contradictory, confused, inchoate; only gradually assuming coherent substance and form as the "rapport" between man and his invisible companions grows clearer and clearer.

We are confronted at this point by one of the most difficult of all dilemmas. If by reason of the fact that we are driven to regard personality as the most real thing in the universe we are compelled toward the act of faith which recognizes one side of the eternal duality of things as embodied in actual living souls, how is it that we are not equally compelled to a similar act of faith in relation to the other side of this duality? In simpler words, how is it that while we are compelled to an act of faith with regard to the existence of powers which embody the spirit of love, we are not compelled to an act of faith with regard to the existence of powers which embody the spirit of malice?

How is it that while we have a right to regard the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness as objectively embodied in living personalities we have no right to regard the ideas of falseness, hideousness, evil and malice, as objectively embodied in living personalities? To answer this question it is necessary to define more clearly the essential duality which we discover as the secret of the universe.

One side of this duality is the creative power of life, the other side is the resistant power which repels life. The emotion of love is the motive-force of the power of creation, a force which we have to recognize as containing in itself the power of destruction; for destruction is necessary to creation and is inspired by the creative energy.

The other side of the eternal duality is not a destructive force, but a resistant force. That is why it is necessary to define the opposite of love, not as hate—but as malice, which is a resistant thing. Thus it becomes clear why it is that we are not driven by the necessity of the situation to any act of faith with regard to the existence of living souls which embody evil and malice. We are not compelled towards this act of faith because the nature of the "other side" of the eternal duality is such that it cannot be embodied, in any complete or objective way, in a living personality. It can and it does appear in every personality that has ever existed. We are compelled to assume that it exists, though in a state of suppression, even in the souls of the immortals. If it did not exist, in some form or other, in the souls of the immortals, the ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness would be absolute in them, and the life of the universe would cease.

For the nature of this eternal duality is such that the life of the universe depends upon this unending struggle between what creates and what resists creation. The power that creates must be regarded as embodied in personality, for creation always implies personality. But the power that resists creation—though present in every living soul—cannot be embodied in personality because personality is the highest expression of creation.

Every soul born into life must possess the attributes of taste, reason, conscience and emotion. And each of these attributes implies this fundamental duality; being resolvable into a choice between hideousness, falsehood, evil, malice, and the opposites of these. But the soul itself, being a living and personal thing, can never, however deeply it plunges into evil, become the embodiment of evil, because by the mere fact of existing at all it has already defeated evil.

Any individual soul may give itself up to malice rather than to love, and may do its utmost to resist the creative power of love. But one thing it cannot do. It cannot become the embodiment of evil, because, by merely being alive, it is the eternal defiance of evil. Personality is the secret of the universe. The universe exists by reason of a struggle between what creates and what resists creation. Therefore personality exists by reason of a struggle between what creates and what resists creation. And the existence of personality, however desperate the struggle within itself may be, is a proof that the power of life is stronger than the power which resists life.

But we have to consider another and yet deeper dilemma. Since the existence of the universe depends upon the continuance of this unfathomable struggle and since the absolute victory of life over death, of love over malice, of truth over falsehood, of beauty over hideousness and of nobility over ignobility, would mean that the universe would end, are we therefore forced to the conclusion that evil is necessary to the fuller manifestation of good?

Undoubtedly we are forced to this conclusion. Not one of these primordial ideas, which find their synthesis in "the invisible companions of men," can be conceived without its opposite. And it is in the process of their unending struggle that the fuller realization of all of them is attained. And this struggle must inevitably assume a double character. It must assume the character of a struggle within the individual soul and of a struggle of the individual soul with other souls and with the universe. Such a struggle must be thought of as continually maintained in the soul of the "invisible companions of men" and maintained there with a depth of dramatic intensity at which we can only guess.

Only less false and dangerous than the dogma that the absolute victory of good over evil has already been achieved, is the dogma that these two eternal antagonists are in reality one and the same thing. They are only one and the same thing in the sense that neither is thinkable without the other; and in the sense that they create the universe by their conflict.

It is important in a matter as crucial as this matter, concerning "the invisible companions of men," not to advance a step beyond our starting-point till we have apprehended it from several different aspects and have gone over our ground again and again—even as builders of a bridge might test the solidity of their fabric stone by stone and arch by arch. By that "conscience in reason" which never allows us pleasantly to deceive ourselves, we are bound to touch, as it were with our very hands, every piece of stone work and every patch of cement which holds this desperate bridge together over the dark waters.

We have not, then, a right to say that every energy of the complex vision depends for its functioning upon the existence of these invisible companions. We have not a right to say—"if there were no such beings these energies could not function; but they do function; therefore there are such beings." What we have a right to say is simply this, that it is an actual experience that when two or more personalities come together and seek to express their various subjective impressions of these ultimate ideas there is always a tacit reference to some objective standard.

This objective standard cannot be thought of apart from personalities capable of embodying it. For these ultimate ideas are only real and living when embodied in personality. Apart from personality we are unable to grasp them; although we must recognize that the universe itself is composed of the very stuff of their contention. We have in the first place, then, completely eliminated from our discussion that "inscrutable mystery" behind the universe. In every direction we find the universe unfathomable; and though our power of thought stops abruptly at a certain limit, we have no reason to think that the universe stops there; and we have every reason to think that it continues—together with the unfathomable element in our souls—into impenetrably receding depths.

The universe, as we apprehend it, presents itself as a congeries of living souls united by some indefinable medium. These living souls are each possessed of that multiform activity which I have named the complex vision. Among the basic energies of this vision are some which in their functioning imply the pre-existence of certain primordial ideas.

These ideas are at once the eternally receding horizon and the eternally receding starting-point—the unfathomable past and the unfathomable future—of this procession of souls. The crux of the whole situation is found in the evasive and tantalizing problem of the real nature of these primordial ideas. Can "truth," can "beauty," can "goodness" be conceived of as existing in the universe apart from any individual soul?

They are clearly not completely exhausted or totally revealed by the vision of any individual human soul or of any number of human souls. The sense which we all have when we attempt to exchange our individual feelings with regard to these things is that we are appealing to some invisible standard or pattern which already exists and of which we each apprehend a particular facet or aspect.