[Note: I have made the following spelling changes: Prologue: "methed"
to "method"; Chapter 2: "renders imposssible" to "renders impossible";
"which man possessses" to "which man possesses"; "absolute
unqestionable" to "absolute unquestionable"; "loathesomeness" to
"loathsomeness"; Chapter 3: "alllowed to distort" to "allowed to
distort"; Chapter 4: "itelf in its precise" to "itself in its precise";
Chapter 5: "do very considerably" to "do vary considerably";
Chapter 6: "oversoul" to "over-soul"; "its own permonition" to "its
own premonition"; "arbitrement" to "arbitrament"; "subtratum" to
"substratum"; "gooodeness" to "goodness"; Chapter 7: "flicherings" to
"filcherings"; "Perapity" to "Peripety"; Chapter 8: "penerated" to
"penetrated"; Chapter 9: "the anthropomorphic expresssion" to
"the anthropomorphic expression"; "convuluted" to "convoluted";
Chapter 10: "a vast hierachy" to "a vast hierarchy"; Chapter 11: "to
be too anthromorphic" to "to be too anthropomorphic"; "strictly strictly
speaking" to "strictly speaking"; Chapter 13: "working in isolaton"
to "working in isolation"; "If to this the astronomer answer" to
"If to this the astronomer answers"; "difficult to decribe" to
"difficult to describe"; "the asethetic sense" to "the aesthetic
sense"; "no attentuation" to "no attenuation"; "the Complex Vision
represents" to "the complex vision represents"; Conclusion: "is
eternaly divided" to "is eternally divided"; "rest of the imortals"
to "rest of the immortals"; "elimination of the objectice mystery" to
"elimination of the objective mystery". The word "over-soul" is
mostly spelled with a hyphen, so I added a hyphen to all instances of
this word. The word "outflowing" is mostly spelled without a hyphen,
so I deleted the hyphens from all instances of this word. All other
spelling remains the same.]
THE COMPLEX VISION
BY
JOHN COWPER POWYS
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920
DEDICATED
TO
LITTLETON ALFRED
PROLOGUE
What I am anxious to attempt in this anticipatory summary of the
contents of this book is a simple estimate of its final conclusions, in
such a form as shall eliminate all technical terms and reduce the
matter to a plain statement, intelligible as far as such a thing can be
made intelligible, to the apprehension of such persons as have not
had the luck, or the ill-luck, of a plunge into the ocean of
metaphysic.
A large portion of the book deals with what might be called our
_instrument of research_; in other words, with the problem of what
particular powers of insight the human mind must use, if its vision
of reality is to be of any deeper or more permanent value than the
"passing on the wing," so to speak, of individual fancies and
speculations.
This instrument of research I find to be the use, by the human
person, of all the various energies of personality concentrated into
one point; and the resultant spectacle of things or reality of things,
which this concentrated vision makes clear, I call the original
revelation of the complex vision of man.
Having analyzed in the earlier portions of the book the peculiar
nature of our organ of research and the peculiar difficulties--
amounting to a very elaborate work of art--which have to be
overcome before this _concentration_ takes place, I proceed in the
later portions of the book to make as clear as I can what kind of
reality it is that we actually do succeed in grasping, when this
concentrating process has been achieved. I indicate incidentally that
this desirable concentration of the energies of personality is so
difficult a thing that we are compelled to resort to our memory of
what we experienced in rare and fortunate moments in order to
establish its results. I suggest that it is not to our average moments
of insight that we have to appeal, but to our exceptional moments of
insight; since it is only at rare moments in our lives that we are able
to enter into what I call the _eternal vision_.
To what, then, does this conclusion amount, and what is this
resultant reality, in as far as we are able to gather it up and
articulate its nature from the vague records of our memory?
I have endeavoured to show that it amounts to the following series
of results. What we are, in the first place, assured of is the
existence within our own individual body of a real actual living thing
composed of a mysterious substance wherein what we call mind and
what we call matter are fused and intermingled. This is our real and
self-conscious soul, the thing in us which says, "I am I," of which
the physical body is only one expression, and of which all the bodily
senses are only one gateway of receptivity.
The soul within us becomes aware of its own body simultaneously
with its becoming aware of all the other bodies which fill the visible
universe. It is then by an act of faith or imagination that the soul
within us takes for granted and assumes that there must be a soul
resembling our own soul within each one of those alien bodies, of
which, simultaneously with its own, it becomes aware.
And since the living basis of our personality is this real soul within
us, it follows that all those energies of personality, whose
concentration is the supreme work of art, are the energies of this real
soul. If, therefore, we assume that all the diverse physical bodies
which fill the universe possess, each of them, an inner soul
resembling our own soul, we are led to the conclusion that just as
our own soul half-creates and half-discovers the general spectacle of
things which it names "the universe," so all the alien souls in the
world half-create and half-discover what they feel as _their_
universe.
If our revelation stopped at this point we should have to admit that
there was not one universe, but as many universes are there are
living souls. It is at this point, however, that we become aware that
all these souls are able, in some degree or other, to enter into
communication. They are able to do this both by the bodily sounds
and signs which constitute language and by certain immaterial
vibrations which seem to make no use of the body at all. In this
communication between different souls, as far as humanity is
concerned, a very curious experience has to be recorded.
When two human beings dispute together upon any important
problem of life, there is always an implicit appeal made by both of
them to an invisible arbiter, or invisible standard of arbitration, in
the heart of which both seem aware that the reality, upon which
their opinions differ, is to be found in its eternal truth. What then
is this invisible standard of arbitration? Whatever it is, we are
compelled to assume that it satisfies and transcends the deepest and
furthest reach of personal vision in all the souls that approach it.
And what is the deepest and furthest reach of our individual soul?
This seems to be a projection upon the material plane of the very
stuff and substance of the soul's inmost nature.
This very "stuff" of the soul, this outflowing of the substance of the
soul, I name "emotion"; and I find it to consist of two eternally
conflicting elements; what I call the element of "love," and what I
call the element of "malice." This emotion of love, which is the
furthest reach of the soul, I find to be differentiated when it comes
into contact with the material universe into three ultimate ways of
taking life; namely, the way which we name the pursuit of beauty,
the way which we name the pursuit of goodness, and the way which
we name the pursuit of truth. But these three ways of taking life find
always their unity and identity in that emotion of love which is the
psychic substance of them all.
The invisible standard of arbitration, then, to which an appeal is
always made, consciously or unconsciously, when two human
beings dispute upon the mystery of life, is a standard of arbitration
which concerns the real nature of love, and the real nature of what
we call "the good" and "the true" and "the beautiful."
And since we have found in personality the one thing in existence of
which we are absolutely assured, because we are aware of it, _on the
inside_, so to speak, in the depths of our own souls, it becomes
necessary that in place of thinking of this invisible standard as any
spiritual or chemical "law" in any stream of "life-force" we should
think of it as being as personal as we ourselves are personal. For
since what we call the universe has been already described as
something which is half-created and half-discovered by the vision of
some one soul in it or of all the souls in it, it is clear that we have
no longer any right to think of these ultimate ideas as "suspended" in
the universe, or as general "laws" of the universe. They are
suspended in the individual soul, which half-creates and
half-discovers the universe according to their influence.
Personality is the only permanent thing in life; and if truth, beauty,
goodness, and love, are to have permanence they must depend for
their permanence not upon some imaginary law in a universe
half-created by personality but upon the indestructible nature of
personality itself.
The human soul is aware of an invisible standard of beauty. To this
invisible standard it is compelled to make an unconscious appeal in
all matters of argument and discussion. This standard must therefore
be rooted in a personal super-human vision and we are driven to the
conclusion that some being or beings exist, superior to man, and yet
in communication with man. And since what we see around us is a
world of many human and sub-human personalities, it is, by
analogy, a more natural supposition to suppose that these
supernatural beings are many than that they are one.
What the human soul, therefore, together with all other souls, attains
in its concentrated moments is "an eternal vision" wherein what is
mortal in us merges itself in what is immortal.
But if what we call the universe is a thing made up of all the various
universes of all the various souls in space and time, we are
forbidden to find in this visible material universe, whose "reality"
does not become "really real" until it has received the "hall-mark,"
so to speak, of the eternal vision, any sort of medium or link which
makes it possible for these various souls to communicate with one
another.
This material universe, thus produced by the concentrated visions of
all the souls entering into the eternal vision, is made up of all the
physical bodies of all such souls, linked together by the medium of
universal ether. But although the bodies which thus occupy different
points of space are linked together by the universal ether, we are not
permitted to find in this elemental ether, the medium which links the
innumerable souls together. And we are not permitted this because
in our original assumption such souls are themselves the
half-creators, as well as the half-discoverers, of that universe whose
empty spaces are thus filled. The material ether which links all
bodies together cannot, since it is a portion of such an universe, be
itself the medium from the midst of which these souls create that
universe.
But if, following our method of regarding every material substance
in the world as the body of some sort of soul, we regard this
universal ether as itself the body of an universal or elemental soul,
then we are justified in finding in this elemental omnipresent soul
diffused through space, the very medium we need; out of the midst
of which all the souls which exist project their various universes.
We are thus faced by a universe which is the half-creation and
half-discovery of all living souls, a universe the truth and beauty of
which depend upon the eternal vision, a universe whose material
substance is entirely composed of the actual physical bodies of
those very souls whose vision half-creates and half-discovers it.
We thus reach our conclusion that there is nothing in the world
except personality. The material universe is entirely made up of
personal bodies united by the personal body of the elemental ether.
What we name the universe, therefore, is an enormous group of
bodies joined together by the body of the ether; such bodies being
the physical expression of a corresponding group of innumerable
souls joined together by the soul of the ether.
In the portions of this book which deal with the creative energy of
the soul I have constantly used the expression "objective mystery";
but in my concluding chapter I have rejected and eliminated this
word as a mere step or stage in human thought which does not
correspond to any final reality. When I use the term "objective
mystery" I am referring to the original movement of the individual
mind when it first stretches out to what is outside itself. What is
outside itself consists in reality of nothing but an unfathomable
group of bodies and souls joined together by the body and soul of
the ether which fills space.
But since, in its first stretching out towards these things, all it is
aware of is the presence of a plastic something which lends itself,
under the universal curve of space, to the moulding and shaping and
colouring of its creative vision, it is natural enough to look about
for a name by which we can indicate this original "clay" or "matter" or
"world-stuff" out of which the individual soul creates its vision of
an universe. And the name "objective mystery" is the name by
which, in the bulk of this book, I have indicated this mysterious
world-stuff, by which the soul finds itself surrounded, both in regard
to the matter of its own body and in regard to the still more alien
matter of which all other bodies are composed.
But when by the use of the term objective mystery I have indicated
that general and universal something, not itself, by which the soul is
confronted, that something which, like a white screen, or a thick
mass of darkness, waits the moving lamp of the soul to give it light
and colour, it becomes clear that the name itself does not cover any
actual reality other than the actual reality of all the bodies in the
world joined together by the universal ether.
Is the term "objective mystery," therefore, no more than the name
given to that first solid mass of external impression which the
insight of the soul subsequently reduces to the shapes, colours,
scents, sounds, and all the more subtle intimations springing from
the innumerable bodies and souls which fill universal space? No. It
is not quite this. It is a little deeper than this. It is, in fact, the
mind's recognition that _behind_ this first solid mass of external
impression which the soul's own creative activity creates into its
"universe" there must exist "something," some real substance, or
matter, or world-stuff, in contact with which the soul half-creates
and half-discovers the universe which it makes its own.
When, however, the soul has arrived at the knowledge that its own
physical body is the outward expression of its inner self, and when
by an act of faith or imagination it has extended this knowledge to
every other bodily form in its universe, it ceases to be necessary to
use the term "objective mystery"; since that something which the
soul felt conscious of as existing behind the original solid mass of
impressions is now known by the soul to be nothing else than an
incredible number of living personalities, each with its own body.
And just as I make use in this book of the term "objective mystery,"
and then discard it in my final conclusion, so I make an emphatic
and elaborate use of the term "creative" and then discard it, or
considerably modify it, in my final conclusion.
My sequence of thought, in this matter of the soul's "creative"
power, may thus be indicated. In the process of preparing the
ground for those rare moments of illumination wherein we attain the
eternal vision the soul is occupied, and the person attempting to
think is occupied, with what I call "the difficult work of art" of
concentrating its various energies and fusing them into one balanced
point of rhythmic harmony. This effort of contemplative tension is a
"creative effort" similar to that which all artists are compelled to
make. In addition to this aspect of what I call "creation," there also
remains the fact that the individual soul modifies and changes that
first half-real something which I name the objective mystery, until it
becomes all the colours, shapes, sounds and so forth, produced by
the impression upon the soul of all the other personalities brought
into contract with it by the omnipresent personality of the universal
ether.
The words "creation" and "creative" axe thus made descriptive in
this book of the simple and undeniable fact that everything which
the mind touches is modified and changed by the mind; and that
ultimately the universe which any mind beholds is an universe
half-created by the mood of the mind which beholds it. And since the
mood of any mind which contemplates the universe is dependent
upon the relative "overcoming" in that particular soul of the emotion
of malice by love, or of the emotion of love by malice, it becomes
true to say that any universe which comes into existence is
necessarily "created" by the original struggle, in the depths of some
soul or other, of the conflicting emotions of love and malice.
And since the ideal of the emotion of love is life, and the ideal of
the emotion of hate is death, it becomes true to say that the emotion
of love is identical with the creative energy in all souls, while the
emotion of malice is identical with the force which resists creation
in all souls.
Why then do I drop completely, or at least considerably modify, this
stress upon the soul's "creative" power in my final chapter? I am led
to do so by the fact that such creative power in the soul is, after all,
only a preparation for the eternal vision. Creative energy implies
effort, tension, revolution, agitation, and the pain of birth. All
these things have to do with preparing the ground for the eternal
vision, and with the final gesture of the soul, by which it enters
into that ultimate rhythm. But once having entered into that vision--
and in these things time is nothing--the rhythm which results is a
rhythm upon which the soul rests, even as music rests upon music, or
life rests upon life.
And the eternal vision, thus momentarily attained, and hereafter
gathered together from the deep cisterns of memory, liberates us,
when we are under its influence, from that contemplative or creative
tension whereby we reached it. It is then that the stoical pride of the
soul, in the strength of which it has endured so much, undergoes the
process of an immense relaxation and relief. An indescribable
humility floods our being; and the mood with which we contemplate
the spectacle of life and death ceases to be an individual mood and
becomes an universal mood. The isolation, which was a necessary
element in our advance to this point, melts away when we have
reached it. It is not that we lose our personality, it is that we merge
ourselves by the outflowing of love, in all the personalities to which
the procession of time gives birth.
And the way we arrive at this identification of ourselves with all
souls, living or dead or unborn, is by our love for that ideal
symbolized in the figure of Christ in whom this identification has
already been achieved. This, and nothing less than this, is the eternal
vision. For the only "god" among all the arbiters of our destiny, with
whom we are concerned, is Christ. To enter into his secret is to enter
into their secret. To be aware of him is to be aware of everything in
the world, mortality and immortality, the transitory and the eternal.
Life then, as I have struggled to interpret it in this book, seems to
present itself as an unfathomable universe entirely made up of
personalities. What we call inanimate substances are all of them the
bodies, or portions of the bodies, of living personalities. The
immense gulf, popularly made between the animate and the
inanimate, thus turns out to be an unfounded illusion; and the whole
universe reveals itself as an unfathomable series, or congeries, of
living personalities, united by the presence of the omnipresent ether
which fills universal space.
It is of little moment, the particular steps or stages of thought, by
which one mind, among so many, arrives at this final conclusion.
Other minds, following other tracks across the desert, might easily
reach it. The important thing to note is that, once reached, such a
conclusion seems to demand from us a very definite attitude toward
life. For if life, if the universe, is entirely made up of personality,
then our instinctive or acquired attitude toward personality becomes
the path by which we approach truth.
To persons who have not been plunged, luckily or unluckily, in the
troublesome sea of metaphysical phrases, the portions of this book
which will be most tiresome are the portions which deal with those
"half-realities" or logical abstractions of the human reason, when
such reason "works" in isolation from the other attributes of the
soul. Such reason, working in isolation, inevitably produces certain
views of life; and these views of life, although unreal when
compared with the reality produced by the full play of all our
energies, cannot be completely disregarded if our research is to
cover the whole field of humanity's reactions. Since there is always
an irresistible return to these metaphysical views of life directly the
soul loses the rhythm of its total being, it seems as if it were unwise
to advance upon our road until we have discounted such views and
placed them in their true perspective, as unreal but inevitable
abstractions.
The particular views of life which this recurrent movement of the
logical reason results in, are, first, the reduction of everything to
an infinite stream of pure thought, outside both time and space,
unconscious of itself as in any way personal; and, in the second
place, the reduction of everything to one universal self-conscious
spirit, in whose absolute and infinite being independent of space and
time all separate existences lose themselves and are found to be
illusions.
What I try to make clear in the metaphysical portion of this book is
that these two views of life, while always liable to return upon us
with every renewed movement of the isolated reason, are in truth
unreal projections of man's imperious mind. When we subject them
to an analysis based upon our complete organ of research they show
themselves to be nothing but tyrannous phantoms, abstracted from
the genuine reality of the soul as it exists _within_ space and time.
What I seek to show throughout this book is that the world resolves
itself into an immeasurable number of personalities held together by
the personality of the universal ether and by the unity of one space
and one time. Even of space and time themselves, since the only
thing that really "fills them," so to speak, to the brim, is the
universal ether, it might be said that they are the expression of this
universal ether in its relation to all the objects which it contains.
Thus the conclusion to which I am driven is that the dome of space,
out of which the sun shines by day and the stars by night, contains
no vast gulfs of absolute nothingness into which the soul that hates
life may flee away and be at rest. At the same time the soul that
hates life need not despair. The chances, as we come to estimate
them, for and against the soul's survival after death, seem so
curiously even, that it may easily happen that the extreme longing of
the soul for annihilation may prove in such a balancing of forces the
final deciding stroke. And quite apart from death, I have tried to
show in this book, how in the mere fact of the unfathomable depths
into which all physical bodies as well as all immaterial souls recede
there is an infinite opportunity for any soul to find a way of escape
from life, either by sinking into the depths of its own physical being,
or by sinking into the depths of its own spiritual substance.
The main purpose of the book reveals, however, the only escape
from all the pain and misery of life which is worthy of the soul of
man. And this is not so much an escape from life as a transfiguring
of the nature of life by means of a newly born attitude toward it.
This attitude toward life, of which I have tried to catch at least the
general outlines, is the attitude which the soul struggles to maintain
by gathering together all its diffused memories of those rare
moments when it entered into the eternal vision.
And I have indicated as clearly as I could how it comes about that in
the sphere of practical life the only natural and consistent
realization of this attitude would be the carrying into actual effect
of what I call "the idea of communism."
This "idea of communism," in which the human implications of the
eternal vision become realized, is simply the conception of a system
of human society founded upon the creative instinct, instead of upon
the possessive instinct in humanity.
I endeavour to make clear that such a reorganization of society,
upon such a basis does not imply any radical change in human
nature. It only implies a liberation of a force that already exists, of
the force in the human soul that is centrifugal, or outflowing, as
opposed to the force that is centripetal, or indrawing. Such a force
has always been active in the lives of individuals. It only remains to
liberate that force until it reaches the general consciousness of the
race, to make such a reconstruction of human society not only ideal,
but actual and effective.
CONTENTS
Chapter I. The Complex Vision 1
Chapter II. The Aspects of the Complex Vision 20
Chapter III. The Soul's Apex-Thought 56
Chapter IV. The Revelation of the Complex Vision 71
Chapter V. The Ultimate Duality 100
Chapter VI. The Ultimate Ideas 120
Chapter VII. The Nature of Art 160
Chapter VIII. The Nature of Love 194
Chapter IX. The Nature of the Gods 214
Chapter X. The Figure of Christ 225
Chapter XI. The Illusion of Dead Matter 248
Chapter XII. Pain and Pleasure 270
Chapter XIII. The Reality of the Soul in Relation to
Modern Thought 293
Chapter XIV. The Idea of Communism 323
Conclusion 339
PREFACE
The speculative system which I have entitled "The Philosophy of
the Complex Vision" is an attempt to bring into prominence, in the
sphere of definite and articulate thought, those scattered and chaotic
intimations which hitherto have found expression rather in Art than
in Philosophy.
It has come to be fatally clear to me that between the great
metaphysical systems of rationalized purpose and the actual shocks,
experiences, superstitions, illusions, disillusions, reactions, hope
and despairs, of ordinary men and women there is a great gulf fixed.
It has become clear to me that the real poignant personal drama in all
our lives, together with those vague "marginal" feelings which
overshadow all of us with a sense of something half-revealed and
half withheld, has hardly any point of contact with these formidable
edifices of pure logic.
On the other hand the tentative, hesitating, ambiguous hypotheses of
Physical Science, transforming themselves afresh with every new
discovery, seem, when the portentous mystery of Life's real secret
confronts us, to be equally remote and elusive.
When in such a dilemma one turns to the vitalistic and pragmatic
speculations of a Bergson or a William James there is an almost
more hopeless revulsion. For in these pseudo-scientific,
pseudo-psychological methods of thought something most profoundly
human seems to us to be completely neglected. I refer to the high
and passionate imperatives of the heroic, desperate, treasonable
heart of man.
What we have come to demand is some intelligible system of
_imaginative reason_ which shall answer the exigencies not only of
our more normal moods but of those moods into which we are
thrown by the pressure upon us--apparently from outside the
mechanical sequence of cause and effect--of certain mysterious
Powers in the background of our experience, such as hitherto have
only found symbolic and representative expression in the ritual of
Art and Religion.
What we have come to demand is some flexible, malleable,
rhythmic system which shall give an imaginative and yet a rational
form to the sum total of those manifold and intricate impressions
which make up the life of a real person upon a real earth.
What we have come to demand is that the centre of gravity in our
interpretation of life should be restored to its natural point of
vantage, namely, to the actual living consciousness of an actual
living human being.
And it is precisely these demands that the philosophy of the
complex vision attempts to satisfy. It seeks to satisfy them by using
as its organ of research the balanced "ensemble" of man's whole
nature. It seeks to satisfy them by using as its "material" the whole
variegated and contradictory mass of feelings and reactions to
feelings, which the natural human being with his superstitions, his
sympathies, his antipathies, his loves and his hates, his surmises, his
irrational intuitions, his hopes and fears, is of necessity bound to
experience as he moves through the world.
It seeks, in fact, to envisage from within and without the confused
hurly-burly of life's drama; and to give to this contradictory and
complicated spectacle the aesthetic rationality or imaginative
inevitableness of a rhythmic work of art.
In this attempt the philosophy of the complex vision is bound to
recognize, and include in its _rational form_, much that remains
mysterious, arbitrary, indetermined, organic, obstinately illogical.
For the illogical is not necessarily the unintelligible, so long as the
reason which we use is that same imaginative and clairvoyant
reason, which, in its higher measure, sustains the vision of the poets
and the artists.
By the use of this fuller, richer, more living, more concrete
instrument of research, the conclusions we arrive at will have in
them more of the magic of Nature, and will be closer to the actual
palpable organic mystery of Life, than either the abstract
conclusions of metaphysic or the cautious, impersonal hypotheses of
experimental physical science.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMPLEX VISION
A philosophy is known by its genuine starting-point. This is also its
final conclusion, often very cunningly concealed. Such a conclusion
may be presented to us as the logical result of a long train of
reasoning, when really it was there all the while as one single vivid
revelation of the complex vision.
Like travellers who have already found, by happy accident, the city
of their desire, many crafty thinkers hasten hurriedly back to the
particular point from which they intend to be regarded as having
started; nor in making this secret journey are they forgetful to erase
their footsteps from the sand, so that when they publicly set forth it
shall appear to those who follow them that they are guided not by
previous knowledge of the way but by the inevitable necessity of
pure reason.
I also, like the rest, must begin with what will turn out to be the
end; but unlike many I shall openly indicate this fact and not attempt
to conceal it.
My starting-point is nothing less than what I call the original
revelation of man's complex vision; and I regard this original
revelation as something which is arrived at by the use of a certain
synthetic activity of all the attributes of this vision. And this
synthetic activity of the complex vision I call its apex-thought.
This revelation is of a peculiar nature, which must be grasped, at
least in its general outlines, before we can advance a step further
upon that journey which is also a return.
It might be maintained that before attempting to philosophize upon
life, the question should be asked . . . "why philosophize at all?"
And again . . . "what are the motive-forces which drive us into this
process which we call philosophizing?"
To philosophize is to articulate and express our personal reaction to
the mystery which we call life, both with regard to the nature of that
mystery and with regard to its meaning and purpose.
My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as
follows. We philosophize for the same reason that we move and
speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize
because man is a philosophical animal. We breathe because we
cannot help breathing and we philosophize because we cannot help
philosophizing. We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very
scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy. To suppress
the activity of philosophizing is as impossible as to suppress the
activity of breathing.
Assuming then that we _have_ to philosophize, the question
naturally arises . . . _how_ have we to philosophize if our
philosophy is to be an adequate expression of our complete reaction
to life?
By the phrase "man's complex vision" I am trying to indicate the
elaborate and intricate character of the organ of research which we
have to use. All subsequent discoveries are rendered misleading if
the total activity, at least in its general movement, of our instrument
of research is not brought into focus. This instrument of research
which I have named "man's complex vision" implies his possession,
at the moment when he begins to philosophize, of certain basic
attributes or energies.
The advance from infancy to maturity naturally means, when the
difference between person and person is considered an unequal and
diverse development of these basic energies. Nor even when the
person is full grown will it be found that these energies exist in him
in the same proportion as they exist in other persons. But if they
existed in every person in precisely equal proportions we should not
all, even then, have the same philosophy.
We should not have this, because though the basic activities were
there in equal proportion, each living concrete person whose
activities these were would necessarily colour the resultant vision
with the stain or dye of his original difference from all the rest. For
no two living entities in this extraordinary world are exactly the
same.
What is left for us, then, it might be asked, but to "whisper our
conclusions" and accept the fact that all "philosophies" must be
different, as they are all the projection of different personalities?
Nothing, as far as pure logic is concerned, is left for us but this.
Yet it remains as an essential aspect of the process of philosophizing
that we should endeavour to bring over to our vision as many other
visions as we can succeed in influencing. For since we have the
power of communicating our thought to one another and since it is
of the very nature of the complex vision to be exquisitely sensitive
to influences from outside, it is a matter of primordial necessity to
us all that we should exercise this will to influence and this will to
be influenced.
And just as in the case of persons sympathetic to ourselves the
activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion of love and the
instinct of creation, so in the case of persons antagonistic to
ourselves the activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion
of hate and the instinct of destruction. For philosophy being the
final articulation of a personal reaction to life, is penetrated
through and through with the basic energies of life.
On the one hand there is a "Come unto me, all ye . . ." and on the
other there is a "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"
Just because the process of philosophizing is necessarily personal, it
is evident that the primordial aspect of it which implies "the will to
influence" must tally with some equally primordial reciprocity,
implying "the will to be influenced."
That it does so tally with this is proved by the existence of language.
This medium of expression between living things does not seem to
be confined to the human race. Some reciprocal harmony of energy,
corresponding to our complex vision, seems to have created
many mysterious modes of communication by which myriads of
sub-human beings, and probably also myriads of super-human beings,
act and react on one another.
But the existence of language, though it excludes the possibility of
absolute difference, does not, except by an act of faith, necessitate
that any sensation we name by the same name is really identical
with the sensation which another person feels. And this difficulty is
much further complicated by the fact that words themselves tend in
the process to harden and petrify, and in their hardening to form, as
it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort
the subtle and evasive play of the human psychology behind them.
So that not only are we aware that the word which we use does not
necessarily represent to another what it represents to ourself, but we
are also aware that it does not, except in a hard and inflexible
manner, represent what we ourselves feel. Words tend all too
quickly to become symbolic; and it is often the chief importance of
what we call "genius" that it takes these inflexible symbols into its
hands and breaks them up into pieces and dips them in the wavering
waters of experience and sensation.
Every philosopher should be at pains to avoid as far as possible the
use of technical terms, whether ancient or modern, and should
endeavour to evade and slip behind these terms. He should
endeavour to indicate his vision of the world by means of words
which have acquired no thick accretion of traditional crust but are
fresh and supple and organic. He should use such words, in fact, as
might be said to have the flexibility of life, and like living plants
to possess leaves and sap. He should avoid as far as he can such
metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated
associations of traditional usage, and he should select his
expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact and
vivid shock of thoughts that leap up from immediate contact with
sensation, like fish from the surface of a river.
Just because words, in their passage from generation to generation,
tend to become so hard and opaque, it is advisable for any one
attempting to philosophize to use indirect as well as direct means of
expressing his thoughts. The object of philosophizing being to
"carry over" into another person's consciousness one's personal
reaction to things, it may well happen that a hint, a gesture, a
signal, a sign, made indirectly and rather by the grouping of words
and the tone of words than by their formal content, will reach the
desired result more effectually than any direct argument.
It must be admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of
philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective
colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical
motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No
two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often
so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible
audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly
assumed in some mysterious way to be the arbiters. These invisible
companions seem to gather to themselves, as we are vaguely aware
of them, the attributes of a company of overshadowing listeners.
They present themselves to the half-conscious background of our
mind as some pre-existent vision of "truth" towards which my
subjective vision is one contribution and my interlocutor's
subjective vision another contribution.
This vague consciousness which we both have, as we exchange our
ideas, of some comprehensive vision of pre-existent reality, to
which we are both appealing, does not destroy my passionate
conviction that I am "nearer the truth" than my friend; nor does it
destroy my latent feeling that in my friend's vision there is
"something of the truth" which I am unable to grasp. I think the
more constantly we encounter other minds in these philosophical
disputes the more does there grow and take shape in our own mind
the idea of some mysterious and invisible watchers whose purer
vision, exquisitely harmonious and clairvoyant, remains a sort of
test both of our own and of others' subjectivity; becomes, in fact, an
objective standard or measure or pattern of those ideas which we
discover within us all, and name truth, beauty, nobility.
This objective standard of the things which are most important and
precious to us, this ideal pattern of all human values, attests and
manifests its existence by the primordial necessity of the
interchange of thoughts among us. I call this pattern or standard of
ideas "the vision of the immortal companions." By the term "the
immortal companions" I do not mean to indicate any "immanent"
power or transcendental "over-soul." Nor do I mean to indicate that
they are created by our desire that they should exist. Although I call
them "companions" I wish to suggest that they exist quite
independently of man and are not the origin of these ideas in man's
soul but only the model, the pattern, the supreme realization of these
ideas.
It is, however, to these tacit listeners, whose vision of the world is
there in the background as the arbiter of our subjective encounters,
that in our immense loneliness we find ourselves constantly turning.
All our philosophy, all our struggle with life, falls into two aspects
as we grow more and more aware of what we are doing. The whole
strange drama takes the form, as we feel our way, of a creation
which at present is non-existent and of a realization of something
which at present is hidden.
Thus philosophy, as I have said, is at once a setting-forth and a
return; a setting-forth to something that has never been reached,
because to reach it we have to create it, and a return to something
that has been with us from the beginning and is the very form and
shape and image of the thing which we have set forth to create.
These hidden listeners, these tacit arbiters, these assumed and
implied witnesses of our life, give value to every attempt we make
at arriving at some unity amid our differences; and their vision
seems, as the eternal duality presses upon us, to be at once the thing
from which we start and the thing towards which, moulding the
future as we go, we find ourselves moving. In the unfathomable
depths of the past we are aware of a form, a shape, a principle, a
premonition; and into the unfathomable depths of the future we
project the fulfilled reality of this. We are as gods creating
something out of nothing. But when we have created it . . . behold!
it was there from the beginning; and the nothing out of which we
have created it has receded into a second future from which it mocks
and menaces us again.
The full significance of this ultimate duality would be rendered
abortive if the future were determined in any more definite way than
by the premonition, the hope, the dream, the passion, the prophecy,
the vision, of those invisible companions whose existence is implied
whenever two separate souls communicate their thoughts to one
another.
It is by our will that the future is created; but around the will hover
intermittently many unfathomable motives. And the pre-existent
motive, which finally gives the shape to the future, holds the future
already in its hand. And this surviving motive, ultimately selected
by our will, is of necessity purged and tested by a continual
comparison with that form, that idea, that dream, that vision, which
is implied from the beginning and which I name "the vision of the
invisible companions."
The philosophical enquiry upon which we are engaged finds its
starting point, then, in nothing less than that revelation of the
complex vision which is also the goal of its journey. The complex
vision, in the rhythmic play of its united attributes, makes use of a
synthetic power which I call its apex-thought.
The supreme activity of this apex-thought is centred about those
primordial ideas of truth, beauty and nobility which are the very
stuff and texture of its being. In the ecstasy of its creative and
receptive "rapport" with these it becomes aware of the presence of
certain immortal companions whose vision is at once the objective
standard of such ideas and the premonition of their fuller realization.
In thus attempting to articulate and clarify the main outlines of our
starting point, a curious situation emerges. The actual _spectacle_,
or mass of impressions to be dealt with, presents itself, we are
forced to suppose, as more or less identical, in its general
appearance, in every human consciousness. And this "general
situation" is strange enough.
We find ourselves, motionless or moving, surrounded by earth and
air and space. Impressions flow past us and flow through us. We
ourselves seem at the same time able to move from point to point in
this apparently real universe and able to remain, as invisible
observers, outside all the phenomena of time and space. As the
ultimate invisible spectator of the whole panorama, or, in the logical
phrase, as the "a priori unity of apperception" our consciousness
cannot be visualized in any concrete image.
But as the empirical personal self, able to move about within the
circle of the objective universe, the soul is able to visualize itself
pictorially and imaginatively, although not rationally or logically.
These two revelations of the situation are simultaneously disclosed;
and although the first-named of them--the "a priori unity of
apperception"--might seem to claim, on the strength of this "a
priori" a precedence over the second, it has no real right to make
such a claim. The truth of the situation is indeed the reverse of this;
and upon this truth, more than upon anything else, our whole
method of enquiry depends. For the fact that we are unable to think
of our integral personal self _as actually_ being this "a priori"
consciousness, and are not only able but are bound to think of our
integral personal self as _actually being_ this individual "soul"
within time and space, we are driven to the conclusion that this "a
priori" observer outside time and space is nothing more than an
inevitable trick or law or aspect or play of our isolated logical
reason.
Our logical reason is itself only one attribute of our real concrete
self, the self which exists within time and space; and therefore we
reach the conclusion that this "a priori unity," which seems outside
time and space, is nothing but a necessary inevitable abstraction
from the concrete reality of our personal self which is within time
and space. There is no need to be startled at the apparent paradox of
this, as though the lesser were including the larger or the part the
whole, because when space and time are eliminated there can be no
longer any large or small or whole or part. All are equal there
because all are equally nothing there.
This "a priori" unity of consciousness, outside time and space, is
only real in so far as it represents the inevitable manner in which
reason has to work when it works in isolation, and therefore
compared with the reality of the personal self, within time and
space, it is unreal.
And it is obvious that an unreal thing cannot be larger than a real
thing; nor can an unreal thing be a whole of which a real thing is a
part.
The method therefore of philosophic enquiry, which I name "the
philosophy of the complex vision," depends upon the realization of
the difference between what is only the inevitable play of reason,
working in isolation, and what is the inevitable play of all the
attributes of the human soul when they are held together by the
synthetic activity of what I name the "apex-thought." But this
logical revelation of the "a priori" unity of consciousness outside of
time and space is not the only result of the isolated play of some
particular attribute of personality. Just as the isolated play of
reason evokes this result, so the isolated play of self-consciousness
evokes yet another result, which we have to recognize as intervening
between this ultimate logical unity and the real personal self.
The abstraction evoked by the isolated play of self-consciousness is
obviously nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the merely
logical one above-named, because self-consciousness has more of
the personal self in it than reason or logic can have. But though
nearer reality and less of an abstraction than the other, this
revelation of the inevitable play of self-consciousness, working by
itself, is also unreal in relation to the revelation of the concrete
personal individual soul. This revelation of self-consciousness,
working in isolation, has as its result the conception of one universal
"I am I" or cosmic self, which is nothing more or less than the
whole universe, contemplating itself as its own object. To this
conception are we driven, when in isolation from the soul's other
attributes our self-consciousness gives itself up to its own activity.
The "I am I" which we then seek to articulate is an "I am I" reached
by the negation or suppression of that primordial act of faith which
is the work of the imagination. This act of faith, thus negated and
suppressed in order that this unreal cosmic self may embrace the
universe, is the act of faith by which we become aware of the
existence of innumerable other "selves," besides our own self,
filling the vast spaces of nature.
The difference between the sensation we have of our own body and
the sensation we have of the rest of the universe ceases to exist
when self-consciousness thus expands; and the conceptions we
arrive at can only be described as the idea that the whole universe
with all the bodies which it contains--including our own body--is
nothing but one vast manifestation of one vast mind which is our
own "I am I."
It must not be supposed that this abstraction evoked by the solitary
activity of self-consciousness is any more a "whole," of which the
real self is a "part," than the logical "a priori unity" is a whole, of
which the real self is a part. Both are abstractions. Both are unreal.
Both are shadowy projections from the true reality, which is the
personal self existing side by side with "the immortal companions."
Nor must it be supposed that these primordial aspects of life are of
equal importance and that we have an equal right to make of any
one of them the starting point of our enquiry. The starting point of
our enquiry, and the end of our enquiry also, can be nothing else
than the innumerable company of individual "souls," mortal and
immortal, confronting the mystery of the universe.
The philosophy of the complex vision is not a mechanical
philosophy; it is a creative philosophy. And as such it includes in it
from the beginning a certain element of faith and a certain element
which I can only describe as "the impossible." It may seem
ridiculous to some minds that the conception of the "impossible"
should be introduced into any philosophy at the very start. The
complex vision is, however, essentially creative. The creation of
something really new in the world is regarded by pure reason as
impossible. Therefore the element of "the impossible" must exist in
this philosophy from the very start. The act of faith must also exist
in it; for the imagination is one of the primary aspects of the
complex vision and the act of faith is one of the basic activities of
the imagination.
The complex vision does not regard history as a progressive
predetermined process. It regards history as the projection, by
advance and retreat, of the creative and resistant power of individual
souls. That the "invisible companions" should be in eternal contact
with every living "soul" is a rational impossibility; and yet this
impossibility is what the complex vision, using the faith of its
creative imagination, reveals as the truth.
The imagination working in isolation is able, like reason and
self-consciousness, to fall into curious distortions and aberrations.
One has only to survey the field of dogmatic religion to see how
curiously astray it may be led. It is only by holding fast to the high
rare moments when the apex-thought attains its consummation that
we are able to keep such isolated acts of faith in their place and
prevent the element of the "impossible" becoming the element of the
absurd. The philosophy of the complex vision, though far more
sympathetic to much that is called "materialism" than to much that
is called "idealism," certainly cannot itself be regarded
as materialistic. And it cannot be so regarded because its
central assumption and implication is the concrete basis of
personality which we call the "soul." And the "soul," when we think
of it as something real, must inevitably be associated with what
might be called "the vanishing point of sensation." In other words
the soul must be thought of as having some kind of "matter" or
"energy" or "form" as its ultimate life, and yet as having no kind of
"matter" or "energy" or "form." The soul must be regarded as
"something" which is living and real and concrete, and which has a
definite existence in time and space, and which is subject to
annihilation; but the stuff out of which the soul is made is not
capable of analysis, and can only be accepted by such an act of faith
as that which believes in "the impossible."
The fact that the philosophy of the complex vision assumes as its
only axiom the concrete reality of the "soul" within us which is so
difficult to touch or handle or describe and yet which we feel to be
so much more real than our physical body, justifies us in making an
experiment which to many minds will seem uncalled for and
ridiculous. I mean the experiment of trying to visualize, by an
arbitrary exercise of fancy, the sort of form or shape which this
formless and shapeless thing may be imagined as possessing.
Metaphysical discussion tends so quickly to become thin and
abstract and unreal; words themselves tend so quickly to become
"dead wood" rather than living branches and leaves; that it seems
advisable, from the point of view of getting nearer reality, to make
use sometimes of a pictorial image, even though such an image be
crudely and clumsily drawn.
Pictorial images are always treacherous and dangerous; but, as I
have hinted, it is sometimes necessary, considering the intricate and
delicately balanced character of man's complex vision, to make a
guarded and cautious use of them, so as to arrive at truth
"sideways," so to speak, and indirectly.
One of the curious psychological facts, in connection with the
various ways in which various minds function, is the fact that when
in these days we seek to visualize, in some pictorial manner, our
ultimate view of life, the images which are called up are geometrical
or chemical rather than anthropomorphic. It is probable that even
the most rational and logical among us as soon as he begins to
philosophize at all is compelled by the necessity of things to form in
the mind some vague pictorial representation answering to his
conception of the universe.
The real inherent nature of such a philosophy would be probably
understood and appreciated far better, both by the philosopher
himself and by his friends, if this vague pictorial projection could
be actually represented, in words or in a picture.
Most minds see the universe of their mental conception as
something quite different from the actual stellar universe upon
which we all gaze. Even the most purely rational minds who find
the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will
to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and
shape and movement.
These hidden and subconscious representations, in terms of sensible
imagery, of the conclusions of philosophic thought, are themselves
of profound philosophical interest. We cannot afford to neglect
them. They are at least proof of the inalienable part played, in the
functioning of our complex vision, by _sensation_ as an organ of
research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating
revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the
individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many
minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle,
without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of
material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. I suppose the
centre of this circle with no circumference is generally assumed to
be the "self" or "soul" of the person projecting this particular image.
Doubtless, in some cases, it is assumed to be such a person's
physical body as it feels itself conscious of sensation and is aware of
space and time.
As I myself use the expression "complex vision" I suppose I call up
in the minds of my various readers an extraordinary variety of
pictorial images. Without laying any undue stress upon this pictorial
tendency, I should like to indicate the kind of projected image
which I myself am conscious of, when I use the expression, "the
complex vision."
I seem to visualize this thing as a wavering, moving mass of flames,
taking the shape of what might be called a "horizontal pyramid," the
apex of which, where the flames are fused and lost in one another, is
continually cleaving the darkness like the point of a fiery arrow,
while the base of it remains continually invisible by reason of some
magical power which confuses the senses whenever they seek to
touch or to hold it.
Sometimes I seem to see this "base" or "spear handle" or "arrow
shaft," of my moving horizontal pyramid, as a kind of deeper
darkness; sometimes as a vibration of air; sometimes as a cloud of
impenetrable smoke. I am always conscious of the curious fact that,
while I can most vividly see the apex-point of the thing, and while I
know that this moving pyramid of fire has a base, there is for ever
some drastic natural law or magical power at work that obscures my
vision whenever I turn my eyes to the place where I know it exists.
I have not mentioned this particular pictorial image with any wish to
lay undue stress upon it. In all rarified and subtle experiments of
thought pictorial images are quite as likely to hinder us in our
groping towards reality as they are to help us. If my image of a
moving, horizontal pyramid with an apex-point of many names
fused into one and a base of impenetrable invisibility seems to any
reader of this passage a ridiculous and arbitrary fancy I would
merely ask such an one to let it go, and to consider my description
of the complex vision quite independently of it.
Sometimes to myself it appears ridiculous; and I only, as we put it,
"throw it out" in order that, if it has the least illuminative value,
such a value should not be quite lost. Any reader who regards my
particular picture as absurd is perfectly at liberty to form his own
pictorial image of what I am endeavouring to make clear. He may, if
he pleases, visualize "the soul" as a sort of darkened planet from
which the attributes of the complex vision radiate to the right or to
the left, as the thing moves through immensity. All I ask is that
these attributes should be thought of as converging to a point and as
finding their "base" in some thing which is felt to exist but cannot
be described.
Probably to a thorough-going empiricist, and certainly to a
thorough-going materialist, it will appear quite unnecessary to
translate the obvious spectacle of the world, with oneself as a
physical body in the centre of it, into mental symbols and pictorial
representations of the above character. Of such an one I would only
ask, in what sort of manner he visualizes, when he thinks of it at all,
the "soul" which he feels conscious of in his own body; and in the
second place how he visualizes the connection between the will, the
instinct, the reason and so forth, which animate his body and endow
it with living purpose? It will be found much easier for critics to
reject the particular image which has commended itself to me as
suggestive of the mystery with which we have to deal, than for them
to drive out and expel from their own thought the insidious human
tendency towards pictorial representation.
I would commend to any sardonic psychologist whose "malice"
leads him to derive pleasure from the little weaknesses of
philosophers, to turn his attention to the ideal systems of supposedly
"pure thought." He will find infinite satisfaction for his spleen in
the crafty manner in which "impure" thought--that is to say thought by
means of pictorial images--passes itself off as "pure" and conceals
its lapses.
Truth, as the complex vision clearly enough reveals to us, refuses to
be dealt with by "pure" thought. To deal with truth one has to use
"impure" thought, in other words thought that is dyed in the grain by
taste, instinct, intuition, imagination. And every philosopher who
attempts to round off his system by pure reason alone, and who
refuses to recognize that the only adequate organ of research is the
complex vision, is a philosopher who sooner or later will be caught
red-handed in the unphilosophic act of covering his tracks.
No philosopher is on safe ground, no philosopher can offer us a
massive organic concrete representation of reality who is shy of all
pictorial images. They are dangerous and treacherous things; but it
is better to be led astray by them than to avoid them altogether.
The mythological symbolism of antique thought was full of this
pictorial tendency and even now the shrewdest of modern thinkers
are compelled to use images drawn from antique mythology. Poetic
thought may go astray. But it can never negate itself into quite the
thin simulacrum of reality into which pure reason divorced from
poetic imagery is capable of fading.
After all, the most obstinate and irreducible of all pictorial
representations is the obvious one of the material universe with our
physical body as the centre of it. But even this is not complete. In
fact it is extremely far from complete, directly we think closely
about it. For not only does such a picture omit the real centre, that
indescribable "something" we call the "soul," it also loses itself in
unthinkable darkness when it considers any one of its own
unfathomable horizons.
It cannot be regarded as a very adequate picture when both the
centre of it and the circumference of it baffle thought. The
materialist or "objectivist" may be satisfied with such a result, but
it is a result which does not answer the question of philosophy, but
rather denies that any answer is possible. But though this obvious
objective spectacle of the universe, with our bodily self as a part of
it, cannot satisfy the demands of the complex vision, it is at least
certain that no philosophy which does not include this and accept
this and continually return to this, can satisfy these demands.
The complex vision requires the reality of this objective spectacle
but it also requires recognition of certain basic assumptions, implicit
in this spectacle, which the materialist refuses to consider.
And the most comprehensive of these assumptions is nothing less
than the complex vision itself, with that "something," which is the
soul, as its inscrutable base. Thus I am permitted to retain, in spite
of its arbitrary fantasy, my pictorial image of a pyramidal arrow of
fire, moving from darkness to darkness. My picture were false to my
conception if it did not depict the whole pyramid, with the soul itself
as its base, moving, in its complete totality, from mystery to
mystery.
It may move upwards, downwards, or, as I myself seem to see it,
horizontally. But as long as it keeps its apex-point directed to the
mystery in front of it, it matters little how we conceive of it as
moving. That it should _move_, in some way or another, is the gist
of my demand upon it; for, if it does not move, nothing moves; and
life itself is swallowed up in nothingness.
This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by
nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The
eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest
between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision
reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.