THE ASPECTS OF THE COMPLEX VISION
The aspects of the complex vision may be separated from one
another according to many systems of classifications. As long as, in
the brief summary which follows, I include the more obvious and
more important of these aspects, I shall be doing all that the
philosophy of the complex vision demands.
The reader is quite at liberty to make a different classification from
mine, if mine appears unconvincing to him. The general trend of my
argument will not be in any serious way affected, as long as he
admits that I have followed the tradition of ordinary human
language, in the classification which I have preferred.
It seems to me, then, that the aspects of the complex vision are
eleven in number; and that they may be summarized as consisting of
reason, self-consciousness, will, the aesthetic sense, or "taste,"
imagination, memory, conscience, sensation, instinct, intuition and
emotion.
These eleven aspects or attributes are not to be regarded as
absolutely separate "functions," but rather as relatively separate
"energies" of the one concrete soul-monad. The complex vision is
the vision of an irreducible living entity which pours itself as a
whole into every one of its various energizings. And though it pours
itself as a whole into each one of these, and though each one of
these contains the latent potentiality of all the rest, the nature of
the complex vision is such that it necessarily takes colour and form
from the particular aspect or attribute through which at the moment
it is especially energizing.
It is precisely here that the danger of "disproportion" was found. For
the complex vision with the whole weight of all its aspects behind it
receives the colour and the form of only one of them. We can see
the result of this from the tenacity--implying the presence of
emotion and will--with which some philosopher of pure reason
passionately and imaginatively defends his logical conclusion.
But we are ourselves proof of it in every moment of our lives.
Confronted with some definite external situation, of a happy or
unhappy character, we fling ourselves upon this new intrusion with
the momentum of our whole being; and it becomes largely a matter
of accident whether our reaction of the moment is coloured by
reason or by will or by imagination or by taste. Immersed in the tide
of experience, receiving shock after shock from alien and hostile
forces, we struggle with the weight of our whole soul against each
particular obstacle, not stopping to regulate the complicated
machinery of our vision but just seizing upon the thing, or trying to
avoid it, with whatever energy serves our purpose best at the
moment.
This is especially true of small and occasional pleasures or small
and occasional annoyances. A supreme pleasure or a supreme pain
forces us to gather our complex vision together, forces us to make
use of its apex-thought, so that we can embrace the ecstasy or fling
ourselves upon the misery with a co-ordinated power. It is the little
casual annoyances and reliefs of our normal days which are so hard
to deal with in the spirit of philosophic art, because these little
pleasures and pains while making a superficial appeal to the reason
or the emotion or the will or the conscience, are not drastic or
formidable enough to drive us into any concentration of the
apex-thought which shall harmonize our confused energies.
The fatal ease with which the whole complex vision gets itself
coloured by and obsessed by one of its own attributes may be
proved by the history of philosophy itself. Individual philosophers
have, over and over again, plunged with furious tenacity into the
mystery of life with a complex vision distorted, deformed and
over-balanced.
I seem to see the complex vision of such thinkers taking some
grotesque shape whereby the apex-point of effective thought is
blunted and broken. The loss and misery, or the yet more ignoble
comfort, of such suppressions of the apex-thought, is however a
personal matter. Those "invisible companions," or immortal
children of the universe, who are implicitly present as the
background of all human discussion, grow constantly more definite
and articulate the apprehension of the general human mind by
reason of these personal aberrations.
It is perhaps rather to the great artists of our race than to any
philosopher at all that these invisible ones reveal themselves, but in
their gradual disclosure to the consciousness of the human race, they
are certainly assisted by the most insane and unbalanced plunges
into mystery, of this and the other abnormal individual. The paradox
may indeed be hazarded that the madder and more abnormal are the
individual's attempts to dig himself into the very nerves and fibres
of reality, the clearer and more definite as far as consciousness of
the race is concerned, does the revelation of these invisible ones
grow.
The abnormal individual whose complex vision is distorted almost
out of human recognition by the predominance of some one
attribute, is yet, in his madness and morbidity, a wonderful engine
of research for the clairvoyance of humanity.
The vision of the immortals, as a background to all further
discussion, is rendered richer and more rhythmical every day, or
rather the hidden rhythm of their being is revealed more clearly
every day, by the eccentricities and maladies, nay! by the insanities
and desperations, of individual victims of life.
Thus it comes about that, while the supreme artists, whose
approximation, to the vision of the invisible ones is closest, remain
our unique masters, the lower crowd of moderately sane and
moderately well-balanced persons are of less value to humanity than
those abnormal and wayward ones whose psychic distortions are the
world's perverted instruments of research.
A philosopher of this unbalanced kind is indeed a sort of living
sacrifice or victim of self-vivisection, out of whose demonic
discoveries--bizarre and fantastic though they may seem to the
lower sanity of the mob--the true rhythmic vision of the immortals
is made clearer and more articulate.
The kind of balance or sanity which such average persons, as are
commonly called "men of the world," possess is in reality further
removed from true vision than all the madness of these debauches of
specialized research. For the consummation of the complex vision is
a meeting place of desperate and violent extremes; extremes, not
watered down nor modified nor even "reconciled," certainly not
cancelled by one another, but held forcibly and deliberately together
by an arbitrary act of the apex-thought of the human soul.
As I glance at these basic activities of the complex vision one by
one, I would beg the reader to sink as far as he can into the recesses
of his own identity; so that he may discover whether what he finds
there agrees in substance--call it by what name he pleases and
explain it how he pleases--with each particular energy I name, as I
indicate such energies in my own way.
Consider the attitude of self-consciousness. That man is self-conscious
is a basic and perhaps a tragic fact that surely requires no
proof. The power of thinking "I am I" is an ultimate endowment of
personality, outside of which, except by an act of primordial faith,
we cannot pass. The phenomenon of human growth from infancy to
maturity proves that it is possible for this self-consciousness--this
power of saying "I am I"--to become clearer and more articulate
from day to day. It seems as impossible to fix upon a definite
moment in a child's life where we can draw a line and say "_there_
he was unconscious of himself and _here_ he is conscious of
himself" as it is impossible to observe as an actual visible movement
the child's growth in stature.
Between consciousness and self-consciousness the dividing line
seems to be as difficult to define as it is difficult to define the
line between sub-consciousness and consciousness. My existence as a
self-conscious entity capable of thinking "I am I" is the basic
assumption of all thought. And though it is possible for my thought
to turn round upon itself and deny my own existence, such thought
in the process of such a denial cuts the very ground away which is
the leaping point of any further advance.
Philosophy by such drastic scepticism is reduced to complete
silence. You cannot build up anything except illusion from a basis
that is itself illusion. If I were not self-conscious there would be no
centre or substratum or coherence or unity in any thought I had. If I
were not self-conscious I should be unable to think.
Consider, then, the attribute of reason. That we possess reason is
also a fact that carries with it its own evidence. It is reason which
at this very moment--reason of some sort, at any rate--I am bound to
use, in estimating the important place or the unimportant place
which reason itself should occupy. You cannot derogate from the
value of reason without using reason. You cannot put reason into an
inferior category, when compared with will or instinct or emotion,
without using reason itself to prove such an inferiority.
We may come to the conclusion that the universe is rather irrational
than rational. We may come to the conclusion that the secret of life
transcends and over-brims all rationality. But this very conclusion
as to the irrational nature of the mystery with which reason is
attempting to deal is itself a conclusion of the reason.
There is only one power which is able to put reason aside in its
search for truth and that power is reason.
Consider, then, the attribute of will. That we possess a definite and
distinct energy whose activity may be contrasted with the rest and
may be legitimately named "the will" is certainly less self-evident
than either of the two preceding propositions but is none the less
implied in both of them. For in the act of articulating to ourself the
definite thought "I am I" we are using our will. The motive-force
may be anything. We may for instance will an answer to the implied
question "_what_ am I," and our self-consciousness may return the
answer "I am I," leaving it to the reason to deal with this answer as
best it can. The motive may be anything or nothing. Both
consciousness and will are independent of motive.
For in all these primordial energizings of the complex vision
everything that happens, happens simultaneously. With the
consciousness "I am I" there comes simultaneously into existence
the consciousness of an external universe which is, at one and the
same time, included in the circle of the "I am I" and outside the
circle. That is to say when we think the thought "I am I," we feel
ourselves to be the whole universe thinking "I am I," and yet by a
primordial contradiction, we feel ourselves to be an "I am I"
opposed to the universe and contrasted with the universe.
But all this happens simultaneously; and the consciousness that we
are ourselves implies, at one and the same time, the consciousness
that we _are_ the universe and the consciousness that we are
_inside_ the universe.
And precisely as the fact of self-consciousness implies the
primordial duality and contradiction of being at once the whole
universe and something inside the universe, so the original fact of
our thinking at all, implies the activity of the will.
We think because we are "thinking animals" and we will because
we are "willing animals." The presence of what we call motive is
something that comes and goes intermittently and which may or
may not be present from the first awakening of consciousness. We
_may_ think "I am I" at the very dawn of consciousness under the
pressure of a vague motive of clearing up a confused situation. We
_may_ use our reason at the very dawn of consciousness under the
pressure of a vague motive of alleviating the distress of disorder
with the comfort of order. But, on the other hand, self-consciousness
may play its part, reason may play its part and the will may play its
part in the complete absence of any definite motive. There is such a
thing--and this is the point I am anxious to make--as _motiveless_
will. Certain thinkers have sought to eliminate the will altogether by
substituting for it the direct impact or pressure of some motive or
motive-force. But if the will can be proved to be a primordial energy
of the complex vision and if the conception of a motiveless exertion
of the will is a legitimate conception, then, although we must admit
the intermittent appearance and disappearance of all manner of
motives, we have no right to substitute motive for will. If we do
make such a substitution, all we really achieve is simply a change of
_name_; and our new motive is the old will "writ small."
Motives undoubtedly may come and go from the beginning of
consciousness and the beginning of will. They may flutter like
butterflies round both the consciousness and the will. For instance it
is clear that I am not _always_ articulating to myself the notable or
troublesome thought "I am I." I may be sometimes so lost and
absorbed in sensation that I quite forget this interesting fact. But it
may easily happen at such times that I definitely experience the
_sensation of choice_; of choice between an intensification of
self-consciousness and a continued blind enjoyment of this external
preoccupation. And it is from this _sensation of choice_ that we
gather weight for our contention that the will is a basic attribute of
the human soul.
It is certainly true that we are often able to detach ourselves from
ourselves and to watch the struggle going on between two opposite
motive-forces, quite unaware, it might seem, and almost indifferent,
as to how the contest will end.
But this struggle between opposite motives does not obliterate our
sensation of choice. It sometimes intensifies it to an extreme point
of quite painful suspension. The opposite motives may be engaged
in a struggle. But the field of the struggle is what we call the will.
And it may even sometimes happen that the will intervenes between
a weaker and stronger motive and, out of arbitrary pride and the
pleasure of exertion for the sake of exertion, throws its weight on
the weaker side.
It is a well-known psychological fact that the complex vision can
energize, with vigorous spontaneity, through the will alone, just as it
can energize through sensation alone. The will can, so to speak,
stretch its muscles and gather itself together for attack or defence at
a moment when there is no particular necessity for its use.
Some degree of self-consciousness is bound to accompany this
"motiveless stretching" of the will, for the simple reason that it is
not "will in the abstract" which makes such a movement but the
totality of the complex vision, though in this case all other
attributes of the complex vision, including self-consciousness and
reason, are held in subordination to the will.
Man is a philosophical animal; and he philosophizes as inevitably as
he breathes. He is also an animal possessed of will; and he uses his
will as inevitably as, in the process of breathing, he uses his lungs
or his throat. Around him, from the beginning, all manner of motives
may flutter like birds on the wing. They may be completely
different motives in the case of different personalities. But in all
personalities there is consciousness, to grasp these motives; and in
all personalities there is will, to accept or to reject these motives.
The question of the freedom of the will is a question which
necessarily enters into our discussion.
The will feels itself--or rather consciousness feels the will to be--at
once free and limited. The soul does not feel it is free to do anything
it pleases. That at least is certain. For without some limitation,
without something resistant to exert itself upon, the will could not
be known. An absolutely free will is unthinkable. The very nature of
the will implies a struggle with some sort of resistance.
The will is, therefore, by the terms of its original definition and by
the original feeling which the soul experiences in regard to it,
limited in its freedom. The problem resolves itself, therefore, if once
we grant the existence of the will, into the question of how much
freedom the will has or how far it is limited. Is it, for instance, when
we know all the conditions of its activity, entirely limited? Is the
freedom of the will an illusion?
It is just at this point that the logical reason makes a savage attempt
to dominate the situation. The logical reason arrives step by step at
the inevitable conclusion that the will has no freedom at all but is
absolutely limited.
On the other hand emotion, instinct, imagination, intuition, and
conscience, all assume that the limitation of the will is not absolute
but that within certain boundaries, which themselves are by no
means fixed or permanent, the will is free.
Consciousness itself must be added to this list. For whatever
arguments may be used in the realm of thought, when the moment
of choice arrives in the realm of action, we are always conscious of
the will as free. If the reason is justified in regarding the freedom
of the will as an illusion, we are justified in denying the existence
of the will altogether. For a will with only an illusion of freedom is
not a will at all. In that ease it were better to eliminate the will
and regard the soul as a thing which acts and reacts under the stimuli
of motives like a helpless automaton endowed with consciousness.
But the wiser course is to experiment with the will and let it prove
its freedom to the sceptical reason by helping that same reason to
retire into its proper place and associate itself with the apex-thought
of the complex vision.
Leaving the will then, as a thing limited and yet free, let us pass to
a consideration of what I call "taste." This is the aesthetic sense, an
original activity of the human soul, associated with that universal
tendency in life and nature which we name the beautiful. I use the
word "taste" at this moment in preference to "aesthetic sense,"
because I feel that this particular original activity of the complex
vision has a wider field than is commonly supposed. I regard it, in
fact, as including much more than the mere sense of beauty. I regard
it as a direct organ of research, comparable to instinct or intuition,
but covering a different ground. I regard it as a mysterious
clairvoyance of the soul, capable of discriminating between certain
everlasting opposites, which together make up an eternal duality in
the very depths of existence.
These opposites imply larger and more complicated issues than are
implied in the words beautiful and ugly. The real and the unreal, the
interesting and the uninteresting, the significant and the
insignificant, the suggestive and the meaningless, the arresting and
the commonplace, the exciting and the dull, the organic and the
affected, the dramatic and the undramatic, are only some of the
differences implied.
The fact that art is constantly using what we call the ugly as well as
what we call the commonplace, and turning both these into new
forms of beauty, is a fact that considerably complicates the
situation. And what art, the culminating creative energy of the
aesthetic sense, can do, the aesthetic sense itself can do with its
critical and receptive power.
So that in the aesthetic sense, or in what I call "taste," we have an
energy which is at once receptive and creative; at once capable of
responding to this eternal duality, and of creating new forms of
beauty and interest _out of_ the ugly and uninteresting. A new name
is really required for this thing. A name is required for it that
conveys a more creative implication than the word "taste," a word
which has an irresponsible, arbitrary, and even flippant sound, and a
more passionate, religious, and ecstatic implication than the word
"aesthetic," a word which suggests something calculated, cold,
learned, and a little tame. I use the word "taste" at this particular
moment because this word implies a certain challenge to both
reason and conscience, and some such challenge it is necessary to
insist upon, if this particular energy of the soul is to defend its
basic integrity.
This ultimate attribute of personality, then, which I call "taste"
reveals to us an aspect of the system of things quite different from
those revealed by the other activities of the human soul. This aspect
of the universe, or this "open secret" of the universe, loses itself,
as all the others do in unfathomable abysses. It descends to the very
roots of life. It springs from the original reservoirs of life. It has
depths which no mental logic can sound; and it has horizons in the
presence of which the mind stops baffled. When we use the term "the
beautiful" to indicate the nature of what it reveals, we are easily
misled; because in current superficial speech--and unless the word is
used by a great artist--the term "beautiful" has a narrow and limited
meaning. Dropping the term "taste" then, as having served its
purpose, and reverting to the more academic phrase "aesthetic
sense" we must note that the unfathomable duality revealed by this
aesthetic sense covers, as I have hinted, much more ground than is
covered by the narrow terms "beauty" and "ugliness."
It must be understood, moreover, that what is revealed by the aesthetic
sense is a struggle, a conflict, a war, a contradiction, going
on in the heart of things. The aesthetic sense does not only reveal
loveliness and distinction; it also reveals the grotesque, the bizarre,
the outrageous, the indecent and the diabolic. If we prefer to use the
term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include
_both sides_ of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard
as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts,
with its appalling evil, with its bitter pain, and with its intolerable
dreariness.
The "beautiful" will then become nothing less than the whole
dramatic vortex regarded from the aesthetic point of view. Life with
all its contradictions, considered as an aesthetic spectacle, will
become "beautiful" to us. This is undoubtedly one form which the
aesthetic sense assumes; the form of justifying existence, in all its
horror and loathsomeness as well as in all its magical attraction.
Another form the aesthetic sense may assume is the form of "taking
sides" in this eternal struggle; of using its inspiration to destroy,
or to make us forget, the brutality of things, by concentrating our
attention upon what in the narrow sense we call the beautiful or the
distinguished or the lovely. But there is yet a third form the
aesthetic sense may assume. Not only can it visualize the whole
chaotic struggle between beauty and hideousness as itself a beautiful
drama; not only can it so concentrate upon beauty that we forget the
hideousness; it is also able to see the world as a humorous spectacle.
When the aesthetic sense regards the whole universe as "beautiful"
it must necessarily regard the whole universe as tragic; for the pain
and dreariness and devilishness in the universe is so unspeakable
that any "beauty" which includes such things must be a tragic
beauty. Not to recognize this and to attempt to "accept" the universe
as something which is not tragic, is to outrage and insult the
aesthetic sense.
But we may regard the universe as tragic without regarding it as
"beautiful" and yet remain under the power of the aesthetic energy.
For there exists a primordial aspect of the aesthetic vision which is
not concerned with the beautiful at all, or only with the beautiful in
so wide a latitude as to transcend all ordinary usage, and this is our
sense of humour.
The universe as the human soul perceives it, is horribly and most
tragically humorous. Man is the laughing animal; and the "perilous
stuff" which tickles his aesthetic sense with a revelation of
outrageous comedy has its roots in the profoundest abyss. This
humorous aspect of the system of things is just as primordial and
intrinsic as what we call the "beautiful." The human soul is able to
pour the whole stream of its complex vision through this fantastic
casement. It knows how to respond to the "diablerie" of the abysses
with a reciprocal gesture. It is able to answer irony with irony; and
to the appalling grotesqueness and indecency of the universe it has
the power of retorting with an equally shameless leer.
But this sardonic aspect of human humour, though tallying truly
enough with one eternal facet of the universe, does not exhaust the
humorous potentiality of the aesthetic sense. There is a "good" irony
as well as a "wicked" irony. Humour can be found in alliance with
the emotion of love as well as with the emotion of hate. Humour can
be kind as well as cruel; and there is no doubt that the aesthetic
spectacle of the world is as profoundly humorous in a quite normal
sense as it is beautiful or noble or horrible.
Turning now to that primeval attribute of the complex vision which
we call emotion, we certainly enter the presence of something
whose existence cannot be denied or explained away. Directly we
grow conscious of ourselves, directly we use reason or instinct or
the aesthetic sense, we are aware of an emotional reaction. This
emotional reaction may be resolved into a basic duality, the activity
of love and the activity of the opposite of love.
I say "the opposite of love" deliberately; because I am anxious to
indicate, in regard to emotion, how difficult it is to find adequate
words to cover the actual field of what we feel.
I should like to write even the word "love" with some such mark of
hesitation. For, just because of the appalling importance of this
ultimate duality, it is essential to be on our guard against the use
of words which convey a narrow, crude, rough-and-ready, and
superficial meaning. By the emotion of "love" I do not mean the
amorous phenomenon which we call "being in love." Nor do I mean
the calmer emotion which we call "affection." The passion of
friendship, when friendship really becomes a passion, is nearer my
meaning than any of these. And yet the emotion of love, conceived
as one side of this eternal duality, is much more than the "passion of
friendship"; because it is an emotion that can be felt in the presence
of things and ideas as well as persons. Perhaps the emotion of love
as symbolized in the figure of Christ, combined with the aesthetic
and intellectual passion inherited from the Greek philosophers,
comes nearest to what I have in mind; though even this, without
some tangible and concrete embodiment, tends to escape us and
evade analysis.
And if it is hard to define this "love" which is the protagonist, so to
speak, in the world's emotional drama, it is still harder to define its
opposite, its antagonist. I could name this by the name of "hate," the
ordinary antithesis of love, but if I did so it would have to be with a
very wide connotation.
The true opposite to the sort of "love" I have in my mind is not so
much "hate" as a kind of dull and insensitive hostility, a kind of
brutal malignity and callous aversion. Perhaps what we are looking
for as the true opposite of love may be best defined as malice.
Malice seems to convey a more impersonal depth and a wider reach
of activity than the word hate and has also a clearer suggestion of
deliberate insensitiveness about it. The most concentrated and
energetic opposite of love is not either hate or malice. It is
_cruelty_; which is a thing that seems to draw its evil inspiration
from the profoundest depths of conscious existence.
But cruelty must necessarily have for its "object" something living
and sentient. A spiritual feeling, a work of art, an idea, a principle,
a landscape, a theory, an inanimate group of things, could not be
contemplated with an emotion of cruelty, though it could certainly
be contemplated with an emotion of malice.
There is often, if not always, a strange admixture of sensuality in
cruelty. Cruelty, profoundly evil as it is, has a living intensity
which makes it less dull, less thick, less deliberately insensitive,
less coldly hostile, than the pure emotion of malice, and therefore
less adapted than malice to be regarded as the true opposite of love.
But the best indication of the distinction I want to make will be
found in the contrast between the conceptions of creation and
destruction. The dull, thick, insensitive callousness which we are
conscious of in the opposite of love is an indication that while love
is essentially creative the opposite of love is essentially _that
which resists creation_.
The opposite of love is not destructive in the sense of being an
active destructive force. Such an active destructive force must
necessarily, by reason of the passionate energy in it, be a perversion
of creative power, not the opposite of creative power.
Creative power, even in its unperverted activity, must always be
capable of destroying. It must be capable of destroying what is in
the way of further creation. Thus the true opposite of creation is not
destruction, but the inert, heavy, thick, callous, brutal, insensitive
"obscurantism" or "material opacity" which resists the pressure of
the creative spirit.
By this analysis of the ultimate duality of emotion we are put in
possession of a basic aspect of the complex vision, which must
largely shape and determine its total activity. The soul within us,
that mysterious "something" which is the living and concrete
"person" whose vision the complex vision is, is a thing subject at the
start to this unfathomable duality, the emotion of love and the
emotion of malice.
The emotion of love is the life-begetting, life-conceiving force, the
creator of beauty, the discoverer of truth, and the reconciler of
eternal contradictions.
The emotion of malice, with its frozen sneer of sardonic denial,
raises its "infernal fist" against the centrifugal outflowing of the
emotion of love. It is impossible to conceive of self-consciousness
without love and hatred; or, as I prefer to say, without love and
malice. Self-consciousness implies from the start what we call the
universe; and the universe cannot appear upon the scene without
exciting in us the emotion of love and hate. Every man born into the
world loves and hates directly he is conscious of the world. This is
the ultimate duality. Attraction and repulsion is the material formula
for this contradiction.
If everything in the world were illusion except one Universal Being,
such a being must necessarily be thought of as experiencing the
emotion of self-love and of self-hatred. A condition of absolute
indifference is unthinkable. Such indifference could not last a
moment without becoming either that faint hatred, which we call
"boredom," or that faint love, which we call "interest." The
contemplation of the universe with no emotional reaction of any
kind is an inconceivable thing. An infant at its mother's breast
displays love and malice. At one and the same moment it satisfies
its thirst and beats upon the breast that feeds it.
The primordial process of philosophizing and the primal will to
philosophize are both of them penetrated through and through, with
this ultimate duality of love and malice. Love and malice in
alternate impulse are found latent and potent in every philosophic
effort. Behind every philosophy, if we have the love or the malice to
seek for it, may be found the love or malice, or both of them, side
by side, of the individual philosopher. That pure and unemotional
desire for truth for its own sake which is the privilege of physical
science cannot retain its simplicity when confronted with the deeper
problems of philosophy. It cannot do so because the complex vision
with which we philosophize contains emotion as one of its basic
attributes.
To consider next, the attribute of imagination. Imagination seems,
when we analyse it, to resolve itself into the half-creative,
half-interpretative act by which the complex personality seizes upon,
plunges into, and moulds to its purpose, that deeper unity in any
group of things which gives such a group its larger and more
penetrating significance.
Imagination differs from intuition in the fact that by its creative and
interpretative power it dominates, possesses and moulds the material
it works upon. Intuition is entirely receptive and it receives the
illumination offered to it at one single indrawing, at one breath.
Imagination may be regarded as a male attribute; intuition as a
feminine one; although in a thousand individual cases the situation
is actually reversed.
To realize the primary importance of imagination one has only to
visualize reason, will, taste, sensation, and so forth, energizing in
its absence. One becomes aware at once that such a limited activity
does not cover the field of man's complex vision. Something--a
power that creates, interprets, illumines, gathers up into large and
flowing outlines--is absent from such an experience.
Consider, in the next place, that primordial attribute of the complex
vision which we commonly name conscience. We are not concerned
here with the world-old discussion as to the "origin" of conscience.
Conscience, from the point of view we are now considering, is just
as fundamental and axiomatic as will, or intuition, or sensation.
The philosophy of the complex vision retains, with regard to what is
called "evolution," a completely suspended judgment. The process
of historic evolution may or may not have resulted in the particular
differentiation of species which we now behold. What we are now
assuming is that, in whatever way the differentiation of actual living
organisms has come about, every particular living organism,
including the planetary and stellar bodies, must possess in some
degree or other the organ of apprehension which we call the
complex vision.
Our assumption, in fact, is that every living thing has personality;
that personality implies the existence of a definite soul-monad; that
where such a soul-monad exists there is a complex vision; and
finally that, where there is a complex vision, there must be, in some
rudimentary or embryotic state, the eleven attributes of such a
vision, including the attribute which the human race has come to
call "conscience" and which is, in reality, "the power of response" to
the vision which we have named "immortal." When evolutionists
retort to us that what we call personality is only a late and accidental
phenomenon in the long process of evolution, our answer is that
when they seek, according to such an assumption, to visualize the
universe as it was _before personality appeared_, they really, only in
a surreptitious and illegitimate manner, project their own conscious
personality into "the vast backward and abysm of time," to be the
invisible witness of this pre-personal universe.
Thus when evolutionists assure us that there was once a period in
the history of the stellar system when nothing existed but masses of
gaseous nebulae, our reply is that they have forgotten that invisible
and shadowy projection of their own personality which is the
pre-supposed watcher or witness of this "nothing-but-nebulae" state of
things.
The doctrine or hypothesis of evolution does not in any degree
explain the mystery of the universe. All it does is to offer us an
hypothetical picture--true or false--of the manner in which the
changes of organic and inorganic life succeeded one another in their
historic creation. Evolutionists have to make their start somewhere,
just as "personalists" have; and it is much more difficult for them to
show how masses of utterly unconscious "nebulae" evoked the
mystery of personality than it is for us to show how the primordial
existence of personality demands at the very start some sort of
material or bodily expression, whether of a nebular or of any other
kind.
Evolutionists, forgetting the presence of that invisible "watcher" of
their evolutionary process which they have themselves projected
into the remote planetary past, assume as their axiomatic "data" that
soulless unconscious chemical elements possess "within them" the
miraculous power of producing living personalities. All one has to
do is to pile up thousands upon thousands of years in which the
miracle takes place.
But the philosophy of the complex vision would indicate that no
amount of piling up of centuries upon centuries could possibly
produce out of "unconscious matter" the perilous and curious "stuff"
which we call "consciousness of life." And we would further reply
to the evolutionists that their initial assumption as to the objective
existence, suspended in a vacuum, of masses of material chemistry
is an assumption which has been abstracted and isolated from the
total volume of those sense-impressions, which are the only actual
reality we know, and which are the impressions made, in human
experience, upon some living personality.
This criticism of the evolutionists' inevitable attack upon us enters
naturally at this point; because, while the average mind is willing
enough to grant some sort of vague omnipresent "will to evolve" to
the primordial "nebula" and even prepared to allow it such obscure
consciousness as is implied in the phrase "life-force" or "élan vital,"
it is startled and shocked to a supreme degree when we assert that
such "nebula," if it existed, was the outward body or form of a
living "soul-monad" possessed, even as human beings are, of every
attribute of the complex vision.
The average mind, in its vague and careless mood, is ready to accept
our contention that some sort of will or reason or consciousness
existed at the beginning of things. It is only when such a mind
comes to realize that what we are predicating is actual personality,
with all the implications of that, that it cries out in protest. The
average mind can swallow our contention that reason and will
existed from the beginning because the average mind has been
penetrated for centuries by vague traditions of an "over-soul" or an
universal "reason" or "will." It is only when in our analysis of the
attributes of personality we come bolt up against the especially
anthropomorphic attribute of "conscience" that it staggers and
gasps.
For the original "stellar gas" to be vaguely animated by some
obscure "élan vital" seemed natural enough; but for it to be the
"body" of some definite living soul seems almost humorous; and for
such a living soul to possess the attribute of "conscience," or the
power of response to the vision of immortals, seems not only
humorous but positively absurd.
The philosophy of the complex vision, however, in its analysis of
the eternal elements of personality is not in the least afraid of
reaching conclusions which appear "absurd" to the average
intelligence. The philosophy of the complex vision accepts the
element of the "absurd" or of the "outrageous" or of the "fantastic"
in its primordial assumptions; for according to its contention this
element of the "apparently impossible" is an essential ingredient in
the whole system of things.
Life, according to this philosophy, is only one aspect of personality.
Another aspect of personality is the apparently miraculous creation
of "something" out of "nothing"; for the unfathomable creative
power of personality extends beyond and below all the organic
phenomena which we group vaguely together under the name of
"life."
Thus when in our analysis of the attributes of the complex vision we
are confronted by the evolutionary question as to how such a thing,
as the thing we call "conscience," got itself lodged in the little
cells of the human cranium, our answer is that the question stated in
this manner does not touch the essential problem at all. The essential
problem from the point of view of the philosophy of the complex
vision is not how "conscience," or why other attribute of the soul,
got itself lodged in the human skull, or expressed, shall we say,
through the human skull, but how it is that the whole stream of
sense-impressions, of which the hardness and thickness of the
human skull is only one impression among many, and the original
"star-dust" or "star-nebulae" only another impression among many,
ever got itself unified and synthesized into the form of "impression"
at all.
In other words the problem is not how the attributes of the soul
arose from the chemistry of the brain and the nerves; but how the
brain and the nerves together with the whole stream of material
phenomena from the star-dust upwards, ever got themselves unified
and focussed into any sort of intelligibility or system. The average
human mind which feels a shock of distrust and suspicion directly
we suggest that the thing we name "conscience," defined as the
power of response to the ideal vision, is an inalienable aspect of
what we call "the soul" wherever the soul exists, feels no sort of
shock or surprise when we appeal to its own "conscience," or when
it appeals to the "conscience" of its child or its dog or even of its
cat, or when it displays anger with its trees or its flowers for
their apparent wilfulness and errancy.
Kant found in the moral sense of humanity his door of escape from
the fatal relativity of pure reason with its confounding antinomies.
Huxley found in the moral sense of humanity a mysterious,
unrelated phenomenon that refused to fall into line with the rest of
the evolutionary-stream. But when, in one hold act of faith or of
imagination, we project the content of our own individual soul into
the circle of every other possible "soul," including the "souls" of
such phenomenal vortices of matter as those from which historic
evolution takes its start, this impossible gulf or "lacuna" dividing
the human scene from all previous "scenes" is immediately bridged;
and the whole stream of material sense-impression flows forward, in
parallel and consonant congruity, with the underlying creative
energy of all the complex visions of which it is the expression.
Therefore, there is no need for us, in our consideration of the basic
attribute of the soul which we call conscience, to tease ourselves
with the fabulous image of some prehistoric "cave-man" supposedly
devoid of such a sense. To do this is to employ a trick of the
isolated reason quite alien from our real human imagination.
Our own personality is so constructed that it is impossible for us to
realize with any sort of intelligent sympathy what the feelings of
this conscience-less cave-man would be. To contemplate his
existence at all we have to resort to pure rationalistic speculation.
We have to leave our actual human experience completely behind.
But the philosophy of the complex vision is an attempt to interpret
the mystery of the universe in terms of nothing else than actual
human experience. So we are not only permitted but compelled to
put out of court this conscience-less cave-man of pure speculation.
It is true that we encounter certain eccentric human beings who
deny that they possess this "moral sense"; but one has only to
observe them for a little while under the pressure of actual life to
find out how they deceive themselves.
Experience certainly indicates that every human being, however
normal and "good," has somewhere in him a touch of insanity and a
vein of anti-social aberration. But no human being, however
abnormal or however "criminal," is born into the world without this
invisible monitor we call "conscience."
The curious pathological experience which might be called
"conscience-killing" is certainly not uncommon. But it is an
experiment that has never been more than approximately successful.
In precisely the same way we might practise "reason-killing" or
"intuition-killing" or "taste-killing." One may set out to hunt and
try to kill any basic attribute of our complex vision; but the proof of
the truth of our whole argument lies in the fact that these murderous
campaigns are never completely successful. The "murdered"
attribute refuses to remain quiet in its grave. It stretches out an arm
from beneath the earth. It shakes the dust off and comes to life
again.
When we leave the question as to the existence of conscience, and
enquire what the precise and particular "command" of conscience
may be in any individual case, we approach the edge of an
altogether different problem.
The particular message or command of conscience is bound to differ
in a thousand ways in the cases of different personalities. Only in its
ultimate essence it cannot differ. Because, in its ultimate essence,
the conscience of every individual is confronted by that eternal
duality of love and malice which is the universal contradiction at the
basis of every living soul.
But short of this there is room for an infinite variety of "categorical
imperatives." The conscience of one personality is able to accept as
its "good" the very same thing that another personality is compelled
to regard as its "evil." Indeed it is conceivable that a moment might
arise in the history of the race when one single solitary individual
called that thing "good" or that thing "evil" which all the rest of the
world regarded in the opposite sense. Not only so; but it might even
happen that the genius and persuasiveness of such a person might
change into its direct opposite the moral valuation of the whole of
humanity. In many quite ordinary cases there may arise a clash
between the conventional morality of the community and the verdict
of an individual conscience. In such cases it would be towards what
the community termed "immoral" that the conscience of the
individual would point, and from the thing that the community
termed "moral" that it would turn instinctively away.
A conscience of this kind would suffer the pain of remorse when in
its weakness it let itself be swayed by the "community-morality"
and it would experience the pleasure of relief when in absolute
loneliness it defied the verdict of society.
Let us consider now an attribute of man's complex vision which
must instantaneously be accepted as basic and fundamental by every
living person. I refer to what we call "sensation." The impressions
of the outward senses may be criticized. They may be corrected,
modified, reduced to order, and supplemented by other considerations.
Conclusions based upon them may be questioned. But whatever be done
with them, or made by them, they must always remain an integral
and inveterate aspect of man's personality.
The sensations of pain and pleasure--who can deny the primordial
and inescapable character of these? Not that the pursuit of pleasure
or the avoidance of pain can be the unbroken motive-force even of
the most hedonistic among us. Our complex vision frequently flings
us passionately upon pain. We often embrace pain in an ecstasy of
welcome. Nor is this fierce embracing of pain "motivated" by a
deliberate desire to get pleasure out of pain. It seems in some
strange way due to an attraction towards pain for its own sake--
towards pain, as though pain were really beautiful and desirable in
itself. One element in all this is undoubtedly due to the desire of
the will to assert its freedom and the integrity of its being; in
other words to the desire of the will towards the irrational, the
capricious, the destructive, the chaotic.
It has been only the least imaginative of philosophers who have
taken for granted that man invariably desires his own welfare. Man
does not even invariably desire his own pleasure. He desires the
reactive vibration of power; and very often this "power" is the
power to rush blindly upon destruction. But, whether dominant or
not as a motive affecting the will, it remains that our experience of
pleasure and pain is a basic experience of the complex vision. And
this experience of sensation is not only a passive experience. The
attribute of sensation has its active, its energetic, its creative
side. No one who has suffered extreme pain or enjoyed exquisite and
thrilling pleasures, can deny the curious fact that these things take
to themselves a kind of independent life within us and become
something very like "entities" or living separate objects.
This phenomenon is due to the fact that our whole personality
incarnates itself in the pain or in the pleasure of the moment. Such
pain, such pleasure, is the quintessential attenuated "matter" with
which our soul clothes itself. At such moments we _are_ the pain;
we _are_ the pleasure. Our human identity seems merged, lost,
annihilated. Our soul seems no longer _our_ soul. It becomes the
soul of the overpowering sensation. We ourselves at such moments
become fiery molecules of pain, burning atoms of pleasure. Just as
the logical reason can abstract itself from the other primal energies
and perform strange and fantastic tricks, so the activity of sensation
can so absorb, obsess and overpower the whole personality that the
rhythm of existence is entirely broken.
Pain at the point of ecstasy, pleasure at the point of ecstasy, are
both of them destructive of those rare moments when our complex vision
resolves itself into music. Such music is indeed itself a kind of
ecstasy; but it is an ecstasy intellectualized and consciously
creative. Pain is present there and pleasure is present there; but
they are there only as orchestral notes in a larger unity that has
absorbed them and transmuted them.
When a work of art by reason of its sensational appeal reduces us to
an ecstasy of pleasure or pain it renders impossible that supreme act
of the complex vision by means of which the immortal calm of the
ideal vision descends upon the unfathomable universe.
Sensation carried to its extreme limit becomes impersonal; for in its
unconscious mechanism personality is devoured. But it does not
become impersonal in that magical liberating sense in which the
impersonal is an escape, bringing with it a feeling of large, cool,
quiet, and unruffled space. It becomes impersonal in a thick, gross,
opaque, mechanical manner.
There is brutality and outrage; there is bestiality and obscenity
about both pain and pleasure when in their voracious maw they devour
the magic of the unfathomable world. Thus it may be noted that most
great and heroic souls hold their supreme pain at a distance from
them, with a proud gesture of contempt, and go down at the last
with their complex vision unruffled and unimpaired. There is indeed
a still deeper "final moment" than this; but it is so rare as to be
out of the reach of average humanity. I refer to an attitude like that
of Jesus upon the cross; in whose mood towards his own suffering
there was no element of "pride of will" but only an immense pity for
the terrible sensitiveness of all life, and a supreme heightening of
the emotion of love towards all life.
It will be noted that in my analysis of "sensation" I have said
nothing of what are usually called "the five senses." These senses
are obviously the material "feelers" or the gates of material
sentiency by which the soul's attribute of sensation feeds itself from
the objective world; but they are so penetrated and percolated,
through and through, by the other basic activities of the soul, that it
is extremely difficult to disentangle from our impressions of sight,
of sound, of touch, of taste, and of smell, those interwoven threads
of reason, imagination and so forth which so profoundly modify and
transmute, even in the art of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and
smelling, the various manifestations of "the objective mystery"
which we apprehend in our sensuous grasp.
By emphasizing the feelings of pleasure and pain as the primary
characteristics of the attribute of sensation we are indicating the
fact that every sensation we experience carries with it in some
perceptible degree or other, the feeling of "well-being" or the
feeling of distress.
We now come to consider that dim, obscure, but nevertheless
powerful energy, which the universal tradition of language dignifies
by the name of "instinct." This "instinct" is the portion of the
activity of the soul which works more blindly and less consciously
than any other.
The French philosopher Bergson isolates and emphasizes this
subterranean activity until it seems to him to hold in its grasp a
deeper secret of life than any other energy which man possesses To
secure for instinct this primary place in the panorama of life it is
necessary to eliminate from the situation that silent witness which
we call "the mind" or self-consciousness; that witness which from
its invisible watch-tower looks forth upon the whole spectacle. It is
necessary to take for granted the long historic stream of
evolutionary development. It is necessary to regard this
development in its organic totality as the sole reality with which we
have to deal.
The invisible mental witness being eliminated, it becomes
necessary, if instinct is to be thus made supreme, to regard the
appearance of the soul as a mere stage in an evolutionary process,
the driving-force of which is the power of instinct itself. Planets
and plants, men and animals, are seen in this way to be all dominated
by instinct; and instinct is found to be so much the most important
element in evolution, that upon it, rather than upon anything else,
the whole future of the universe may be said to depend.
Having made this initial plunge into shameless objectivity, having
put completely out of court the invisible witness of it all, we find
ourselves reduced to regarding this "blind" instinct as the galvanic
battery which moves the world. Thus isolated from the other powers
of the soul, this mysterious energy, this subterranean driving-force,
has to bear the whole weight of everything that happens in space
and time. A strange sort of "blindness" must its blindness be, when
its devices can supply the place of the most passionate intellectual
struggles of the mind!
If it is blind, it gropes its way, in its blindness, through the
uttermost gulfs of space and into the nethermost abysses of life. If
it is dumb, its silence is the irresistible silence of Fate, the
silence of the eternal "Mothers."
But the "instinct" which is one of the basic attributes of the complex
vision is not quite such an awe-inspiring thing as this. To raise it
into such a position as this there has to be a vigorous suppression, as
I have hinted, of many other attributes of the soul. Instinct may be
defined as the pressure of obscure creative desire, drawn from the
inscrutable recesses of the soul, malleable up to a certain point by
reason and will, but beyond that point remaining unconscious,
irrational, incalculable, elusive. That it plays an enormous part in
the process of life cannot be denied; but the part it plays is not so
isolated from consciousness as sometimes has been imagined.
There is in truth a strange reciprocity between instinct and
self-consciousness, according to which they both play into each
other's hands. This is above all true of great artists' work, which
in a superficial sense might be called unconscious, but which in a
deeper sense is profoundly conscious. It seems as though, in great
works of art, a certain superficial reasoning is sacrificed to
instinct, but in that very sacrifice a deeper level of reason is
reached between which and instinct there is no longer anything
but complete understanding.
To intellectualize instinct is one of the profoundest secrets of the
art of life; and it is only when instinct is thus intellectualized, or
brought into focus with the other aspects of the soul, that it is able
to play its proper rhythmic part in the musical synthesis of the
complex vision. But although we cannot allow to instinct the
all-absorbing part in the world-play which Bergson claims for it, it
remains that we have to regard it as one of the most mysterious and
incalculable of the energies of the soul. It is instinct which brings
all living entities into relation with something sub-conscious in their
own nature.
Under the pressure of instinct man recognizes the animal in himself,
the plant in himself, and even a strange affinity with the inorganic
and the inanimate. It is instinct in us which attracts us so strangely
to the earth under our feet. It is instinct which attracts certain
individual souls to certain particular natural elements, such as air,
fire, sand, mould, rain, wind, water, and the like; a kind of remote
atavistic reciprocity in us stretching out towards that particular
element. It is by means of instinct that we are able to sink into that
mysterious sub-conscious world which underlies the conscious
levels of every soul-monad. Under the groping and fumbling
guidance of this strange power we seem to come into touch with the
profoundest reservoirs of our personal identity.
Considering what fantastic and cruel tricks the lonely thinking
power, the abstract reason, has been allowed to play us it is no
wonder that this French philosopher has been tempted to turn away
from reason and find in instinct the ultimate solution. Instinct, as we
give ourselves up to it, seems to carry us into the very nerves and
tissues and veins and pulses of life. Its verdicts seem to reach us
with an absolute and unquestionable authority. They seem to bear
upon them an "imprimatur" more powerful than any moral sanction.
Potent and terrible, direct and final, instinct seems to rise up out of
the depths and break every law.
It leaps forth from our inmost being like a second self more
powerful than we are. It invades religion. It incarnates itself in
lust. It obsesses taste. It masquerades as intuition. It triumphs over
reason. With an irrationality, that seems at the same time terrible
and beautiful, instinct moves straight to its goal. It follows its
purpose with demonic tenacity, heedless of logic, contemptuous of
consequences. It cares nothing for contradictions. It forces
contradictions to lose themselves in one another according to some
secret law of its own, unknown to the law of reason.
Such, then, is instinct, the sub-conscious fatality of Nature so
difficult to control; whose unrestrained activity is capable of
completely destroying the rhythm of the complex vision. Nothing
but the power of the apex-thought of man's whole concentrated
being is able to dominate this thing. It may be detected lurking in
the droop of the Sphinx's eyelids and in the cruel smile upon her
mouth. But the answer given to the challenge of this subterranean
force is not, after all, any logical judgment of the pure reason. It
is the answer of the vision of the artist, holding its treacherous
material under his creative hand.
Let us turn now to the attribute of "intuition." Intuition is a thing
more clearly definable and more easily analysed than almost any
other of the aspects of the soul. Intuition is the feminine counterpart
of imagination; and, as compared with instinct, it is a power which
acts in clearly denned, isolated, intermittent movements, each one of
which has a definite beginning and a definite end. As compared
with imagination, intuition is passive and receptive; as compared
with instinct it does not fumble and grope forward, steadily and
tenaciously, among the roots of things; but it suspends itself,
mirror-like, upon the surface of the unfathomable waters, and
suspended there reflects in swift sudden glimpses the mysterious
movements of the great deep. In this process of reflecting, or
apprehending in sudden, intermittent glimpses, the mysterious depths
of the life of the soul, intuition is less affected by the reason
or by the will than any other aspect of the complex vision.
Instinct, in secret sub-conscious alliance with the will, is a
permanent automatic energy, working in the hidden darkness of the
roots of things like an ever-flowing subterranean stream. The
revelations of intuition, on the other hand, are not flowing and
constant, but separate, isolated, distinct and detached. In the
subject-matter of their revelations, too, intuition and instinct are
very different. If the recesses of the soul be compared to a fortified
castle, instinct is the active messenger of the place, continually
issuing forth on secret errands concerning the real nature of which
he is himself often quite ignorant. Intuition, on the contrary, is
the little postern gate at the back of the building, set open at
rare moments to the wide fields and magical forests which extend to
the far-off horizon.
Instinct is always found in close contact with sensation, groping its
ways through the midst of the mass of material impressions, acting
and reacting as it fumbles among such impressions. Intuition seems
to deal directly and absolutely with a clear and definite landscape
behind the superficial landscape, with a truth behind truth, with a
reality within reality.
To take an instance from common experience: a stranger, an
unknown person, enters our circle. Instinct, working automatically
and sensationally, may attract us powerfully towards such a person,
with a steady, irresistible attraction. Intuition, on the contrary,
uttering its revelation abruptly and with, so to speak, one sudden
mysterious cry, may warn us of some dangerous quicksand or
perilous jungle in such a stranger's nature of which instinct was
totally ignorant because the thing was what might be called a
"spiritual quality" lying deeper than those sensational or magnetic
levels through which instinct feels its way.
The instinct of animals or birds for instance warns them very
quickly with regard to the presence of some natural enemy whose
approach they apprehend through some mysterious sense-impression
beyond the analysis of human reason. But when their enemy
is the mental intention of a human being they are only too easily
tricked.
To take quite a different instance. It may easily happen that while
conscience has habitually driven us to a certain course of action
against which instinct has never revolted because of its
preoccupation with the senses, some sudden flash of intuition
reaching us from the hidden substratum of our being changes our
whole perspective and gives to conscience itself a completely
opposite bias. What these intermittent revelations of intuition
certainly do achieve is the preservation in the soul's memory of the
clear and deep and free and unfathomable margins of the ultimate
mystery, those wavering sea-edges and twilight-shores of our being,
which the austere categories of rational logic tend to shut out as if
by impenetrable walls.
It remains to consider the attribute of memory. Memory is the name
which we give to that intrinsic susceptibility, implying an intrinsic
permanence or endurance in the material which displays
susceptibility, such as makes it possible for what the soul feels or
what the soul creates to write down its own record, so that it can be
read at will, or if not "at will," at least can be read, if the proper
stimulus or shock be applied.
Memory is not the cause of the soul's concrete identity. The soul's
concrete identity is the cause or natural ground of memory. Memory
is the "passive-active" power by means of which the concrete
identity of the soul grows richer, fuller, more articulate, more
complex and more subtle.
In looking back over these eleven attributes of the "soul-monad,"
what we have to remark is, that two of the number differ radically in
their nature from the rest. The attribute of emotion differs from the
rest in the sense that it is the living substantial unity or ultimate
synthesis in which they all move. It is indeed more than this. For it
is the actual "stuff" or "material" out of which they are all, so to
speak, "made" or upon which they all, so to speak, inscribe their
diverse creations.
The permanent "surface," or identical susceptibility, of this ebbing
and flowing stream of emotion is memory; but the emotion itself,
divided into the positive and negative "pole," as we say of love and
malice, is an actual projection upon the objective universe of the
intrinsic "stuff" or psycho-material "substance" of which the
substratum of the soul is actually composed. The other aspects of
the soul are, so to speak, the various "tongues" of diversely coloured
flame with which the soul pierces the "objective mystery"; but the
substance of all these flames is one and the same. It is the soul
itself, projected upon the plane of material impression; and thus
projected, becoming the conflicting duality to which I give the name of
"emotion."
The attribute of "will," also, differs radically from the rest; in the
sense that "will" is the power which the soul possesses of
encouraging or suppressing, re-vivifying or letting fade, all the other
attributes of the soul, including that attribute which is the substance
and synthesis of them all and which I name "emotion."
In regard to "emotion" the will can do three separate things. It can
encourage the emotion of love and suppress that of malice. It can
encourage the emotion of malice and suppress that of love. And
finally it can use its energy in the effort, an effort which can never
be totally successful, to suppress all emotion, of any kind at all.
Man's complex vision then consists, in simple terms, of
self-consciousness, reason, taste, imagination, conscience, instinct,
sensation, intuition, will, memory, and emotion. These various
activities, differentiated clearly enough in their separate energizing,
must never be regarded as absolutely separate "faculties," but rather
as relatively separated "aspects." Behind all of them and under all of
them is the complex vision itself, felt by all of us in rare moments in
its creative totality, but constantly being distorted and obscured as
one or other of its primal energies invades the appropriate territory
of some other.
The complex vision must not be regarded as the mere sum or
accumulated agglomeration of all these. It is much more than this. It
is more than a mere formal focussing of its own attributes. It is more
than a mere logical unity suspended in a vacuum.
The complex vision is the vision of a living self, of an organic
personality, of an actual soul-monad. It may be the vision of a man.
It may be the vision of a plant or a planet or a god. It may be the
vision of entities undreamed of and of existences inconceivable. It
may be the vision, for example, of some strange "soul of space" or
"soul of the ether" whose consciousness is extended throughout the
visible universe and even throughout the "etherial medium" which
binds all souls together.
But whether the vision of a plant, a man, or a god, the complex
vision seems to bring with it its own immediate revelation that
where there is any form of "matter," however attenuated, such
"matter" is the outward expression of some inward living soul
whose energies have some mysterious correspondence to the eleven
aspects of the soul of man.