THE REVELATION OF THE COMPLEX VISION
Using then, as our instrument of research, that totality of attributes
by which the soul in its rare moments of rhythmic consummation
visualizes the world, the question arises--what, in plain
untechnical terms, is the revelation made to us by this complex
medium? Here, as before, I am anxious, before I venture upon
such a hazardous undertaking as an answer to this question, to
indicate clearly that what I am attempting to state is a revelation
which is common to the experience of all souls, wherever such a
thing as the soul exists. The question as to whether or not such an
universal revelation is an illusion does not concern us. To call any
universal experience "an illusion" is no more and no less
illuminating than to call it "an ultimate truth." It is the only
reality we are at present in possession of; and we must accept it,
or remain in complete scepticism; which is only another name for
complete chaos.
The first important discovery which the complex vision makes is
the fact that the revelation, thus half-offered to it and half-created
by it, is presented simultaneously in all its various aspects. It does
not appear to us bit by bit or in succession but "en masse" and in
its complete "ensemble." It is of course unavoidable that its
aspects should be enumerated one by one and that in such an
enumeration one aspect should be placed first and another last.
Nevertheless, this "first" and "last" must not be regarded as of any
reasonable importance; but as nothing more than an accident of
arbitrary choice. All the aspects of this original revelation are
linked together. All are dependent upon one another. Among them
there is no "first" and "last." All are equally real. All are equally
necessary. All are equally inescapable.
The activity of the complex vision, then, makes us aware that we
have within us an integral irreducible self, the living personal
substratum of our self-consciousness, the "I" of our primordial "I
am I." This living personal self is the background of our complex
vision. It is the personal "visionary" whose vision we are using. I
say we have "within us" such a self. This "within us" is one of the
inescapable original revelations. For though our consciousness
will be found in its full circle to invade obscure shores and
wavering margins, there must always be a return, however far it
may wander, to this definite "something" within us which utters
the happy or unhappy "I am I."
It is precisely here, in regard to the nature of this "I am I," that it
is essential to let the totality of our complex vision speak, and not
one or other of its attributes. Nowhere has the fantastic and
desolating power of pure abstract reason left to itself done more to
distort the general situation than in this matter. It has distorted it
in two opposing ways.
It has distorted it metaphysically by completely eliminating this
revelation of a personal self, "within us," and it has distorted it
scientifically by reducing this personal self to an automatic
mechanical phenomenon produced by the action and interaction of
unconscious chemical "forces."
To the logic of metaphysical reason there is no concrete living self
which can say "I am I" from that definite point in space and time
which we indicate by the use of the phrase "within us." According
to such logic our "I am I" becomes "an infinity of consciousness"
with no local habitation. It becomes a consciousness which
includes both the "within" and the "without," a consciousness in
which our actual personal self is nothing but an illusory
phenomenon, a consciousness which is outside both time and
space, a consciousness whose centre is everywhere and its
circumference nowhere, a consciousness which is pure disembodied
"thought," thought without any "thinker," thought contemplating
itself as thought, thought in an absolutely empty void.
When to this ultimate "unity of apperception," suspended
in a vacuum, consciousness of self is added; when this
"consciousness-in-the-abstract" is regarded as an universal
self-consciousness, the resultant "I am I" of such an omnipresent
being becomes an infinite "I am I" which is nothing less than the
unfathomable universe conscious of itself in its totality. Whether
consciousness of self be added to this "consciousness-in-the-abstract"
or not, it is hard to see how out of this unruffled ocean of identity
the actual multifarious world which we feel around us, this world of
plants and planets and birds and fishes and mortal men and immortal
gods, ever succeeded in getting itself produced at all.
The vague metaphysical phrases about the One issuing forth into
the Many, in order to make Itself more completely Itself than it
was before, seem to us, when under the influence of our complex
vision, no other than the meaningless playing with cosmic tennis
balls of some insane universal Juggler.
The second way in which reason, left to itself, has distorted what
the complex vision reveals to us about the "I am I," is the scientific
or evolutionary way. According to this view which assumes that
the objective process of evolution is our only knowable reality, the
individual personal "I am I" finds itself resolved into a fatal
automatic phenomenon of cause and effect; a phenomenon which
has as its "cause" nothing, but the prehistoric chemical movements
of "matter" or "energy." The personal self thus considered
becomes a momentary vortex in a perpetually changing stream of
"states of consciousness" or "ripples of sensation" to each of
which vast anterior tides of atavistic forces have contributed their
mechanical quota.
The chemical fatality of our nerve-tissues, the psychological
fatality of our motive-impulses, leave no space, when they have all
been summed up, for any free arbitrary action of an independent
self.
And so, just as according to the metaphysical view, the soul
disappears in a blur of ideal fatality, according to the scientific
view the soul disappears in a nexus of mechanical determinism.
As against both these errors, to the complex vision this "soul"
within us appears to be something altogether different from the
physical body. The experience we have of it, the feeling we have
of it, is that it is a definite "something" dwelling "within" the
physical body.
This revelation with regard to it is as unmistakable as it is difficult
to analyze. That it is here, within us, we feel and know; but as
soon as we attempt to subject it to any exact scrutiny it seems to
melt away under our hands. The situation is indeed a kind of
philosophical tragic-comedy; and is only too indicative of the
baffling whimsicality of the whole system of things. Contradiction
and paradox at the very basis of life mock our attempt to utter one
intelligible word about the thing which is the most real of all
things to us.
We are vividly aware of this mysterious personality within us, "the
guest and companion of the body," but directly we attempt to lay
hold upon the actual substance of it it seems to vanish into thin air.
But at least our complex vision, which is _its_ complex vision,
reveals to us the fact of its existence; and with its existence once
acknowledged, however impossible analysis of it may be, we are
able to give a plain and unequivocal denial to all the impersonal
conclusions reached by metaphysic and science.
This categorical pronouncement of the complex vision with regard
to the "I am I," namely that it is the voice of a living concrete soul
within us, is supported historically by an immense weight of
human tradition. Belief in the reality of the soul is older and more
tenacious than any other human doctrine which our race has ever
held. The use of the term "soul" is no more than a bare recognition
that behind the consciousness which says "I am I" there is a living
entity whose consciousness this is.
With this bare recognition the revelation of the complex vision
abruptly stops. It stops with that peculiar and disconcerting
suddenness with which it seems to be its nature to stop, whenever
it reaches the limit of its scope in any direction. It stops here,
with regard to the soul, just as it stops when confronted with the
conception of limitlessness, both with regard to space and with
regard to time. But the soul at least is ours; a fact that cannot be
explained away.
And although we have no right to go a step beyond the bare
recognition of its existence and although all words regarding it are
misleading if used in any other than a symbolic sense, we must
remember that since the complex vision is conscious of itself as a
unity, whatever this "something" may be which is the centre and
core of our living personality, it must at least be a definite
irreducible "monad," "something" that cannot be resolved into
anything else, or accounted for by anything else, or explained in
terms of anything else, or "caused" by anything else; "something"
that may, perhaps, at last be annihilated; but that while it lives
must remain the vividest reality we know.
Insanity and disease may obstruct and cloud the soul. Outward
circumstances may drive the soul back upon itself. But while it
lives it lives in its totality and when it perishes, if it be its
destiny to perish, it perishes in its totality.
While the soul lives we may sink into it and have no fear; and yet
all the while we have no right to say anything about it except that
it exists. Truly it is a tragic commentary upon the drama that we
call our life, that we should find our ultimate "rest" and "peace" in
so bare, so stark, so austere, so irrational a revelation as this!
But surrounded as we are by the menace of eternal nothingness it
is at least something to have at the background of our life a living
power of this kind, a power which can endure unafraid the very
breaking point of disaster, a power which can contemplate the
possibility of annihilation itself with equanimity and unperturbed
calm.
It will be noted that I have been compelled to use once and again
the term "eternal nothingness." This is indeed an inevitable aspect
of what the soul visualizes as possible. For since the soul is the
creator and discoverer of all life, when once the soul has ceased to
exist, non-existence takes the place of existence, and nothingness
takes the place of life.
Speculatively we have the right, although the complex vision is
silent on that tremendous question, to dally with the idea of the
survival of the soul after the death of the body. But this must for
ever be an open question, not to be answered either negatively or
affirmatively, not to be answered by the intelligence of any living
man. All we can say is that it seems as if the death of the body
destroyed the complex vision; and if the complex vision is
destroyed it seems as though non-existence were bound to take the
place of existence, and as though nothingness were bound to take
the place of everything. The oriental conception of "Nirvana" is no
more than a soothing opiate administered to a soul that has grown
weary of its complex vision and weary of its irreducible
personality. To imagine oneself freed from the burden of personal
consciousness, and yet in some mysterious way conscious of being
freed from consciousness, is a delicious and delicate dream of
life-exhausted souls.
As a speculation it has a curious attraction; as a reality it has
nothing that is intelligible. But though the tragedy of life to all
sensitive spirits is outrageous and obscene, at least we may say
that the worst conceivable possibility is not likely to occur. The
worst conceivable possibility would be to be doomed to an
immortal personal life without losing the restrictions and
limitations of our present personal life. If the soul survives the
body it must do so on the strength of its possession of some
transforming energy which shall enable it to supply the place in its
organic being which is at present occupied by the attribute of
sensation. It is quite obvious that if the life of the soul depends
upon the active functioning of all its attributes; and if one of its
attributes, namely sensation, is entirely dependent for its active
functioning upon the life of the body; the life of the soul itself
must also depend upon the life of the body, unless, as I have
hinted, it can transmute its attribute of sensation into some other
attribute suitable to some unknown plane of spiritual existence.
There are indeed certain ecstatic moments when the soul feels as if
such a power of liberation from the bodily senses were actually
within its grasp; but it will inevitably be found, when the great
rhythmic concentration of the apex-thought is brought to bear
upon such a feeling as this, that it either melts completely away, or
is relegated to unimportance and insignificance. Such a feeling,
ecstatic and intense though it may have been, has been nothing
more than a disproportioned activity of the attribute of intuition;
intuition misled in favour of the immortality of the soul, even as
the pure reason is often misled in the direction of the denial of the
soul's existence.
The revelation of the complex vision has no word to say, on either
side, with regard to whether the soul does or does not survive the
death of the body; but it has a very distinct word to say as to the
importance of this whole question; and what it says in regard to
this is--that it is not important at all! The revelation of the complex
vision implies clearly enough that what man were wise to
"assume"--leaving always the ultimate question as an open
question--is that the individual soul and the individual body perish
together.
This assumption is in direct harmony with what we actually _see_;
even though it is in frequent collision with what we sometimes
_feel_. But the essence of the matter is to be found in this, that our
assumption as to the soul's perishing, when the body perishes, is
an assumption, untrue though it may turn out to be, which the soul
itself, when under the power of its apex-thought, is compelled to
make. And it is compelled to make this assumption by reason of
the inherent nature of love. For it is of the nature of love when
confronted by two alternatives one of which lays the stress upon
personal advantage and the other _upon love itself_ apart from any
personal advantage, whether one's own or another's, to choose, as
the assumption upon which it shall live, the latter of these two
alternatives. For it is the nature of love to seek love and nothing
else than love. And as long as the assumption which the soul
makes is the assumption that it survives the death of the body, that
emotion of love which is the soul's creative essence is debarred
from the full and complete integrity of its desire.
For the desire of love is not for immortality but for the eternal; and
the eternal is not something that depends upon the survival of any
individual soul, whether our own or another's. The eternal is
something which can be realized in one single moment; something
which completely destroys in us any desire for survival after
death; something which reconciles us to existence _considered in
the light of love alone_; something that does not assume anything
at all about the universe, except that love exists.
Thus we return to that assumption about the soul, which it is
better--leaving the open question still an open question--for the
mind to accept as its working assumption; namely that the soul
uses the body in its own ends, is conscious of its existence through
the senses of the body, lives _in_ the body, and perishes when the
body perishes. Nor is it only the emotion of love which rejects the
dogma of the immortality of the soul. Were the soul proved
beyond all possibility of doubt to be immortal, there would at once
fall upon us a despair more appalling than any which we have
known. For just as the idea of the eternal satisfies the very depths
of our soul with an infinite peace, so the idea of immortality
troubles the very depths of our soul with an infinite doubt.
Something unutterable in our aesthetic sense demands that life
should be surrounded by death and ended by death. Thus and not
otherwise should we ourselves have created the world at the
beginning. Thus and not otherwise by the rhythmic play of the
complex vision, do we create the world.
But meanwhile, whatever happens, as long as we live we possess
the reality of the soul. This is, and always has been, the
rallying-ground of heroic and sensitive personalities, struggling with
the demons of circumstance and chance. This is that unconquerable
"mind-within-themselves" into which the great Stoics of Antiquity
withdrew at their will, and were "happy," beyond the reach of
hope and fear. This is the citadel from the security of which all the
martyrs for human liberty have mocked their tormentors. This is
the fortress from which the supreme artists of the world have
looked forth and moulded the outrage of life's dilemma into
monumental forms of imaginative beauty. This is the sanctuary
from which all human personalities, however weak and helpless,
have been permitted to endure the cruelty and pitilessness of fate.
After all, it does not so greatly matter that we are unable to do
more than know that this thing, this indescribable "something,"
really exists. Perhaps it is because its existence is more real than
anything else that we are unable to define it. Perhaps we can only
define those attributes which are the outward aspects of our real
being. Perhaps it is simply because the soul is nothing less than
our very self, that our analytical power stops, helpless, in its
presence. _We_ are what it is; and for this very cause it
perpetually evades and escapes us.
The reality of the soul, therefore, is the first revelation of the
complex vision. The second revelation is the objective reality of
the outward visible universe. Left to itself, in its isolated activity,
our logical reason is capable of throwing doubt upon this
revelation also. For it is logically certain that what we are actually
conscious of is no more than a unified stream of various mental
impressions, reaching us through our senses, and never interrupted
except in moments of unconscious sleep.
It is therefore quite easy for the logical reason, functioning in its
isolation from the other attributes, to maintain that this stream of
mental impressions _is all that there is_, and that we have no right
to call the universe real and objective, except in the ambiguous
sense of a sort of permanent illusion. But as soon as the complex
vision, in its totality, contemplates the situation, the thing takes on
a very different aspect. The pure reason may be as sceptical as it
pleases about the static solidity of what is popularly called
"matter." It may use the term energy, or movement, or ether, or
force, or electricity, or any other name to describe that _permanent
sensation of outward reality_ which our complex vision reveals.
But one thing it has no right to do. It has no right to utter the word
"illusion" with regard to this objective universe. The apparent
solidity of matter may be rationally resolved into energy or
movement, just as the apparent objectivity of matter may be
rationally resolved into a stream of mental impression. But the
complex vision still persists in asserting that this _permanent
sensation of outward reality_, which, except in dreamless sleep, is
never normally interrupted, represents and bears witness to the real
existence, outside ourselves, of "something" which corresponds to
such a sensation. It is just at this point that the soul--helped by
instinct, imagination, and intuition--makes its great inevitable
plunge into the act of primordial faith.
This act of primordial faith is the active belief of the soul not only
in an objective universe outside itself, but also in the objective
existence of other individual souls. Without this primordial act of
faith the individual soul can never escape from itself. For the pure
reason not only reduces the whole universe to an idea in the mind;
but it also reduces all _other_ minds to ideas in _our_ mind. In
other words the logical reason imprisons us fatally and hopelessly
in a sort of cosmic nut-shell of our own mentality.
And there would, actually, be no escape from this appalling
imprisonment, according to which the individual soul becomes a
solitary circle, the centre and circumference of all possible
existence, if it were not that the soul possesses other organs of
research, in addition to reason and self-consciousness. Directly we
temper reason with these other activities the whole situation has a
different look. It is a thing of small consequence what word we
use to describe that external cause of the flowing stream of mental
impressions. The important point is that we are compelled to
assume, as representing a real outward fact, this permanent sense
of objectivity from which there is no escape.
And as the existence of the objective universe is established by a
primordial act of faith, so it is also established that these alien
bodily personalities, whose outward appearance stands and falls
with the objective universe, possess "souls," or what we have
come to name "complex visions," comparable with our own. And
this is the case not only with regard to other human beings, but
with regard to all living entities whether human or non-human. As
to how the "souls" of plants, birds, and animals, or of planets or
stars, differ in their nature from human souls we can only vaguely
conjecture. But to refuse some degree of consciousness, some
measure of the complex vision, to any living thing, is to be false to
that primordial act of faith into which the original revelation of the
complex vision compels us to plunge.
The inevitableness of this act of faith may be perhaps more vividly
realized when we remember that it includes in its revelation the
objective reality of our own physical body. Our evidence for the
real outward existence of our own body is no surer and no more
secure than our evidence for the outward existence of other
"bodies."
They stand or fall together. If the universe is an illusion then our
own physical body is an illusion also.
And precisely as the "stuff" out of which the universe is made may
be named "energy" or "ether" or "force" or "electricity," rather
than "matter," so also the "stuff" out of which the body is made
may be named by any scientific term we please. The term used is
of no importance as long as the thing represented by it is accepted
as a permanent reality.
We are now able to advance a step further in regard to the
revelation of the complex vision. Granting, as we are compelled to
grant, that the other "souls" in the universe possess, each of them,
its own "vision" of this same universe; and assuming that each
"vision" is so coloured by the individuality of the "visionary" as to
be, in a measure, different from all the rest, it becomes obvious
that in a very important sense there is not only one universe, but
many universes. These many universes, however, are "caused," or
evoked, or created, or discovered, by the encounter of various
individual souls with that one "objective mystery" which confronts
them all.
What a naive confession it is of the limitation of the human mind
that we should be driven, after all our struggles to articulate the
secret of life, to accept, as our final estimate of such a secret just
the mysterious "something" which is the substratum of our own
soul, confronted by that other mysterious "something" which is the
substratum of all possible universes! With the complex vision's
revelation that the objective universe really exists comes the
parallel revelation that time and space really exist. Here, for the
third time, are we faced with critical protests from the isolated
activity of the logical reason.
Metaphysic reduces both time and space to categories of the mind.
Mathematical speculation hints at the existence of some
mysterious fourth-dimensional space. Bergsonian dialectic regards
ordinary "spatial" time as an inferior category; and finds the real
movement of life in a species of time called "duration," which can
only be detected by the interior feeling of intuition.
But while we listen with interest to all these curious speculations,
the fact remains that for the general vision of the combined
energies of the soul the world in which we find ourselves is a
world entirely dependent upon what must be recognized as a
_permanent sensation_ of "ordinary" space and "ordinary" time.
And as we have shown in the case of the objective existence of
what we call Nature, when any mental impression reaches the
level of becoming a _permanent sensation_ of all living souls it
ceases to be possible to speak of it as an illusion.
It is well that we should become clearly conscious of this
"reality-destroying" tendency of the logical reason, so that whenever
it obsesses us we can undermine its limited vision by an appeal to
the complex vision. Shrewdly must we be on our guard against
this double-edged trick of logic, which on the one hand seeks to
destroy the basis of its own activity, by disintegrating the unity of
the soul, and on the other hand seeks to destroy the material of its
own activity by disintegrating the unity of the "objective mystery."
The original revelation of the complex vision not only puts us on
our guard against this disintegrating tendency of the pure reason,
but it also explains the motive-force behind this tendency. This
motive-force is the emotion of malice, which naturally and
inevitably seeks to hand us over to the menace of nothingness; in
the first place of nothingness "within" us, and in the second place
of nothingness "without" us. That the logic of the pure reason
quickly becomes the slave of the emotion of malice may be proved
by both introspection and observation. For we note, both in
ourselves and others, a peculiar glow of malicious satisfaction
when such logic strikes its deadliest blows at what it would
persuade us to regard as the illusion of life.
Life, just because its deepest secret is not law, determined by fate,
but personality struggling against fate, is always found to display a
certain irrationality. And the complex vision becomes false to
itself as soon as it loses touch with this world-deep irrationality.
We have now therefore reached the conception of reality as
consisting of the individual soul confronted by the objective
mystery. That this objective mystery would be _practically_ the
same as _nothing_, if there were no soul to apprehend it, must be
admitted. But it would not be _really_ the same as _nothing_;
since as soon as any kind of soul reappeared upon the scene the
inevitable material of the objective mystery would at once
re-appear with it. The existence of the objective mystery as a
permanent possibility of material for universe-building is a fact
which surrounds every individual soul with a margin of
unfathomable depth.
At its great illuminated moments the complex vision reduces the
limitlessness of space to a realizable sensation of liberty, and the
"flowingness" of time to an eternal now; but even at these
moments it is conscious of an unfathomable background, one
aspect of which is the immensity of space and the other the
flowingness of time.
The revelation of the complex vision which I have thus attempted
to indicate will be found identical with the natural conclusions of
man in all the ages of his history. The primeval savage, the ancient
Greek, the mediaeval saint, the eighteenth century philosopher, the
modern psychologist, are all brought together here and are all
compelled to confess the same situation.
That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body,
and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about
which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex
vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage
looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as
living gods exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving
earth. In this view of the sun and the moon and the stars such a
savage was perfectly within his right, because always along with it
even to the most anthropomorphic, there came the vague sense of
unfathomableness.
The natural Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God
of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the
eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern
man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the
unfathomableness of the ultimate mystery.
But the revelation of the complex vision saves us from the logical
boredom of the word "infinite." The idea of the infinite is merely a
tedious mathematical formula, marking the psychological point
where the mind finds its stopping-place. All that the complex
vision can say about "infinite space" is that it is a real experience,
and that we can neither imagine space with an end nor without an
end.
The "Infinite" is the name which logic gives to this psychological
phenomenon. The fact that the mind stops abruptly and breaks into
irreconcilable contradictions when it is confronted with
unfathomable space is simply a proof that space without an end is
as unimaginable as space with an end. It is no proof that space is
merely a subjective category of the human mind. One, thing,
however, it is a proof of. It is a proof that the universe can never
be satisfactorily explained on any materialistic hypothesis.
The fact that we all of us, at every hour of our common day, are
surrounded by this unthinkable thing, space without end, is an
eternal reminder that the forms, shapes and events of habitual
occurrence, which we are inclined to take so easily for granted, are
part of a staggering and inscrutable enigma.
The reality of this thing, actually there, above our heads and under
our feet, lodges itself, like an ice cold wedge of annihilating
scepticism, right in the heart of any facile explanation. We cannot
interpret the world in terms of what we call "matter" when what
we call "matter" has these unthinkable horizons. We may take into
our hands a pebble or a shell or a grain of sand; and we may feel
as though the universe were within our grasp. But when we
remember that this little piece of the earth is part of a continuous
unity which recedes in every direction, world without end, we are
driven to admit that the universe is so little within our grasp that
we have to regard it as something which breaks and baffles the
mind as soon as the mind tries to take hold of it at all.
The reason does not advance one inch in explaining the universe
when it utters the word "evolution" and it does not advance one
thousandth part of an inch--indeed it gives up the task altogether--
when it informs us that infinite space is a category of the human
mind. We must regard it, then, as part of the original revelation of
the complex vision, that we are separate personal souls surrounded
by an unfathomable mystery whose margins recede into unthinkable
remoteness.
The ancient dilemma of the One and the Many obtrudes itself at
this point; and we are compelled to ask how the plurality of these
separate souls can be reconciled with the unity of which they form
a part. That they cannot be regarded as absolutely separate is clear
from the fact that they can communicate with one another, not
only in human language but in a thousand more direct ways. But
granting this communication between them, does the mere
existence of myriads of independent personalities, living side by
side in a world common to all, justify us in speaking of the
original system of things as being pluralistic rather than monistic?
Human language, at any rate, founded on the fact that these
separate souls can communicate with one another, seems very
reluctant to use any but monistic terms. We say "the system of
things," not "the systems of things." And yet it is only by an act of
faith that human language makes the grand assumption that the
complex vision of all these myriad entities tells the same story.
We say "the universe"; yet may it not be that there are as many
"universes" as there are conscious personalities in this
unfathomable world? If there were no closer unity between the
separate souls which fill the universe than the fact that they are
able, after one primordial act of faith, to communicate with one
another, these monistic assumptions of language might perhaps be
disregarded and we might have a right to reject such expressions
as "system of things" and "cosmos" and "universe" and "nature."
But it still remains that they are connected, in space and in time,
by the medium, whatever it may be, which fills the gulfs between
the planets and the stars. As long as these separate souls are
invariably associated as they are, with physical bodies, and as long
as these physical bodies are composed of the same mysterious
force which we may call earth, fire, water, air, ether, electricity,
energy, vibration, or any other technical or popular name, so long
will it be legitimate to use these monistic expressions with which
human language is, so to speak, so deeply stained. As a matter of
fact we are not left with only this limited measure of unity. There
are also certain psychological experiences--experiences which I
believe I have a right to regard as universal--which bring these
separate souls into much closer connection.
Such experiences can be, and have been, ridiculously exaggerated.
But the undeniable fact that they exist is sufficient to prove that in
spite of the pluralistic appearance of things, there is still enough
unity available to prevent the Many from completely devouring
the One. The experiences to which I am referring are experiences
which the complex vision owes to the intuition. And though this
experience has been made unfair use of, by both mystics and
metaphysicians, it cannot be calmly disregarded.
The intuition, which is, as I have already pointed out, the feminine
counterpart to the imagination, is found, with regard to this
particular problem, uttering so frequent and impressive an oracle
that to neglect its voice, would be to nullify and negate the whole
activity of the intuition and deny it its place among the ultimate
energies of vision.
There is always more difficulty in putting into words a revelation
which the complex vision owes to intuition than in regard to any
other of its attributes. Reason in his matter, and sensation and
imagination also, have an unfair advantage when it comes to
_words_. For human language is compelled to draw its images
from sensation and its logic from reason. But intuition--the
peculiarly feminine attribute of the soul--finds itself dealing with
what is barely intelligible and with what is profoundly irrational.
Thus it naturally experiences a profound difficulty in getting itself
expressed in words at all.
And, incidentally, we cannot avoid asking ourselves the curious
question whether it may not be that language, which is so
dependent upon the peculiarly masculine attributes of reason and
sensation, has not become an inadequate medium for the
expression of what might be called the feminine vision of the
world? May we not indeed go so far as to hazard the suggestion
that when this fact, of the masculine domination of language,
has been adequately recognized, there will emerge upon the
earth women-philosophers and women-artists who will throw
completely new light upon many problems? The difficulty which
women experience in getting expressed in definite terms, whether
in philosophy or art, the co-ordinated rhythm of _their_ complex
vision, may it not be largely due to the fact that the attribute of
intuition which is their most vital organ of research has remained
so inarticulate? And may not the present wave of psychological
"mysticism," which just now is so prominent a psychic phenomenon,
be due to the vague and, in many cases, the clumsy attempt, which
women are now making to get their intuitive contribution into
line with the complex vision of the rest?
When the universe is referred to as "Nature," may it not be that it
is this very element, this strange wisdom of the abysmal
"Mothers," which humanity thinks of as struggling to utter its
unutterable secret?
How, then, for the sake of its contribution to the ultimate rhythm,
does the complex vision articulate this mysterious oracle from the
feminine principle in life, as it brokenly and intermittently lifts up
its voice?
One aspect of this oracle's voice is precisely what we are
concerned with now. I mean the problem of the relation of the One
to the Many. The merely logical conception of unity is misleading
because the wavering mass of impression which makes up our life
has a margin which recedes on every side into unfathomableness.
This conception has two aspects. In the first place it implies
_continuity_, by which I mean that everything in the world is in
touch with everything else.
In the second place it implies _totality_, by which I mean that
everything in the world can be considered as one rounded-off and
complete "whole." According to this second aspect of the case, we
think of the world as an integral One surrounded by nothingness,
in the same way that the individual soul is surrounded by the
universe.
The revelation of the complex vision finds the second of these two
aspects entirely misleading. It accepts the conception of
_continuity_, and rejects the conception of _totality_. It rejects the
conception of "totality," because "totality," in this cosmic sense, is
a thing of which it has no experience; and the revelation of the
complex vision is entirely based on experience. The margins of the
world, receding without limit in every direction, prevent us from
ever arriving at the conception of "totality."
What right have we to regard the universe as a totality, when all
we are conscious of is a mass of wavering impression continued
unfathomable in every direction? In only one sense, therefore,
have we a right to speak of the unity of the system of things; and
that is in the sense of continuity. Since this mass of impression,
which we name the universe, is on all sides lost in a margin of
unfathomableness, it is, after all, only a limited portion of it which
comes into the scope of our consciousness. It is one of the curious
exaggerations of our logical reason that we should be tempted to
"round off" this mystery. The combined voices of imagination and
intuition protest against such an enclosed circle.
The same revelation of the complex vision which gives objective
reality to what is outside our individual soul insists that this
objective reality extends beyond the limited circle of our
consciousness. The device by which the logical reason "rounds
off" the conception of _continuity_ by the conception of _totality_
is the device of the mathematical formula of "infinity."
The imaginative movement by which the complex vision of the
soul plunges into the abysses of stellar space, seeking to fathom, at
least in a mental act, immensity beyond immensity, and gulf
beyond gulf, is a definite human experience. It is the actual
experience of the soul itself, dropping its plummet into immensity,
and finding immensity unfathomable. But as soon as the logical
reason dominates the situation, in place of this palpable plunge
into a real concrete experience, with its accompanying sensation of
appalling wonder and terrible freedom, we are offered nothing but
a thin, dry, barren mathematical formula called "infinity," the mere
mention of which freezes the imagination at its source.
What, in fact, the complex vision reveals to us is that all these arid
formulae, such as infinity, the Absolute Being, and the Universal
Cause, are conceptions projected into the real and palpable bosom
of unfathomable life by the very enemy and antagonist of life, the
aboriginal emotion of inert malice. This is why so often in the
history of the human race the conception of "God" has been the
worst enemy of the soul. The conception of "God" by its alliance
with the depressing mathematical formula of "infinity" has indeed
done more than any other human perversion to obliterate the
beauty and truth of the emotional feeling which we name
"religion."
The revelation of the complex vision makes it clear to us that the
idea of "God," in alliance with the idea of "Infinity," is a
projection, into religious experience, of the emotion of inert
malice. As soon as the palpable unfathomableness of space is
reduced to the barren notion of a mathematical "infinity" all the
free and terrible beauty of life is lost. We have pressed our hands
against our prison-gates and found them composed of a material
more rigid than adamant, the material of "thought-in-the-abstract."
Now although our chief difficulty in regard to this insistent
problem of the One and the Many has been got rid of by eliminating
from the notion of the One all idea of totality, it is still
true that something in us remains unsatisfied while our individual
soul is thought of as absolutely isolated from all other souls. It is
here, as I have already said, that the peculiarly feminine attribute
of intuition comes to our rescue. The fact that we can
communicate together by human and sub-human language, does
not, though it implies a basic similarity in our complex vision,
really satisfy us.
A strange unhappiness, a vague misery, a burden of unutterable
nostalgia, troubles the loneliness of our soul. And yet it is not, this
vague longing, a mere desire to break the isolating circle of the "I
am I" and to invade, and mingle with, other personalities. It is
something deeper than this, it is a desire to break the isolation of
all personalities, and to enter, in company with all, some larger,
fuller, freer level of life, where what we call "the limits of
personality" are surpassed and transcended.
This underlying misery of the soul is, in fact, a constant
recognition that by the isolated loneliness of our deepest self we
are keeping at a distance something--some unutterable flow of
happiness--which would destroy for us all fears and all weariness,
and would end for ever the obscene and sickening burden of the
commonplace. It is precisely at this point that the intuition comes
to the rescue; supplying our complex vision with that peculiar
"note," or "strain of music," without which the orchestral harmony
must remain incomplete.
In seeking to recall those great moments when the "apex-thought"
of the complex vision revealed to us the secret of things, we find
ourselves remembering how, when in the presence of some
supreme work of art, or of some action of heroic sacrifice, or of
some magical effect of nature, or of some heart-breaking gesture
of tragic emotion in some simple character, we have suddenly
been transported out of the closed circle of our personal life into
something that was at once personal and impersonal. At such a
moment it seems as if we literally "died" to ourself, and became
something "other" than ourself; and yet at the same time "found"
ourself, as we had never "found" ourself before.
What the complex vision seems to reveal to us about this great
human experience is that it is an initiation into an "eternal vision,"
into a "vision of the immortals," into a mood, a temper, a "music
of the spheres," wherein the creative mystery of the emotion of
love finds its consummation. The peculiar opportunity of an
experience of this kind, its temporal "occasion," shall we say,
seems to be more often supplied by the intuition, than by any other
attribute of the complex vision.
Intuition having this power, it is not surprising that many souls
should misuse and abuse this great gift. The temptation to allow
the intuition to absorb the whole field of consciousness is to
certain natures almost irresistible. And yet, when intuition is
divorced from the other aspects of the rhythm of life, its tendency
towards what might be called "the passion of identity" very easily
lapses into a sort of spiritual sensuality, destructive to the creative
freedom of the soul. Woe to the artist who falls into the quagmire
of unbalanced intuition! It is as if he were drugged with a spiritual
lust.
To escape from self-loathing, to escape from the odious monotony
and the indecent realism of life--what a relief! How desirable to be
confronted no longer by that impassable gulf between one's own
soul and all other living souls! How desirable to cross the abyss
which separates the "something" which is the substance of our
being from the "something" which is the substance of the
"objective mystery"!
And yet, according to the revelation of the complex vision, this
"spiritual ecstasy" is a perversion of the true art of life. The true
art of life finds in "the vision of the immortals," and in "the vision
of the immortals" alone, its real escape from evil. This "passion of
identity," offered us by the vice, by the madness of intuition, is not
in harmony with the great moments of the soul. Its "identity" is but
a gross, mystical, clotted "identity"; and its "heaven" is not the
"heaven" of the Christ.
If the "ecstasy of identity," as the unbalanced attribute of intuition
forces it upon us, were in very truth the purpose of life, how
grotesque a thing life would be! It would then be the purpose of
life to create personality, only in order to drown it in the
impersonal. In other words it would be the purpose of life to create
the "higher" in order that it should lose itself in the lower. At its
very best this "ecstasy of identity" is the expression of what might
be called the "lyrical" element in things. But the secret of life is
not lyrical, as many of the prophets have supposed, but dramatic,
as all the great artists have shown. For the essence of life is
contradiction. And contradiction demands a "for" and an "against,"
a protagonist and an antagonist. What the revelation of the
complex vision discloses is the inherent duality of all things.
Pleasure and pain, night and day, man and woman, good and evil,
summer and winter, life and death, personality and fate, love and
malice, the soul and the objective mystery, these are the threads
out of which the texture of existence is woven; and there is no
escape from these, except in that eternal "_nothingness_" which
itself is the "contradiction" or "opposite" of that "_all_," which it
reduces to chaos and annihilation. Thus runs the revelation of the
complex vision.
This integral soul of ours, made of a stuff which for ever defies
analysis; this objective mystery, made of a stuff which for ever
defies analysis; these two things perpetually confront one another
in a struggle that only annihilation can end. The vision of the
eternal implies the passing of the transitory. For what cannot cease
from being beautiful has no real beauty; and what cannot cease
from being true has no real truth. The art of life according to the
revelation of the complex vision, consists in giving to the
transitory the form of the eternal. It is the art of creating a rhythm,
a music, a harmony, so passionate and yet so calm, that the mere
fact of having once or twice attained it is sufficient "to redeem all
sorrows."
The assumption that death ends it all, is an assumption which the
very nature of love calls upon us to make; for, if we did not make
it make it, something different from love would be the object and
purpose of our life. But the revelation of the complex vision, in
our supreme moments, discloses to us that love itself is the only
justification for life; and therefore, by making the assumption that
the soul perishes, we put once and for all out of our thought that
formidable revival of love, the idea of personal immortality.
For the idea of personal immortality, like the idea of an Absolute
God, is a projection of the aboriginal "inert" malice. It must be
remembered that the revelation of the complex vision, by laying
stress upon the creative energy of the soul in its grappling with the
objective mystery, implies an element of _indeterminism_, or free
choice, in regard to the ultimate nature of the world. Man, in a
very profound sense, perpetually creates the world according to his
will and desire. Nor can he ever know at what point, in the
struggle between personality and destiny, the latter is bound to
win. Such a point may _seem_ to be reached; until some astounding
"act of faith" on the part of the soul flings that "point"
into a yet further remoteness. And this creative power in the soul
of man may apply in ways which at present our own race has
hardly dared to contemplate. It may apply, for instance, to the idea
of personal immortality.
Personal immortality may be a thing which the soul, by a
concentrated act of creative will, can secure for itself, or can
reject for itself. It may be, if we take the whole conscious and
subconscious purpose of a man's life, a _matter of choice_.
But when a man makes a choice of such a kind, when a man
concentrates his energy upon surviving the death of his body, he is
deliberately selecting a "lower" purpose for his life in place of a
"higher." In other words, instead of concentrating his will upon the
evocation of the emotion of love, he is concentrating his will upon
self-realization or self-continuance. What he is really doing is even
worse than this. For since what we call "emotion" is an actual
projection into the matrix of the objective mystery, of the very
substance and stuff of the soul, when the will thus concentrates
upon personal immortality, it takes the very substance of the soul
and perverts it to the satisfaction of inert malice. In other words it
actually transforms the stuff of the soul from its positive to its
negative chemistry, and produces a relative victory of malice over
love.
The soul's desires for personal immortality is one of the aspects of
the soul's "possessive" instinct. The soul desires to "possess"
itself--itself as it exactly is, itself in its precise and complete
"status quo"--without interruption for ever. But love has a very
different desire from this. Love is not concerned with time at all--
for time has a "future"; and any contemplation of a "future"
implies the activity of something in the soul which is different
from love, implies something which is concerned with outward
events and occurrences and chances. But love is not concerned
with outward events, whether past or future. Love desires eternity
and eternity alone. Or rather it does not "desire" eternity. It _is_
eternity. It is an eternal Now, in which what _will_ happen and
what _has_ happened are irrelevant and unimportant.
All this offers us an intelligible explanation of a very bewildering
phenomenon in human life. I mean the instinctive disgust
experienced by the aesthetic sense when men, who otherwise seem
gentle and good, display an undue and unmeasured agitation about
the fate of their souls.
Love never so much as even considers the question of the fate of
the soul. Love finds, in the mere act of loving, a happiness so
profound that all such problems seem tiresome and insignificant.
The purpose of life is to attain the rhythmic ecstasy of all love's
intrinsic potentialities. This desire for personal immortality is not
one of love's intrinsic potentialities. When a human soul has lost
by death the one person it has loved, the strength of its love is
measured by the greater or less emphasis it places upon the
problem of the lost one's "survival."
The disgust which the aesthetic sense experiences when it
encounters a certain sort of mystical and psychic agitation over the
question as to whether the lost one "lives still somewhere" is a
disgust based upon our instinctive knowledge that this particular
kind of inquiry would never occur to a supreme and self-forgetful
love. For this enquiry, this agitation, this dabbling in "psychic
evidences," is a projection of the baser nature of the soul; is, in
fact, a projection of the "possessive instinct," which is only
another name for the original inert malice.
In the "ave atque vale" of the Roman poet, there is much more of
the absolute quality of great love than in all these psychic
dabblings. For in the austere reserve of that passionate cry there is
the ultimate acceptance, by Love itself, of the tragedy of having
lived and loved at all. There is an acceptance of that aspect of the
"vision of the immortals" which implies that the possessive
instinct has no part or lot in the eternal.
The inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise
"good" men under the motive of "saving" other people's souls, and
the inhuman cruelties which have been practised by otherwise
"good" men under the motive of saving their own souls, have,
each of them, the same evil origin. Love sweeps aside, in one great
wave of its own nature, all these doubts and ambiguities. It lifts the
object of its love into its own eternity; and in its own eternity the
ultimate tragedy of personal separation is but one chord of its
unbroken rhythm.
The tragedy of personal separation is not a thing which love
realizes for the first time when it loses the object of its love. It is
a thing which is of the very nature of the eternity in which love
habitually dwells. For the eternity in which love habitually dwells
is its vision of the tragedy of all life.
This, then, is the original revelation of the complex vision. The
soul is confronted by an ultimate duality which extends through
the whole mass of its impressions. And because this duality
extends through every aspect of the soul's universe and can be
changed and transformed by the soul's will, it is inevitable that
what the world has hitherto named "philosophy" and has regarded
as the effort of "getting hold" of a reality which exists already,
should be named by the complex vision the "art of life" and should
be regarded as the effort of reducing to harmony the unruly
impulses and energies which perpetually transform and change the
world.