THE ULTIMATE DUALITY
What we are really, all of us, in search of, whether we know it or
not, is some concrete and definite symbol of life and the "object"
of life which shall gather up into one living image all the broken,
thwarted, devious, and discordant impressions which make up our
experience. What we crave is something that shall, in some
permanent form and yet in a form that can grow and enrich itself,
represent and embody the whole circle of the joy and pain of
existence. What we crave is something into which we can throw
our personal joys and sorrows, our individual sensations and ideas,
and know of a certainty that thrown into that reservoir, they will
blend with all the joys and sorrows of all the dead and all the
living.
Such a symbol in order to give us what we need must represent the
ultimate reach of insight to which humanity has attained. It must
be something that, once having come into existence, remains
independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing
moods. It must be something of clearer outlines and more definite
lineaments than those vague indistinct ecstasies, half-physiological
and half-psychic, which the isolated intuition brings us.
Such a symbol must represent the concentrated struggle of the
human soul with the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of fate, its
long struggle with the deadly malice in itself and the deadly
malice in nature.
There is only one symbol which serves this purpose; a symbol
which has already by the slow process of anonymous creation and
discovery established itself in the world. I mean the symbol of the
figure of Christ.
This symbol would not have sufficed to satisfy the craving of
which I speak if it were only a "discovery" of humanity. The
"God-man" may be "discovered" in nature; but the "Man-god"
must be "created" by man.
We find ourselves approaching this symbol from many points of
view, but the point of view which especially concerns us is to note
how it covers the whole field of human experience. In this symbol
the ultimate duality receives its "eternal form" and becomes an
everlasting standard or pattern of what is most natural and most
rhythmic. As I advance in my analysis of the relation of the
ultimate duality to this symbolic figure of Christ, it becomes
necessary to review once more, in clear and concise order, the
various stages of thought by means of which I prove the necessity
of some sort of universal symbol, and the necessity of moulding
this symbol to fit the drama of One ultimate duality.
A summary of the stages of thought through which we have
already passed will thus be inevitable; but it will be a summary of
the situation from the view-point of a different angle.
Philosophy then is an attempt to articulate more vividly the nature
of reality than such "reality" can get itself articulated in the
confused pell-mell of ordinary experience. The unfortunate thing
is that in this process of articulating reality philosophy tends to
create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far
away from reality that its conclusions when they are confronted
with the pell-mell of ordinary experience appear remote, strange,
fantastic, arbitrary, and even laughable.
This philosophical tendency to create an artificial world which
when confronted with the real world appears strange and remote is
due to the fact that philosophers, instead of using as their
instrument of research the entire complex vision, use first one and
then another of its isolated attributes. But there must come
moments when, in the analysis of so intricate and elaborate a thing
as "reality" by means of so intricate and elaborate an instrument,
as the complex vision, the most genuine and the least artificial of
philosophies must appear to be following a devious and serpentine
path.
These moments of difficulty and obscurity are not, however--as
long as such a philosophy attaches itself closely to "reality" and
flows round "reality" like a tide flowing round submerged rocks or
liquid metal flowing round the cavities of a mould--a sign that
philosophy has deserted reality, but only a sign that the curves and
contours and jagged edges of reality are so intricate and involved
that only a very fluid element can follow their complicated shape.
But these moments of difficulty and obscurity, these vague and
impalpable links in the chain, are only to be found in the
_process_ by which we arrive at our conclusion. When our
conclusion has been once reached it becomes suddenly manifest to
us that it has been there, with us, all the while, implicit in our
whole argument, the secret and hidden cause why the argument
took the form it did rather than any other. The test of any
philosophy is not that it should appeal immediately and directly to
what is called "common-sense," for common-sense is no better
than a crude and premature synthesis of superficial experiences; a
synthesis from which the supreme and culminating experiences of
a person's life have been excluded. For in our supreme and
culminating experiences there is always an element of what might
be called the "impossible" or of what must be recognized as a
matter of faith or imagination. It is therefore quite to be expected
that the conclusions of a philosophy like the philosophy of the
complex vision, which derives its authority from the exceptional
and supreme experiences of all souls, should strike us in our
moments of "practical common-sense" as foolish, impossible,
ridiculous and even insane. All desperate and formidable efforts
towards creation have struck and will strike the mood of "practical
common-sense" as ridiculous and insane. This is true of every
creative idea that has ever emanated from the soul of man.
For the mood of "practical common-sense" is a projection of the
baser instinct of self-preservation and is penetrated through and
through with that power of inert malice which itself might be
called the instinct of self-preservation of the enemy of life.
"Practical common-sense" is the name we give to that superficial
synthesis of our baser self-preservative instincts, which, when it is
reinforced and inspired by "the will of malice" out of the evil
depths of the soul, is the most deadly of all antagonists of new life.
We need suffer, therefore, no surprise or pain if we find the
conclusions of the philosophy of the complex vision ridiculous
and "impossible" to our mood of practical common-sense. If on
the contrary they did not seem insane and foolish to such a mood
we might well be profoundly suspicious of them. For although
there are very few certainties in this world, one thing at least is
certain, namely that for any truth or reality to satisfy the creative
spirit in us it must present itself as something dangerous,
destructive, ridiculous and insane to that instinct in us which
resists creation.
But although "the appeal to common-sense" is no test of the truth
of a philosophy, since common-sense is precisely the thing in us
which has a malicious hostility to the creative spirit, yet no
philosophy can afford to disregard an appeal to actual experience
as long as actual experience includes the rare moments of our life
as well as all the rest. Here is indeed a true and authentic test of
philosophic validity. If we take our philosophical conclusions, so
to speak, in our hands, and plunge with them into the very depths
of actual experience, do they grow more organic, more palpable
and more firm, or do they melt away into the flowing waters?
Who is not able to recall the distress of bitter disillusionment
which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of
"sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of
reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict
upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable
system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass
casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some
"iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable and
unfathomable, something that can destroy as well as create, it is
not of much avail against the winds and storms of destiny.
For a philosophy to be a true representation of reality, for it to be
that reality itself, become conscious and articulate, it is necessary
that it should prove most vivid and actual at those supreme
moments when the soul of man is driven to the ultimate wall and
is at the breaking-point.
The truth of a philosophy is not to be tested by what we feel about
it in moods of practical common-sense; for in these moods we
have, for some superficial reason, suppressed more than half of the
attributes of our soul. The truth of a philosophy can only be tested
in those moments when the soul, driven to the wall, gathers itself
together for one supreme effort. But there is, even in less stark and
drastic hours, an available test of a sound and organic philosophy
which must not be forgotten. I refer to its capacity for being
vividly and emphatically summed up and embodied in some
concrete image or symbol.
If a philosophy is so rationalistic that it refuses to lend itself to
a definite and concrete expression we are justified in being more
than suspicious of it.
And we are suspicious of it not because its lack of simplicity
makes it intricate and elaborate, for "reality" is intricate and
elaborate; but because its inability to find expression for its
intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple.
For the remote conclusions of a purely logical and rationalistic
philosophy are made to appear much less simple than they really
are by reason of their use of remote technical terms.
What the soul demands from philosophy is not simplicity but
complexity, for the soul itself is the most complex thing we know.
The thin, rigid, artificial outlines of purely rationalistic systems
can never be expressed in ritual or symbol or drama, not because
they are too intricate, but because they are not intricate enough.
A genuine symbol, or ritualistic image, is a concrete living organic
thing carrying all manner of magical and subtle associations. It is
an expression of reality which comes much nearer to reality than
any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or
ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life.
It has the creative and destructive power of life. It has the
formidable mysteriousness of life, and with all this it has the
clear-cut directness of life's terrible and exquisite tangibility.
When suddenly confronted, then, in the mid-stream of life, by the
necessity of expressing the starting-point, which is also the
conclusion, of the philosophy of the complex vision, what
synthetic image or symbol or ritualistic word are we to use in
order to sum up its concrete reality?
The revelation of life, offered to us by the complex vision, is, as
we have seen, no very simple or logical affair. We axe left with
the spectacle of innumerable "souls," human, sub-human and
super-human, held together by some indefinable "medium" which
enables them to communicate with one another. Each one of these
"souls" at once creates and discovers its own individual "universe"
and then by an act of faith assumes that the various "universes"
created and discovered by all other souls are identical with its
own.
That they _are_ identical with its own the soul is led to assume
with more and more certainty in proportion as its communion with
other souls grows more and more involved. This identity between
the various "universes" of alien souls is rendered more secure and
more objective by the fact that time and space are found to be
essential peculiarities of all of them alike. For since time and space
are found to enter into the original character of all these
"universes," it becomes a natural and legitimate conclusion that all
these "universes" are in reality the same "universe."
We are left, then, with the spectacle of innumerable souls
confronting a "universe" which in their interaction with one
another they have half-created and half-discovered. There is no
escape from the implication of this phrase "half-discovered." The
creative activity of the complex vision perpetually modifies,
clarifies and moulds the mystery which surrounds it; but that there
is an objective mystery surrounding it, of which time and space are
permanent aspects, cannot be denied.
The pure reason's peculiar power of thinking time and space away,
or of lodging itself outside of time and space, is an abstraction
which leads us out of the sphere of reality; because, in its resultant
conception, it omits the activity of the other attributes of the
complex vision.
The complex vision reveals to us, therefore, three aspects of
objective mystery. It reveals to us in the first place the presence of
an objective "something" outside the soul, which the soul by its
various energies moulds and clarifies and shapes. This is that
"something" which the soul at one and the same moment "half-discovers"
and "half-creates." It reveals to us, in the second place, the presence
of an indefinable objective "something" which is the medium
that makes possible the communion of one soul with another and with
"the invisible companions."
This is the medium which holds all these separate personalities
together while each of them half-creates and half-discovers his
own "universe."
In the third place it reveals to us the presence, in each individual
soul, of a sort of "substratum of the soul" or something beyond
analysis which is the "vanishing point of sensation" and the
vortex-point or fusion-point where the movement which we call
"matter" loses itself in the movement which we call "mind."
In all these three aspects of objective mystery, revealed to us by
the united activities of the complex vision, we are compelled, as
has been shown, to use the vague and obscure word "something."
We are compelled to apply this unilluminating and tantalizing
word to all these three aspects of "objective mystery," because no
other word really covers the complex vision's actual experience.
The soul recognizes that there is "something" outside itself which
is the "clay" upon which its energy works in creating its
"universe," but it cannot know anything about this "something"
except that it is "there"; because, directly the soul discovers it, it
inevitably moulds it and recreates it. There is not one minutest
division of time between this "discovery" and this "creation"; so
all that one can say is that the resultant objective "universe" is
half-created and half-discovered; and that whatever this
mysterious "something" may be, apart from the complex vision, it
at any rate has the peculiarity of being forced to submit to the
complex vision's creative energy.
But not only are we compelled to apply the provoking and
unilluminating word "something" to each of these three aspects of
objective mystery which the complex vision reveals; we are also
compelled to assume that each one of these is dominated by time
and space.
This implication of "time and space" is necessitated in a different
way in each of these three aspects of what was formerly called
"matter." In the first aspect of the thing we have time and space as
essential characteristics of all the various "universes," reduced by
an act of faith to one "universe," of the souls which fill the world.
In the second aspect of it we have time and space as essential
characteristics of that indefinable "medium" which holds all these
souls together, and which by holding them together makes it easier
to regard their separate "universes" as "one universe," since they
find their ground or base in one universal "medium."
In the third aspect of it we have time and space as essential
characteristics of that "substratum of the soul" which is the
vanishing-point of sensation and the fusion-point of "mind" and
"matter."
We are thus inevitably led to a further conclusion; namely, that all
these three aspects of objective reality, since they are all
dominated by time and space, are all dominated by the _same_
"time" and the same "space." And since it is unthinkable that three
coexistent forms of objective reality should be all dominated by
the same time and space and remain absolutely distinct from one
another, it becomes evident that these three forms of objective
mystery, these three indefinable "somethings," are not separate
from one another but are in continual contact with one another.
Thus the fact that all these three aspects of objective reality are
under the domination of the same time and space is a further
confirmation of the truth which we have already assumed by
an act of faith, namely that all the various "universes,"
half-discovered and half-created by all the souls in the world, are
in reality "one universe."
The real active and objective existence of this "one universe" is
made still more sure and is removed still further from all
possibility of "illusion," by the fact that we are forced to regard it
as being not only "our" universe but the universe also of those
"invisible companions" whose vision half-creates it and
half-discovers it, even as our own vision does. It is true that to
certain types of mind, for whom the definite recognition of mystery is
repugnant, it must seem absurd and ridiculous to be driven to the
acknowledgment of a thing's existence, while at the same time we
have to confess complete inability to predicate anything at all
about the thing except that it exists.
It must seem to such minds still more absurd and ridiculous that
we should be driven to recognize no less than three aspects of this
mysterious "something."
But since they are included in the same time and space, and since,
consequently, they are intimately connected with one another, it
becomes inevitable that we should take the yet further step and
regard them as three separate aspects of one and the same mystery.
Thus we are once more confronted with the inescapable trinitarian
nature of the system of things; and just as we have three ultimate
aspects of reality in the monistic truth of "the one time and space,"
in the pluralistic truth of the innumerable company of living souls
and the dualistic truth of the contradictory nature of all existence;
so we have three further ultimate aspects of reality, in the
incomprehensible "something" which holds all souls together; in
the incomprehensible "something" out of which all souls create the
universe; and in the incomprehensible "something" which forms
the substratum both of the souls of the invisible "companions of
men" and of the soul of every individual thing.
The supreme unity, therefore, in this complicated world, thus
revealed to us by the activity of the complex vision is the unity of
time and space. This unity is eternally reborn and eternally
re-discovered every time any living personality contemplates the
system of things. And since "the sons of the universe" must be
regarded as continually contemplating the system of things,
struggling with it, moulding it, and changing it, according to their
pre-existent ideal, we are compelled to assume that time and space
are eternal aspects of reality and that their eternal necessity gives
the system of things its supreme unity.
No isolated speculation of the logical reason, functioning apart
from the other attributes of the complex vision, can undermine this
supreme unity of time and space. The "a priori unity of
apperception" is an unreality compared with this reality. The
all-embracing cosmic "monad," contemplating itself as its eternal
object, is an unreality compared with this reality.
We are left with a pluralistic world of individual souls, finding
their pattern and their ideal in the vision of the "immortal gods"
and perpetually rediscovering and recreating together "a universe"
which like themselves is dominated by time and space and which
like themselves is for ever divided against itself in an eternal and
unfathomable duality.
The ultimate truth of the system of things according to the
revelation of the complex vision is thus found to consist in the
mystery of personality confronting "something" which _seems_
impersonal. Over both these things, over the personal soul and
over the primordial "clay" or "energy" or "movement" or "matter"
out of which the personal soul creates its "universe," time and
space are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this
original "plasticity" except that it is "plastic" and that time and
space rule over it, it is in a strict sense illegitimate to say that
this primordial "clay" or "world stuff" is in itself divided into a
duality. We know nothing, and can never know anything about it, beyond
the bare fact of its existence. Its duality comes from the duality in
us. It is we who create the contradiction upon which its life
depends. It is from the unfathomable duality in the soul of the
"companions of men" that the universe is brought forth.
The ultimate duality which perpetually creates the world is the
ultimate duality in all living souls and in the souls of "the sons of
the universe." But although it is we ourselves who in the primal
act of envisaging the world endow it with this duality, it would be
an untrue statement to say that this duality in the material universe
is an "illusion." It is no more an illusion than the objective
material world itself is an illusion. Both are created by the
inter-action between the mystery of personality and the mystery of what
seems the impersonal. Thus it remains perfectly true that what we
sometimes call "brute matter" possesses an element of malignant
inertness and malicious resistance to the power of creation. This
malice of the impersonal, this malignant inertness of "matter," is
an ultimate fact; and is not less a fact because it depends upon the
existence of the same malice and the same inert resistance in our
own souls.
Nor are we able to escape from the conclusion that this malignant
element in the indefinable "world-stuff" exists independently of
any human soul. It must be thought of as dependent upon the same
duality in the souls of "the sons of the universe" as that which
exists in the souls of men. For although the primordial ideas of
truth and nobility and beauty, brought together by the emotion of
love, are realized in the "gods" with an incredible and immortal
intensity, yet the souls of the "gods" could not be souls at all if
they were not subject to the same duality as that which struggles
within ourselves.
It follows from this that we are forced to recognize the presence of
a potentiality of evil or malice in the souls of "the sons of the
universe." But although we cannot escape from the conclusion that
evil or malice exists in the souls of the immortals as in all human
souls, yet in their souls this evil or malice must be regarded as
perpetually overcome by the energy of the power of love. This
overcoming of malice by the power of love, or of evil by "good,"
in the souls of "the sons of the universe," must not be regarded as
a thing once for all accomplished, but as a thing eternally
re-attained as the result of an unceasing struggle, a struggle so
desperate, so passionate and so unfathomable, that it surpasses all
effort of the mind to realize or comprehend it.
It must not, moreover, be forgotten that what the complex vision
reveals about this eternal struggle between love and malice in the
souls of "the sons of the universe" and in the souls of all living
things, is not that love and malice are vague independent
elemental "forces" which obsess or possess or function _through_
the soul which is their arena, but rather that they themselves _are_
the very stuff and texture and essence of the individual soul itself.
Their duality is unfathomable because the soul is unfathomable.
The struggle between them is unfathomable because the struggle
between them is nothing less than the intrinsic nature of the soul.
The soul is unthinkable without this unfathomable struggle in its
inherent being between love and malice or between life and what
resists life. We are therefore justified in saying that "the universe"
is created by the perpetual struggle between love and malice or
between life and what resists life. But when we say this we must
remember that this is only true because "the universe" is
half-discovered and half-created by the souls of "the sons of the
universe" and by the souls of all living things which fill the
universe. This unfathomable duality which perpetually re-creates
Nature, does not exist in Nature apart from living things, although
it does exist in nature apart from any individual living thing.
All those aspects of the objective universe which we usually call
"inanimate," such as earth, water, air, fire, ether, electricity,
energy, movement, matter and the like, including the stellar and
planetary bodies and the chemical medium, whatever it may be,
which unites them, must be regarded as sharing, in some
inscrutable way, in this unfathomable struggle. We are unable to
escape from this conception of them, as thus sharing in this
struggle, because they are themselves the creation and discovery
of the complex vision of the soul; and the soul is, as we have seen,
dependent for its every existence upon this struggle.
In the same way, all those other aspects of the universe which are
"animate" but sub-human, such as grass, moss, lichen, plants,
sea-weed, trees, fish, birds, animals and the like, must be regarded
as sharing in a still more intimate sense in this unfathomable
struggle. This conception has a double element of truth. For not
only do these things depend for their form and shape and reality
upon the complex vision of the soul which contemplates them; but
they are themselves, since they are things endowed with life,
possessed of some measure or degree of the complex vision.
And if the souls of men and the Souls of the "sons of the universe"
are inextricably made up of the very stuff of this unfathomable
struggle, between life and what resists life, we cannot escape from
the conclusion that the souls of plants and birds and animals and
all other living things are inextricably made up of the stuff of the
same unfathomable struggle. For where there is life there must be
a soul possessed of life. Life, apart from some soul possessed with
life, is an abstraction of the logical reason and a phantom of no
more genuine reality than the "a priori unity of apperception" or
"the universal self-conscious monad."
What we call reality, or the truth of the system of things, is
nothing less than an innumerable company of personalities
confronting an objective mystery; and while we are driven to
regard the "inanimate," such as earth and air and water and fire, as
the bodily expressions of certain living souls, so are we much
more forcibly driven to regard the "animate," wherever it is found,
as implying the existence of some measure of personality and
some degree of consciousness.
Life, apart from a soul possessing life, is not life at all. It is an
abstraction of the logical reason which we cannot appropriate to
our instinct or imagination. A vague phrase, like the phrase
"life-force," conveys to us whose medium of research is the complex
vision, simply no intelligible meaning at all. It is on a par with the
"over-soul"; and, to the philosophy of the complex vision, both the
"life-force" and the "over-soul" are vague, materialistic,
metaphorical expressions which do not attain to the dignity of a
legitimate symbolic image.
They do not attain to this, because a legitimate symbolic image
must appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sense by the
possession of something concrete and intelligible.
Any individual personal soul is concrete and intelligible. The
personal souls of "the sons of the universe" are concrete and
intelligible. But the "over-soul" and the "life-force" are neither
concrete nor intelligible and therefore cannot be regarded as
legitimate symbols. One of the most important aspects of the
method of philosophical enquiry which the philosophy of the
complex vision adopts is this use of legitimate symbolic images in
place of illegitimate metaphorical images.
This use of concrete, tangible, intelligible images is a thing which
has to pay its price. And the price which it has to pay is the price
of appearing childish, absurd and ridiculous to the type of mind
which advocates the exclusive use of the logical reason as the sole
instrument of philosophical research. This price of appearing
naive, childish and ridiculous has to be paid shamelessly and in
full.
The type of mind which exacts this price, which demands in fact
that the concrete intelligible symbols of the philosophy of the
complex vision should be regarded as childish and ridiculous, is
precisely the type of mind for whom "truth" is a smoothly
evolutionary affair, an affair of steady "progress," and for whom,
therefore, the mere fact of an idea being "a modern idea" implies
that it is "true" and the mere fact of an idea being a classical idea
or a mediaeval idea implies that it is crude and inadequate if not
completely "false."
To the philosophy of the complex vision "truth" does not present
itself as an affair of smooth and steady historical evolution but as
something quite different from this--as a work of art, in fact,
dependent upon the struggle of the individual soul with itself, and
upon the struggle of "the souls of the sons of the universe" with
themselves. And although the struggle of the souls of "the sons of
the universe" towards a fuller clarifying of the mystery of life must
be regarded as having its concrete tangible history in time and
space, yet this history is not at all synonymous with what is
usually called "progress."
An individual human soul, the apex-thought of whose complex
vision has attained an extraordinary and unusual rhythm, must be
regarded as having approached nearer to the vision of "the sons of
the universe" although such an one may have lived in the days of
the patriarchs or in the Greek days or in the days of mediaevalism
or of the renaissance, than any modern rationalistic thinker who is
obsessed by "the latest tendencies of modern thought."
The souls of "the immortals" must certainly be regarded as
developing and changing and as constantly advancing towards the
realization of their hope and premonition. But this "advance" is
also, as we have seen, in the profoundest sense a "return," because
it is a movement towards an idea which already is implicit and
latent. And in the presence of this "advance," which is also a
"return," all historic ages of individual human souls are equal and
co-existent.
All real symbols are "true," wherever and whenever they are
invoked, because all real symbols are the expression of that rare
unity of the complex vision which is man's deepest approximation
to the mystery of life. The symbol of the cross, for instance, has
far more truth in it than any vague metaphorical expression such
as the "over-soul." The symbolic ritual of the Mass, for instance,
has far more truth in it than any metaphorical expression such as
the "life-force." And although both the Cross and the Mass are
inadequate and imperfect symbols with regard to the vision of "the
sons of the universe," because they are associated with the idea of
an historic incarnation, yet in comparison with any modern
rationalistic or chemical metaphor they are supremely true.
The philosophy of the complex vision, just because it is the
philosophy of personality, must inevitably use images which
appear to the rationalistic mind as naive and childish and
ridiculous. But the philosophy of the complex vision prefers to
express itself in terms which are concrete, tangible and intelligible,
rather than in terms which are no more than vague projections of
phantom logic abstracted from the concrete activity of real
personality.
In completing this general picture of the starting point of the
philosophy of the complex vision there is one further implication
which ought to be brought fully into the light. I refer to a doctrine
which certain ancient and mediaeval thinkers adopted, and which
must always be constantly re-appearing in human thought because
it is an inevitable projection of the human conscience when the
human conscience functions in isolation and in disregard of the
other attributes. I mean the doctrine of the essentially evil,
character of that phenomenon which was formerly called "matter"
but which I prefer to call the objective mystery.
According to this doctrine--which might be called the eternal
heresy of puritanism--this objective mystery, this world-stuff, this
eternal "energy" or "movement," this "flesh and blood" through
which the soul expresses itself and of which the physical body is
made, is "evil"; and the opposite of this, that is to say "mind" or
"thought" or "consciousness" or "spirit" is alone "good."
According to this doctrine the world is a struggle between "the
spirit" which is entirely good and "the flesh" which is entirely evil.
To the philosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears
false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted,
an attempt of the conscience to arrogate to itself the whole field of
experience and to negate all the other attributes, especially
emotion and the aesthetic sense.
Such a doctrine negates the whole activity of the complex vision
because it assumes the independent existence of "flesh and blood"
as opposed to "mind." But "flesh and blood" is a thing which has
no existence apart from "mind," because it is a thing "half-created"
as well as "half-discovered" by "mind."
It negates the aesthetic sense because the aesthetic sense requires
the existence of "the body" or of "flesh and blood" or of what we
call "matter," and cannot exert its activity without the reality of
this thing.
It negates emotion, because the emotion of love demands, for its
full satisfaction, nothing less than "the eternal idea of flesh and
blood." And since love demands the "eternal idea of flesh and
blood," "flesh and blood" cannot be "evil."
This doctrine of the evil nature of "matter" is obviously a
perversion of what the complex vision reveals to us about the
eternal duality. According to this doctrine, which I call the puritan
heresy, the duality resolves itself into a struggle between the spirit
and the flesh. But according to the revelation of the complex
vision the true duality is quite different from this. In the true
duality there is an evil aspect of "matter" and also an evil aspect of
"mind."
In the true duality "spirit" is by no means necessarily good. For
since the true duality lies in the depths of the soul itself, what we
call "spirit" must very often be evil. According to the revelation of
the complex vision, evil or malice is a positive force, of malignant
inertness, resisting the power of creation or of love. It is, as we
have seen, the primordial or chaotic weight which opposes itself to
life.
But "flesh and blood" or any other definite form of "matter" has
already in large measure submitted to the energy of creation and is
therefore both "good" and "evil." That original shapeless "clay" or
"objective mystery" out of which the complex vision creates the
universe certainly cannot be regarded as "evil," for we can never
know anything at all about it except that it exists and that it lends
itself to the creative energy of the complex vision. And in so far as
it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision it
certainly cannot be regarded as entirely evil, but must obviously
be both good and evil; even as the complex vision itself, being the
vision of the soul, is both good and evil.
According to the philosophy of the complex vision then, what we
call "mind" is both good and evil and what we call "matter" being
intimately dependent upon "mind" is both good and evil. We are
forced, therefore, to recognize the existence of both spiritual "evil"
and spiritual "good" in the unfathomable depths of the soul. But
just because personality is itself a relative triumph of good over
evil it is possible to conceive of the existence of a personality in
whom evil is perpetually overcome by good, while it is impossible
to conceive of a personality in whom good is _perpetually_
overcome by evil.
In other words, all personalities are relatively good; and some
personalities namely those of "the immortals" are, as far as we are
concerned, absolutely good. All personalities including even the
personalities of "the immortals" have evil in them, but no
personality can be the embodiment of evil, in the sense in which
"the sons of the universe" are the embodiment of good.
I thus reach the conclusion of this complicated summary of the
nature of the ultimate duality and the necessity of finding a clear
and definite symbol for it.