THE FIGURE OF CHRIST
In considering the figure of that great Intermediary between
mortality and immortality whom we have come to name Christ,
the question arises, in view of the historic existence of other
world-saviours, such as the Indian Buddha, whether it would not
be better to invent, out of our arbitrary fancy, some completely
new symbol for the eternal vision which should be entirely free
from those merely geographical associations which have limited
the acceptance of this Figure to so much less than one-half of the
inhabitants of our planet.
The question arises--can there be invented any concrete, tangible
symbol which shall appeal to every attribute of the complex vision
and be an accumulated image of that side of the unfathomable
duality from which we draw our ideas of truth, beauty, and
goodness?
For the complex vision itself I have projected my own arbitrary
image of an arrow-head of many concentrated flames; but when
we approach a matter as important as the choice of a symbolic
image for the expression of the ultimate synthesis of the good as
contrasted with the evil something very different from a mere
subjective fancy is required.
If it were possible for me, the present writer, to give myself up so
completely to the creative spirit as to become suddenly inspired
with the true idea of such a symbolic image, even then my image
would remain detached, remote and individualistic. If it were
possible for me to gather up, as it were, and to bring into focus all
the symbolic images used by all the supreme prophets and artists
and poets of the world, my synthetic symbol, including all these
different symbols, would still remain remote and distant from the
feelings and experiences of the mass of humanity.
But the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness, together with that
emotion of love which is their synthesis, are not confined to the
great artists and prophets of the world. They are felt and
experienced by the common mass of humanity. They have indeed
an even wider scope than this, since they exist in the depths of the
souls of the sons of the universe, and in the depths of that
unfathomable universe whose objective reality depends upon their
energy. They have the widest scope which it is possible for the
complex vision to grasp. Wherever time and space are, they are;
and, as we have seen, time and space make up the ultimate unity
within whose limits the drama of life proceeds.
Although the universe depends for its objective reality upon the
vision of the immortals and incidentally upon all the visions of all
the souls born into the world, it is not true to say that either the
vision of the immortals or the visions of all souls, or even both of
these together, exhaust the possibilities of the universe and sound
the depths of its unfathomableness. The complex vision of man
stops at a certain point; but the unfathomable nature of the
universe goes on beyond that point. The complex vision, of the
immortals stops at a definite point; but the unfathomable nature of
the universe goes on beyond that point.
If it be asked, "how can it be said that an universe, which depends
for its objective reality upon the complex vision, goes on beyond
the point where the complex vision stops?" I would answer that
the complex vision does not only create reality; it discovers
reality. There is always the primordial objective mystery outside
the complex vision; that objective mystery, or world-stuff, or
world-clay, out of which, in its process of half-creation and
half-discovery, the complex vision evokes the universe.
And although apart from the activity of the complex vision this
primordial world-clay or objective mystery is almost nothing
because it is only of its bare existence that we are aware, yet it is
not altogether nothing, because it is, in a sense, the origin of
everything we discover. When, therefore, we speak of the
unfathomable as receding into depths beyond the point where the
vision of man stops and beyond the point where the vision of the
immortals stops, we do not contradict the statement that the vision
of man and the vision of the immortals create the universe. They
create the universe in so far as they discover the universe; but the
universe must be thought of as always capable of being further
discovered and further created. Perhaps the most adequate way of
putting the situation would be to image the objective mystery as a
kind of colourless screen across which a coloured picture is slowly
moved. This coloured picture is the universe as we know it.
Without the white screen as a background there could be no picture.
All the colours of the picture are latent and potential in the
whiteness of the screen; but they require the focussed lime-light of
the magic-lantern to call them forth. The lantern from which the
light comes, half-creates, so to speak, and half-discovers the
resultant colours.
When we say, therefore, that the universe, although created by the
complex vision, recedes into unfathomable depths beyond the
reach of the complex vision, what we mean is that the boundary
line between the moving colour-picture, which is the universe, and
the original whiteness of the screen across which the picture is
moved, which is the objective mystery, is capable of endless
recession. The blank whiteness of the part of the screen over
which the picture has not yet moved is capable of revealing every
kind of colour as soon as the focussed lime-light of the complex
vision reaches it. The colours are in the whiteness of the screen as
well as in the lime-light which is thrown upon the screen; but
neither the lantern which throws the light nor the screen upon
which the light is thrown, can, in isolation from one another,
produce colour.
The universe, therefore, is half-created and half-discovered by the
complex vision; and it may be said to go on beyond the point
where the complex vision stops, although strictly speaking what
goes on beyond the stopping place of the complex vision is not the
universe as we know it but a potential universe as we may come to
know it; a universe, in fact, which is at present held in suspense in
the unfathomable depths of the objective mystery.
This potential universe, this universe which will come into
existence as soon as the complex vision discovers it and creates it,
this universe across which gathers already the moving shadow of
the complex vision, is not a new universe but only an extension
into a further depth of the objective mystery, of the universe which
we already know.
We are not justified in saying of this objective mystery or of this
white screen across which the colours will presently flow, that it is
outside time and space. We are not justified in saying anything at
all about it, except that it exists and that it lends itself to the
advance of the complex vision. If in place of a white screen we
could figure to ourselves this objective mystery as a mass of
impenetrable darkness, we should thus be able to envisage the
complex vision as I have tried to envisage it, namely as a moving
arrow-head of focussed flames with the point of it, or what I have
named the apex-thought of it, illuminating that mass of darkness
with all the colours of life.
But, as I have said, none of these subjective images can serve as
the sort of symbol we are in search of, because by reason of their
being arbitrary and individualistic they lack the organic and
magical associations which cling round such symbols as have
become objective and historical. We can content ourselves with
such fanciful symbols as white screens and arrow-heads and
pyramids of fire in regard to the organ of our research and the
original protoplasmic stuff out of which this organ of research
creates the world; but when it comes to the purpose of life and the
meaning of life, when it comes to that unfathomable duality which
is the essence of life, we require for our symbol something that has
already gathered about it the whole desperate stream of life's tears
and blood and dreams and ecstasies and memories and hopes.
We can find no symbol for the adversary of life, no symbol for the
malignant obscurantism and the sneering malice that resist
creation. To endow this thing which is in the way, this unfathomable
depth of spiritual evil, with the vivid and imaginative life
of a symbolic image would be to change its inherent nature.
No adequate symbol can be found for evil, any more than a
complete embodiment can be found for evil. Directly evil
becomes personal it ceases to be evil, because personality
is the supreme achievement of life. And directly evil is expressed in
a living, objective, historic, mythological image it ceases to be
evil, because such an image instantaneously gathers to itself some
potency of creative energy. Evil is a positive thing, a spiritual
thing, an eternal thing; but it is positive only in its opposition to
creation, in its corruption of the soul, and in its subtle undermining
of the divine moments of the soul by the power of eternal
dreariness and disillusion.
What we need above everything is a symbolic image which shall
represent the creative energy of life, the creative power of love,
and those eternal ideas of truth and beauty and nobility which
seem in some mysterious way derogated from, rendered less
formidable and unfathomable, by being named "the good."
The desire for a symbol of this kind, which shall gather together
all the tribes and nations of men and all conflicting ideals of
humanity, is a desire so deep and universal as to be perhaps the
supreme desire of the human race. No symbol arbitrarily invented
by any one man, even though he were the greatest genius that ever
lived, could supply this want or satisfy this desire. And it could not
do so because it would lack the organic weathering and bleaching,
so to speak, of the long panorama of time. An individual
genius might hit upon a better symbolic image, an image more
comprehensive, more inclusive, more appealing to the entire
nature of the complex vision; but without having been subjected to
the sun and rain of actual human experience, without having
endured the passion of the passing of the generations, such an
image would remain, for all its appropriateness, remote,
intellectual and barren of magical suggestiveness.
I do not mean to indicate that there is necessarily any determined
or fatalistic process of natural selection in these things by which
one symbol rather than another gathers about it the hopes and fears
of the generations. Chance no doubt plays a strange part in all this.
But the concrete necessities of living human souls play a greater
part than chance; and without believing in any steady evolutionary
process or even in any law of natural selection among the
evocations of human desire, it must still remain that the symbol
which survives will be the symbol adapted to the deepest instincts
of complicated souls and at the same time palpable and tangible to
the touch of the crudest and most simple.
It cannot be denied that there are serious difficulties in the way of
the acceptance of any historic symbol, the anonymous evocation
of the generations of men. Just because it has a definite place in
history such a symbol will necessarily have gathered to itself much
that is false and much that is accidental and unessential. It will
have entered into bitter controversies. It will have been hardened
and narrowed by the ferocious logic of rationalistic definition. It
will have been made the rallying cry of savage intolerances and
the mask for strange perversions. Evil will naturally have attached
itself to it and malice will have left its sinister stain upon it.
Because chance and accident and even evil have had much to do
with its survival, it may easily happen that some primary attribute
of the complex vision, such for instance as the aesthetic sense with
its innate awareness of the humorous and the grotesque, will have
been forgotten altogether in the stuff out of which it is made.
Considering such things, considering above all this final fact that it
may not satisfy every attribute of the complex vision, and may
even completely suppress and negate some essential attribute, it
remains still a perilous question whether it were not, after all,
better to invent a new symbol that shall be deliberately adapted to
the entire complex vision, than to accept an already existing
symbol, which in the shocks and jolts and casualties, of history has
been narrowed, limited and stiffened by the malice of attack and
defence.
This narrowing and hardening process by which such a symbol,
the anonymous creation of humanity under the shocks of circumstance,
becomes limited and inadequate, is a process frequently assisted
by those premature and violent syntheses of the ultimate
contradiction which we name dogmatic religions. To make such
a symbol once more fluid and flexible, to restore it to its
place in the organic life of the soul, it is necessary to extricate it
from the clutch of any dogmatic religion. I do not say that it is
necessary to extricate it from religion, or even from every aspect
of dogma; for it is of the very essence of such symbol to be a
stimulus to the religious ecstasy and there are many dogmas which
are full of imaginative poetry.
But it is necessary to extricate it from dogmatic religion because
dogmatic religion may be defined as a premature metaphysical
synthesis, masquerading beneath a system of imaginative ritual.
The truth of religion is in its ritual and the truth of dogma is in its
poetry. Where a dogmatic religion becomes dangerous to any
human symbol is when it tries to rationalize it and interpret it
according to a premature metaphysical synthesis. In so far as it
remains purely symbolic and does not attempt to rationalize its
symbolism, a dogmatic religion must always contain within the
circle of its creed many profound and illuminating secrets. The
false and ephemeral portion of a dogmatic religion is its
metaphysical aspect, because the whole science of metaphysics is
an ambiguity from the start, since it is a projection of one isolated
attribute of the complex vision.
What the apex-thought of the complex vision does is to undermine
metaphysic; not by the use of metaphysic but by the use of the
rhythmic totality of all the attributes of the soul. The philosophy of
the complex vision has its metaphysical, as it has its psychological
and its physiological aspect, but its real starting point must
transcend all these, because it must emanate from personality. And
personality is something super-metaphysical; as it is something
super-psychological, and super-physiological.
The creed of a dogmatic religion is not to be condemned because it
calls upon us to believe the impossible. Some sort of belief in the
impossible, some primordial act of faith is an essential part of the
process of life and, without it, life could not continue. It is where
dogmatic religion attempts to justify its belief in the impossible by
the use of metaphysical reason that we must regard it as an enemy
of the truth of its own symbolism.
The supreme example of the evil and dangerous influence of
metaphysic upon religion is to be found in connection with that
inscrutable nothingness behind the universe, and also behind the
objective mystery out of which the soul creates the universe. I
refer to that ambiguous and unbeautiful phantom, which has
acquired for itself the name of "the absolute," or the parent or first
cause of life.
That the conception of "the sons of the universe," to which certain
basic facts and experiences in regard to the intercourse between
living human souls has led humanity, is not a metaphysical
conception, is proved by the fact that it is a conception of a reality
existing inside and not outside the ultimate unity of time and
space. Any pure metaphysical conception must, as we have seen,
remain outside the categories of time and space, and remaining
there bear perpetual witness to its essential unreality.
The sons of the universe are living personal souls; and being this,
they must be, as all personalities are, super-metaphysical,
super-psychological, and super-physiological.
The perilous choice between the invention of an arbitrary symbol
which shall represent in its full complexity this idea of the sons of
the universe, and the acceptance of a symbol already supplied by
that chaotic mixture of accident and human purpose which we call
history is a choice upon which more than we can imagine or
surmise may ultimately depend. It is necessary in all matters of
this kind, wherein the rhythmic totality of the complex vision is
involved, to remain rigorous in our suppression of any particular
usurpation of the whole field by any isolated attribute of the soul.
It is a most evil usurpation, for instance, an usurpation of which
the sinister history of dogmatic religion is full, when the
conscience is allowed to introduce the conception of a "duty," of
an "ought," of a "categorical" imperative, into such a choice as
this. There is no ought in philosophy. There is no ought in faith.
And there can be, in no possible way, any ought of the usurping
conscience, in regard to this choice of an appropriate symbol
which shall represent a thing so entirely beyond the conception of
any single attribute, as this eternal protagonist of the ultimate
struggle. The risk of choosing for our symbol a mere arbitrary
invention is that it should remain thin and cold and unappealing.
The risk of choosing for our symbol a form, a figure, a gesture, a
name, offered us by history, is that it should carry with it too many
of the false accretions of accident, chance, the passions of
controversy and the hypocrisies of malice. But after all the
anonymous creative spirit of the generations is so full of the
wisdom of the earth and so involved with the rhythmic inspiration
of innumerable souls, that it would seem better to risk the presence
of certain sinister accretions, than to risk the loss of so much
magical suggestiveness.
If we do select for our symbol such a form, such a shape, such a
gesture and such a name, as history may offer, we shall at any rate
be always free to keep it fluid and malleable and organic. We shall
be free to plunge it, so to speak, again and again into the living
reality which it has been selected to represent. We shall be free to
extricate it completely from all its accretions of chance and
circumstance and material events. We shall be free to extricate it
from all premature metaphysical syntheses. We shall be free to
draw it from the clutches of dogmatic religion. We shall be free
to make it, as all such symbols should be made, poetical
and mythological and, in the aesthetic sense, shamelessly
anthropomorphic. Above all we shall be completely free, since it
represents for us those sons of the universe who are the
embodiment of the creative energy, to associate it with every
aspect of the life of the soul. We shall be free to associate it with
those aspects of the soul which in the process of its slow invention
by the generations have, it may be, been disassociated from it and
separated from it. We shall be free to use it as a symbol for the
fuller, complete life of the future, and for every kind of revolt,
into which the spirit of creation may drive us, against the evil
obscurantism and malicious inertness which resist the power of
love. The conclusion to which we are thus led, the choice which
we are thus compelled to make, is one that has been anticipated
from the beginning. No other name except the name of Christ, no
other figure except the figure of Christ, can possibly serve, if we
are to make any use of history at all, as our symbol for the sons of
the universe.
The choice of Christ as our symbol for these invisible companions
does not imply that we are forced to accept in their entirety the
scriptural accounts of the life of Jesus, or even that we are forced
to assume that the historic Jesus ever lived at all. The desire which
the soul experiences for the incarnation of Christ does not prove
that Christ has already been incarnated, or ever will be incarnated.
And it does not prove this because, in the greater, nobler, and
more spiritual moods of the soul, there is no need for the
incarnation of Christ. In these rare and indescribable moments,
when the past and future seem annihilated and we experience the
sensation of eternity, Christ is felt to be so close to us that no
material incarnation could make him any closer.
The association of Christ with the figure of Jesus is a sublime
accident which has had more influence upon the human soul than
any other historic event; and it must be confessed that the idea of
Christ has been profoundly affected by this association. It has been
so deepened and enlarged and clarified by it that the substitution
of the religion of Jesus for the religion of Christ has been an
almost entirely fortunate event, since it has furnished the soul with
a criterion of the true nature of love which otherwise it might
never have gained.
Jesus undoubtedly came so much nearer than any other to the
understanding of the nature of love, and consequently of the nature
of "the immortals," that the idea of the incarnation--that beautiful
concession to the weakness of the flesh--emanated with an almost
inevitable naturalness from their association. Jesus himself felt in
his own soul the presence of the invisible companions; although he
was led, by reason of his peculiar religious bent, and by reason of
the influences that surrounded him, to speak of these companions
as a "heavenly father."
But the words of Jesus which carry with them the very magic of
truth are not the words in which he speaks of his "father," but the
words in which he speaks of himself as if he were the very
incarnation of Love itself. There is no doubt that the sons of the
universe found in Jesus a soul so uniquely harmonious with
their own that there existed between them a sympathy and an
understanding without parallel in the history of humanity.
It is this sympathy which is the origin of those unequalled words
used by the son of Mary in which he speaks as if he were himself
in very truth an incarnation of the vision of the immortals. The
whole situation is one which need have little mystery for those
who understand the nature of love. In moment after moment of
supreme ecstasy Jesus felt himself so given up to the will of the
invisible companions that this own identity became lost. In
speaking for himself he spoke for them; in suffering for himself he
suffered for them, and in the great hours of his tragic wayfaring he
felt himself so close to them that, by reason of his love, he knew
himself able to speak of the secret of life even as the immortals
themselves would speak.
We are permitted indeed in reading the divine narrative to
distinguish between two moods in the soul of Jesus. In one of
these moods he refers to his "father" as if his father were distinct
and separate from him and even very distant. In the other mood he
speaks as if he himself were in very truth a god; and were able,
without any appeal to any other authority, to heal the wounds of
the world and to reveal to mankind the infinite pity of the love
which is beyond analysis.
It is towards the words and gestures of the son of Mary, when he
spoke of himself rather than of his "father" that we are inevitably
drawn, in our search for an adequate symbol for the eternal vision.
It is when he speaks with authority as if he himself were an
immortal god, as if he himself were one of the invisible
companions, that his words and gestures carry the very breath and
fragrance of truth.
As the drama of his life unfolds itself before us we seem to grow
more and more aware of these two aspects of his soul. It was his
reason, brooding upon the traditions of his race, that led him into
that confusion of the invisible witnesses with the jealous tribal
God of his father David. It was the rhythmic harmony of his soul,
rising up out of the depths of his struggle with himself, that led
him, in his passionate submission to the will of his invisible
friends, to feel as if he were identical with those friends, as if he
were himself the "son of man" and the incarnation of man's
supreme hope.
It is the emphasis laid by Jesus upon his identity with his "father"
which has produced the tragic results we know. For although this
was the personal conception of the noblest of all human souls, it
remains a proof of how much even the soul of Jesus was limited
and restricted by the malicious power which opposes itself to love.
The living companions of men are as we have seen a necessary
answer to the craving of the complex vision for some objective
standard of beauty and reality, which shall give these things an
eternal unity and purpose. Such a vision is an answer to our desire
that the spirit of creative love, which is one side of the
unfathomable duality, should be embodied in personality.
And we have a right to use the name of Christ in this sense; and to
associate it with all that immortal anonymous company, so
beautiful, so pitiful, so terrible, which the name of "_the gods_"
has, in its turbulent and dramatic history, gathered about itself.
The idea of Christ is older than the life of Jesus; nor does the life
of Jesus, as it has come down to us in ecclesiastical tradition,
exhaust or fulfil all the potentialities latent in the idea of Christ.
What the complex vision seems to demand is that the invisible
companions of men should be regarded as immortal gods. If,
therefore, we throw all hesitancy and scruple aside and risk the
application of the name of Christ to this vision of the sons of the
universe, then we shall be compelled to regard Christ as an
immortal God.
The fact that there must be some objective standard which shall
satisfy all the passionate demands of the complex vision is the
path by which we reach this conception of Christ. But once having
reached him he ceases to be a mere conception of the intellect, and
becomes an objective reality which we can touch and appeal to
with our emotion, our imagination, and our aesthetic sense.
But although Christ as our symbolic image of the invisible
companions, must be assumed to be the objective standard of all
our ideas of truth, it is obvious that we cannot escape from
subjectivity in our individual interpretation of his deeper and truer
vision.
Thus there are two parallel streams of growth and change. There is
growth and change in the soul of Christ as he continually
approximates nearer and nearer to his eternally receding ideal.
And there is growth and change in the accumulated harmony of
our individual ideas about his ideal, as each human soul and each
generation of human souls restates this ideal in terms of its own
limited vision.
Each new restatement of this accumulated interpretation of the
ideal of the son of man brings necessarily with it an innate
conviction of its truth because it finds an immediate response in
every individual soul in so far as such individual souls are able to
overcome their intrinsic evil or malice.
What Jesus did for the universe was to recognize in it the peculiar
nature of that love which is its essential life. He would have done
yet more for it had he been able to disassociate his vision from the
conception of an imaginary father of the universe and from his
traditional interest in the tribal god of his ancestors. But Jesus
remains the one human soul who has revealed to us in his own
subjective vision the essential secret of the vision of the
immortals. And that he has done so is proved by the fact that all
his words and actions have come to be inextricably associated with
the Christ-idea.
In this way Jesus remains the profoundest of all human philosophers
and the subtlest of all human psychologists; and although
we have the right to disassociate the Christ-idea from the
sublime illusion of Jesus which led him to confuse the invisible
companions of humanity with the tribal God of the Hebrews, we
are compelled to recognize that Jesus has done so much for
humanity by the depth of his psychological insight that we do not
experience any shock when in the ritual of the Church the name of
the son of David becomes identical with the name of Christ.
The essential thing to establish is that there are greater depths in
the Christ-idea than even Jesus was able to fathom; and that
compared with the soul of Jesus or with the soul of any other man
or god or spiritual entity, the figure of Christ has come now at last
to be for humanity the only god we need; for he is the only god
whose love for all living things is beyond question and dispute,
and whose existence is assumed and implied when any soul in the
universe loves any other soul.
It is necessary then to do two things. To accept without reserve the
vision which Jesus had as to the secret of love; because to nothing
less than this does the love which we possess in our own souls
respond. And in the second place to be merciless and drastic, even
at the risk of pain to the weakness of our human flesh, in
separating the personality of Christ, the immortal god, from the
historic figure of the traditional Jesus. By doing these two things,
and by this alone, we establish what the complex vision desires,
upon a firm ground. For we retain what the vision of Jesus has
revealed to us as to the inherent nature of the invisible companions
and we are saved from all controversy as to the historic reality of
the life of Jesus.
It does not matter to us whether Jesus "really lived"; or whether,
like other great figures, his personality has been created by the
anonymous instinct of humanity. What matters to us is that
humanity itself, using the vision of Jesus as its organ of research
or as the focus point of its own passionate clairvoyance has in
some way or another recognized that the secret of the universe is
to be found in the unfathomable duality of love and malice. From
this point, now it has been once reached, the intrinsic nature of all
human souls makes sure that humanity cannot go back. And it is
because, either by his own sublime insight or by the accident and
chance of history, the figure of Jesus has become associated with
the reality of the immortal gods that we are justified in using for
our symbol of these sons of the universe no other name than the
name of Christ.
We shall, however, be doing wrong to our conception of Christ, if,
while recognizing that the kind of love, of which Jesus revealed
the secret, is the essence of Christ's soul, we refuse to find in him
also many aspects and attributes of life which occupy but little
place or no place at all in the traditional figure of Jesus.
All that is most beautiful and profound, all that is most magical
and subtle, in the gods of the ancient world, must be recognized as
existent in the soul of Christ who is our true "Son of the Morning."
The earth-magic of the ancient gods must be in him; and the
Titanic spirit which revolted against such gods must be in him
also. The mystery of the elements must be interwoven with the
very stuff of his being and the unfathomable depths of Nature
must be a path for his feet. In him all mythologies and all religions
must meet and be transcended. He is Prometheus and Dionysus.
He is Osiris and Balder. He is the great god Pan. "All that we have
been, all that we are, and all that we hope to be, is centred in him
alone." His spirit is the creative spirit which moves for ever upon
the face of the waters. In him all living souls find the object of
their love. Against him the unfathomable power of evil struggles
with eternal demonic malice. In his own soul it struggles against
him; and in the universe which confronts him it struggles against
him. His inmost being is made up of the duality of this struggle
even as is the inmost being of all that exists. If it were not for the
presence of evil in him his passion of love would be as nothing.
For without evil there can be no good, and without malice there
cannot be love. His soul and our human souls remain the ultimate
reality. These alone are concrete, definite, actual and personal. All
except these is ambiguous, half-real and unstable as water. These
and the universe which they create are the true truth; and
compared with these every other "truth" is dubious, shadowy and
unsubstantial.
These are the true truth, because these are personal; and we know
nothing in life, and can know nothing, with the interior
completeness with which we know personality. And the essence of
that interior knowledge with which we know personality is our
recognition of the unfathomable duality within ourselves. We
cannot imagine the good in us as existing without the evil in us;
and we cannot imagine the evil in us as existing without the good
in us.
And this ultimate essence of reality must apply to the soul of
Christ. And this duality has no reconciliation except the
reconciliation that it is a duality in ourselves and a duality in him.
For both the good and the evil in us recede into unfathomable
depths. So that the ultimate reality of the universe is to be found in
the two eternal emotions which perpetually contradict and oppose
one another; of which the only unity and reconciliation is to be
found in the fact that they both belong to every separate soul; and
are the motive power which brings the universe into existence; and
in bringing the universe into existence find themselves under the
domination of time and space.
Every individual soul in the world is composed of two unfathomable
abysses. From the limitless depths of each of these emanates
an emotion which is able to obsess and preoccupy the whole
field of consciousness. Every individual soul has depths,
therefore, which descend into unfathomable recesses; and we are
forced into the conclusion that the unfathomable recesses in the
soul of Christ are subject to the same eternal duality as the souls of
men.
Every movement of thought implies an evocation of the opposing
passion of these two emotions. For no movement of thought can
take place without the activity of the complex vision; and since
one of the basic attributes of the complex vision is divided into
these two primary emotions, we are compelled to conclude that it
is impossible to think any thought at all without some evocation of
the emotion of love and some evocation of the emotion of malice.
The emotion of love is the power that brings together and
synthesizes those eternal ideas of truth and beauty and nobility
which find their objective standard in the soul of Christ. The
emotion of malice is the power that brings together and
synthesizes and harmonizes those eternal ideas of unreality and
hideousness and evil with which the love of Christ struggles
desperately in the unfathomable depths of his soul. It matters to us
little or nothing that we have no name to give to any among the
gods except to this god; for in this god, in this companion of men,
in this immortal helper, the complex vision of man finds all it
needs, the embodiment of Love itself.
We arrive, therefore, at the very symbol we desire, at the symbol
which in tangible and creative power satisfies the needs of the
soul. We owe this symbol to nothing less than the free gift
of the gods themselves; and to the anonymous strivings of
the generations. And once having reached this symbol, this
name of Christ, the same phenomenon occurs as occurs in the
establishment of the real existence of the external universe.
_That_, like this, was at first only a daring hypothesis, only a
supreme act of faith, reached by the subjective effort of the
innumerable individual souls. But once having been reached, it
became, as this has become, a definite objective fact, whose reality
turns out to have been implicit from the beginning.
Thus the name, the word, which we arrive at as the only possible
symbol of our hope is found to be, as soon as we reach it, no
longer merely a symbol but the outward sign of an invisible and
eternal truth. And thus although it remains that we are forced to
recognize that the world is full of gods and that the Person we
name Christ is only one of an innumerable company of invisible
companions to whom in our loneliness we have a right to turn, yet
just because the vision of humanity has found in Christ a
completer, subtler, more beautiful, more revolutionary figure upon
which to fix its hope than it has found in Buddha or Confucius or
Mahomet, or any other name, the figure of Christ has become the
supreme and solitary embodiment of the Ideal to which we look,
and about this figure has come to gather itself and focus itself all
the hopeless longing with which the soul of man turns to the souls
of the immortals.
These divine people of the abyss, these sons of the universe, are
for us henceforth and must be now for us for ever summed up and
embodied in this one figure, the only one among them all whose
nature and being has been drawn so near to us that we can
appropriate it to ourselves.
It remains that the unity of time and space contains an
immeasurable company of immortals; but of these immortals only
one has been articulated and outlined, and so to speak "touched
with the hand," by the troubled passion of humanity. Henceforth,
therefore, while the necessity of the complex vision compels us to
think of the invisible company of the sons of the universe as a vast
hierarchy of supernatural beings, the necessity of the complex
vision compels us also to recognize, that of this company, only
one--only one until the end of time--can be the true symbol of
what our heart desires.
It is better to think of the evocation of this figure as due to the pity
of the gods themselves and to the anonymous craving of humanity
than to think of him as dependent upon the historic evidence as to
the personality of Jesus. The soul requires something more certain
than historic evidence upon which to base its faith. It requires
something closer and more certain even than the divine "logoi"
attributed to the historic Jesus. It requires a living and a personal
soul for ever present to the depths of its own nature. It requires a
living and a personal soul for ever ready to answer the cry of its
love. The misery and unhappiness, the restlessness and pain of all
our human "loves," is due to the fact that the only eternal response
to Love as it beats its hands against the barriers set up against it,
is the embodiment of Love itself as we feel it present with us in the
figure of Christ.
The love which draws two human souls together can only become
eternal and indestructible when it passes beyond the love of the
two for one another into the love of both of them for the Lover
who is immortal. This merging of the love of human lovers into
the love of the immortal Lover does not imply the lessening or
diminishing of the love which draws them together. The nature of
this love cries out against their separation, cries out that they two
shall become one. And yet if they actually and in very truth
became one, that unity in difference which is the very essence of
love would be destroyed. But though they know this well enough
there still remains the desperate craving of the two that they
should become one; and this is of the very nature of love itself.
Thus it may be seen that the only path by which human lovers can
be satisfied is by merging their love for one another into their love
for Christ. In this way, in a sense profounder than mortal flesh can
know, they actually do become one. They become so completely
one that no power on earth or above the earth can ever separate
them. For they are bound together by no mortal link but by the
eternal love of a soul beyond the reach of death. Thus when one of
them comes to die the love which was of the essence of that soul
lives on in the soul of Christ; and when both of them are dead it
can never be as though their love had not been, for in the eternal
memory of Christ their love lives on, increasing the love of Christ
for others like themselves and continually drawing the transitory
and the mortal nearer to the eternal and the immortal.
It therefore becomes evident why it is that the vision of the
invisible companions which remains our standard of reality and of
beauty is not broken up into innumerable subjective visions but is
fixed and permanent and sure. All the unfathomable souls of the
world, and all souls are unfathomable whether they are the souls of
plants or animals or planets or gods or men, are found, the closer
they approach one another, to be in possession of the same vision.
For this immortal vision, in which what we name beauty, and what
we name "reality," finds its synthesis, is found to be nothing less
than the secret love. And while the great company of the immortal
companions are only known to us by the figure of one among
them, namely by the figure of Christ, this figure alone is sufficient
to contain all that we require of life; for being the embodiment of
love this figure is the embodiment of life, of which love is the
creator and the sustainer.
Thus what the apex-thought of man's complex vision reveals is not
only the existence of the gods but the fact that the vision of the
gods is not broken up and divided but is one and the same; and is
yet for ever growing and deepening. And the only measure of the
vision of the gods which we possess is the figure of Christ; for it
has come about by reason of the anonymous instinct of humanity,
by reason of the compassion of the immortals, and by reason of
the divine insight of Jesus, that the figure of Christ contains within
it every one of those primordial ideas from which and towards
which, in a perpetual advance which is also a perpetual return, the
souls of all living things are for ever journeying.
Whether the souls of men and of beasts, of plants and of planetary
spheres survive in any form after they are dead we know not and
can never know. But this at least the revelation of the complex
vision makes clear, that the secret of the whole process is to be
found in the mystery of love; and to the mystery of love we can, at
the worst, constantly appeal; for the mystery of love has been at
last embodied for us in a living figure over whom Death has no
control.