THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM
The philosophy of the complex vision inevitably issues, when it is
applied to political and economic conditions, in the idea of
communism. The idea of communism is inherent in it from the
beginning; and in communism, and in communism alone, does it
find its objective and external expression.
The philosophy of the complex vision reveals, as we have seen, a
certain kind of ultimate duality as the secret of life. This ultimate
duality remains eternally unreconciled; for it is a duality within the
circle of every personal soul; and the fact that every personal soul
is surrounded by an incomprehensible substance under the
dominion of time and space, does not reconcile these eternal
antagonists; because these eternal antagonists are for ever
unfathomable, even as the personal soul, of which they are the
conflicting conditions, is itself for ever unfathomable.
It is therefore a perpetual witness to the truth that the idea of
communism is the inevitable expression of the complex vision that
this idea should, more than other idea in the world, divide the
souls of men into opposite camps. If the idea of communism were
not the inevitable expression of the philosophy of the complex
vision as applied to human life it would be an idea with regard to
which all human souls would hold infinitely various opinions.
But this is not the case. In regard to the idea of communism we do
not find this infinite variety of opinion. We find, on the contrary, a
definite and irreconcilable duality of thought. Human souls are
divided on this matter not, as they are on other matters, into a
motley variety of convictions but into two opposite and
irreconcilable convictions, unfathomably hostile to one another.
There is no other question, no other issue, about which the souls of
men are divided so clearly and definitely into two opposite camps.
The question of the existence of a "parent of the universe" does
not divide them so clearly; because it always remains possible for
any unbeliever in a spiritual unity of this absolute kind to use the
term "parent," if he pleases, for that incomprehensible "substance"
under the dominion of space and time which takes the triple form
of the "substance" out of which the substratum of the soul is made,
the "substance" out of which the "objective mystery" is made, and
the substance out of which is made the surrounding "medium"
which holds all personal souls together.
The question of the mortality or the immortality of the soul does
not divide them so clearly; because such a question is entirely
insoluble; and a vivid consciousness of its insolubility
accompanies all argument. The question of race does not divide
them so clearly; because both with regard to race and with regard
to class the division is very largely a superficial thing, dependent
upon public opinion and upon group-consciousness and leaving
many individuals on each side entirely unaffected.
The question of sex does not divide them so clearly; because there
are always innumerable examples of noble and ignoble treachery
to the sex-instinct; not to speak of a certain intellectual neutrality
which refuses to be biased. The idea of communism is on the
contrary so profoundly associated with the original revelation of
the complex vision that it must be regarded as the inevitable
expression of all the attributes of this vision when such attributes
are reduced to a rhythmic harmony.
That this is no speculative hypothesis but a real fact of experience
can be proved by any sincere act of personal introspection.
The philosophy of the complex vision is based upon those rare and
supreme moments when the soul's "apex-thought" quivers like an
arrow in the very heart of the surrounding darkness. By any honest
act of introspection we can recall to memory the world-deep
revelations which are thus obtained. And among these revelations
the one most vivid and irrefutable, as far as human association is
concerned, is the revelation of the idea of communism.
So vivid and so dominant is this idea, that it may be said that no
motive which drives or obsesses the will in the sphere of external
relations can approach or rival it in importance. And that this is so
can be proved by the fact that the opposite of this idea, namely the
idea of private property, is found when we analyse the content of
our profoundest instincts to be in perpetual conflict with the idea
of communism.
And the inevitableness of the world-deep struggle between these
two ideas is proved by the fact that in no other way, as soon as the
objective world is introduced at all, can we conceive of love and
malice as expressing themselves. Love must naturally express
itself in the desire to "have all things in common"; and malice
must naturally express itself in the desire to have as little as
possible in common and as much as possible for ourselves alone.
The "possessive instinct," although it may often be found
accompanying like an evil shadow some of the purest movements
of love, must be recognized as eternally arising out of the depths
of the power opposed to love. If we have any psychological
clairvoyance we can disentangle this base element from some of
the most passionate forms of the sexual instinct and from some of
the most passionate forms of the maternal instinct. It is undeniable
that the possessive instinct does accompany both these emotions
and we are compelled to recognize that, whenever or wherever it
appears, it is the expression of the direct opposite of love.
So inevitably does the complex vision manifest itself in the idea of
communism that it would be legitimate to say that the main object
of human life as we know it at present is the realization of the
ideas of truth and beauty and nobility in a world-wide
communistic state.
As far as the human soul in our present knowledge of it is
concerned there is no other synthesis possible except this
synthesis. And there is no other synthesis possible except this,
because this and this alone realizes the ideal which the abysmal
power of love implies. And the power of love implies this ideal
because the power of love is the only unity which fuses together
the ideas of reality and beauty and nobility; and because it is
impossible to conceive the power of love as embodying itself in
these ideas except in a world-wide communistic state.
We are able to prove that this is no speculative hypothesis but a
fact based upon experience, by a consideration of the opposite
ideal. For evil, as we have hinted in many places, _has_ its ideal.
The ideal of evil, or of what I call "malice," is the annihilation of
the will to creation. This ideal of malice is in fact an obstinate and
continuous resistance to the power of creation; a resistance carried
so far as to reduce everything that exists to eternal non-existence.
The profoundest experience of the human soul is to be found in the
unfathomable struggle that goes on in the depths between "the
ideal of evil" which is universal death and "the ideal of love"
which is universal life.
Reason and sensation are used in turn by this abysmal malice of
the soul, to establish and make objective "the idea of nothingness."
Thus reason, driven on by the power of malice, derives exquisite
satisfaction from the theory of the automatism of the will.
The theory of the automatism of the will, the theory that the will is
only an illusive name for a pre-determined congeries of irresistible
motives, is a theory that lends itself to the ideal of universal death.
It is a theory that diminishes, and reduces to a minimum, the
identity of the personal soul. And therefore it is a theory which the
isolated reason, divorced from imagination and instinct, fastens
upon and exults in.
The isolated reason, in league with pure sensation and divorced
from instinct, becomes very quickly a slave of the abysmal
power of malice; and the pleasure which it derives from the
contemplation of a mechanical universe predestined and pre-determined,
a universe out of which the personal soul has been completely
expurgated, is a pleasure derived directly from the power of malice,
exulting in the idea of eternal death.
Philosophers are very crafty in these things; and it is necessary to
discriminate between that genuine passion for reality which
derived from the power of love and that exultant pleasure in a
"frightful" reality which is derived from intellectual sadism and
from the unfathomable malice of the soul.
Between a philosophic pessimism which springs from a genuine
passion for reality and from a pure "pity" for tortured sentient
things, and a philosophic pessimism which springs from a cruel
pleasure in atrocious situations and an ambiguous "pity" for
tortured sentient things there is an eternity of difference.
It needs however something almost like a clairvoyance to
recognize this difference; and such a clairvoyance can only be
obtained when, as in the case of Christ, the soul becomes aware of
its own unfathomable possibilities of good and evil.
A careful and implacable analysis of the two camps of opinion
into which the idea of communism divides the world reveals to us
the fact that the philosophical advocates of private property draw a
certain malignant pleasure from insisting that the possessive
instinct is the strongest instinct in humanity.
This is tantamount to saying that the power of malice is the
strongest instinct in humanity; whereas, if the power of malice had
not already been relatively overcome by the power of love there
would be no "humanity" at all. But the philosophical advocates of
private property do not confine themselves to this malign
insistence upon the basic greediness of human nature. They are in
the habit of twisting their arguments completely around and
speaking of the "rights" of property and of the "wholesome" value
of the "natural instinct" to possess property.
This "natural instinct to possess property" becomes, when they so
defend it, something which we assume to be "good" and "noble,"
and not something which we are compelled to recognize as "evil"
and "base."
It is necessary to keep these two arguments quite separate in our
minds and not to allow the philosophical advocates of private
property to confuse them. If the assumption is that the instinct to
possess property is a "good" instinct, an instinct springing from
the power of love in the human soul, then what we have to do is to
subject this "good instinct" to an inflexible analysis; under the
process of which such "goodness" will be found to transform itself
into the extreme opposite of goodness.
If the assumption is that the instinct to possess property is an evil
instinct, but an instinct which is the strongest of all human
instincts and therefore one which it is insane to attempt to resist,
then what we have to do is to prove that the instinct or the emotion
of love is stronger than the instinct or the emotion of malice and so
essential to the life of the soul that if it had not already relatively
overcome the emotion of malice, the personal soul would never
have become what it has become; in fact would never have existed
at all, since its mere existence depends upon the relative victory of
love over malice.
In dealing with the former of these two arguments, namely that the
instinct to possess property is a "good" instinct, it is advisable to
search for some test of "goodness" which shall carry a stronger
conviction to the mind of such biassed philosophers than any
appeal to the conscience or even to the aesthetic sense. The
conscience and the aesthetic sense speak with uncompromising
finality upon this subject and condemn the possessive instinct or
the instinct to possess property with an unwavering voice. As
eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the
aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all
the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness
that the possessive instinct is not good but evil.
The person obsessed by the idea of "nobility" and the person
obsessed by the idea of "beauty" are both of them found to be
extraordinarily suspicious of the possessive instinct and fiercely
anxious to destroy its power. But the test more likely to appeal to
the type of philosopher whose business it is to defend the
institution of private property is the simple test of reality. Reality
or "truth," much more than nobility or beauty, is the idea in the
soul which is outraged by the illusion of the value of private
property.
For the illusion of the value of private property is like the "illusion
of dead matter." It is a half-truth projected by the power of malice.
The inherent unreality of the illusion of the value of private
property can be proved by the simplest examination of the facts.
The illusion draws its strength from a false appeal to the genuine
and basic necessities of the human mind and the human body.
These necessities demand adequate food, adequate clothing,
adequate shelter and adequate leisure. They also demand freedom,
beauty, happiness, a considerable degree of solitude, and final
relief from the intolerable fear of poverty. But the economic and
intellectual resources of the human race are perfectly capable of
providing all these things for all human beings within the limits of
a communistic society. These things and the legitimate demand for
these things must not be confused with the illusion of the value of
private property. Nor must the illusion of the value of private
property be permitted to fortify its insecure position by a false
appeal to these real values.
The astounding achievements of modern science have brought to
light two things. They have brought to light the fact that no human
or social unit short of the international unit of the whole race can
adequately deal with the resources of the planet. And they have
brought to light the fact that this inevitable internationalizing of
economic production must be accompanied by a co-operative
internationalizing of economic distribution, if murderous chaotic
conflict is to be avoided.
The real values of sufficient food, clothing, shelter, leisure,
and solitude can be secured for every human being inhabiting
this planet, under _a far from perfect_ organization of
world-production and world-distribution. The astounding achievements
of modern science have made this possible. It only requires a
reasonable and not by any means an ideal co-operation to make it
actual.
The achievements of modern science, especially in the sphere of
industrial machinery, have made it possible for every human being
to have sufficient food, clothing, shelter, leisure and solitude. Man,
in this sense, has already conquered Nature; and has secured for
his progeny however indefinitely increased, and for the frail and
incompetent ones of his race, however indefinitely increased, a
more than sufficient supply of these primal necessities.
The extraordinary power of international co-operation has been
recently displayed during the years of the war in the production of
engines of destruction. Far less cooperation applied to the
problems of production could secure for an indefinitely multiplied
population, including all derelicts and all incompetents, such
primal necessities of life as normal persons demand. The resources
of this planet, as long as scientific distribution follows close upon
scientific production, are sufficient to maintain in food, in shelter,
in clothing, in leisure, in reasonable comfort, any human progeny.
What then is the principal cause why, as things are now, such
lamentable poverty and such huge fear of lamentable poverty
dominate the human situation? The cause is not far to seek. It lies
in the very root and ground of our existing commercial and
industrial system. It lies in the fact that economic production by
reason of the illusive value of private enterprise, is directed not
towards the satisfaction of such universal and primary necessities
as food, shelter, clothing, leisure and reasonable comfort, but
towards the creation of unnecessary luxury and artificial frippery,
towards the piling up, by means of advertisement, monopoly,
exploitation and every kind of chicanery of unproductive
accumulation of private property.
Our present commercial and industrial system is based upon what
is called "free competition." In other words it is based upon the
right of private individuals to make use of the resources of nature
and the energy of labour to produce unnecessary wealth, wealth
which does little or nothing to increase the food, shelter, clothing,
leisure and comfort of the masses of mankind, wealth which is
artificially maintained by artificial values and by the fantastic
process of advertisement.
In order to make clear and irrefutable the statement that the
illusive value of private property is, like "the illusion of dead
matter," a thing conceived, projected and maintained by the
aboriginal power of evil, it is necessary to prove two things. It is
necessary to prove in the first place that the idea of private
property is neither beautiful nor noble nor real. And it is necessary
to prove in the second place that the defence of the idea of private
property arouses the most evil and most malignant passions which
it is possible for the human soul to feel.
That private property is neither beautiful nor noble can be deduced
from the fact that in proportion as human souls become attuned
to finer, more distinguished, and more intellectual levels
they become more and more indifferent to the "sensation of
ownership." That private property is an unreal thing can be
deduced from the fact that no human being can actually "possess,"
in a definite, positive, and exhaustive manner, more than he can
eat or drink or wear or otherwise personally enjoy.
His "sensation of ownership," over lands, houses, gardens,
pictures, statues, books, animals and human beings, is really and
actually restricted to the immediate and direct enjoyment which he
is able in person to derive from such things. Beyond this
immediate and personal enjoyment the extension of his "sensation
of ownership" can do no more than increase his general sense of
conventional power and importance. His real "possession" of his
land is actually restricted to his capacity for appreciating its
beauty. His real "possession" of his books is actually restricted to
his personal capacity for entering into the living secrets of these
things. Without such capacity, though he may call himself the
"possessor" or "owner," he is really no better than an official
"care-taker," whose province it is to preserve certain objects for
other people to enjoy, or, shall we say, for the permanent
prevention of any people ever enjoying them. And just as the
"sensation of ownership" or "the idea of private property" is unreal
and illusive with regard to land, houses, pictures, books, and the
like so it is unreal and illusive with regard to human beings. No
one, however maliciously he may hug to himself his possessive
instinct, can ever actually and truly "possess" another living
person.
One's wife, one's paramour, one's child, one's slave, are only
apparently and by a conventional illusion of language one's real
and actual "possession." That this is the case can be proved by the
fact that any of these "human possessions" has only to commit
suicide, to escape for ever from such bondage.
The illusion of private property derives its vigour and its obstinate
vividness from two things; from the apparent increase of power
and importance which accompanies it, and from its association
with that necessary minimum of food, shelter, clothing, leisure,
comfort, freedom, solitude, and happiness, which is certainly real,
essential and indispensable.
The universal wisdom of the ages bears witness to the fact that a
"moderate poverty" or a "moderate competence" is the ideal
outward state for a man to find himself in. And this "moderate
enjoyment" of food, shelter, clothing, comfort, leisure and
emotional happiness, is a thing which, in a scientifically organized
communistic society, would be within the reach of even the least
efficient.
The gloomy and melancholy argument brought forward by the
enemies of "communism" that under such a condition "the
incentive of private initiative would disappear" and that no other
motive could take its place, is an argument based upon the
assumption that human nature derives more inspiration from the
idea of dishonourable greed than it derives from the idea of
honourable and useful labour; which is an assumption so wholly
opposed to true psychology that it has only to be nakedly stated to
be seen in its complete absurdity.
What the psychologist, interested in this abysmal struggle between
the idea of communism and the idea of private property, has to
note is the nature and character of the particular individual who
brings forward this argument of the "incentive of greed" or the
"initiative" produced by greed. Such an individual will never be
found to be a great man of science, or a great artist or scholar or
craftsman, or a first-rate engineer, or a highly trained artisan or
farmer or builder.
The individual bringing forward this argument of the "initiative of
greed" will invariably be found to be a member of what might be
called the "parasitic class." He will either be an intellectually
second-rate minister or politician or lawyer or professor, or he will
be a commercial and financial "middleman," whose activities are
entirely absorbed in the art of exploitation and who has never
experienced the sensation of creative work.
If he does not himself belong to the unproductive and parasitic
class it will be easy to detect in him the unmistakable presence of
the emotion of malice. Nowhere is the emotion of malice more
entirely in harmony with itself than when it is engaged in
attributing base and sordid motives to the energy of human nature.
This monstrous doctrine that human beings _require_ "the
incentive of greed" and that without that incentive or "initiative"
no one would engage in any kind of creative work, is a doctrine
springing directly from the aboriginal malice of the soul; and a
doctrine which is refuted every day by every honest, healthy and
honourable man and woman.
But all these are, after all, only negative proofs of the inevitable
rise, out of the very necessity of love's nature, of the idea of
communism. Of all mortal instincts, the possessive instinct is the
most insidious and most evil. Love is for ever being perverted and
polluted by this thing, and turned from its true essence into
something other than itself. This is equally true of love whether
such love is directed towards persons or towards ideas or things.
The possessive instinct springing directly from the aboriginal
malice is perpetually deceiving itself. Apparently and superficially
what it aims at is the eternally "static." In other words what it aims
at is the retention in everlasting immobility of the person or the
idea or the thing into which it has dug its claws.
Thus the maternal instinct, in its evil mood, aims at petrifying and
rendering immobile that helpless youthfulness in its offspring
which the possessive passion finds so provocative and exciting.
Thus the lover in his evil mood, desires that the object of his love
should remain in everlasting immobility, an odalisque of eternal
reciprocity. That this evil desire takes the form of a longing that
the object of his love should eternally escape and eternally be
recaptured makes no difference in the basic feeling.
Thus the collector of "works of art"--a being divided from the real
lover of art by an impassable gulf--derives no pleasure from the
beauty of anything until it has become _his_, until he has hidden it
away from all the rest of the world. Thus the lover of "nature," in
his evil mood, derives no pleasure from the fitful magic of grass
and bowers and trees, until he feels happy in the mad illusion that
the very body of the earth, even to the centre of the planet, where
these things grow, is his "private" property and is something fixed,
permanent, static, unchanging. But all this desire for the eternally
"static" is superficial and self-deceiving.
Analysed down to its very depth, what this evil possessive instinct
desires is what all malice desires, namely the annihilation of life.
Pretending to itself that it desires to hug to itself, in eternal
immobility, the thing it loves, what in its secret essence it really
desires is that thing's absolute annihilation. It wants to hug that
thing so tightly to itself that the independence of the thing
completely vanishes. It wants to destroy all separation between
itself and the thing, and all liberty and freedom for the thing. It
wants "to eat the thing up" and draw the thing into its own being.
Its evil desire can never find complete satisfaction until it has
"killed the thing it loves" and buried it within its own identity. It
is this evil possessive element in sexual love, whether of a man for a
woman or a woman for a man, which is the real evil in the sexual
passion. It is this possessive instinct in maternal love which is the
evil element in the love of a mother for a child. Both these evil
emotions tend to make war upon life.
The mother, in her secret sub-conscious passion, desires to draw
back her infant into her womb, and restore it to its pre-natal
physiological unity with herself. The lover in his secret evil
sub-consciousness, desires to draw his beloved into ever-increasing
unity with himself, until the separation between them is at an end
and her identity is lost in his identity.
The final issue, therefore, of this evil instinct of possession, this
evil instinct of private property, can never be anything else than
death. Death is what the ultimate emotion of malice desires; and
death is an actual result of the instinct of possession carried to an
extreme limit.
The static immobility and complete "unchangeableness" which the
possessive instinct pretends to itself is all it desires is really
therefore nothing but a mask for its desire to destroy. The
possessive instinct is, in its profoundest abyss, an amorist of death.
What it secretly loves is the dead; for the dead alone can never
defraud it of its satisfaction. Wherever love exercises its creative
energy the possessive instinct relaxes its hold. Love expands and
diffuses itself. Love projects itself and merges itself The creative
impulse is always centrifugal. The indrawing movement, the
centripetal movement, is a sign of the presence of that inert malice
which would reduce all life to nothingness.
The creative energy of love issues inevitably in the idea
of communism. The idea of communism implies the complete
abolition of private property; because private property, whether it
be property in persons or in things, is essentially evil, is indeed the
natural expression of the primordial inert malice, in its hostility to
life. Under any realization, in actual existence, of the idea of
communism the creative energy finds itself free to expand and
dilate. All that heavy clogging burden of "the personally
possessed" being shaken off, the natural fresh shoots of living
beauty rise to the surface like the new green growths of spring
when the winter's rubble has been washed away by the rain.
The accursed system of private property, rooted in the abysmal
malice of the human heart, lies like a dead weight upon every
creative impulse. Everything is weighed and judged, everything is
valued and measured, in relation to this.
Modern Law is the system of restriction by which we protect
private property.
Modern religion is the system of compensation by which we
soften the difference between inequalities in private property.
Modern politics is the system of compromise by which public
opinion registers its devotion to private property. Modern morality
is the system of artificial inhibitions by which the human
conscience is perverted into regarding private property as the
supreme good.
Modern science is the system by which private property is
increased and the uses of it made more complicated. Modern
"truth" is the system of traditional opinion by which the illusion of
private property is established as "responsible" thinking, and
"serious" thinking, and "ethical" thinking.
Modern art is the system by which what is most gross and vulgar
in the popular taste is pandered to in the interests of private
property.
The creative energy in modern life is therefore restricted and
opposed at almost every point by the evil instinct to possess. Of
every new idea the question is asked, "does it conflict with private
property?"
Of every new aesthetic judgment the question is asked, "does it
conflict with private property?"
Of every new moral valuation the question is asked, "does it
conflict with private property?" And the instinct which puts these
questions to every new movement of the creative energy is the
instinct of inert malice. The object of life can be regarded as
nothing less than the realization of the vision of the Immortals;
and it is only under a communistic state that the vision of the
Immortals can be realized; because only in such a state is that
petrified illusion of inert malice which we name "private property"
thoroughly got rid of and destroyed.
CONCLUSION
No attempted articulation of the mystery, life, can be worthy of
being named a "philosophy" unless it has a definite bearing upon
what, in the midst of that confused "manifold" through which we
move, we call the problem of conduct.
The mass of complicated impression, which from our first dawn of
consciousness presses upon us, falls into two main divisions--the
portion of it which comes under the power of our will and the
portion of it which is supplied by destiny or circumstance, and
over which our will is impotent.
Superficially speaking what we call conduct only applies to action;
but in a deeper sense it applies to that whole division of our
sensations, emotions, ideas, and energies, whether it take the form
of action or not, which comes in any measure under the power of
the will. Such acts of the mind therefore, as are purely intellectual
or emotional--as for instance what we call "acts of faith"--are as
much to be considered forms of conduct as those outer visible
material gestures which manifest themselves in action.
This is no fantastic or extravagant fancy. It is the old classical and
catholic doctrine, to which not only such thinkers as Plato and
Spinoza have affixed their seal, but which is at the root of the
deepest instincts of Buddhists, Christians, Epicureans, Stoics, and
the mystics of all ages. It may be summed up by the statement that
life is an art towards which the will must be directed; and that the
larger portion of life manifests itself in interior contemplation and
only the smaller part of it in overt action.
In both these spheres, in the sphere of contemplation as much as in
the sphere of action, there exists that "given element" of destiny or
circumstance, in the presence of which the will is powerless. But
in regard to this given element it must be remembered that no
individual soul can ever, to the end of time, be absolutely certain
that in any particular case, whether his own or another's, he has
finally arrived at this irreducible fatality.
The extraordinary phenomenon of what religious people call
"conversion," a phenomenon which implies a change of heart so
unexpected and startling as to seem miraculous, is a proof of how
unwise it is to be in any particular case rigidly dogmatic as
to where the sunken rock of destiny really begins. So many
appearances have taken the shape of this finality, so many mirages
of "false fate" have paralysed our will, that it is wisest to believe
to the very end of our days that our attitude to destiny can change
and modify destiny.
Assuming then that the articulation of the mystery of life which
has been outlined in this book, under the name of "the philosophy
of the complex vision," must remain the barest of intellectual
hypotheses until it has manifested itself in "conduct"; and
assuming further that this "conduct" includes the whole of that
portion of life, whether contemplative or active, which can be
reduced to a fine art by the effort of the will; the question
emerges--what kind of effort must the will make, both interiorally
and exteriorally, if it desire to respond, by a rhythmic reciprocity,
to the vision which the intellect has accepted?
It must be remembered that the vision upon which this philosophy
depends and from which it derives its primordial assumptions is
not the normal vision of the human soul. The philosophy of the
complex vision rejects the normal vision of the human soul on
behalf of the abnormal vision of the human soul. Its point of view,
in this matter, is that the human soul only arrives at the secret of
the universe in those exalted, heightened, exceptional and rare
moments, when all the multiform activities of the soul's life
achieve a musical consummation. Its point of view is that since
philosophy, at its deepest and highest, necessarily becomes art;
and since art is a rare and difficult thing requiring infinite
adjustments and reconciliations; what philosophy has really to use,
in formulating any sort of adequate system, is the memory of such
rare moments after they have passed away. The point of view from
which we have made all our basic assumptions is the point of view
that the secret of the universe is only revealed to man in rare
moments of ecstasy; and that what man's reason has to do is to
gather together in memory the broken and scattered fragments of
these moments and out of this residuum build up and round off, as
best it may, some coherent interpretation of life.
From all this it follows that the first rhythmic reply of the human
will to the vision to serve is a passionate act of what might be
called "contemplative tension," in the direction of the reviving of
such memories, and in the direction of preparing the ground for
the return of another "moment of vision" similar in nature to those
that have gone before.
The secret of this act of inward contemplative tension we have
already analysed. We have found it to consist in a "complex" of all
the primordial energies of the soul, focussed and concentrated into
what we have compared to a pyramidal apex-point by the power of
a certain synthetic movement of the soul itself which we have
named the apex-thought.
The reply of the will, therefore, to the vision it desires to serve
consists of a gathering together of all the energies of the soul into
a rhythmic harmony. It may well be that this premeditated and
deliberately constructed harmony will have to wait for many days
and years without experiencing the magic touch of the soul's
apex-thought. For though we may passionately desire the touch of
this--aye, and pray for it with a most desperate prayer!--it is of the
very nature of this mysterious thing to require for the moment of its
activity something else than the contemplative tension which
has prepared the ground for its appearance. For this synthetic
apex-thought, which is the soul's highest power, is only in a very
limited sense within the power of the will.
The whole matter is obscure and perhaps inexplicable; but it seems
as if a place were required here for some philosophic equivalent of
that free gift of the Gods which, in theological language, goes by
the name of "grace." Long and long may the soul wait--with the
hardly won rhythm of its multiform "complex" poised in vibrant
expectation--before the moment arrives in which the apex-thought
can strike its note of ecstasy.
In the time and place of such a moment, in the accumulation of
conditions which render such a moment eternal, chance and
circumstance may play a prominent part. There is, however, an
inveterate instinct in humanity--not perhaps to be altogether
disregarded--according to the voice of which this unaccountable
element of chance and circumstance, or, shall we say, of destiny,
is itself the result of the interposed influence of the invisible
companions. But whether this be so or not, the fact remains that
some alien element of indeterminable chance or circumstance or
destiny does frequently enter into that accumulation of obscure
conditions which seem to be necessary before the magic of the
apex-thought is roused.
This preparing of the ground, this deliberate concentration of the
soul's energies, is the first movement of the will in answer to the
attraction of the eternal vision discerned so far only as a remote
ideal. The second movement of the will has been already implied
in the first, and is only a lifting into clear consciousness of what
led the soul to make its initial effort. I speak of the part played by
the will in the abysmal struggle between love and malice. This
struggle was really implicit, in the beginning, in the effort the will
made to focus the multiform energies of the complex vision. But
directly some measure of insight into the secret of life has
followed upon this effort, or directly, if the soul's good fortune has
been exceptional, its great illuminative moment has been reached,
the will finds itself irresistibly plunged into this struggle, finds
itself inevitably ranged, on one side or the other, of the ultimate
duality.
That the first effort of the will was largely what might be called an
intellectual one, though its purpose was to make use of all the
soul's attributes together, is proved by the fact that it is possible
for human souls to be possessed of formidable insight into the secret
of life and yet to use that insight for evil rather than for good.
But the second movement of the will, of which I am now speaking,
reveals without a shadow of ambiguity on which side of the
eternal contest the personality in question has resolved to
throw its weight. If, in this second movement, the will answers,
with a reciprocal gathering of itself together, the now far clearer
attraction of the vision attained by its original effort, it will be
found to range itself on the side of love against the power of
malice.
If, on the contrary, having made use of its original vision to
understand the secret of this struggle, it allies itself with the power
of malice against love, it will be found to produce the spectacle of
a soul of illuminated intellectual insight deliberately concentrated
on evil rather than good.
But once irrevocably committed to the power of that creative
energy which we call love, the will, though it may have
innumerable lapses and moments of troubled darkness, never
ceases from its abysmal struggle. For this is the conclusion of the
whole matter. When we speak of the eternal duality as consisting
in a struggle between love and malice, what we really mean is that
the human soul, concentrated into the magnet-point of a
passionately conscious will, is found varying and quivering
between the pole of love and the pole of malice.
The whole drama is contained within the circle of personality; and
it would be of a similar nature if the personality in question were
confronted by no other thing in the universe except the objective
mystery. I mean that the soul would be committed to a struggle
between its creative energy and its inert malice even if there were
no other living persons in the world towards whom this love and
this malice could be directed.
I have compared the substance of the soul to an arrowhead of
concentrated flames, the shaft of which is wrapped in impenetrable
darkness while the point of it pierces the objective mystery. From
within the impenetrable darkness of this invisible arrow-shaft the
very substance of the soul is projected; and in its projection it
assumes the form of these flames; and the name I have given to
this mysterious outpouring of the soul is _emotion_, whereof the
opposing poles of contending force are respectively love and
malice. The psycho-material substance of the invisible soul-monad
is itself divided into this eternally alternating duality, of which the
projected "flames," or manifested "energies" are the constant
expression. Each of these energies has as its concrete "material,"
so to speak, the one projected substance of the soul; and is thus
composed of the very stuff of emotion.
The eternal duality of this emotion takes various forms in these
various manifestations of its one substance. Thus the energy or
flame of the aesthetic sense resolves itself into the opposed
vibrations of the beautiful and the hideous. Thus the energy, or
flame, of the pure reason resolves itself into the opposed
vibrations of the true and the false. Thus the energy, or flame, of
conscience resolves itself into the opposed vibrations of the good
and the evil.
Although the remaining energies of the soul, beyond those I have
just named--such as instinct, intuition, imagination, and the like--
are less definitely divided up among those three "primordial ideas"
which we discern as "truth," "beauty," and "goodness," they are
subject, nevertheless, since their substance is the stuff of emotion,
to the same duality of love and malice.
It is not difficult to see how this duality turns upon itself in human
instinct, in human imagination, and in human intuition for the
creative impulse in all these energies finds itself opposed by the
impulse to resist creation. It is when the will is in question that we
are compelled to notice a difference. For the will, although itself a
primal energy or projection of the soul, is in its inherent nature set
apart from the other activities of the soul.
The will is that particular aspect of the soul-monad by means of
which it consciously intensifies or relaxes the outward pressure of
emotion. From the point of view of the complex vision, the will,
although easily differentiated from both consciousness and
emotion, cannot be imagined as existing apart from these.
Every living organism possesses consciousness in some degree,
emotion in some degree, and will in some degree; and the part
played by the will in the complicated "nexus" of the soul's life may
be compared to that of a mechanical spring in some kind of a
machine. In this case, however, the spring of the machine is fed by
the oil of consciousness and releases its force upon the cogs and
wheels of contradictory emotion.
No theory of psychology which attempts to eliminate the will by
the substitution of pure "motive" playing upon pure "action" is
acceptable to us. And such an elimination is unacceptable,
because, in the ultimate insight of the complex vision turned round
upon itself, the soul is aware of a definite recognizable
phenomenon which although present to consciousness is different
from consciousness, and although intensifying and lessoning
emotion is different from emotion.
In regard to this "problem of conduct," which I refuse to interpret
as anything short of the whole art of life, contemplative as well as
active, the will, being, so to say, the main-spring of the soul,
naturally plays the most important part. The prominence given, in
moral tradition, to the struggle of the will with sexual desire is one
of the melancholy evidences as to how seldom the complex vision
of the soul has been allowed full play.
What is called "asceticism" or "puritanism" is the result of an
over-balanced concentration of the will upon the phenomena of
sensation alone. Whereas in the rhythmic balance of the soul's
complete faculties, what the ideal vision calls upon the will to do,
is not to concentrate upon repressing sensation but to concentrate
upon repressing malice and intensifying love.
Sensation is only, after all, one of the energies, or projected
flames, of the soul, in its reaction to the objective mystery. But
emotion is, as we have seen, the very soul itself, poured forth in its
profoundest essence, and eternally divided against itself in the
ultimate duality. Emotion is the psychic element which is the real
substratum of sensation, just as it is the real substratum of reason
and taste. So that when the will concentrates itself, as it
has so often done and so often been commended for doing, upon
sensation alone, it is neglecting and betraying its main function,
which is the repressing of malice and the liberation of love.
The deliberate repression of sensation does, it is true, sometimes
destroy our response to sensation; but it more often intensifies the
soul's sensational life. It is only when the will is concentrated upon
the intensifying of love and the suppression of malice that
sensation falls into its right place in the resultant rhythm. There is
then no question of either suppressing it or of indulging it. It
comes and goes as naturally, as easily, as inevitably, as the rain or
the snow.
When the will is concentrated upon the suppression of malice and
the intensifying of love all those cults of sensation which we call
vice naturally relinquish their hold upon us. The fact that women
so rarely indulge in the worst excesses of these cults is due to the
fact that in their closeness to nature they follow more easily the
rhythmic flow of life and are less easily tempted to isolate and
detach from the rest any particular feeling. But women pay the
penalty for this advantage when it comes to the question of the
illuminative moments of the apex-thought. For in these high, rare
and abnormal moments, the ordinary ebb and flow of life is
interrupted; and something emerges which resembles the final
effluence of a work of art that has touched eternity. The rhythmic
movement of the apex-thought, when under such exceptional
conditions it evokes this effluence, rises for a moment out of the
flux of nature and gathers itself into a monumental vision, calm
and quiet and immortal. It is more difficult for women to attain
this vision than for men; because, while under normal conditions
the play of their energies is better balanced and more harmonious
than man's, it is harder for them to detach themselves from the ebb
and flow of nature's chemistry, harder for them to attain the
personal isolation which lends itself to the supreme creative
act. But while such exceptional moments seem to come more
frequently to men than to women, and while a greater number of
the supreme artists and prophets of the world are of the male sex,
it cannot be denied that the average woman, in every generation,
leads a more human and a more dignified life than the average
man. And she does this because the special labours which occupy
her, such as the matter of food, of cleanliness, of the making and
mending of clothes, of the care of children and animals and
flowers, of the handling of animate and inanimate things with a
view to the increase of life and beauty upon the earth, are labours
which have gathered about them, during their long descent of the
centuries, a certain symbolic and poetic distinction which nothing
but immemorial association with mankind's primal necessities is
able to give.
The same dignity of immemorial association hangs, it is true,
about such masculine labours as are connected with the tilling of
the earth and the sailing of the sea. Certain ancient and eternally
necessary handicrafts, such as cannot be superseded by machinery,
take their place with these. But since man's particular power of
separating himself from Nature and dominating Nature by means
of logical reason, physical science and mechanical devices, puts
him in the position of continuity breaking up those usages of the
ages upon which the ritualistic element in life depends, he has
come, by inevitable evolution, to be much more the child of the
new and the arbitrary than woman is; and in his divorce from
immemorial necessity has lost much of that symbolic distinction
which the life of woman retains.
It may thus be said that while the determining will in the soul of
the average woman ought to be directed towards that exceptional
creative energy which lifts the soul out of the flux of Nature and
gives it a glimpse of the vision of the immortals, the determining
will in the soul of the average man ought to be directed towards
the heightening of his ordinary consciousness so as to bring this up
to the level of the flux of nature and to penetrate it with the
memory of the creative moments which he has had.
In both cases the material with which the will has to work is the
emotions of love and of malice; but in the case of man this malice
tends to destroy the poetry of common life, while in the case of
woman it tends to obstruct and embarrass her soul when the magic
of the apex-thought stirs within her and an opportunity arises for
that creative act which puts the complex vision in touch with the
vision of the Gods.
The philosophy of the complex vision does not discover in its
examination of the psycho-material organism of the soul any
differentiated "faculties" which can be paralleled by the
differentiated "members" of the human body. The organic unity of
the soul is retained, in undissipated concentration, throughout
whatever movement or action or stress of energy it is led to make.
The totality of the soul becomes will, or the totality of the soul
becomes reason, or the totality of the soul becomes intuition, in
the same way as a falling body of water, or the projected stream of
a fountain _becomes_ whatever dominant colour of sky or air or
atmosphere penetrates it and transforms it. What we have called
emotion, made up of the duality of love and malice, is something
much more integral than this. For the totality of the soul, which
_becomes_ reason, consciousness, intuition, conscience, and the
like, is always composed of the very stuff and matter of emotion.
When we say "the totality of the soul becomes imagination or
intuition" it is the same thing as though we said "the emotion of
the soul becomes imagination or intuition."
Emotion is our name, in fact, for the psycho-material "stuff" out of
which the organic substratum of the soul is made. And since this
"stuff" is eternally divided against itself into a positive and a
negative "pole" we are compelled to assert that our ultimate
analysis of the system of things is dualistic, in spite of the fact
that the whole drama takes place under the one comprehensive unity of
space.
When we say that the totality of the soul becomes will, reason,
imagination, conscience, intuition and so forth, we do not mean
that by becoming any one of these single things it is prevented
from becoming others. We are confronted here by a phenomenon
of organic life which, however inexplicable, is of frequent
occurrence in human experience. The ecclesiastical dogma of the
Trinity is no fantastic invention of this or the other theologian. It
is an inevitable definition of a certain body of human experience to
which it affords a plausible explanation.
What the philosophy of the complex vision attempts to do is
to analyse into its component parts that confused mass of
contradictory impressions to which the soul awakens as soon as it
becomes conscious of itself at all. The older philosophers begin
their adventurous journey by the discovery and proclamation of
some particular clue, or catchword, or general principle, out of the
rational necessity of whose content they seek to evoke that living
and breathing universe which impinges upon us all. Modern
philosophy tends to reject these Absolute "clues," these
simplifying "secrets" of the system of things; but in rejecting these
it either substitutes its own hypothetical generalizations, such as
"spirit," "life-force," or "cosmic energy," or it contents itself with
noting, as William James does, the more objective grouping of
states of consciousness, as they weave their pattern on the face of
the swirling waters, without regard to any "substantial soul" whose
background of organic life gives these "states" their concrete
unity.
The philosophy of the complex vision differs from the older
philosophies in that it frankly and confessedly starts with that
general situation which is also its goal. Its movement is therefore a
perpetual setting-forth and a perpetual return; a setting forth
towards a newly created vision of the world, and a return to that
ideal of such a vision which has been implicit from the beginning.
And this general situation from which it starts and to which it
returns is nothing less than the huge spectacle of the visible
universe confronting the individual soul and implying the kindred
existence of innumerable other souls. The fact that what the
complex vision reveals is the primary importance of personality
does not detract in the least degree from the unfathomable
mysteriousness of the objective universe And it does not detract
from this because the unfathomableness of the universe is not a
rational deduction drawn from the logical idea of what an
objective universe would be like if it existed, but is a direct human
experience verified at every movement of the soul. The universe
revealed to us by the complex vision is a universe compounded of
the concentrated visions of all the souls that compose it, a universe
which in its eternal beauty and hideousness has received the
"imprimatur of the immortal Gods."
The fact that such a universe is in part a creation of the mind, and
in part a discovery made by the mind when it flings itself upon
the unknown, does not lessen or diminish the strangeness or
unfathomableness of life. The fact that the ultimate reality of such
a universe is to be found in the psycho-material substratum--where
mind and matter become one--of the individual soul, does not
lessen or diminish the magical beauty or cruel terribleness of life.
What we name by the name of "matter" is not less a permanent
human experience, because apart from the creative energy of some
personal soul we are not able to conceive of its existence.
The philosophy of the complex vision reduces everything that
exists to an eternal action and re-action between the individual
soul and the objective mystery. This action and reaction is itself
reproduced in the eternal duality, or ebb and flow, which
constitutes the living soul itself. And because the psycho-material
substance of the soul must be considered as identical, on its
psychic side, with the "spiritual substance" of the universe
"medium" through which all souls come into contact with one
another, and identical on its material side with the objective
mystery which is expressed in all bodies, it is impossible to avoid
the conclusion that the individual personality is surrounded by an
elemental and universal "something" similar to itself, dominated
as itself is dominated by the omnipresent circle of Space.
This universal "something" must be regarded, in spite of its double
nature, as one and the same, since it is dominated by one and
the same space. The fact that the material aspect of this
psycho-material element is constantly plastic to the creative energy of
the soul does not reduce it to the level of an "illusion." The mind
recreates everything it touches; but the mind cannot work in a
vacuum. There must be something for the mind to "touch." What
the soul touches, therefore, as soon as it becomes conscious of
itself is, in the first place, the "material element" of its own inmost
nature; in the second place the "material element" which makes it
possible for all bodies to come in contact with one another; and in
the third place the "material element" which is the original
potentiality of all universes and which has been named "the
objective mystery."
To call this universal material element, thus manifested in a
three-fold form, an illusion of the human mind is to destroy the
integrity of language. Nothing can justly be called an illusion which
is a permanent and universal human experience. The name we select
for this experience is of no importance. We can name it _matter_,
or we can name it _energy_, or _movement_, or _force_. The
experience remains the same, by whatever name we indicate it to
one another.
The philosophy of the complex vision opposes itself to all
materialistic systems by its recognition of personality as the
ultimate basis of life; and it opposes itself to all idealistic systems
by its recognition of an irreducible "material element" which is the
object of all thought but which is also, in the substratum of the
soul-monad, fused and blended with thought itself.
We now arrive at the conclusion of our philosophical journey; and
we find it to be the identical point or situation from which we
originally started. Once and for all we are compelled to ask
ourselves the question, whether since personality is the ultimate
secret of life and since all individual personalities, whether human,
sub-human, or super-human, are confronted by one "material
element" dominated by one universal material space, it is not
probable that this "material element" should itself be, as it were,
the "outward body" of one "elemental soul"? Such an elemental
soul would have no connexion with the "Absolute Being" of the
great metaphysical systems. For in those systems the Absolute
Being is essentially impersonal, and can in no sense be regarded as
having anything corresponding to a body.
But this hypothetical soul of the ethereal element would be just as
definitely expressed in a bodily form as are the personalities of
men, beasts, plants and stars. It is impossible to avoid, now we are
at the end of our philosophic journey, one swift glance backward
over the travelled road; and it is impossible to avoid asking
ourselves the question whether this universal material element
which confronts every individual soul and surrounds every
individual body may not itself be the body of an universal living
personality? Is such a question, so presented to us for the last time,
as we look back over our long journey, a kind of faint and
despairing gesture made by the phantom of "the idea of God," or is
it the obscure stirring of such an idea, from beneath the weight of
all our argument, as it refuses to remain buried? It seems to me
much more than this.
The complex vision seems to indicate in this matter that we have a
right to make the hypothetical outlines of this thing as clear and
emphatic as we can; as clear and emphatic, and also, by a rigid
method of limitation, as little overstressed and as little
overpowering as we can.
The question that presses upon us, therefore, as we glance
backward over our travelled road, is whether or not, by the logic of
our doctrine of personality, we are bound to predicate some sort of
"elemental soul" as the indwelling personal monad belonging to
the universal material element even as any other soul belongs to its
body.
Does it not, we might ask, seem unthinkable that any portion of
this universal element should remain suspended in a vacuum
without the indwelling presence of a definite personality of which
it is the expression? Are we not led to the conclusion that the
whole mass and volume of this material element, namely the
material element in every living soul, the material element which
binds all bodies together, and the material element which
composes the objective mystery, must make up in its total weight
and pressure the _body_, so to speak, of some sort of universal
elemental soul?
And because no personality, whether universal or individual, can
be regarded as absolute, since perpetual creation is the essence of
life, must it not follow that this elemental personality must itself
eternally confront and be confronted by an unfathomable depth of
objective mystery which it perpetually invades with its creative
energy but which it can never exhaust, or touch the limit of? The
body of this being would be in fact its own "objective mystery,"
while our "objective mystery" would be recognized as disappearing
in the same reality. Does this hypothesis reduce the tragedy
of life to a negligible quantity, or afford a basis upon
which any easy optimism could be reared? It does not appear so.
Wherever personality existed, there the ultimate duality would
inevitably reign. And just as with "the invisible companions" what
is evil and malicious in us attracts towards us what is evil and
malicious in them so with the elemental personality, whatever
were evil and malicious in us would attract towards us whatever
were evil and malicious in it. The elemental personality would not
necessarily be better, or nobler, or wiser than we are. There would
be no particular reason why we should worship it, or give it praise.
For if it really existed it could no more help being what it is than
we can help being what we are, or the immortal gods can help
being what they are.
That such an elemental personality would have to be regarded as a
kind of demi-god can hardly be denied; but there would be no
reason for asserting that our highest moments of inspiration were
due to its love for us. As with the rest of the "immortals" it would
be sometimes possessed by love and sometimes possessed by
malice, and we should have not the least authority for saying that
our supreme moments of insight were due to its inspiration.
Sometimes they would be so. On the other hand sometimes our
most baffled, clouded, inert, moribund, and wretched moments
would be due to its influence. Such an elemental personality
would have no advantage over any other personality, except in the
fact of being elemental; and this would give it no absolute
advantage, since its universality would be eternally challenged by
the unfathomable element in its own being. The "body" of such an
elemental personality would have to be regarded as the actual
objective mystery which confronts both men and gods. It would
have to be regarded as possessing a complex vision even as every
other personality possesses it; and its soul-monad would have to
be as concrete, actual, and real, as every other soul monad. An
ethereal Being of this kind, whose body were composed of the
whole mass of the material element which binds all bodies
together, would have no closer connexion with the soul of man
than any other invisible companion. The soul of man could be
drawn to it in love or could be repelled from it by malice, just as it
can be drawn to any other living thing or repelled by any other
living thing.
That the human race should have sometimes made the attempt to
associate such an universal personality with the ideal figure of
Christ is natural enough. But such an association wins no sanction
or authority from the revelation of the complex vision. In one
sense the figure of Christ, as the life of Jesus reveals it, is a pure
symbol. In another sense, as we become aware of his love in the
depths of our own soul, he is the most real and actual of all living
beings. But neither as a symbol of the immortal vision, nor as
himself an immortal God, have we any right to regard Christ as
identical with this elemental personality. Christ is far more
important to us and precious to us than such a being could possibly
be.
And just as this hypothetical personality, whose body is the
material element which binds all bodies together, must not be
confused with the figure of Christ, so also it is not to be confused
with either of those primordial projections of pure reason, working
in isolation, which we have noted as the "synthetic unity of
apperception" and the "universal self," The elemental personality,
if it existed, would be something quite different from the universal
self of the logical reason. For the universal self of the logical
reason includes and transcends all the other selves, whereas the
elemental personality which has the whole weight of the world's
material element as its body could not transcend, or in any way
"subsume" the least of individual things except in so far as the
material element which is its body would surround all living things
and bring them into contact with one another.
The elemental personality could in no sense be called an
over-soul, because, so far from being an universal self made up of
particular individual selves, it would be a completely detached
soul, only related to other souls in the sense that all other souls
come into contact with one another through the medium of its
spiritual substance.
According to the revelation of the complex vision the question of
the existence or non-existence of an elemental soul of this kind has
no relation to the problem of human conduct. For the material
element in the individual soul is fused in individual consciousness;
and therefore the spiritual medium which surrounds the individual
soul cannot impinge upon or penetrate the soul which it surrounds.
And this conclusion is borne witness to in all manner of common
human experience. For although we all feel dimly aware of vast
gulfs of spiritual evil and vast gulfs of spiritual beauty in the world
about us, this knowledge only becomes definite and concrete when
we think of such gifts as being entirely made up of personal
moods, the moods of mortal men, of immortal gods, and the
moods, it may be, of this elemental personality.
But the problem of conduct is not the problem of getting into
harmony with any particular individual soul. It is the problem of
getting into harmony with the creative vision in our own soul,
which when attained turns out to be identical with the creative
vision of every other soul in the universe. The conception of the
elemental personality does not depend, as does the existence of the
immortals, upon our consciousness of something objective and
eternal in our primordial ideas. It depends upon our suspicion that
no extended mass of what we call matter, however attenuated and
ethereal, can exist suspended in soulless space.
Some attenuated form of matter our universe demands, as the
universal medium by means of which all separate bodies come
into touch with each other; but it is hard to imagine an universal
medium hung, as it were, in an enormous vacuum. Such a medium
would seem to demand, as a reason for its existence, some living
centre of energy such as that which a personal soul can alone
supply. It is in this way we arrive at the hypothetical conception of
the elemental soul.
And our hypothesis is borne out by one very curious human
experience. I mean the experience which certain natures have of a
demonic or magnetic force in life which can be drawn upon either
for good or for evil, and which seems in some strange sense to be
diffused round us in the universal air. Goethe frequently refers to
this demonic element; and others, besides Goethe, have had
experience of it. If our hypothetical, elemental personality is to be
regarded as a sort of demi-god, lower than the immortals and
perhaps lower than man, we may associate it with those vague
intimations of a sub-human life around us which seems in some
weird sense distinct from the life of any particular thing we know.
The elemental personality, in this case, would be the cause of
those various "psychic manifestations" which have sometimes
been fantastically accounted for as the work of so-called
"elementals."
But the supreme moments of human consciousness, when the
apex-thought of the complex vision is shooting its arrows of flame
into the darkness, are but slightly concerned with the demonic
sub-human life of hypothetical elemental personalities. They are
concerned with the large, deep, magical spectacle of the great
cosmic drama as it unrolls itself in infinite perspective. They are
concerned with the unfathomable struggle, more terrible, more
beautiful, more real, than anything else in life, between the
resistant power of malice and the creative power of love. Nor do
they see, these moments, the end of this long drama. The soul
creates and is baffled in its creations. The soul loves and is baffled
in its loving. Good and evil grow strangely mingled as they
wrestle in the bottomless abyss. And ever, above us and beneath
us, the same immense space spreads out its encircling arms. And
ever, out of the invisible, the beckoning of immortal beauty leads
us forward. Pain turns into pleasure; and pleasure turns into pain.
Misery, deep as the world, troubles the roots of our being.
Happiness, deep as the world, floods us with a flood like the
waves of the ocean. All our philosophy is like the holding up of a
little candle against a great wind. Soon, soon the candle is blown
out: and the immense Perhaps rolls its waters above our heads.
The aboriginal malice against which the Gods struggle is never
overcome. But who can resist asking the question--supposing that
drama once ended, that eternal duality once reconciled, would
annihilation be the last word or would something else, something
undreamed of, something unguessed at, something "impossible,"
irrational, contrary to every philosophy that has ever sprung from
the human brain, take the place of what we call life and substitute
some new organ of research for the vision which we have called
complex?
Who can say? The world is still young and the immortal Gods are
still young; and our business at present is with life rather than
beyond-life. Confused and difficult are the ways of our mortality;
and after much philosophizing we seem to be only more conscious
than ever that the secret of the world is in something else than
wisdom.
The secret of the world is not in something that one can hold in
one's hand, or about which one can say "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!"
The secret of the world is in the whole spectacle of the world, seen
under the emotion of one single moment. But the memory of such
a moment may be diffused over all the chances and accidents of
our life and may be restored to us in a thousand faint and shadowy
intimations. It may be restored to us in broken glimpses, in little
stirrings and ripples on the face of the water, in rumours and
whispers among the margin-reeds, in sighings of the wind across
the sea-bank. It may be restored to us in sudden flickerings of
unearthly light thrown upon common and familiar things. It may
be restored to us when the shadow of death falls upon the path we
have to follow. It may be restored to us when the common ritual
and the ordinary usages of life gather to themselves a sudden
dignity from the presence of great joy or of tragic grief. For the
stream of life flows deeper than any among us realize or know;
deeper, and with more tragic import; deeper, and with more secret
hope. We are all born, even the most lucky among us, under a
disastrous eclipse. We all contain something of that perilous
ingredient which belongs to the unplumbed depths. Deep calls
unto deep within us; and in the circle of our mortal personality an
immortal drama unrolls itself. Waves of unredeemed chaos roll
upward from the abysses of our souls, and like a brackish tide
contend with the water-springs of life.
Over the landscape of our vision lies a shadow, a rarely lifted
shadow, the shadow of our own malice. But the human race has
not been destined to carry on the unending struggle alone. Its
subjective human vision has touched in the darkness a subjective
super-human vision; and the symbol of the encounter of these two
is the lonely figure of Christ.
Looking backward, as we thus reach our conclusion, we see how
such a conclusion was implicit all the while in the first movement
with which we started. For since the truth we seek is not a thing
we just put out our hand and take, but is a mood, an attitude, a
gesture of our whole being, it follows that whenever, and by
whatever means, we reach it, this "truth" will always be the same,
and will not be affected, when once it is reached, by the slowness
or the speed of the method with which we approach it. Nor will it
be changed or transformed by the vision that finally grasps it as it
would necessarily be if it were an objective fact which we could
each of us take into our hands. Such an objective fact or series of
facts would, of necessity, "look differently" to every individual
vision that seized upon it. But by making our truth, down to the
very depths, a gesture, an attitude, a mood, we have already
anticipated and discounted that fatal relativity which inserts itself
like a wedge of distorting vapour, between any objective fact and
any subjective mind.
"Truth" cannot get blurred and distorted by the subjective mind
when truth is regarded as that subjective mind's own creation.
According to the conclusion we have reached, every subjective
mind in the universe, when it is rhythmically energizing, attains
the same truth. For when subjectivity is carried to the furthest
possible limit of rhythm and harmony, it transforms itself, of
necessity, into objectivity. The subjective vision of all mortal
minds, thus rendered objective by the intensity of the creative
energy, is nothing less than the eternal vision. For as soon as the
rhythmic harmony of the creative act has thus projected such a
truth, such a truth receives the "imprimatur of the Gods" and turns
out to be the truth which was implicit in us from the beginning.
Thus, the reality which we apprehend is found to be identical with
the pursuit of the ideal which we seek; for what we name beauty
and truth and goodness are of the essence of the mystery of life,
and it is of _their_ essence that they should ever advance and
grow.
The eternal vision includes in its own inmost rhythm the idea and
spectacle of inexhaustible growth; for, although it beholds all
things "under the form of eternity," its own nature is the nature of
a creative gesture, of a supreme "work of art," whereby it
approximates to the ideal even in the midst of the real. The "form
of eternity" under which it visualizes the world is not a dead or
static eternity but an eternity of living growth. The peace and quiet
which it attains is not the peace and quiet of the equilibrium which
means "nothingness" but the peace and quiet of the equilibrium
which means the rhythmic movement of life. The truth which it
creates is a truth which lends itself to infinite development upon
lines already laid down from the beginning. The beauty which it
creates is a beauty which lends itself to infinite development upon
lines laid down from the beginning.
And this truth, this beauty, this goodness, are all of them nothing
less than the projection of the soul itself--of all the souls which
constitute the system of things--in the mysterious outflowing of
the ultimate duality. And when we make use of the expression
"from the beginning" we are using a mere metaphorical sign-post.
There is no beginning of the system of things and there is no end.
"From the beginning" means nothing except "from eternity"; and
in the immortal figure of Christ the beginning and the end are one.
In my analysis of the ultimate duality which is the secret of the soul
I have said little about sex. The modern tendency is to over-emphasize
the importance of this thing and to seek its influence in
regions it can never enter. Many attributes of the soul are sexless;
and since only one attribute of the soul, namely sensation, is
entirely devoted to the body and unable to function except through
the body, it is ridiculous and unphilosophical to make sex the
profoundest aspect of truth which we know. The tendency to lay
stress upon sex, at the expense of all sexless aspects of the soul, is
a tendency which springs directly from the inert malice of the
abyss What the instinct of sex secretly desires is that the very
fountains of life should be invaded by sex and penetrated by sex.
But the fountains of life can never be invaded by sex; because the
fountains of life sink into that eternal vision which transcends all
sex and reduces sex to its proper place as one single element in the
rhythm of the universe.
It is only by associating itself with love and malice--it is only by
getting itself transformed into love and malice that the sexual
instinct is able to lift itself up, or to sink itself down, into the
subtler levels of the soul's vision. The secret of life lies far deeper
than the obvious bodily phenomena of sex. The fountains from
which life springs _may flow through that channel_ but they flow
from a depth far below these physical or magnetic agitations. And
it is only the abysmal cunning of the inert malice, which opposes
itself to creation that tempts philosophers and artists to lay such a
disproportionate stress upon this thing. The great artists are always
known by their power to transcend sex and to reduce sex to its
relative insignificance. In the greatest of all sculpture, in the
greatest of all music, in the greatest of all poetry, the difference
between the sexes disappears.
The inert malice delights to emphasize this thing, because its
normal functioning implies the most desperate exertion of the
possessive instinct known to humanity. The sexual instinct unless
transfigured by love, tends towards death; because the sexual
instinct desires to petrify into everlasting immobility what the
creative instinct would change and transform. What the sexual
instinct secretly desires is the eternal death of the object of its
passion. It would strike its victim if it could into everlasting
immobility so that it could satiate its lust of possession upon it
without limit and without end. Any object of sexual desire,
untransformed by love, is, for the purposes of such desire, already
turned into a living corpse.
But although, according to the method we have been following,
the difference between men and women is but of small account in
the real life of the soul, it remains that humanity has absurdly and
outrageously neglected the especial vision of the woman, as, in her
bodily senses and her magnetic instincts, she differs from man we
may well hope that with the economic independence of women,
which is so great and desirable a revolution in our age, individual
women of genius will arise, able to present, in philosophy and art,
the peculiar and especial reaction to the universe which women
possess as women we may well desire such a consummation in
view of the fact that all except the very greatest of men have
permitted their vision of the world to be perverted and distorted by
their sex-instinct.
Could women of genius arise in sufficient numbers to counteract
this tendency, such sex-obsessed masculine artists would be
shamed into recognizing the narrowness of their perverted
outlook. As it is, what normal women of talent do is simply to
copy and imitate, in a diluted form, the sex-distortions of man's
narrower vision. Sex-obsessed male artists have seduced the
natural intelligence of the most talented women to their own
narrow and limited view of life.
But it still remains that what the true artists of the world for ever
seek--whether they be male or female--is not the partial and
distorted vision of man as _a man_, or of woman _as a woman_,
but the rhythmic and harmonious vision of, the human soul as it
allies itself with the vision of the immortals. Women in private
life, and in private conversation, disentangle themselves from the
prejudices of men, but, as soon as they touch philosophy and art,
they tend to deny their natural instincts and imitate the
sex-obsessed instincts of man. But this tendency is already beginning
to collapse under the freer atmosphere of economic independence;
and in the future we may expect such a fierce conflict between the
sex-vision of woman and the sex-vision of man, that the human
soul will revolt against both such partialities and seek the "ampler
ether and diviner air" of a vision that has altogether transcended
the difference of sex.
As we look back over the travelled road of our attempt to
articulate the ultimate secret, there arises one last stupendous
question, not to meet which would be to shirk the heaviest weight
of the problem. We have reached the conclusion that the secret of
Nature is to be found in personality. We have reached the further
conclusion that personality demands, for the integrity of its inmost
self, an actual "soul-monad." We are faced with a "universe," then,
made up entirely of living souls, manifested in so-called animate,
or so-called inanimate bodies. Everything that our individual mind
apprehends is therefore the body of a soul, or a portion of the body
of a soul, or the presence of a soul that needs no incarnation. The
soul itself is composed of a mysterious substance wherein what we
call mind and what we call matter are fused and merged. What I
have named throughout this book by the name of the _objective
mystery_ is therefore, when we come to realize the uttermost
implications of our method, nothing more than the appearance of
all the bodies of all the souls in the world _before_ the creative act
of our own particular soul has visualized such a spectacle. We can
never see the objective mystery as _it is_, because directly we
have seen it, that is to say, the appearance of all the adjacent
bodies of all the souls within our reach, it ceases to be the
objective mystery and becomes the universe we know.
The objective mystery is therefore no real thing at all, but only the
potentiality of all real things, before the "real thing" which is our
individual soul comes upon the scene to create the universe. It is
only the potentiality of the "universe" which we have thus named,
only the idea of the general spectacle of such an universe,
_before_ any universe has actually appeared.
And since the final conclusion of our attempt at articulation should
rigorously eliminate from our picture everything that is relatively
unreal, in favour of what is relatively real, it becomes necessary,
now at the end, to eliminate from our vision of reality any
substantial basis for this, "potentiality of all universes," and to
see how our actual universe appears when this thing has been
withdrawn as nothing but an unreal thing. The substantial basis for
what we actually see becomes therefore no mere potential
universe, or objective mystery, but something much more definite
than either of these. The spectacle of Nature, as we behold it,
becomes nothing else than the spectacle of all the living bodies
that compose the universe, each one of them with its corresponding
invisible soul-monad.
The movement of thought to which I have throughout this book
given the name of "the struggle with the objective mystery"
remains the same. In these cases, _names_ are of small account.
But since it is a movement of thought which itself culminates in
the elimination of the "objective mystery," it becomes necessary to
"think through" the stage of thought which this term covered, and
articulate the actual cause of this movement of the mind.
The cause of the spectacle of the universe, as it presents itself to us
in its manifold variety, is the presence of innumerable visible
bodies which are themselves the manifestation of innumerable
invisible souls. Everything that we see and touch and taste and
smell and hear is a portion of some material body, which is the
expression of some spiritual soul.
The universe is an immense congeries of bodies, moved and
sustained by an immense congeries of souls. But it remains that
these souls, inhabiting these bodies, are linked together by
some mysterious medium which makes it possible for them to
communicate with one another. What is this mysterious medium?
What we have already indicated, here and there in this book, leads
us at this point to our natural conclusion. Such a medium may well
be nothing less than that elemental soul, with the universal ether as
its bodily expression, the existence of which we have already
suggested as a more than probable hypothesis. If the omnipresent
body of this elemental soul is the material atmosphere or medium
which unites all material bodies, surely we are justified in
assuming that the invisible primordial medium which binds all
souls together, which hypothetically binds them together even
_before_ they have, by the interaction of their different visions,
created the universe, is this universal "soul of the elements." Only
a spiritual substance is able to unite spiritual substances. And only
a material substance is able to unite material substances. Thus we
are justified in assuming that while the medium which unites all
bodies is the universal body of the elemental soul, the medium
which unites all souls is the omnipresent soul-monad of this
elemental being. It must however be remembered that this uniting
does not imply any sort of spiritual _including_ or subsuming of
the souls thus united. They communicate with one another by
means of this medium; but the integrity of the medium which
unites them does not impinge at any point upon their integrity.
Thus, at the end of our journey, we are able, by this final process
of drastic elimination, to reduce the world in which we live to a
congeries of living souls. Some of these souls possess what we
name animate bodies, others possess what we name inanimate
bodies. For us, these words, animate and inanimate, convey but
slight difference in meaning. Between a stone, which is part of the
body of the earth, and a leaf which is part of the body of a plant,
and a lock of hair which is part of the body of a man, there may be
certain unimportant chemical differences, justifying us in using the
terms animate and inanimate. But the essential fact remains that all
we see and taste and touch and smell and hear, all, in fact, that
makes up the objective universe which surrounds us, is a portion
of some sort of living body, corresponding to some sort of living
soul.
Our individual soul-monad, then, able to communicate with other
soul-monads, whether mortal or immortal, through the medium of
omnipresent soul-monads of the universal ether finds itself
dominated, as all the rest are dominated, by one inescapable circle
of unfathomable space. Under the curve of this space we all of us
live, and under the curve of this space those that are mortal among
us, die. When we die, if it be our destiny not to survive death, our
souls vanish into nothingness; and our bodies become a portion of
the body of the earth. But if we have entered into the eternal vision
we have lost all fear of death; for we have come to see that the
thing which is most precious to us, the fact that love remains
undying in the heart of the universe, does not vanish with our
vanishing. Once having attained, by means of the creative vision
of humanity and by means of the grace of the immortals, even a
faint glimpse into this mystery, we are no longer inclined to lay
the credit of our philosophizing upon the creative spirit in our
individual soul. The apex-thought of the complex vision has given
us our illuminated moments. But the eternal vision to which those
moments led us has filled us with an immense humility.
And in the last resort, when we turn round upon the amazing
spectacle of life it is of the free gift of the gods, or of the magical
love hidden in the mystery of nature, that we are led to think,
rather than of any creative activity in ourselves. The word
"creative" like the word "objective mystery," has served our
purpose well in the preceding pages. But now, as we seek to
simplify our conclusion to the uttermost, it becomes necessary to
reject much of the manifold connotation which hangs about this
word; although in this case also, the stage of thought which it
covers is a real movement of the mind.
But the creative activity in the apex-thought of our complex vision
is, after all, only a means, a method, a gesture which puts us into
possession of the eternal vision. When once the eternal vision has
been ours, the memory of it does not associate itself with
any energy of our own. The memory of these eternal moments
associates itself with a mood in which the creative energy rests
upon its own equipoise, upon its own rhythm; a mood in which the
spectacle of the universe, the magic of Nature, the love in all
living souls, the contact of mortality with immortality, become
things which blend themselves together; a mood in which what is
most self-assertive in our personality seems to lose itself in what is
least self-assertive, and yet in thus losing itself is not rendered
utterly void.
For all action, even the ultimate act of faith, must issue in
contemplation; and this is the law of life, that what we
contemplate, _that_ we become. He who contemplates malice
becomes malicious. He who contemplates hideousness becomes
hideous. He who contemplates unreality becomes unreal.
If the universe is nothing but a congeries of souls and bodies,
united by the soul and the body which fill universal space, then it
follows that "the art of philosophy" consists in the attempt to attain
the sort of "contemplation" which can by the power of its love
enter into the joy and the suffering of all these living things.
Thus in reaching a conclusion which tallies with our rarest
moments of super-normal insight we discover that we have
reached a conclusion which tallies with our moments of profoundest
self-abasement. In these recurrent moods of humiliation
it seems ridiculous to speak of the creative or the destructive
energy of the mind. What presents itself to us in such moods
is a world of forms and shapes that we can neither modify
nor obliterate. All we can do is to reflect their impact upon us and
to note the pleasure of it or the pain. But when even in the depths
of our weakness we come to recognize that these forms and shapes
are, all of them, the bodily expressions of souls resembling our
own, the nostalgia of the great darkness is perceptibly lifted and a
strange hope is born, full of a significance which cannot be put
into words. The world-stuff, or the objective mystery, out of which
the eternal vision has been created is now seen to be the very flesh
and blood of a vast company of living organisms; and it has
become impossible to contemplate anything in the world without
the emotion of malice or the emotion of love. If ever the universe,
as we know it now, is dissolved into nothingness, such an end of
things will be brought about either by the complete victory of
malice or by the complete victory of love.
THE END