The Complex Vision

gather up into one living image all the broken, thwarted, devious, and discordant impressions which make up our experience. What we crave is something tha

individual sensations and ideas, and know of a certainty that thrown into that reser

, once having come into existence, remains independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing moods. It must be something of clearer out

oul with the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of fate, its long str

already by the slow process of anonymous creation and discovery estab

speak if it were only a "discovery" of humanity. The "God-man" may b

eternal form" and becomes an everlasting standard or pattern of what is most natural and most rhythmic. As I advance in my analysis of the relation of the ultimate duality to this symbolic figure of Christ, it becomes necessary to

eady passed will thus be inevitable; but it will be a summar

rience. The unfortunate thing is that in this process of articulating reality philosophy tends to create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far aw

ent of research the entire complex vision, use first one and then another of its isolated attributes. But there must come moments when, in the analysis of so intricate and elaborate a thing as "real

r conclusion has been once reached it becomes suddenly manifest to us that it has been there, with us, all the while, implicit in our whole argument, the secret and hidden cause why the argument took the form it did rather than any other. The test of any philosophy is not that it should appeal immediately and directly to what is called "common-sense," for common-sense is no better than a crude and premature synthesis of superficial experiences; a synthesis from which the supreme and culminating experiences of a person's life have been excluded. For in our supreme and culminating experiences there is always an element of what migh

h itself might be called the instinct of self-preservation of the enemy of life. "Practical common-sense" is the name we give to that superficial synthesis of our baser self-

ry they did not seem insane and foolish to such a mood we might well be profoundly suspicious of them. For although there are very few certainties in this world, one thing at least is certain, name

o disregard an appeal to actual experience as long as actual experience includes the rare moments of our life as well as all the rest. Here is indeed a true and authentic test of philosophic validity. If we take our p

ked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy

e conscious and articulate, it is necessary that it should prove most vivid and actual at those

tes of our soul. The truth of a philosophy can only be tested in those moments when the soul, driven to the wall, gathers itself together for one supreme effort. But there is, even in less stark and drast

to lend itself to a definite and concrete expression

use its inability to find expression for its intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple. For the remote conclusions of a pur

ex thing we know. The thin, rigid, artificial outlines of purely rationalistic systems can never be expressed

ch nearer to reality than any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life. It has the creat

tarting-point, which is also the conclusion, of the philosophy of the complex vision, what synt

man, sub-human and super-human, held together by some indefinable "medium" which enables them to communicate with one another. Each one of these "souls" at once creates and

the various "universes" of alien souls is rendered more secure and more objective by the fact that time and space are found to be essential peculiarities of all of them alike. For since time

iscovered. There is no escape from the implication of this phrase "half-discovered." The creative activity of the complex vision perpetually modifies, clarifies

of time and space, is an abstraction which leads us out of the sphere of reality; because, in

soul by its various energies moulds and clarifies and shapes. This is that "something" which the soul at one and the same moment "half-discovers" and "half-creates." It reveals to us, in

te personalities together while each of them ha

e soul" or something beyond analysis which is the "vanishing point of sensation" and the vortex-point or

as has been shown, to use the vague and obscure word "something." We are compelled to apply this unilluminating and tantalizing

irectly the soul discovers it, it inevitably moulds it and recreates it. There is not one minutest division of time between this "discovery" and this "creation"; so all that one can say is that the resultant objective "univer

" to each of these three aspects of objective mystery which the complex vision reveals;

as formerly called "matter." In the first aspect of the thing we have time and space as essential characteristic

m" which holds all these souls together, and which by holding them together makes it easier to regard the

racteristics of that "substratum of the soul" which is the vanish

me" and the same "space." And since it is unthinkable that three coexistent forms of objective reality should be all dominated by the same time and space and remain absolutely distinct from on

ce is a further confirmation of the truth which we have already assumed by an act of faith, namely that all the v

but the universe also of those "invisible companions" whose vision half-creates it and half-discovers it, even as our own vision does. It is true that to certain types of mind, for whom the definite recognition of mystery is repu

iculous that we should be driven to recognize no les

arian nature of the system of things; and just as we have three ultimate aspects of reality in the monistic truth of "the one time and space," in the pluralistic truth of the innumerable company of living souls and the dualistic truth of the contradictory nature of all existence; so we have three further ultimate aspects

ery time any living personality contemplates the system of things. And since "the sons of the universe" must be regarded as continually contemplating the system of things, struggling with it, moulding it, and

rmine this supreme unity of time and space. The "a priori unity of apperception" is an unreality compared with this realit

"immortal gods" and perpetually rediscovering and recreating together "a universe" which like themselves is dominated

ch the personal soul creates its "universe," time and space are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this original "plasticity" except that it is "plastic" and that time and space rule over it, it is in a strict sense illegitimate to say that this primordial "clay" or "world stuff" is in itself divided into a

the material universe is an "illusion." It is no more an illusion than the objective material world itself is an illusion. Both are created by the inter-action between the mystery of personality and the mystery of what seems the impersonal. Thus it remains perfectly true that what we sometimes call "brute matter

y in the souls of "the sons of the universe" as that which exists in the souls of men. For although the primordial ideas of truth and nobility and beauty, brought together by the emotion of love, are re

n all human souls, yet in their souls this evil or malice must be regarded as perpetually overcome by the energy of the power of love. This overcoming of malice by the power of love, or of evil by "good," in the souls of "the sons of the universe," must not

f the universe" and in the souls of all living things, is not that love and malice are vague independent elemental "forces" which obsess or possess or f

between life and what resists life. We are therefore justified in saying that "the universe" is created by the perpetual struggle between love and malice or between life and what resists life. But when we say this we must remember that this is only true because "the universe" is half-discovered and h

dies and the chemical medium, whatever it may be, which unites them, must be regarded as sharing, in some inscrutable way, in this unfathomable struggle. We are unable to escape from this conception of them, a

arded as sharing in a still more intimate sense in this unfathomable struggle. This conception has a double element of truth. For not only do these things depend for their form and shape and r

on that the souls of plants and birds and animals and all other living things are inextricably made up of the stuff of the same unfathomable struggle. For where there is life there must be a soul possessed of lif

d while we are driven to regard the "inanimate," such as earth and air and water and fire, as the bodily expressions of certain living souls, so are we much

the phrase "life-force," conveys to us whose medium of research is the complex vision, simply no intelligible meaning at all. It is on a par with the "over-soul"; and, to the philosop

image must appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sen

d the "life-force" are neither concrete nor intelligible and therefore cannot be regarded as legitimate symbols. One of the most important aspects of the method

ice of appearing childish, absurd and ridiculous to the type of mind which advocates the exclusive use of the logical reason as the so

diculous, is precisely the type of mind for whom "truth" is a smoothly evolutionary affair, an affair of steady "progress," and for whom, therefore, the mere fact of an idea being

upon the struggle of the individual soul with itself, and upon the struggle of "the souls of the sons of the universe" with themselves. And although the struggle of the souls of "the sons of the universe"

oached nearer to the vision of "the sons of the universe" although such an one may have lived in the days of the patriarchs or in the Greek days or

remonition. But this "advance" is also, as we have seen, in the profoundest sense a "return," because it is a movement towards an idea which already is im

far more truth in it than any vague metaphorical expression such as the "over-soul." The symbolic ritual of the Mass, for instance, has far more truth in it than any metaphorical expression such as the "life-force." And although both the Cross and the Mass

ind as naive and childish and ridiculous. But the philosophy of the complex vision prefers to express itself in terms which are concrete, tangible and

ain ancient and mediaeval thinkers adopted, and which must always be constantly re-appearing in human thought because it is an inevitable projection of the human conscience when the human conscience functions i

s eternal "energy" or "movement," this "flesh and blood" through which the soul expresses itself and of which the physical body

hilosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted, an attempt of the co

xistence of "flesh and blood" as opposed to "mind." But "flesh and blood" is a thing which has no exi

existence of "the body" or of "flesh and blood" or of what we call "ma

ion, nothing less than "the eternal idea of flesh and blood." And since love de

doctrine, which I call the puritan heresy, the duality resolves itself into a struggle between the spirit and the flesh. But according to the revelation of

ll "spirit" must very often be evil. According to the revelation of the complex vision, evil or malice is a positive force, of malignant i

complex vision creates the universe certainly cannot be regarded as "evil," for we can never know anything at all about it except that it exists and that it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision. And in so far as it

therefore, to recognize the existence of both spiritual "evil" and spiritual "good" in the unfathomable depths of the soul. But just because personality is itself a relative triumph of good over evil i

we are concerned, absolutely good. All personalities including even the personalities of "the immortals" have evil in them, b

ary of the nature of the ultimate duality and the ne