The Complex Vision | Page 2

own individual body of a real actual living thing composed
of a mysterious substance wherein what we call mind and what we call
matter are fused and intermingled. This is our real and self-conscious
soul, the thing in us which says, "I am I," of which the physical body is
only one expression, and of which all the bodily senses are only one
gateway of receptivity.
The soul within us becomes aware of its own body simultaneously with
its becoming aware of all the other bodies which fill the visible
universe. It is then by an act of faith or imagination that the soul within
us takes for granted and assumes that there must be a soul resembling
our own soul within each one of those alien bodies, of which,
simultaneously with its own, it becomes aware.
And since the living basis of our personality is this real soul within us,
it follows that all those energies of personality, whose concentration is
the supreme work of art, are the energies of this real soul. If, therefore,
we assume that all the diverse physical bodies which fill the universe
possess, each of them, an inner soul resembling our own soul, we are
led to the conclusion that just as our own soul half-creates and
half-discovers the general spectacle of things which it names "the
universe," so all the alien souls in the world half-create and
half-discover what they feel as their universe.
If our revelation stopped at this point we should have to admit that

there was not one universe, but as many universes are there are living
souls. It is at this point, however, that we become aware that all these
souls are able, in some degree or other, to enter into communication.
They are able to do this both by the bodily sounds and signs which
constitute language and by certain immaterial vibrations which seem to
make no use of the body at all. In this communication between
different souls, as far as humanity is concerned, a very curious
experience has to be recorded.
When two human beings dispute together upon any important problem
of life, there is always an implicit appeal made by both of them to an
invisible arbiter, or invisible standard of arbitration, in the heart of
which both seem aware that the reality, upon which their opinions
differ, is to be found in its eternal truth. What then is this invisible
standard of arbitration? Whatever it is, we are compelled to assume that
it satisfies and transcends the deepest and furthest reach of personal
vision in all the souls that approach it. And what is the deepest and
furthest reach of our individual soul? This seems to be a projection
upon the material plane of the very stuff and substance of the soul's
inmost nature.
This very "stuff" of the soul, this outflowing of the substance of the
soul, I name "emotion"; and I find it to consist of two eternally
conflicting elements; what I call the element of "love," and what I call
the element of "malice." This emotion of love, which is the furthest
reach of the soul, I find to be differentiated when it comes into contact
with the material universe into three ultimate ways of taking life;
namely, the way which we name the pursuit of beauty, the way which
we name the pursuit of goodness, and the way which we name the
pursuit of truth. But these three ways of taking life find always their
unity and identity in that emotion of love which is the psychic
substance of them all.
The invisible standard of arbitration, then, to which an appeal is always
made, consciously or unconsciously, when two human beings dispute
upon the mystery of life, is a standard of arbitration which concerns the
real nature of love, and the real nature of what we call "the good" and

"the true" and "the beautiful."
And since we have found in personality the one thing in existence of
which we are absolutely assured, because we are aware of it, on the
inside, so to speak, in the depths of our own souls, it becomes
necessary that in place of thinking of this invisible standard as any
spiritual or chemical "law" in any stream of "life-force" we should
think of it as being as personal as we ourselves are personal. For since
what we call the universe has been already described as something
which is half-created and half-discovered by the vision of some one
soul in it or of all the souls in it, it is clear that we have no longer any
right to think of these ultimate ideas as "suspended" in the universe, or
as general "laws" of the universe. They are suspended in the individual
soul, which half-creates and half-discovers