The Complex Vision Part 3

The reader is quite at liberty to make a different cla.s.sification from mine, if mine appears unconvincing to him. The general trend of my argument will not be in any serious way affected, as long as he admits that I have followed the tradition of ordinary human language, in the cla.s.sification which I have preferred.

It seems to me, then, that the aspects of the complex vision are eleven in number; and that they may be summarized as consisting of reason, self-consciousness, will, the aesthetic sense, or "taste,"

imagination, memory, conscience, sensation, instinct, intuition and emotion.

These eleven aspects or attributes are not to be regarded as absolutely separate "functions," but rather as relatively separate "energies" of the one concrete soul-monad. The complex vision is the vision of an irreducible living ent.i.ty which pours itself as a whole into every one of its various energizings. And though it pours itself as a whole into each one of these, and though each one of these contains the latent potentiality of all the rest, the nature of the complex vision is such that it necessarily takes colour and form from the particular aspect or attribute through which at the moment it is especially energizing.

It is precisely here that the danger of "disproportion" was found. For the complex vision with the whole weight of all its aspects behind it receives the colour and the form of only one of them. We can see the result of this from the tenacity--implying the presence of emotion and will--with which some philosopher of pure reason pa.s.sionately and imaginatively defends his logical conclusion.

But we are ourselves proof of it in every moment of our lives.

Confronted with some definite external situation, of a happy or unhappy character, we fling ourselves upon this new intrusion with the momentum of our whole being; and it becomes largely a matter of accident whether our reaction of the moment is coloured by reason or by will or by imagination or by taste. Immersed in the tide of experience, receiving shock after shock from alien and hostile forces, we struggle with the weight of our whole soul against each particular obstacle, not stopping to regulate the complicated machinery of our vision but just seizing upon the thing, or trying to avoid it, with whatever energy serves our purpose best at the moment.

This is especially true of small and occasional pleasures or small and occasional annoyances. A supreme pleasure or a supreme pain forces us to gather our complex vision together, forces us to make use of its apex-thought, so that we can embrace the ecstasy or fling ourselves upon the misery with a co-ordinated power. It is the little casual annoyances and reliefs of our normal days which are so hard to deal with in the spirit of philosophic art, because these little pleasures and pains while making a superficial appeal to the reason or the emotion or the will or the conscience, are not drastic or formidable enough to drive us into any concentration of the apex-thought which shall harmonize our confused energies.

The fatal ease with which the whole complex vision gets itself coloured by and obsessed by one of its own attributes may be proved by the history of philosophy itself. Individual philosophers have, over and over again, plunged with furious tenacity into the mystery of life with a complex vision distorted, deformed and over-balanced.

I seem to see the complex vision of such thinkers taking some grotesque shape whereby the apex-point of effective thought is blunted and broken. The loss and misery, or the yet more ign.o.ble comfort, of such suppressions of the apex-thought, is however a personal matter. Those "invisible companions," or immortal children of the universe, who are implicitly present as the background of all human discussion, grow constantly more definite and articulate the apprehension of the general human mind by reason of these personal aberrations.

It is perhaps rather to the great artists of our race than to any philosopher at all that these invisible ones reveal themselves, but in their gradual disclosure to the consciousness of the human race, they are certainly a.s.sisted by the most insane and unbalanced plunges into mystery, of this and the other abnormal individual. The paradox may indeed be hazarded that the madder and more abnormal are the individual's attempts to dig himself into the very nerves and fibres of reality, the clearer and more definite as far as consciousness of the race is concerned, does the revelation of these invisible ones grow.

The abnormal individual whose complex vision is distorted almost out of human recognition by the predominance of some one attribute, is yet, in his madness and morbidity, a wonderful engine of research for the clairvoyance of humanity.

The vision of the immortals, as a background to all further discussion, is rendered richer and more rhythmical every day, or rather the hidden rhythm of their being is revealed more clearly every day, by the eccentricities and maladies, nay! by the insanities and desperations, of individual victims of life.

Thus it comes about that, while the supreme artists, whose approximation, to the vision of the invisible ones is closest, remain our unique masters, the lower crowd of moderately sane and moderately well-balanced persons are of less value to humanity than those abnormal and wayward ones whose psychic distortions are the world's perverted instruments of research.

A philosopher of this unbalanced kind is indeed a sort of living sacrifice or victim of self-vivisection, out of whose demonic discoveries--bizarre and fantastic though they may seem to the lower sanity of the mob--the true rhythmic vision of the immortals is made clearer and more articulate.

The kind of balance or sanity which such average persons, as are commonly called "men of the world," possess is in reality further removed from true vision than all the madness of these debauches of specialized research. For the consummation of the complex vision is a meeting place of desperate and violent extremes; extremes, not watered down nor modified nor even "reconciled," certainly not cancelled by one another, but held forcibly and deliberately together by an arbitrary act of the apex-thought of the human soul.

As I glance at these basic activities of the complex vision one by one, I would beg the reader to sink as far as he can into the recesses of his own ident.i.ty; so that he may discover whether what he finds there agrees in substance--call it by what name he pleases and explain it how he pleases--with each particular energy I name, as I indicate such energies in my own way.

Consider the att.i.tude of self-consciousness. That man is self-conscious is a basic and perhaps a tragic fact that surely requires no proof. The power of thinking "I am I" is an ultimate endowment of personality, outside of which, except by an act of primordial faith, we cannot pa.s.s. The phenomenon of human growth from infancy to maturity proves that it is possible for this self-consciousness--this power of saying "I am I"--to become clearer and more articulate from day to day. It seems as impossible to fix upon a definite moment in a child's life where we can draw a line and say "_there_ he was unconscious of himself and _here_ he is conscious of himself" as it is impossible to observe as an actual visible movement the child's growth in stature.

Between consciousness and self-consciousness the dividing line seems to be as difficult to define as it is difficult to define the line between sub-consciousness and consciousness. My existence as a self-conscious ent.i.ty capable of thinking "I am I" is the basic a.s.sumption of all thought. And though it is possible for my thought to turn round upon itself and deny my own existence, such thought in the process of such a denial cuts the very ground away which is the leaping point of any further advance.

Philosophy by such drastic scepticism is reduced to complete silence. You cannot build up anything except illusion from a basis that is itself illusion. If I were not self-conscious there would be no centre or substratum or coherence or unity in any thought I had. If I were not self-conscious I should be unable to think.

Consider, then, the attribute of reason. That we possess reason is also a fact that carries with it its own evidence. It is reason which at this very moment--reason of some sort, at any rate--I am bound to use, in estimating the important place or the unimportant place which reason itself should occupy. You cannot derogate from the value of reason without using reason. You cannot put reason into an inferior category, when compared with will or instinct or emotion, without using reason itself to prove such an inferiority.

We may come to the conclusion that the universe is rather irrational than rational. We may come to the conclusion that the secret of life transcends and over-brims all rationality. But this very conclusion as to the irrational nature of the mystery with which reason is attempting to deal is itself a conclusion of the reason.

There is only one power which is able to put reason aside in its search for truth and that power is reason.

Consider, then, the attribute of will. That we possess a definite and distinct energy whose activity may be contrasted with the rest and may be legitimately named "the will" is certainly less self-evident than either of the two preceding propositions but is none the less implied in both of them. For in the act of articulating to ourself the definite thought "I am I" we are using our will. The motive-force may be anything. We may for instance will an answer to the implied question "_what_ am I," and our self-consciousness may return the answer "I am I," leaving it to the reason to deal with this answer as best it can. The motive may be anything or nothing. Both consciousness and will are independent of motive.

For in all these primordial energizings of the complex vision everything that happens, happens simultaneously. With the consciousness "I am I" there comes simultaneously into existence the consciousness of an external universe which is, at one and the same time, included in the circle of the "I am I" and outside the circle. That is to say when we think the thought "I am I," we feel ourselves to be the whole universe thinking "I am I," and yet by a primordial contradiction, we feel ourselves to be an "I am I"

opposed to the universe and contrasted with the universe.

But all this happens simultaneously; and the consciousness that we are ourselves implies, at one and the same time, the consciousness that we _are_ the universe and the consciousness that we are _inside_ the universe.

And precisely as the fact of self-consciousness implies the primordial duality and contradiction of being at once the whole universe and something inside the universe, so the original fact of our thinking at all, implies the activity of the will.

We think because we are "thinking animals" and we will because we are "willing animals." The presence of what we call motive is something that comes and goes intermittently and which may or may not be present from the first awakening of consciousness. We _may_ think "I am I" at the very dawn of consciousness under the pressure of a vague motive of clearing up a confused situation. We _may_ use our reason at the very dawn of consciousness under the pressure of a vague motive of alleviating the distress of disorder with the comfort of order. But, on the other hand, self-consciousness may play its part, reason may play its part and the will may play its part in the complete absence of any definite motive. There is such a thing--and this is the point I am anxious to make--as _motiveless_ will. Certain thinkers have sought to eliminate the will altogether by subst.i.tuting for it the direct impact or pressure of some motive or motive-force. But if the will can be proved to be a primordial energy of the complex vision and if the conception of a motiveless exertion of the will is a legitimate conception, then, although we must admit the intermittent appearance and disappearance of all manner of motives, we have no right to subst.i.tute motive for will. If we do make such a subst.i.tution, all we really achieve is simply a change of _name_; and our new motive is the old will "writ small."

Motives undoubtedly may come and go from the beginning of consciousness and the beginning of will. They may flutter like b.u.t.terflies round both the consciousness and the will. For instance it is clear that I am not _always_ articulating to myself the notable or troublesome thought "I am I." I may be sometimes so lost and absorbed in sensation that I quite forget this interesting fact. But it may easily happen at such times that I definitely experience the _sensation of choice_; of choice between an intensification of self-consciousness and a continued blind enjoyment of this external preoccupation. And it is from this _sensation of choice_ that we gather weight for our contention that the will is a basic attribute of the human soul.

It is certainly true that we are often able to detach ourselves from ourselves and to watch the struggle going on between two opposite motive-forces, quite unaware, it might seem, and almost indifferent, as to how the contest will end.

But this struggle between opposite motives does not obliterate our sensation of choice. It sometimes intensifies it to an extreme point of quite painful suspension. The opposite motives may be engaged in a struggle. But the field of the struggle is what we call the will.

And it may even sometimes happen that the will intervenes between a weaker and stronger motive and, out of arbitrary pride and the pleasure of exertion for the sake of exertion, throws its weight on the weaker side.

It is a well-known psychological fact that the complex vision can energize, with vigorous spontaneity, through the will alone, just as it can energize through sensation alone. The will can, so to speak, stretch its muscles and gather itself together for attack or defence at a moment when there is no particular necessity for its use.

Some degree of self-consciousness is bound to accompany this "motiveless stretching" of the will, for the simple reason that it is not "will in the abstract" which makes such a movement but the totality of the complex vision, though in this case all other attributes of the complex vision, including self-consciousness and reason, are held in subordination to the will.

Man is a philosophical animal; and he philosophizes as inevitably as he breathes. He is also an animal possessed of will; and he uses his will as inevitably as, in the process of breathing, he uses his lungs or his throat. Around him, from the beginning, all manner of motives may flutter like birds on the wing. They may be completely different motives in the case of different personalities. But in all personalities there is consciousness, to grasp these motives; and in all personalities there is will, to accept or to reject these motives.

The question of the freedom of the will is a question which necessarily enters into our discussion.

The will feels itself--or rather consciousness feels the will to be--at once free and limited. The soul does not feel it is free to do anything it pleases. That at least is certain. For without some limitation, without something resistant to exert itself upon, the will could not be known. An absolutely free will is unthinkable. The very nature of the will implies a struggle with some sort of resistance.

The will is, therefore, by the terms of its original definition and by the original feeling which the soul experiences in regard to it, limited in its freedom. The problem resolves itself, therefore, if once we grant the existence of the will, into the question of how much freedom the will has or how far it is limited. Is it, for instance, when we know all the conditions of its activity, entirely limited? Is the freedom of the will an illusion?

It is just at this point that the logical reason makes a savage attempt to dominate the situation. The logical reason arrives step by step at the inevitable conclusion that the will has no freedom at all but is absolutely limited.

On the other hand emotion, instinct, imagination, intuition, and conscience, all a.s.sume that the limitation of the will is not absolute but that within certain boundaries, which themselves are by no means fixed or permanent, the will is free.

Consciousness itself must be added to this list. For whatever arguments may be used in the realm of thought, when the moment of choice arrives in the realm of action, we are always conscious of the will as free. If the reason is justified in regarding the freedom of the will as an illusion, we are justified in denying the existence of the will altogether. For a will with only an illusion of freedom is not a will at all. In that ease it were better to eliminate the will and regard the soul as a thing which acts and reacts under the stimuli of motives like a helpless automaton endowed with consciousness.

But the wiser course is to experiment with the will and let it prove its freedom to the sceptical reason by helping that same reason to retire into its proper place and a.s.sociate itself with the apex-thought of the complex vision.

Leaving the will then, as a thing limited and yet free, let us pa.s.s to a consideration of what I call "taste." This is the aesthetic sense, an original activity of the human soul, a.s.sociated with that universal tendency in life and nature which we name the beautiful. I use the word "taste" at this moment in preference to "aesthetic sense,"

because I feel that this particular original activity of the complex vision has a wider field than is commonly supposed. I regard it, in fact, as including much more than the mere sense of beauty. I regard it as a direct organ of research, comparable to instinct or intuition, but covering a different ground. I regard it as a mysterious clairvoyance of the soul, capable of discriminating between certain everlasting opposites, which together make up an eternal duality in the very depths of existence.

These opposites imply larger and more complicated issues than are implied in the words beautiful and ugly. The real and the unreal, the interesting and the uninteresting, the significant and the insignificant, the suggestive and the meaningless, the arresting and the commonplace, the exciting and the dull, the organic and the affected, the dramatic and the undramatic, are only some of the differences implied.

The fact that art is constantly using what we call the ugly as well as what we call the commonplace, and turning both these into new forms of beauty, is a fact that considerably complicates the situation. And what art, the culminating creative energy of the aesthetic sense, can do, the aesthetic sense itself can do with its critical and receptive power.

So that in the aesthetic sense, or in what I call "taste," we have an energy which is at once receptive and creative; at once capable of responding to this eternal duality, and of creating new forms of beauty and interest _out of_ the ugly and uninteresting. A new name is really required for this thing. A name is required for it that conveys a more creative implication than the word "taste," a word which has an irresponsible, arbitrary, and even flippant sound, and a more pa.s.sionate, religious, and ecstatic implication than the word "aesthetic," a word which suggests something calculated, cold, learned, and a little tame. I use the word "taste" at this particular moment because this word implies a certain challenge to both reason and conscience, and some such challenge it is necessary to insist upon, if this particular energy of the soul is to defend its basic integrity.

This ultimate attribute of personality, then, which I call "taste"

reveals to us an aspect of the system of things quite different from those revealed by the other activities of the human soul. This aspect of the universe, or this "open secret" of the universe, loses itself, as all the others do in unfathomable abysses. It descends to the very roots of life. It springs from the original reservoirs of life. It has depths which no mental logic can sound; and it has horizons in the presence of which the mind stops baffled. When we use the term "the beautiful" to indicate the nature of what it reveals, we are easily misled; because in current superficial speech--and unless the word is used by a great artist--the term "beautiful" has a narrow and limited meaning. Dropping the term "taste" then, as having served its purpose, and reverting to the more academic phrase "aesthetic sense" we must note that the unfathomable duality revealed by this aesthetic sense covers, as I have hinted, much more ground than is covered by the narrow terms "beauty" and "ugliness."

It must be understood, moreover, that what is revealed by the aesthetic sense is a struggle, a conflict, a war, a contradiction, going on in the heart of things. The aesthetic sense does not only reveal loveliness and distinction; it also reveals the grotesque, the bizarre, the outrageous, the indecent and the diabolic. If we prefer to use the term "beauty" in a sense so comprehensive and vast as to include _both sides_ of this eternal duality, then we shall be driven to regard as "beautiful" the entire panorama of life, with its ghastly contrasts, with its appalling evil, with its bitter pain, and with its intolerable dreariness.

The "beautiful" will then become nothing less than the whole dramatic vortex regarded from the aesthetic point of view. Life with all its contradictions, considered as an aesthetic spectacle, will become "beautiful" to us. This is undoubtedly one form which the aesthetic sense a.s.sumes; the form of justifying existence, in all its horror and loathsomeness as well as in all its magical attraction.

Another form the aesthetic sense may a.s.sume is the form of "taking sides" in this eternal struggle; of using its inspiration to destroy, or to make us forget, the brutality of things, by concentrating our attention upon what in the narrow sense we call the beautiful or the distinguished or the lovely. But there is yet a third form the aesthetic sense may a.s.sume. Not only can it visualize the whole chaotic struggle between beauty and hideousness as itself a beautiful drama; not only can it so concentrate upon beauty that we forget the hideousness; it is also able to see the world as a humorous spectacle.