Part 10 (1/2)
The pure reason's peculiar power of thinking time and s.p.a.ce away, or of lodging itself outside of time and s.p.a.ce, is an abstraction which leads us out of the sphere of reality; because, in its resultant conception, it omits the activity of the other attributes of the complex vision.
The complex vision reveals to us, therefore, three aspects of objective mystery. It reveals to us in the first place the presence of an objective ”something” outside the soul, which the 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 the second place, the presence of an indefinable objective ”something” which is the medium that makes possible the communion of one soul with another and with ”the invisible companions.”
This is the medium which holds all these separate personalities together while each of them half-creates and half-discovers his own ”universe.”
In the third place it reveals to us the presence, in each individual soul, of a sort of ”substratum of the soul” or something beyond a.n.a.lysis which is the ”vanis.h.i.+ng point of sensation” and the vortex-point or fusion-point where the movement which we call ”matter” loses itself in the movement which we call ”mind.”
In all these three aspects of objective mystery, revealed to us by the united activities of the complex vision, we are compelled, as has been shown, to use the vague and obscure word ”something.”
We are compelled to apply this unilluminating and tantalizing word to all these three aspects of ”objective mystery,” because no other word really covers the complex vision's actual experience.
The soul recognizes that there is ”something” outside itself which is the ”clay” upon which its energy works in creating its ”universe,” but it cannot know anything about this ”something”
except that it is ”there”; because, directly 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 ”universe” is half-created and half-discovered; and that whatever this mysterious ”something” may be, apart from the complex vision, it at any rate has the peculiarity of being forced to submit to the complex vision's creative energy.
But not only are we compelled to apply the provoking and unilluminating word ”something” to each of these three aspects of objective mystery which the complex vision reveals; we are also compelled to a.s.sume that each one of these is dominated by time and s.p.a.ce.
This implication of ”time and s.p.a.ce” is necessitated in a different way in each of these three aspects of what was formerly called ”matter.” In the first aspect of the thing we have time and s.p.a.ce as essential characteristics of all the various ”universes,” reduced by an act of faith to one ”universe,” of the souls which fill the world.
In the second aspect of it we have time and s.p.a.ce as essential characteristics of that indefinable ”medium” which holds all these souls together, and which by holding them together makes it easier to regard their separate ”universes” as ”one universe,” since they find their ground or base in one universal ”medium.”
In the third aspect of it we have time and s.p.a.ce as essential characteristics of that ”substratum of the soul” which is the vanis.h.i.+ng-point of sensation and the fusion-point of ”mind” and ”matter.”
We are thus inevitably led to a further conclusion; namely, that all these three aspects of objective reality, since they are all dominated by time and s.p.a.ce, are all dominated by the _same_ ”time” and the same ”s.p.a.ce.” And since it is unthinkable that three coexistent forms of objective reality should be all dominated by the same time and s.p.a.ce and remain absolutely distinct from one another, it becomes evident that these three forms of objective mystery, these three indefinable ”somethings,” are not separate from one another but are in continual contact with one another.
Thus the fact that all these three aspects of objective reality are under the domination of the same time and s.p.a.ce is a further confirmation of the truth which we have already a.s.sumed by an act of faith, namely that all the various ”universes,”
half-discovered and half-created by all the souls in the world, are in reality ”one universe.”
The real active and objective existence of this ”one universe” is made still more sure and is removed still further from all possibility of ”illusion,” by the fact that we are forced to regard it as being not only ”our” universe 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 repugnant, it must seem absurd and ridiculous to be driven to the acknowledgment of a thing's existence, while at the same time we have to confess complete inability to predicate anything at all about the thing except that it exists.
It must seem to such minds still more absurd and ridiculous that we should be driven to recognize no less than three aspects of this mysterious ”something.”
But since they are included in the same time and s.p.a.ce, and since, consequently, they are intimately connected with one another, it becomes inevitable that we should take the yet further step and regard them as three separate aspects of one and the same mystery.
Thus we are once more confronted with the inescapable trinitarian 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 s.p.a.ce,”
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 of reality, in the incomprehensible ”something” which holds all souls together; in the incomprehensible ”something” out of which all souls create the universe; and in the incomprehensible ”something” which forms the substratum both of the souls of the invisible ”companions of men” and of the soul of every individual thing.
The supreme unity, therefore, in this complicated world, thus revealed to us by the activity of the complex vision is the unity of time and s.p.a.ce. This unity is eternally reborn and eternally re-discovered every 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 changing it, according to their pre-existent ideal, we are compelled to a.s.sume that time and s.p.a.ce are eternal aspects of reality and that their eternal necessity gives the system of things its supreme unity.
No isolated speculation of the logical reason, functioning apart from the other attributes of the complex vision, can undermine this supreme unity of time and s.p.a.ce. The ”a priori unity of apperception” is an unreality compared with this reality. The all-embracing cosmic ”monad,” contemplating itself as its eternal object, is an unreality compared with this reality.
We are left with a pluralistic world of individual souls, finding their pattern and their ideal in the vision of the ”immortal G.o.ds”
and perpetually rediscovering and recreating together ”a universe”
which like themselves is dominated by time and s.p.a.ce and which like themselves is for ever divided against itself in an eternal and unfathomable duality.
The ultimate truth of the system of things according to the revelation of the complex vision is thus found to consist in the mystery of personality confronting ”something” which _seems_ impersonal. Over both these things, over the personal soul and over the primordial ”clay” or ”energy” or ”movement” or ”matter”
out of which the personal soul creates its ”universe,” time and s.p.a.ce are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this original ”plasticity” except that it is ”plastic” and that time and s.p.a.ce 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 duality. We know nothing, and can never know anything about it, beyond the bare fact of its existence. Its duality comes from the duality in us. It is we who create the contradiction upon which its life depends. It is from the unfathomable duality in the soul of the ”companions of men” that the universe is brought forth.
The ultimate duality which perpetually creates the world is the ultimate duality in all living souls and in the souls of ”the sons of the universe.” But although it is we ourselves who in the primal act of envisaging the world endow it with this duality, it would be an untrue statement to say that this duality in 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” possesses an element of malignant inertness and malicious resistance to the power of creation. This malice of the impersonal, this malignant inertness of ”matter,” is an ultimate fact; and is not less a fact because it depends upon the existence of the same malice and the same inert resistance in our own souls.
Nor are we able to escape from the conclusion that this malignant element in the indefinable ”world-stuff” exists independently of any human soul. It must be thought of as dependent upon the same duality 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 n.o.bility and beauty, brought together by the emotion of love, are realized in the ”G.o.ds” with an incredible and immortal intensity, yet the souls of the ”G.o.ds” could not be souls at all if they were not subject to the same duality as that which struggles within ourselves.