Part 24 (1/2)
It is just here that we touch one of the profoundest secrets of the aesthetic sense. I refer to that condition of the soul when the creative energy which is life and love, suffers an insidious corruption by the power which resists creation and which is malice and death. This psychological secret, although a.s.suming an aesthetic form, is closely a.s.sociated with the s.e.xual instinct.
The s.e.xual instinct, which is primarily creative, may easily, by the insidious corruption of the power which resists creation, become a vampirizing force of destruction. It may indeed become something worse than destruction. It may become an abysmal and unutterable ”death-in-life.” That voluptuous ”pleasure in cruelty” which is an intrinsic element of the s.e.xual instinct may attach itself to ”the pleasure in death” which is the intrinsic emotion of the aboriginal inert malice; or rather the ”pleasure in death” of the adversary of creation may insidiously a.s.sociate itself with the ”pleasure in cruelty” of the s.e.xual instinct and make of ”this energy of cruelty”
a new and terrible emotion which is at once cruel and inert.
All this were mere fantastic speculation if it lacked touch with direct experience. But direct experience, if we have any psycho-clairvoyance at all, bears unmistakable witness to what I have been saying. If one glances at the expression in the countenance of any human soul who is deriving pleasure from the spectacle of suffering and who, under the pressure of this queer fusion of the aesthetic sense with the abysmal malice, is engaged in vampirizing the victim of such suffering one will observe a very curious and very illuminating series of revelations.
One will observe, for instance, the presence of demonic energy and of magnetic dominance in such a countenance; but parallel with this and simultaneously with this, one will observe an expression of unutterable sadness, a sadness which is inert and death-like, a sadness which has the soulless rigidity and the frozen immobility of a corpse. We are thus justified, by an impression of direct experience, in our contention that the peculiar pleasure which many artists derive from the contemplation of suffering and from the contemplation of what is atrocious, obscene, monstrous and revolting, is the result of a corruption of both the s.e.xual instinct and the aesthetic sense by the abysmal malice.
For the pleasure which such souls derive from the contemplation of suffering is identical with the pleasure they derive from contemplating the ”illusion of dead matter.” Philosophers who give themselves up to the profoundest pessimism do not do so, as a rule, under the influence of love. The only exceptions to this are rare cases when preoccupation with suffering does not spring from a furtive enjoyment of the spectacle of suffering but from an incurable pity for the victims of suffering. Such exceptions are far more rare than is usually supposed, because the self-preservative hypocrisy of most pessimists enables them to conceal their voluptuousness under the mask of pity.
Nor must we hide from ourselves the fact that even pity, which in its pure form is the very incarnation of love, has a perverted form in which it lends itself to every kind of subterranean cruelty. Our psychological insight does not amount to very much if it does not recognize that there is a form of pity which enhances the pleasure of cruelty. There may indeed be discovered, when we dig deep enough into the abysses of the soul, an aspect of pity which thrills us with a most delicate sensation of tenderness and yet which remains an aspect of pity by no means incompatible with the fact that we continue the process of causing pain to the object of such tenderness.
Of all human emotions the emotion of pity is capable of the most divergent subtleties. The only kind of pity which is entirely free from the ambiguous element of ”pleasure in cruelty” is the pity which is only another name for love, when love is confronted by suffering. There is such a thing as a suppressed envy of ”the pleasure of cruelty” manifested in the form of moral indignation against the perpetrator of such cruelty.
Such moral indignation, with its secret impulse of suppressed unconscious jealousy, is a very frequent phenomenon when any s.e.xual element enters into the cruelty in question. But the psychologist who has learnt his art from the profoundest of all psychologists--I mean the Christ of the gospels--is not deceived by this moral gesture. He is able to detect the infinite yearning of the satyr under the righteous fury of the moral avenger.
And he has an infallible test at hand by which to ascertain whether the emotion he feels is pure or impure pity; whether in other words it is merely a process of delicate vampirizing, or whether it is the creative sympathy of love. And the test which he has at his disposal is nothing less than his att.i.tude towards the perpetrator of the particular cruelty under discussion. If his att.i.tude is one of implacable revenge he may be sure that his pity is something else than the emotion of love. If his att.i.tude is one which implies pity not only for the victim but also for the victim's torturer--who without question has more need for pity--then he may be sure that his att.i.tude is an att.i.tude of genuine love.
The mood of implacable revenge need not necessarily imply a suppressed jealousy or envy; but it certainly implies the presence of an element which has its origin in the sinister side of the great duality. The pleasure which certain minds derive from a contemplation of the ”deadness of matter” is closely a.s.sociated with the voluptuousness of cruelty drawn from the recesses of the s.e.xual instinct. Such cruelty finds one of its most insidious incentives in the phenomenon of humiliation; and when the philosopher contemplates the ”deadness of matter” with exquisite satisfaction, the pleasure which he experiences, or the ”sweet pain”
which he experiences, is very closely connected with the cruel idea of humiliating the pride of the human soul.
The duality of pleasure and pain helps us to understand the nature of the duality of good and evil, for it helps us to realize that good and evil are not separate independent existences; but are--like pleasure and pain--emotional conditions of the soul. Thus when we say that the ultimate duality of good and evil, or of creation and what resists creation, is the thing upon which the whole universe depends, we must not for a moment be supposed to mean that the ultimate reality of the universe consists of two opposed ”forces” who, like blind chemical energies, struggle with one another in unconscious darkness.
The ultimate reality of the universe is personality, or rather, let us say, is the existence of an innumerable company of personal souls, visible and invisible, each of whom half-creates and half-discovers his own universe; each of whom finds, sooner or later, in the objective validity of the ”eternal ideas,” a universe which is common to them all. The unfathomable duality upon which this objective world, common to them all, depends for its existence is a duality which exists in every separate soul. Without such a duality it is impossible to conceive any soul existing. And directly such a duality were resolved into unity such a soul would cease to exist.
But because, without the presence of evil, good would cease to exist, we have no right to say that evil is an aspect of good. We have no right to say this because, if good is dependent for its existence upon evil, it is equally true that evil is dependent for its existence upon good.
The whole question of ultimate issues is a purely speculative one and one that does not touch the real situation. The real situation, the real fact of our personal experience--which is the only experience worth anything--lies undoubtedly in this impression of unfathomable duality. It cannot be regarded as a reconciliation between love and malice merely to recognize that love and malice are not independent ”forces,” such as can be compared to chemical ”forces,” but are states of the soul.
It is true that they both exist within the soul, just as the soul exists within time and s.p.a.ce; but since the soul is unfathomable these two conditions of the soul are also unfathomable. The struggle upon which the universe depends is a struggle which goes on within the circle of personality; but since personality is unthinkable without this struggle, it may truly be said that the existence of personality ”depends” upon the existence of this struggle. When we speak of pain and pleasure as if they were independent ent.i.ties we are forgetting that it is merely as ”states of the soul” that pain and pleasure exist. When we speak of love and malice as independent ent.i.ties we are forgetting that it is merely as ”states of the soul” that love and malice exist. Love and malice, the life-force and the death-force, these are merely abstractions when separated from the soul which is their arena.
It is certainly not in harmony with the revelation of the complex vision to seek to imagine some vague ”beginning of things”; when some inscrutable chemical or spiritual ”energy,” called ”life,”
rushed into objective existence and proceeded to create living personalities through which it might be able to function.
The revelation of the complex vision is a revelation of a world made up of unfathomable personalities. Of this world, of these unfathomable personalities, we are unable to postulate any ”beginning.” They have always existed. They seem likely to remain always in existence. Our knowledge stops at that point; because our knowledge is the knowledge of personality. The revelation of the complex vision is constantly warning us against any tendency to evade the whole question of the original mystery by the use of meaningless abstractions.
The word ”energy” is such an abstraction. So also is the word ”movement.” So also are those logical formulae of the pure reason, such as the ”a priori unity of apperception” and the ”absolute spirit.” Apart from personality, apart from the complex vision of the individual soul, there is no such thing as ”energy” or ”movement” or ”transcendental unity” or ”absolute spirit.” In the same way we are compelled to recognize that apart from personality the unfathomable duality has no meaning. But in so far as it represents the eternal struggle between life and death which goes on all the while in every living soul, the unfathomable duality is the permanent condition of our deepest knowledge.
It is just here that the mystery of pain and pleasure helps us to understand the mystery of love and malice, the same insensitiveness in certain souls that prevents their feeling any vivid pain or any vivid pleasure, also prevents their feeling any intense malice. But this insensitiveness which prevents their feeling any intense malice is, more than anything else, the especial evocation of the power of malice. For intensity, even in malice, is a proof that malice has been appropriating to its use the energy of life. The real opposite of intense love is not intense malice but inert malice.
For malignant inertness is the true adversary of creation. From this it necessarily follows that the soul which is insensitive to pain and pleasure and to malice and love is a soul in whom the profound opposite of love has already won a relative victory. It is certainly possible, as we have seen, for the victory of malice over love to be accompanied by thrilling pleasure; but, when this happens malice has lost something of its ”inertness” by drawing to itself and corrupting for its own use the dynamic energy of love. When malice displays itself in an intense and vivid activity of destruction it is less ”evil” and less purely ”malignant” than when it remains insensitive and inert. For this reason it is undeniably true that an insensitive person, although he may cause much less positive pain than a pa.s.sionately cruel person, is in reality a more complete incarnation of the power of ”evil” than the latter; for the latter, in the very violence of his pa.s.sion, has appropriated to himself something of the creative energy. It is true that in appropriating this he has corrupted it, and it is true that by the use of it he can cause far more immediate pain; but it remains that in himself he is less purely ”evil” than the person whose chief characteristic is a malignant insensitiveness.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REALITY OF THE SOUL IN RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT
It ought not to be forgotten, as at least an important historical fact, in regard to what we have a.s.serted as the revelation of the complex vision concerning the reality of the soul, that the two most influential modern philosophers deny this reality altogether. I refer to Bergson and William James.
In the systems of thought of both these writers there is no place left for that concrete, real, actual ”monad,” with its semi-mental, semi-material substratum of unknown hyper-physical, hyper-psychic substance, which is what we mean, in philosophical as well as in popular language when we talk of the ”soul.”