Part 30 (1/2)
Looking backward, as we thus reach our conclusion, we see how such a conclusion was implicit all the while in the first movement with which we started. For since the truth we seek is not a thing we just put out our hand and take, but is a mood, an att.i.tude, a gesture of our whole being, it follows that whenever, and by whatever means, we reach it, this ”truth” will always be the same, and will not be affected, when once it is reached, by the slowness or the speed of the method with which we approach it. Nor will it be changed or transformed by the vision that finally grasps it as it would necessarily be if it were an objective fact which we could each of us take into our hands. Such an objective fact or series of facts would, of necessity, ”look differently” to every individual vision that seized upon it. But by making our truth, down to the very depths, a gesture, an att.i.tude, a mood, we have already antic.i.p.ated and discounted that fatal relativity which inserts itself like a wedge of distorting vapour, between any objective fact and any subjective mind.
”Truth” cannot get blurred and distorted by the subjective mind when truth is regarded as that subjective mind's own creation.
According to the conclusion we have reached, every subjective mind in the universe, when it is rhythmically energizing, attains the same truth. For when subjectivity is carried to the furthest possible limit of rhythm and harmony, it transforms itself, of necessity, into objectivity. The subjective vision of all mortal minds, thus rendered objective by the intensity of the creative energy, is nothing less than the eternal vision. For as soon as the rhythmic harmony of the creative act has thus projected such a truth, such a truth receives the ”imprimatur of the G.o.ds” and turns out to be the truth which was implicit in us from the beginning.
Thus, the reality which we apprehend is found to be identical with the pursuit of the ideal which we seek; for what we name beauty and truth and goodness are of the essence of the mystery of life, and it is of _their_ essence that they should ever advance and grow.
The eternal vision includes in its own inmost rhythm the idea and spectacle of inexhaustible growth; for, although it beholds all things ”under the form of eternity,” its own nature is the nature of a creative gesture, of a supreme ”work of art,” whereby it approximates to the ideal even in the midst of the real. The ”form of eternity” under which it visualizes the world is not a dead or static eternity but an eternity of living growth. The peace and quiet which it attains is not the peace and quiet of the equilibrium which means ”nothingness” but the peace and quiet of the equilibrium which means the rhythmic movement of life. The truth which it creates is a truth which lends itself to infinite development upon lines already laid down from the beginning. The beauty which it creates is a beauty which lends itself to infinite development upon lines laid down from the beginning.
And this truth, this beauty, this goodness, are all of them nothing less than the projection of the soul itself--of all the souls which const.i.tute the system of things--in the mysterious outflowing of the ultimate duality. And when we make use of the expression ”from the beginning” we are using a mere metaphorical sign-post.
There is no beginning of the system of things and there is no end.
”From the beginning” means nothing except ”from eternity”; and in the immortal figure of Christ the beginning and the end are one.
In my a.n.a.lysis of the ultimate duality which is the secret of the soul I have said little about s.e.x. The modern tendency is to over-emphasize the importance of this thing and to seek its influence in regions it can never enter. Many attributes of the soul are s.e.xless; and since only one attribute of the soul, namely sensation, is entirely devoted to the body and unable to function except through the body, it is ridiculous and unphilosophical to make s.e.x the profoundest aspect of truth which we know. The tendency to lay stress upon s.e.x, at the expense of all s.e.xless aspects of the soul, is a tendency which springs directly from the inert malice of the abyss What the instinct of s.e.x secretly desires is that the very fountains of life should be invaded by s.e.x and penetrated by s.e.x.
But the fountains of life can never be invaded by s.e.x; because the fountains of life sink into that eternal vision which transcends all s.e.x and reduces s.e.x to its proper place as one single element in the rhythm of the universe.
It is only by a.s.sociating itself with love and malice--it is only by getting itself transformed into love and malice that the s.e.xual instinct is able to lift itself up, or to sink itself down, into the subtler levels of the soul's vision. The secret of life lies far deeper than the obvious bodily phenomena of s.e.x. The fountains from which life springs _may flow through that channel_ but they flow from a depth far below these physical or magnetic agitations. And it is only the abysmal cunning of the inert malice, which opposes itself to creation that tempts philosophers and artists to lay such a disproportionate stress upon this thing. The great artists are always known by their power to transcend s.e.x and to reduce s.e.x to its relative insignificance. In the greatest of all sculpture, in the greatest of all music, in the greatest of all poetry, the difference between the s.e.xes disappears.
The inert malice delights to emphasize this thing, because its normal functioning implies the most desperate exertion of the possessive instinct known to humanity. The s.e.xual instinct unless transfigured by love, tends towards death; because the s.e.xual instinct desires to petrify into everlasting immobility what the creative instinct would change and transform. What the s.e.xual instinct secretly desires is the eternal death of the object of its pa.s.sion. It would strike its victim if it could into everlasting immobility so that it could satiate its l.u.s.t of possession upon it without limit and without end. Any object of s.e.xual desire, untransformed by love, is, for the purposes of such desire, already turned into a living corpse.
But although, according to the method we have been following, the difference between men and women is but of small account in the real life of the soul, it remains that humanity has absurdly and outrageously neglected the especial vision of the woman, as, in her bodily senses and her magnetic instincts, she differs from man we may well hope that with the economic independence of women, which is so great and desirable a revolution in our age, individual women of genius will arise, able to present, in philosophy and art, the peculiar and especial reaction to the universe which women possess as women we may well desire such a consummation in view of the fact that all except the very greatest of men have permitted their vision of the world to be perverted and distorted by their s.e.x-instinct.
Could women of genius arise in sufficient numbers to counteract this tendency, such s.e.x-obsessed masculine artists would be shamed into recognizing the narrowness of their perverted outlook. As it is, what normal women of talent do is simply to copy and imitate, in a diluted form, the s.e.x-distortions of man's narrower vision. s.e.x-obsessed male artists have seduced the natural intelligence of the most talented women to their own narrow and limited view of life.
But it still remains that what the true artists of the world for ever seek--whether they be male or female--is not the partial and distorted vision of man as _a man_, or of woman _as a woman_, but the rhythmic and harmonious vision of, the human soul as it allies itself with the vision of the immortals. Women in private life, and in private conversation, disentangle themselves from the prejudices of men, but, as soon as they touch philosophy and art, they tend to deny their natural instincts and imitate the s.e.x-obsessed instincts of man. But this tendency is already beginning to collapse under the freer atmosphere of economic independence; and in the future we may expect such a fierce conflict between the s.e.x-vision of woman and the s.e.x-vision of man, that the human soul will revolt against both such partialities and seek the ”ampler ether and diviner air” of a vision that has altogether transcended the difference of s.e.x.
As we look back over the travelled road of our attempt to articulate the ultimate secret, there arises one last stupendous question, not to meet which would be to s.h.i.+rk the heaviest weight of the problem. We have reached the conclusion that the secret of Nature is to be found in personality. We have reached the further conclusion that personality demands, for the integrity of its inmost self, an actual ”soul-monad.” We are faced with a ”universe,” then, made up entirely of living souls, manifested in so-called animate, or so-called inanimate bodies. Everything that our individual mind apprehends is therefore the body of a soul, or a portion of the body of a soul, or the presence of a soul that needs no incarnation. The soul itself is composed of a mysterious substance wherein what we call mind and what we call matter are fused and merged. What I have named throughout this book by the name of the _objective mystery_ is therefore, when we come to realize the uttermost implications of our method, nothing more than the appearance of all the bodies of all the souls in the world _before_ the creative act of our own particular soul has visualized such a spectacle. We can never see the objective mystery as _it is_, because directly we have seen it, that is to say, the appearance of all the adjacent bodies of all the souls within our reach, it ceases to be the objective mystery and becomes the universe we know.
The objective mystery is therefore no real thing at all, but only the potentiality of all real things, before the ”real thing” which is our individual soul comes upon the scene to create the universe. It is only the potentiality of the ”universe” which we have thus named, only the idea of the general spectacle of such an universe, _before_ any universe has actually appeared.