The Complex Vision Part 16

It might be objected at this point, by such as follow the philosophy of Epicurus, that, even though such beings exist, we have no right to a.s.sume that they have any regard for us. My answer to this is that in such moments as I have attempted to describe, when the rhythmic activity of the soul is at its highest, we become directly and intuitively conscious of an immense unutterable harmony pervading all forms of life, whether mortal or immortal; a harmony which could not be felt if there were not some mysterious link binding all living souls together.

We become aware at such moments that not only are all living souls thus bound together but that all are bound together by the fact that the ideal vision of them all is one and the same. This is not only my answer to such as maintain that though there may be Beings in the system of things superior to man, such Beings have no necessary connection with man; it is also my answer to the question as to how, considering the capricious subjectivity of our human vision, we can be a.s.sured that the ideal vision of the immortals does not vary in the same way among themselves. We are a.s.sured against both these possibilities; against the possibility of the immortals being indifferent to humanity, and against the possibility of the immortals being divided among themselves, by the fact that, according to the very basic revelation of the complex vision, wherever there is a living soul, that living soul is dependent for its continued existence upon the overcoming of malice by love.

This duality is so much the essence of what we call personality that we cannot conceive of personality without it. If, therefore, the immortals are possessed of personality they must be subject to this duality; and the fact that they are subject to it puts them necessarily in at least a potential "rapport" with all other living souls, since the essence of every living soul is to be found in the same unfathomable struggle.

But granting that there _are_ superior Beings, worthy to be called G.o.ds, who in their essential nature resemble humanity, how can we be a.s.sured that there is any contact between them and humanity? We are a.s.sured of this in the intuitive revelation of a most definite human experience, an experience which few philosophers have been sceptical enough to deny, although their explanations of it may have been different from mine.

William James, for instance, whose psychological investigations into the phenomena of religious feeling are so thorough and original, describes the sense we have of the presence of these unseen Powers in a very interesting and curious way. He points out that the feeling we experience at such moments is that there exists below the level of our ordinary consciousness a deep and limitless reservoir or cistern containing "more" of the same stream of spiritual emotion which we are conscious of as being our very inmost self or soul of our soul.

On the waves of this subconscious ocean of deeper life we are, so to speak, able to "ride"; if once, in a sudden revolution of absolute humility, we can give ourselves up to it.

It is needless to indicate how the Ideas of Plato, the "sub specie aeternitatis" of Spinoza, the "Liberation" from "the Will" of Schopenhauer, the "Beatific Vision" of the Catholic saints are all a.n.a.logues and parallels, expressed under different symbols, of the same universal feeling. The difference between these philosophic statements of the situation and mine, is that, whereas these are content, with the doubtful exception of Plato, to eliminate from this subconscious "more" of what is "best" in our own soul, every trace and element of personality, I am unable to escape from the conviction that compared with personality no power in the universe, whether it be called "Idea" or "Substance" or a "Will to annihilate Will" or "Life Force" or "Stream of consciousness" or any other name, is worthy to be regarded as the cause and origin of that intimation of "something more" by which our soul comes into contact with the secret of the system of things.

To a.s.sume that the vision of unutterable truth which is reached in the supreme works of art is anything less than the vision of super-human Personality is to a.s.sume that something other than Peripety is the secret of life. And how can man, who feels so profoundly conscious that his own personal "I am I" is the inmost essence of his being, when it comes to the question of the cause of his sensation of "riding on the waves" of this something "more," be content to find the cause in mere abstractions from personality, such as "streams of consciousness" or "life-force" or "Absolute Substance"?

What we _know for certain_, in this strange imbroglio, is that what we call Beauty is a complex of two mysteries, the mystery of our own "I am I" and the mystery of the "objective something"

which this "I am I" confronts. And if, as is the case, our most intense and pa.s.sionate experience, when the rhythm of our nature is at the fullest, is the intuition of some world-deep authority or sanction giving an eternal validity to our ideas, this authority or sanction cannot be interpreted in mere metaphors or similes abstracted from personality, or in any material substance without a mind, or in any "stream of thought" without a thinker: but can only be interpreted in terms of what alone we have an inside consciousness of, namely in terms of personality itself.

To some temperaments it might seem as though this reduction of the immense unfathomable universe to a congeries of living souls were a strangling limitation. There are certain human temperaments, and my own is one of them, whose aesthetic sense demands the existence of vast interminable s.p.a.ces of air, of water, of earth, of fire, or even of blank emptiness. To such a temperament it might seem as though to be jostled throughout eternity by other living souls were to be shut up in an unescapable prison. And when to this unending population of fellow-denizens of s.p.a.ce we add this doctrine that our deepest ideas of Beauty remain subjective and ephemeral until they have received the "imprimatur" of some mysterious superhuman Being or Beings, such rebellious temperaments as I am speaking of might conceivably cry aloud for the Psalmist's "wings of a dove."

But the aspect of things which I have just suggested is after all only a superficial aspect of the situation. Those hollow s.p.a.ces of unplumbed darkness, those gulfs filled with primordial nothingness, those caverns of midnight where the h.o.a.ry chemistry of matter swirls and ferments in eternal formlessness; these indeed _are_ taken away from us. But as I have indicated again and again, no movement of human logic, no energy of human reason, can destroy the unfathomableness of Nature. The immense spectacle of the material universe, with its perpetually receding background of objective mystery, is a thing that cannot be destroyed. Those among us who reluct at every human explanation of this panorama of shadows, are only too easily able to "flee away and be at rest" in the bottomless gulf they crave.

The fact that man's apex-thought reveals the presence of an unending procession of living souls, each of whose creative energy moulds this mystery to its own vision, does not remove the unfathomableness of the world-stuff whereof they mould it. As we have already seen, this aboriginal world-stuff, so impenetrable to all a.n.a.lysis, a.s.sumes as far as we are concerned a three-fold form.

It a.s.sumes the form of the material element in that fusion of matter and consciousness which makes up the substance of the soul. It a.s.sumes the form of the universal medium which binds all souls together. And it a.s.sumes the form of the objective mystery which confronts the vision of all souls. Over these three forms of the "world-stuff" hangs irrevocably the great "world-curve" or "world-circle" of omnipresent s.p.a.ce, which gives the final and ultimate unity to all possible universes.

The temperamental revolt, however, which I am endeavouring to describe, against our doctrine of personality, does not stop with a demand for de-humanized air and s.p.a.ce. It has a pa.s.sionate "penchant" for the projection of such vague imaginative images as "spirit" and "life." Forgetful that no man has ever seen or touched this "spirit," apart from a personal soul, or this "life," apart from some living thing, the temperament I am thinking of loves to make imaginative excursions into what it supposes to be vast receding abysses of pure "spirit" and of impersonal inhuman "life."

It gains thus a sense of liberation from the boundaries of its own personality and a sense of liberation from the boundaries of all personality. The doctrine, therefore, that the visible universe is a mysterious complex of many concentrated mortal visions, stamped, so to speak, with the "imprimatur" of an ideal immortal vision, is a doctrine that seems to impede and oppose such a temperament in this abysmal plunge into the ocean of existence.

But my answer to the protest of this temperament--and it is an answer that has a certain measure of authority, since this temperament is no other than my own--is that this feeling of "imprisonment" is due to a superficial understanding of the doctrine against which it protests. It is superficial because it does not recognize that around, above, beneath, within, every form of personality that the "curve of s.p.a.ce" covers, there is present the aboriginal "world-stuff," unfathomable and inexplicable, out of which all souls draw the material element of their being, in which all souls come into contact with one another, and from which all souls half-create and half-discover their personal universe.

It was necessary to introduce this question of temperamental reaction just here, because in any conclusion as to the nature of Beauty it is above all things important to give complete satisfaction to every great recurrent exigency of human desire.

And this desire for liberation from the bonds of personality is one of the profoundest instincts of personality.

We have now arrived at a point of vantage from which it is possible to survey the outlines of our final problem; the problem, namely as to what it really is which renders one object in nature more beautiful than another object, and one work of art more beautiful than another work of art. We know that in the intuitive judgment which affixes these relative valuations there must be the three elements of mortal subjective vision, of immortal objective vision, and of the original "world-stuff" out of which all visions are made.

But upon what criteria, by what rules and standards, do we become aware that one tree is more beautiful than another tree, one landscape than another landscape, one poem or person or picture than another of the same kind? The question has already been lifted out of the sphere of pure subjective taste by what has been said with regard to the eternal Ideal vision. But are there any permanent laws of Beauty by which we may a.n.a.lyse the verdict of this objective vision? Or are we made aware of it, in each individual case, by a pure intuitive apprehension?

I think there _are_ such laws. But I think the "science," so to say, of the aesthetic judgment remains at present in so rudimentary a stage that we are not in a position to do more than indicate their general outline. The following principles seem, as far as I am able to lay hold upon this evasive problem, of more comprehensive application than any others.

A thing to be beautiful must form an organic totality, even though in some other sense it is only a portion of a larger totality.

It must carry with it the impression, illusive or otherwise, that it is the outward form or shape of a living personal soul.

It must satisfy, at least by symbolic a.s.sociation, the physical desires of the body.

It must obey certain hidden laws of rhythm, proportion, balance, and harmony, both with regard to colour and form, and with regard to magical suggestiveness.

It must answer, in some degree, the craving of the human mind for some symbolic expression of the fatality of human experience.

It must have a double effect upon us. It must arouse the excitement of a pa.s.sion of attention, and it must quiet us with a sense of eternal rest.

It must thrill us with a happiness which goes beyond the pleasure of a pa.s.sing physical sensation.

It must convey the impression of something unique and yet representative; and it must carry the mind through and beyond itself, to the very brink and margin of the ultimate objective mystery.

It must suggest inevitableness, spontaneity, a certain monumental ease, and a general feeling of expansion and liberation.

It must, if it belong to nature, convey that magical and world-deep sadness which springs from an inarticulate appeal; or, if it belong to art, that wistful loneliness which springs from the creation of immortality by the hands of mortality.

The above principles are not offered as in any way exhaustive.

They are outlined as a temporary starting point and suggestion for the more penetrating a.n.a.lysis which the future will surely provide.

And I have temporally excluded from them, as can be seen, all references to those auxiliary elements drawn from reason and conscience which, according to the philosophy of the complex vision, must be included in the body of art, if art is to be the final expression of human experience.

But after gathering together all we have acc.u.mulated among these various paths leading to the edge of the mystery of art, what we are compelled to recognize, when we confront the palpable thing itself, is that, in each unique embodiment of it, it arrests and entrances us, as with a sudden transformation of our entire universe.

Out of the abysses of personality--human or super-human--every new original work of art draws us, by an irresistible magnetism, into itself, until we are compelled to become _what it is_, until we are actually transformed into its inmost ident.i.ty.

What hitherto has seemed to us mere refuse and litter and dreariness and debris--all the shards and ashes and flints and excrement of the margins of our universe--take upon themselves, as they are thus caught up and transfigured, a new and ineffable meaning.

The terrible, the ghastly, the atrocious, the abominable, the apparently meaningless and dead, suddenly gather themselves together and take on strange and monumental significance.

What has. .h.i.therto seemed to us floating jetsom and blind wreckage, what has. .h.i.therto seemed to us mere brutal lumps of primeval clay tossed to and fro by the giant hands of chaos, what has. .h.i.therto seemed to us slabs of inhuman chemistry, suddenly a.s.sumes under the pressure of this great power out of the abyss a strange and lovely and terrible expressiveness.

Deep calls to Deep; and the mysterious oceans of Personality move and stir in a terrific reciprocity.

The unfathomable gulfs of the eternal duality within us are roused to undreamed-of response in answer to this abysmal stirring of the powers that create the world.

What is good in us is enlarged and heightened; what is evil in us is enlarged and deepened; while, under the increasing pressure of this new wave of the perilous stuff "of emotion," slowly, little by little, as we give ourselves up to the ecstasy of contemplation, the intensified "good" overcomes the intensified "evil."

It is then that what has begun in agitation and disturbance sinks by degrees into an infinite peace; as, without any apparent change or confusion, the waves roll in, one after another, upon our human sh.o.r.e, and we are lifted up and carried out on that vast tide into the great s.p.a.ces, beneath the morning and the evening, where the eternal vision awaits us with its undescribable calm.

Let art be as bizarre, as weird, as strange, as rare, as fantastic, as you please, if it be true art it must spring from the aboriginal duality in the human soul and thus must remain indestructibly personal. But since the two elements of personality wrestle together in every artist's soul, the more personal a work of art becomes the more comprehensive is its impersonality.

For art, by means of the personal and the particular, attains the impersonal and the universal. By means of sinking down into the transitory and the ephemeral, by means of moulding chance and accident to its will, it is enabled to touch the eternal and the eternally fatal.

From agitation to peace; from sound to silence; from creation to contemplation; from birth and death to that which is immortal; from movement to that which is at rest--such is the wayfaring of this primordial power.

It is from the vantage-ground of this perception that we are able to discern how the mysterious beauty revealed in apparently "inhuman" arrangements of line and colour and light and shade is really a thing springing from the depths of some personal and individual vision.

The controversy as to the superior claims of an art that is just "art,"

with an appeal entirely limited to texture and colour and line and pure sound, and an art that is imagistic, symbolic, representative, religious, philosophical, or prophetic, is rendered irrelevant and meaningless when we perceive that all art, whether it be a thing of pure line and colour or a thing of pa.s.sionate human content, must inevitably spring from the depths of some particular personal vision and must inevitably attain, by stressing this personal element to the limit, that universal impersonality which is implied in the fact that every living soul is composed of the same elements.

It may require no little subtlety of vision to detect in the pure beauty of line, colour, and texture that compose, say, some lovely piece of bric-a-brac, the hidden presence of that primordial duality out of which all forms of beauty emerge, but the metaphysical significance latent in the phrase "the sense of difficulty overcome"

points us towards just this very interpretation. The circ.u.mstantial and the s.e.xual "motifs" in art, so appealing to the mob, may or may not play an aesthetic part in the resultant rhythm. If they do, they do so because such "interest" and such "eroticism" were an integral portion of the original vision that gave unity to the work in question. If they do not, but are merely dragged in by the un-aesthetic observer, it is easy enough for the genuine virtuoso to disregard such temptation and to put "story," "message,"

"sentiment," and "s.e.x-appeal" rigidly aside, as he seeks to respond to the primordial vision of an "unstoried" non-s.e.xual beauty springing from those deeper levels of the soul where "story,"

"sentiment," and s.e.x have no longer any place.

More dangerous, however, to art, than any popular craving for "human interest" or for the comfort of amorous voluptuousness, is the unpardonable stupidity of puritanical censorship. Such censorship, in its cra.s.s impertinence, a.s.sumes that its miserable and hypocritical negations represent that deep, fierce, terrible "imperative" uttered by the soul's primordial conscience.