The Complex Vision Part 25

Such a teleological unity, forever advancing to a consummation never entirely to be attained, demands however some sort of static "milieu" as well as some sort of static "material" in the midst of which and out of which it moulds its premeditated future. It is precisely this static "milieu" or "medium," and this static "material" or formless "objective mystery," which Bergson's philosophy, of the _"elan vital" of pure spirit_, spreading out into a totally indetermined future, denies and eliminates.

In order to justify this double elimination--the elimination of an universal "medium" and the elimination of a formless "thing-in-itself"--Bergson is compelled to reduce _s.p.a.ce_ to a quite secondary and merely logical conception and to subst.i.tute for our ordinary stream of time, measurable in terms of s.p.a.ce, an altogether new conception of time, measurable in terms of feeling.

When however we come to a.n.a.lyse this new Bergsonian time, or as he prefers to call it "intuitively-felt duration," we cannot avoid observing that it is merely a new "mysterious something"

introduced into the midst of the system of things, in order to enable us to escape from those older traditional "mysterious somethings" which we have to recognize as the "immediate data"

of human consciousness.

It might be argued that Bergson's monistic "spirit," functioning in a mysterious indefinable "time," demands neither more nor less of an irrational act of faith than our mysterious psycho-material "soul" surrounded by a mysterious hyper-chemical "medium" and creating its future out of an inexplicable "objective mystery."

Where however the philosophy of the complex vision has the advantage over the philosophy of the "elan vital" is in the fact that even on Bergson's own admission what the human consciousness most intensely _knows_ is not "pure spirit," whether shaped like a fan or shaped like a sheaf, but simply its own integral ident.i.ty.

And this integral ident.i.ty of consciousness can only be visualized or felt in the mind itself under the form of a living concrete monad.

It will be seen, however, when it comes to a "showing up" of what might be called the "trump cards" of axiomatic mystery, that the complex vision has in reality fewer of these ultimate irrational "data" than has the philosophy of the elan vital.

s.p.a.ce itself, whether we regard it as objective or subjective, is certainly not an irrational axiom but an entirely rational and indeed an entirely inevitable a.s.sumption. And what the complex vision reveals is that the trinity of "mysterious somethings" with which we are compelled to start our enquiry, namely the "something"

which is the substratum of the soul, the "something" which is the "medium" binding all souls together, and the "something" which is the "objective mystery" out of which all souls create their universe, is, in fact, a genuine trinity in the pure theological sense; in other words is a real "three-in-one." And it is a "three-in-one"

not only because it is unthinkable that three "incomprehensible substances" should exist in touch with one another without being in organic relation, but also because all three of them are dominated, in so far as we can say anything about them at all, by the same universal s.p.a.ce.

It is true that the unappropriated ma.s.s of "objective mystery" upon which no shadow of the creative energy of any soul has yet been thrown must be considered as utterly "formless and void" and thus in a sense beyond s.p.a.ce and time, yet since immediately we try to _imagine_ or _visualize_ this mystery, as well as just logically "consider" it, we are compelled to extend over it our conception of time and s.p.a.ce, it is in a practical sense, although not in a logical sense, under the real dominion of these.

When therefore the philosophy of the complex vision places its trump-cards of axiomatic mystery over against the similar cards of the philosophy of the "elan vital" it will be found that in actual number Bergson has one more "card" than we have. For Bergson has not only his "pure spirit" and his "intuitively-felt time," but has also--for he cannot really escape from that by just a.s.serting that his "spirit" produces it--the opposing obstinate principle of "matter" or "solid bodies" or "mechanical brains" upon which his pure spirit has to work.

It is indeed out of its difficulties with "matter," that is to say with bodies and brains, that Bergson's "spirit" is forced to forego its natural element of "intuitive duration" and project itself into the rigid rationalistic conceptualism of ordinary science and metaphysic.

The point of our argument in this place is that since the whole purpose of philosophy is articulation or clarification and since in this process of clarification the fewer "axiomatic incomprehensibles" we start with the better; it is decidedly to the advantage of any philosophy that it should require at the start nothing more than the mystery of the individual soul confronting the mystery of the world around it. And it is to the disadvantage of Bergson's philosophy that it should require at the start, in addition to "pure spirit" with its a.s.sumption of memory and will, and "pure matter" with its a.s.sumption of ordinary s.p.a.ce and ordinary time, a still further axiomatic trump-card, in the theory of intuitive "durational" time, in which the real process of the life-flow transcends all reason and logic.

Putting aside however the cosmological aspect of our controversy with the "radical empirical" school of thought, we still have left unconsidered our most serious divergence from their position.

This consists in the fact that both Bergson and James have entirely omitted from their original instrument of research that inalienable aspect of the human soul which we call the aesthetic sense.

With only a few exceptions--notably that of Spinoza--all the great European philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche have begun their philosophizing from a starting-point which implied, as an essential part of their "organum" of enquiry, the possession by the human soul of some sort of aesthetic vision.

To these thinkers, whether rationalistic or mystic, no interpretation of the world seemed possible that did not start with the aesthetic sense, both as an instrument of research and as a test of what research discovered.

The complete absence of any discussion of the aesthetic sense in Bergson and James is probably an historic confession of the tyranny of commercialism and physical science over the present generation. It may also be a spiritual reflection, in the sphere of philosophy, of the rise to political and social power of that bourgeois cla.s.s which, of all cla.s.ses, is the least interested in aesthetic speculation.

The philosophy of the complex vision may have to wait for its hour of influence until the proletariat comes into its own. And it does indeed seem as if between the triumph of the proletariat and the triumph of the aesthetic sense there were an intimate a.s.sociation. It is precisely because these two philosophers have so completely neglected the aesthetic sense that their speculations seem to have so little hold upon the imagination. When once it is allowed that the true instrument of research into the secret of the universe is the rhythmic activity of man's complete nature, and not merely the activity of his reason or the activity of his intuition working in isolation, it then becomes obvious that the universal revelations of the aesthetic sense, if they can be genuinely disentangled from mere subjective caprices, are an essential part of what we have to work with if we are to approach the truth.

The philosophy of the complex vision bases its entire system upon its faith in the validity of these revelations; and, as we have already shown, it secures an objective weight and force for this ideal vision by its faith in certain unseen companions of humanity, whom it claims the right to name "the immortals."

This is really the place where we part company with Bergson and James. We agree with the former in his distrust of the old metaphysic. We agree with the latter in many of his pluralistic speculations. But we feel that any philosophy which refuses to take account, at the very beginning, of those regions of human consciousness which are summed up by the words "beauty" and "art," is a philosophy that in undertaking to explain life has begun by eliminating from life one of its most characteristic products.

In Bergson's interpretation of life the stress is laid upon "spirit"

and "intuition." In James' interpretation of life the stress is laid upon those practical changes in the world and in human nature which any new idea must produce if it is to prove itself true.

In the view of life we are now trying to make clear, philosophy is so closely dependent upon the activity of the aesthetic sense that it might itself be called an art, the most difficult and the most comprehensive of all the arts, the art of retaining the rhythmic balance of all man's contradictory energies. What this rhythmic balance of man's concentrated energies seems to make clear is the primary importance of the process of discrimination and valuation.

From the profoundest depths of the soul rises the consciousness of the power of choice; and this power of choice to which we give, by common consent, the name of "will," finds itself confronted at the start by the eternal duality of the impulse to create and the impulse to resist creation. The impulse to create we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of love. And the impulse to resist creation we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of malice.

But experience carries us further than this. The impulse to create, or the emotion of love, is found, as soon as it begins a function, to be itself a living synthesis of three primordial reactions to life, which, in philosophic language, we name "ideas." These three primordial ideas may be summed up as follows: The idea of beauty, which is the revelation of the aesthetic sense. The idea of goodness or n.o.bility, which is the revelation of conscience. The idea of truth, or the mind's apprehension of reality, which is the revelation of reason, intuition, instinct, and imagination, functioning in sympathic harmony. Now it is true that by laying so much stress upon the "elan vital" or flowing tide of creative energy, Bergson has indicated his acceptance of one side of the ultimate duality. But for Bergson this creative impulse is not confronted by evil or by malice as its opposite, but simply by the natural inertness of mechanical "matter."

And once having a.s.sumed his "continuum" of pure spirit, he deals no further with the problem of good and evil or with the problem of the aesthetic sense.

From our point of view he is axiomatically unable to deal with these problems for the simple reason that his elan vital or flux of pure spirit, being itself a mere metaphysical abstraction from living personality, can never, however hard you squeeze it, produce either the human conscience or the human aesthetic sense.

These things can only be produced from the concrete activity of a real living individual soul. In the same way it is true that William James, by his emphasis upon conduct and action and practical efficiency as the tests of truth, is bound to lay enormous stress at the very start upon the ethical problem.

What a person believes about the universe becomes itself an ethical problem by the introduction on the one hand of the efficiency of the will to believe and on the other of the a.s.sumption that a person "ought" to believe that which it is "useful" to him to believe, as long as it does not conflict with other desirable truths.

But this ethical element in the pragmatic doctrine, though it is so dominant as almost to reduce philosophy itself to a sub-division of ethics, is not, when one examines it, at all the same thing as what the philosophy of the complex vision means by the revelation of conscience.

Ethics with William James swallows up philosophy and in swallowing up philosophy the nature of Ethics is changed and becomes something different from the clear unqualified mandate of the human conscience. With the philosophy of the complex vision the revelations of conscience are intimately a.s.sociated with the revelations of the aesthetic sense; and these again, in the rhythmic totality of man's nature, with the revelations of emotion, instinct, intuition, imagination.

Thus when it comes to conduct and the question of choice the kind of "imperative" issued by conscience has been already profoundly changed. It is still the mandate of conscience. But it is the mandate of a conscience whose search-light has been taken possession of by the aesthetic sense and has been fed by imagination, instinct and intuition.

It must be understood when we speak of these various "aspects" or "attributes" of the human soul we do not imply that they exist as separable faculties independently of the unity of the soul which possesses them.

The soul is an integral and indivisible monad and throws its whole strength along each of these lines of contact with the world. As will, the soul flings itself upon the world in the form of choice between opposite valuations. As conscience, it flings itself upon the world in the form of motive force of opposite valuations. As the aesthetic sense, it flings itself upon the world in the form of yet another motive-force of opposite valuations. As imagination, it half-creates and half-discovers the atmospheric climate, so to speak, of this valuation. As intuition, it feels itself to be in possession of a super-terrestrial, super-human authority which gives objective definiteness and security to this valuation. As instinct, it feels its way by an innate clairvoyance into the organic or biological vibrations of this valuation.

Thus we return to the point from which we started, namely that the whole problem of philosophy is the problem of valuation. And this is the same thing as saying that philosophy, considered in its essential nature, is nothing less than art--the art of flinging itself upon the world with all the potentialities of the soul functioning in rhythmic harmony.

When Bergson talks of the "elan vital" and suggests that the acts of choice of the human personality are made as naturally and inevitably, under the pressure of the "shooting out" of the spirit, as leaves grow upon the tree, he is falling into the old traditional blunder of all pantheistic and monistic thinkers, the blunder namely of attributing to a universal "G.o.d" or "life-force" or "stream of tendency" the actual personal achievements of individual souls.

Bergson's "apologia" for free-will is therefore rendered ineffective by reason of the fact that it does not really leave the individual free. The only "free" thing is the aboriginal "spirit," pouring forth in its "durational" stream, and moulding bodies and brains as it goes along.

The philosophy of the complex vision does not believe in "spirit"

or "life-force" or "durational streams of tendency." Starting with personality it is not inc.u.mbent upon it to show how personality has been evolved. It is no more inc.u.mbent upon it to show how personality has been evolved than it is inc.u.mbent upon pantheistic idealism to show how G.o.d or how the Absolute has been evolved.

Personality with its implication of separate concrete psycho-material soul-monads is indeed our Absolute or at any rate is as much of an Absolute as we can ever get while we continue to recognize the independent existence of one universal s.p.a.ce, of one universal ethereal medium, and of on universal objective mystery.

Perhaps the correct metaphysical statement of our philosophic position would be that our Absolute is a duality from the very start--a duality made up on one side of innumerable soul-monads and on the other side of an incomprehensible formless ma.s.s of plastic material, itself subdivided into the two aspects of a medium binding the soul-monads together, and an objective mystery into which they pierce their way.

When the evolutionists tell us that personality is a thing of late appearance in the system of things and a thing of which we are able to note the historic or prehistoric development, out of the "lower" forms of life, our answer is that we have no right to a.s.sume that the life of the earth and of the other planetary and stellar bodies is a "lower" form of life.

If to this the astronomer answer that he is able to carry the history of evolution further back than any planet or star, as far back as a vast floating ma.s.s of h.o.m.ogeneous fiery vapour, even then we should still maintain that this original nebular ma.s.s of fire was the material "body" of an integral soul-monad; and that in surrounding immensities of s.p.a.ce there were other similar ma.s.ses of nebular fire--possibly innumerable others--who in their turn were the bodily manifestations of integral soul-monads.

When evolutionists argue that personality is a late and accidental appearance on the world scene, they are only thinking of human personalities; and our contention is that while man has a right to interpret the universe in terms of his soul, he has no right to interpret the universe in terms of his body; and that it is therefore quite possible to maintain that the "body" of the earth has been from the beginning animated by a soul-monad whose life can in no sense be called "lower" than the life of the soul-monad which at present animates the human body. And in support of our contention just here we are able to quote not only the authority of Fechner but the authority of Professor James himself approving of Fechner.

What the philosophy of the complex vision really does is to take life just as it is--the ordinary multifarious spectacle presented to our senses and interpreted by our imagination--and regard this, and nothing more recondite than this, as the ultimate Absolute, or as near an Absolute as we are ever likely to get.

From our point of view it seems quite uncalled for to summon up vague and remote ent.i.ties, like streams of consciousness and shootings forth of spirit, in order to interpret this immediate spectacle. Such streams of consciousness and shootings forth of spirit seem to us just as much abstractions and just as much conceptual subst.i.tutions for reality as do the old-fashioned metaphysical ent.i.ties of "being" and "becoming."

No one has ever _seen_ a life-stream or a life-force. No one has ever _seen_ a compounded congeries of conscious states. But every one of us has seen a living human soul looking out of a living human body; and most of us have seen a living soul looking out of the mysterious countenance of earth, water, air and fire.

The philosophy of the soul-monad has at any rate this advantage over every other: namely, that it definitely represents human experience and can always be verified by human experience. Any human being can try the experiment of sinking into the depths of his own ident.i.ty. Let the reader of this pa.s.sage try such an experiment here and now; and let him, in the light of what he finds, decide this question. Does he find himself flowing mysteriously forth, along some indescribable "durational" stream, and, as he flows, feeling himself to be that stream? Or does he feel himself to be a definite concrete actual "I am I," "the guest and companion of his body" and, as far as the mortal weakness of flesh allows, the motive-principle of that body?

If the philosophy of the complex vision is able to make an appeal of this kind with a certain degree of a.s.surance as to the answer, it is able to make a yet more convincing appeal, when--the soul's existence once admitted--it becomes a question as to that soul's inherent quality. No human being, unless in the grasp of some megalomania of virtue, can deny the existence, in the depths of his nature, of a struggle between the emotion of love and the emotion of malice.

Out of this ultimate duality under the pressure of the forms and shapes of life and the reaction against these of the imagination and the aesthetic sense, spring into existence those primordial ideas of truth and beauty and goodness which, are the very stuff and texture of our fate. But these ideas, primordial though they are, are so confused and distorted by their contact with circ.u.mstances and accident, that it may well be that no clear image of them is found in the recesses of the soul when the soul turns its glance inward.

No soul, however, can turn its glance inward without recognizing in its deepest being this ultimate struggle between love and malice.