Complex vision

“ The philosophy of the complex vision is based, as I have shown, upon nothing less than the whole personality of man become conscious of itself in the totality of its rhythmic functioning. This personality, although capable of being analysed in its constituent elements, is an integral and unfathomable reality. And just because it is such a reality it descends and expands on every side into immeasurable depths and immeasurable horizons. ”

“ When once, by the bold synthesis of reason and sensation with those other attributes of the complex vision which we name instinct, imagination, intuition, and the like, the soul itself comes to be regarded as the substratum of personal existence, that desolating separation between humanity and Nature ceases to baffle us. ”

“ The truth is that in this ultimate revelation of the complex vision we are confronted with an inevitable triad, or trinity, of primordial aspects. We are compelled to think of a plurality of living souls of which our own is one; of certain ideal companions of all souls whose vision gives to our vision its objective value; and of an external universe which is the creation of this vision. ”

“ For the complex vision with the whole weight of all its aspects behind it receives the colour and the form of only one of them. We can see the result of this from the tenacity—implying the presence of emotion and will—with which some philosopher of pure reason passionately and imaginatively defends his logical conclusion. ”

“ The question arises—can there be invented any concrete, tangible symbol which shall appeal to every attribute of the complex vision and be an accumulated image of that side of the unfathomable duality from which we draw our ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is precisely this shape, this form, this principle, this hope, this dream, this essential motive of those sons of the universe whose existence is implied "when two and three are gathered together," which would be destroyed and annihilated, if the complex vision were transformed into something else and a new world took the place of the old. ”

“ And just as the complex vision could not exist without the reality of the objective world, so the objective world could not exist without the reality of the complex vision. These two depend upon one another and perpetually recreate one another. ”

“ The revelation of the complex vision implies clearly enough that what man were wise to "assume"—leaving always the ultimate question as an open question—is that the individual soul and the individual body perish together. ”

“ The philosophical enquiry upon which we are engaged finds its starting point, then, in nothing less than that revelation of the complex vision which is also the goal of its journey. The complex vision, in the rhythmic play of its united attributes, makes use of a synthetic power which I call its apex-thought. ”

“ This original play of thought, apart from what it may think, can result in nothing better than isolated abstractions; because thought, apart from concrete objects of thought, is itself nothing more than one attribute of the complex vision, groping about in a vacuum and finding nothing. ”

“ They are at least proof of the inalienable part played, in the functioning of our complex vision, by sensation as an organ of research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle, without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. ”

“ What we are conscious of, when our complex vision gathers itself together, is the fact that the inevitable element of subjectivity in our individual feeling about these things is transcended and supplemented by an invisible pattern or standard or ideal in which these things are reconciled and fused together at a higher pitch of harmony than we individually, or even in contact with one another, are capable of attaining. ”

“ Philosophers who believe in the unchangeableness of the complex vision are bound to recognize that the human will, which is a basic attribute of this vision, must in any case play a considerable part in the creation of the future. ”

“ What the complex vision indicates, therefore, is a system of things which has a monistic aspect, for there is only one space and only one succession of time; a pluralistic aspect, for the system of things gives birth continually to innumerable individual souls; and a dualistic aspect, for the universe itself is created by the struggle between love and malice. ”

“ It is therefore quite easy for the logical reason, functioning in its isolation from the other attributes, to maintain that this stream of mental impressions is all that there is, and that we have no right to call the universe real and objective, except in the ambiguous sense of a sort of permanent illusion. But as soon as the complex vision, in its totality, contemplates the situation, the thing takes on a very different aspect. ”

“ But as I have hinted before, the complex vision's attribute of self-consciousness projects a second abstraction, which takes its place between this ultimate monad which is pure "subject" and our real personal self which is so much more than subject and object together. ”

“ The vague metaphysical phrases about the One issuing forth into the Many, in order to make Itself more completely Itself than it was before, seem to us, when under the influence of our complex vision, no other than the meaningless playing with cosmic tennis balls of some insane universal Juggler. ”

“ From that maxim of Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one’s self in them, till one’s whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision—the “beatific vision,” if we really cared to make it such—of our actual experience in the world. ”

“ And this something, although impossible to be analysed, must be regarded as existing within that mysterious medium which is the uniting force of the universe. The soul must, in fact, be thought of as possessing some sort of "spiritual body" which is the centre of its complex vision and which, therefore, expresses itself in reason, self-consciousness, will, sensation, instinct, intuition, memory, emotion, conscience, taste, and imagination. All this must necessarily imply that the soul is within, and not outside, time and space. ”

“ That progressing perception of differences and consequent greater correctness of classing constitutes under one of its chief aspects the development of mind, is equally seen when we pass from the relatively simple physical vision to the relatively complex intellectual vision—the vision through the agency of which things previously grouped by certain external resemblances or by certain extrinsic circumstances come to be more truly grouped in conformity with their intrinsic structures or natures. ”

“ And precisely as the subjective vision of man creates the companions of men and then discovers them to be an objective reality, so the subjective vision of man creates the universe and then discovers the universe to be an objective reality. And in both cases this discovering finds its justification in a recognition that the idea of this resultant objectivity was implicit in the subjective energy from the beginning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Deep calls unto deep within us; and in the circle of our mortal personality an immortal drama unrolls itself. Waves of unredeemed chaos roll upward from the abysses of our souls, and like a brackish tide contend with the water-springs of life.
Over the landscape of our vision lies a shadow, a rarely lifted shadow, the shadow of our own malice. But the human race has not been destined to carry on the unending struggle alone. Its subjective human vision has touched in the darkness a subjective super-human vision; and the symbol of the encounter of these two is the lonely figure of Christ. ”

“ Is there no design of analogy in this Universe? Are these striking resemblances that wed remote parts, these family traits that break out all through nature and that show the unity of the creating mind, the work of chance? Are these resemblances and mutual answerings of part to part that human intelligence sees and recognizes only in its most exalted moments—when its vision is clearest—a mere accident? ”

“ The reality of this thing, actually there, above our heads and under our feet, lodges itself, like an ice cold wedge of annihilating scepticism, right in the heart of any facile explanation. We cannot interpret the world in terms of what we call "matter" when what we call "matter" has these unthinkable horizons. We may take into our hands a pebble or a shell or a grain of sand; and we may feel as though the universe were within our grasp. ”

“ Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception. ”

“ They are, for instance, the visible forms, colours, and shades of the parts, understood according to the maxims of perspective; (for of perspective every one has a practical knowledge, as every one has of grammar;) the effort by which we fix both our eyes on the same object, and adjust each eye to distinct vision ”

“ I have tried to reason over it with myself, as I would with a sequence of another character, to deduce from a sequence better than could be done from a single vision, valid reasons for believing that there must be a conscious intellect somewhere behind the sequence.
But I cannot reason over it.
I only know that I look everywhere in the face of youth, in the aspect of every new notability, hoping before I die to recognise the broad-browed avatar of my vision. ”

“ It is the eye of the mind that sees through the material eye, and thus discerns objects in nature.
The power of sight chiefly depends upon two things, the strength, clearness, and perfection of the lens of the natural eye, and the force and direction of mental light. The intelligence of vision, other things being equal, is in proportion to the quality of intellectual light. ”

“ The mountains, let us say, which the eye beholds are the objects of its vision. In the same way the passions, sensations, "states of mind," &c., which the man is, or may be, conscious of, are the objects of his consciousness, of his conscious self. But no one ever supposes that the fact of vision is the same as the objects of vision. ”

“ The moment, then, that we get beyond the first crude sense-perception consciousness consists not of detached sensory images but of "ideas," the complex [Pg 19] product of present sense-perceptions, past sense-perceptions and the mental processes known to psychology as association and discrimination.
How Ideas are Created
Every concrete conception or idea, such as "horse," "rose," "mountain," is made up of a number of associated properties. It has mass, form and various degrees of color, light and shade. ”

“ In both cases, the habit of interpretation is become as familiar as the act of perception. And this is the case with regard to vision. We see the breadth of the street as clearly and readily as we see the house on the other side of it. We see the house to be square, however obliquely it be presented to us. Indeed the difficulty is, to recover the consciousness of our real and original sensations;—to discover what is the apparent relation of the lines which appear before us. ”

“ The truth is that we have learned to look at all objects with sophisticated eyes. The schools have wrought that tangle about us, and the tangles within the tangle, until to our bewildered vision nothing appears as it is, but only as hidebound theory presents it. ”