things. Contradiction
and paradox at the very basis of life mock our attempt to utter one
intelligible word about the thing which is the most real of all
things to us.

We are vividly aware of this mysterious personality within us, "the
guest and companion of the body," but directly we attempt to lay
hold upon the actual substance of it it seems to vanish into thin air.
But at least our complex vision, which is _its_ complex vision,
reveals to us the fact of its existence; and with its existence once
acknowledged, however impossible analysis of it may be, we are
able to give a plain and unequivocal denial to all the impersonal
conclusions reached by metaphysic and science.

This categorical pronouncement of the complex vision with regard
to the "I am I," namely that it is the voice of a living concrete soul
within us, is supported historically by an immense weight of
human tradition. Belief in the reality of the soul is older and more
tenacious than any other human doctrine which our race has ever
held. The use of the term "soul" is no more than a bare recognition
that behind the consciousness which says "I am I" there is a living
entity whose consciousness this is.

With this bare recognition the revelation of the complex vision
abruptly stops. It stops with that peculiar and disconcerting
suddenness with which it seems to be its nature to stop, whenever
it reaches the limit of its scope in any direction. It stops here,
with regard to the soul, just as it stops when confronted with the
conception of limitlessness, both with regard to space and with
regard to time. But the soul at least is ours; a fact that cannot be
explained away.

And although we have no right to go a step beyond the bare
recognition of its existence and although all words regarding it are
misleading if used in any other than a symbolic sense, we must
remember that since the complex vision is conscious of itself as a
unity, whatever this "something" may be which is the centre and
core of our living personality, it must at least be a definite
irreducible "monad," "something" that cannot be resolved into
anything else, or accounted for by anything else, or explained in
terms of anything else, or "caused" by anything else; "something"
that may, perhaps, at last be annihilated; but that while it lives
must remain the vividest reality we know.

Insanity and disease may obstruct and cloud the soul. Outward
circumstances may drive the soul back upon