e
sons of the universe," because they are associated with the idea of
an historic incarnation, yet in comparison with any modern
rationalistic or chemical metaphor they are supremely true.

The philosophy of the complex vision, just because it is the
philosophy of personality, must inevitably use images which
appear to the rationalistic mind as naive and childish and
ridiculous. But the philosophy of the complex vision prefers to
express itself in terms which are concrete, tangible and intelligible,
rather than in terms which are no more than vague projections of
phantom logic abstracted from the concrete activity of real
personality.

In completing this general picture of the starting point of the
philosophy of the complex vision there is one further implication
which ought to be brought fully into the light. I refer to a doctrine
which certain ancient and mediaeval thinkers adopted, and which
must always be constantly re-appearing in human thought because
it is an inevitable projection of the human conscience when the
human conscience functions in isolation and in disregard of the
other attributes. I mean the doctrine of the essentially evil,
character of that phenomenon which was formerly called "matter"
but which I prefer to call the objective mystery.

According to this doctrine--which might be called the eternal
heresy of puritanism--this objective mystery, this world-stuff, this
eternal "energy" or "movement," this "flesh and blood" through
which the soul expresses itself and of which the physical body is
made, is "evil"; and the opposite of this, that is to say "mind" or
"thought" or "consciousness" or "spirit" is alone "good."

According to this doctrine the world is a struggle between "the
spirit" which is entirely good and "the flesh" which is entirely evil.
To the philosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears
false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted,
an attempt of the conscience to arrogate to itself the whole field of
experience and to negate all the other attributes, especially
emotion and the aesthetic sense.

Such a doctrine negates the whole activity of the complex vision
because it assumes the independent existence of "flesh and blood"
as opposed to "mind." But "flesh and blood" is a thing which has
no existence apart from "mind," because it is a thing "half-created"
as well as "half-discovered" by "mind."

It negates the aesthetic sense because the aestheti