c sense requires
the existence of "the body" or of "flesh and blood" or of what we
call "matter," and cannot exert its activity without the reality of
this thing.

It negates emotion, because the emotion of love demands, for its
full satisfaction, nothing less than "the eternal idea of flesh and
blood." And since love demands the "eternal idea of flesh and
blood," "flesh and blood" cannot be "evil."

This doctrine of the evil nature of "matter" is obviously a
perversion of what the complex vision reveals to us about the
eternal duality. According to this doctrine, which I call the puritan
heresy, the duality resolves itself into a struggle between the spirit
and the flesh. But according to the revelation of the complex
vision the true duality is quite different from this. In the true
duality there is an evil aspect of "matter" and also an evil aspect of
"mind."

In the true duality "spirit" is by no means necessarily good. For
since the true duality lies in the depths of the soul itself, what we
call "spirit" must very often be evil. According to the revelation of
the complex vision, evil or malice is a positive force, of malignant
inertness, resisting the power of creation or of love. It is, as we
have seen, the primordial or chaotic weight which opposes itself to
life.

But "flesh and blood" or any other definite form of "matter" has
already in large measure submitted to the energy of creation and is
therefore both "good" and "evil." That original shapeless "clay" or
"objective mystery" out of which the complex vision creates the
universe certainly cannot be regarded as "evil," for we can never
know anything at all about it except that it exists and that it lends
itself to the creative energy of the complex vision. And in so far as
it lends itself to the creative energy of the complex vision it
certainly cannot be regarded as entirely evil, but must obviously
be both good and evil; even as the complex vision itself, being the
vision of the soul, is both good and evil.

According to the philosophy of the complex vision then, what we
call "mind" is both good and evil and what we call "matter" being
intimately dependent upon "mind" is both good and evil. We are
forced, therefore, to recognize the existence of both spiritual "evil"
and spiritual "good" in the unfathomable depths of the soul. But
just because personality is itself a relative triumph of good over
evil it is possible to conceive of the existence of a