t to be but a thin and rigid fancy
when we consider how in the actual play of life the soul expresses
itself through the body.

As I have already indicated, the original revelation of the complex
vision accepts without scruple the whole spectacle of natural life.
The philosophy of the complex vision insists that no rationalistic
necessity of pure logic gives it the right to reject this natural
objective spectacle. The philosophy of the complex vision insists
that this obvious, solid, external, so-called "materialistic" spectacle
of common life, be accepted, included and continually returned to.
It insists that the word "illusion" be no more used about this
spectacle. It insists that this vast unfathomable universe of time
and space be recognized as an ultimate reality, and that all these
projected images of the pure reason, all these circles, cubes,
squares and straight lines, all these "unities of apperception,"
universal "monads" and the like, be recognized as by-products of
the abstracting energy of human logic and as entirely without
reality when compared with this objective spectacle. My own
symbolic or pictorial image of the activity of the complex vision,
this pyramidal wedge or arrow-head of concentrated and focussed
flames, must be recognized as no more adequate or satisfactory
than any of these.

The complex vision, with its rhythmic apex-thought, is not really a
"pyramid" or a "wedge of flame" any more than it is a circle or a
cube or a square or an "a priori synthetic unity of apperception" or
"an universal self-conscious monad." It is the vision of a living
personality, surrounded by an unfathomable universe.

To keep our thoughts firmly and harmoniously fixed on the real
objective spectacle of life and on the real subjective "soul," or
personality, contemplating this spectacle, it is advisable to revert
to the magical and mysterious associations called up by the
classical word _Nature_. The mere utterance of the word "Nature"
serves to bring us back to the things which are essential and
organic, and to put into their proper place of comparative unreality
all these "unities" and circles, all these pyramids and "monads."
When we think of the astounding beauty and intricacy of the
actual human body; when we think of the astounding beauty and
intricacy of the actual living soul which animates this body, and
when we think of the magical universe which surrounds them
both, we are compelled to recognize that