one
another.

It is by our will that the future is created; but around the will hover
intermittently many unfathomable motives. And the pre-existent
motive, which finally gives the shape to the future, holds the future
already in its hand. And this surviving motive, ultimately selected
by our will, is of necessity purged and tested by a continual
comparison with that form, that idea, that dream, that vision, which
is implied from the beginning and which I name "the vision of the
invisible companions."

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.

The supreme activity of this apex-thought is centred about those
primordial ideas of truth, beauty and nobility which are the very
stuff and texture of its being. In the ecstasy of its creative and
receptive "rapport" with these it becomes aware of the presence of
certain immortal companions whose vision is at once the objective
standard of such ideas and the premonition of their fuller realization.

In thus attempting to articulate and clarify the main outlines of our
starting point, a curious situation emerges. The actual _spectacle_,
or mass of impressions to be dealt with, presents itself, we are
forced to suppose, as more or less identical, in its general
appearance, in every human consciousness. And this "general
situation" is strange enough.

We find ourselves, motionless or moving, surrounded by earth and
air and space. Impressions flow past us and flow through us. We
ourselves seem at the same time able to move from point to point in
this apparently real universe and able to remain, as invisible
observers, outside all the phenomena of time and space. As the
ultimate invisible spectator of the whole panorama, or, in the logical
phrase, as the "a priori unity of apperception" our consciousness
cannot be visualized in any concrete image.

But as the empirical personal self, able to move about within the
circle of the objective universe, the soul is able to visualize itself
pictorially and imaginatively, although not rationally or logically.
These two revelations of the situation are simultaneously disclosed;
and although the first-named of them--the "a priori unity of
apperception"--might seem to cla