ality in the world except the
reality of personality, therefore we are compelled to assume that
every separate external object in Nature is possessed of a soul.

The peculiar psychological melancholy which sometimes seizes us
in the presence of inanimate natural objects, such as earth and
water and sand and dust and rain and vapour, objects whose
existence may superficially appear to be entirely chemical or
material, is accounted for by the fact that the soul in us is baffled
and discouraged and repulsed by these things because by reason of
their superficial appearance they convey the impression of
complete soullessness. In the presence of plants and animals and
all animate things we are also vaguely conscious of a strange
psychological melancholy. But this latter melancholy is of a
less poignant character than the former because what we seem
superficially conscious of is not "soullessness" but a psychic life
which is alien from our life, and therefore baffling and obscure.

In both of these cases, however, as soon as we are bold enough to
apply the conclusions we have arrived at from the analysis of the
knowledge which is most vivid and real to us, namely, the
knowledge of our own soul, this peculiar psychological melancholy
is driven away. It is a melancholy which descends upon us
when in any disintegrated moment the creative energy in
us, the energy of love in us, is overcome by the evil and inertness
of the aboriginal malice. Under the influence of this inert malice,
which takes advantage of some lapse or ebb of the creative energy
in us, the rhythmic activity of our complex vision breaks down;
and we visualize the world through the attributes of reason and
sensation alone. And the world, visualized through reason and
sensation alone, becomes a world of uniform, and homogeneous
monotony, made up either of one all-embracing material substance,
or of one all-embracing spiritual substance. In either case
that living plurality of real separate "souls" which correspond
to our own soul vanishes away, and a dreary and devastating
oneness, whether spiritual or chemical, fills the whole field. The
world which is the emanation of this atrophied and distorted vision
is a world of crushing dreariness; but it is an unreal world because
the only vivid and unfathomable reality we know is the reality of
innumerable souls. The curious thing about this world of
superficial chemical or spiritual uniformity is that it seems the
sa