lism, this "unreal reality" projected by the
malignant power which resists creation, is not only an obscene
outrage to the aesthetic sense; it is actually an assassination of
life. When, therefore, a philosopher who uses the complex vision of
the soul as his organ of research is asked the question, "where are we
to look for the type of human being most entirely evil?" the
answer which he is compelled to give is not a little surprising to
many minds.

For there are many minds whose physiological timidity corrupts
their judgment, and who lack the clairvoyance to unmask with
infallible certainty that look of sneering apathy which is the pure
expression of malice. And to such minds some wretched devil of a
criminal, driven to crime by an insane perversion of the creative
instinct--for creation and destruction are not the true opposites--
might easily seem the ultimate embodiment of evil.

Whereas the particular type of human being from whom the
philosopher of the complex vision would draw his standard of evil
would be a type very different from any perverted type even from
those whose mania might take the form of erotic cruelty. It would
be a type whose recurrent "evil" would take the form of a sneering
and malignant inertness, the form of a cold and sarcastic
disparagement of all intense feeling. It would be a type entirely
obsessed by "the illusion of dead matter"; not so much the
"illusion of dead matter" where Nature is concerned, but where the
economic struggle has resulted in some unnecessary and purely
commercial activity, altogether divorced from the basic necessities
of human life. A person of this type would, in his evil moods, be
more completely dominated by a malignant resistance to every
movement of the creative spirit than any other type, unless it were
perhaps one whom the heavy brutality of "officialdom" had
blunted into inhuman callousness.

Compared with persons such as these, by whom no actual positive
"wickedness" may have ever been perpetrated, the confessed
criminal or the acknowledged pervert remains far less committed
to the depths of evil. For in persons who have habitually lent
themselves to "the illusion of dead matter," whether in regard to
Nature or in regard to commercial or financial exploitation, there
occurs a kind of "death-in-life" which gives the sneering malignity
of the abyss its supreme opportunity, whereas in the souls of those
who have committed "crimes," or have been guilty of