are both instruments of the creative power of life. They
only become evil or are used for purposes of evil, when, by reason
of some fatal weakening in the other attributes of the soul, the
purely sensational element in them dominates the emotional and
they become something most horribly like living entities--entities
with bodies composed of the vibrations of torment and souls
composed of the substance of torment--and succeed in annihilating
the very features of humanity.

Pain and pleasure are not identical with the unfathomable duality
which descends into the abyss; for pain and pleasure are definitely
and quite unmistakenly fathomable; though, as the gods know
well, few enough of the sons of mortals reach the limit of them.
They are fathomable; for carried to a certain pitch of intensity they
end in ecstasy or they end in death. They are fathomable; for even
in the souls of "the immortals" they are only instruments of life
warring against death. They are fathomable; because they have
one identical root; and this root is the ecstasy of the rhythm of the
complex vision which transcends and surpasses them both.

The hideous symbol of "hell" is the creation of the false
philosophy which makes the eternal duality resolve itself into flesh
and spirit or into soul and body. The power of love renders this
symbol meaningless and abortive; for personality is the supreme
victory of life over what resists life; and consequently where
personality exists "hell" cannot exist; for personality is the scope
and boundary of all we know. The symbol of "Satan" also is
rendered meaningless by the philosophy of the complex vision;
unless such a symbol is used to express those appalling moments
when the evil in the soul attracts to itself and associates with itself
the evil in the soul of some immortal god.

But just as no mortal can be more evil than good, so also no
immortal can be more evil than good, that is to say intrinsically
and over a vast space of time. Momentarily and for a limited space
of time it is obvious that the human soul can be more evil than
good; and by a reasonable analogy it is only too probable that the
same thing applies to the invisible sons of the universe. But the
philosophy of the complex vision has no place for devils or
demons in its world; for the simple reason that at the very moment
any soul did become intrinsically and unchangeably evil, at that
same moment it would vanish into nothingness, since existe