der philosophers begin
their adventurous journey by the discovery and proclamation of
some particular clue, or catchword, or general principle, out of the
rational necessity of whose content they seek to evoke that living
and breathing universe which impinges upon us all. Modern
philosophy tends to reject these Absolute "clues," these
simplifying "secrets" of the system of things; but in rejecting these
it either substitutes its own hypothetical generalizations, such as
"spirit," "life-force," or "cosmic energy," or it contents itself with
noting, as William James does, the more objective grouping of
states of consciousness, as they weave their pattern on the face of
the swirling waters, without regard to any "substantial soul" whose
background of organic life gives these "states" their concrete
unity.

The philosophy of the complex vision differs from the older
philosophies in that it frankly and confessedly starts with that
general situation which is also its goal. Its movement is therefore a
perpetual setting-forth and a perpetual return; a setting forth
towards a newly created vision of the world, and a return to that
ideal of such a vision which has been implicit from the beginning.
And this general situation from which it starts and to which it
returns is nothing less than the huge spectacle of the visible
universe confronting the individual soul and implying the kindred
existence of innumerable other souls. The fact that what the
complex vision reveals is the primary importance of personality
does not detract in the least degree from the unfathomable
mysteriousness of the objective universe And it does not detract
from this because the unfathomableness of the universe is not a
rational deduction drawn from the logical idea of what an
objective universe would be like if it existed, but is a direct human
experience verified at every movement of the soul. The universe
revealed to us by the complex vision is a universe compounded of
the concentrated visions of all the souls that compose it, a universe
which in its eternal beauty and hideousness has received the
"imprimatur of the immortal Gods."

The fact that such a universe is in part a creation of the mind, and
in part a discovery made by the mind when it flings itself upon
the unknown, does not lessen or diminish the strangeness or
unfathomableness of life. The fact that the ultimate reality of such
a universe is to be found in the psycho-material substratum-