the "immortals" it would
be sometimes possessed by love and sometimes possessed by
malice, and we should have not the least authority for saying that
our supreme moments of insight were due to its inspiration.
Sometimes they would be so. On the other hand sometimes our
most baffled, clouded, inert, moribund, and wretched moments
would be due to its influence. Such an elemental personality
would have no advantage over any other personality, except in the
fact of being elemental; and this would give it no absolute
advantage, since its universality would be eternally challenged by
the unfathomable element in its own being. The "body" of such an
elemental personality would have to be regarded as the actual
objective mystery which confronts both men and gods. It would
have to be regarded as possessing a complex vision even as every
other personality possesses it; and its soul-monad would have to
be as concrete, actual, and real, as every other soul monad. An
ethereal Being of this kind, whose body were composed of the
whole mass of the material element which binds all bodies
together, would have no closer connexion with the soul of man
than any other invisible companion. The soul of man could be
drawn to it in love or could be repelled from it by malice, just as it
can be drawn to any other living thing or repelled by any other
living thing.

That the human race should have sometimes made the attempt to
associate such an universal personality with the ideal figure of
Christ is natural enough. But such an association wins no sanction
or authority from the revelation of the complex vision. In one
sense the figure of Christ, as the life of Jesus reveals it, is a pure
symbol. In another sense, as we become aware of his love in the
depths of our own soul, he is the most real and actual of all living
beings. But neither as a symbol of the immortal vision, nor as
himself an immortal God, have we any right to regard Christ as
identical with this elemental personality. Christ is far more
important to us and precious to us than such a being could possibly
be.

And just as this hypothetical personality, whose body is the
material element which binds all bodies together, must not be
confused with the figure of Christ, so also it is not to be confused
with either of those primordial projections of pure reason, working
in isolation, which we have noted as the "synthetic unity of
apperception" and the "universal self," The elemental p