ersonality,
if it existed, would be something quite different from the universal
self of the logical reason. For the universal self of the logical
reason includes and transcends all the other selves, whereas the
elemental personality which has the whole weight of the world's
material element as its body could not transcend, or in any way
"subsume" the least of individual things except in so far as the
material element which is its body would surround all living things
and bring them into contact with one another.

The elemental personality could in no sense be called an
over-soul, because, so far from being an universal self made up of
particular individual selves, it would be a completely detached
soul, only related to other souls in the sense that all other souls
come into contact with one another through the medium of its
spiritual substance.

According to the revelation of the complex vision the question of
the existence or non-existence of an elemental soul of this kind has
no relation to the problem of human conduct. For the material
element in the individual soul is fused in individual consciousness;
and therefore the spiritual medium which surrounds the individual
soul cannot impinge upon or penetrate the soul which it surrounds.
And this conclusion is borne witness to in all manner of common
human experience. For although we all feel dimly aware of vast
gulfs of spiritual evil and vast gulfs of spiritual beauty in the world
about us, this knowledge only becomes definite and concrete when
we think of such gifts as being entirely made up of personal
moods, the moods of mortal men, of immortal gods, and the
moods, it may be, of this elemental personality.

But the problem of conduct is not the problem of getting into
harmony with any particular individual soul. It is the problem of
getting into harmony with the creative vision in our own soul,
which when attained turns out to be identical with the creative
vision of every other soul in the universe. The conception of the
elemental personality does not depend, as does the existence of the
immortals, upon our consciousness of something objective and
eternal in our primordial ideas. It depends upon our suspicion that
no extended mass of what we call matter, however attenuated and
ethereal, can exist suspended in soulless space.

Some attenuated form of matter our universe demands, as the
universal medium by means of which all separate bodies come
into touch wi