nced kind is indeed a sort of living
sacrifice or victim of self-vivisection, out of whose demonic
discoveries--bizarre and fantastic though they may seem to the
lower sanity of the mob--the true rhythmic vision of the immortals
is made clearer and more articulate.

The kind of balance or sanity which such average persons, as are
commonly called "men of the world," possess is in reality further
removed from true vision than all the madness of these debauches of
specialized research. For the consummation of the complex vision is
a meeting place of desperate and violent extremes; extremes, not
watered down nor modified nor even "reconciled," certainly not
cancelled by one another, but held forcibly and deliberately together
by an arbitrary act of the apex-thought of the human soul.

As I glance at these basic activities of the complex vision one by
one, I would beg the reader to sink as far as he can into the recesses
of his own identity; so that he may discover whether what he finds
there agrees in substance--call it by what name he pleases and
explain it how he pleases--with each particular energy I name, as I
indicate such energies in my own way.

Consider the attitude of self-consciousness. That man is self-conscious
is a basic and perhaps a tragic fact that surely requires no
proof. The power of thinking "I am I" is an ultimate endowment of
personality, outside of which, except by an act of primordial faith,
we cannot pass. The phenomenon of human growth from infancy to
maturity proves that it is possible for this self-consciousness--this
power of saying "I am I"--to become clearer and more articulate
from day to day. It seems as impossible to fix upon a definite
moment in a child's life where we can draw a line and say "_there_
he was unconscious of himself and _here_ he is conscious of
himself" as it is impossible to observe as an actual visible movement
the child's growth in stature.

Between consciousness and self-consciousness the dividing line
seems to be as difficult to define as it is difficult to define the
line between sub-consciousness and consciousness. My existence as a
self-conscious entity capable of thinking "I am I" is the basic
assumption of all thought. And though it is possible for my thought
to turn round upon itself and deny my own existence, such thought
in the process of such a denial cuts the very ground away which is
the leaping point of any further advance.

Philosophy by such drasti