It accepts fully the fact that we have to regard the apparent
objectivity of the external universe, with its historic process, as an
essential and unalterable aspect of reality, so grounded in truth that
to call it an "illusion" is a misuse of language. But although it
accepts both the extreme "materialistic" view and the extreme
"idealistic" view as inevitable revelations of reality, it does not
regard either of them as the true starting-point of enquiry, because
it regards both these extremes as the result of the isolated play of
one or the other of the complex vision's attributes.
The philosophy of the complex vision refuses to accept as its
starting-point any "synthetic unity" other than the synthetic unity
of personality; because any other than this it is compelled to
regard as abstracted from this by the isolated play of some
particular attribute of the mind. The philosophy of the complex
vision refuses to accept as its starting-point any attenuated
materialistic hypothesis, such as may be indicated by the arbitrary
words "life" or "movement" or "ether" or "force" or "energy" or
"atoms" or "molecules" or "electrons" or "vortices" or "evolutionary
progress," because it recognizes that all these hypothetical
origins of life are only projected and abstracted aspects
of the central reality of life, which is, and always must be,
personality.
But what is the relation of the philosophy of the complex vision to
that modern tendency of thought which calls itself "pragmatism"
and which also finds in personality its starting-point and centre?
The philosophy of the complex vision seems to detect in the
pragmatic attitude something which is profoundly unpleasing to its
taste. Its own view of the art of life is that it is before everything
else a matter of rhythm and harmony and it cannot help discerning
in "pragmatism" something piece-meal, pell-mell and "hand-to-mouth."
It seems conscious of a certain outrage to its aesthetic
sense in the method and the attitude of this philosophy. The
pragmatic attitude, though it would be unfair to call it superficial,
does not appeal to the philosophy of the complex vision as being
one of the supreme, desperate struggles of the human race to
overcome the resistance of the Sphinx. The philosophy of the
complex vision implies the difficult attainment of an elaborate
harmony. It regards "philosophy" as the most difficult of all
"works of art." What it seems to be suspicious of in pragmatism is
a tendency to seek mediocrity rather than beauty, and a certain
humorous opportunism rather than the quiet of an eternal vision. It
seems to look in vain in "Pragmatism" for that element of the
_impossible_, for that strain of Quixotic faith, in which no high
work of art is found to be lacking. It seems unable to discover in
the pragmatic attitude that "note of tragedy" which the fatality of
human life demands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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