Emotion is our name, in fact, for the psycho-material "stuff" out of
which the organic substratum of the soul is made. And since this
"stuff" is eternally divided against itself into a positive and a
negative "pole" we are compelled to assert that our ultimate
analysis of the system of things is dualistic, in spite of the fact
that the whole drama takes place under the one comprehensive unity of
space.
When we say that the totality of the soul becomes will, reason,
imagination, conscience, intuition and so forth, we do not mean
that by becoming any one of these single things it is prevented
from becoming others. We are confronted here by a phenomenon
of organic life which, however inexplicable, is of frequent
occurrence in human experience. The ecclesiastical dogma of the
Trinity is no fantastic invention of this or the other theologian. It
is an inevitable definition of a certain body of human experience to
which it affords a plausible explanation.
What the philosophy of the complex vision attempts to do is
to analyse into its component parts that confused mass of
contradictory impressions to which the soul awakens as soon as it
becomes conscious of itself at all. The older 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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