If our revelation stopped at this point we should have to admit that
there was not one universe, but as many universes are there are
living souls. It is at this point, however, that we become aware that
all these souls are able, in some degree or other, to enter into
communication. They are able to do this both by the bodily sounds
and signs which constitute language and by certain immaterial
vibrations which seem to make no use of the body at all. In this
communication between different souls, as far as humanity is
concerned, a very curious experience has to be recorded.
When two human beings dispute together upon any important
problem of life, there is always an implicit appeal made by both of
them to an invisible arbiter, or invisible standard of arbitration, in
the heart of which both seem aware that the reality, upon which
their opinions differ, is to be found in its eternal truth. What then
is this invisible standard of arbitration? Whatever it is, we are
compelled to assume that it satisfies and transcends the deepest and
furthest reach of personal vision in all the souls that approach it.
And what is the deepest and furthest reach of our individual soul?
This seems to be a projection upon the material plane of the very
stuff and substance of the soul's inmost nature.
This very "stuff" of the soul, this outflowing of the substance of the
soul, I name "emotion"; and I find it to consist of two eternally
conflicting elements; what I call the element of "love," and what I
call the element of "malice." This emotion of love, which is the
furthest reach of the soul, I find to be differentiated when it comes
into contact with the material universe into three ultimate ways of
taking life; namely, the way which we name the pursuit of beauty,
the way which we name the pursuit of goodness, and the way which
we name the pursuit of truth. But these three ways of taking life find
always their unity and identity in that emotion of love which is the
psychic substance of them all.
The invisible standard of arbitration, then, to which an appeal is
always made, consciously or unconsciously, when two human
beings dispute upon the mystery of life, is a standard of arbitration
which concerns the real nature of love, and the real nature of what
we call "the good" and "the true" and "the beautiful."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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