At its great illuminated moments the complex vision reduces the
limitlessness of space to a realizable sensation of liberty, and the
"flowingness" of time to an eternal now; but even at these
moments it is conscious of an unfathomable background, one
aspect of which is the immensity of space and the other the
flowingness of time.
The revelation of the complex vision which I have thus attempted
to indicate will be found identical with the natural conclusions of
man in all the ages of his history. The primeval savage, the ancient
Greek, the mediaeval saint, the eighteenth century philosopher, the
modern psychologist, are all brought together here and are all
compelled to confess the same situation.
That we are now living personalities, possessed of soul and body,
and surrounded by an unfathomable universe, is a revelation about
which all ages and all generations agree, whenever the complex
vision is allowed its orchestral harmony. The primeval savage
looking up at the sky above him might regard the sun and moon as
living gods exercising their influence upon a fixed unmoving
earth. In this view of the sun and the moon and the stars such a
savage was perfectly within his right, because always along with it
even to the most anthropomorphic, there came the vague sense of
unfathomableness.
The natural Necessity of the ancient Greeks, the trinitarian God
of the mediaeval school-man, the great First Cause of the
eighteenth-century deist, the primordial Life-Force of the modern
man of science, are all on common ground here in regard to the
unfathomableness of the ultimate mystery.
But the revelation of the complex vision saves us from the logical
boredom of the word "infinite." The idea of the infinite is merely a
tedious mathematical formula, marking the psychological point
where the mind finds its stopping-place. All that the complex
vision can say about "infinite space" is that it is a real experience,
and that we can neither imagine space with an end nor without an
end.
The "Infinite" is the name which logic gives to this psychological
phenomenon. The fact that the mind stops abruptly and breaks into
irreconcilable contradictions when it is confronted with
unfathomable space is simply a proof that space without an end is
as unimaginable as space with an end. It is no proof that space is
merely a subjective category of the human mind. One, thing,
however, it is a proof of. It is a proof that the universe can never
be satisfactorily explained on any materialistic hypothesis.
The fact that we all of us, at every hour of our common day, are
surrounded by this unthinkable thing, space without end, is an
eternal reminder that the forms, shapes and events of habitual
occurrence, which we are inclined to take so easily for granted, are
part of a staggering and inscrutable enigma.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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