very element, this strange wisdom of the abysmal
"Mothers," which humanity thinks of as struggling to utter its
unutterable secret?

How, then, for the sake of its contribution to the ultimate rhythm,
does the complex vision articulate this mysterious oracle from the
feminine principle in life, as it brokenly and intermittently lifts up
its voice?

One aspect of this oracle's voice is precisely what we are
concerned with now. I mean the problem of the relation of the One
to the Many. The merely logical conception of unity is misleading
because the wavering mass of impression which makes up our life
has a margin which recedes on every side into unfathomableness.
This conception has two aspects. In the first place it implies
_continuity_, by which I mean that everything in the world is in
touch with everything else.

In the second place it implies _totality_, by which I mean that
everything in the world can be considered as one rounded-off and
complete "whole." According to this second aspect of the case, we
think of the world as an integral One surrounded by nothingness,
in the same way that the individual soul is surrounded by the
universe.

The revelation of the complex vision finds the second of these two
aspects entirely misleading. It accepts the conception of
_continuity_, and rejects the conception of _totality_. It rejects the
conception of "totality," because "totality," in this cosmic sense, is
a thing of which it has no experience; and the revelation of the
complex vision is entirely based on experience. The margins of the
world, receding without limit in every direction, prevent us from
ever arriving at the conception of "totality."

What right have we to regard the universe as a totality, when all
we are conscious of is a mass of wavering impression continued
unfathomable in every direction? In only one sense, therefore,
have we a right to speak of the unity of the system of things; and
that is in the sense of continuity. Since this mass of impression,
which we name the universe, is on all sides lost in a margin of
unfathomableness, it is, after all, only a limited portion of it which
comes into the scope of our consciousness. It is one of the curious
exaggerations of our logical reason that we should be tempted to
"round off" this mystery. The combined voices of imagination and
intuition protest against such an enclosed circle.

The same revelation of the complex vision which gives objective
re