This, then, is the original revelation of the complex vision. The
soul is confronted by an ultimate duality which extends through
the whole mass of its impressions. And because this duality
extends through every aspect of the soul's universe and can be
changed and transformed by the soul's will, it is inevitable that
what the world has hitherto named "philosophy" and has regarded
as the effort of "getting hold" of a reality which exists already,
should be named by the complex vision the "art of life" and should
be regarded as the effort of reducing to harmony the unruly
impulses and energies which perpetually transform and change the
world.

CHAPTER V.

THE ULTIMATE DUALITY

What we are really, all of us, in search of, whether we know it or
not, is some concrete and definite symbol of life and the "object"
of life which shall gather up into one living image all the broken,
thwarted, devious, and discordant impressions which make up our
experience. What we crave is something that shall, in some
permanent form and yet in a form that can grow and enrich itself,
represent and embody the whole circle of the joy and pain of
existence. What we crave is something into which we can throw
our personal joys and sorrows, our individual sensations and ideas,
and know of a certainty that thrown into that reservoir, they will
blend with all the joys and sorrows of all the dead and all the
living.

Such a symbol in order to give us what we need must represent the
ultimate reach of insight to which humanity has attained. It must
be something that, once having come into existence, remains
independent of our momentary subjective fancies and our passing
moods. It must be something of clearer outlines and more definite
lineaments than those vague indistinct ecstasies, half-physiological
and half-psychic, which the isolated intuition brings us.

Such a symbol must represent the concentrated struggle of the
human soul with the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of fate, its
long struggle with the deadly malice in itself and the deadly
malice in nature.

There is only one symbol which serves this purpose; a symbol
which has already by the slow process of anonymous creation and
discovery established itself in the world. I mean the symbol of the
figure of Christ.

This symbol would not have sufficed to satisfy the craving of
which I speak if it were only a "discovery" of humanity. The
"God-man" may be "discovered" in nature; but