we are justified in being more
than suspicious of it.

And we are suspicious of it not because its lack of simplicity
makes it intricate and elaborate, for "reality" is intricate and
elaborate; but because its inability to find expression for its
intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple.
For the remote conclusions of a purely logical and rationalistic
philosophy are made to appear much less simple than they really
are by reason of their use of remote technical terms.

What the soul demands from philosophy is not simplicity but
complexity, for the soul itself is the most complex thing we know.
The thin, rigid, artificial outlines of purely rationalistic systems
can never be expressed in ritual or symbol or drama, not because
they are too intricate, but because they are not intricate enough.

A genuine symbol, or ritualistic image, is a concrete living organic
thing carrying all manner of magical and subtle associations. It is
an expression of reality which comes much nearer to reality than
any rationalistic system can possibly do. A genuine symbolic or
ritualistic image is a concrete expression of the complexity of life.
It has the creative and destructive power of life. It has the
formidable mysteriousness of life, and with all this it has the
clear-cut directness of life's terrible and exquisite tangibility.

When suddenly confronted, then, in the mid-stream of life, by the
necessity of expressing the starting-point, which is also the
conclusion, of the philosophy of the complex vision, what
synthetic image or symbol or ritualistic word are we to use in
order to sum up its concrete reality?

The revelation of life, offered to us by the complex vision, is, as
we have seen, no very simple or logical affair. We axe left with
the spectacle of innumerable "souls," human, sub-human and
super-human, held together by some indefinable "medium" which
enables them to communicate with one another. Each one of these
"souls" at once creates and discovers its own individual "universe"
and then by an act of faith assumes that the various "universes"
created and discovered by all other souls are identical with its
own.

That they _are_ identical with its own the soul is led to assume
with more and more certainty in proportion as its communion with
other souls grows more and more involved. This identity between
the various "universes" of alien souls is rendered more secure and
more objective by the fact