ion of the logical reason and a phantom of no
more genuine reality than the "a priori unity of apperception" or
"the universal self-conscious monad."

What we call reality, or the truth of the system of things, is
nothing less than an innumerable company of personalities
confronting an objective mystery; and while we are driven to
regard the "inanimate," such as earth and air and water and fire, as
the bodily expressions of certain living souls, so are we much
more forcibly driven to regard the "animate," wherever it is found,
as implying the existence of some measure of personality and
some degree of consciousness.

Life, apart from a soul possessing life, is not life at all. It is an
abstraction of the logical reason which we cannot appropriate to
our instinct or imagination. A vague phrase, like the phrase
"life-force," conveys to us whose medium of research is the complex
vision, simply no intelligible meaning at all. It is on a par with the
"over-soul"; and, to the philosophy of the complex vision, both the
"life-force" and the "over-soul" are vague, materialistic,
metaphorical expressions which do not attain to the dignity of a
legitimate symbolic image.

They do not attain to this, because a legitimate symbolic image
must appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sense by the
possession of something concrete and intelligible.

Any individual personal soul is concrete and intelligible. The
personal souls of "the sons of the universe" are concrete and
intelligible. But the "over-soul" and the "life-force" are neither
concrete nor intelligible and therefore cannot be regarded as
legitimate symbols. One of the most important aspects of the
method of philosophical enquiry which the philosophy of the
complex vision adopts is this use of legitimate symbolic images in
place of illegitimate metaphorical images.

This use of concrete, tangible, intelligible images is a thing which
has to pay its price. And the price which it has to pay is the price
of appearing childish, absurd and ridiculous to the type of mind
which advocates the exclusive use of the logical reason as the sole
instrument of philosophical research. This price of appearing
naive, childish and ridiculous has to be paid shamelessly and in
full.

The type of mind which exacts this price, which demands in fact
that the concrete intelligible symbols of the philosophy of the
complex vision should be regarded as childish and ridiculous, is
precisely t