nal antagonists are in reality one and the same
thing. They are only one and the same thing in the sense that
neither is thinkable without the other; and in the sense that they
create the universe by their conflict.

It is important in a matter as crucial as this matter, concerning "the
invisible companions of men," not to advance a step beyond our
starting-point till we have apprehended it from several different
aspects and have gone over our ground again and again--even as
builders of a bridge might test the solidity of their fabric stone by
stone and arch by arch. By that "conscience in reason" which
never allows us pleasantly to deceive ourselves, we are bound to
touch, as it were with our very hands, every piece of stone work
and every patch of cement which holds this desperate bridge
together over the dark waters.

We have not, then, a right to say that every energy of the complex
vision depends for its functioning upon the existence of these
invisible companions. We have not a right to say--"if there were
no such beings these energies could not function; but they do
function; therefore there are such beings." What we have a right to
say is simply this, that it is an actual experience that when two or
more personalities come together and seek to express their various
subjective impressions of these ultimate ideas there is always a
tacit reference to some objective standard.

This objective standard cannot be thought of apart from
personalities capable of embodying it. For these ultimate ideas are
only real and living when embodied in personality. Apart from
personality we are unable to grasp them; although we must
recognize that the universe itself is composed of the very stuff of
their contention. We have in the first place, then, completely
eliminated from our discussion that "inscrutable mystery"
behind the universe. In every direction we find the universe
unfathomable; and though our power of thought stops abruptly at a
certain limit, we have no reason to think that the universe stops
there; and we have every reason to think that it continues--together
with the unfathomable element in our souls--into impenetrably
receding depths.

The universe, as we apprehend it, presents itself as a congeries of
living souls united by some indefinable medium. These living
souls are each possessed of that multiform activity which I have
named the complex vision. Among the basic energies of this
vision are some which in