The Complex Vision

by John Cowper Powys

Since all three of these primordial ideas are unified by the emotion of love it is clear that the emotion of love is the element in which each of them severally moves. And since it is impossible that love should be antagonistic to itself we must conclude that the love which is the element or substratum of beauty is the same love that is the element or substratum of goodness and truth. And since all these three elements are in reality one element, which is indeed nothing less than the dominant outflowing of the soul itself, it follows that those portions of the soul's outflowing which have been directed by reason and by conscience, which we call the idea of truth and the idea of goodness, must have an ultimate identity with that portion of the soul's outflowing which has been directed by the aesthetic sense and which we call the idea of beauty.

This identity between truth and goodness on the one hand and beauty on the other cannot be regarded as an absolute identity. The idea of truth continues to represent one facet of the universe, the idea of goodness another, and the idea of beauty another or a third. What we mean by the use of the term "identity" is simply this: that the universe revealed by each one of these three ideas is the same universe as is revealed by the others, and the emotional outflowing of the individual soul, which reveals each of these separate facets or aspects of the universe, is the same in each of the three ideas which govern its direction.

It is, however, only at their supreme point, when they are fused together by the apex-thought of the complex vision, that the activity of these separate ideas is found to be in complete harmony. Short of this extreme limit they tend to deviate from each other and to utter contradictory oracles. We may therefore lay it down as an unalterable law of their activity that when any one of these ideas contradicts another it does so because of a weakness and imperfection in its own intensity or in the intensity of the idea it contradicts.

Thus if an idea of goodness is found irreconcilable with an idea of beauty, something is wrong with one or the other of these ideas, or perhaps with both of them. And we are not only able to say that something is wrong with such ideas when they contradict one another, we are able to predicate with certainty as to what precisely is wrong. For the "something wrong" which leads to this contradiction, the "something wrong" which stands in the way of the rhythmic activity of the soul's apex-thought, will invariably be found to be a weakening of the outflowing of the emotion of love in one or other or perhaps all three of the implicated ideas.

For the outflowing of the soul's emotion is not only the life of the root of this "tree of knowledge"; it is also the life of the sap of the uttermost branches; it is the force that makes the fragrance of each topmost leaf mingle with that of all the rest, in that unified breath of the whole tree which loses itself in the air.

Thus we arrive at our final conclusion as to the nature of art. And when we apply our criterion to any of the supreme works of art of the world we find it does not fail us. The figure of Christ, for instance, remains the supreme incarnation of the idea of goodness in the world; and few will deny that the figure of Christ represents not only the idea of goodness but the ideas of truth and beauty also. If one contemplates many another famous "good man" of history, such as easily may be called to mind, one is at once conscious that the "goodness" of these admirable persons is a thing not altogether pleasing to the aesthetic taste, and a thing which in some curious way seems to obscure our vision of the real truth of life.

A great work of art, such as Leonardo's "Virgin of the Rocks," or Dostoievsky's "Idiot," is intuitively recognized as being not only entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense but also entirely satisfying to our craving for truth and our longing for the inmost secret of goodness. Every great work of art is the concentrated essence of a man's ultimate reaction to the universe. It has an undertone of immense tragedy; but in the depths of this tragedy there is no despair, because an infinite pity accompanies the infinite sorrow, and in such pity love finds itself stronger than fate. No work of art, however appealing or magical, can carry the full weight of what it means to be an inheritor of human tradition, of what it means to be a living soul, until it has arrived at that rhythm of the apex-thought which is a fusion of what we call the "good" with what we call the "beautiful" and the "true."

It is only when our notion of what is good and what is true falls short of the austere demands of the aesthetic sense that a certain uneasiness and suspicion enters into a discussion of this kind. And such an uneasiness is justified by reason of the fact that the popular notion both of goodness and truth does so often fall lamentably short of such demands. The moral conscience of average humanity is a thing of such dull sensibility, of such narrow and limited vision, that it is inevitable that its "goodness" should clash with so exacting a censor as the aesthetic sense.

The rational conscience of average humanity is a thing of such dense and rigid and unimaginative vision that it is inevitable that its "truth" should clash with the secrets revealed by the aesthetic sense. The cause, why the aesthetic sense seems to come on the scene with an apparatus of valuation so much more advanced and refined than that possessed by the conscience or by the reason, is that both conscience and reason are continually being applied to action, to conduct, to the manipulation of practical affairs, and are bound in this commerce with superficial circumstance to grow a little blunt and gross and to lose something of their fine edge.

Conscience and reason, in the hurly-burly and pell-mell of life, are driven to compromise, to half-measures, to the second-best.