The Complex Vision

by John Cowper Powys

What is left for us, then, it might be asked, but to "whisper our conclusions" and accept the fact that all "philosophies" must be different, as they are all the projection of different personalities? Nothing, as far as pure logic is concerned, is left for us but this. Yet it remains as an essential aspect of the process of philosophizing that we should endeavour to bring over to our vision as many other visions as we can succeed in influencing. For since we have the power of communicating our thought to one another and since it is of the very nature of the complex vision to be exquisitely sensitive to influences from outside, it is a matter of primordial necessity to us all that we should exercise this will to influence and this will to be influenced.

And just as in the case of persons sympathetic to ourselves the activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion of love and the instinct of creation, so in the case of persons antagonistic to ourselves the activity of philosophizing is attended by the emotion of hate and the instinct of destruction. For philosophy being the final articulation of a personal reaction to life, is penetrated through and through with the basic energies of life.

On the one hand there is a "Come unto me, all ye . . ." and on the other there is a "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" Just because the process of philosophizing is necessarily personal, it is evident that the primordial aspect of it which implies "the will to influence" must tally with some equally primordial reciprocity, implying "the will to be influenced."

That it does so tally with this is proved by the existence of language.

This medium of expression between living things does not seem to be confined to the human race. Some reciprocal harmony of energy, corresponding to our complex vision, seems to have created many mysterious modes of communication by which myriads of sub-human beings, and probably also myriads of super-human beings, act and react on one another.

But the existence of language, though it excludes the possibility of absolute difference, does not, except by an act of faith, necessitate that any sensation we name by the same name is really identical with the sensation which another person feels. And this difficulty is much further complicated by the fact that words themselves tend in the process to harden and petrify, and in their hardening to form, as it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort the subtle and evasive play of the human psychology behind them.

So that not only are we aware that the word which we use does not necessarily represent to another what it represents to ourself, but we are also aware that it does not, except in a hard and inflexible manner, represent what we ourselves feel. Words tend all too quickly to become symbolic; and it is often the chief importance of what we call "genius" that it takes these inflexible symbols into its hands and breaks them up into pieces and dips them in the wavering waters of experience and sensation.

Every philosopher should be at pains to avoid as far as possible the use of technical terms, whether ancient or modern, and should endeavour to evade and slip behind these terms. He should endeavour to indicate his vision of the world by means of words which have acquired no thick accretion of traditional crust but are fresh and supple and organic. He should use such words, in fact, as might be said to have the flexibility of life, and like living plants to possess leaves and sap. He should avoid as far as he can such metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated associations of traditional usage, and he should select his expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact and vivid shock of thoughts that leap up from immediate contact with sensation, like fish from the surface of a river.

Just because words, in their passage from generation to generation, tend to become so hard and opaque, it is advisable for any one attempting to philosophize to use indirect as well as direct means of expressing his thoughts. The object of philosophizing being to "carry over" into another person's consciousness one's personal reaction to things, it may well happen that a hint, a gesture, a signal, a sign, made indirectly and rather by the grouping of words and the tone of words than by their formal content, will reach the desired result more effectually than any direct argument.

It must be admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly assumed in some mysterious way to be the arbiters. These invisible companions seem to gather to themselves, as we are vaguely aware of them, the attributes of a company of overshadowing listeners. They present themselves to the half-conscious background of our mind as some pre-existent vision of "truth" towards which my subjective vision is one contribution and my interlocutor's subjective vision another contribution.