The world is intricate, and that is one reason we should respect it. It is complex, and what is the same in this complexity is difficult to feel. The fact that the world is intricate is really liked by a person; for when we do not respect what surrounds us, there is more chance for contempt and boredom.
Because the world is intricate, and we feel it so, is why, deeply, we love it, and why, less deeply, we fear it and go from it. The making of order out of the intricate is a fundamental and constant desire.
The seeing of something as intricate and the increasing feeling that we can find continuity in it, is a source of joy. Magnificent beauty has the intricate in it. If things were settled right away, a thin familiarity would occur; and we would not like the universe as company.
Constantly we find the intricate beckoning to, and giving hope of, the orderly and simple. A way of happily apprehending an object is to see it as intricate. A dull small town, looked on as having a crisscrossing of emotion, people, streets, windows, sky, memories, dust, air, birds, time—while the small town is seen quietly and as a whole, is a live satisfaction.
If we were aware of our own intricacy, and were disposed to greet it contentedly, we should be more pleased with ourselves. As we look at the moving, great aggregate of bones, memories, impressions, yearnings, disappointments, attitudes, things unknown, that is in us, we should respect what we are, and have an incitement to live, greater most likely, than previously. We have felt our unity already. When this feeling of our unity, or individuality, is present along with an unhesitating, unfrightened acceptance of our intricacy, we can be lifted up, stirred, brightly soothed. We see ourselves then, as an organization of known and unknown, continuity and discontinuity, outwardness and depth.
The intricate is the various and rich, with the attendance of the mysterious, unlooked for, not easily disposed of. When we are frightened, there is a desire to dissolve the fright by contempt. So comes boredom or ennui.
The plot that is in fiction or a drama pleases because it is like the “plot” in ourselves. A plot is an arrangement of matters or situations so that the different, the unexpected, the various, the intricate, becomes reasonable. The universe can be seen as a great plot; a continuing intricacy that never yet has said, Order cannot be. Intricacy is inherent in being; being is a most interesting interaction of uncertainty and unity. The history of the world can be regarded as a great orchestration or plot in time, space, and event.
Intricacy can be found most strikingly in man. He has more ways of looking at things, taking them, storing them, altering them. Every man that walks is a heterogeneity walking. Under every name is an intricacy in personal history.
Intricacy is about one thing. It is an intricate machine we talk of, an intricate animal, an intricate plot, an intricate city, an intricate relation, an intricate motive. When something is intricate, that thing is looked on as a somewhat disconcerting gathering of things; and it is our job to see how the gathering has taken place. Intricacy implies the romanticism of analysis.
In intricacy the outside is seen; what goes on within is what is puzzling. A plot is a whole or one, come to be a whole through an interior manyness, unexpectedness, surprisingness. For example, an intricate machine can be thought of as being in a box nine feet by six feet by eight feet. What it’s in is simple enough.
Let us look at a man walking into a room. From one point of view, when the man, Mr. Judd, does this walking, it is as if an umbrella stand were doing it (in fact, the umbrella stand could be called Mr. Judd). What goes on within Mr. Judd, what is in him, is the intricacy. Mr. Judd himself may not know enough about this. He knows, though, that as he walks his intricacy goes with him. His diverse longings, regrets, disappointments, possibilities, have walked with him into the room. In a deep way, Mr. Judd is a baffling, intricately plotted heterogeneity.
Intricacy, then, is complexity within. This is why I have accented the word in. The simple outwardness of Henry Judd, containing all that assemblage of organic and psychological mystery, is an example of the inward complexity we can presume to be in every human. How Henry Judd came to be what he is in all his psychological, gorgeous multitudinousness, if explained in narrative, would show a true plot of personal evolution. Henry Judd, as we now see him, is the resounding, satisfying climax of this plot. The plot, where it concerns just Mr. Judd, has no loose ends.
The intricacy of a person is like the intricacy of other things. It is particularly like that of the universe itself. If the universe were seen from without, and what was going on within it were felt—at that moment a most impressive plot of event and situation would be apprehended and comprehended. The plot is likely quite beautiful, for simplicity and complexity working as one always make for a beautiful sight. Stars and trees and waters and battles and great men and inventions and literature—and now an indefinite number of et ceteras—would mingle intricately; and there would be a thread. After all, all these things, including the et ceteras—and one of these et ceteras would be novels written by men—would be together. The sameness in the togetherness would be the key to the plot. The intricacy, seen thus, would, I believe, because it was beautiful, be unusually soothing.