Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 18: Intellect and Emotion

Rationality and life. | Life as knowledge. | Intellect and emotions. | Emotion as an organ of knowledge. | The evolution of emotion from the standpoint of knowledge. | Pure and impure emotions. | Personal and impersonal emotions. | Personal and super-personal emotions. | The elimination of self-elements as a means of approach to true knowledge. | “Be as little children. . . | “Blessed are the pure in heart. . . | The value of morals from the standpoint of knowledge. | The defects of intellectualism. | Dreadnaughts as the crown of intellectual culture. \The dangers of morality. | Moral esthetics. | Religion and art as organized forms of emotional knowledge. | The knowledge of God and the knowledge of Beauty.

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THE MEANING OF LIFE — this is the eternal theme of human meditation. All philosophical systems, all religious teachings strive to find and give to men the answer to this question. Some say that the meaning of life is in service, in the surrender of self, in self-sacrifice, in the sacrifice of everything, even life itself. Others declare that the meaning of life is in the delight of it, relieved against “the expectation of the final horror of death ” Some say that the meaning of life is perfection, and the creation of a better future beyond the grave, or in future lives for ourselves. Others say that the meaning of life is in the approach to non-existence: still others, that the meaning of life is in the perfection of the race, in the organization of life on earth; while there are those who deny the possibility of even attempting to know its meaning. 

The fault of all these explanations consists in the fact that they all attempt to discover the meaning of life outside of itself, either in the future of humanity, or in some problematical existence beyond the grave, or again in the evolution of the Ego throughout many successive incarnations — always in something outside of the present life of man. But if instead of thus speculating about it, men would simply look within themselves, then they would see that in reality the meaning of life is not after all so obscure. IT CONSISTS IN KNOWLEDGE. All life, through all its facts, events and incidents, excitements and attractions, inevitably leads us TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF SOMETHING. All life-experience is KNOWLEDGE. The most powerful emotion in man is his yearning toward the unknown. EVEN IN LOVE, the most powerful of all attractions, to which everything is sacrificed, is this yearning toward the unknown, toward the NEW — curiosity. 

The Persian poet-philosopher, Al-Ghazzali, says: “The highest function of man’s soul is the perception of truth.” 

In the very beginning of this book PSYCHIC LIFE AND THE WORLD were recognized as existing. The world is everything that exists. The function of psychic life may be defined as the realization of existence. 

Man realizes his existence and the existence of the world, a part of which he is. His relation to himself and to the world is called knowledge. The expansion and deepening of his relation to himself and to the world is the expansion of knowledge. 

All the soul-properties of man, all the elements of his psyche — sensations, perceptions, conceptions, ideas, judgments, reasonings, feelings, emotions, even creation — all these are the INSTRUMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE which the I possesses. 

Feelings — from the simple emotions up to the most complex, such as esthetic, religious and moral emotion — and creation, from the creation of a savage making a stone hatchet for himself up to the creation of a Beethoven, indeed are means of knowledge. 

Only to our narrow HUMAN view do they appear to serve other purposes — the preservation of life, the construction of something, or merely pleasure. In reality all this conduces to knowledge. 

Evolutionists, followers of Darwin, say that the struggle for existence and the selection of the fittest created in the mind and feeling of contemporary man — that mind and feeling SERVE LIFE, preserve the life of separate individuals and of the species — and that beyond this they have no meaning in themselves. But it is possible to answer this with the same arguments before advanced against the mechanicality of the universe; namely, that if rationality exists, then nothing exists except rationality. The struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, if they truly play such a role in the creation of life, are also not merely accidents, but products of a mind, CONCERNING WHICH WE DO NOT KNOW; and they also conduce, like everything else, TO A KNOWLEDGE. 

But we do not realize, do not discern the presence of rationality in the phenomena and laws of nature. This happens because we study always not the whole but the part, and we do not divine that whole which we wish to study — by studying the little finger of a man we cannot discover his reason. It is the same way in our relation to nature: we study always the little finger of nature. When we come to realize this and shall understand that EVERY LIFE IS THE MANIFESTATION OF A PART OF SOME WHOLE, then only the possibility of knowledge of that whole opens to us. 

In order to comprehend the rationality of a given whole, it is necessary to understand the character of the whole and its functions. Thus the function of man is knowledge; but without understanding “man” as a whole, it is impossible to understand his function. 

To understand our psyche, the function of which is knowledge, it is necessary to clear up our relation to life. 

In Chapter X an attempt was made — a very artificial one, founded upon the analogy with a world of two-dimensional beings — to define life as motion in a sphere higher in dimensionality in comparison with ours. From this standpoint every separate life is as it were the manifestation in our sphere of a part of one of the rational entities of another sphere. These rationalities look in upon us, as it were, in these lives which we see. When a man dies, one eye of the Universe closes, says Fechner. Every separate human life is a moment of the life of some great being, which lives in us. The life of every separate tree is a moment of the life of a being, “species” or “family ” The rationalities of these higher beings do not exist independently of these lower lives. They are two sides of one and the same thing. Every single human psyche, in some other section of the world, may produce the illusion of many lives. 

This is difficult to illustrate by an example. But if we take Hinton’s spiral, passing through a plane, and the point running in circles on the plane (see Chapter 8), and conceive of the spiral as the psyche, then the moving point of intersection of the spiral with the plane will be life. This example illustrates a possible relation between the psyche and life. 

To us, life and the psyche are different and separate from each other, because we are inept at seeing, inept at looking at things. And this in turn depends upon the fact that it is very difficult for us to step outside the frames of our divisions. We see the life of a tree, of this tree; and if we are told that the life of a tree is a manifestation of some psychic life, then we understand it in such a way that the life of this tree is the manifestation of the psychic life of this tree. But this is of course an absurdity resulting from “three-dimensional thinking” — the “Euclidian” mind. The life of this tree is a manifestation of the psychic life of the species, or family, or perhaps of the psychic life of the entire vegetable kingdom. 

In exactly the same way, our separate lives are manifestations of some great rational entity. We find the proof of this in the fact that our lives have no other meaning at all aside from that process of acquiring knowledge performed by us. A thoughtful man ceases to feel painfully the absence of meaning in life only when he realizes this, and begins to strive consciously for that for which he strove unconsciously before. 

This process of acquiring knowledge, representing our function in the world, is performed not by the intellect only, but by our entire organism, by all the body, by all the life, and by all the life of human society, its organizations, its institutions, by all culture and all civilization; by that which we know of humanity and, still more, by that which we do not know. And we acquire the knowledge of that which we deserve to know. 

The actual meaning of life lies in resolving anomalies. Man’s struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest are efforts to resolve anomalies. The resolution of anomalies results in knowledge that helps man evolve. Therefore, the major function of man is to resolve anomalies. This brings up the question of man’s psyche that is used to resolve anomalies. The individual psyche is a simply a part of a much larger psyche. This psyche is not just the intellect but involves the entire organism.

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If we declare in regard to the intellectual side of man that its purpose is knowledge this will evoke no doubts. All agree that the human intellect together with everything subjected to its functions is for the purpose of knowledge — although often the faculty of knowledge is considered as serving only utilitarian ends. But concerning the emotions: joy, sorrow, rage, fear, love, hatred, pride, compassion, jealousy; concerning the sense of beauty, esthetic pleasure and artistic creation; concerning the moral sense; concerning all religious emotions: faith, hope, veneration, etc., etc., — concerning all human activity — things are not so clear. We usually do not see that all emotions, and all human activity serve knowledge. How do fear, or love, or work serve knowledge? It seems to us that by emotions we feel; by work — create. Feeling and creation seem to us as something different from knowledge. Concerning work, creative power, creation, we are rather inclined to think that they demand knowledge, and if they serve it, do so only indirectly. In the same way it is incomprehensible how religious emotions serve knowledge.

Usually the emotional is opposed to the intellectual — “heart” to “mind.” Some place “cold reason” or intellect over against feelings, emotions, esthetic pleasure; and from these they separate the moral sense, the religious sense, and “spirituality.” 

The misunderstanding here lies in the interpretation of the words intellect and emotion. 

Between intellect and emotion there is no sharp distinction. Intellect, considered as a whole, is also emotion. But in every-day language, and in “conversational psychology” reason is contrasted with feeling; will is considered as a separate and independent faculty; moralists consider moral feeling as entirely distinct from all these; religionists consider spirituality separately from faith. 

One often hears such expressions as: reason mastered feeling; will mastered desire; the sense of duty mastered passion; spirituality mastered intellectuality; faith conquered reason. But all these are merely the incorrect expressions of conversational psychology; just as incorrect as are the expressions “sunrise” and “sunset.” In reality in the soul of man nothing exists save emotions. And the soul life of man is either a struggle or a harmonious adjustment between different emotions. Spinoza saw this quite clearly when he said that emotion can be mastered only by another more powerful emotion, and by nothing else. Reason, will, feeling, duty, faith, spirituality, mastering some other emotion, can conquer only by force of the emotional element contained in them. The ascetic who kills all desires and passions in himself, kills them by the desire for salvation. A man renouncing all the pleasures of the world, renounces them because of the delight of sacrifice, of renunciation. A soldier dying at his post through his sense of duty or habit of obedience, does so because the emotion of devotion, or faithfulness, is more powerful in him than all other things. A man whose moral sense prompts him to overcome passion in himself, does so because the moral sense (i.e., emotion) is more powerful than all his other feelings, other emotions. In substance all this is perfectly clear and simple, but it has become confused and confusing simply because men, calling different degrees of one and the same thing by diverse names, began to see fundamental differences where there were only differences in degree. 

Will is the resultant of desires. We call that man strong-willed in whom the will proceeds on definite lines, without turning aside; and we call that man weak-willed in whom the line of the will takes a zigzag course, turning aside here or there under the influence of every new desire. But this does not mean that will and desire are something opposite; quite the reverse, they are one and the same, because the will is composed of desires. 

Reason cannot conquer feeling, because feeling can be conquered only by feeling. Reason can only give thoughts and pictures, evoking feelings which will conquer the feeling of a given moment. Spirituality is not opposed to “intellectuality” or “emotionality.” It is only THEIR HIGHER FLIGHT. Reason has no limits: only the human, “Euclidian” mind, the mind devoid of emotions, is limited. 

But what is “reason”? 

It is the inner aspect of any given being. In the earth’s animal kingdom, in all animals lower than man, we see passive reason. But with the appearance of concepts it becomes active, and part of it begins to work as intellect. The animal is conscious through his sensation and emotions. The intellect is present in the animal only in an embryonic state, as an emotion of curiosity, a pleasure of knowing. 

In man the growth of consciousness consists in the growth of the intellect and the accompanying growth of the higher emotions — esthetic, religious, moral — which according to the measures of their growth become more and more intellectualized, while simultaneously with this the intellect is assimilating emotionality, ceasing to be “cold.” 

Thus “spirituality” is a fusion of the intellect with the higher emotions. The intellect is spiritualized from the emotions; the emotions are spiritualized from the intellect. 

The functions of the rational faculty are not limited, but not often does the human intellect rise to its highest form. At the same time it is incorrect to say that the highest form of human knowledge will not be intellectual, but of a different character; only this higher reason is entirely unrestricted by logical concepts and by Euclidian modes of thought. We are likely to hear a great deal concerning this from the standpoint of mathematics, which as a matter of fact transcended the reasoning of logic long ago. But it achieved this by the aid of the intellect. A new order of receptivity grows in the soil of the intellect and of the higher emotions, but it is not created by them. A tree grows in the earth, but it is not created by the earth. A seed is necessary. This seed may be in the soul, or absent from it. When it is there it can be cultivated or it can be choked; when it is not there it is impossible to replace it with anything else. The soul (if a soul it may be called) lacking that seed, i.e., inept to feel and reflect the world of the wondrous, will never put forth the living sprout, but will always reflect the phenomenal world, and that alone. 

At the present stage of his development man comprehends many things by means of his intellect, but at the same time he comprehends many things by means of his emotions. In no case are emotions merely organs of feeling for feeling’s sake: they are all organs of knowledge. In every emotion man knows something that he could not know without its aid — something that he could know by no other emotion, by no effort of the intellect. If we consider the emotional nature of man as self-contained, as serving life and not serving knowledge we shall never understand its true content and significance. Emotions serve knowledge. There are things and relations which can be known only emotionally, and only through a given emotion. 

To understand the psychology of play, it is necessary to experience the emotions of the player; to understand the psychology of the hunt, it is necessary to experience the emotions of the hunter; the psychology of a man in love is incomprehensible to him who is indifferent; the state of mind of Archimedes when he jumped out of the bath tub is incomprehensible to the staid citizen, who would look on such a performance as a sign of insanity; the feelings of the globe-trotter, delightedly breathing in the sea air and sweeping with his eyes the wide horizon, is incomprehensible to the sedentary stay-at-home. The feeling of a believer is incomprehensible to an unbeliever, and to a believer the feeling of an unbeliever is quite as strange. Men understand one another so imperfectly because they live always by different emotions. And when they feel similar emotions simultaneously, then and then only do they understand one another. The proverbial philosophy of the people knows this very well: “A FULL MAN DOES NOT UNDERSTAND A HUNGRY ONE,” it says. “A drunkard is no comrade for a sober man.” “One rogue recognizes another.” 

In this mutual understanding or in the illusion of mutual understanding—in this immersion in similar emotions — lies one of the principal charms of love. The French novelist, de Maupassant, has written very delightfully about this in his little story Solitude. The same illusion explains the secret power of alcohol over the human soul, for alcohol creates the illusion of a communion of souls, and induces similar fantasies simultaneously, in two or several men. 

Emotions are the stained-glass windows of the soul; colored glasses through which the soul looks at the world. Each such glass assists in finding in the contemplated object the same or similar colors, but it also prevents the finding of opposite ones. Therefore it has been correctly said that a one-sided emotional illumination cannot give a correct perception of an object. Nothing gives one such a clear idea of things as the emotions, yet nothing deludes one so much. 

Every emotion has a meaning for its existence, although its value from the standpoint of knowledge varies. Certain emotions are important and necessary for the life of knowledge and certain emotions hinder rather than help one to understand. 

Theoretically all emotions are an aid to knowledge; all emotions arose because of the knowing of one or another thing. Let us consider one of the most elementary emotions — say THE EMOTION OF FEAR. Undoubtedly there are relations which can be known only through fear. The man who never experienced the sensation of fear will never understand many things in life and in nature; he will never understand many of the controlling motives in the life of man. (What else but the fear of hunger and cold forces the majority of men to work?) He will never understand many things in the animal world. For example, he will not understand the relation of mammals to reptiles. A snake excites a feeling of repulsion and fear in all mammals. By this repulsion and fear the mammal knows the nature of the snake and the relation of that nature to its own, and knows it correctly, but strictly personally, and only from its own standpoint. But what the snake is in itself the animal never knows by the emotion of fear. What the snake is in itself — not in the philosophical meaning of the thing-in-itself (nor from the standpoint of the man or animal whom it has bitten or may bite) but simply from the standpoint of zoology — THIS CAN BE KNOWN BY THE INTELLECT ONLY. 

Emotions unite with the different I’s of our psyche. Emotions apparently the same may be united with the very small I’s and with the very great and lofty I’s; and so the role and meaning of such emotions in life may be very different. The continual shifting of emotions, each of which calls itself I and strives to establish power over man, is the chief obstacle to the establishment of a constant I. And particularly does this interfere when the emotions are manifesting in and passing through the regions of the psyche connected with a certain kind of self-consciousness and self-assertion. These are the so-called personal emotions. 

The sign of the growth of the emotions is the liberation of them from the personal element, and their sublimation on the higher planes. The liberation from personal elements augments the cognizing power of the emotions, because the more there are of pseudo-personal elements in emotion the greater the possibility of delusion. Personal emotion is always partial, always unjust, by reason of the one fact that it opposes itself to all the rest. 

Thus the cognitive power of the emotions is greater in proportion as there is less of self-elements in a given emotion, i.e., more consciousness that this emotion is not the I. 

We have seen before in studying space and its laws, that the evolution of knowledge consists in a gradual withdrawing from oneself. Hinton expresses this very well. He says that only by withdrawing from ourselves do we begin to comprehend the world as it is. The entire system of mental exercises with colored cubes invented by Hinton aims at the training of consciousness to look at things from other than the pseudo-personal standpoint. 

When we study a block of cubes, writes Hinton, (say a cube consisting of 27 lesser cubes) we first of all learn it by starting from a particular cube and axis, and learning how 26 others come with regard to that cube. . . . We learn the block with regard to this axis, so that we can mentally conceive the disposition of every cube as it comes regarded from one point of view. Next we suppose ourselves to be in another cube at the extremity of another axis; and looking from this axis, we learn the aspect of all the cubes, and so on. 

Thus we impress on the feelings what the block of cubes is like from every axis. In this way we get a knowledge of the block of cubes. 

Now, to get the knowledge of humanity, we must study it from the standpoint of the individuals composing it. 

The egotist may be compared with the man who knows a cube from one standpoint only. 

Those who feel superficially with a great many people, are like those learners who have a slight acquaintance with a block of cubes from many points of view. 

Those who have a few deep attachments are like those who know them well from only one or two points of view. 

And after all, perhaps the difference between the good and the rest of us, lies rather in the former being aware. There is something outside them which draws them to it, which they see, while we do not.

The function of intellect is thoughtful reasoning. The function of emotion is an intuitive “assessment,” which may appear as a reaction. Will, desire, moral sense, spirituality, etc., are all aspects of this emotion. Emotion is viewed as opposing the intellect; but that is a wrong view. Both intellect and emotion are complementing each other in response to some situation. It is intuitive emotion that detects anomaly in the first place, which is then resolved with the help of intellect.

Intellect functions by forming concepts through reason. Complex concept help one appreciate higher emotion, such as esthetic. Intellect and emotion are two different aspects of knowledge. Together they help sensations, perceptions, memory, experience, knowledge and wisdom assimilate into oneness.  Oneness (continuity, consistency and harmony) is the only requirement that applies to knowledge. From this requirement comes all logic.

Emotions are relevant only in the context of some anomaly. Emotion may shift as attention shifts on anomalies. Error comes about when focus goes on emotion for its own sake. There may be personal emotions associated with some internal anomaly. As internal anomalies resolve, there is a great feeling of liberation.

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Just as it is incorrect in relation to oneself to evaluate everything from the standpoint of one emotion, contrasting it with all the rest, so is it correspondingly incorrect in relation to the world and men to evaluate everything from the standpoint of one’s own accidental I, contrasting oneself of a given moment with the rest. 

Thus the problem of correct emotional knowledge consists in the fact that one shall feel in relation to the world and men from some standpoint other than the personal. And the broader the circle becomes for which a person feels, the deeper becomes the knowledge which his emotions yield. But not all emotions are of equal potency in liberating from self-elements. Certain emotions from their very nature are disruptive, separative, alienating, forcing man to feel himself as individualized and separate; such are hatred, fear, jealousy, pride, envy. These are emotions of a materialistic order, forcing a belief in matter. And there are emotions which are unitive, harmonizing, making man feel himself to be a part of some great whole; such are love, sympathy, friendship, compassion, love of country, love of nature, love of humanity. These emotions lead man out of the material world and show him the truth of the world of the wondrous. Emotions of this character liberate him more easily from self-elements than those of the former class. Nevertheless there can be a quite impersonal pride — the pride in an heroic deed accomplished by another man. There can even be impersonal envy, when we envy a man who has conquered himself, conquered his personal desire to live, sacrificed himself for that which everyone considers to be right and just, but which we cannot bring ourselves to do, cannot even think of doing, because of weakness, of love of life. There can be impersonal hatred — of injustice, of brute force, anger against stupidity, dullness; aversion to nastiness, to hypocrisy. These feelings undoubtedly elevate and purify the soul of man and help him to see things which he would not otherwise see. 

Christ driving the money-changers out of the temple, or expressing his opinion about the Pharisees, was not entirely meek and mild; and there are cases wherein meekness and mildness are not virtues at all. Emotions of love, sympathy, pity transform themselves very readily into sentimentality, into weakness; and thus transformed they contribute of course to nescience, i.e., matter. The difficulty of dividing emotions into categories is increased by the fact that all emotions of the higher order, without exception, can also be personal and then their action partakes of the nature of this class. 

Negative emotions are usually associated with narrow, personal viewpoint. It is better to feel things from a broad, non-personal viewpoint that is liberated from self-elements. A person may then react emotionally to anomalies in a more mature fashion.

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There is a division of emotions into pure and impure. We all know this, we all use these words, but understand little of what they mean. Truly, what does “pure” or “impure” mean with reference to feeling? 

Common morality divides, a priori, all emotions into pure and impure according to certain outward signs, just as Noah divided the animals in his ark. All “fleshly desires” fall into the category of the “impure.” In reality indeed, “fleshly desires” are just as pure as is everything in nature. Nevertheless emotions are pure and impure. We know very well that there is truth in this classification. But where is it, and what does it mean? 

Only an analysis of emotions from the standpoint of knowledge can give the key to this. 

Impure emotion — this is quite the same thing as impure glass, impure water, or impure sound, i.e., emotion which is not pure, but containing sediments, deposits, or echoes of other emotions: IMPURE — MIXED. Impure emotion gives obscure, not pure knowledge, just as impure glass gives a confused image. Pure emotion gives a clear pure image of that for the knowledge of which it is intended. 

This is the only possible decision of the question. The arrival at this conclusion saves us from the common mistake of moralists who divide arbitrarily all emotion into “moral” and “immoral.” But if we try for a moment to separate emotions from their usual moral frames, then we see that matters are considerably simpler, that there are no in their nature pure emotions, nor impure in their nature, but that each emotion will be pure or impure according to whether or not there are admixtures of other emotions in it. 

There can be a pure sensuality, the sensuality of the Song of Songs, which initiates into the sensation of cosmic life and gives the power to hear the beating pulse of nature. And there can be an impure sensuality, mixed with other emotions good or bad from a moral standpoint but equally making muddy the fundamental feeling. 

There can be pure sympathy, and there can be sympathy mixed with calculation to receive something for one’s sympathy. There can be pure love of knowledge, a thirst for knowledge for its own sake, and there can be an inclination to knowledge wherein considerations of utility or profit assume the chief importance. 

In their outer manifestation pure and impure emotions may differ very little. Two men may be playing chess, acting outwardly very similarly, but in one will burn self-love, desire of victory, and he will be full of different unpleasant feelings toward his rival — fear, envy of a clever move, spite, jealousy, animosity, or schemes to win, while the other will simply solve a complex mathematical problem which lies before him, not thinking about his rival at all. 

The emotion of the first man will be impure, if only because it contains much of the mixed. The emotion of the second will be pure. The meaning of this is of course perfectly clear. 

Examples of a similar division of outwardly similar emotions may be constantly seen in the esthetic, literary, scientific, public and even the spiritual and religious activities of men. In all regions of this activity only complete victory over the pseudo-personal elements leads a man to the correct understanding of the world and of himself. All emotions colored by such SELF-ELEMENTS are like concave, convex, or otherwise curved glasses which refract rays incorrectly and distort the image of the world. 

Therefore the problem of emotional knowledge consists in a corresponding preparation of the emotions which serve as organs of knowledge. 

Become as little children . . . and
Blessed are the pure in heart. . . . 

In these evangelical words is expressed first of all the idea of the purification of the emotions. It is impossible to know through impure emotions. Therefore in the interests of a correct understanding of the world and of the self, man should undertake the purification and the elevation of his emotions. 

This last leads to an entirely new view of morality. That morality the aim of which is to establish a system of correct relations toward the emotions, and to assist in their purification and elevation, ceases in our eyes to be some wearisome and self-limiting exercise in virtue. Morality — this is a form of esthetics. 

That which is not moral is first of all not beautiful, because not concordant, not harmonious. 

We see all the enormous meaning that morality may have in our life; we see the meaning morality has for knowledge, for the reason that there are emotions by which we know, and there are emotions by which we delude ourselves. If morality can actually help us to analyze these, then its value is indisputable from the standpoint of knowledge. 

Current popular psychology knows very well that malice, hatred, anger, jealousy BLIND a man, DARKEN his reason; it knows that fear DRIVES ONE INSANE, etc., etc. 

But we also know that every emotion may serve either knowledge or nescience. 

Let us consider such an emotion — valuable and capable of high development — as the pleasure of activity. This emotion is a powerful motive force in culture, and of service in the perfection of life and in the evolution of all higher faculties of man. But it is also the cause of an infinite number of his delusions and faux pas for which he afterwards pays bitterly. In the passion of activity man is easily inclined to forget the aim that started him to act; to accept the activity itself for the aim and even to sacrifice the aim in order to preserve the activity. This is seen with especial clearness in the activity of various spiritual movements. Man, starting out in one direction, turns in the opposite one without himself noticing it, and often descends into the abyss thinking that he is scaling the heights. 

There is nothing more contradictory, more paradoxical than the man who is enticed away by activity. We have become so accustomed to “man” that the strange perversions to which he is sometimes subject fail to startle us as curiosities. 

Violence in the name of freedom; violence in the name of love; the Gospel of Christianity with sword in hand; the stakes of the Inquisition for the glory of a God of Mercy; the oppression of thought and speech on the part of the ministers of religion — all these are incarnated absurdities of which humanity only is capable.

A correct understanding of morality can preserve us in some degree from such perversions of thought. In our life in general there is not much morality. European culture has gone along the path of intellectual development. The intellect invented and organized without considering the moral meaning of its own activity. Out of this arose the paradox that the crown of European culture is the “dreadnaught.” 

Many people realize all this, and on account of it assume a negative attitude to all culture. But this is unjust. European culture created much other than dreadnaughts that is new and valuable, facilitating life. The elaboration of the principles of freedom and right; the abolition of slavery (though these are indeed nominal); the victory of man in many regions where nature presented to him a hostile front; the methods for the distribution of thought, the press; the miracles of contemporary medicine and surgery — all these are indisputably real conquests, and it is impossible not to take them into consideration. But there is no morality in them, i.e., there is no truth but too much of falsehood. We are satisfied with mere principles as such; we are content to think that eventually they will be introduced into life, and we neither marvel nor are disturbed at the thought that we ourselves (i.e., cultured humanity), developing beautiful principles, continually deny and controvert them in our lives. The man of European culture invents with equal readiness a machine gun and a new surgical apparatus. European culture began from the life of the savage, taking this life as an example as it were and starting to develop all its sides to the uttermost without thinking of their moral aspects. The savage crushed the head of his enemy with a simple club. We invented for this purpose complicated devices, making possible the crushing of hundreds and thousands of heads at once. Therefore such a thing as this happened: aerial navigation, toward which men had looked forward for millenniums, finally achieved, is used first of all for purposes of war. 

Morality should be the co-ordination and the necessity for the coordination of all sides of life, i.e., of the actions of man and humanity with the higher emotions and the higher comprehensions of the intellect. From this point of view the statement previously made, that morality is a form of esthetics, becomes clear. Esthetics — the sense of beauty — is the sensation of the relation of parts to a whole, and the perception of the necessity for a certain harmonious relation. And morality is the same. Those actions, thoughts and feelings are not moral which are not co-ordinated, which are not harmonious with the higher understanding and the higher sensations accessible to man. The introduction of morality into our life would make it less paradoxical, less contradictory, more logical and — most important — more civilized; because now our vaunted civilization is much compromised by “dreadnaughts,” i.e., war and everything that goes with it, as well as many things of “peaceful” life such as the death penalty, prisons, etc. 

Morality, or moral esthetics in such a sense as is here shown, is necessary to us. Without it we too easily forget that the word has after all a certain relation to the act. We are interested in many things, we enter into many things, but for some strange reason we fail to note the incongruity between our spiritual life and our life on earth. Thus we create two lives. In one we are preternaturally strict with ourselves, analyze with great care every idea before we discuss it; in the other we permit with extreme ease any compromises, and easily keep from seeing that which we do not care to see. Moreover, we reconcile ourselves to this division. We do not find it necessary seriously to introduce into our lives our higher ideals, and almost accept as a principle the division of the “real” from the “spiritual.” All of the indecencies of our life have arisen as a result of this; all of those infinite falsifications of our life — falsifications of the press, art, drama, science, politics — falsifications in which we suffocate as in a fetid swamp, but which we ourselves create, because we and none other are servants and ministers of those falsifications. We have no sense of the necessity to introduce our ideals into life, to introduce them into our daily activity, and we even admit the possibility that this activity may go counter to our spiritual quests, in accordance with one of those established standards the harm of which we recognize, but for which no one holds himself responsible because he did not create them himself. We have no sense of personal responsibility, no boldness, and we are even without the consciousness of their necessity. All this would be very sad and hopeless if the concept “we” were not so dubious. In reality, the correctness of the very expression “we” is subject to grave doubt. The enormous majority of the population of this globe is engaged in effect in destroying, disfiguring, and falsifying the ideas of the minority. The majority is without ideas. It is incapable of understanding the ideas of the minority, and left to itself it must inevitably disfigure and destroy. Imagine a menagerie full of monkeys. In this menagerie a man is working. The monkeys observe his movements and try to imitate him but they can imitate only his visible movements; the meaning and aim of these movements are closed to them; therefore their actions will have quite another result. And should the monkeys escape from their cages and get hold of the man’s tools, then perhaps they will destroy all his work, and inflict great damage on themselves as well. But they will never be able to create anything. Therefore a man would make a great mistake if he referred to their “work,” and spoke of them as “we.” Creation and destruction — or more correctly, the ability to create or the ability only to destroy — are the principal signs of the two types of men. 

Morality is necessary to “man”: only by regarding everything from the standpoint of morality is it possible to differentiate unmistakably the work of man from the activity of apes. But at the same time delusions are nowhere more easily created than in the region of morality. Allured by his own particular morality and moral gospel, a man forgets the aim of moral perfection, forgets that this aim consists in knowledge. He begins to see an aim in morality itself. Then occurs the a priori division of the emotions into good and bad, “moral” and “immoral.” The correct understanding of the aim and meaning of the emotions is lost along with this. Man is charmed with his “niceness.” He desires that everyone else should be just as nice as he, or as that remote ideal created by himself. Then appears delight in morality for morality’s sake, a sort of moral sport — the exercise of morality for morality’s sake. A man under these circumstances begins to be afraid of everything. Everywhere, in all manifestations of life, something “immoral” begins to appear to him, threatening to dethrone him or others from that height to which they have risen or may rise. This develops a preternaturally suspicious attitude toward the morality of others. In an ardor of proselytism, desiring to popularize his moral views, he begins quite definitely to regard everything which is not in accord with his morality as hostile to it. All this becomes “black” in his eyes. Starting with the idea of utter freedom, by arguments, by compromises, he very easily convinces himself that it is necessary to fight freedom. He already begins to admit a censure of thought. The free expression of opinions contrary to his own seems to him inadmissible. All this may be done with the best intentions, but the results of it are very well known. 

There is no tyranny more ferocious than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it. And of course there is nothing so blind as such tyranny, as such “morality.” 

Nevertheless humanity needs morality, but of a different kind — such as is founded on the real data of superior knowledge. Humanity is passionately seeking for this, and perhaps will find it. Then on the basis of this new morality will occur a great division, and those few who will be able to follow it will begin to rule others, or they will disappear altogether. In any case, because of this new morality and those forces which it will engender, the contradictions of life will disappear, and those biped animals which constitute the majority of humanity will have no opportunity to pose as men any longer. 

Pure emotion will be a pure reaction to an anomaly. A clear vision comes about only when the viewpoint is kept independent of personal self. Influence of self-elements make the emotions impure and deceptive. When it comes to morality, one must have clear vision and pure emotions. The sense of morality must be aimed at honestly resolving some anomaly. True morality is beautiful and harmonious.

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The organized forms of intellectual knowledge are: science, founded upon observation, calculation and experience; and philosophy, founded upon the speculative method of reasoning and drawing conclusions. 

The organized forms of emotional knowledge are: religion and art. Religious teachings, taking on the character of different “cults” as they depart from the original “revelation,” are founded entirely upon the emotional nature of man. Magnificent temples, the gorgeous vestments of priests and acolytes, the solemn ritual of worship, processions, sacrifices, singing, music, dances — all these have as their aim the attuning of man in a certain way, the evoking in him of certain definite feelings. The same purpose is served by religious myths, legends, stories of the lives of heroes and saints, prophecies, apocalypses — they all act upon the imagination, upon the feelings, although they fail to fulfill their original purpose, which is to transmit ideas, i.e., to serve knowledge. 

The aim of it is to give God to man, to give him morality, i.e., to give him an accessible knowledge of the mysterious side of the world. Religion may deviate from its true aim, may serve earthly interests and purposes, but its foundation is the search for truth, for God. 

Art serves beauty, i.e., emotional knowledge of its own kind. Art discovers beauty in everything, and compels man to feel it and therefore to know. Art is a powerful instrument of knowledge of the noumenal world: mysterious depths, each one more amazing than the last, open to the vision of man when he holds in his hands this magical key. But let him only think that this mystery is not for knowledge but for pleasure in it, and all the charm disappears at once. Just as soon as art begins to take delight in that beauty which is already found, instead of the search for new beauty an arrestment occurs and art becomes a superfluous estheticism, encompassing man’s vision like a wall. The aim of art is the search for beauty, just as the aim of religion is the search for God and truth. And exactly as art stops, so religion stops also as soon as it ceases to search for God and truth, thinking it has found them. This idea is expressed in the precept: Seek. . . . the kingdom of God and his righteousness. . . . It does not say, find; but merely, seek!

Science, philosophy, religion and art are forms of knowledge. The method of science is experiment; the method of philosophy is speculation; the method of religion and art is moral or esthetic emotional inspiration. But both science and philosophy, religion and art, begin to serve true knowledge only when in them commence to manifest the sensing and finding of some inner property in things. In general it is quite possible to say — and perhaps it will be most true to fact — that the aim of even purely intellectual systems of philosophy and science consists not at all in the giving to man of certain data of knowledge, but in the raising of man to such a height of thinking and feeling as to enable him to pass to those new and higher forms of knowledge to which art and religion approach more nearly. It is necessary however to remember that these very divisions into science, philosophy, religion and art betray the poverty and incompleteness of each. A complete religion unites in itself religion, art, philosophy and science; a complete art equally unites them, while a complete science or a complete philosophy comprehends religion and art. A religion which contradicts science, and a science which contradicts religion are both equally false.

Intellect organizes itself in science and philosophy; whereas, emotion organizes itself in religion and art. Science, philosophy, religion and art are forms of knowledge. But they begin to serve true knowledge only when they start to seek and resolve anomalies. True knowledge is one (continuous, consistent and harmonious).

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Reference: Tertium Organum

NOTE: Text in color contains my comments.

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Chapter 16: Man

The phenomenal and noumenal side of man. “Man-in-himself.” How do we know the inner side of man? Can we know of the existence of consciousness in conditions of space not analogous to ours? Brain and consciousness. Unity of the world. Logical impossibility of the simultaneous existence of spirit and matter. Either all spirit or all matter. Rational and irrational actions in nature and in the life of man. Can rational actions exist alongside irrational? The world as an accidentally self-created mechanical toy. The impossibility of reason in a mechanical universe. The irreconcilability of mechanicalness with the existence of reason. Kant concerning “hosts.” Spinoza on the knowledge of the invisible world. Necessity for the intellectual definition of that which can be, and that which cannot be, in the world of the hidden.

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We know what man is only imperfectly; our conceptions regarding him are extremely fallacious and easily create new illusions. First of all, we are inclined to regard man as a certain unity, and to regard the different parts and functions of man as being bound together, and dependent upon one another. Moreover, in the physical apparatus, in man visible, we see the cause of all his properties and actions. In reality, man is a very complicated something, and complicated in various meanings of the word. Many sides of the life of a man are not bound together among themselves at all, or are bound only by the fact that they belong to one man; but the life of man goes on simultaneously on different planes, as it were, while the phenomena of one plane only at times and partially touch those of another, and may not themselves touch at all. And the relations of the same man to the various sides of himself and to other men are entirely dissimilar. 

Man includes within himself all three of the above-mentioned orders of phenomena, i.e., he represents in himself the combination of physical phenomena with those of life and psychic phenomena. And the mutual relations between these three orders of phenomena are infinitely more complex than we are accustomed to think. Psychic phenomena we feel, sense and are conscious of in ourselves; physical phenomena and the phenomena of life we observe and make conclusions about on the basis of experience. We do not sense the psychic phenomena of others, i.e., the thoughts, feelings and desires of another man; but the fact that they exist in him we conclude from what he says, and by analogy with ourselves. We know that in ourselves certain actions, certain thoughts, and feelings proceed, and when we observe the same actions in another man, we conclude that he has thought and felt like us. Analogy with ourselves — this is our sole criterion and method of reasoning and drawing conclusions about the psychic life in other men if we cannot communicate with them, or do not wish to believe in what they tell us about themselves. 

Suppose that I should live among men without the possibility of communicating with them and having no way to make conclusions based upon analogy; in that case I should be surrounded by moving and acting automatons, the cause, purpose and meaning of whose actions would be perfectly incomprehensible to me. Perhaps I would explain their actions by “molecular motion,” perhaps by the “influence of the planets,” perhaps by “spiritism,” i.e., by the influence of “spirits,” possibly by “chance” or by a haphazard combination of causes — but in any case I should not and could not see the psychic life in the depth of these men’s actions. 

Concerning the existence of thought and feeling I can usually only conclude by analogy with myself. I know that certain phenomena are connected in me with my possession of thought and feeling. When I see the same phenomena in another man I conclude that he also possesses thought and feeling. But I cannot convince myself directly of the existence of psychic life in another man. Studying man from one side only I should stand in the same position in relation to him as, according to Kant, we stand with relation to the world surrounding us. We know merely the form of our knowledge of it. The world-in-itself we do not know. 

Thus the psyche, with all its functions and with all its contents — I have two methods — analogy with myself, and intercourse with him by the exchange of thoughts. Without this, man is for me a phenomenon merely, a moving automaton. 

The noumenon of a man is his psyche together with everything this psyche includes within itself and that with which it unites him. 

In “man” are opened to us both worlds, though the noumenal world is open only slightly, because it is cognized by us through the phenomenal. 

Noumenal means apprehended by the mind; and the characteristic property of the things of the noumenal world is that they cannot be comprehended by the same method by which the things of the phenomenal world are comprehended. We may speculate about the things of the noumenal world; we may discover them by a process of reasoning, and by means of analogy; we may feel them, and enter into some sort of communion with them; but we can neither see, hear, touch, weigh, measure them; nor can we photograph them or decompose them into chemical elements or number their vibrations. 

Thus, the psyche, with all its functions and with all its contents — thoughts, feelings, desires, will — does not relate itself to the world of phenomena. We cannot know even a single element of the psyche objectively. Emotion as such is a thing which it is impossible to see, just as it is impossible to see the value of a coin. You can see the stamp upon a coin, but you will never see its value. It is just as impossible to photograph thought as it is to imagine “Egyptian darkness” in a vial. To think otherwise, to experiment with the photographing of thought, simply means to be unable to think logically. On a phonographic record are the tracings of the needle, elevations and depressions, but there is no sound. He who holds a phonographic record to his ear, hoping to hear something, will be sure to listen in vain. 

Objectivity of thought (noumenon) is very different from the objectivity of matter (phenomenon). The “noumenon” is visible only through the grasping of oneness of postulates.

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Including within himself two worlds, the phenomenal and the noumenal, man gives us the opportunity to understand in what relation these worlds stand to one another everywhere throughout nature. It is necessary however to remember, that defining a noumenon in terms of the psyche, we take but one of its infinity of aspects. 

We have already arrived at the conclusion that the noumenon of a thing consists in its function in another sphere — in its meaning which is incomprehensible in a given section of the world.* [The expression “section of the world” is taken as an indicator of the unreality of the forms of each section. The world is infinite, and all forms are infinite, but to grasp them with the finite brain-consciousness, i.e., by consciousness reflected in the brain, we must imagine the infinite forms as being finite, and these are “sections of the world.” The world is one, but the number of possible sections is infinite. Let us imagine an apple: it is one, but we may imagine an infinite number of sections in all directions and these sections will differ from one another. If instead of an apple we take a more complicated body, for instance the body of some animal: then the sections taken in different directions will be even more unlike one another.] Next we came to the conclusion that the number of meanings of one and the same thing in different sections of the world must be infinitely great and infinitely various, that it must become its own opposite, return again to the beginning (from our standpoint), etc., etc., infinitely expanding, contracting again, and so forth. 

It is necessary to remember that the noumenon and the phenomenon are not different things, but merely different aspects of one and the same thing. Thus, each phenomenon is the finite expression, in the sphere of our knowledge through the organs of sense, of something infinite. 

A phenomenon is the three-dimensional expression of a given noumenon. 

This three-dimensionality depends upon the three-dimensional forms of our knowledge, i.e., speaking simply, upon our brains, nerves, eyes, and finger-tips.

Neumenon is made up of infinite number of dimensions, and the phenomenon is the visible expression of it.

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In “man” we have found that one side of his noumenon is his psychic life, and that therefore in the psyche lies the beginning of the solution of the riddle of the functions and meanings of man which are incomprehensible from an outside point of view. What is the psyche of man if it is not his function — incomprehensible in the three-dimensional section of the world? Truly, if we shall study and observe man by all accessible means, objectively, from without, we shall never discover his psyche and shall never define the function of his consciousness. We must first of all become aware of the existence of our own psyche, and then either begin a conversation (by signs, gestures, words) with another man, begin to exchange thoughts with him, and from his answers deduce the conclusion that he possesses the same thing that we do — or come to the conclusion about it from external indications (actions similar to ours in similar circumstances). By the direct method of objective investigation, without the help of speech, or without the help of conclusions based upon analogy, we shall not discover the psyche in another man. That which is inaccessible to the direct method of investigation, but exists, is NOUMENAL. Consequently we shall not be in a position to define the functions and meanings of man in another section of the world than that world of Euclidian geometry, solely accessible to the “direct methods of investigation.” Therefore we have a perfect right to regard “the psyche of man” as his function in some section of the world different from that three-dimensional section wherein “the body of man” functions. 

Having established this much we may ask ourselves the question: Have we not the right to make a reverse conclusion, and regard as a psyche of its own kind the, to us, unknown function of the “world” and of “things” outside of their three-dimensional section?

The psyche of man consists of his functions. The key function is to realize oneness by resolving anomalies. These functions are beyond the three-dimensionality of man.

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Our usual positivistic view regards psychic life as a function of the brain. Without a brain we cannot imagine rationality.

Max Nordau, when he wanted to imagine the world’s consciousness (in Paradoxes), was obliged to say that we cannot be certain that somewhere in the infinite space of the universe is not repeated on a grandiose scale the same combination of physical and chemical elements as constitutes our brains. This is very characteristic and typical of “positive science.” Desiring to imagine the “world’s consciousness” positivism is first of all forced to imagine a gigantic brain. Does not this at once savor of the two-dimensional or plane world? Surely the idea of a gigantic brain somewhere beyond the stars reveals the appalling poverty and impotence of positivistic thought. This thought cannot leave its usual grooves; it has no wings for a soaring flight. 

Let us imagine that some curious inhabitant of Europe in the seventeenth century should try to foresee the means of transportation in the twentieth century, and should picture to himself an enormous stagecoach, large as an hotel, harnessed to one thousand horses; he would be pretty near to the truth, but also at the same time infinitely far from it. And yet even in his time some minds which foresaw along correct lines already existed: already the idea of the steam engine had been broached and models were appearing. 

The thought expressed by Nordau reminds one of a favorite concept of popular philosophy relating to an accidentally caught idea, that the planets and satellites of the solar system are merely molecules of some tremendous organism, an insignificant part of which that system represents. 

“Perhaps the entire universe is located on the tip of the little finger of some great being,” says such a philosophizer, “and perhaps our molecules are also worlds.” The deuce! Perhaps on my little finger there are several universes too! And such a philosophizer gets frightened. But all such reasonings are merely the gigantic stage-coach over again.* [The incorrectness here is not in the idea itself, but in a literal analogy. The thought itself, that molecules are worlds and worlds are but molecules, deserves attention and study.] This is the way a little girl thought, about whom I was reading, if I mistake not, in The Theosophical Review. The girl was sitting near the fireplace, and beside her slept a cat. “Well, the cat is sleeping,” the girl reflected, “perhaps she sees in a dream that she is not a cat, but a little girl. And maybe I am not a little girl at all, but a cat, and only see in a dream that I am a little girl. . . ” The next moment the house resounds with a violent cry, and the parents of the little girl have a hard time to convince her that she is not a cat but really a little girl. 

All this shows that it is necessary to philosophize with a certain amount of skill. Our thought is encompassed by many blind alleys, and positivism, always attempting to apply the rule of proportion, is in itself such a blind alley.

According to the positivistic philosophy, psychic life is a function of the brain. Brain just attempts to apply the rule of proportion to what it already knows. This is not the case, since, in psychic life, there is creative, out-of-the-box thinking.

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Our analysis of phenomena, the relation which we have shown to exist between physical phenomena and those of life and of the psyche, permits us to assert quite definitely that psychic phenomena cannot be a function of physical phenomena — or phenomena of a lower order. We established that the higher cannot be a function of the lower. And this division into higher and lower is also based upon the clear fact of the different potentialities of various orders of phenomena — of the different amount of latent force contained in them (or liberated by them). And of course we have the right to call those phenomena the higher which possess immeasurably greater potentiality, immeasurably more latent force; and to call those the lower which possess less potentiality, less latent force. 

The phenomena of life are the higher in comparison with physical phenomena. 

Psychic phenomena are the higher, in comparison with the phenomena of life and physical phenomena. 

Which must be the function of which is clear. 

Without making a palpable logical mistake we cannot declare life and the psyche to be dependent functionally upon physical phenomena, i.e., to be a result of physical phenomena. The truth is quite the opposite of this: everything forces us to recognize physical phenomena as the result of life, and life (in a biological sense) as the result of some form of psychic life, which is perhaps unknown to us. 

But of which life, and of which psyche? Here lies the question. Of course it would be absurd to regard our planetary sphere as a function of the vegetable and animal life proceeding upon it — and the visible stellar universe as a function of the human psyche. But nothing of this sort is meant. In the occult understanding of things we speak always of another life and another psyche, the particular manifestation of which is our life and our psyche. It is important to establish the general principle that physical phenomena, being the lower, depend upon the phenomena of life and of the psyche, which are higher. 

If we admit this principle as established, then it is possible to proceed further.

The first question which arises is this: In what relation does the psychic life of man stand to his body and his brain? 

This question has been answered differently in different times. Psychic life has been regarded as a direct function of the brain (“Thought is the motion of brain substance”), thus of course denying any possibility of thought without the existence of a brain. Then followed an attempt to establish a parallelism between psychic activity and the activity of the brain. But the nature of this parallelism has always remained obscure. Yes, evidently, the brain works parallel to thinking and feeling: an arrestment or a disorder of the activity of the brain brings as a consequence a visible arrestment or disorder of psychic activity. But after all the activity of the brain is merely motion, i.e., an objective phenomenon, whereas the activity of the psyche is a phenomenon objectively undefinable, and at the same time more powerful than anything objective. How shall we reconcile all this? 

Let us endeavor to consider the activity of the brain and the activity of the psyche from the standpoint of the existence of those two data, the “world” and “consciousness,” accepted by us at the very beginning. 

If we consider the brain from the standpoint of consciousness, then the brain will be part of the “world,” i.e., part of the outer world lying outside of consciousness. Therefore the psyche and the brain are different things. But the psyche, as experience and observation shows, can act only through the brain. The brain is that necessary prism, passing through which, part of the psyche manifests itself to us as intellect. Or to put it a little differently, the brain is a mirror, reflecting psychic life in our three-dimensional section of the world. This last means that in our three-dimensional section of the world not all of the psyche (the true dimensions of which we do not know) is acting, but only so much of it as can be reflected in a brain. It is clear that if the mirror be broken, then the image will be broken too, or if the mirror be injured or imperfect, then the reflection will be blurred or distorted. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that when the mirror is broken the object which it reflects is thereby destroyed, i.e., psychic life in the given case. 

The psyche cannot suffer from any disorder of the brain, but the manifestations of it may suffer very much or may even disappear from the field of our observation altogether. Therefore it is clear that a disorder in the activity of the brain causes an enfeeblement or a distortion, or even a complete disappearance of the psychic faculties manifesting in our sphere. 

The idea of the comparison between a three-dimensional body and a four-dimensional one enables us to affirm that not all the psychic activity goes through the brain, but a part of it only.

Each of us is in reality an abiding physical entity far more extensive than he knows — an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the self unmanifested.* [In all the above it would be more correct to substitute for the word brain the word body — organism. The present trend of scientific psychology leads to an understanding of the psychic importance of diverse physiological functions, previously unknown and even now but little investigated. The psychic life is connected not with the brain only, but with the entire body, all its organs, all its tissues. The study of the activity of glands, and of many other things with which science is now concerning itself, shows that the brain is by no means the only conductor of the psychic activity of man.]

As the assimilation of sensations increases, the physical phenomenon rises to biological which then rises to psychic. Assimilation is driven by the motion inherent in substance that aims to become continuous, consistent and harmonious. The psychic phenomenon manifests through the whole organism and not just through the brain. Thought exists independent of the brain, just like sound exists independent of the ears.

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The “positivist” will remain unconvinced. He will say: prove to me that thought can act without a brain, then I will believe it. 

I shall answer him by the question: what, in the given case, will constitute a proof? 

There are no proofs and there cannot be any. The existence of the psyche without a brain (without a body), if that be possible, is for us a fact which cannot be proven like a physical fact. 

And if my opponent will reason sincerely, then he will be convinced there can be no proof, because he himself has no means of being convinced of the existence of a psyche acting independently of a brain. Let us assume that the thought of a dead man (i.e., of a man whose brain has ceased to act) continues to function. How can we convince ourselves of this? By no possible means whatever. We have means of communication (speech, writing) with beings which are in conditions similar to our own — i.e., acting through brains; concerning the existence of the psyche of those same beings we can conclude by analogy with ourselves; but concerning the existence of the psychic life of other beings, whether they do or they do not exist is immaterial, we can not by ordinary means convince ourselves that they exist. 

It is exactly this that gives us a key to the understanding of the true relation of psychic life to the brain. Our psyche being a reflection from the brain, we can observe only those reflections which are similar to itself. We have before established that we can make conclusions concerning the psychic life of other beings from the exchange of thoughts with them and from analogies with ourselves. Now we may add to this, that for this very reason we can know only about the existence of psychic lives similar to our own, and we cannot know any other at all, whether they exist or not, unless we ourselves enter their plane. 

Should we ever realize our psychic life, not only as it is reflected from a brain, but in a condition more universal, simultaneously with this the possibility would open up of discovering beings with a psychic life independent of the brain analogical to ourselves, if such exist in nature. 

But do such beings exist or not? How can we gain information on this point with our thought such as it is now? 

Observing the world from our standpoint, we perceive in it actions proceeding from rational conscious causes, such as the work of a man seems to us; and other actions proceeding from the unconscious blind forces of nature, such as the movement of waves, the ebbing and flowing of the tide, the descent of great rivers, etc., etc. 

In such a division of observed actions into rational and mechanical there is something naive, even from the positivistic standpoint. For if we have learned anything from the study of nature, if the positivistic method has given us anything at all, then it is the assurance of the necessity for the uniformity of phenomena. We know, and with great certainty, that things basically similar cannot proceed from dissimilar causes. Our scientific philosophy knows this too. Therefore it also regards the foregoing division as naive, and conscious of the impossibility of such dualism — that one part of observed phenomena proceeds from rational and conscious causes and another part from unreasoned and unconscious ones — positivistic philosophy finds it possible to explain everything as proceeding from mechanical causes. 

Scientific observation holds that the seeming rationality of human actions is an illusion and a self-deception. Man is a toy in the hands of elemental forces. He is merely a transforming station of forces. All that which as it seems to him, he is doing, is in reality done instead by external forces which enter him through air, food, sunlight. Man does not perform a single action by himself. He is merely a prism in which a line of action is refracted in a certain manner. But just as the beam of light does not proceed from the prism, so action does not proceed from the reason of man. 

The “theoretical experiment” of certain German psycho-physiologists is usually advanced in confirmation of this. They affirmed that if it were possible, from the time of his birth, to deprive a man of ALL EXTERNAL IMPRESSIONS: light, sound, touch, heat, cold, etc., and at the same time preserve him alive, then such a man would not be able to perform EVEN THE MOST INSIGNIFICANT ACTION. 

From this it follows that man is an automaton, like that automaton projected by the American inventor Tesla, which, obeying electric currents and vibrations coming from a great distance without wires, was calculated to execute a whole series of complicated movements. 

It follows from this that all the actions of a man depend upon outer impulses. For the smallest reflex, outer irritation is necessary. For more complex action a whole series of preceding complex irritations is necessary. Sometimes between the irritation and the action a considerable time elapses, and a man does not feel any connection between the two. Therefore he regards his actions as voluntary, though in reality there are no voluntary actions at all — man cannot do anything by himself, just as a stone cannot jump voluntarily: it is necessary that something should throw it up. Man needs something to give him an impulse, and then he will develop exactly as much force as such an impulse (and all preceding impulses) put into him and no trifle more. Such is the teaching of positivism. 

From the STANDPOINT OF LOGIC such a theory is more correct than the theory of two classes of actions — REASONED AND UNREASONED. It at least establishes the principle of NECESSARY UNIFORMITY. It is really impossible to suppose that in an immense machine certain parts move according to their own desire and reasoning; there must be something uniform — either all parts of the machine possess a consciousness of their function and act according to this consciousness, or all are worked from one motor and are driven by one transmission. The enormous service performed by positivism is that it established this principle of uniformity. It is left to us to define in what this uniformity consists. 

The positivistic hypothesis of the world considers that the basis of everything is unconscious energy, which arose from unknown causes at a time that is not known. This energy, after it has passed through a whole series of invisible electro-magnetic and physico-chemical processes, is expressed for us in visible and sensed motion, then in growth, i.e., in the phenomena of life, and at last in psychic phenomena. 

This view has been already investigated and the conclusion reached that it is impossible to regard physical phenomena as the cause of PSYCHIC PHENOMENA, while on the other hand, psychic phenomena serve as an undoubted cause for a great number of the physical phenomena observed by us. The observed process of origination of psychic phenomena under the influence of outside mechanical impulses does not at all mean that physical phenomena create psychic phenomena. Such do not constitute the cause, but are merely a shock, disturbing the balance. In order that outer shocks may evoke psychic phenomena an organism is necessary, i.e., a complex and animated life. The cause of psychic life lies in the organism, its animatedness, which can be defined as a potential of psychic life. 

Then, from the very essence of the idea of motion — which is the foundation of the physico-mechanical world —was deduced the conclusion that motion is not an entirely obvious truth, that the idea of motion arose in us because of the limitation and incompleteness of our sense of space (a slit through which we observe the world). And it was established, not that the idea of time is deduced from the observation of motion, but that the idea of motion results from our “time-sense” — and that the idea of motion is quite definitely the function of the “time-sense,” which in itself is a limit or boundary of the space-sense belonging to a being of a given psyche. It was also established that the idea of motion could arise out of a comparison between two different fields of consciousness. And in general, all analysis of the fundamental categories of our knowledge of the world — space and time — showed that we have absolutely no data whatever for accepting motion as the fundamental principle of the world. 

And if this is so — if it is impossible to assume behind the scenes of the creation of the world the presence of an unconscious mechanical motor — then it is necessary to consider the world as living and rational. Because one or the other of two things must be true: either it is mechanical and dead — “accidental” — or it is living and animated. There can be nothing dead in living nature and there can be nothing living in dead nature. 

Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world, where intelligence and consciousness began at first very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last great development in man, whose intellect is nature’s crowning point, the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works. 

So writes Schopenhauer in his Counsels and Maxims, and indeed it is very effectively expressed, but we have no foundation whatsoever for regarding man as the summit of that which nature has created. This is only THE HIGHEST THAT WE KNOW.

Positivism would be absolutely correct in its picture of the world, there would not be even one deficiency, if there were no reason in the world, anywhere or at any time. Then it would be necessary, nolens volens, to regard the universe as an accidentally self-created mechanical toy in space. But the fact of the existence of psychic life “spoils all the statistics” It is impossible to exclude it. 

We are either forced to admit the existence of two principles — “spirit” and “matter” — or to select one of them. 

Then dualism annihilates itself, because if we admit the separate existence of spirit and matter, and reason further on this basis, it will be inevitably necessary to conclude, either that spirit is unreal and matter real; or that matter is unreal and spirit real — i.e., either that spirit is material or that matter is spiritual. Consequently it is necessary to select some one thing — spirit or matter. 

But to think really MONISTICALLY is considerably more difficult than it seems. I have met many men who have called themselves “monists,” and sincerely considered themselves as such, but in reality they never departed from the most naive dualism, and no spark of understanding of the world’s unity ever flashed upon them. 

Positivism, regarding “motion” or “energy” as the basis of everything, can never be “monistic.” It is impossible to annihilate the fact of psychic life. If it were possible not to take this fact into consideration at all, then everything would be splendid, and the universe could be something like an accidentally self-created mechanical toy. But to its sorrow, positivism cannot deny the existence of the psyche. It can only try to degrade it as low as possible, calling it the reflection of reality, the substance of which consists of motion. 

But how deal with the fact that the “reflection” possesses in this case an infinitely greater potentiality than the “reality”? How can this be? From what does this reality reflect, or what is it refracted in, that in its reflected state it possesses infinitely greater potentiality than in its original state? 

The consistent “materialist-monist” will be forced to say that “reality” reflects from itself, i.e., “one motion” reflects from another motion. But this is merely dialectics, and fails to make clear the nature of psychic life, for it is something other than motion. 

The ultimate reality is unknowable. But all that is known can be reduced to basic postulates. The known universe is as real as the basic postulates (and the reasoning proceeding from them) are continuous, consistent and harmonious. Violations of continuity, consistency and harmony can be seen as anomalies. Truth is established, not by cause-effect relationships, but through the resolution of anomalies. Current ideas, scientific, or otherwise, must be examined closely for anomalies, before being accepted.

The idea that matter is substance but thought is not, is an anomaly because both matter and thought are substantial enough to be qualified as substance. From this anomaly proceed a host of other anomalies. Space, time and motion are properties inherent to substance and not separate from it. Not recognizing this is an anomaly. The conscious being itself is a phenomenon of substance, space, time and motion. Not recognizing this is an anomaly. These anomalies exist because the basic postulates have not been identified properly and assimilated all the way to explain the reality that is experienced.

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No matter how hard we may try to define thought in terms of motion, we nevertheless know that they are two different things, different as regards our receptivity of them, belonging to different worlds, incommensurable, capable of existing simultaneously. Moreover, thought can exist without motion, but motion cannot exist without thought, because out of the psyche comes the necessary condition of motion — time: no psychic life — no time, as it exists for us; no time — no motion. 

We cannot escape this fact, and thinking logically, we must inevitably recognize two principles. But if we begin to consider the very recognition of two principles as illogical, then we must recognize THOUGHT as a single principle, and motion as AN ILLUSION OF THOUGHT. 

But what does this mean? It means that there can be no “monistic materialism.” Materialism can be only dualistic, i.e., it must recognize two principles: motion and thought. 

Thought is substance that has the property of motion. Neither thought nor motion can be isolated from each other. Motion is not an illusion of thought. Time is another property of substance. Time and motion are not identical. Time without motion is infinite duration or eternity. Time with motion is finite duration. 

Here a new difficulty arises. 

Our concepts are limited by language. Our language is deeply dualistic. This is indeed a terrible obstacle. I showed previously how language retards our thought, making it impossible to express the relations of a being universe. In our language only an eternally becoming universe exists. The “Eternal Now” cannot be expressed in language. 

Thus our language pictures to us beforehand a false universe — dual, when in reality it is one; and eternally becoming when it is in reality eternally being. 

And if we come to realize the degree to which our language falsifies the real view of the world, then the understanding of this fact will enable us to see that it is not only difficult, but even absolutely impossible to express in language the correct relation of the things of the real world. 

This difficulty can be conquered only by the formation of new concepts and by extended analogies. 

Later on the principles and methods of this expansion of what we already have, and what we can extract from our stores of knowledge will be made clear. For the present it is only important to establish one thing —THE NECESSITY FOR UNIFORMITY: the monism of the universe. 

As a matter of principle it is not important which one we regard as first cause, spirit or matter. It is essential to recognize their unity. 

The monism or unity can be described more appropriately as continuity, consistency and harmony. The universe is a complete whole made up of infinite gradients. It cannot be simply described just as monistic or dualistic.

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But what then is matter? 

From one point of view, it is a logical concept, i.e., a form of thinking. Nobody ever saw matter, nor will he ever — it is possible only to think matter. From another point of view it is an illusion accepted for reality. Even more truly, it is the incorrectly perceived form of that which exists in reality. Matter is a section of something; a non-existent, imaginary section. But that of which matter is a section, exists. This is the real, four-dimensional world. 

Wood, the substance from which this table (for example) is made, exists; but the true nature of its existence we do not know. All that we know about it is just the form of our receptivity of it. And if we should cease to exist, it would continue to exist, but only for a receptivity acting similarly to ours. But in itself this substance exists in some other way — HOW, we do not know. Certainly not in space and time, for we ourselves impose these forms upon it. Probably all similar wood, of different centuries, and different parts of the world, constitutes one mass — one body — perhaps one being. Certainly that substance (or that part of it) of which this table is made, has no separate existence apart from our receptivity. We fail to understand that a particular thing is merely an artificial definition by our senses, of some indefinable cause infinitely surpassing that thing. 

But a thing may acquire its own individual and unique soul; and in that case the thing exists quite independently of our receptivity. Many things possess such souls, especially old things — old houses, old books, works of art, etc. 

Matter is neither a form of thinking nor is it an illusion. It is part of reality plain and simple. Reality is defined by the assimilation of postulates that lie beyond us (beings or souls). Beyond postulates is the Unknowable.

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But what ground have we for thinking that there is psychic life in the world other than our human one, that of animals and of plants? 

First of all, of course, the thought that everything in the world is alive and animated and that manifestations of life and animatedness would naturally exist on all planes and in all forms. But we can discern the psychic life only in forms analogous to ours. 

The question stands in this way: how could we know about the existence of the psychic life of other sections of the world if they exist? 

By two methods: through COMMUNICATION, EXCHANGE OF THOUGHTS, and through CONCLUSIONS BY ANALOGY. 

For the first, it is necessary that our psyche should become similar to theirs, should transcend the limits of the three-dimensional world, i.e., it is necessary to change the form of receptivity and perception. 

The second may result as a consequence of the gradual expansion of the faculty of drawing inferences by analogy. By trying to think out of the usual categories, by trying to look at things and at ourselves from a new angle and simultaneously from many sides, by trying to liberate our thinking from its accustomed categories of perception in space and time, little by little we begin to notice analogies between things which we did not notice before. Our mind grows, and with it grows the power to discover analogies. This ability, with each new step attained, expands and enriches the mind. Each minute we advance more rapidly, each new step makes the next more easy. Our psyche becomes different. Then, applying to ourselves this expanded ability to construct analogies, and looking about we suddenly perceive all around ourselves a psychic life the existence of which we were previously unaware. And we understand the reason for this unawareness: this psychic life belongs to another plane, and not to that to which our psychic life is native. Thus in this case the ability to discover new analogies is the beginning of changes, which translate us into another plane of existence. 

The thought of a man begins to penetrate into the world of noumena, which is in affinity with it. Then his point of view changes likewise with regard to the things and events of the phenomenal world. Phenomena may suddenly assume, to his eyes, quite a different grouping. As already said, similar things may be different from one another in reality, different things may be similar; quite separate, disconnected things may be part of one great whole, of some entirely new category; and things which appear inextricably united in one, constituting one whole, may in reality be manifestations of different beings having nothing in common among themselves, even knowing nothing whatever about the existence of one another. Such indeed may be any whole of our world — man, animal, planet, planetary system — i.e., consisting of different psychic lives, a battlefield as it were of warring entities. 

In each whole of our world we perceive a multitude of opposing tendencies, aspirations, efforts. Each aggregate is as it were an arena of struggle for multitudes of opposing forces, each of which acts by itself, is directed to its own goal, usually to the disruption of the whole. But the interaction of these forces represents the life of the whole; and in everything something is always acting which limits the activity of separate tendencies. This something is the psychic life of the whole. We cannot establish the existence of such a life by analogy with ourselves, or by intercourse with it, or by exchange of thoughts, but a new path opens before us. We perceive a certain separate and quite definite function (the preservation of the whole). Behind this function we infer a certain separate something. A separate something having a definite function is impossible without a separate psychic life. If the whole possesses its own psychic life then the separate tendencies or forces must also possess a psychic life of their own. A body or organism is the point of intersection of such lines of forces, a place of meeting, perhaps a battlefield. Our “I” is also that battlefield on which this or that emotion, this or that habit or inclination gains an advantage, subjecting to itself all of the rest at every given moment, and identifying itself with the I. Our I is a being, having its own life, imperfectly conscious of that of which it itself consists, and identifying itself with this or another portion of itself. Have we any warrant for supposing that the organs and members of a body, thoughts and emotions, are BEINGS also? We have, because we know that there exists nothing purely mechanical; and any something, having a separate function, MUST BE animated and can be called a being. 

All the beings assumed by us to exist in the world of many dimensions, cannot know one another, i.e., cannot know that we are binding them together in different wholes in our phenomenal world, just as in general they cannot know our phenomenal world and its relations. But they must know themselves, although it is impossible for us to define the degree of clearness of this consciousness. It may be clearer than ours, and it may be more vague — dreamlike, as it were. Between these beings there may be a continuous but imperfectly perceived exchange of thoughts, analogous to the exchange of substance in a living organism. They may experience certain feelings in common, certain thoughts may arise in them spontaneously as it were, under the influence of general causes. Upon the lines of this inner communion they must divide themselves into different wholes of some categories to us entirely incomprehensible, or only guessed at. The essence of each such separate being must consist in its knowledge of itself, and its nearest functions and relations; it must feel things analogous to itself, and must have the faculty of telling about itself and them, i.e., this consciousness must always behold a picture of itself and its conditioning relations. It is eternally studying this picture and instantly communicating it to another being coming into communion with it. 

Whether these consciousnesses in sections of the world other than ours exist or not, we, under the existing conditions of our receptivity, cannot say. They can be sensed only by the changed psyche. Our usual receptivity and thinking are too absorbed by the sensations of the phenomenal world, and by themselves, and therefore do not reflect impressions coming to them from other beings, or reflect them so weakly that they are not fixed there in any intelligible form. Moreover we do not recognize the fact that we are in constant communion with the noumena of all surrounding things, near and remote, with beings like ourselves and others entirely different, with the life of everything in the world and of all the world. But if the impressions coming from other beings are so forceful that the consciousness feels them, then our mind immediately projects them into the outer world of phenomena and seeks for their cause in the phenomenal world, exactly in the same manner that a two-dimensional being, inhabiting a plane, seeks in its plane for the cause of the impressions which come from a higher world. 

To discover psychic life that has evolved beyond us, we must discover and resolve anomalies in the area of life. This requires intelligent guesswork. The ultimate criterion is the oneness of the whole. Nothing should be taken for granted. Everything must be questioned.

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Our psyche is limited by its phenomenal receptivity, i.e., it is surrounded by itself. The world of phenomena, i.e., the form of its own perception, surrounds it as a ring, or as a wall, and it sees nothing save this wall. 

But if the psyche succeeds in escaping out of this limiting circle, it will invariably see much that is new in the world. 

If we will separate self-elements in our perception, writes Hinton [A New Era of Thought, pp. 36, 37], then it will be found that the deadness which we ascribe to the external world is not really there, but is put in by us because of our own limitations. It is really the self-elements in our knowledge which make us talk of mechanical necessity, dead matter. When our limitations fall, we behold the spirit of the world as we behold the spirit of a friend — something which is discerned in and through the material presentation of a body to us. 

Our thought means are sufficient at present to show us human souls; but all except human beings is, as far as science is concerned, inanimate. Our self-element must be got rid of from our perception, and this will be changed. 

But is the unknowableness of the noumenal world as absolute for us as it sometimes seems? 

In The Critique of Pure Reason and in other writings, Kant denied the possibility of “spiritual sight” But in Dreams of a Ghost-seer he not only admitted this possibility, but gave to it one of the best definitions which we have ever had up to now. He clearly affirms: 

I confess that I am very much inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to put my soul itself into that class of beings. These immaterial beings . . . are immediately united with each other, they might form, perhaps, a great whole which might be called the immaterial world. Every man is a being of two worlds: of the incorporeal world and of the material world . . . and it will be proved I don’t know where or when, that the human soul also in this life forms an indissoluble communion with all immaterial natures of the spirit-world, that, alternately, it acts upon and receives impressions from that world of which nevertheless it is not conscious while it is still man and as long as everything is in proper condition . . . 

We should, therefore, have to regard the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time, of which it clearly perceives only the material world, in so far as it is conjoined with a body, and thus forms a personal unit. . . . 

It is therefore, indeed, one subject, which is thus at the same time a member of the visible and of the invisible world, but not one and the same person; for on account of their different quality, the conceptions of the one world are not ideas associated with those of the other world; thus, what I think as a spirit, is not remembered by me as a man, and, conversely, my state as a man does not at all enter into the conception of myself as a spirit. 

Birth, life, death are the states of soul only . . . Consequently, our body only is perishable, the essence of us is not perishable, and must have been existent during that time when our body had no existence. The life of the man is dual. It consists of two lives — one animal and one spiritual. The first life is the life of man, and man needs a body to live this life. The second life is the life of spirit; his soul lives in that life separately from the body, and must live on in it after the separation from the body.

Our psyche is limited by its phenomenal receptivity; but there is much that is new in the world. Kant denied the possibility of physical receptivity but not that of spiritual receptivity. 

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In an essay on Kant in The Northern Messenger (1888, Russian), A. L. Volinsky says that both in Vorlesungen, and also in Dreams of a Ghost-seer, Kant denied the possibility of one thing only — the possibility of the physical receptivity of spiritual phenomena. 

Thus Kant admitted not only the possibility of the existence of a spiritual conscious world, but also the possibility of communion with it. 

Hegel built all his philosophy upon the possibility of a direct knowledge of truth, upon spiritual vision. 

Approaching the question of two worlds from the psychological standpoint, from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge, let us firmly establish the principle that before we can hope to comprehend anything in the region of noumena, we must define everything that it is possible to define of the world of many dimensions by a purely intellectual method, by a process of reasoning. It is highly probable that by this method we cannot define very much. Perhaps our definitions will be too crude, will not quite correspond to the fine differentiation of relations in the noumenal world: all this is possible and must be taken into consideration. Nevertheless we shall define what we can, and at the outset make as clear as possible what the noumenal world cannot be; then what it can be — show what relations are impossible in it, and what are possible.

This is necessary in order that we, coming in contact with the real world, may discriminate between it and the phenomenal world, and what is more important, that we may not mistake simple reflections of the phenomenal world for the noumenal. We do not know the world of causes; we are confined in the jail of the phenomenal world simply because we do not know how to discern where one ends and where the other begins. 

We are in constant touch with the world of causes, we live in it, because our psyche and our incomprehensible function in the world are part of it or a reflection of it. But we do not see or know it because we either deny it — consider that everything existing is phenomenal, and that nothing exists except the phenomenal — or we recognize it, but try to comprehend it in the forms of the three-dimensional phenomenal world; or lastly, we search for it and find it not, because we lose our way amid the deceits and illusions of the reflected phenomenal world which we mistakenly accept for the noumenal world. 

In this dwells the tragedy of our spiritual questings: we do not know what we are searching for. And the only method by which we can escape this tragedy consists in a preliminary intellectual definition of the properties of that of which we are in search. Without such definitions, going merely by indefinite feelings, we shall not approach the world of causes or else we shall get lost on its borderland. 

Spinoza understood this, saying that he could not speak of God, not knowing his attributes. 

When I studied Euclid, I learned first of all that the sum of three angles of a triangle was equal to two right angles, and this property of a triangle was entirely comprehensible to me, although I did not know its many other properties. But so far as spirits and ghosts are concerned, I do not know even one of their attributes, but constantly hear different fantastic tales about them in which it is impossible to discover any truth. 

We must first define everything by a process of reasoning. It may then guided us as to what relations are impossible in the noumenal world, and what are possible.

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We have established certain criteria which permit us to deal with the world of noumena or the “world of spirits.” These we shall make use of now. 

First of all we may say that the world of noumena cannot be three-dimensional and that there cannot be anything three-dimensional in it, i.e., commensurable with physical objects, similar to them in outside appearance, having form — there cannot be anything having extension in space and changing in time. And most important, there cannot be anything dead or inanimate. In the world of causes everything must be alive, because it is life itself: the soul of the world. 

Let us remember also that the world of causes is the world of the marvelous; that what appears simple to us can never be real. The real appears to us as the marvelous. We do not believe in it, we do not recognize it; and therefore we do not feel the mysteries of which life is so full. 

The simple is only that which is unreal. The real must seem marvelous. 

The mystery of time penetrates all. It is felt in every stone, which perhaps might have witnessed the glacial period, seen the ichthyosaurus and the mammoth. It is felt in the approaching day, which we do not see, but which possibly sees us, which perchance is our last day; or on the other hand is the day of some transformation the nature of which we do not ourselves now know. 

The mystery of thought creates all. As soon as we shall understand that thought is not a “function of motion,” but that motion itself is only a function of thought — and shall begin to feel the depth of THIS MYSTERY — we shall perceive that the entire phenomenal world is some gigantic hallucination, which fails to frighten us, and does not drive us to think that we are mad simply because we have become accustomed to it. 

The mystery of infinity — the greatest of all mysteries — it tells us that all the visible universe and its galaxies of stars have no dimension: that in relation to infinity they are equal to a point, a mathematical point which has no extension whatever, and that points which are not measurable for us may have a different extension and different dimensions. 

In “positive” thinking we make the effort TO FORGET ABOUT ALL THIS: NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT. 

At some future time positivism will be defined as a system by the aid of which it was possible not to think of real things and to limit oneself to the region of the unreal and illusory.

The noumenal world has to be made of postulates that are infinite in possibilities. That makes it a world that is alive, full of mysteries, and exciting.

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