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object:1.04 - Wherefore of World?
class:The Wherefore of the Worlds
author class:Paul Richard
magazine class:Arya
class:chapter

Wherefore of World?
15th November 1914

But if there is no first cause, are there at least first reasons which can explain the wherefore of the worlds?

But why any reasons? Is it not possible that the world may have no reason for existence outside itself? Is it really necessary that what is, should justify its existence? Is not the simple fact of existence sufficient to itself? There can be no doubt of it, once we perceive that the fact of existence contains in itself all its own reasons for existence. Only they are so deeply hidden and profound that they escape the vision of the mind. And therefore, because it cannot see, it replaces contemplation by reasoning, vision by intellectual search.

The various hypotheses constructed by the reasoning mind about that which is beyond its knowledge, would undoubtedly have shed light on the riddle of the world but for our regrettable habit of opposing them to each other instead of harmonising them. Harmonised, their number would have increased our knowledge. As things stand, their diversity rather increases the perplexity of our minds.

The reason pays in this loss and bewilderment the penalty of its lack of respect for the numerous forms which its effort has assumed at different times and in varying environments. However imperfect these forms may be, we should prize in them the fruit of the labour accomplished by the thought of man and have no right to despise what was and still is for so many minds the means of expressing the mystery of things and entering into contact with the inexpressible reality.

Is there a single conception or a single belief, even though puerile, which does not contain a portion, a soul of truth? And if we love and seek the truth, how shall we refuse to receive, listen to and understand these different tongues into which it is translated or to gather instruction from them all?

For all the forms of language that the mind employs, are equally necessary to it and it would be impoverished by the pretension of any one of them to exclude the rest and so deprive it of the means of comprehension which they represent; while, on the contrary, by lending their assistance to each other and completing each other, they add to its riches.

Therefore, all teachings about the riddle of the world, however seemingly different, should be considered with the same sympathy; for they are all of them perceptions, distinct and sometimes opposite, of one and the same integral truth and may become, with advantage to that truth and to each other, elements in a comprehensive synthesis in which Philosophy may at length find its highest thought and its truest conception.
***

However numerous the different hypotheses relating to the first reasons of things, they can be reduced to two principal standpoints. Is the world necessary or is it contingent or accidental? Might what is, not have been? For one can conceive that nothing might exist or at least that nothing might exist in the way that things now exist. Many philosophies and religions arrive at a regret that things have not been ordered otherwise than they are and some even affirm that it would have been better if nothing at all had been.

But after all, whether one will or no, the world is what it is, and, whether it is a necessity or a contingent accident, we have first to admit that what is, was possible and next that there was a sufficient reason for its existing.

To speak of the accidental or contingent existence of the world is to say only that other worlds or rather other modes of being of the world were possible ;and that is very certain, since it is just those other possibilities which, by realising themselves in their turn, are continually modifying the order of the universe. Its evolution consists in the addition to the first accidents of others that succeed them.

To say on the other hand that this world was necessity, is simply to affirm that the reason for which it exists, so prevailed over all others as to determine the realisation of this possibility and postpone to it the realisation of others,a self-evident proposition.

Whether this be the best or the worst of all possible worlds, it is the necessary manifestation of a given sum of contingencies.

That which is, is at once accident in relation to what might have been and necessity in relation to what has not succeeded in being. And it will be the same for each new accident until there is a consummation of all the possibilities.
***

But this conclusion does not carry us very far, For what is that sufficient reason which will explain the possibilities actually realised?

According as we adopt the mechanical or the psychological standpoint in regard to the universe, our hypotheses touching the wherefore of the world become the theory of a conscient or of an inconscient necessity, of a fortuitous accident or of an arbitrary act; and this arbitrary act proceeding from a pure freedom of will may in its turn be differently interpreted according to the motives we attri bute to it,thought of transcendental love or thought of transcendental egoism.

But if we look more closely at these opposite ideas of a mechanism or of a psychological working, we shall see that they are only a double device which the mind adopts to interpret the riddle and veil its own ignorance. For each of the two theses seems to deny what the other affirms and, nevertheless, they only reveal severally, without knowing it, two aspects of one reality.

All their oppositions resolve themselves into the dilemma of the consciousness or unconsciousness of the first reasons of things, that is to say, into two conceptions, according to our intellectual preference, of the universal dynamism which the one calls force, the other will.

But what is meant by consciousness or unconsciousness? The distinction which we express by these words, has reference to our own modes of activity and to our own special conditions. And, certainly, it is no less erroneous to refuse than to attri bute what we call consciousness to the principle of the universe. For, perhaps, what for us would be a supreme unconsciousness, is indistinguishable from an entire superconsciousness in the All; and a single term cannot be applied to the manner of thought in the individual and the way in which the universe reflects. Two opposite terms would both be justified, if they could be used as simultaneous affirmations.

The terms, Force and Will, which are often opposed to each other by the materialistic and the spiritual conceptions of the universe, are such affirmations and we have only to complete one by the other in the domain proper to each by conceiving Will as a force seen from within in its subjective principle and Force as a will seen from without in its objective manifestations.

Thus these contradictory hypotheses and exclusive doctrines appear insufficient and too exiguous in their Simplicity, if they are considered separately, but reconcilable, if more deeply regarded, and capable of completing each other by their reconciliation.

Here, as elsewhere, contradictories prove to be only complementaries ill-adjusted and inconscient of each other.
***

When we speak of first reasons, we affirm by implication that there is a principle of Reason in the very essence of things. We admit, in other words, that the fundamental law of the universe responds to the rule and need order and arrangement in our own mentality.

Even if we suppose at the beginning of things a chaos such as sometimes confuses our own ideas, we cannot refuse to this melancholy condition the power to assume progressive form, that is to say, to realise the principle of order which it holds in itself. Otherwise there would be no possibility of anything more rational issuing out of that chaos.

It would be vain to mass together indefinitely a heap of letters of the alphabet; they would never of themselves arrange words and phrases, if the idea of those phrases and those words did not intervene and preside over the arrangement. Nor, any more, would the elements constituting Matter have organised themselves as they have done if previous affinities, that is to say, first reasons had not determined and rendered possible their combinations.

Thus in the chaos, which can be nothing but an inferior order, an order yet unrealised, existed already the spirit, force or law the word we use matters littleof the order to come.

And this chaos was already an admirable harmony in comparison with the greater chaos which preceded it, just as the actual existing order hymned by the poets of Nature is an impossible chaos compared with the more perfect order that is yet to be born.

Thus all that is in actuality must first be in potentiality. All that is, virtually was. Nothing can be in effect and result which was not in some way and some form in the origin of things. The phenomenon only manifests what was before concealed.

By self-manifestation the universe stands revealed to us and the things of Nature discover to our minds the nature of things.

How could we understand anything at all if there were not some relation of harmony and some link of identity between the inner reason of phenomena and the inner phenomena of our reason?
***

No doubt, the reality assumes a new character when it translates, itself into concrete forms. In those forms the universal becomes the particular. When it appears, it clothes itself in appearances and they veil even while they reveal it. It is for this reason that the mind finds it as difficult to admit as to deny the principle which underlies the phenomenon.

If we examine, for instance, the phenomenon of thought, we have to observe that it is inseparable from the functioning of the material organs, while on the other hand it seems in its principle to have nothing in common with the matter of the organ which manifests it. And we cannot help opposing Mind and Matter to each other, although we do not see the in anywhere apart from each other.

Thought, even though in its apparent form a concrete effect of a purely physico-chemical order, is also, independently of its special conditions, outside of the apparatus which manifests it, a principle of activity in itself, a mode of the universal energy.

To speak of Thought independently of the mechanism of the brain is not, then, less legitimate than to speak of Light independently of our different means of illumination. The only difference is that we have found a formula for the swiftness of Light, while we have not yet succeeded in finding in motion any such equation for Thought.

But just as the vibratory motion from which Light is horn, can give rise in Nature to many and diverse phenomena without any relation to our visual perceptions, so also the principle of Thought may be at work under different forms and lend itself to manifestations that have no relation to the phenomena of our intellectuality.

And inversely, if there are different processes capable of producing the effect of luminosity, why should there not be also other means for the manifestation of Intelligence than that which we employ? The forms which thought assumes outside the mechanism of the brain, are to us unknown. But since one principle of Intelligence fills the whole universe, who can say whether worlds do not, like beings, think?

Before Mind became active in being, its principle existed in the worlds; before it existed in the worlds, it was, in itself, an eternal principle of Mind.

But before this principle could translate itself into the forms that thought takes in us, Matter was; and the principle existed as a force in Matter.

Similarly, before Matter was, before its forms were manifested, there was in the possibility of these forms an eternal principle of Matter. And there where all form disappears and leaves only abstractions of pure Mind, does not this principle of Matter still subsist? Is it not the very substance and, so to speak, the matter of that Mind?

It is therefore beyond Matter and Mind, Force and Will, Consciousness and Unconsciousness and in all these that we must seek a cause for the existence of the worlds.
***

Still, the mind is justified in translating its first data into its own language in preference to another. And, even, this preference is forced upon it. For what has more than anything else hampered its attempt to discover the cause of the world, is the search for it in a domain alien to the minds own activities. The problem of the initial movement will always remain insoluble to it, if the data are not first translated into psychological terms. It is in its own fundamental dynamism that it must discover the primary energy, in its own secret that it must seek for the secret of the universe.

But there is another thing which prevents it from resolving the riddle of the world, and that is the arbitrary reduction of the whole formula of being into the terms of mental knowledge. For the domain of mind, intelligence, thought, is only one domain of the universal; its reality represents only one of the forms, one of the aspects of existence. The fact of existence is not exhausted by the idea; therefore its principle cannot be defined from the sole point of view of Mind.

Pure thought, which Idealism regards as the first essence, may well constitute the abstract and conceptual foundation of being; it is not sufficient to explain the living and concrete reality. And Will itself cannot be presented as ultimate cause of the world. For Will is a power of action, realisation, emotion, productive of movement, only in the domain of the subjective energies. But the universe is not only an internal dynamism; it is a substantial activity.

It is, therefore, only an integral experience that can enable us to attain, beyond the multiple forms and successive depths of the reality, its ultimate sources. The discovery cannot be effected by the sole aid of the logical reason. The data of sensation must enter into it no less than those of the understanding, no less than those of the still more transcendent faculties of intuitive consciousness and of knowledge that is lived.

When the mind, then, assembles these data and makes its language sufficiently supple to translate them synthetically, it perceives that each of them justifies from its own point of view one or other of the reasons which philosophies and religions have assigned for the existence of beings and of the world. And as the being within proceeds to resume them and make an integral whole of them all, it learns to discover by them the being itself and by the being the wherefore of the worlds.
***



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