TERMS STARTING WITH
The philosophers, dramatists, and historians who held the Dionysian mythos to be purely allegorical and symbolic take in the great names of antiquity, including Plato, Pythagoras, all the Neoplatonists, the greatest historians, and a few of the early Christian Fathers, notably Clement of Alexandria; Eusebius, Tertullian, Justin, and Augustine, also write of it.
TERMS ANYWHERE
Absolute: (Lat. absolvere to release or set free) Of this term Stephanus Chauvin in the Lexicon Philosophicum, 1713, p2 observes: "Because one thing is said to be free from another in many ways, so also the word absolute is taken by the philosophers in many senses." In Medieval Scholasticism this term was variously used, for example: freed or abstracted from material conditions, hence from contingency; hence applicable to all being; without limitations or restrictions; simply; totally; independent; unconditionally; uncaused; free from mental reservation.
Alchemy seeks the primal unity beyond diversity: a homogeneous substance from which the many elements were derived; a pure gold which could be obtained from baser metals by purging them of the dross with which the pure element was alloyed; an elixir of life which would cure all diseases. The transmutation of metals was their magnum opus; the agent to be employed was the philosopher’s stone. Though these processes are possible physically, the spiritual processes to which they correspond are incomparably more important. The base metals are the passions and delusions of the lower mind; and the pure gold is the wisdom of the manas in alliance with buddhi.
Among his most important works the following must be mentioned: Paz en la Guerra, 1897; De la Ensenanza Superior en Espana, 1899; En Torno al Casticismo, 1902; Amor y Pedagogia, 1902; Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, 1905; Mi Religion y Otros Ensayos, 1910; Soliloquios y Conversaciones, 1912; Contra Esto y Aquello, 1912; Ensayos, 7 vols., 1916-1920; Del Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida en los Hombres y en los Pueblos, 1914; Niebla, 1914; La Agonia del Cristianismo, 1930; etc. Unamuno conceives of everv individual man as an end in himself and not a means. Civilization has an individual responsibility towards each man. Man lives in society, but society as such is an abstraction. The concrete fact is the individual man "of flesh and blood". This doctrine of man constitutes the first principle of his entire philosophy. He develops it throughout his writings by way of a soliloquy in which he attacks the concepts of "man", "Society", "Humanity", etc. as mere abstractions of the philosophers, and argues for the "Concrete", "experiential" facts of the individual living man. On his doctrine of man as an individual fact ontologically valid, Unamuno roots the second principle of his philosophy, namely, his theory of Immortality. Faith in immortality grows out, not from the realm of reason, but from the realm of facts which lie beyond the boundaries of reason. In fact, reason as such, that is, as a logical function is absolutely disowned bv Unamuno, as useless and unjustified. The third principle of his philosophy is his theory of the Logos which has to do with man's intuition of the world and his immediate response in language and action. -- J.A.F.
antonomasia ::: n. --> The use of some epithet or the name of some office, dignity, or the like, instead of the proper name of the person; as when his majesty is used for a king, or when, instead of Aristotle, we say, the philosopher; or, conversely, the use of a proper name instead of an appellative, as when a wise man is called a Solomon, or an eminent orator a Cicero.
Arabic Philosophy: The contact of the Arabs with Greek civilization and philosophy took place partly in Syria, where Christian Arabic philosophy developed, partly in other countries, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt and Spain. The effect of this contact was not a simple reception of Greek philosophy, but the gradual growth of an original mode of thought, determined chiefly by the religious and philosophical tendencies alive in the Arab world. Eastern influences had produced a mystical trend, not unlike Neo-Platonism; the already existing "metaphysics of light", noticeable in the religious conception of the Qoran, also helped to assimilate Plotinlan ideas. On the other hand, Aristotelian philosophy became important, although more, at least in the beginning, as logic and methodology. The interest in science and medicine contributed to the spread of Aristotelian philosophy. The history of philosophy in the Arab world is determined by the increasing opposition of Orthodoxy against a more liberal theology and philosophy. Arab thought became influential in the Western world partly through European scholars who went to Spain and elsewhere for study, mostly however through the Latin translations which became more and more numerous at the end of the 12th and during the 13th centuries. Among the Christian Arabs Costa ben Luca (864-923) has to be mentioned whose De Differentia spiritus et animae was translated by Johannes Hispanus (12th century). The first period of Islamic philosophy is occupied mainly with translation of Greek texts, some of which were translated later into Latin. The Liber de causis (mentioned first by Alanus ab Insulis) is such a translation of an Arab text; it was believed to be by Aristotle, but is in truth, as Aquinas recognized, a version of the Stoicheiosis theologike by Proclus. The so-called Theologia Aristotelis is an excerpt of Plotinus Enn. IV-VI, written 840 by a Syrian. The fundamental trends of Arab philosophy are indeed Neo-Platonic, and the Aristotelian texts were mostly interpreted in this spirit. Furthermore, there is also a tendency to reconcile the Greek philosophers with theological notions, at least so long as the orthodox theologians could find no reason for opposition. In spite of this, some of the philosophers did not escape persecution. The Peripatetic element is more pronounced in the writings of later times when the technique of paraphrasis and commentary on Aristotelian texts had developed. Beside the philosophy dependent more or less on Greek, and partially even Christian influences, there is a mystical theology and philosophy whose sources are the Qoran, Indian and, most of all, Persian systems. The knowledge of the "Hermetic" writings too was of some importance.
Aristotle, medieval: Contrary to the esteem in which the Fathers held Platonic and especially Neo-Platonic philosophy, Aristotle plays hardly any role in early Patristic and Scholastic writings. Augustine seems not to have known much about him and admired him more as logician whereas he held Plato to be the much greater philosopher. The Middle Ages knew, until the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, only the logical texts, mostly in the translations made by Boethius of the texts and of the introduction by Porphyrius (Isagoge). During the latter third of the 12th, mostly however at the beginning of the 13th century appeared translations partly from Arabian texts and commentaries, partly from the Greek originals. Finally, Aquinas had William of Moerbeke translate the whole work of Aristotle, who soon came to be known as the Philosopher. Scholastic Aristotelianism is, however, not a simple revival of the Peripatetic views; Thomas is said to have "Christianized" the Philosopher as Augustine had done with Plato. Aristotle was differently interpreted by Aquinas and by the Latin Averroists (q.v. Averroism), especially in regard to the "unity of intellect" and the eternity of the created world. -- R.A.
Barqu: In demonography, a demon, guardian of the great secret of the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.).
carmot ::: n. --> The matter of which the philosopher&
chemistry; alchemy; the philosopher's stone.
citrination ::: n. --> The process by which anything becomes of the color of a lemon; esp., in alchemy, the state of perfection in the philosopher&
Crow’s head: In medieval alchemical terminology, the blackness of the mixture intended to produce the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.).
Epicurean School: Founded by Epicurus in Athens in the year 306 B.C. Epicureanism gave expression to the desire for a refined type of happiness which is the reward of the cultured man who can take pleasure in the joys of the mind over which he can have greater control than over those of a material or sensuous nature. The friendship of gifted and noble men, the peace and contentment that comes from fair conduct, good morals and aesthetic enjoyments are the ideals of the Epicurean who refuses to be perturbed by any metaphysical or religious doctrines which impose duties and thus hinder the freedom of pure enjoyment. Epicurus adopted the atomism of Democritus (q.v.) but modified its determinism by permitting chance to cause a swerve (clinamen) in the fall of the atoms. See C. W. Bailey, Epicurus. However, physics was not to be the main concern of the philosopher. See Apathia, Ataraxia, Hedonism. -- M.F.
everlasting to everlasting), and perhaps they are the spiritual intelligences of which the philosophers speak.” He goes
Fa chia: The Legalists School, the Philosophers of Law, also called hsing ming chia, who "had absolute faithfulness in reward and punishment as support for the system of correct conduct," and made no distinction between kindred and strangers and no discrimination between the honorable and the humble, but treated them as equals before the law. They emphasized the power natural to the position of a ruler (shih, especially Kuan Tzu, sixth century B.C. and Shen Tao, 350-275 B.C.?) statecraft (shu, especially Shen Pu-hai, 400-337 B.C.?), and law (fa, especially Shang Chun, 390-338 B.C.?), with Han Fei Tzu (280-233 B.C.) synthesizing all the three tendencies. -- W.T.C.
Green Lion, Hunting of the: A medieval alchemical treatise on the search for the Philosopher’s Stone (q.v.). The Green Lion is natural, unpurified, undeified Man—green because he is unripe, his occult powers are dormant, but having the strength and fierceness of a lion.
Ha-Levi, Judah: (b. ca. 1080, d. ca. 1140) Poet and philosopher. His Kuzari (Arabic Kitab Al-Khazari), written in dialogue form, has a double purpose. First, as its subtitle, A Book of Proofs and Arguments in Defense of the Humiliated Religion, indicates, it aims to prove the dignity and worth of Judaism. Secondly, he endeavors to show the insufficiency of philosophy and the superiority of the truths of revealed religion to those arrived at by logic. The admission of both Christianity and Islam that Judaism is their source proves the first. The exaltation of intuition as a means of certainty in matters of religion, and the claim that the prophet is the highest type of man rather than the philosopher purposes to substantiate the second. He endows the Jewish people with a special religio-ethical sense which is their share only and constitutes a quasi-biological quality. He assigns also a special importance to Palestine as a contributory factor in the spiritual development of his people, for only there can this religio-ethical sense come to full expression. -- M.W.
Hence in its widest sense Scholasticism embraces all the intellectual activities, artistic, philosophical and theological, carried on in the medieval schools. Any attempt to define its narrower meaning in the field of philosophy raises serious difficulties, for in this case, though the term's comprehension is lessened, it still has to cover many centuries of many-faced thought. However, it is still possible to list several characteristics sufficient to differentiate Scholastic from non-Scholastic philosophy. While ancient philosophy was the philosophy of a people and modern thought that of individuals, Scholasticism was the philosophy of a Christian society which transcended the characteristics of individuals, nations and peoples. It was the corporate product of social thought, and as such its reasoning respected authority in the forms of tradition and revealed religion. Tradition consisted primarily in the systems of Plato and Aristotle as sifted, adapted and absorbed through many centuries. It was natural that religion, which played a paramount role in the culture of the middle ages, should bring influence to bear on the medieval, rational view of life. Revelation was held to be at once a norm and an aid to reason. Since the philosophers of the period were primarily scientific theologians, their rational interests were dominated by religious preoccupations. Hence, while in general they preserved the formal distinctions between reason and faith, and maintained the relatively autonomous character of philosophy, the choice of problems and the resources of science were controlled by theology. The most constant characteristic of Scholasticism was its method. This was formed naturally by a series of historical circumstances, The need of a medium of communication, of a consistent body of technical language tooled to convey the recently revealed meanings of religion, God, man and the material universe led the early Christian thinkers to adopt the means most viable, most widely extant, and nearest at hand, viz. Greek scientific terminology. This, at first purely utilitarian, employment of Greek thought soon developed under Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and St. Augustine into the "Egyptian-spoils" theory; Greek thought and secular learning were held to be propaedeutic to Christianity on the principle: "Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians." (Justin, Second Apology, ch. XIII). Thus was established the first characteristic of the Scholastic method: philosophy is directly and immediately subordinate to theology. Because of this subordinate position of philosophy and because of the sacred, exclusive and total nature of revealed wisdom, the interest of early Christian thinkers was focused much more on the form of Greek thought than on its content and, it might be added, much less of this content was absorbed by early Christian thought than is generally supposed. As practical consequences of this specialized interest there followed two important factors in the formation of Scholastic philosophy: Greek logic en bloc was taken over by Christians; from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the XII century, no provision was made in Catholic centers of learning for the formal teaching of philosophy. There was a faculty to teach logic as part of the trivium and a faculty of theology. For these two reasons, what philosophy there was during this long period of twelve centuries, was dominated first, as has been seen, by theology and, second, by logic. In this latter point is found rooted the second characteristic of the Scholastic method: its preoccupation with logic, deduction, system, and its literary form of syllogistic argumentation. The third characteristic of the Scholastic method follows directly from the previous elements already indicated. It adds, however, a property of its own gained from the fact that philosophy during the medieval period became an important instrument of pedogogy. It existed in and for the schools. This new element coupled with the domination of logic, the tradition-mindedness and social-consciousness of the medieval Christians, produced opposition of authorities for or against a given problem and, finally, disputation, where a given doctrine is syllogistically defended against the adversaries' objections. This third element of the Scholastic method is its most original characteristic and accounts more than any other single factor for the forms of the works left us from this period. These are to be found as commentaries on single or collected texts; summae, where the method is dialectical or disputational in character. The main sources of Greek thought are relatively few in number: all that was known of Plato was the Timaeus in the translation and commentary of Chalcidius. Augustine, the pseudo-Areopagite, and the Liber de Causis were the principal fonts of Neoplatonic literature. Parts of Aristotle's logical works (Categoriae and de Interpre.) and the Isagoge of Porphyry were known through the translations of Boethius. Not until 1128 did the Scholastics come to know the rest of Aristotle's logical works. The golden age of Scholasticism was heralded in the late XIIth century by the translations of the rest of his works (Physics, Ethics, Metaphysics, De Anima, etc.) from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona, John of Spain, Gundisalvi, Michael Scot, and Hermann the German, from the Greek by Robert Grosseteste, William of Moerbeke, and Henry of Brabant. At the same time the Judae-Arabian speculation of Alkindi, Alfarabi, Avencebrol, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides together with the Neoplatonic works of Proclus were made available in translation. At this same period the Scholastic attention to logic was turned to metaphysics, even psychological and ethical problems and the long-discussed question of the universals were approached from this new angle. Philosophy at last achieved a certain degree of autonomy and slowly forced the recently founded universities to accord it a separate faculty.
He was the first to recognize a fundamental critical difference between the philosopher and the scientist. He found those genuine ideals in the pre-Socratic period of Greek culture which he regarded as essential standards for the deepening of individuality and real culture in the deepest sense, towards which the special and natural sciences, and professional or academic philosophers failed to contribute. Nietzsche wanted the philosopher to be prophetic, originally forward-looking in the clarification of the problem of existence. Based on a comprehensive critique of the history of Western civilization, that the highest values in religion, morals and philosophy have begun to lose their power, his philosophy gradually assumed the will to power, self-aggrandizement, as the all-embracing principle in inorganic and organic nature, in the development of the mind, in the individual and in society. More interested in developing a philosophy of life than a system of academic philosophy, his view is that only that life is worth living which develops the strength and integrity to withstand the unavoidable sufferings and misfortunes of existence without flying into an imaginary world.
in 1964. Hegel the philosopher saw in Mephisto¬
inconscient ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Inconscient and the Ignorance may be mere empty abstractions and can be dismissed as irrelevant jargon if one has not come in collision with them or plunged into their dark and bottomless reality. But to me they are realities, concrete powers whose resistance is present everywhere and at all times in its tremendous and boundless mass.” *Letters on Savitri
". . . in its actual cosmic manifestation the Supreme, being the Infinite and not bound by any limitation, can manifest in Itself, in its consciousness of innumerable possibilities, something that seems to be the opposite of itself, something in which there can be Darkness, Inconscience, Inertia, Insensibility, Disharmony and Disintegration. It is this that we see at the basis of the material world and speak of nowadays as the Inconscient — the Inconscient Ocean of the Rigveda in which the One was hidden and arose in the form of this universe — or, as it is sometimes called, the non-being, Asat.” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient itself is only an involved state of consciousness which like the Tao or Shunya, though in a different way, contains all things suppressed within it so that under a pressure from above or within all can evolve out of it — ‘an inert Soul with a somnambulist Force".” Letters on Yoga
"The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.” Letters on Yoga
"The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga :::
"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal.” The Life Divine
"Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine. Letters on Savitri :::
"Is it really a fact that even the ordinary reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say ‘even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, ‘the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one can be ignorant. What is true is that the ordinary reader might not be familiar with the philosophical content of the word Inconscient and might not be familiar with the Vedantic idea of the Ignorance as the power behind the manifested world. But I don"t see how I can acquaint him with these things in a single line, even with the most. illuminating image or symbol. He might wonder, if he were Johnsonianly minded, how an Inconscient could be teased or how it could wake Ignorance. I am afraid, in the absence of a miracle of inspired poetical exegesis flashing through my mind, he will have to be left wondering.” Letters on Savitri
**inconscient, Inconscient"s.**
In Germany, the movement was initiated by G. W. Leibniz whose writings reveal another motive for the cult of pure reason, i.e. the deep disappointment with the Reformation and the bloody religious wars among Christians who were accused of having forfeited the confidence of man in revealed religion. Hence the outstanding part played by the philosophers of ''natural law", Grotius, S. Pufendorf, and Chr. Thomasius, their theme being advanced by the contributions to a "natural religion" and tolerance by Chr. Wolff, G. E. Lessing, G. Herder, and the Prussian king Frederik II. Fr. v. Schiller's lyric and dramas served as a powerful commendation of ideal freedom, liberty, justice, and humanity. A group of educators (philanthropists) designed new methods and curricula for the advancement of public education, many of them, eg. Pestalozzi, Basedow, Cooper, A. H. Francke, and Fr. A. Wolf, the father of classic humanism, having achieved international recognition. Although in general agreement with th philosophical axioms of foreign enlighteners, the German philosophy decidedly opposed the English sensism (Hume) and French scepticism, and reached its height in Kant's Critiques. The radical rationalism, however, combined with its animosity against religion, brought about strong philosophical, theological, and literal opposition (Hamann, Jacobi, Lavater) which eventually led to its defeat. The ideals of the enlightenment period, the impassioned zeal for the materialization of the ideal man in an ideal society show clearly that it was basically related to the Renaissance and its continuation. See Aufklärung. Cf. J. G. Hibben, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. -- S.v.F.
investigation ::: n. --> The act of investigating; the process of inquiring into or following up; research; study; inquiry, esp. patient or thorough inquiry or examination; as, the investigations of the philosopher and the mathematician; the investigations of the judge, the moralist.
The Philosopher&
K = The Knowledge of Reality
P = The Philosopher&
KNOWLEDGE, HYLOZOIC THEORY OF As regards the theory of knowledge, everything is above all what it appears to be: physical material reality, but beside that always something totally different and immensely more. K 1.4.3, 4.1.1
In the main, there are three totally different kinds of so-called theory of knowledge; that of Western ignorance of life, Indian illusionist philosophy (advaita), and hylozoics, respectively.
The Western theory is either the usual agnostic or skeptical physicalism that denies the existence of anything that cannot be ascertained by everybody, and regards consciousness as a quality of organic matter; or philosophic subjectivism that attributes man's different kinds of consciousness to a fictitious immaterial or
spiritual world of consciousness.
The advaita philosophy makes the cardinal mistake of judging reality in one world from the apprehension of reality in another world, and therefore arrives at nothing but absurdities. The apprehension of reality in world 45, for example, is logically impossible to both 47- selves and 43-selves. The philosophers must learn to let &
Korn's philosophy represents an attack against naive and dogmatic positivism, but admits and even assimilates an element of Positivism which Korn calls Native Argentinian Positivism. Alejandro Korn may be called The Philosopher of Freedom. In fact, freedom is the keynote of his thought. He speaks of Human liberty as the indissoluble union of economic and ethical liberties. The free soul's knowledge of the world of science operates mainly on the basis of intuition. In fact, intuition is the basis of all knowledge. "Necessity of the objective world order", "Freedom of the spirit in the subjective realm", "Identity", 'Purpose", "Unity of Consciousness", and other similar concepts, are "expressions of immediate evidence and not conclusions of logical dialectics". The experience of freedom, according to Korn, leads to the problem of evaluation, which he defines as "the human response to a fact", whether the fact be an object or an event. Valuation is an experience which grows out of the struggle for liberty. Values, therefore, are relative to the fields of experience in which valuation takes place. The denial of an absolute value or values, does not signify the exclusion of personal faith. On the contrary, personal, faith is the common ground and point of departure of knowledge and action. See Latin-American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.
Magnum Opus (Latin) The great work; in medieval and modern times an alchemical term for the making of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life; an achievement which, as with alchemy generally, may be regarded as being accomplished either in the laboratory of human nature among the elements of man’s constitution, or in a brick and mortar laboratory with chemicals.
mastery ::: n. --> The position or authority of a master; dominion; command; supremacy; superiority.
Superiority in war or competition; victory; triumph; preeminence.
Contest for superiority.
A masterly operation; a feat.
Specifically, the philosopher&
“Men have not learnt yet to recognise the Inconscient on which the whole material world they see is built, or the Ignorance of which their whole nature including their knowledge is built; they think that these words are only abstract metaphysical jargon flung about by the philosophers in their clouds or laboured out in long and wearisome books like The Life Divine.
Nāgārjunakondā. "Nāgārjuna's hill" (kondā means "hill" in Telugu), an important archaeological site in southern India, in the modern state of Andhra Pradesh; it is the present name for Vijayapurī, the capital of the Iksvāku dynasty (c. 227-309) founded by Vāsistīputra CaMtamula after the decline of AMARĀVATĪ, the southern capital of the later Sātavāhana [alt. sātavāhana] dynasty. In 1926, ruins were discovered of what was the most important monastic center in the Deccan. There is no archaeological evidence to support its traditional association with the philosopher NĀGĀRJUNA, although there are remains of Buddhist monasteries and reliquaries of at least four Buddhist schools. Each monastic unit consisted of a STuPA, two CAITYA halls (one containing a stupa, the other an image of the buddha), and a VIHĀRA (residential quarters). The stupas at the site are designed in the shape of a wheel. Limestone panels and friezes have also been discovered at the site. Nāgārjunakondā and AMARĀVATĪ are particularly important for showing how Buddhist and Brahmanical structures were constructed at the same time, alongside each other, supported by different members of the same ruling families.
Nature Philosophers: Name given to pre-Socratic "physiologers" and to Renaissance philosophers who revived the study of physical processes. Early in the 16th century, as a result of the discovery of new lands, the revival of maritime trade, and the Reformation, there appeared in Europe a renewed interest in nature. Rationalism grown around the authorities of the Bible and Aristotle was challenged and the right to investigate phenomena was claimed. Interest in nature was directed at first toward the starry heaven and resulted in important discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. The scientific spirit of observation and research had not yet matured, however, and the philosophers of that time blended their interest in facts with much loose speculation. Among the nature philosophers of that period three deserve to be mentioned specifically, Telesio, Bruno and Carnpanella, all natives of Southern Italy. Despite his assertions that thought should be guided by the observation of the external world, Bernardino Telesio (1508-1588) confined his works to reflections on the nature of things. Particularly significant are two of his doctrines, first, that the universe must be described in terms of matter and force, the latter classified as heat and cold, and second, that mind is akin to matter. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a Dominican monk and a victim of the Inquisition, was greatly influenced by the Copernican conception of the universe regarded by him as a harmonious unity of which the earth was but a small and not too important part. The concept of unity was not a condition of human search for truth but a real principle underlying all things and expressing the harmonious order of Divine wisdom. Deity, in his view, was the soul of nature, operating both in the human minds and in the motion of bodies. Consequently, both living beings and material objects must be regarded as animated. Tomaso Campanella (1568-1639), another Dominican monk, was also persecuted for his teachings and spent 27 years in prison. He contended that observations of nature were not dependent on the authority of reason and can be refuted only by other observations. His interests lay largely along the lines previously suggested by Telesio, and much of his thought was devoted to problems of mind, consciousness and knowledge. He believed that all nature was permeated by latent awareness, and may therefore be regarded as an animist or perhaps pantheist. Today, he is best known for his City of the Sun, an account of an imaginary ideal state in which existed neither property nor nobility and in which all affair were administered scientifically. -- R.B.W.
philosophate ::: v. i. --> To play the philosopher; to moralize.
Philosopher’s Stone [from Latin Lapis philosophorum] The stone or material which can transmute base metals into gold. The universal agent or great solvent, the mystical culmination of whose work is the production of spiritual perfect man. The base metals, in this mystical interpretation, are the passions and lower elements in the human constitution, which by the philosopher’s stone are transmuted into the pure inner gold of his spiritual nature. Spiritual processes have their analogs in chemical processes, the latter being the sole object of most if not all of the later alchemists.
Philosopher's Stone ::: One of the primary aims of inner alchemy is a transformation of perspective on self. A major way this is done is to supplant the self of the Lunar Personality into the Self of the Solar Personality. On this site the stance is taken that the philosopher's stone is mainly a metaphor for this process.
PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is limited to physical reality and therefore, physically, all philosophy remains physicalism and, superphysically, subjectivism: speculations without reality content. In order to speak about the superphysical one must have factual knowledge of the superphysical worlds. K 5.38.2
The philosophers have not yet managed to solve the basic problem of existence: trinity; the three equal, inseparable aspects of existence. Ever since the Greek sophists, the whole history of philosophy has been dominated by the subjectivist way of looking at things. K 5.43.21
Platonic School The philosophers of the Academy, who followed Plato and can be traced down to the days of Cicero, gradually undergoing change during that period and divisible into schools connected with the names of prominent philosophers. Distinguished from the Aristotelian or Peripatetic school, much as philosophy is distinguished from science or as idealism is distinguished from naturalism. The principal feature is the Platonic dualism: of noumenon and phenomenon, of the self-moving and that which is moved, of the Idea and its manifestation in an organic being, of the permanent and the impermanent, of soul and body, nous and psyche, etc. In epistemology this dualism appears as philosophia and sense experience — the wisdom which apprehends reality and that which forms concepts from the data of sense experience; in morals, as the contrast between the Good, which is altruistic because it apprehends the unity of all beings, and the ethic of self-seeking based on the illusion of separateness.
Platonism as a political philosophy finds its best known exposition in the theory of the ideal state in the Republic. There, Plato described a city in which social justice would be fully realized. Three classes of men are distinguished: the philosopher kings, apparently a very small group whose education has been alluded to above, who would be the rulers because by nature and by training they were the best men for the job. They must excel particularly in their rational abilities: their special virtue is philosophic wisdom; the soldiers, or guardians of the state, constitute the second class; their souls must be remarkable for the development of the spirited, warlike element, under the control of the virtue of courage; the lowest class is made up of the acquisitive group, the workers of every sort whose characteristic virtue is temperance. For the two upper classes, Plato suggested a form of community life which would entail the abolition of monogamous marriage, family life, and of private property. It is to be noted that this form of semi-communism was suggested for a minority of the citizens only (Repub. III and V) and it is held to be a practical impossibility in the Laws (V, 739-40), though Plato continued to think that some form of community life is theoretically best for man. In Book VIII of the Republic, we find the famous classification of five types of political organization, ranging from aristocracy which is the rule of the best men, timocracy, in which the rulers are motivated by a love of honor, oligarchy, in which the rulers seek wealth, democracy, the rule of the masses who are unfit for the task, to tyranny, which is the rule of one man who may have started as the champion of the people but who governs solely for the advancement of his own, selfish interests.
postmodernism ::: A philosophical movement characterized by the postmodern criticism and analysis of Western philosophy. Beginning as a critique of Continental philosophy, it was heavily influenced by phenomenology, structuralism, and existentialism, and by the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. It was also influenced to some degree by Ludwig Wittgenstein's later criticisms of analytic philosophy. Within postmodern philosophy, there are numerous interrelated fields, including deconstruction and several fields beginning with the prefix "post-", such as post-structuralism, post-Marxism, and post-feminism. In particular postmodern philosophy has spawned a huge literature of critical theory.
prescriptivism ::: A meta-ethical theory about the semantical content of moral statements, introduced by the philosopher R. M. Hare in his book The Language of Morals. It holds that moral statements functions similarly to imperatives. For example, according to prescriptivism, the statement "Killing is wrong" means something like "You shouldn't kill". What it expresses is an imperative.
Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
Romanticism: As a general philosophical movement, romanticism is best understood as the initial phase of German Idealism, serving as a transition from Kant to Hegel, and flourishing chiefly between 1775 and 1815. It is associated primarily with the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, Fried, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, with Schelhng as its culmination and most typical figure. The philosophical point of departure for romanticism is the Kantian philosophy, and romanticism shares with all German Idealism both the fundamental purpose of extending knowledge to the realm of noumena, and the fundamental doctrine that all reality is ultimately spiritual, derivative from a living spirit and so knowable by the human spirit. The essence of philosophical romanticism as expressed by Schelhng, that which differentiates it from other types of Idealism, resides in its conception of Spirit; upon this depend its metaphysical account of nature and man, and its epistemological doctrine of the proper method for investigating and understanding reality. Romanticism holds that Spirit, or the Absolute, is essentially creative; the ultimate ground of all things is primarily an urge to self-expression, and all that it has brought into being is but a means to its fuller self-realization. If the Absolute of Fichte is a moralist, and that of Hegel a logician, then that of the romanticists is primarily an artist. From this basic view there springs a metaphysic that interprets the universe in terms of the concepts of evolution, process, life, and consciousness. The world of nature is one manifestation of Spirit, man is another and a higher such manifestation, for in man Spirit seeks to become conscious of its own work. The metaphysical process is the process by which the Absolute seeks to realize itself, and all particular things are but phases within it. Hence, the epistemology of romanticism is exclusively emotional and intuitive, stressing the necessity for fullness of experience and depth of feeling if reality is to be understood. Reason, being artificial and analytical, is inadequate to the task of comprehending the Absolute; knowing is living, and the philosopher must approach nature through inspiration, longing, and sympathy.
Salt Used in alchemy for a fundamental principle of nature, a member of the triad mercury, sulphur, and salt, corresponding to spirit, soul, and body; or to fire (or air), water, and earth. Paracelsus regarded these as the mystical elements of all compound bodies. All forms of matter were reducible to one or other of them — everything was either a sulphur, a mercury, a salt, or a compound. The philosopher’s stone was said to be a compound of all three. Thus salt is the physical rudiment, as illustrated by the cubical crystals of common salt. Ancient thought regarded such elements as fundamental principles which manifest on various planes, nor did it make hard and fast distinctions between physical and nonphysical; but modern thought has given a fictitious reality to physical objects, and regards the ancient use of the terms as metaphorical. The veneration shown for salt was not a mere deification of its physical virtues, but a recognition of the salt-principle in nature, of which ordinary salt is merely a physical emblem. The well-known stimulant, flavoring, and preservative qualities of salt prove it to be a physical manifestation of an important principle; such phrases as bread and salt, and salt of the earth are therefore theosophy, as concerns not merely figures of speech but a use of salt in its more radical sense. For the same reason it played an important part, along with other substances, in sacrificial ceremonies. The word was also used to include other bodies besides sodium chloride or common salt, and is still used in chemistry in this generic sense. With some alchemists we find arsenic taking the place of salt in the fundamental triad, and this would be one of the salts of arsenic.
Serpent One of the most fundamental and prolific symbols of the mystery-language. Its most basic meaning is of the eternal, alternating, cyclic motion during cosmic manifestation. For motion, which to the physicist and the philosopher alike seems an abstraction, is for the ancient wisdom a primordial principle or axiom, of the same order as space and time, existing per se. Never does motion cease utterly even during kosmic pralaya. And motion is essentially circular: where physics would derive circular motion from a composition of rectilinear motions, the opposite procedure would be that of the ancient wisdom. This circular motion, compounding itself into spirals, helixes, and vortices, is the builder of worlds, bringing together the scattered elements of chaos; motion per se is essential cosmic intelligence. This circular motion, returning upon itself like a serpent swallowing its tail, represents the cycles of time. This conscious energy in spirals whirls through all the planes of cosmos as fohat and his innumerable sons — the cosmic energies and forces, fundamentally intelligent, operating in every scale or grade of matter. The caduceus of Hermes, twin serpents wound about a staff, represents cosmically the mighty drama of evolution, in its twin aspects, the staff or tree standing for the structural aspect, the serpent for the fohatic forces that animate the structure.
Social Contract: The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times -- Hooker, Hohbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. -- individuals have united and formed the state. This theory was combined with the older idea of the governmental contract by which the people conferred the power of government upon a single person or a group of persons. This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, suth as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies. See Political Philosophy. -- W.E.
Solvent The universal solvent is an alchemical expression equivalent to the Philosopher’s Stone and the Universal Agent of medieval alchemy. It means a unity into which diverse elements can be resolved or from which they emanate or proceed; and has different applications according to particular planes. Thus “whatsoever quits the Laya State becomes active life; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of Life)” (SD 1:258). One culmination of the “Secret Work” is the union of the three elements (sulfur, mercury, salt), the occult solvent in the world-soul; while on the material plane the solvent is hydrogen (SD 2:113).
Specificative: (in Schol.) Any concrete thing is taken specificatively or denominatively when the predicate which is attributed to it belongs to it by reason of the concrete subject itself: if we say: the philosopher sleeps, philosopher is taken specificatively, for he sleeps as man. -- H.G.
Spiritus rector: Latin for ruling spirit. In the terminology of medieval alchemists, the philosopher’s stone (q.v.) or the elixir of life (q.v.).
stoic ::: n. --> A disciple of the philosopher Zeno; one of a Greek sect which held that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and should submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity, by which all things are governed.
Hence, a person not easily excited; an apathetic person; one who is apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain.
Alt. of Stoical
The Esoteric Dictionary is primarily an inventory of the terminology used by Henry T. Laurency, secondarily of the terminology used in theosophy and the works of Alice A. Bailey. The Dictionary is intended to be more than a mere vocabulary. It contains more than 500 entries, the majority of which besides definitions of the terms also cite excerpts from The Philosopher&
“The philosopher of the Yoga-charya School would say — as well he could — ‘Dharma is not a person but an unconditioned and underived entity, combining in itself the spiritual and material principles of the universe, whilst from Dharma proceeded, by emanation, Buddha [’reflected’ Bodhi rather] as the creative energy which produced, in conjunction with Dharma, the third factor in the trinity, viz., “Samgha,” which is the comprehensive sum total of all real life.’ Samgha, then, is not and cannot be that which it is now understood to be, namely, the actual ‘priesthood’; for the latter is not the sum total of all real life, but only of religious life. The real primitive significance of the word Samgha or ‘Sangha’ applies to the Arhats or Bhikshus, or the ‘initiates,’ alone, that is to say to the real exponents of Dharma — the divine law and wisdom, coming to them as a reflex light from the one ‘boundless light’ ” (TG 342).
The philosophers, dramatists, and historians who held the Dionysian mythos to be purely allegorical and symbolic take in the great names of antiquity, including Plato, Pythagoras, all the Neoplatonists, the greatest historians, and a few of the early Christian Fathers, notably Clement of Alexandria; Eusebius, Tertullian, Justin, and Augustine, also write of it.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was "the philosopher," "the master of those who know." With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thought: in Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. -- G.R.M.
The Platonic theory of education is based on a drawing out (educatio) of what is already dimly known to the learner. (Meno, Repub. II-VII, Theaetetus, Laws.) The training of the philosopher-ruler, outlined in the Republic, requires the selection of the most promising children in their infancy and a rigorous disciplining of them in gymnastic, music (in the Greek sense of literary studies), mathematics and dialectic (the study of the Ideas). This training was to continue until the students were about thirty-five years of age; then fifteen years of practical apprenticeship in the subordinate offices of the state were required; finally, at the age of fifty, the rulers were advised to return to the study of philosophy. It should be noted that this program is intended only for an intellectual elite; the military class was to undergo a shorter period of training suited to its functions, and the masses of people, engaged in production, trading, and like pursuits, were not offered any special educational schedule.
This rebuilding of the notion of creature permits St. Thomas also to analyze the problems that Averroism was making more and more prominent. Philosophical truth was discovered by the Greeks and the Arabians neither completely nor adequately nor without error. What the Christian thinker must do in their presence is not to divide his allegiance between them and Christianity, but to discover the meaning of reason and the conditions of true thinking. That discovery will enable him to learn from the Greeks without also learning their errors; and it would thus show him the possibility of the harmony between reason and revelation. He must learn to be a philosopher, to discover the philosopher within the Christian man, in order to meet philosophers. In exploring the meaning of a creature, St. Thomas was building a philosophy which permitted his contemporaries (at least, if they listened to him) to free themselves from the old eternalistic and rigid world of the Greeks and to free their thinking, therefore, from the antinomies which this world could raise up for them. In the harmony of faith and reason which St. Thomas defended against Averroism, we must see the culminating point of his activity. For such a harmony meant ultimately not only a judicious and synthetic diagnosis of Greek philosophy, as well as a synthetic incorporation of Greek ideas in Christian thought, it meant also the final vindication of the humanism and the naturalism of Thomistic philosophy. The expression and the defense of this Christian humanism constitute one of St. Thomas' most enduring contributions to European thought. -- A.C.P.
White Stone “To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Rev 2:17). In Revelation, a symbolic record of John’s initiation, the white stone is the new, pure, inner psychological vehicle in the person which the spirit within him is enabled to acquire and work through when the victory in initiation has been won; and the new name signifies the new self which has thus become manifest in him. The stone “had the word prize engraved on it, and was the symbol of that word given to the neophyte who, in his initiation, had successfully passed through all the trials in the Mysteries. It was the potent white cornelian of the mediaeval Rosicrucians, who took it from the Gnostics” (TG 369). In exoteric rites this truth was represented by the gift of an actual stone or gem, and we hear of the alba petra (white stone) of initiation; while the Gnostic gems and their inscriptions are well known. It also calls to mind the philosopher’s stone.
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2 Manly P Hall
2 Sri Aurobindo
2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
1 Thomas A Kempis
1 S. Bulgakov
1 Saint John Chrysostom
1 Saint Basil
1 Ramakrishna
1 Manly P Hall?
1 Khalil Gibran
1 Karl Marx
1 Hurrychund Chintamon
1 Friedrich Nietzsche
1 Epicurus
1 Descartes
1 Alastair MacIntyre
1 Saint Augustine of Hippo
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25 Friedrich Nietzsche
12 Plato
10 Karl Marx
10 Anonymous
9 Epictetus
7 Edward Gibbon
6 Terry Pratchett
6 Ryan Holiday
6 Mark Manson
6 Marcus Aurelius
6 Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 J K Rowling
5 Voltaire
5 R C Sproul
5 Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 Jostein Gaarder
5 Henry David Thoreau
5 C S Lewis
5 Bertrand Russell
5 Arthur Schopenhauer
1:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments.
~ Manly P Hall,#KEYS
2:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #KEYS
3:The 'work,' whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, #KEYS
4:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
~ Khalil Gibran,#KEYS
5:A philosophical system is only a section of the Truth which the philosopher takes as a whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Place of Study in Sadhana, #KEYS
6:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?, #KEYS
7:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
8:Since philosophy arises out of wonder, it is clear that the philosopher is some kind of philo-myth, a lover of fables, which is proper to poets ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on Metaphysics 1, lect. 3)., #KEYS
9:What is important about philosophy is the way in which a life informed by... philosophical inquiry and guided by its conclusions will be significantly different from the life of someone in other respects like the philosopher, but untouched by philosophy. ~ Alastair MacIntyre, #KEYS
10:The philosopher cannot fly; he must ascend into the ether; but his wings inevitably melt in the heat of the sun, and he falls and breaks into fragments. On this flight, however, he sees something, and his philosophy speaks of this vision. ~ S. Bulgakov, The Tragedy of Philosophy, #KEYS
11:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, in New York (20 Jan. 1877) #KEYS
12:The occultist and the philosopher are entirely willing to accept the mystical truths of Christianity for they are a part of all truth, all revelation, and all mysteries. What the mystic seeks to escape is not true Christianity but the contendings of unnumbered jarring sects that have theologized Jesus out of existence and put in his place a figure of their own conception. ~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter, 4th year #KEYS
13:If iron is once changed to gold by the touch of the philosopher's stone, it may be kept in the earth or thrown into a mass of ordure, but always it will be gold and can never go back to its first condition. So is it with him whose heart has touched, were it but a single time, the feet of the Almighty; let him dwell amidst the tumult of the world or in the solitude of the forest, by nothing can he again be polluted. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
14:One alchemist announced that one grain of this powder would transmute into purest gold one hundred thousand times its own weight. But his readers did not realize that this powder is wisdom, one grain of which can transmute all the ignorance in the world. Nor did the reader properly understand that the PHILOSOPHER'S STONE IS KNOWLEDGE, the great miracle worker, or that the elixir of life was Truth, which makes all things new. It was sad that misunderstandings should exist, but wherever great truths are given to small minds, misunderstandings are inevitable. ~ Manly P Hall, (A Monthly Letter April 1937), #KEYS
15:The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #KEYS
16:A man will cherish the illusion that he is the doer as long as he has not seen God, as long as he has not touched the Philosopher's Stone. So long will he know the distinction between his good and bad actions. This awareness of distinction is due to God's maya; and it is necessary for the purpose of running His illusory world. But a man can realize God if he takes shelter under His vidyamaya and follows the path of righteousness. He who knows God and realizes Him is able to go beyond maya. He who firmly believes that God alone is the Doer and he himself a mere instrument is a jivanmukta, a free soul though living in a body. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
17:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #KEYS
18:Noah harkened to the voice of the Lord that is he lived according to the Law, perfecting his soul and enriching his consciousness with the many experiences which result from the mystery of living. As a consequence the "Lord" protects the life of Noah, and brings the Ark at the end to a safe testing place upon the Mount of the illumination, Ararat. Part of the thirty-third degree of Freemasonry includes an interpretation of the symbolism of Noah and his Ark. Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is the illumined mystic floating safely over the chaos.
~ Manly P Hall, How To Understand Your Bible,#KEYS
19:It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #KEYS
20:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ voltaire, @wisdomtrove 2:On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 3:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 4:If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 5:The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 6:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 7:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 8:The task of the philosopher is to create the best story, because culture moves forward through us creating better stories. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 9:The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 10:We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 11:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 12:It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 13:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 14:And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 15:Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart? ~ oliver-goldsmith, @wisdomtrove 16:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately, it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 17:What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand,and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 18:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 19:I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog... .Only in the novel are all things given full play. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 20:Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 21:It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 22:Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 23:The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. ~ sir-arthur-eddington, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:into the philosopher's ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
2:You win. You're the philosopher. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
3:The philosopher is Nature's pilot. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
4:The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone ~ Hilda Doolittle, #NFDB
5:The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
6:Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
7:The philosopher caught in the nets of language. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
8:The whole life of the philosopher is a preparation for death. ~ Plato, #NFDB
9:Woman's nudity is wiser than the philosopher's teachings. ~ Max Ernst, #NFDB
10:...the philosopher's professional addiction to furniture... ~ J L Austin, #NFDB
11:Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
12:Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man's friend. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
13:The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
14:On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
15:What does the philosopher say? Odi ergo sum. I hate therefore I am. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
16:Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. ~ Plato, #NFDB
17:Someone once quoted Shakespeare to the philosopher W. V. O. Quine: There ~ Chet Raymo, #NFDB
18:I don’t have to,” replies the philosopher. “I only have to outrun you.”) ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
19:If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
20:The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
21:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments ~ Manly Hall, #NFDB
22:The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
23:Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
24:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments ~ Manly P Hall, #NFDB
25:Know that the philosopher has power over the stars, and not the stars over him. ~ Paracelsus, #NFDB
26:The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind. ~ Mortimer Adler, #NFDB
27:The scholar without good breeding is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
28:The Philosopher said that a man alone is either a god or a monster. I'm no god. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
29:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
30:Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments.
~ Manly P Hall,#NFDB
31:Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
32:Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
33:If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
34:In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal;7 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
35:The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
36:You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher, "May you live forever! ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
37:Occupy thyself with few things, says the philosopher, if thou wouldst be tranquil.- ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
38:This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
39:The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
40:The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila, #NFDB
41:The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
42:The philosopher king said, "Everything stinks sometimes. Some of it can't be explained. ~ Richard Stevenson, #NFDB
43:The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
44:the philosopher Isaiah Berlin sagely pointed out, liberty for wolves means death to lambs.124 ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
45:The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has advised us to “seek simplicity and distrust it. ~ Scott Richard Shaw, #NFDB
46:The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
47:Get out of the way,’ he said. As Harry moved aside he felt the Philosopher’s Stone against his leg. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
48:I said his line of thought - referring to the philosopher, because this is also a story of men. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
49:Is literature better, is politics better, for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher? ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
50:Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
51:The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
52:which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.15.13 W ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
53:I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus, and I would prefer to be even a satyr than a saint. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
54:If you wanted to explore the castle forever and ever, you’d need to get hold of the Philosopher’s Stone. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
55:It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
56:The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
57:The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
58:What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
59:It is good to renew one’s wonder,” said the philosopher. “Space travel has again made children of us all. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
60:The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity. ~ Plato, #NFDB
61:In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
62:All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
63:Philosophy is an act of seduction between one true lover and another, most often the philosopher and himself. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
64:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as ‘Things just happen. What the hell. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
65:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as “Things just happen. What the hell. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
66:The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell". ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
67:How small a thought it takes to fill someone’s whole life,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
68:They who search after the Philosopher's Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
69:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
70:The old men ask for more time; the young waste it. And the philosopher simply smiles, knowing there is none there. ~ R S Thomas, #NFDB
71:The philosopher must become non-philosopher so that non-philosophy becomes the earth and people of philosophy. ~ Gilles Deleuze, #NFDB
72:The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
73:Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
74:Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
75:According to Nietzche," said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, "philosophy is the biography of the philosopher. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
76:Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
77:It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
78:That's life" said the philosopher each time he was almost laid prostrate, "It's often our best friends who make us fall ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
79:The philosopher had rescued her. The unknown letter writer had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
80:The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant. ~ Julien Benda, #NFDB
81:The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, #NFDB
82:Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
83:The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
84:The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
85:Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
86:Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
87:Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
88:The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic. ~ Morris Raphael Cohen, #NFDB
89:When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
90:The philosopher: he alone knows how to live for himself. He is the one, in fact, who knows the fundamental thing: how to live. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
91:The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones. ~ Giacomo Casanova, #NFDB
92:The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
93:As the philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
94:The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
95:Unfortunately robots capable of manufacturing robots do not exist. That would be the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
96:Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
97:The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world of symphony and to re-project them in the form if concepts ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
98:What is reality? Is it not merely a term for the philosopher to conjure with, behind which he may craftily conceal his ignorance? ~ John Grier Hibben, #NFDB
99:The Country is both the Philosopher's Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
100:All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
101:I have never seen the Philosopher's Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man's Gold into Lead. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
102:The philosopher is not someone who has thought instead of us but rather someone who makes us think. ~ Joxe Azurmendi, Oraingo gazte eroak (1998), p. 35., #NFDB
103:Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
104:Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
105:The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe. God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves. ~ Dwight L Moody, #NFDB
106:as the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”24 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
107:In my early youth - he would later write to his friend, the philosopher Constantin Noica- seduced me solely the libraries and the brothels. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
108:Lawn looked down at his patient. "In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
109:In my early youth - he would later write to his friend, the philosopher Constantin Noica - seduced me solely the libraries and the brothels. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
110:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
111:advocates of opinions who attack one another in daily politics are grouped together over against their common adversary, the philosopher. When ~ Eric Voegelin, #NFDB
112:To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
113:He had the philosopher's disease of seeing so far ahead that all the little pleasant shapes and colors of existence passed under his nose unseen. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
114:When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
115:Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
116:A philosophical system is only a section of the Truth which the philosopher takes as a whole. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Place of Study in Sadhana, #NFDB
117:One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. ~ Plato, #NFDB
118:The philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) often remarked “We don’t know anything” and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
119:There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
120:Although astronomy had made Thales rich, this has remained the stereotype of the philosopher—lost in the stars rather than having his feet on the ground. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
121:We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
122:The philosopher Elaine Scarry has observed that "beauty always takes place in the particular." Cruelty, on the other hand, prefers abstraction. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
123:The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
124:The ‘work,’ whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have created it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, #NFDB
125:Why is it apparently the philosopher who is expected to be "easier" and not some scientist or other who is even more inaccessible to the same readers? ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
126:So in the first place, such things show clearly that the philosopher more
than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much
as possible? ~ Plato,#NFDB
127:Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse. Untrammeled reasoning is the indulgence of the philosopher, of the dreamer of sweet dreams. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
128:Human intelligence is a function of man’s evolutionary urge; the scientist and the philosopher hunger for truth because they are tired of being merely human. ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
129:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
130:The philosopher calmly defined the exact difference between life and love: "Life is just one fool thing after another: love is just two fool things after each other. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
131:The philosopher Charles Taylor, following Hegel, points out that struggles over identity are inherently political because they involve demands for recognition. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
132:The philosopher's lecture room is a 'hospital': you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain; for you are not in good condition when you arrive. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
133:There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with which he can reply to criticisms he may think undeservedly severe. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
134:This man has conquered the world! What have you done?" The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
135:According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
136:religions of the Roman Empire “were all considered by the people, as equally true, by the philosopher, as equally false, and by the magistrate, as equally useful.”8 ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
137:The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke's philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example. ~ Robert Trout, #NFDB
138:Let the world wag as it will, I’ve the philosopher’s stone in my waistcoat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard;12 I’m independent of both Fate and Fortune! ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
139:The really royal calling of the philosopher (as expressed by Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon): To correct what is wrong, and strengthen the right, and raise what is holy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
140:This man has conquered the world! What have you done?"
The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world. ~ Steven Pressfield,#NFDB
141:What verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher. He grasps for it in order to get hold of his own enchantment, in order to perpetuate it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
142:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
143:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
144:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
145:Passion adds eyes; is a magnifying glass. Sonnets of lovers are mad enough, but are valuable to the philosopher, as are prayers of saints, for their potent symbolism. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
146:What becomes of the heart, when the heart’s hand grasps the hand of a sweetheart?
What becomes of the dross copper, when it hears the welcoming voice of the philosopher’s stone? ~ Rumi,#NFDB
147:The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
~ Khalil Gibran,#NFDB
148:When one admists that nothing is certain", proposed the philosopher Betrand Russell, "one must, I think, also add that some things are much more nearly certain than others. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
149:Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
150:The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
151:The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
152:Men, the philosopher’s lecture-hall is a hospital—you shouldn’t walk out of it feeling pleasure, but pain, for you aren’t well when you enter it.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.23.30 ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
153:It brings joy in sorrow, victory in battle, light to darkness, life to the dead. That is the power of the blood-red jewel which men honor with the name "The Philosopher's Stone. ~ Hiromu Arakawa, #NFDB
154:What does it take to live a good life?” The philosopher had written something about this quite early on in the course. Everybody needs food, warmth, love, and care. Such basics ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
155:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
156:The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. ~ Plato, #NFDB
157:The philosopher as an analyst is not concerned with the physical properties of things, but only with the way in which we speak about them. ~ Alfred Jules Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)., #NFDB
158:Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is ... ~ Manly P Hall?, Understand your Bible?, #NFDB
159:Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future. ~ Lion Feuchtwanger, #NFDB
160:A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
161:FAUSTUS. To have fooled the philosopher.
MAGUS. One finds, in my profession, sir, the greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
FAUSTUS. One finds the same in mine. ~ David Mamet,#NFDB
162:One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
163:This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
164:To make the moral achievement implicit in science a source of strength to civilization, the scientist will have to have the cooperation also of the philosopher and the religious teacher. ~ Arthur Compton, #NFDB
165:In teaching the young you have to satisfy the schoolchild in yourself and enter the region where all meanings start. That is where, in any case, the philosopher has perpetually to start. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
166:When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
167:From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
168:All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
169:The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
170:As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
171:The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
172:Without at all invalidating what we have just said, we believe that a perpetual remembrance of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree: We must die. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
173:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
174:A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. ~ Johann Georg Hamann, #NFDB
175:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
176:Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
177:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
178:How is that even possible?” the philosopher says. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.” She knows. She knows. So it begs the question, doesn’t it? Did she unkind and ungood and untrue him? ~ Jenny Offill, #NFDB
179:The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion,but determined to judge for himself.He should not be a respector of persons,but of things.Truth should be his primary object. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
180:And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
181:[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...
(The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.) ~ Denis Diderot,#NFDB
182:She goes on to recount how she “once found the philosopher Richard Rorty standing in a bit of a daze in Davidson’s food market. He told me in hushed tones that he’d just seen Gödel in the frozen food aisle. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
183:The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
184:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
185:You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ Diana Pavlac Glyer, #NFDB
186:We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
187:According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy. ~ Matthieu Ricard, #NFDB
188:MEPHISTO. Good fortune’s closely linked to merit, A thought that never enters foolish minds; The Philosopher’s Stone’s there in their hands? The Philosopher’s searching everywhere for it. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
189:The philosopher finds only two books in all the world--two divine, original books, viz., the Volume of Nature, and the Revelations of God. All others are mere commentaries upon these two original, divine books. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
190:Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave. ~ Diogenes of Sinope, #NFDB
191:Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy , looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
192:give the man of color an equal opportunity with the white, from the cradle to manhood, and from manhood to the grave, and you would discover the dignified statesman, the man of science, and the philosopher. ~ Maria W Stewart, #NFDB
193:Horace once told me that laws were powerless against the private passions of the human heart, and only he who has no power over it, such as the poet or the philosopher, may persuade the human spirit to virtue. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
194:In any hard discipline, whether it be gardening, structural engineering, or Russian,” the philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford writes, “one submits to things that have their own intractable ways. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
195:It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: “With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
196:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
197:The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
198:The philosopher seeks a generality beyond the boundaries of science; he attempts to frame a comprehensive and coherent framework of ideas within which the partial results of science may become more intelligible. ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
199:The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
200:But the Philosopher startles us by arguing that even if you are one of the few people who breaks through and accomplishes all you hope for, it’s all for nothing, for in the end there are no lasting achievements. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
201:No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . . ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
202:Ask yourself whether you are happy', observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly. ~ Oliver Burkeman, #NFDB
203:Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, #NFDB
204:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
205:The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
206:As Preach waited for her to appear, he couldn’t get a quote from Kierkegaard out of his mind. “The truth is a trap,” the philosopher had once written. “You cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you. ~ Layton Green, #NFDB
207:Finally, it follows from the preceding proposition that the joy by which the drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy which is the portion of the philosopher,--a think I wished just to hint in passing. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
208:The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
209:The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
210:Furthermore, plot, as JG wisely put it, is the storyteller's equivalent to the philosopher's argument; its importance lies in it being an interpretation (one based on causation) of why the world works the way it does. ~ Charles R Johnson, #NFDB
211:The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbour by his own nature. ~ Henri Fr d ric Amiel, #NFDB
212:As the philosopher and writer Paul Valéry explained in 1938, “A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.” That is, his job is to produce work. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
213:If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said.
'It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions,' commented the gambler and conservationist John Aspinall. ~ John N Gray,#NFDB
214:If you make a product good enough... the public will make a path to your door, says the philosopher. But if you want the public in sufficient numbers, you would better construct a highway. Advertising is that highway. ~ William Randolph Hearst, #NFDB
215:It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, “Like a human body.”) ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
216:for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician. ~ Plato, #NFDB
217:The simple style is bad for the savage because he does worse than to obtain the luxuries of life; it is good for the philosopher because he does better than to work for them. The question is whether you can bear freedom.... ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
218:My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality; and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my undivided attention: wealth was ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
219:Those who are conquered," wrote the philosopher Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century, "always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics—in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and customs. ~ Adam Hochschild, #NFDB
220:The philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
221:the outcome, if successful, in both alchemy and individuation is a union of opposites—the coniunctionis or transcendent function—leading to alchemical gold, the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, or, in Jungian terms, the Self. ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
222:Certainly the philosopher of 'possible worlds' must take care that his technical apparatus not push him to ask questions whose meaningfulness is not supported by our original intuitions of possibility that gave the apparatus its point. ~ Saul Kripke, #NFDB
223:And though the philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
224:There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician. ~ Edward Kasner, #NFDB
225:To mourn deeply for the death of another loosens from myself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view without shrinking the coffin and the pall. ~ Edward Bulwer Lytton 1st Baron Lytton, #NFDB
226:What resists phenomenology within us--natural being, the 'barbarian' source Schelling spoke of--cannot remain outside phenomenology. The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is not simply the factual absence of future light. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
227:Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity; it is that which gives value to every character. The ignorant peasant, without fault, is greater than the philosopher with many; for what is genius or courage without a heart? ~ Oliver Goldsmith, #NFDB
228:The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
229:The thing is this: Even if the husband leaves her in this awful craven way, she will still have to count it as a miracle, all of those happy years she spent with him. “It was a fucking miracle that I found him,” she tells the philosopher. ~ Jenny Offill, #NFDB
230:It has only been very slowly that scientific method, which seeks to reach principles inductively from observations of particular facts, has replaced the Hellenic belief in deduction from luminous axioms derived from the mind of the philosopher. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
231:I would welcome the passing of the idea of philosophy as defined by a method of conceptual analysis. But that is not the passing of philosophy, and it leaves the philosopher with the task of grasping natures or essences (among other things). ~ Robert Adams, #NFDB
232:The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
233:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
234:the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
235:Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher; and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately, it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
236:Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
237:The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer. ~ Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Act III, line 509. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97., #NFDB
238:What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand,and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
239:Learn that there are no basilisks in nature, that people are always healthy with sobriety and exercise, and that the art of making intemperance and health together is as chimerical as the philosopher's stone, judicial astrology, and the theology of magi. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
240:This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
241:The physician and the philosopher have different ways of defining the diseases of the soul. For instance anger for the philosopher is a sentiment born of the desire to return an offense, whereas for the physician it is a surging of blood around the heart. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
242:It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
243:I think if we could turn the dial a bit, and try to take what the philosopher Henry Sidgwick called "the point of view of the universe", and look from above, and realize that we are not special, none of us are, I think it would just cause a transformation. ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
244:When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
245:When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: “Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.” It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
246:A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
247:The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
248:In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to WHO HE IS,—that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
249:The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: “I think, therefore I am.” He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
250:Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
251:Now in giving honor to one’s parents or to the gods, as indeed the Philosopher says, it is impossible to repay them measure for measure; but it suffices that man repay as much as he can, for friendship does not demand measure for measure, but what is possible. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
252:Socrates
The philosopher offered us a way out of two powerful delusions: that we should always or never listen to the dictates of public opinion.
To follow his example, we will best be rewarded if we strive instead to listen to the dictates of reason ~ Alain de Botton,#NFDB
253:How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
254:In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal;7 and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is—that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other. 7 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
255:We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy. ~ Saul Williams, #NFDB
256:In this lengthy riposte, the philosopher informs Paulinus that “learning how to live takes a whole life,” and the sense most of us have that our lives are cruelly brief is a specious one: “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
257:Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. ‘You’ve just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
258:There is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, / pulcher et fortissimus. (Translation: The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave.) ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
259:A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. ~ Johann Georg Hamann, Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), p. 147., #NFDB
260:Plato Plato the philosopher lived in ancient Greece in the fourth century B.C. Plato founded a school called the Academy. In both his teachings and his writings, Plato explored the best way for a government to be set up. His ideas are still talked about today. ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
261:To mount and descend in the words themselves-this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together. Must the philosopher alone be condemned by his peers always to live on the ground floor? ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
262:The philosopher and the scientist emphasize different features of the world, follow different interests and inspire different passions in the soul. But the aim of their study is in each case the same: the supreme good which consists in the adequate knowledge of God ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
263:When you break the heart of the philosopher, you must apply great force and cunning strategy, but when the deed is completed, the heart lies in great stony ruin at your feet. If you succeed in breaking it, the job is done once and for all. It will not be repaired. ~ Charles Baxter, #NFDB
264:There’s no answer that ends the search, you know. Obviously, there never will be. The artist seeks to capture the world because the nature of every single object is a mystery to him. The philosopher addresses human nature because he’s a stranger to every part of it. It ~ Ethan Canin, #NFDB
265:This queer crotchet [of Hamilton's] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher's stone in the gall bladder of mathematics. ~ Eric Temple Bell, #NFDB
266:The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
267:Since Pawlow [Pavlov] and his pupils have succeeded in causing the secretion of saliva in the dog by means of optic and acoustic signals, it no longer seems strange to us that what the philosopher terms an 'idea' is a process which can cause chemical changes in the body. ~ Jacques Loeb, #NFDB
268:For the time being, it need only be said that the philosopher in question made much of human existence as a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness—parent of all horrors. ~ Thomas Ligotti, #NFDB
269:Between the philosopher's attitude towards the issue of reality and that of the mathematician there is this essential difference: for the philosopher the issue is paramount; the mathematician's love for reality is purely platonic. ~ Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930)., #NFDB
270:The intimate and the infinite are tangled together in this incandescent book, lit by Aristotle’s bright spark of a daughter. Lucid even in nightmare, The Sweet Girl slips sideways around the philosopher to examine the lives of girls and women when we were not yet human. ~ Marina Endicott, #NFDB
271:The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
272:What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things? ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
273:I set apart with high reverence the name of Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosopher crowd rejected the evidence of the senses because these showed plurality and change, he rejected their evidence because they showed things as if they possessed duration and unity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
274:Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
275:The Philosopher
“Those who speak know nothing;
Those who know are silent.”
These words, as I am told,
Were spoken by Lao Tzu.
If we are to believe that Lao Ttzu
Was himself one who knew,
How comes it that he wrote a book
Of five thousand words?
~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
276:Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
277:In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
278:Only a tiny percentage of people in the world care about moral theory in the sense I have been discussing, whereas 100 percent of the people in the world like stories. Most moral insights come from stories, but it is the special virtue of the philosopher to organize those insights ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
279:The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
280:Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher. ~ Marvin Minsky, #NFDB
281:My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
282:I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
283:In all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point. To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting certain edifices in the air. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
284:In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
285:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
286:We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness.
We trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone.
Our music is our alchemy. ~ Saul Williams,#NFDB
287:And in declaring true every theory that does not contravene the evidence of the senses, Epicurus does not blink the fact that the philosopher may arrive at more than one explanation for a given phenomenon—in some cases, even at explanations that are mutually exclusive or contradictory. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
288:As Chris Hedges, the philosopher and journalist, wrote, “In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
289:The philosopher Zeng said, "I daily examine myself on three points: whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful; whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
290:I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time. ~ Timothy Leary, #NFDB
291:Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to bear this constantly in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
292:There is another possibly apocryphal story about the philosopher Jerry Fodor (he’s the Yogi Berra of philosophy). Someone asked what his stream of consciousness was like as he wrote philosophy. His reply was that it mostly said, “Come on, Jerry, you can do it, Jerry, keep going, Jerry. ~ Alison Gopnik, #NFDB
293:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
294:What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils. ~ Henri Poincare, #NFDB
295:There is a familiar formula—perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas—developed by Euler from a discovery of De Moivre: eiπ + 1 = 0. ...It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician. ~ Edward Kasner, James R. Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination (1940)., #NFDB
296:We seem to have a fear of empty spaces. The philosopher Spinoza called this a horror vacui. We want to fill up what is empty. Our lives stay very full. And when we are not blinded by busyness, we fill our inner space with guilt about things of the past or worries about things to come. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
297:As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
298:In fact, I think it was the philosopher Hume who argued that it's far more likely that a miracle is a new physical phenomenon that we have yet to discover and have now discovered in that moment than it is a spiritual force coming down from God making something happen in front of you. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
299:If here and there an honest student of the black art still survives, he is regarded as a mad but harmless enthusiast; and as for the pretended searchers for the philosopher's stone, they are, if possible, less interesting objects than the dupes they still continue to cheat. ~ Encyclopedia Brittanica (1875), #NFDB
300:Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
301:A nation which has no great philosophers will never have any great scientists. Heidegger says that the philosopher is a man who is always capable of wonder. This also characterizes the scientist. The utilitarian man is not capable of wonder. Hence, it is doubtful whether he can develop science ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy, #NFDB
302:The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
Gibbon, Edward. HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE COMPLETE VOLUMES 1 - 6 ~ Edward Gibbon,#NFDB
303:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
304:The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
305:Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find. ~ Fritz Leiber, in "Poor Superman" (1951), also in the anthology Tomorrow (1952) edited by Robert Heinlein, #NFDB
306:The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
307:Unable to bring himself to believe in a God who offers salvation, the philosopher is above all one who believes that by understanding the world, by understanding ourselves and others as far our intelligence permits, we shall succeed in overcoming fear, through clear-sightedness rather than blind faith. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
308:I am a man and alive. For this reason I am a novelist. And, being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, te scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog....Only in the novel are all things given full play. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
309:To the mass of mankind, therefore, the philosopher may appear as a spiritual saboteur, a subverter of things lawfully established, and an apologist for the devil. So Spinoza appeared to his contemporaries, and for many years after his death he was regarded as the greatest heretic of the 17th century. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
310:Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
311:Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
312:Candide drew near and saw his benefactor, who rose above the water one moment and was then swallowed up for ever. He was just going to jump after him, but was prevented by the philosopher Pangloss, who[Pg 19] demonstrated to him that the Bay of Lisbon had been made on purpose for the Anabaptist to be drowned. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
313:Oh, I’m not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,” said the philosopher. “I’m talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn’t them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn’t them that they were throwing just as hard as they could. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
314:You're of a mind with Mr. Staines.'
'Am I?'
'Yes,' Anna said. 'That is precisely the sort of thing that he would say.'
'Your Mr. Staines is quite the philosopher, Miss Wetherell.'
'Why, Reverend,' Anna said, smiling suddenly, 'I believe you've just paid yourself a compliment. ~ Eleanor Catton,#NFDB
315:Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
316:Information is the atmosphere—what the philosopher Luciano Floridi calls the infosphere—of our lives.7 But the fact that we live in the infosphere, that it is becoming ordinary, doesn’t mean that we understand it, nor how it is changing us and what Ludwig Wittgenstein might have called our form of life. ~ Michael P Lynch, #NFDB
317:Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. ~ William James, #NFDB
318:According to Law, confidence alone was the basis for public credit; with confidence, banknotes would serve just as well as coins. ‘I have discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone, he told a friend, ‘it is to make gold out of paper.’40 The Duke demurred, saying ‘I am not rich enough to ruin myself. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
319:To paraphrase the philosopher Nietzsche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how. I've found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we've failed to change for years. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
320:What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer, #NFDB
321:The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification. ~ Hans Reichenbach, #NFDB
322:Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
323:Forty years ago the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thought it self-evident that you would get a good government if you took power out of the hands of the acquisitive and gave it to the learned and the cultivated. At present, a child in kindergarten knows better than that. ~ Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath (1979), p. 40-41, #NFDB
324:It is said that even the philosopher cannot bear to endure a toothache. Words contain great wisdom, but it is only in the manifestation of these experiences that the wisdom settles into our bones and guides us to act. You see, the words printed here are but concepts. You must go through the experiences yourself. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
325:"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry." ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
326:I recall the story of the philosopher and the theologian... The two were engaged in disputation and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher resembling a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which wasn't there. ‘That may be,’ said the philosopher, ‘but a theologian would have found it. ~ Julian Huxley, #NFDB
327:learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. “But, above all, I learned that these ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
328:The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
329:[…] but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed. One was a man, and the other was either more – or less. However, they are both dead, and Mrs Beard is dead, and youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts – all dies… No matter. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
330:The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
331:You never hear of a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue. ~ Steve Toltz, #NFDB
332:If the God of revelation is most appropriately worshipped in the temple of religion, the God of nature may be equally honored in the temple of science. Even from its lofty minarets the philosopher may summon the faithful to prayer, and the priest and sage exchange altars without the compromise of faith or knowledge. ~ David Brewster, #NFDB
333:No one can tell you for certain if we have free will or we don't. [...] Whatever you choose to believe, you will probably want to agree with the philosopher John Locke, who argued that the whole debate is largely irrelevant. If it feels to us like free will, then let's treat it as free will and get on with our lives. ~ John Ironmonger, #NFDB
334:There was some ground for this appropriation of Nietzsche as one of the originators of the Nazi Weltanschauung. Had not the philosopher thundered against democracy and parliaments, preached the will to power, praised war and proclaimed the coming of the master race and the superman—and in the most telling aphorisms? ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
335:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. This force amplifies and colors every other piece of the code, and unlocks our potential for understanding and ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
336:In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
337:The creator of the heavens obeys a carpenter; the God of eternal glory listens to a poor virgin. Has anyone ever witnessed anything comparable to this? Let the philosopher no longer disdain from listening to the common laborer; the wise, to the simple; the educated, to the illiterate; a child of a prince, to a peasant. ~ Anthony of Padua, #NFDB
338:It was a clever saying of Bion, the philosopher, that, just as the suitors, not being able to approach Penelope, consorted with her maid-servants, so also do those who are not able to attain to philosophy wear themselves to a shadow over the other kinds of education which have no value. ~ Plutarch, “The education of children,” Moralia, 7D, #NFDB
339:The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
340:To the artist He is the one altogether lovely, and to the educator He is the master teacher. To the philosopher He is the wisdom of God, and to the lonely He is a brother; to the sorrowful, a comforter to the bereaved, the resurrection and the life. And to the sinner he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin from the world. ~ John Gerstner, #NFDB
341:Perhaps it is worthwhile mentioning in this context a phenomenon as uncalled for as it is irritating, and that is the philosopher, or the so-called philosopher, who imagines he can support his aberrant theses by means of novels and plays, which amounts to inventing aberrant stories in order to prove that two and two make five ~ Frithjof Schuon, #NFDB
342:A habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and the impression that has not learned to express itself--all of which are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible soul. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
343:The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own. ~ Thomas Friedman, #NFDB
344:...the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches...Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
345:As the philosopher Pamela Hieronymi says, “A past wrong against you, standing in your history without apology, atonement, retribution, punishment, restitution, condemnation, or anything else that might recognize it as a wrong, makes a claim. It says, in effect, that you can be treated in this way, and that such treatment is acceptable ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
346:There is nothing more inspiring than a speaker who makes clear to his audience that he has need of them. [37] Tell me – has anyone who has ever heard you read or discourse felt self-remorse as a result, or experienced self-realization, or afterwards left thinking, ‘The philosopher touched a nerve there; I can’t go on acting as I have’? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
347:While war ravaged Rome, Mithradates gloried in the victories of the Greek campaign. Halley’s Comet was taken as a good omen by Mithradates’ Magi and by his allies. In Athens, the philosopher Aristion succeeded Athenion, elected on a pro-Mithradates platform; Aristion’s name appeared with Mithradates’ on Athenian coins of 87–86 BC. ~ Adrienne Mayor, #NFDB
348:As the philosopher Hilary Putnam put it: ‘The difference between science and previous ways of trying to find out truth is, in large part, that scientists are willing to test their ideas, because they don’t regard them as infallible . . . You have to put questions to nature and be willing to change your ideas if they don’t work.’FN4811 ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
349:The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without ~ Jack London, #NFDB
350:Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
351:One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay. He is in love with the whole of that reality, and will not willingly be deprived even of the most insignificant fragment of it - just like the lovers and men of ambition we described earlier on. ~ Plato, #NFDB
352:Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. ~ William James, The Sentiment of Rationality (1882)., #NFDB
353:We need Christ—the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher’s pattern simply won’t do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent by scholarly surgery is not Christ but Antichrist. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
354:Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously--the pharisee ostentatiously--the simple-hearted humbly--the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion--given an equally good digestion. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
355:There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future. ~ Kenneth E Boulding, #NFDB
356:Life is getting through the moment. The philosopher William James says to cultivate the cheerful attitude. Now nobody had more trouble than he did -- except me. I had more trouble in my life than anybody. But your first big trouble can be a bonanza if you live through it. Get through the first trouble, you'll probably make it through the next one. ~ Ruth Gordon, #NFDB
357:We need Christ-the real Christ. A Christ born of empty speculation or created to squeeze into the philosopher's pattern
simply won't do. A recycled Christ, a Christ of compromise, can redeem no one. A Christ watered down, stripped of power, debased of glory, reduced to a symbol, or made impotent by scholarly surgery is not Christ but Antichrist. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
358:Because real alchemists understand that the test tube is just a vehicle. Alchemy is about the process of transformation, my boy. Not of lead to gold, but of the spirit. Understanding the universe. Applying the secrets of the ancients to the follies of the present. The elixir, the philosopher’s stone: they’re not just recipes. They are life itself. ~ Layton Green, #NFDB
359:The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society. ~ Henri de Saint-Simon, Mémoire sur la science de l'homme (1813)., #NFDB
360:We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena simply because they are inexplicable at the present state of our knowledge. The more difficult it is to acknowledge their existence, the greater the care with which we must study these phenomena. ~ Pierre Simon Laplace, #NFDB
361:If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
362:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, New York (20 Jan. 1877), #NFDB
363:Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. For ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
364:Which is more important: money or wisdom? “Wisdom,” says the philosopher. “Ha!” scoffs the cynic. “If wisdom is more important than money, why is it that the wise wait on the rich, and not the rich on the wise?” “Because,” says the scholar, “the wise, being wise, understand the value of money; but the rich, being only rich, do not know the value of wisdom. ~ Leo Rosten, #NFDB
365:The soul of the philosopher achieves a calm from such emotions; it follows reason and ever stays with it contemplating the true, the divine, which is not the object of opinion. Nurtured by this, it believes that one should live in this manner as long b as one is alive and, after death, arrive at what is akin and of the same kind, and escape from human evils. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
366:The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils." Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king. ~ Anthony de Mello, #NFDB
367:In Hindustan, as in England, there are doctrines for the learned, and dogmas for the unlearned; strong meat for men & milk for babes; facts for the few, & fictions for the many, realities for the wise, and romances for the simple; esoteric truth for the philosopher, & exoteric fable for the fool. ~ Hurrychund Chintamon, quoted by H. P. Blavatsky, in New York (20 Jan. 1877), #NFDB
368:The religion department introduced me to the philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work resonated with me deeply. Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
369:Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
370:The man of science, whether he knows it or not (most often, obviously, he does know it), whether he wishes it or not (ordinarily he does not wish it), cannot help but be a realist in the medieval sense of the term. He is distinguished from the philosopher only by the fact that the philosopher must, in addition, explain and justify the realism practiced by science ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
371:I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is wiser to go directly to the quiddity, to the text, to the source, to the essence—and only then evolve whatever theories may tempt the philosopher, or the historian, or merely please the spirit of the day. Readers are born free and ought to remain free. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
372:The matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not. It is glorious and vile, precious and of small account, and is found everywhere... But, to be brief, our Matter has as many names as there are things in this world; that is why the foolish know it not. ~ The Golden Tract concerning the Philosopher's Stone in the Musaeum Hermeticum, #NFDB
373:It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
374:When God “died” in the 19th century, “social-ism” took the form of materialist scientism (hence the philosopher Eric Voegelin’s observation that under Marxism, “Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come”). It’s worth recalling that both Marx and Engels came to their socialism via their atheism, not the other way around. ~ Jonah Goldberg, #NFDB
375:Every other art,—as poetry, music, painting,—may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted;—but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), as translated by William Smith (1847), p. 14., #NFDB
376:It is just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
377:The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
378:I knew it! I knew it! ”
“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone!”
This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.
“The what?” said Harry and Ron.
“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there. ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
379:The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one’s own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
380:The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one's own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence - as inoffensively as possible - like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow - the philosopher, the artist, the believer. ~ Ernst Junger, #NFDB
381:It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
382:Various accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
383:Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously—the pharisee ostentatiously—the simple-hearted humbly—the poor idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground; the philosopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same fashion—given an equally good digestion. There's theory for theory for you! ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
384:In his book The Four Loves, Lewis describes the pleasure of working with one’s colleagues side by side. In fact, he builds his whole theory of friendship upon this very idea: “You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress: better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him. ~ Diana Pavlac Glyer, #NFDB
385:The precious stones shall all unite, the scent of time shall fill the night, once time links the fraternity, one man lives for eternity.
Under the sign of the twelvefold star, all sickness and ill will flee afar.
The philosopher's stone shall eternally bind.
New strength will arise in the young at that hour,
Making one man immortal, for he holds the power. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
386:We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea. ~ Willard Van Orman Quine, #NFDB
387:What is truth to the philosopher, would not be Truth, nor have the effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of the many must necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective few, not so much in the essence as in its forms, not so much in the spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as the symbols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
388:So the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundary as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
389:But before he knew it, Harry was shouting. ‘SO YOU HAVEN’T BEEN IN THE MEETINGS, BIG DEAL! YOU’VE STILL BEEN HERE, HAVEN’T YOU? YOU’VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER! ME, I’VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS’ FOR A MONTH! AND I’VE HANDLED MORE THAN YOU TWO’VE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT – WHO SAVED THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED BOTH YOUR SKINS FROM THE DEMENTORS? ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
390:In his version of the theory, information becomes conscious when certain “workspace” neurons broadcast it to many areas of the brain at once, making it simultaneously available for, say, language, memory, perceptual categorization, action planning, and so on. In other words, consciousness is “cerebral celebrity,” as the philosopher Daniel Dennett has described it, or “fame in the brain. ~ Jim Holt, #NFDB
391:It may be objected that the meaning of names can guide us at most only to the opinions, possibly the foolish and groundless opinions, which mankind have formed concerning things, and that as the object of philosophy is truth, not opinion, the philosopher should dismiss words and look into things themselves, to ascertain what questions can be asked and answered in regard to them. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
392:So the life of the philosopher extends widely: he is not confined by the same boundaries as are others. He alone is free from the laws that limit the human race, and all ages serve him as though he were a god. Some time has passed: he grasps it in his recollection. Time is present: he uses it. Time is to come: he anticipates it. This combination of all times into one gives him a long life ~ Seneca, #NFDB
393:the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. “But, above all, I learned that these things are all so simple that they could be written on the surface of an emerald. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
394:I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
395:I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
396:The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
397:As the philosopher Karl Popper wrote: ‘For if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain . . . overwhelming evidence in favour of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.14’ V ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
398:If one proceeds philosophically before proceeding poetically, and this is central to the philosopher, pleasure is crushed, But if one begins by having pleasure, it is like knowing how to swim: one never forgets it [Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life, trans Elizabeth Lowe & Earl Fitz, Foreword by Hélène Cixous trans Verena Conley, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989]. ~ H l ne Cixous, #NFDB
399:The explanatory gap has never been bridged. And the inescapable reason is this: a neural state is not a mental state. The mind is not the brain, though it depends on the material brain for its existence (as far as we know). As the philosopher Colin McGinn says, “The problem with materialism is that it tries to construct the mind out of properties that refuse to add up to mentality. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
400:When the boy begins to understand that the visible point is preceded by an invisible point, that the shortest distance between two points is conceived as a straight line before it is ever drawn with pencil and paper...the fountain of all thought has been opened to him...the philosopher can reveal him nothing new, as a geometrician he has discovered the basis of all thought. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
401:In the Middle Ages, as in Classical times, the academy possessed freedom unknown to other bodies and persons because the philosopher, the scholar, and the student were looked upon as men consecrated to the service of the Truth; and that Truth was not simply a purposeless groping after miscellaneous information , but a wisdom to be obtained, however imperfectly, from a teleological search. ~ Russell Kirk, #NFDB
402:In the preface to her translation of the philosopher, economist, and satirist Bernard Mandeville’s 1714 social allegory The Fable of the Bees, Du Châtelet wrote: If I were king, I would wish to make this scientific experiment. I would reform an abuse that cuts out, so to speak, half of humanity. I would allow women to share in all the rights of humanity, and most of all those of the mind. ~ Maria Popova, #NFDB
403:The philosopher who travels the world in order to learn must put up with all customs, all religions, all kinds of weather and climate, all beds and all kinds of food, and leave to the voluptuous, indolent man in the capital his prejudices...his luxury...that obscene luxury that, as it never contains any real needs, creates artificial ones every day at the expense of fortune and health. ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
404:These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. It was reasoning as described by the philosopher David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
405:The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is importnat, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe. For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself. ~ George H Smith, #NFDB
406:How well do you know yourself?” He thought about the years, the goals he’d achieved, and the ultimate goal it was serving. “The Philosopher said that a man alone is either a god or a monster,” Gavin said. “I’m no god.” She stared at him for one moment more, those intense blue eyes unreadable. She smiled. “Well then. Maybe the times call for a monster.” She knelt at his feet, and he blessed her. ~ Brent Weeks, #NFDB
407:An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. "But the facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not agree with your theory."—"Don't they?" replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, tant pis pour les faits;"—so much the worse for the facts! ~ Charles Mackay, #NFDB
408:A man who swears
before the world to love a woman till death part him and her is sane
neither in the opinion of the philosopher who understands what
mutability is nor in the opinion of the man of the world who
understands that it is safer to be a witness than an actor in such
affairs. A man who swears to do something which it is not in his power
to do is not accounted a sane man. ~ James Joyce,#NFDB
409:The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this “the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking.” Von Kleist quotes the French proverb that “appetite comes from eating” and observes that it is equally the case that “ideas come from speaking.” The best thoughts, in his view, can be almost unintelligible as they emerge; what matters most is risky, thrilling conversation as a crucible for discovery. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
410:Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
411:The finest imagination in the world could not have conceived of a better idea than the philosophers' stone to inspire the minds and faculties of men. Without it, chemistry would not be what it is today. In order to discover that no such thing as the philosopher's stone existed, it was necessary to ransack and analyze every substance known on earth. And in precisely this lay its miraculous influence. ~ Justus von Liebig, #NFDB
412:The mathematic, then, is an art. As such it has its styles and style periods. It is not, as the layman and the philosopher (who is in this matter a layman too) imagine, substantially unalterable, but subject like every art to unnoticed changes form epoch to epoch. The development of the great arts ought never to be treated without an (assuredly not unprofitable) side-glance at contemporary mathematics. ~ Oswald Spengler, #NFDB
413:The occultist and the philosopher are entirely willing to accept the mystical truths of Christianity for they are a part of all truth, all revelation, and all mysteries. What the mystic seeks to escape is not true Christianity but the contendings of unnumbered jarring sects that have theologized Jesus out of existence and put in his place a figure of their own conception. ~ Manly P Hall, The Students Monthly Letter, 4th year #10, #NFDB
414:A person of your century: Great persons are of their time. Not all were born into a period worthy of them, and many so born failed to benefit by it. Some merited a better century, for all that is good does not always triumph. Fashions have their periods and even the greatest virtues, their styles. But the philosopher, being ageless, has one advantage: Should this not prove the right century, many to follow will. ~ Baltasar Gracian, #NFDB
415:A person of your century: Great persons are of their time. Not all were born into a period worthy of them, and many so born failed to benefit by it. Some merited a better century, for all that is good does not always triumph. Fashions have their periods and even the greatest virtues, their styles. But the philosopher, being ageless, has one advantage: Should this not prove the right century, many to follow will. ~ Baltasar Graci n, #NFDB
416:If iron is once changed to gold by the touch of the philosopher’s stone, it may be kept in the earth or thrown into a mass of ordure, but always it will be gold and can never go back to its first condition. So is it with him whose heart has touched, were it but a single time, the feet of the Almighty; let him dwell amidst the tumult of the world or in the solitude of the forest, by nothing can he again be polluted. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
417:I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds ... This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
418:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
419:Man can affect his own development and that of his surroundings only so far as he has a clear view of what the possibilities of action are open to him. To do this he has to understand the historical situation in which he finds himself: and once he does this, then he can play an active part in modifying that situation.
The man of action is the true philosopher: and the philosopher must of necessity be a man of action. ~ Antonio Gramsci,#NFDB
420:If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind. Few such conflicts can match the First Vegan Wars for grotesque excess. ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
421:In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language. ~ Donald Davidson. "Quotation" in: Theory and Decision, March 1979, Vol. 11, Iss. 1, pp 27-40; Cited by Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, (2010), p. 4., #NFDB
422:The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.....It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law” - the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
423:The ancient Greeks told of a philosopher eating bread and lentils for dinner. He was approached by another man, who lived sumptuously by flattering the king. Said the flatterer, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils." The philosopher replied, "If you would learn to live on lentils, you would not have to give up your independence in order to be docile and acquiescent to the king. ~ John Robbins, #NFDB
424:It is said that when Alexander heard that the philosopher Diogenes was the smartest person in the world, he decided he must meet the man. So he went to Corinth, where Diogenes was contemplating his theories as he lay in the sun. Alexander stood over him and said, “I am Alexander, conqueror of worlds; put forward your request and it shall be done.” Diogenes squinted up at him, shook his head, and said, “Just get out of my light. ~ Shmuley Boteach, #NFDB
425:.. how worthless are all these poor people who are engaged in matters political, and, as they suppose, are playing the philosopher. All drivelers.
Well then, man: do what Nature now requires. Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about to see if anyone will observe it, nor expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. ~ Marcus Aurelius,#NFDB
426:The tyrant of Syracuse once went to the slavephilosopher Epictetus and told him, “I’ll pay the ransom for you and you will be liberated ” Epictetus replied, “Why do you care about me? Free yourself.” “But I am a king,” said the amazed tyrant. “This I contest,” was the answer of the philosopher. “He who masters his passions is a king even while in chains. He who is ruled by his passions is a slave even while sitting on a throne. ~ Richard Wurmbrand, #NFDB
427:I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
428:I remember the philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked why he spent his time protesting against nuclear war and getting arrested on demonstrations. Why didn’t he continue to work on the serious philosophical and logical problems which have major intellectual significance? And his answer was pretty good. He said: “Look, if I and others like me only work on those problems, there won’t be anybody around to appreciate it or be interested. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
429:The philosopher wants to know things as they are. He loves the truth. That is an intellectual virtue. He does not love to tell the truth. That is a moral virtue. Presumably he would prefer not to practice deception; but if it is a condition of his survival, he has no objection to it. The hopes of changing mankind almost always end up in changing not mankind but one’s thought. ~ Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 279., #NFDB
430:Science, the partisan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosophy of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him. —Thomas Paine, 1778 ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
431:Science, the partisan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosophy of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him. —Thomas Paine, 17781 ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
432:The philosopher Alan Watts, were he alive today, would nod knowingly when told of that experiment. Watts once said, “Only bad music has any meaning.” Meaning necessarily entails words, symbols. They point to something other than themselves. Good music doesn’t point anywhere. It just is. Likewise, only unhappiness has meaning. That’s why we feel compelled to talk about it and have so many words to draw upon. Happiness doesn’t require words. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
433:It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness. ~ lvaro de Campos, #NFDB
434:There is a beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All literate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan and the musician. ~ Glenn T Seaborg, #NFDB
435:May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Have I not understood it myself? Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life? And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago, "That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer—— CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
436:in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science is too delicate for the purposes of life. The value of a work must be estimated by its use; it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critick, unless, at the same time, it instructs the learner; as it is to little purpose that an engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its application as to be of no advantage to the common workman. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
437:The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
438:History isn’t only a subject; it’s also a method. My method is, generally, to let the dead speak for themselves. I’ve pressed their words between these pages, like flowers, for their beauty, or like insects, for their hideousness. The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth. ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
439:I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
440:Every work turns against its author: the poem will crush the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. Destruction awaits anyone who, answering to his vocation and fulfilling it, exerts himself within history; only the man who sacrifices every gift and talent escapes: released from his humanity, he may lodge himself in Being. (...) One always perishes by the self one assumes: to bear a name is to claim an exact mode of collapse. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
441:If any one asks: ‘Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?’ we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense. The ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
442:Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
443:It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles’ Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God’s sake, not to inquire further. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, Letter to Goethe (November 1819), #NFDB
444:I feel grateful to the Milesian wench who, seeing the philosopher Thales continually spending his time in contemplation of the heavenly vault and always keeping his eyes raised upward, put something in his way to make him stumble, to warn him that it would be time to amuse his thoughts with things in the clouds when he had seen to those at his feet. Indeed she gave him or her good counsel, to look rather to himself than to the sky. —Michel de Montaigne ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
445:One of them, the philosopher Philostratus, summed up the idea by saying that the great athletes of the past “made war training for sport, and sport training for war.” Turning Spartan logic on its head, Plutarch even claimed that the Thebans at the great Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC defeated the Spartans because they had done more training at the palaestra; he also wrote that sport, wrestling specifically included, was an imitation and exercise of war. ~ Martin van Creveld, #NFDB
446:The philosopher Vatsigotra asked, “Is there a self?” and the Buddha did not say anything. Vatsigotra persisted, “Do you mean there is no self?” but the Buddha still did not reply. Finally, Vatsigotra left. Ananda, the Buddha’s attendant, was puzzled. “Lord, you always teach that there is no self. Why did you not say so to Vatsigotra?” The Buddha told Ananda that he did not reply because Vatsigotra was looking for a theory, not a way to remove obstacles. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
447:The philosopher and critic Georg Lukács put it this way: “The essence of art is form: it is to defeat oppositions, to conquer opposing forces, to create coherence from every centrifugal force, from all things that have been deeply and eternally alien to one another before and outside this form. The creation of form is the last judgment over things, a last judgment that redeems all that could be redeemed, that enforces salvation on all things with divine force. ~ Alex Ross, #NFDB
448:The philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
449:We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone. ~ Viggo Mortensen, #NFDB
450:The philosopher John Stuart Mill once wrote, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”8 ~ Eric Greitens, #NFDB
451:In reality, however, she was guilty of a distinctive kind of laziness. By failing to engage with the complexity of the system she managed, she was blaming preemptively and thus undermining openness and learning. She was weakening the most important accountability of all: what the philosopher Virginia Sharpe calls “forward-looking accountability.” This is the accountability to learn from adverse events so that future patients are not harmed by avoidable mistakes. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
452:You can be horrified by the state of the prisons, the misery in certain neighborhoods of its cities, or their level of poverty. Anti-Americanism, by which I mean a hatred for America as such-its transformation into a metaphysical category, which incarnates all the evil in the world-is one of fascism's favorite themes. Look at writer and political theorist Charles Maurras in France. The philosopher Martin Heidegger in Germany. The radical Islamists of today! ~ Bernard Henri Levy, #NFDB
453:The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
454:The Fairness Principle: When contemplating a moral action imagine that you do not know if you will be the moral doer or receiver, and when in doubt err on the side of the other person. This is based on the philosopher John Rawls’s concepts of the “veil of ignorance” and the “original position” in which moral actors are ignorant of their position in society when determining rules and laws that affect everyone, because of the self-serving bias in human decision making. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
455:The philosopher must argue for sense experience by appealing to sense experience. What choice does he have? If he appeals to something else as his final authority, he is simply being inconsistent. But this is the case with any basic commitment. When we are arguing on behalf of an absolute authority, then our final appeal must be to that authority and to no other. A proof of the primacy of reason must appeal to reason; a proof of the necessity of logic must appeal to logic; ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
456:The philosopher Karl Popper believed [POP] that nothing can ever be known with absolute certainty. He instead had a concept of “truth up to falsifiability.” Mathematics, in its traditional modality, rejects this point of view. Mathematical assertions that are proved according to the accepted canons of mathematical deduction are believed to be irrefutably true. And they will continue to be true. This permanent nature of mathematics makes it unique among human intellectual pursuits. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
457:I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
458:The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
459:The philosopher Descartes believed he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
460:Israel's monomaniacal Spinoza worship is amusing and exasperating by turns. For a start, his insistence that Spinoza was the singular font of the Enlightenment leaves him without a story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins. Every historian has to begin somewhere, but the fact that Israel begins with Spinoza, and then reduces most of what follows the philosopher to a footnote, leaves his account of the Enlightenment founded on something like immaculate conception. ~ Samuel Moyn, #NFDB
461:The philosopher … subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment—namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society. ~ Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (1964), p. 126., #NFDB
462:All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to[21] reach a conclusion. "Man" involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
463:You have asked two questions, and I will answer them separately,” Gray said. “Trollope writes with precision and feeling about love and marriage. Yes, I can assure you of that. Now, the second question is rather different. Trollope, I believe, would take the view that it is the function of the preacher and the theologian, the philosopher and perhaps the poet, but emphatically not that of the novelist, to deal with what you call ‘the great mystery of our existence.’ I would tend to agree with him. ~ Colm T ib n, #NFDB
464:Theology is not merely another branch of philosophy, but something else entirely. For him, philosophy was man's search for truth apart from God... But theology begins and ends with faith in Christ, who reveals himself to man; apart from such revelation, there could be no such thing as truth. Thus the philosopher-- and the theologian who operates on a philosopher's assumptions-- chases his own tail and gazes at his own navel. He cannot break out of that cycle, but God, via revelation, can break in. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
465:The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience. ~ Martin Esslin, #NFDB
466:The true wisdom of the philosopher ought to insist in enjoying everything. Yet we apply ourselves to dissecting and destroying everything that is good in itself, that has virtue, albeit the virtue there is in mere illusions. Nature gives us this life like a toy to a weak child. We want to see how it all works; we break everything. There remains in our hands, and before our eyes, stupid and opened too late, the sterile wreckage, fragments that will not again make a whole. The good is so simple. ~ Eugene Delacroix, #NFDB
467:There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries, and by all nations; it is the philosopher's stone, that turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers not want to break into its dwelling; it is the northwest passage, that brings the merchant's ships as soon to him as he can desire: in a word, it conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution. ~ Edward Hyde 1st Earl of Clarendon, #NFDB
468:I know you're on my side," an immunologist once remarked to me as we discussed the politics of vaccination. I did not agree with him, but only because I was uncomfortable with both sides, as I had seen them delineated. The debate over vaccination tends to be described with what the philosopher of science Donna Haraway would call "troubling dualisms." These dualisms pit science against nature, public against private, truth against imagination, self against other, thought against emotion, and man against woman. ~ Eula Biss, #NFDB
469:Rather, we look in wonder at the infinite space beyond the boundaries of what we currently understand, and dare to step into that unbounded terrain, discovering new problems as we find new solutions, as great scientists do. As the philosopher Karl Popper put it: ‘it is part of the greatness and beauty of science that we can learn through our own critical investigations that the world is utterly different from what we ever imagined – until our imagination was fired by the refutation of our earlier theories’.1 ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
470:The philosopher’s hesitation about language is a chastening reminder that we ought not place too much faith in whatever our religious construct is. When the construct fails us, as it surely will, we will remember that there was presumption in giving our heart so wholly to whatever it was we had said about God anyway. And when the construct fails us, maybe we will glimpse the God beneath the picture we had faithfully, longingly, lovingly made. Hush. In this poverty of expression, thou findest that He is all. ~ Lauren F Winner, #NFDB
471:In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. ~ Evelyn Underhill, #NFDB
472:Western engagement with Eastern spirituality dates back at least as far as Alexander’s campaign in India, where the young conqueror and his pet philosophers encountered naked ascetics whom they called “gymnosophists.” It is often said that the thinking of these yogis greatly influenced the philosopher Pyrrho, the father of Greek skepticism. This seems a credible claim, because Pyrrho’s teachings had much in common with Buddhism. But his contemplative insights and methods never became part of any system of thought in the West. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
473:The historian (and for that matter the philosopher) is not God, looking at the world from above and outside. He is a man, and a man of his own time and place. He looks at the past from the point of view of the present: he looks at other countries and civilizations from the point of view of his own. This point of view is valid only for him and people situated like him, but for him it is valid. He must stand firm in it, because it is the only one accessible to him, and unless he has a point of view he can see nothing at all. ~ R G Collingwood, #NFDB
474:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. This force amplifies and colors every other piece of the code, and unlocks our potential for understanding and ability. It’s no coincidence that geniuses not only dare to dream of the impossible for their work, but do the same for their lives. They’re audacious enough to think that they’re not just an ordinary player. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
475:Alas, Islam turned against science in the twelfth century. The most influential figure was the philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, who argued in The Incoherence of the Philosophers against the very idea of laws of nature, on the ground that any such laws would put God's hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smoulder because of the heat, but because God wants it to darken and smoulder. After al-Ghazzali, there was no more science worth mentioning in Islamic countries. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
476:Resentment is a storytelling passion,' says the philosopher Charles Griswold in his book Forgiveness. I know well how compelling those stories are, how they grant immortality to an old injury. The teller goes in circles like a camel harnessed to a rotary water pump, diligently extracting misery, reviving feeling with each retelling. Feelings are kept alive that would fade away without narrative, or are invented by narratives that may have little to do with what once transpired and even less to do with the present moment. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
477:I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, force and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
478:Yet now they call her goddess. Now, we are to kneel before her, and know her face as Dark’s own, her presence as the elemental force itself. What has become of us that we should so descend into superstition? Treasonous thoughts – she knew that. The philosopher’s game of separating governance from faith was a lie. Beliefs ran the gamut, from worshipping vast spirits in the sky down to professing love for a man. From listening to the voice of a god’s will to accepting an officer’s right to command. The only distinction was one of scale. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
479:Nearly four centuries ago, the philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon wrote about the ways in which the mind errs, and he considered the failure to consider absences among the most serious: By far the greatest impediment and aberration of the human understanding arises from [the fact that]…those things which strike the sense outweigh things which, although they may be more important, do not strike it directly. Hence, contemplation usually ceases with seeing, so much so that little or no attention is paid to things invisible.6 ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
480:Away thou fondling motley humorist,
Leave mee, and in this standing woodden chest,
Consorted with these few bookes, let me lye
In prison, and here be coffin'd, when I dye;
Here are Gods conduits, grave Divines; and here
Natures Secretary, the Philosopher;
And jolly Statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinewes of a cities mistique bodie;
Here gathering Chroniclers, and by them stand
Giddie fantastique Poets of each land.
Shall I leave all this constant company,
And follow headlong, wild uncertaine thee? ~ John Donne,#NFDB
481:Every man ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself, and enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity. The philosopher may very justly be delighted with the extent of his views, and the artificer with the readiness of his hands; but let the one remember, that, without mechanical performances, refined speculation is an empty dream, and the other, that, without theoretical reasoning, dexterity is little more than a brute instinct. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
482:I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i. e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
483:But one night, while reading lectures by the philosopher Charles Peirce, James decided to conduct a little experiment. In his diary, he wrote that he would spend one year believing that he was 100 percent responsible for everything that occurred in his life, no matter what. During this period, he would do everything in his power to change his circumstances, no matter the likelihood of failure. If nothing improved in that year, then it would be apparent that he was truly powerless to the circumstances around him, and then he would take his own life. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
484:Political dissension is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism: but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles of society as that political opinions shall, in its intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may well be doubted. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
485:The artist, the poet, the musician and the philosopher show in their gifts throughout their lives the heritage of the jinn. The words genius and jinn come from a Sanskrit word Jnana, which means knowledge. The jinns. Therefore, are the beings of knowledge; whose hunger is for knowledge, whose joy is in learning, in understanding, and whose work is in inspiring, and bring light and joy to others. In every kind of knowledge that exists, the favorite knowledge to a jinn is the knowledge of truth, in which is the fulfillment of its life's purpose. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
486:When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification. ~ Rebecca Goldstein, #NFDB
487:That is, through his imagination, Goethe could, when practising ‘active seeing’, enter into the inner being of whatever he was observing, in the way that the philosopher Bergson argued ‘intuition’ could. Here ‘imagination’ is not understood in the reductive sense of ‘unreal’ but in the sense given it by Hermetic thinkers such as Ficino and Suhrawardi, as a means of entering the Hūrqalyā, the Imaginal World or anima mundi that mediates between the world of pure abstraction (Plato’s Ideas) and physical reality (in Goethe’s case, a plant or a cathedral). ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
488:Confucius, the philosopher and politician who was born in the sixth century B.C.E. He acquired a place in Chinese history akin to that of Socrates in the West, in part because his ideology encouraged order and loyalty. “There is government,” Confucius said, “when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.” Confucius linked morality to the strength of the state: “He who exercises government by means of virtue may be compared to the North Star, which holds its place while all other stars turn around it. ~ Evan Osnos, #NFDB
489:As the philosopher Tzvetan Todorov has observed, even though no one wants to be a victim, the position does confer certain advantages. Groups that gain recognition as victims of past injustices obtain “a bottomless line of moral credit,” he has written. “The greater the crime in the past, the more compelling the rights in the present—which are gained merely through membership in the wronged group.” Conversely, the grandchildren of the alleged perpetrators aspire to absolve their ancestors of guilt and, by association, of a link to Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
490:the philosopher of history Emmerich de Vattel could write in 1758, the second year of the Seven Years’ War, that: The continual negotiations that take place, make modern Europe a sort of republic, whose members—each independent, but all bound together by a common interest—unite for the maintenance of order and the preservation of liberty. This is what has given rise to the well-known principle of the balance of power, by which is meant an arrangement of affairs so that no state shall be in a position to have absolute mastery and dominate over the others.15 ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
491:The question of belief is a curious one, partaking of the wonders of childhood and the blind hopefulness of the very old; in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something. It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
492:But how we should care for other people remains a question. In his discussion of efforts to control childhood obesity, the philosopher Michael Merry defines paternalism as “interference with the liberty of another for the purposes of promoting some good or preventing some harm.” This type of paternalism, he notes, is reflected in traffic laws, gun control, and environmental regulations. These are limits to liberty, even if they are benevolent. Interfering with the parenting of obese children, he argues, is not necessarily benevolent. There is risk in assigning risk. ~ Eula Biss, #NFDB
493:Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please. ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
494:The Philosopher
And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?
And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?
I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?
Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,—
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,#NFDB
495:So, whenever you find yourself putting forth great effort without success, you're trying to force something that won't fit under the circumstances. That's a destructive waste of time. And if that isn't enough to keep in mind, your techniques must always be allowed to evolve and change, in relationships, in life, in science, in society. Otherwise you stagnate, and you won't get anywhere in the long run... You know what the philosopher Aldous Huxley said? He said 'Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. ~ Tony Vigorito, #NFDB
496:Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: “What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies,” Kuhn wrote, “…. [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis.” Instead, he concluded, “A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place.” That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
497:Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
498:The only way out of this cul-de-sac seems to be to substitute for genetic atomism, which has so drastically broken down, the concept of the genetic micro-hierarchy, with its own built-in rules, that permit a great amount of variation, but only in limited directions on a limited number of themes. This really amounts to the revival of an ancient idea which goes back to Goethe-and even further to Plato. The point is worth a short historical digression-which may make it clear why the concept of homology has such great importance not only for the biologist, but also for the philosopher. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
499:One alchemist announced that one grain of this powder would transmute into purest gold one hundred thousand times its own weight. But his readers did not realize that this powder is wisdom, one grain of which can transmute all the ignorance in the world. Nor did the reader properly understand that the PHILOSOPHER'S STONE IS KNOWLEDGE, the great miracle worker, or that the elixir of life was Truth, which makes all things new. It was sad that misunderstandings should exist, but wherever great truths are given to small minds, misunderstandings are inevitable. ~ Manly P Hall, (A Monthly Letter April 1937), #NFDB
500:The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
501:My dear loser, Glenn greeted Wertheimer, with his Canadian-American cold-bloodedness he always called him the loser, he called me quite dryly the philosopher, which didn’t bother me. Wertheimer, the loser, was for Glenn always busy losing, constantly losing out, whereas Glenn noticed I had the word philosopher in my mouth at all times and probably with sickening regularity, and so quite naturally we were for him the loser and the philosopher, I said to myself upon entering the inn. The loser and the philosopher went to America to see Glenn the piano virtuoso again, for no other reason. And ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
502:The Circle of Blood its perfection will find,
The philosopher's stone shall eternity bind.
New strength will arise in the young at that hour,
Making one man immortal, for he holds the power.
But beware: when the twelfth star shows its own force,
His life here on earth runs its natural course.
And if youth is destroyed, the the oak tree will stand
To the end of all time, rooted fast in the land.
As the star dies, the eagle arises supreme,
Fulfilling his ancient and magical dream.
For a star goes out in the sky above,
If it freely chooses to die for love. ~ Kerstin Gier,#NFDB
503:More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
504:When a person with curiosity and interest has discipline available to him, he has the right formula for creativity. The philosopher Nietzsche spoke of the creative act as involving both Dionysian and Apollonian elements. The Dionysian represents the passionate interest and desire to learn. The Apollonian represents the form and structure that must guide any truly creative act. Music is limited by the diatonic scale, and poetry is limited by words and the forms of poetic cadence. The world is full of people with good ideas and fantasies that never come to fruition because they don’t have disciplined limits. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
505:The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas. Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong. ... This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning. If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
506:The philosopher Edmund Burke said “there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.” Imagination is the life force of the genius code. This force amplifies and colors every other piece of the code, and unlocks our potential for understanding and ability. It’s no coincidence that geniuses not only dare to dream of the impossible for their work, but do the same for their lives. They’re audacious enough to think that they’re not just an ordinary player. Few stories better illustrate this than the life of the father of the modern world, a man of ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
507:In the world described by quantum mechanics there is no reality except in the relations between physical systems. It isn’t things that enter into relations but, rather, relations that ground the notion of ‘thing’. The world of quantum mechanics is not a world of objects: it is a world of events. Things are built by the happening of elementary events: as the philosopher Nelson Goodman wrote in the 1950s, in a beautiful phrase, ‘An object is a monotonous process.’ A stone is a vibration of quanta that maintains its structure for a while, just as a marine wave maintains its identity for a while before melting again into the sea. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
508:our most basic myth would seem to be not Oedipus’s patricide, but matricide and violence against women. Where is Cinderella’s mother, and where is Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother? The philosopher Julia Kristeva has explained the drive toward matricide as a kind of original, generative anger, expressing a need to destroy the mother, the origin place, to become an individual self. This is messier than an Oedipal reading of history, as the will to matricide is born in confusion and creates only chaos. As Nelson explains, the maternal element returns “via horror, repulsion, the uncanny, haunting, melancholia, depression, guilt. ~ Alice Bolin, #NFDB
509:Two of the most famous Baghdadi scholars, the philosopher Al-Kindi and the mathematician Al-Khawarizmi, were certainly the most influential in transmitting Hindu numerals to the Muslim world. Both wrote books on the subject during al-Ma'mun's reign, and it was their work that was translated into Latin and transmitted to the West, thus introducing Europeans to the decimal system, which was known in the Middle Ages only as Arabic numerals. But it would be many centuries before it was widely accepted in Europe. One reason for this was sociological: decimal numbers were considered for a long time as symbols of the evil Muslim foe. ~ Jim Al Khalili, #NFDB
510:My Clippings - Your Highlight on Location 483-486 | Added on Friday, March 6, 2015 4:28:26 PM Every man ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself, and enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity. The philosopher may very justly be delighted with the extent of his views, and the artificer with the readiness of his hands; but let the one remember, that, without mechanical performances, refined speculation is an empty dream, and the other, that, without theoretical reasoning, dexterity is little more than a brute instinct. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
511:The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I KNOW what thinking is. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
512:The philosopher and ethicist Jonathan Glover reports the story of Odilo Globocnik, the Nazi SS leader in Lublin, Poland, who recalled an incident in which he expressed to another Nazi officer, a Major Hofle, how much it bothered him to think about the Polish children freezing to death while being transported by the Nazis from Lublin to Warsaw. He could not look at these young children without thinking of his own three-year-old niece. Hofle, he recalled, looked at me 'like [I was] an idiot.' Sometime later, Hofle’s own baby twins died of diphtheria and, at the cemetery, he cried out that it was heaven’s punishment for his misdeeds. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
513:The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
514:The philosopher Leon Kass is among the foremost spokesmen for Shweder’s ethic of divinity, and for the Sanctity foundation on which it is based. Writing in 1997, the year after Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, Kass lamented the way that technology often erases moral boundaries and brings people ever closer to the dangerous belief that they can do anything they want to do. In an essay titled “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” Kass argued that our feelings of disgust can sometimes provide us with a valuable warning that we are going too far, even when we are morally dumbfounded and can’t justify those feelings by pointing to victims: ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
515:Do you know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead-letter nowadays? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In Greece, ideas went hand-in-hand with life; so that the artist's life was already a poetic realisation, the philosopher's life a putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave expression to philosophy - and the result was admirably persuasive. Nowadays beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart. ~ Andr Gide, #NFDB
516:Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the proper sphere of government to create and enforce a framework of law that prohibits force and fraud. But it must refrain from specific economic interventions. Government's main economic function is to encourage and preserve a free market. When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: "Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun." It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
517:Summer is more wooing and seductive, more versatile and human, appeals to the affections and the sentiments, and fosters inquiry and the art impulse. Winter is of a more heroic cast, and addresses the intellect. The severe studies and disciplines come easier in winter. One imposes larger tasks upon himself, and is less tolerant of his own weaknesses...The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
518:The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, History, #NFDB
519:The drum with no drumhead beats; clouds thunder without the monsoon; rain falls without clouds. Can anyone guess this riddle? I have met Ram the beautiful, and I too have become beautiful. The philosopher's stone turns lead into gold; costly rubies I string with my words and thoughts. I discovered real love; doubts, fears have left me. I found comfort in what my guru taught me. A pitcher will fill when plunged in water, so Ram is the One in all. The guru's heart and the disciple's heart are one. Thus has the slave Namdeva perceived Truth. [2184.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth, Translated by Nirmal Dass
~ Namdev, The drum with no drumhead beats
,#NFDB
520:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
521:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
522:The modern state is furthest removed from the idea of the Philosopher-king (Thank Heaven for that! the Christian will say); but we must think whether it takes that very 'encouragement of philosophy' in a Platonic sense, I mean as seriously and honestly as if its highest object were to produce more Platos. If the philosopher seem, as usual, an accident of his time, does the state make it its conscious business to turn the accidental into the necessary and help Nature here also?
Experience teaches us a better way — or a worse: it says that nothing so stands in the way of the birth and growth of Nature's philosopher as the bad philosophers made 'by order'. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
523:3. To prove the truth of the first reason, we take for granted a principle of the philosopher, namely, the more clear and evident divine things are, the more dark and hidden they are to the soul naturally. Thus the more clear the light the more does it blind the eyes of the owl,3 and the stronger the sun’s rays the more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them, by reason of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul, not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness, because it not only surpasses its strength, but because it blinds it and deprives it of its natural perceptions. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
524:English teaching at school is, unfortunately, obsessed with what a poet thought, as though that were of any interest to anyone. Rather than being taught about how a poem is phrased, schoolchildren are asked to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nutjob whose opinions, in a civilised society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. So ~ Mark Forsyth, #NFDB
525:From the mid-1940s, ‘existentialist’ was used as shorthand for anyone who practised free love and stayed up late dancing to jazz music. As the actor and nightclubber Anne-Marie Cazalis remarked in her memoirs, ‘If you were twenty, in 1945, after four years of Occupation, freedom also meant the freedom to go to bed at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.’ It meant offending your elders and defying the order of things. It could also mean mingling promiscuously with different races and classes. The philosopher Gabriel Marcel heard a lady on a train saying, ‘Sir, what a horror, existentialism! I have a friend whose son is an existentialist; he lives in a kitchen with a Negro woman!’ The ~ Sarah Bakewell, #NFDB
526:The peculiar, withdrawn attitude of the philosopher, world denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, which has been maintained down to the most modern times and has become virtually the philosopher’s pose par excellence—is above all a result of the emergency conditions under which philosophy arose and survived at all; for the longest time, philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloaks, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding. To put it vividly: the ascetic priest provided until the most modern times the repulsive and gloomy caterpillar form in which alone the philosopher could live and creep about. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
527:There is a false ecumenism, as sentimental and vague as you please, which for all intents and purposes abolishes doctrine; in order to reconcile two adversaries, one strangles them both, which is certainly the best way to make peace.
[...]
Objectivity toward the perspectives and spiritual ways of other peoples is too often the result of philosophic indifferentism or sentimental universalism, and in such a case there is no reason to pay it homage; indeed one may well ask whether objectivity in the full sense of the word is really involved. The Christian saint who fights Muslims is closer to Islamic sanctity than the philosopher who accepts everything and practices nothing. ~ Frithjof Schuon,#NFDB
528:What are these things?” he asked. “That’s the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. It’s the Master Work of the alchemists. Whoever swallows that elixir will never be sick again, and a fragment from that stone turns any metal into gold.” The Arabs laughed at him, and the alchemist laughed along. They thought his answer was amusing, and they allowed the boy and the alchemist to proceed with all of their belongings. “Are you crazy?” the boy asked the alchemist, when they had moved on. “What did you do that for?” “To show you one of life’s simple lessons,” the alchemist answered. “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
529:Noah harkened to the voice of the Lord that is he lived according to the Law, perfecting his soul and enriching his consciousness with the many experiences which result from the mystery of living. As a consequence the "Lord" protects the life of Noah, and brings the Ark at the end to a safe testing place upon the Mount of the illumination, Ararat. Part of the thirty-third degree of Freemasonry includes an interpretation of the symbolism of Noah and his Ark. Considered mystically, the story of the Flood is the wise man's mastery of adversity. It is the philosopher surviving the onslaughts of ignorance. It is the illumined mystic floating safely over the chaos.
~ Manly P Hall, How To Understand Your Bible,#NFDB
530:It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
531:The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.'
Said [author:Diogenes|3213618, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king". ~ Anthony de Mello,#NFDB
532:I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibnitz’s monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
533:Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
534:Whatever the philosopher says, in his philosophical discourse at any rate, he will be in the truth, even if he is himself a man of little virtue or a bad citizen; something of the truth will pass into his discourse, and, on the other hand, his discourse will never completely die out, it will never be completely erased in the history of the truth; in one way or another it will forever recur in it. The philosopher is someone who is never completely driven out or who is never completely killed. There is no philosophical ostracism. The victories discourse may win against him, the jousts in the course of which he may be vanquished, do not affect that part of truth which is delivered in his discourse. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
535:It is absurd to think that the scientific views of a Muslim scientist are necessarily connected with his religious belief, or that he necessarily derives inspiration for his scientific work from faith. This was as true a thousand years ago as it is now. Alchemy provides an excellent example. Developed extensively by Jabir Ibn Hayyan and AI-Razi, and based on certain myths going back to Arius and Pythagoras, it was one of the most important Muslim contributions. Of course, today everyone knows that alchemy was scientific nonsense: there cannot be anything like the Philosopher's Stone, and the transformation of base metals like copper or tin into silver or gold by chemical means is an impossibility ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy, #NFDB
536:A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
537:No one could have been more surprised than I was. I never thought I was the type. I had been born and raised a Jew and lived most of my life as an agnostic. I believed in the fullest freedom of thought into the widest reaches of fact and philosophy. I believed in science and analysis and reasonable explanations. I had no time for magical thinking of any kind. I couldn’t bear solemn piety. I despised even the ordinary varieties of willful blindness to the tragic shambles of life on earth. And as for what the philosopher Schopenhauer once called the Christian’s “banal optimism”—that forced, praise-singing cheer in the face of pain and disappointment and inescapable death—oh God, how I hated it; it set my teeth on edge. ~ Andrew Klavan, #NFDB
538:Philosophy needs vision and argument… there is something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains arguments, however good, which are not inspired by some genuine vision, and something disappointing about a philosophical work that contains a vision, however inspiring, which is unsupported by arguments…Speculation about how things hang together requires… the ability to draw out conceptual distinctions and connections, and the ability to argue… But speculative views, however interesting or well supported by arguments or insightful, are not all we need. We also need what [the philosopher Myles] Burnyeat called ‘vision’ – and I take that to mean vision as to how to live our lives, and how to order our societies. ~ Hilary Putnam, #NFDB
539:I have known true alchemists,” the alchemist continued. “They locked themselves in their laboratories, and tried to evolve, as gold had. And they found the Philosopher’s Stone, because they understood that when something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well. “Others stumbled upon the stone by accident. They already had the gift, and their souls were readier for such things than the souls of others. But they don’t count. They’re quite rare. “And then there were the others, who were interested only in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
540:I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. 'I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?'
'It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and-'
'Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.'
'The state of the body is not-'
'Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wan't them in the pit that they were throwing just as hard as they could. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
541:The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
542:When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind? The mind of the Sage being in repose becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.22 [59a] The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the water, but is its natural property. And the virtue of the perfect man is such that even without cultivation there is nothing which can withdraw from his sway. Heaven is naturally high, the earth is naturally solid, the sun and moon are naturally bright. Do they cultivate these attributes?23 [63b] ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
543:/Farsi & Turkish God is "what is nearer to you than your neck-vein," You have cast the arrow of speculation afar off. O you, who have made ready your bow and arrows, The game is close to you, and you shoot too far off. The further a man shoots, the further off he is, And the more removed from the treasure he seeks. The philosopher kills himself with thinking, Tell him that his back is turned to that treasure; Tell him that the more he runs to and fro, The further he is removed from his heart's desire. The Almighty says, "Make efforts in our ways," Not "Make efforts away from us," O restless one. [1502.jpg] -- from The Mathnawi: Rumi, Translated by E. H. Whinfield
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, God is what is nearer to you than your neck-vein,
,#NFDB
544:Now he who exercises his reason and cultivates
it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most dear to the
gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are
thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight
in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e. reason) and that
they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring
for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly.
And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher
is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who
is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way
too the philosopher will more than any other be happy. ~ Aristotle,#NFDB
545:But who are they? (opium-eaters) Reader, I am sorry to say, a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago, by computing, at that time, the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station), who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent , the late dean of ; Lord ; Mr , the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state … Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference, that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
546:The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
547:It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
548:It is the power given by wisdom and knowledge that makes the occultist superior to his fellow man, his superiority being proportionate to his superior intelligence. In every walk of life, the uninitiated will be confronted with mysteries. To the average person, the working of a gasoline engine is just as mysterious as calculus would be to a kindergarten child, but intimate relationship and study result in that familiarity which gives ease in handling and intelligence in directing. It has been well said that no man is a stranger to his own valet. The philosopher is a servant of God, and by perfect serving, soon becomes capable of thoroughly understanding the desires and dictates of his divine Master. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
549:Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and who have watched, not without astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has been effected both inside and outside the boundaries of the scientific world in the attitude of men's minds towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary manifestation of affectionate regard for the man, and of profound reverence for the philosopher, which followed the announcement, on Thursday last, of the death of Mr Darwin. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
550:I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?’
‘It has to be done,’ Brutha mumbled. ‘So the soul can be shriven and -‘
‘Don’t know about the soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher,’ said Didactylos. ‘All I know is, it was a horrible sight.’
‘The state of the body is not -‘
‘Oh, I’m not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,’ said the philosopher. ‘I’m talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn’t them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn’t them that they were throwing just as hard as they could. ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
551:The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has developed a concept of ‘living traditions’, which suggests that traditions are entirely distinct from consensus and a simple repetition of the past. He defines a living tradition as ‘an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition’.6 It may seem strange to define a tradition as an ‘argument’ extended over time, but it suggests that any tradition – e.g. of political co-operation, educational practices or artistic activity – must involve a continuous discussion of what it is and how to legitimise or change it. Traditions aren’t monolithic and unchanging (apart from dead ones, of course). They are living, dynamic and in constant motion. ~ Svend Brinkmann, #NFDB
552:There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into strom troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people. ~ T H White, #NFDB
553:In a world where the great questions have been solved and geopolitics has been subordinated to economics, humanity will look a lot like the nihilistic “last man” described by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: a narcissistic consumer with no greater aspirations beyond the next trip to the mall. In other words, these people would closely resemble today’s European bureaucrats and Washington lobbyists. They are competent enough at managing their affairs among post-historical people, but understanding the motives and countering the strategies of old-fashioned power politicians is hard for them. Unlike their less productive and less stable rivals, post-historical people are unwilling to make sacrifices, focused on the short term, easily distracted, and lacking in courage. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
554:There is prepossession on either side of the controversy, the one positive, the other negative, and history itself must decide between them. The facts must rule philosophy, not philosophy the facts. If it can be made out that the life of Christ and the apostolic church can be psychologically and historically explained only by the admission of the supernatural element which they claim, while every other explanation only increases the difficulty, of the problem and substitutes an unnatural miracle for a supernatural one, the historian has gained the case, and it is for the philosopher to adjust his theory to history. The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room. ~ Philip Schaff, #NFDB
555:You mean the Grail also comes into this?” Belbo asked. “Naturally. And I’m not the only one who says so. You are educated men; there is no need for me to go into the legend of the Grail. The Knights of the Round Table, the mystical quest for this miraculous object, which some believe was the chalice in which the blood of Jesus was collected. The Grail taken to France by Joseph of Arimathea. Others say it is a stone that possesses mysterious powers. The Grail is often depicted as a dazzling light. It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals wounds, blinds, strikes down…. Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists, but even if that’s so, what was the philosopher’s stone if not a symbol of some cosmic energy? The ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
556:It seems simple: a quotation is a repetition of a saying : But leading language philosophers — Frege, Tarski, Geach, Quine, Searle — recognized that quotations are trouble. Donald Davidson was taught that quotation is “a somewhat shady device” and an “invitation to sin.” In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language. Quotation might “appear trivial” yet also be “an easy entrance to the labyrinth” of other heady problems: propositional attitudes, explicit performatives, and picture theories of reference ~ Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, (2010), p. 4., #NFDB
557:The philosopher Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” If a common philosopher could think that, how much more we Christians ought to listen to the Holy Spirit when He says, “Examine yourself.” An unexamined Christian lies like an unattended garden. Let your garden go unattended for a few months, and you will not have roses and tomatoes but weeds. An unexamined Christian life is like an unkempt house. Lock your house up as tight as you will and leave it long enough, and when you come back you will not believe the dirt that got in from somewhere. An unexamined Christian is like an untaught child. A child that is not taught will be a little savage. It takes examination, teaching, instruction, discipline, caring, tending, weeding and cultivating to keep the life right. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
558:The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian. For history itself is destroyed, and its comprehensibility—based upon the fact that it is enacted by men and therefore can be understood by men—is in danger, whenever facts are no longer held to be part and parcel of the past and present world, and are misused to prove this or that opinion. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
559:But all the fighting in the world will not help us if we do not also hope. What i'm trying to cultivate is not blind optimism or inane positivity but what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls radical hope. "What makes this hope radical," Lear writes, "is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is." Radical hope is not so much something you have but something you practice; it demands flexibility, openness, and what Lear describes as "imaginative excellence." Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable; it makes the survival of the end of your world possible. Only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence. And I believe that it will help us create a better, more loving future. ~ Junot D az, #NFDB
560:Take science, a discipline where learning from failure is part of the method. This is a point that has been made by the philosopher Karl Popper, who suggested that science progresses through its vigilant response to its own mistakes. By making predictions that can be tested, a scientific theory is inherently vulnerable. This may seem like a weakness, but Popper realized that it is an incalculable strength. “The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of . . . error,” Popper wrote. “But science is one of the very few human activities—perhaps the only one—in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we learn from our mistakes and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
561:For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;--this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God--when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. ~ Plato, #NFDB
562:How can we unshackle ourselves from this irrational impulse to chase worthless options? In 1941 the philosopher Erich Fromm wrote a book called Escape from Freedom. In a modern democracy, he said, people are beset not by a lack of opportunity, but by a dizzying abundance of it. In our modern society this is emphatically so. We are continually reminded that we can do anything and be anything we want to be. The problem is in living up to this dream. We must develop ourselves in every way possible; must taste every aspect of life; must make sure that of the 1,000 things to see before dying, we have not stopped at number 999. But then comes a problem-are we spreading ourselves too thin? The temptation Fromm was describing, I believe, is what we saw as we watched our participants racing from one door to another. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
563:Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no cap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. presumably, he said, these must be some elementary particles - kingons, or possibly queons - that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plan to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
564:Certainly the anonymous scarecrow portrait was intended to put him in his place, in much the same way as the philosopher David Hume was said to have dismissed Williams’s accomplishments by comparing the admiration people had for him to the praise they might give “a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.” It is clear, then, that in eighteenth-century Britain there were Britons, like the painter Gainsborough, who were ready to accord respect to an African, even an African who was a servant; and there were other Britons, like the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, or the eminent philosopher Hume, who would sneer at a black man’s achievement. And it was not so much a question of the times in which they lived as the kind of people they were. It was the same in the times of Joseph Conrad a century later, and it is the same today! ~ Chinua Achebe, #NFDB
565:Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to Be Happy” shit that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap: The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
566:/Farsi Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation, split open the skies and start anew on creation. If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins, cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation. With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup; we'll sugar the fire to sweeten smoke's emanation. Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song; let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration. As dust, O West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens, floating free in Creator's glow of elation. If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay, here's a quarrel for love's deliberation. Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land; come, Hafez, let's create a new generation. [1509.jpg] -- from The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love, by Haleh Pourafzal / Roger Montgomery
~ Hafiz, A New World
,#NFDB
567:The Telescope, the Fluxions, the invention of Logarithms and the frenzy of multiplication, often for its own sake, that follow'd have for Emerson all been steps of an unarguable approach to God, a growing clarity,- Gravity, the pulse of time, the finite speed of Light present themselves to him as aspect of God's character. It's like becoming friendly with an erratic, powerful, potentially dangerous member of the Aristocracy. He holds no quarrel with the Creator's sovereignty, but is repeatedly appall'd at the lapses in Attention, the flaws in Design, the squand'rings of life and energy, the failures to be reasonable, or to exercise common sense,- first appall'd, then angry. We are taught,- we believe,- that it is love of the Creation which drives the Philosopher in his Studies. Emerson is driven, rather, by a passionate Resentment. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
568:let's say you and a small child go to a magic show, where things are made to float in the air. Which of you would have the most fun?"
"I probably would."
"And why would that be?"
"Because I would know how impossible it all is."
"So... for the child it's no fun to see the laws of nature being defied before it has learned what they are."
"I guess that's right."
"And we are still at the crux of Hume's philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher's most distinguishing virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences ~ Jostein Gaarder,#NFDB
569:John Stuart Mill said that liberals and conservatives are like this: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”44 The philosopher Bertrand Russell saw this same dynamic at work throughout Western intellectual history: “From 600 BC to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them.”45 Russell then explained why both sides are partially right, using terms that are about as close a match to moral capital as I could ever hope to find: It is clear that each party to this dispute—as to all that persist through long periods of time—is partly right and partly wrong. Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
570:It is reason which breeds pride and reflection which fortifies it; reason which turns man inward into himself; reason which separates him from everything which troubles or affects him. It is philosophy which isolates a man, and prompts him to say in secret at the sight of another suffering: 'Perish if you will; I am safe.' No longer can anything but dangers to society in general disturb the tranquil sleep of the philosopher or drag him from his bed. A fellow-man may with impunity be murdered under his window, for the philosopher has only to put his hands over his ears and argue a little with himself to prevent nature, which rebels inside him, from making him identify himself with the victim of the murder. The savage man entirely lacks this admirable talent, and for want of wisdom and reason he always responds recklessly to the first promptings of human feeling. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
571:It is a mortifying circumstance, which greatly perplexes many a painstaking philosopher, that nature often refuses to second his most profound and elaborate efforts; so that often after having invented one of the most ingenious and natural theories imaginable, she will have the perverseness to act directly in the teeth of his system, and flatly contradict his most favorite positions. This is a manifest and unmerited grievance, since it throws the censure of the vulgar and unlearned entirely upon the philosopher; whereas the fault is not to be ascribed to his theory, which is unquestionably correct, but to the waywardness of Dame Nature, who, with the proverbial fickleness of her sex, is continually indulging in coquetries and caprices, and seems really to take pleasure in violating all philosophic rules, and jilting the most learned and indefatigable of her adorers. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
572:If you take home one souvenir from this part of the tour, may I suggest that it be a suspicion of moral monists. Beware of anyone who insists that there is one true morality for all people, times, and places—particularly if that morality is founded upon a single moral foundation. Human societies are complex; their needs and challenges are variable. Our minds contain a toolbox of psychological systems, including the six moral foundations, which can be used to meet those challenges and construct effective moral communities. You don’t need to use all six, and there may be certain organizations or subcultures that can thrive with just one. But anyone who tells you that all societies, in all eras, should be using one particular moral matrix, resting on one particular configuration of moral foundations, is a fundamentalist of one sort or another. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
573:The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world symphony and to re-project them in the form of concepts. While he is contemplative-perceptive like the artist, compassionate like the religious, a seeker of purposes and causalities like the scientist, even while he feels himself swelling into a macrocosm, he all the while retains a certain self-possession, a way of viewing himself coldly as a mirror of the world. This is the same sense of self-possession which characterizes the dramatic artist who transforms himself into alien bodies and talks with their alien tongues and yet can project this transformation into written verse that exists in the outsitle world on its own. "Vhat verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Regnery Publishing, 1998, 117. (p.48) ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
574:In saying that the truth is both said and not said by the philosopher (said and not said in the form of stammering), Aristotle was still close to the methods of interpretation used by grammarians in their commentaries on the poets. Symbolic or allegorical methods pointing out what was deliberately hidden by Homer behind the figure of Nestor or Ulysses.
But there is a difference however — and a crucial one — which is that for Aristotle the equivocation of the said and the not-said, this distance without gap which means that the truth is both hidden and present in the philosopher's words, this light that is shadow, is not the effect of an oracular kind of intentional secret or prudent reserve. If philosophers do not speak the truth, this is not because their indulgence wishes to protect men from its terrible face; it is because they lack a certain knowledge (savoir). ~ Michel Foucault,#NFDB
575:most influential philosopher of all time? At least in the Western tradition, there’s a clear victor in the race for this title: Aristotle. Although his works did not dominate the philosophical scene in the centuries immediately following his death, once they caught on, they caught on in a big way. For well over a thousand years Aristotle was not just the most widely read and significant philosopher. He was philosophy, in the sense that the study of philosophy was often simply the study of Aristotle’s works. In medieval times it was possible simply to say “the Philosopher,” and everyone would know who you meant. Only after the Renaissance would Aristotle’s total dominance of philosophy and science be questioned, and even since then Aristotle has never gone away. Current views in contemporary metaphysics and, especially, ethics, are explicitly presented as expansions on Aristotle’s ideas. ~ Peter Adamson, #NFDB
576:The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means 'two,' and the word zweifel, which means 'doubt' - suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
577:These are not fables. You will touch with your hands, you will see with your own eyes, the Azoth, the Mercury of Philosophers, which alone will suffice to obtain for you our Stone. … Darkness will appear on the face of the Abyss; Night, Saturn and the Antimony of the Sages will appear; blackness, and the raven's head of the alchemists, and all the colors of the world, will appear at the hour of conjunction; the rainbow also, and the peacock's tail. Finally, after the matter has passed from ashen-colored to white and yellow, you will see the Philosopher's Stone, our King and Dominator Supreme, issue forth from his glassy sepulcher to mount his bed or his throne in his glorified body... diaphanous as crystal; compact and most weighty, as easily fusible by fire as resin, as flowing as wax and more so than quicksilver … the color of saffron when powdered, but red as rubies when in an integral mass... ~ Heinrich Khunrath, in Amphitheatrum, #NFDB
578:creature on earth seemed to Schopenhauer to be equally committed to an equally meaningless existence: Contemplate the restless industry of wretched little ants … the life of most insects is nothing but a restless labour for preparing nourishment and dwelling for the future offspring that will come from their eggs. After the offspring have consumed the nourishment and have turned into the chrysalis stage, they enter into life merely to begin the same task again from the beginning … we cannot help but ask what comes of all of this … there is nothing to show but the satisfaction of hunger and sexual passion, and … a little momentary gratification … now and then, between … endless needs and exertions. 3. The philosopher did not have to spell out the parallels. We pursue love affairs, chat in cafés with prospective partners and have children, with as much choice in the matter as moles and ants – and are rarely any happier. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
579:It was only twenty-five years ago that the philosopher Joseph Levine officially dubbed it the explanatory gap, which he later described in his book Purple Haze: We have no idea, I contend, how a physical object could constitute a subject of experience, enjoying, not merely instantiating, states with all sorts of qualitative character. As I now look at my red diskette case, I’m having a visual experience that is reddish in character. Light of a particular composition is bouncing off the diskette case and stimulating my retina in a particular way. That retinal stimulation now causes further impulses down the optic nerve, eventually causing various neural events in the visual cortex. Where in all of this can we see the events that explain my having a reddish experience? There seems to be no discernible connection between the physical description and the mental one, and thus no explanation of the latter in terms of the former.2 ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB
580:Philosophy deals in the abstract and the universal, but not in the particular. History deals only in the particular, not with general principles. Poetry deals with both, illustrating universal principles with particular examples or embodiments of those principles:
Now doth the peerless poet perform both: for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it in someone by whom he presupposeth it was done; so as he coupleth the general notion with the particular example.
Another advantage poetry has over philosophy is greater clarity:
the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs, the poet is indeed the right popular philosopher.
Essentially, poetry shows history more brilliantly than history, and explains philosophy more cogently than philosophy. ~ Philip Sidney,#NFDB
581:The man of genius is he who understands incomparably more other beings than the average man. Goethe is said to have said of himself that there was no vice or crime of which he could not trace the tendency in himself, and that at some period of his life he could not have understood fully. The genius, therefore, is a more complicated, more richly endowed, more varied man; and a man is the closer to being a genius the more men he has in his personality, and the more really and strongly he has these others within him. If comprehension of those about him only flickers in him like a poor candle, then he is unable, like the great poet, to kindle a mighty flame in his heroes, to give distinction and character to his creations. The ideal of an artistic genius is to live in all men, to lose himself in all men, to reveal himself in multitudes; and so also the aim of the philosopher is to discover all others in himself, to fuse them into a unit which is his own unit. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
582:Some two years since, I printed a small pamphlet on the subject of Alchemy, my object being to throw out an idea with which I was strongly impressed, that the Philosopher's Stone was a mere symbol, and that the Alchemists were not in pursuit of gold, but of wisdom, carefully and conscientiously leaving the latter word undefined... I did not then, nor do I now, undertake to say precisely what the Alchemists sought. I was positive, however, that they were not in pursuit of 'gold or of worldly honors; and I am still of this opinion. I thought their object was religious, in which I am also fully confirmed by a further examination of alchemical works, of which I have obtained many since my pamphlet was printed... My pamphlet, in which I express the opinion that the Philosopher’s Stone is a mere symbol, signifying something which could not be expressed openly without incurring the danger of an auto-da-fe. ~ Remarks upon alchemy and the alchemists... Published by James Miller (1865), #NFDB
583:One August evening in 1996, a publisher named Nigel Newton left his office in London’s Soho district and headed home, carrying a stack of papers. Among them were fifty sample pages from a book he needed to review, but Newton didn’t have high hopes for it. The manuscript had already been rejected by eight other publishers. Newton didn’t read the sample pages that evening. Instead, he handed them over to his eight-year-old daughter, Alice. Alice read them. About an hour later, she returned from her room, her face glowing with excitement. “Dad,” she said, “this is so much better than anything else.” She wouldn’t stop talking about the book. She wanted to finish reading it, and she pestered her father – for months – until he tracked down the rest. Eventually, spurred by his daughter’s insistence, Newton signed the author to a modest contract and printed five hundred copies. That book, which barely made it to the public, was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.fn1 ~ Jake Knapp, #NFDB
584:However, the enormous superiority of contemplation over activity of any kind, action not excluded, is not Christian in origin. We find it in Plato’s political philosophy, where the whole utopian reorganization of polis life is not only directed by the superior insight of the philosopher but has no aim other than to make possible the philosopher’s way of life. Aristotle’s very articulation of the different ways of life, in whose order the life of pleasure plays a minor role, is clearly guided by the ideal of contemplation (theōria). To the ancient freedom from the necessities of life and from compulsion by others, the philosophers added freedom and surcease from political activity (skholē),10 so that the later Christian claim to be free from entanglement in worldly affairs, from all the business of this world, was preceded by and originated in the philosophic apolitia of late antiquity. What had been demanded only by the few was now considered to be a right of all. The ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
585:Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle, the philosopher, observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of persuasiveness"; and the absence of this in the character of Marcius made all his great actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those whom they benifited: pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls it, of solitude, made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades, on the contrary, possessed to treat every one in the way most agreeable to him, we cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with the most exuberant favour and honour; his very errors, at time, being accompanied by something of grace and felicity. And so in spite of great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a place which his great services had made his due. The one, in spite of the harm he occasioned, could not make himself hated, nor the other, with all the admiration he attracted, succeed in being beloved by his countrymen. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
586:The development of the telescope marks, indeed, a new phase in human thought, a new vision of life. It is an extraordinary thing that the Greeks, with their lively and penetrating minds, never realized the possibilities of either microscope or telescope. They made no use of the lens. Yet they lived in a world in which glass had been known and had been made beautiful for hundreds of years; they had about them glass flasks and bottles, through which they must have caught glimpses of things distorted and enlarged. But science in Greece was pursued by philosophers in an aristocratic spirit, men who, with a few such exceptions as the ingenious Archimedes and Hiero, were too proud to learn from such mere artisans as jewellers and metal- and glass-workers.
Ignorance is the first penalty of pride. The philosopher had no mechanical skill and the artisan had no philosophical education, and it was left for another age, more than a thousand years later, to bring together glass and the astronomer.
(The Earth in Space and Time §1) ~ H G Wells,#NFDB
587:Through many a long day you'll be taught
That what you once did without thinking,
As easy as if it were eating or drinking,
Must be done in order: one! two! three!
But truly, this though factory of ours
Is like some weaver's masterpiece:
One treadle stirs a thousand threads,
This way and that the shuttles whistle,
Threads flow invisibly, one ... Read morestroke
Ties a thousand knots .... The philosopher steps in
And proves to you it had to be so;
The first was so, the second was so,
And therefore the third and fourth were so.
If the first and second hadn't existed,
The third and fourth would never have existed.
And this is praised by every scholar,
But never a one becomes a weaver.
To know and describe a living thing
You first get rid of all its spirit:
Then the parts are all in the palm of your hand,
And all that you lack is the spirit that binds them!
Encheiresis naturae, chemists call it,
And fool themselves and never know it ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,#NFDB
588:But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental faculties, such as alone should venture on the solution of the hardest of all problems—those which concern nature as a whole and humanity in its widest range, he will do well to extend his view equally in all directions, without ever straying too far amid the intricacies of various by-paths, or invading regions little known; in other words, without occupying himself with special branches of knowledge, to say nothing of their petty details. There is no necessity for him to seek out subjects difficult of access, in order to escape a crowd of rivals; the common objects of life will give him material for new theories at once serious and true; and the service he renders will be appreciated by all those—and they form a great part of mankind—who know the facts of which he treats. What a vast distinction there is between students of physics, chemistry, anatomy, mineralogy, zoology, philology, history, and the men who deal with the great facts of human life, the poet and the philosopher! ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
589:The real world, the world revealed during mystical illumination, is not like our everyday world, and within it our everyday ways of knowing and understanding simply don’t work. Wilson points out that the philosopher Henri Bergson realized this earlier in the century. Bergson argued that while excellent for enabling us to maneuver through the world, the intellect is not very good at grasping reality. When we try to do this, it slips through our fingers. What is time? Where does space end? Our mind numbs when faced with these questions. What was needed for this, Bergson said, was intuition, which was a way of getting inside the world, knowing it from within. The intellect looks at things from outside and analyzes experience into parts. This is good for obvious uses, but it is useless if we want to grasp the reality of things. The intellect falsifies reality to a great extent in order to make it manageable for us. What seems to happen in mystical moments is that we see the world through intuition, not intellect, and the experience can be overwhelming. But ~ Gary Lachman, #NFDB
590:the philosopher John W. Carroll compared the statement “All gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter” to a statement like “All uranium-235 spheres are less than a mile in diameter.” Our observations of the world tell us that there are no gold spheres larger than a mile wide, and we can be pretty confident there never will be. Still, we have no reason to believe that there couldn’t be one, and so the statement is not considered a law. On the other hand, the statement “All uranium-235 spheres are less than a mile in diameter” could be thought of as a law of nature because, according to what we know about nuclear physics, once a sphere of uranium-235 grew to a diameter greater than about six inches, it would demolish itself in a nuclear explosion. Hence we can be sure that such spheres do not exist. (Nor would it be a good idea to try to make one!) This distinction matters because it illustrates that not all generalizations we observe can be thought of as laws of nature, and that most laws of nature exist as part of a larger, interconnected system of laws. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
591:Thus, the philosopher dislikes marriage as well as what might persuade him into it??marriage is a barrier and a disaster along his route to the optimal. What great philosopher up to now has been married? Heraclitus, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibtniz, Kant, Schopenhauer?? None of these got married. What`s more, we cannot even imagine them married. A married philosopher belongs in a comedy, that`s my principle. And Socrates, the exception, the malicious Socrates, it appears, got married ironically to demonstrate this very principle.
Every philosopher would speak as once Buddha spoke when someone told him of the birth his son, "Rahula has been born to me. A shackle has been forged for me." (Rahula here means "a little demon"). To every "free spirit" there must come a reflective hour, provided that previously he has had a one without thought, of the sort that came then to Buddha - "Life in a house," he thought to himself, "is narrow and confined, a polluted place. Freedom consists of abandoning houses;" "because he thought this way, he left the house. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
592:We live in an age of universal inquiry, ergo of universal scepticism. The prophecies of the poet, the dreams of the philosopher and scientist, are being daily realized — things formerly considered mere fairy-tales have become facts — yet, in spite of the marvels of learning and science that are hourly accomplished among us, the attitude of mankind is one of disbelief. “There is no God!” cries one theorist; “or if there be one, I can obtain no proof of His existence!” “There is no Creator!” exclaims another. “The Universe is simply a rushing together of atoms.” “There can be no immortality,” asserts a third. “We are but dust, and to dust we shall return.” “What is called by idealists the SOUL,” argues another, “is simply the vital principle composed of heat and air, which escapes from the body at death, and mingles again with its native element. A candle when lit emits flame; blow out the light, the flame vanishes — where? Would it not be madness to assert the flame immortal? Yet the soul, or vital principle of human existence, is no more than the flame of a candle. ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
593:There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can't. He cites -- as one does -- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deceptions. With the help of cell phones, e-mail and handheld games, it's easier to stay busy, in the Kierkegaardian sense, than it's ever been.
Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. "We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we've created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful," Franzen says. "The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world. ~ Lev Grossman,#NFDB
594:Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future—the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shews his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come. The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the elixir vitæ, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, and omens. ~ Charles Mackay, #NFDB
595:For every impulse is imperious, and as SUCH, attempts to philosophize. To be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise—"better," if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, without the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. The actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction—in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is,—that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. 7. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
596:The great milestones of civilization always have the whiff of utopia about them at first. According to renowned sociologist Albert Hirschman, utopias are initially attacked on three grounds: futility (it’s not possible), danger (the risks are too great), and perversity (it will degenerate into dystopia). But Hirschman also wrote that almost as soon as a utopia becomes a reality, it often comes to be seen as utterly commonplace. Not so very long ago, democracy still seemed a glorious utopia. Many a great mind, from the philosopher Plato (427–347 B.C.) to the statesman Edmund Burke (1729–97), warned that democracy was futile (the masses were too foolish to handle it), dangerous (majority rule would be akin to playing with fire), and perverse (the “general interest” would soon be corrupted by the interests of some crafty general or other). Compare this with the arguments against basic income. It’s supposedly futile because we can’t pay for it, dangerous because people would quit working, and perverse because ultimately a minority would end up having to toil harder to support the majority. ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
597:Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to Be Happy” shit that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap:
The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you desperately want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. ~ Mark Manson,#NFDB
598:And yet I will exert special effort to the end that they who lend ready and open ears to God’s Word may have a firm standing ground. Here, indeed, if anywhere in the secret mysteries of Scripture, we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great moderation; let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends. For how can the human mind measure off the measureless essence of God according to its own little measure, a mind as yet unable to establish for certain the nature of the sun’s body, though men’s eyes daily gaze upon it? Indeed, how can the mind by its own leading come to search out God’s essence when it cannot even get to its own? Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself. For, as Hilary (of Poitiers) says, he is the one fit witness to himself, and is not known except through himself. But we shall be “leaving it to him” if we conceive him to be as he reveals himself to us, without inquiring about him elsewhere than from his Word. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I:XIII:21. ~ James R White, #NFDB
599:Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, lovers of gain? Exactly. And there are three kinds of pleasure, which are their several objects? Very true. Now, if you examine the three classes of men, and ask of them in turn which of their lives is pleasantest, each will be found praising his own and depreciating that of others: the money-maker will contrast the vanity of honour or of learning if they bring no money with the solid advantages of gold and silver? True, he said. And the lover of honour—what will be his opinion? Will he not think that the pleasure of riches is vulgar, while the pleasure of learning, if it brings no distinction, is all smoke and nonsense to him? Very true. And are we to suppose, I said, that the philosopher sets any value on other pleasures in comparison with the pleasure of knowing the truth, and in that pursuit abiding, ever learning, not so far indeed from the heaven of pleasure? Does he not call the other pleasures necessary, under the idea that if there were no necessity for them, he would rather not have them? There ~ Plato, #NFDB
600:The Philosopher, The Young Man, And His Statue
A Fond Athenian Mother brought
A Sculptor to indulge her Thought,
And carve her Only Son;
Who to such strange perfection wrought,
That every Eye the Statue caught
Nor ought was left undone.
A youthful Smile adorn'd the Face,
The polish gave that Smile a Grace;
And through the Marble reigns
(Which well the Artist's Skill cou'd trace,
And in their due Positions place)
A Thread of purple Veins.
The Parasites about it came,
(Whose Praises were too large to name)
And to each other said;
The Man so well had reach'd his Aim,
Th' Original cou'd o'er it claim
Only a native Red.
Mean while a Sage, amidst the Croud,
Thus, with a Precept wise and loud,
Check'd the Vain-glorious Boy;
By telling him, who now grew proud,
That tho' with Beauty 'twas endow'd,
The Figure was a Toy:
Of no Advantage to the State,
'Twou'd neither combate, nor debate,
But idly stand alone;
Bids him beware, whilst Men create
In Stone thus his Resemblance great,
He proves not like the Stone.
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
601:And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young servant-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: "Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence. ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
602:But if that were the case, then moral philosophers—who reason about ethical principles all day long—should be more virtuous than other people. Are they? The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel tried to find out. He used surveys and more surreptitious methods to measure how often moral philosophers give to charity, vote, call their mothers, donate blood, donate organs, clean up after themselves at philosophy conferences, and respond to emails purportedly from students.48 And in none of these ways are moral philosophers better than other philosophers or professors in other fields. Schwitzgebel even scrounged up the missing-book lists from dozens of libraries and found that academic books on ethics, which are presumably borrowed mostly by ethicists, are more likely to be stolen or just never returned than books in other areas of philosophy.49 In other words, expertise in moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even make it worse (perhaps by making the rider more skilled at post hoc justification). Schwitzgebel still has yet to find a single measure on which moral philosophers behave better than other philosophers. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
603:Compare King William with the philosopher Haeckel. The king is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim—one upon whose head has been poured the divine petroleum of authority. Compare this king with Haeckel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own genius.
The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, to genius, to heart.
We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation, having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame. ~ Robert G Ingersoll,#NFDB
604:Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems, i.e., of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a solution, toward one or the other of the very few typical solutions. Yet as long as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the 'subjective certainty' [quoting M. Alexandre Kojève] of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that moment the sectarian is born. The danger of succumbing to the attraction of solutions is essential to philosophy which, without incurring this danger, would degenerate into playing with the problems. But the philosopher does not necessarily succumb to this danger, as is shown by Socrates, who never belonged to a sect and never founded one. And even if the philosophic friends are compelled to be members of a sect or to found one, they are not necessarily members of one and the same sect: Amicus Plato. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
605:War and battle' are the opening words of the Gorgias, and the declaration of war against the corrupt society is its content. Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric, is in Athens as the guest of Callicles, an enlightened politician. It is a day of audience. Gorgias receives visitors and is ready to answer all questions addressed to him. Socrates, with his pupil Chaerephon, calls at Callicles’ house in order to see the great man. The ultimate motif of the battle is not statedexplicitly but indicated, as so frequently with Plato, through the form of the dialogue. Gorgias is somewhat exhausted by the stream of visitors and the hours of conversation, and he lets his follower Polus open the discussion; Socrates leaves the opening game to Chaerephon. The battle is engaged in as a struggle for the soul of the younger generation. Who will form the future leaders of the polity: the rhetor who teaches the tricks of political success, or the philosopher who creates the substance in soul and society?
The substance of man is at stake, not a philosophical problem in the modern sense. Socrates suggests to Chaerephon the first question: Ask him “Who he is” (447d). ~ Eric Voegelin,#NFDB
606:Ballade Of The Summer Term
When Lent and Responsions are ended,
When May with fritillaries waits,
When the flower of the chestnut is splendid,
When drags are at all of the gates
(Those drags the philosopher 'slates'
With a scorn that is truly sublime),
Life wins from the grasp of the Fates
Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
When wickets are bowl'd and defended,
When Isis is glad with 'the Eights,'
When music and sunset are blended,
When Youth and the summer are mates,
When Freshmen are heedless of 'Greats,'
And when note-books are cover'd with rhyme,
Ah, these are the hours that one rates Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
When the brow of the Dean is unbended
At luncheons and mild tete-a-tetes,
When the Tutor's in love, nor offended
By blunders in tenses or dates;
When bouquets are purchased of Bates,
When the bells in their melody chime,
When unheeded the Lecturer prates Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
ENVOY.
Reformers of Schools and of States,
Is mirth so tremendous a crime?
Ah! spare what grim pedantry hates Sweet hours and the fleetest of time!
~ Andrew Lang,#NFDB
607:Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. For so long you thought the ambition of racist language was to denigrate and erase you as a person. After considering Butler’s remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please. Standing outside the conference room, unseen by the two men waiting for the others to arrive, you hear one say to the other that being around black people is like watching a foreign film without translation. Because you will spend the next two hours around the round table that makes conversing easier, you consider waiting a few minutes before entering the room. ~ Claudia Rankine, #NFDB
608:Beauty is not so much a fulfillment as rather a promise." In other words, by absorbing beauty with the right disposition, we experience, not gratification, satisfaction, and enjoyment but the arousal of an expectation; we are oriented toward something "not-yet-here". He who submits properly to the encounter with beauty will be given the sight and tase not of a fulfillment but of a promise--a promise that, in our bodily existence, can never be fulfilled. . . . Lovers and philosopers are connectd by special ties, insofar as both erotic excitement and genuine philosophical quest trigger a momentum that, in this finite existence, can never be stilled. In an encounter with sensual beauty, if man opens up totally to the object of the encounter, a passion is born that, in the realm of the senses, which at first would seem to be the only adequate realm, can never be satisfied. The same holds true for the first moment of philosophical wonder (the wonder that arises from our contact with "reality"); a question arises that, in our finite world--which may mean, for example, with the tools of "science"--will also never receive an answer. The philosopher and the true lover--neither will find fulfillment except through a divine favor. ~ Josef Pieper, #NFDB
609:He concerns himself so much,” replied Martin, “in the affairs of this world that it is very probable he may be in me as well as
everywhere else; but I must confess, when I cast my eye on this globe, or rather globule, I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being. I always except El Dorado. I scarce ever knew a city that did not wish the destruction of its neighboring city; nor a
family that did not desire to exterminate some other family. The poor in all parts of the world bear an inveterate hatred to the rich, even while they creep and cringe to them; and the rich treat the poor like sheep, whose wool and flesh they barter for money; a million of regimented
assassins traverse Europe from one end to the other, to get their bread by regular depredation and murder, because it is the most gentlemanlike profession. Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the
blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured with envy, care, and inquietudes, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town besieged. Private chagrins are still more dreadful than public calamities. In a word,” concluded the philosopher,
“I have seen and suffered so much that I am a Manichaean. ~ Voltaire,#NFDB
610:An aged and wise Chinese once set out to visit a distant place. He sent a messenger ahead to tell the good folks of the house to prepare him no food save rice; but when he arrived, he found a many-course dinner awaiting him, for the good family felt that they must so honor his presence. The philosopher reproved them, saying, "I asked for rice, you have given me fish; I asked for rice, you have given me corn; I asked for rice, you have given me meat; I asked for rice, and you have given me sweets; and among all these things you have given me no rice." Observing that the family was hurt by the words, the philosopher added: "I have lived these many years, and, after studying carefully this body which God has given me, I have found that it doth flourish nobly upon rice. It was with wisdom that I ordered rice; it was with folly that you insulted me by offering other foods. You say that I am a great philosopher, that I am wiser than all other men; and yet you did not think me wise enough to order my own mean." In the same way, when our brother asks for rice, we have no right to give him meat because we think he ought to have it. It matters not whether the meat be physical or spiritual, whether the rice be literal or allegorical. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
611:The idea of “taking on” the baseline cultural narratives of late-modern secularism may sound intimidating. Those who promote the wisdom of this age, who disdain Christians as being “on the wrong side of history,” seem supremely confident. However, Christian preachers and teachers should not be abashed or threatened. Try to remember that you are at odds with a system of beliefs far more than you are at war with a group of people. Contemporary people are the victims of the late-modern mind far more than they are its perpetrators. Seen in this light the Christian gospel is more of a prison break than a battle. Paul cries out, “Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20). In his day the cross and the atonement made no sense within any of the reigning worldviews. The philosophers treated Paul with disdain on Mars Hill in Acts 17, and hardly anyone believed his message. But answer the question. Where now is the wisdom of that world? It’s over, gone. No one believes those worldviews anymore. Such will always be the case. The philosophies of the world will come and go, rise and fall, but the wisdom we preach—the Word of God—will still be here. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
612:The only four times this word anamnesis is used in Scripture, it is in reference to the sacrifice that Christ made and is “remembered” in the Last Supper (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24, 25; Hebrews 10:3). The little clay-sculpted loaves in my hands feel like a memory I’m starved for. Like a memory become real between fingers. I had read it once that anamnesis was a term used to express an intangible idea moving into this material, tangible world. The philosopher Plato had used the word anamnesis to express a remembering that allowed the world of ideas to impact the world of our everyday, allowing something in another world to take form in this physical one. That was the point: remembrance, anamnesis, does not simply mean memory by mental recall, the way you remember your own address—but it means to experience a past event again through the physical, to make it take form through reenactment. Like the way you remember your own grandma Ruth by how your great-aunt Lois laughs, how she makes butterscotch squares for Sunday afternoons too, how she walks in her Birkenstocks with that same soft heel as Grandma did, her knees cracking up the stairs the same way too. The way your great-aunt Lois acts makes you remember in ways that make your grandma Ruth real and physically present again now. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
613:For Marx, nature is to be subjugated in order to obey history; for Nietzsche, nature is to be
obeyed in order to subjugate history. It is the difference between the Christian and the Greek. Nietzsche,
at least, foresaw what was going to happen: "Modern socialism tends to create a form of secular
Jesuitism, to make instruments of all men"; and again: "What we desire is well-being. ... As a result we
march toward a spiritual slavery such as has never been seen. . . . Intellectual Caesarism hovers over
every activity of the businessman and the philosopher." Placed in the crucible of Nietzschean philosophy,
rebellion, in the intoxication of freedom, ends in biological or historical Caesarism. The absolute negative had driven Stirner to deify crime simultaneously with the individual. But the absolute affirmative leads to
universalizing murder and mankind simultaneously. Marxism-Leninism has really accepted the burden
of Nietzsche's freewill by means of ignoring several Nietzschean virtues. The great rebel thus creates with
his own hands, and for his own imprisonment, the implacable reign of necessity. Once he had escaped
from God's prison, his first care was to construct the prison of history and of reason, thus putting the
finishing touch to the camouflage and consecration of the nihilism whose conquest he claimed. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
614:ALL POST-COMMUNIST SOCIETIES ARE uprooted ones because Communism uprooted traditions, so nothing fits with anything else,” explained the philosopher Patapievici. Fifteen years earlier, when I had last met him, he had cautioned: “The task for Romania is to acquire a public style based on impersonal rules, otherwise business and politics will be full of intrigue, and I am afraid that our Eastern Orthodox tradition is not helpful in this regard. Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Greece—all the Orthodox nations of Europe—are characterized by weak institutions. That is because Orthodoxy is flexible and contemplative, based more on the oral traditions of peasants than on texts. So there is this pattern of rumor, lack of information, and conspiracy….”11 Thus, in 1998, did Patapievici define Romanian politics as they were still being practiced a decade and a half later. Though in 2013, he added: “No one speaks of guilt over the past. The Church has made no progress despite the enormous chance of being separated from the state for almost a quarter century. The identification of religious faith with an ethnic-national group, I find, is a moral heresy.” Dressed now in generic business casual and wearing fashionable glasses, Patapievici appeared as a figure wholly of the West—more accurately of the global elite—someone you might meet at a fancy ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
615:In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of 'world history' — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
616:CUSTOMER: Which was the first Harry Potter book?
BOOKSELLER: The Philosopher’s Stone.
CUSTOMER: And the second?
BOOKSELLER: The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: I’l take The Chamber of Secrets. I don’t want The Philosopher’s Stone.
BOOKSELLER: Have you already read that one?
CUSTOMER: No, but with series of books I always find they take a while to really get going. I don’t want to waste my time with the useless introductory stuff at the beginning.
BOOKSELLER: The story in Harry Potter actually starts right away. Personally, I do recommend that you start with the first book – and it’s very good.
CUSTOMER: Are you working on commission?
BOOKSELLER: No.
CUSTOMER: Right. How many books are there in total?
BOOKSELLER: Seven.
CUSTOMER: Exactly. I’m not going to waste my money on the first book when there are so many others to buy. I’l take the second one.
BOOKSELLER: . . . If you’re sure.
(One week later, the customer returns)
BOOKSELLER: Hi, did you want to buy a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban?
CUSTOMER: What’s that?
BOOKSELLER: It’s the book after The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: Oh, no, definitely not. I found that book far too confusing. I ask you, how on earth are children supposed to understand it if I can’t? I mean, who the heck is that Voldemort guy anyway? No. I’m not going to bother with the rest.
BOOKSELLER: . . . ~ Jen Campbell,#NFDB
617:In these red labyrinths of London
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,
save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin
give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.
In today's dialect
I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things:
I shall try to be worthy
of the great echo of Byron.
This dust that I am will be invulnerable.
If a woman shares my love
my verse will touch the tenth sphere of the concentric heavens;
if a woman turns my love aside
I will make of my sadness a music,
a full river to resound through time.
I shall live by forgetting myself.
I shall be the face I glimpse and forget,
I shall be Judas who takes on
the divine mission of being a betrayer,
I shall be Caliban in his bog,
I shall be a mercenary who dies
without fear and without faith,
I shall be Polycrates, who looks in awe
upon the seal returned by fate.
I will be the friend who hates me.
The persian will give me the nightingale, and Rome the sword.
Masks, agonies, resurrections
will weave and unweave my life,
and in time I shall be Robert Browning.
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Browning Decides To Be A Poet
,#NFDB
618:It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning—it will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
619:The only one of the early investigators who carried the exploration of hysteria to its logical conclusion was Breuer's patient Anna O. After Breuer abandoned her, she apparently remained ill for several years. And then she recovered. The mute hysteric who had invented the "talking cure" found her voice and her sanity, in the women's liberation movement. Under a pseudonym, Paul Berthold, she translated into German the classic treatise by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and authored a play, Women's Rights. Under her own name, Bertha Papenheim became a prominent feminist social worker, intellectual, and organizer. In the course of a long and fruitful career she directed an orphanage for girls, founded a feminist organization for Jewish women and traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children. Her dedication, energy and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, 'A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.' At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: 'I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit. ~ Judith Lewis Herman, #NFDB
620:The writer of the following pages submits his opinions upon Alchemy to the public... convinced that the character of the Alchemists, and the object of their study, have been almost universally misconceived; and as a matter of fact though of the past, he thinks it of sufficient importance to take a step in the right direction for developing the true nature of the studies of that extraordinary class of thinkers. The opinion has become almost universal, that Alchemy was a "pretended science by which gold and silver were to be made by the transmutation of the baser metals into these substances, the agent of the transmutation being called the philosopher's stone." Those who professed this Art are supposed to have been either impostors or under a delusion created by impostors and mountebanks. This opinion has found its way into works on Science, and has been stereotyped in biographical dictionaries and in encyclopaedias... allusions to Alchemy, in histories, romances, and novels, are of but one character, and imply that the professors of the Art were either deluders or deluded, were guilty of fraud or the victims of it.... the object of the Art was the perfection, or at least the improvement, of Man. (Preface) ~ Remarks upon alchemy and the alchemists, indicating a method of discovering the true nature of Hermetic philosophy: and showing that the search after the philosopher's stone had not for its object the discovery of an agent for the transmutation of metals, Published by James Miller, (1865), #NFDB
621:There’s the claim that the only progress made is in posing problems that scientists can answer. That philosophy never has the means to answer problems—it’s just biding its time till the scientists arrive on the scene. You hear this quite often. There is, among some scientists, a real anti-philosophical bias. The sense that philosophy will eventually disappear. But there’s a lot of philosophical progress, it’s just a progress that’s very hard to see. It’s very hard to see because we see with it. We incorporate philosophical progress into our own way of viewing the world. [...] And it’s usually philosophical arguments that first introduce the very outlandish idea that we need to extend rights. And it takes more, it takes a movement, and activism, and emotions, to affect real social change. It starts with an argument, but then it becomes obvious. The tracks of philosophy’s work are erased because it becomes intuitively obvious. The arguments against slavery, against cruel and unusual punishment, against unjust wars, against treating children cruelly—these all took arguments.
About 30 years ago, the philosopher Peter Singer started to argue about the way animals are treated in our factory farms. Everybody thought he was nuts. But I’ve watched this movement grow; I’ve watched it become emotional. It has to become emotional. You have to draw empathy into it. But here it is, right in our time—a philosopher making the argument, everyone dismissing it, but then people start discussing it. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,#NFDB
622:Pattern recognition is so basic that the brain's pattern detection modules and its reward circuitry became inextricably linked. Whenever we successfully detect a pattern-or think we detect a pattern-the neurotransmitters responsible for sensations of pleasure squirt through our brains. If a pattern has repeated often enough and successfully enough in the past, the neurotransmitter release occurs in response to the mere presence of suggestive cues, long before the expected outcome of that pattern actually occurs. Like the study participants who reported seeing regular sequences in random stimuli, we will use alomst any pretext to get our pattern recognition kicks.
Pattern recognition is the most primitive form of analogical reasoning, part of the neural circuitry for metaphor. Monkeys, rodents, and birds recognize patterns, too. What distinguishes humans from other species, though, is that we have elevated pattern recognition to an art. "To understand," the philosopher Isaiah Berlin observed, "is to perceive patterns."
Metaphor, however, is not the mere detection of patterns; it is the creation of patterns, too. When Robert Frost wrote,
"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain"
his brain created a pattern connecting umbrellas to banks, a pattern retraced every time someone else reads this sentence. Frost believed passionately that an understanding of metaphor was essential not just to survival in university literature courses but also to survival in daily life. ~ James Geary,#NFDB
623:In a section of The Vaccine Book titled “Is it your social responsibility to vaccinate your kids?” Dr. Bob asks, “Can we fault parents for putting their own child’s health ahead of that of the kids around him?” This is meant to be a rhetorical question, but Dr. Bob’s implied answer is not mine. In another section of the book, Dr. Bob writes of his advice to parents who fear the MMR vaccine, “I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the disease increase significantly.” I do not need to consult an ethicist to determine that there is something wrong there, but my sister clarifies my discomfort. “The problem is in making a special exemption just for yourself,” she says. This reminds her of a way of thinking proposed by the philosopher John Rawls: Imagine that you do not know what position you are going to hold in society—rich, poor, educated, insured, no access to health care, infant, adult, HIV positive, healthy immune system, etc.—but that you are aware of the full range of possibilities. What you would want in that situation is a policy that is going to be equally just no matter what position you end up in. “Consider relationships of dependence,” my sister suggests. “You don’t own your body—that’s not what we are, our bodies aren’t independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making.” She falters for a moment here, and is at a loss for words, which is rare for her. “I don’t even know how to talk about this,” she says. “The point is there’s an illusion of independence. ~ Eula Biss, #NFDB
624:Philosophy, then, is not a doctrine, not some simplistic scheme for orienting oneself in the world, certainly not an instrument or achievement of human Dasein. Rather, it is this Dasein itself insofar as it comes to be, in freedom, from out of its own ground. Whoever, by stint of research, arrives at this self-understanding of philosophy is granted the basic experience of all philosophizing, namely that the more fully and originally research comes into its own, the more surely is it "nothing but" the transformation of the same few simple questions. But those who wish to transform must bear within themselves the power of a fidelity that knows how to preserve. And one cannot feel this power growing within unless one is up in wonder. And no one can be caught up in wonder without travelling to the outermost limits of the possible. But no one will ever become the friend of the possible without remaining open to dialogue with the powers that operate in the whole of human existence. But that is the comportment of the philosopher: to listen attentively to what is already sung forth, which can still be perceived in each essential happening of world. And in such comportment the philosopher enters the core of what is truly at stake in the task he has been given to do. Plato knew of that and spoke of it in his Seventh Letter:
'In no way can it be uttered, as can other things, which one can learn. Rather, from out of a full, co-existential dwelling with the thing itself - as when a spark, leaping from the fire, flares into light - so it happens, suddenly, in the soul, there to grow, alone with itself. ~ Martin Heidegger,#NFDB
625:This example, it seems to us, suffices to show in what way the nonreligious man of modern societies is still nourished and aided by the activity of his unconscious, yet without thereby attaining to a properly religious experience and vision of the world. The unconscious offers him solutions for the difficulties of his own life, and in this way plays the role of religion, for, before making an existence a creator of values, religion ensures its integrity, From one point of view it could almost be said that in the case of those moderns who proclaim that they are nonreligious, religion and mythology are "eclipsed" in the darkness of their unconscious—which means too that in such men the possibility of reintegrating a religious vision of life lies at a great depth. Or, from the Christian point of view, it could also be said that nonreligion is equivalent to a new "fall" of man— in other words, that nonreligious man has lost the capacity to live religion consciously, and hence to understand and assume it; but that, in his deepest being, he still retains a memory of it, as, after the first "fall," his ancestor, the primordial man, retained intelligence enough to enable him to rediscover the traces of God that are visible in the world. After the first "fall," the religious sense descended to the level of the ' 'divided" consciousness"; now, after the second, it has fallen even further, into the depths of the unconscious; it has been "forgotten," Here the considerations of the historian of religions end.
Here begins the realm of problems proper to the philosopher, the psychologist, and even the theologian. ~ Mircea Eliade,#NFDB
626:Wisdom Of Hafiz: The Philosopher Takes To Racing
My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo,
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow;
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow.
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat.
He knows his own cunning no doubt -- does he know what the others are at?
Find out what he's frightened of most, and invest a few dollars on that.
Walk not in the track of the trainer, nor hang round the rails at his stall.
His wisdom belongs to his patron -- shall he give it to one and to all?
When the stable is served he may tell you -- and his words are like jewels let fall.
Run wide of the tipster, who whispers that Borak is sure to be first,
He tells the next mug that he meets with a tale with the placings reversed;
And, remember, of judges of racing, the jockey's the absolute worst.
When they lay three to one on the field, and the runners are twenty-and-two,
Take a pull at yourself; take a pull -- it's a mighty big field to get through.
Is the club handicapper a fool? If a fool is about, p'raps it's you!
Beware of the critic who tells you the handicap's absolute rot,
For this is chucked in, and that's hopeless, and somebody ought to be shot.
How is it he can't make a fortune himself when he knows such a lot?
From tipsters, and jockeys, and trials, and gallops, the glory has gone,
For this is the wisdom of Hafiz that sages have pondered upon,
"The very best tip in the world is to see the commission go on!"
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
627:In a now famous thought experiment, the philosopher Derek Parfit asks us to imagine a teleportation device that can beam a person from Earth to Mars. Rather than travel for many months on a spaceship, you need only enter a small chamber close to home and push a green button, and all the information in your brain and body will be sent to a similar station on Mars, where you will be reassembled down to the last atom. Imagine that several of your friends have already traveled to Mars this way and seem none the worse for it. They describe the experience as being one of instantaneous relocation: You push the green button and find yourself standing on Mars—where your most recent memory is of pushing the green button on Earth and wondering if anything would happen. So you decide to travel to Mars yourself. However, in the process of arranging your trip, you learn a troubling fact about the mechanics of teleportation: It turns out that the technicians wait for a person’s replica to be built on Mars before obliterating his original body on Earth. This has the benefit of leaving nothing to chance; if something goes wrong in the replication process, no harm has been done. However, it raises the following concern: While your double is beginning his day on Mars with all your memories, goals, and prejudices intact, you will be standing in the teleportation chamber on Earth, just staring at the green button. Imagine a voice coming over the intercom to congratulate you for arriving safely at your destination; in a few moments, you are told, your Earth body will be smashed to atoms. How would this be any different from simply being killed? To ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
628:I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented. ... The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse. The subject is far more interesting than that.
... When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification. You have to keep them straight.... ...(T)he assessment of those intuitions in terms of the argument's soundness isn't accomplished by work done in the context of discovery. And conversely, one doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life (pp. 160-161). ~ Rebecca Goldstein,#NFDB
629:Science is analytical description, philosophy is synthetic interpretation. Science wishes to resolve the whole into parts, the organism into organs, the obscure into the known. It does not inquire into the values and ideal possibilities of things, nor into their total and final significance; it is content to show their present actuality and operation, it narrows its gaze resolutely to the nature and process of things as they are. The scientist is as impartial as Nature in Turgenev's poem: he is as interested in the leg of a flea as in the creative throes of a genius. But the philosopher is not content to describe the fact; he wishes to ascertain its relation to experience in general, and thereby to get at its meaning and its worth; he combines things in interpretive synthesis; he tries to put together, better than before, that great universe-watch which the inquisitive scientist has
analytically taken apart. Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom desire coordinated in the light of all experience- can tell us when to heal and when to kill. To observe processes and to construct means is science; to criticize and coordinate ends is philosophy: and because in these days our means and instruments have multiplied beyond our interpretation and synthesis of ideals and ends, our life is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For a fact is nothing except in relation to desire; it is not complete except in relation to a purpose and a whole. Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom. ~ Will Durant,#NFDB
630:One reader of an early draft of this chapter complained at this point, saying that by treating the hypothesis of God as just one more scientific hypothesis, to be evaluated by the standards of science in particular and rational thought in general, Dawkins and I are ignoring the very widespread claim by believers in God that their faith is quite beyond reason, not a matter to which such mundane methods of testing applies. It is not just unsympathetic, he claimed, but strictly unwarranted for me simply to assume that the scientific method continues to apply with full force in this domain of truth.
Very well, let's consider the objection. I doubt that the defender of religion will find it attractive, once we explore it carefully.
The philosopher Ronaldo de Souza once memorably described philosophical theology as "intellectual tennis without a net," and I readily allow that I have indeed been assuming without comment or question up to now that the net of rational judgement was up. But we can lower it if you really want to.
It's your serve.
Whatever you serve, suppose I return service rudely as follows: "What you say implies that God is a ham sandwich wrapped in tin foil. That's not much of a God to worship!". If you then volley back, demanding to know how I can logically justify my claim that your serve has such a preposterous implication, I will reply: "oh, do you want the net up for my returns, but not for your serves?
Either way the net stays up, or it stays down. If the net is down there are no rules and anybody can say anything, a mug's game if there ever was one. I have been giving you the benefit of the assumption that you would not waste your own time or mine by playing with the net down. ~ Daniel C Dennett,#NFDB
631:If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
632:Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them. The need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect:
'Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection. . . . Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.' - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
That (he said) is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible.
These systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt -- though of course usually an unsuccessful one -- to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most.
If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we -- being creatures subject to gravitation -- could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwin’s idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention.
“Wickedness: An Open Debate,” The Philosopher’s Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001 ~ Mary Midgley,#NFDB
633:None of these men will bring about your death any time sooner, but rather they will teach you how to die. None of them will shorten your lifespan, but each will add the wisdom of his years to yours. In other words, there is nothing dangerous about talking to these people and it won’t cost you a penny. Take from them as much as you wish. It’s up to you to squeeze the most you can from their wisdom. What bliss, what a glorious old age awaits the man who has offered himself as a mate to these intellects! He will have mentors and colleagues from whom he may seek advice on the smallest of matters, companions ever ready with counsel for his daily life, from whom he may hear truth without judgment, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself. They say ‘you can’t choose your parents,’ that they have been given to us by chance; but the good news is we can choose to be the sons of whomever we desire. There are many respectable fathers scattered across the centuries to choose from. Select a genius and make yourself their adopted son. You could even inherit their name and make claim to be a true descendant and then go forth and share this wealth of knowledge with others. These men will show you the way to immortality, and raise you to heights from which no man can be cast down. This is the only way to extend mortality – truly, by transforming time into immortality. Honors, statues and all other mighty monuments to man’s ambition carved in stone will crumble but the wisdom of the past is indestructible. Age cannot wither nor destroy philosophy which serves all generations. Its vitality is strengthened by each new generation’s contribution to it. The Philosopher alone is unfettered by the confines of humanity. He lives forever, like a god. He embraces memory, utilizes the present and anticipates with relish what is to come. He makes his time on Earth longer by merging past, present and future into one. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
634:Psychologists have devised some ingenious ways to help unpack the human "now." Consider how we run those jerky movie frames together into a smooth and continuous stream. This is known as the "phi phenomenon." The essence of phi shows up in experiments in a darkened room where two small spots are briefly lit in quick succession, at slightly separated locations. What the subjects report seeing is not a succession of spots, but a single spot moving continuously back and forth. Typically, the spots are illuminated for 150 milliseconds separated by an interval of fifty milliseconds. Evidently the brain somehow "fills in" the fifty-millisecond gap. Presumably this "hallucination" or embellishment occurs after the event, because until the second light flashes the subject cannot know the light is "supposed" to move. This hints that the human now is not simultaneous with the visual stimulus, but a bit delayed, allowing time for the brain to reconstruct a plausible fiction of what has happened a few milliseconds before.
In a fascinating refinement of the experiment, the first spot is colored red, the second green. This clearly presents the brain with a problem. How will it join together the two discontinuous experiences—red spot, green spot—smoothly? By blending the colors seamlessly into one another? Or something else? In fact, subjects report seeing the spot change color abruptly in the middle of the imagined trajectory, and are even able to indicate exactly where using a pointer. This result leaves us wondering how the subject can apparently experience the "correct" color sensation before the green spot lights up. Is it a type of precognition? Commenting on this eerie phenomenon, the philosopher Nelson Goodman wrote suggestively: "The intervening motion is produced retrospectively, built only after the second flash occurs and projected backwards in time." In his book ,#NFDB
635:The Philosopher
Who shall be our prophet then,
Chosen from all the sons of men
To lead his fellows on the way
Of hidden knowledge, delving deep
To nameless mysteries that keep
Their secret from the solar day!
Or who shall pierce with surer eye!
This shifting veil of bittersweet
And find the real things that lie
Beyond this turmoil, which we greet
With such a wasted wealth of tears?
Who shall cross over for us the bridge of fears
And pass in to the country where the ancient Mothers dwell?
Is it an elder, bent and hoar
Who, where the waste Atlantic swell
On lonely beaches makes its roar,
In his solitary tower
Through the long night hour by hour
Pores on old books with watery eye
When all his youth has passed him by,
And folly is schooled and love is dead
And frozen fancy laid abed,
While in his veins the gradual blood
Slackens to a marish flood?
For he rejoiceth not in the ocean's might,
Neither the sun giveth delight,
Nor the moon by night
Shall call his feet to wander in the haunted forest lawn.
He shall no more rise suddenly in the dawn
When mists are white and the dew lies pearly
Cold and cold on every meadow,
To take his joy of the season early,
The opening flower and the westward shadow,
And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love,
They lie so many leaden years behind.
Such eyes are dim and blind,
And the sad, aching head that nods above
His monstrous books can never know
The secret we would find.
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But let our seer be young and kind
And fresh and beautiful of show,
And taken ere the lustyhead
And rapture of his youth be dead;
Ere the gnawing, peasant reason
School him over-deep in treason
To the ancient high estate
Of his fancy's principate,
That he may live a perfect whole,
A mask of the eternal soul,
And cross at last the shadowy bar
To where the ever-living are.
~ Clive Staples Lewis,#NFDB
636:The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination. ~ Ralph Barton Perry, The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918), #NFDB
637:The Philosopher
'Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space - sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again?
'Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity,
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven, these wild desires,
Could all, or half fulfil;
No threathened hell, with quenchless fires,
Subdue this quenchless will!'
'So said I, and still say the same;
Still, to my death, will say Three gods, within this little frame,
Are warring night and day;
Heaven could not hold them all, and yet
They all are held in me;
And must be mine till I forget
My present entity!
Oh, for the time, when in my breast
Their struggles will be o'er!
Oh, for the day, when I shall rest,
And never suffer more!'
'I saw a spirit, standing, man,
Where thou dost stand - an hour ago,
And round his feet three rivers ran,
Of equal depth, and equal flow 'A golden stream - and one like blood;
And one like sapphire, seemed to be;
But, where they joined their triple flood
It tumbled in an inky sea.
The spirit sent his dazzling gaze
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Down through that ocean's gloomy night
Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,
The glad deep sparkled wide and bright White as the sun, far, far more fair
Than its divided sources were!'
'And even for that spirit, seer,
I've watched and sought my life - time long;
Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air An endless search, and always wrong!
Had I but seen his glorious eye
Once light the clouds that wilder me,
I ne'er had raised this coward cry
To cease to think and cease to be;
I ne'er had called oblivion blest,
Nor, stretching eager hands to death,
Implored to change for senseless rest
This sentient soul, this living breath Oh, let me die - that power and will
Their cruel strife may close;
And conquered good, and conquering ill
Be lost in one repose!'
~ Emily Jane Brontë,#NFDB
638:The hoodlum-occultist is “sociopathic” enough to, see through the conventional charade, the social mythology of his species. “They’re all sheep,” he thinks. “Marks. Suckers. Waiting to be fleeced.” He has enough contact with some more-or-less genuine occult tradition to know a few of the gimmicks by which “social consciousness,” normally conditioned consciousness, can be suspended. He is thus able to utilize mental brutality in place of the simple physical brutality of the ordinary hooligan.
He is quite powerless against those who realize that he is actually a stupid liar.
He is stupid because spending your life terrorizing and exploiting your inferiors is a dumb and boring existence for anyone with more than five billion brain cells. Can you imagine Beethoven ignoring the heavenly choirs his right lobe could hear just to pound on the wall and annoy the neighbors? Gödel pushing aside his sublime mathematics to go out and cheat at cards? Van Gogh deserting his easel to scrawl nasty caricatures in the men’s toilet? Mental evil is always the stupidest evil because the mind itself is not a weapon but a potential paradise.
Every kind of malice is a stupidity, but occult malice is stupidest of all. To the extent that the mindwarper is not 100 percent charlatan through-and-through (and most of them are), to the extent that he has picked up some real occult lore somewhere, his use of it for malicious purposes is like using Shakespeare’s sonnets for toilet tissue or picking up a Picasso miniature to drive nails. Everybody who has advanced beyond the barbarian stage of evolution can see how pre-human such acts are, except the person doing them.
Genuine occult initiation confers “the philosopher’s stone,” “the gold of the wise” and “the elixir of life,” all of which are metaphors for the capacity to greet life with the bravery and love and gusto that it deserves. By throwing this away to indulge in spite, malice and the small pleasure of bullying the credulous, the mindwarper proves himself a fool and a dolt.
And the psychic terrorist, besides being a jerk, is always a liar and a fraud. Healing is easier (and more fun) than cursing, to begin with, and cursing usually backfires or misfires. The mindwarper doesn’t want you to know that. He wants you to think he’s omnipotent. ~ Robert Anton Wilson,#NFDB
639:Wall, Cave, And Pillar Statements, After Asoka
In order to perfect all readers
the statements should he carved
on rock walls, on cave walls,
and on the sides of pillars so
the charm of their instruction can
affect the mountain climbers near
the cliffs, the plainsmen near
the pillars, and the city people near
the caves they go to on vacations.
The statements should, and in a fair
script, spell out the right text and gloss
of the Philosopher’s jocular remark. Text:
“Honesty is the best policy.” Gloss:
“He means not ‘best’ but ‘policy,’
(this is the joke of it) whereas in fact
Honesty is Honesty, Best
is Best, and Policy is Policy,
the three terms being not
related, but here loosely allied.
What is more important is that ‘is’
is, but the rocklike truth of the text
resides in the ‘the’. The ‘the’ is The.
By this means the amusing sage
has raised or caused to be raised
the triple standard in stone:
the single is too simple for life,
the double is mere degrading hypocrisy,
but the third combines the first two
in a possible way, and contributes
something unsayable of its own:
this is the pit, nut, seed, or stone
of the fruit when the fruit has been
digested:
It is good to do good for the wrong
reason, better to do good for the good
reason, and best of all to do good
good: i.e. when the doer and doee
and whatever passes between them
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are beyond all words like ‘grace’
or ‘anagogic insight,’ or definitions like
‘particular instance of a hoped-at-law,’
and which the rocks alone can convey.
This is the real reason for the rock walls,
the cave walls and pillars, and not the base
desires for permanence and display
that the teacher’s conceit suggests.”
That is the end of the statements, but,
in order to go on a way after the end
so as to make up for having begun
after the beginning, and thus to come around
to it in order to include the whole thing,
add: “In some places the poignant slogan,
‘Morality is a bad joke like everything else,’
may be written or not, granted that space
exists for the vulgar remarks, the dates,
initials and hearts of lovers, and all
other graffiti of the prisoners of this world.”
~ Alan Dugan,#NFDB
640:This, to be sure, is not the entire truth. For there were individuals in Germany who from the very beginning of the regime and without ever wavering were opposed to Hitler; no one knows how many there were of them—perhaps a hundred thousand, perhaps many more, perhaps many fewer—for their voices were never heard. They could be found everywhere, in all strata of society, among the simple people as well as among the educated, in all parties, perhaps even in the ranks of the N.S.D.A.P. Very few of them were known publicly, as were the aforementioned Reck-Malleczewen or the philosopher Karl Jaspers. Some of them were truly and deeply pious, like an artisan of whom I know, who preferred having his independent existence destroyed and becoming a simple worker in a factory to taking upon himself the “little formality” of entering the Nazi Party. A few still took an oath seriously and preferred, for example, to renounce an academic career rather than swear by Hitler’s name. A more numerous group were the workers, especially in Berlin, and Socialist intellectuals who tried to aid the Jews they knew. There were finally, the two peasant boys whose story is related in Günther Weisenborn’s Der lautlose Aufstand (1953), who were drafted into the S.S. at the end of the war and refused to sign; they were sentenced to death, and on the day of their execution they wrote in their last letter to their families: “We two would rather die than burden our conscience with such terrible things. We know what the S.S. must carry out.” The position of these people, who, practically speaking, did nothing, was altogether different from that of the conspirators. Their ability to tell right from wrong had remained intact, and they never suffered a “crisis of conscience.” There may also have been such persons among the members of the resistance, but they were hardly more numerous in the ranks of the conspirators than among the people at large. They were neither heroes nor saints, and they remained completely silent. Only on one occasion, in a single desperate gesture, did this wholly isolated and mute element manifest itself publicly: this was when the Scholls, two students at Munich University, brother and sister, under the influence of their teacher Kurt Huber distributed the famous leaflets in which Hitler was finally called what he was—a “mass murderer. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
641:If we put aside the self-awareness standard -- and really, how arbitrary and arrogant is that, to take the attribute of consciousness we happen to possess over all creatures and set it atop the hierarchy, proclaiming it the very definition of consciousness (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote something wise in his notebooks, to the effect of: only a man can draw a self-portrait, but only a man wants to) -- it becomes possible to say at least the following: the overwhelming tendency of all this scientific work, of its results, has been toward more consciousness. More species having it, and species having more of it than assumed. This was made boldly clear when the 'Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness' pointed out that those 'neurological substrates' necessary for consciousness (whatever 'consciousness' is) belong to 'all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses.' The animal kingdom is symphonic with mental activity, and of its millions of wavelengths, we’re born able to understand the minutest sliver. The least we can do is have a proper respect for our ignorance.
"The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote an essay in 1974 titled, 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?,' in which he put forward perhaps the least overweening, most useful definition of 'animal consciousness' ever written, one that channels Spinoza’s phrase about 'that nature belonging to him wherein he has his being.' Animal consciousness occurs, Nagel wrote, when 'there is something that it is to be that organism -- something it islike for the organism.' The strangeness of his syntax carries the genuine texture of the problem. We’ll probably never be able to step far enough outside of our species-reality to say much about what is going on with them, beyond saying how like or unlike us they are. Many things are conscious on the earth, and we are one, and our consciousness feels likethis; one of the things it causes us to do is doubt the existence of the consciousness of the other millions of species. But it also allows us to imagine a time when we might stop doing that. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan,#NFDB
642:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#NFDB
643:As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even
sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control.
First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure.
This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything
according to the mode of the Spirit. ~ Juan de la Cruz,#NFDB
644:One really has to ask oneself how Socrates managed to maneuver himself into such conjugal misery, and this question can be posed in several variations. If Xantippe really was from the start the kind of woman the legend says she was, we would show very little understanding for our great philosopher because then it was his own carelessness that led him to choose precisely her and no other woman. Or is he supposed to have thought, ironic as he was, that a surly woman is just what a thinker needs? If, from the beginning, he recognized her "true nature" and put up with it, then this indicates deplorable marital behavior on his part because he thus unreasonably expected a women to spend her whole life with a man who obviously at best endured her but did not appreciate her. Conversely, if Xantippe had become as she is described only during her marriage to Socrates, then the philosopher would really come into a questionable light because then indisputably he himself must have caused his wife's vexation without having interested himself in it. No matter how the story is turned, Xantippe's moods fall back on Socrates. This is a genuine philosophical problem: How did the thinker and questioner manage not to solve the puzzle of Xantippe's bad temper? This great midwife of truth was obviously unable to let his wife's rage express itself or to help her find a language in which she would have been able to express the grounds and justifications for her behavior. The failure of a philosopher often consists not in false answers but in neglecting to pose the right questions —and in denying some experiences the right to become "problems." His experiences with Xantippe must have been of this kind—a misery that is not given the dignity of obtruding into the male problem-monopoly. Philosphers fail when they endure as a naturally given evil that for which they are to blame; indeed, their capacity for "wisely" enduring it is itself an intellectual scandal, a misuse of wisdom in favor of blindness. With Socrates, it seems, this misuse immediately avenged itself. When a thinker cannot refrain from equating humanity with masculinity, reality will strike back in the philosopher's marital hell. The stories about this thus have, I think, also a kynical meaning. They reveal the real reason for philosophicalclerical celibacy in our civilization. A definite dominating kind of idealism, philosophy, and grand theory becomes possible only when a certain "other kind" of experience is systematically avoided ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
645:Augustine relates in his Confessions how it was decisive for his own path when he learned that the famous philosopher Marius Victorinus had become a Christian. Victorinus had long refused to join the Church because he took the view that he already possessed in his philosophy all the essentials of Christianity, with whose intellectual premises he was in complete agreement.10 Since from his philosophical thinking, he said, he could already regard the central Christian ideas as his own, he no longer needed to institutionalize his convictions by belonging to a Church. Like many educated people both then and now, he saw the Church as Platonism for the people, something of which he as a full-blown Platonist had no need. The decisive factor seemed to him to be the idea alone; only those who could not grasp it themselves, as the philosopher could, in its original form needed to be brought into contact with it through the medium of ecclesiastical organization. That Marius Victorinus nevertheless one day joined the Church and turned from Platonist into Christian was an expression of his perception of the fundamental error implicit in this view. The great Platonist had come to understand that a Church is something more and something other than an external institutionalization and organization of ideas. He had understood that Christianity is not a system of knowledge but a way. The believers’ “We” is not a secondary addition for small minds; in a certain sense it is the matter itself—the community with one’s fellowmen is a reality that lies on a different plane from that of the mere “idea”. If Platonism provides an idea of the truth, Christian belief offers truth as a way, and only by becoming a way has it become man’s truth. Truth as mere perception, as mere idea, remains bereft of force; it only becomes man’s truth as a way that makes a claim upon him, that he can and must tread. Thus belief embraces, as essential parts of itself, the profession of faith, the word, and the unity it effects; it embraces entry into the community’s worship of God and, so, finally the fellowship we call Church. Christian belief is not an idea but life; it is, not mind existing for itself, but incarnation, mind in the body of history and its “We”. It is, not the mysticism of the self-identification of the mind with God, but obedience and service: going beyond oneself, freeing the self precisely through being taken into service by something not made or thought out by oneself, the liberation of being taken into service for the whole. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
646:Spiders
Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.
There are far more spiders than the man in the street
supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds of spiders and each one
Differs in kind and in unkindness.
In variety of behavior spiders are unrivalled:
The fat garden spider sits motionless, amidst or at the heart
Of the orb of its web: other kinds run,
Scuttling across the floor, falling into bathtubs,
Trapped in the path of its own wrath, by overconfidence
drowned and undone.
Other kinds - more and more kinds under the stars and
the sun Are carnivores: all are relentless, ruthless
Enemies of insects. Their methods of getting food
Are unconventional, numerous, various and sometimes
hilarious:
Some spiders spin webs as beautiful
As Japanese drawings, intricate as clocks, strong as rocks:
Others construct traps which consist only
Of two sticky and tricky threads. Yet this ambush is enough
To bind and chain a crawling ant for long
enough:
The famished spider feels the vibration
Which transforms patience into sensation and satiation.
The handsome wolf spider moves suddenly freely and relies
Upon lightning suddenness, stealth and surprise,
Possessing accurate eyes, pouncing upon his victim with the
speed of surmise.
Courtship is dangerous: there are just as many elaborate
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and endless techniques and varieties
As characterize the wooing of more analytic, more
introspective beings: Sometimes the male
Arrives with the gift of a freshly caught fly.
Sometimes he ties down the female, when she is frail,
With deft strokes and quick maneuvres and threads of silk:
But courtship and wooing, whatever their form, are
informed
By extreme caution, prudence, and calculation,
For the female spider, lazier and fiercer than the male
suitor,
May make a meal of him if she does not feel in the same
mood, or if her appetite
Consumes her far more than the revelation of love's
consummation.
Here among spiders, as in the higher forms of nature,
The male runs a terrifying risk when he goes seeking for
the bounty of beautiful Alma Magna Mater:
Yet clearly and truly he must seek and find his mate and
match like every other living creature!
~ Delmore Schwartz,#NFDB
647:Terrible cultural struggle is kindled by the demand that that which is great shall be eternal. For everything else that lives exclaims 'No!' The customary, the small, and the common fill up the crannies of the world like a heavy atmosphere which we are all condemned to breathe. Hindering, suffocating, choking, darkening, and deceiving: it billows around what is great and blocks the road which it must travel towards immortality. This road leads through human brains — through the brains of miserable, short-lived creatures who, ever at the mercy of their restricted needs, emerge again and again to the same trials and with difficulty avert their own destruction for a little time. They desire to live, to live a bit at any price. Who could perceive in them that difficult relay race by means of which only what is great survives? And yet again and again a few persons awaken who feel themselves blessed in regard to that which is great, as if human life were a glorious thing and as if the most beautiful fruit of this bitter plant is the knowledge that someone once walked proudly and stoically through this existence, while another walked through it in deep thoughtfulness and a third with compassion. But they all bequeathed one lesson: that the person that lives life most beautifully is the person who does not esteem it. Whereas the common man takes this span of being with such gloomy seriousness, those on their journey to immortality knew how to treat it with Olympian laughter, or at least with lofty disdain. Often they went to their graves ironically — for what was there in them to bury?
The boldest knights among these addicts of fame, those who believe that they will discover their coat of arms hanging on a constellation, must be sought among philosophers. Their efforts are not dependent upon a 'public,' upon the excitation of the masses and the cheering applause of contemporaries. It is their nature to wander the path alone. Their talent is the rarest and in a certain respect most unnatural in nature, even shutting itself off from the hostile towards similar talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be made of diamond if it is not to be demolished and shattered. For everything in man and nature is on the move against them. Their journey towards immortality is more difficult and impeded than any other, and yet no one can be more confident than the philosopher that he will reach his goal. Because the philosopher knows not where to stand, if not on the extended wings of all ages. For it is the nature of philosophical reflection to disregard the present and momentary. He possesses the truth: let the wheel of time roll where it will, it will never be able to escape from the truth. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,#NFDB
648:Who is he?”
Eleanor lowered her voice, the name rolling off her tongue like a dark secret. “Dante Berlin.”
I laughed. “Dante? Like the Dante who wrote the Inferno? Did he pick that name just to cultivate his ‘dark and mysterious’ persona?”
Eleanor shook her head in disapproval. “Just wait till you see him. You won’t be laughing then.”
I rolled my eyes. “I bet his real name is something boring like Eugene or Dwayne.”
I expected Eleanor to laugh or say something in return, but instead she gave me a concerned look. I ignored it.
“He sounds like a snob to me. I bet he’s one of those guys who know they’re good-looking. He probably hasn’t even read the Inferno. It’s easy to pretend you’re smart when you don’t to anyone.”
Eleanor still didn’t respond. “Shh . . .” she muttered under her breath.
But before I could say “What?” I heard a cough behind me. Oh God, I thought to myself, and slowly turned around.
“Hi,” he said with a half grin that seemed to be mocking me.
And that’s how I met Dante Berlin.
So how do you describe someone who leaves you speechless?
He was beautiful. Not Monet beautiful or white sandy beach beautiful or even Grand Canyon beautiful. It was both more overwhelming and more delicate. Like gazing into the night sky and feeling incredibly small in comparison. Like holding a shell in your hand and wondering how nature was able to make something so complex yet to perfect: his eyes, dark and pensive; his messy brown hair tucked behind one ear; his arms, strong and lean beneath the cuffs of his collared shirt.
I wanted to say something witty or charming, but all I could muster up was a timid “Hi.”
He studied me with what looked like a mix of disgust and curiosity.
“You must be Eugene,” I said.
“I am.” He smiled, then leaned in and added, “I hope I can trust you to keep my true identity a secret. A name like Eugene could do real damage to my mysterious persona.”
I blushed at the sound of my words coming from his lips. He didn’t seem anything like the person Eleanor had described.
“And you are—”
“Renee,” I interjected.
“I was going to say, ‘in my seat,’ but Renee will do.”
My face went red. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
“Renee like the philosopher Rene Descartes? How esoteric of you. No wonder you think you know everything. You probably picked that name just to cultivate your overly analytical persona.”
I glared at him. I knew he was just dishing back my own insults, but it still stung. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” I said curtly, and pushed past him before he could respond, waving a quick good-bye to Eleanor, who looked too stunned to move.
I turned and walked to the last row, using all of my self-control to resist looking back. ~ Yvonne Woon,#NFDB
649:write animal stories. This one was called Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly; a meditation on ethics, you might say; it had been inspired by a short business trip to Brittany. Here’s a key passage from it: ‘Let us first consider the Breton cow: all year round she thinks of nothing but grazing, her glossy muzzle ascends and descends with impressive regularity, and no shudder of anguish comes to trouble the wistful gaze of her light-brown eyes. All that is as it ought to be, and even appears to indicate a profound existential oneness, a decidedly enviable identity between her being-in-the-world and her being-in-itself. Alas, in this instance the philosopher is found wanting, and his conclusions, while based on a correct and profound intuition, will be rendered invalid if he has not previously taken the trouble of gathering documentary evidence from the naturalist. In fact the Breton cow’s nature is duplicitous. At certain times of the year (precisely determined by the inexorable functioning of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in her being. Her mooing becomes more strident, prolonged, its very harmonic texture modified to the point of recalling at times, and astonishingly so, certain groans which escape the sons of men. Her movements become more rapid, more nervous, from time to time she breaks into a trot. It is not simply her muzzle, though it seems, in its glossy regularity, conceived for reflecting the abiding presence of a mineral passivity, which contracts and twitches under the painful effect of an assuredly powerful desire. ‘The key to the riddle is extremely simple, and it is that what the Breton cow desires (thus demonstrating, and she must be given credit here, her life’s one desire) is, as the breeders say in their cynical parlance, “to get stuffed”. And stuff her they do, more or less directly; the artificial insemination syringe can in effect, whatever the cost in certain emotional complications, take the place of the bull’s penis in performing this function. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to her original state of earnest meditation, except that a few months later she will give birth to an adorable little calf. Which, let it be said in passing, means profit for the breeder.’ * The breeder, of course, symbolized God. Moved by an irrational sympathy for the filly, he promised her, starting from the next chapter, the everlasting delight of numerous stallions, while the cow, guilty of the sin of pride, was to be gradually condemned to the dismal pleasures of artificial fertilization. The pathetic mooing of the ruminant would prove incapable of swaying the judgment of the Great Architect. A delegation of sheep, formed in solidarity, had no better luck. The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
650:her imperative to “think dialectically”—a maxim drawn from her study of the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Because reality is constantly changing, we must constantly detect and analyze the emerging contradictions that are driving this change. And if reality is changing around us, we cannot expect good ideas to hatch within an ivory tower. They instead emerge and develop through daily life and struggle, through collective study and debate among diverse entities, and through trial and error within multiple contexts. Grace often attributes her “having been born female and Chinese” to her sense of being an outsider to mainstream society. Over the past decade she has sharpened this analysis considerably. Reflecting on the limits of her prior encounters with radicalism, Grace fully embraces the feminist critique not only of gender discrimination and inequality but also of the masculinist tendencies that too often come to define a certain brand of movement organizing—one driven by militant posturing, a charismatic form of hierarchical leadership, and a static notion of power seen as a scarce commodity to be acquired and possessed. Grace has struck up a whole new dialogue and built relationships with Asian American activists and intellectuals since the 1998 release of her autobiography, Living for Change. Her reflections on these encounters have reinforced her repeated observation that marginalization serves as a form of liberation. Thus, she has come away impressed with the particular ability of movement-oriented Asian Americans to dissect U.S. society in new ways that transcend the mind-sets of blacks and whites, to draw on their transnational experiences to rethink the nature of the global order, and to enact new propositions free of the constraints and baggage weighing down those embedded in the status quo. Still, Grace’s practical connection to a constantly changing reality for most of her adult life has stemmed from an intimate relationship with the African American community—so much so that informants from the Cointelpro days surmised she was probably Afro-Chinese.3 This connection to black America (and to a lesser degree the pan-African world) has made her a source of intrigue for younger generations grappling with the rising complexities of race and diversity. It has been sustained through both political commitments and personal relationships. Living in Detroit for more than a half century, Grace has developed a stature as one of Motown’s most cherished citizens: penning a weekly column for the city’s largest-circulation black community newspaper; regularly profiled in the mainstream and independent media; frequently receiving awards and honors through no solicitation of her own; constantly visited by students, intellectuals, and activists from around the world; and even speaking on behalf of her friend Rosa Parks after the civil rights icon became too frail for public appearances. ~ Grace Lee Boggs, #NFDB
651:The New Yorker (The New Yorker) - Clip This Article on Location 1510 | Added on Wednesday, June 10, 2015 5:42:23 PM FICTION THE DUNIAZáT BY SALMAN RUSHDIE In the year 1195, the great philosopher Ibn Rushd, once the qadi , or judge, of Seville and most recently the personal physician to the Caliph Abu Yusuf Yaqub in his home town of Córdoba, was formally discredited and disgraced on account of his liberal ideas, which were unacceptable to the increasingly powerful Berber fanatics who were spreading like a pestilence across Arab Spain, and was sent to live in internal exile in the small village of Lucena, a village full of Jews who could no longer say they were Jews because they had been forced to convert to Islam. Ibn Rushd, a philosopher who was no longer permitted to expound his philosophy, all of whose writing had been banned and burned, felt instantly at home among the Jews who could not say they were Jews. He had been a favorite of the Caliph of the present ruling dynasty, the Almohads, but favorites go out of fashion, and Abu Yusuf Yaqub had allowed the fanatics to push the great commentator on Aristotle out of town. The philosopher who could not speak his philosophy lived on a narrow unpaved street in a humble house with small windows and was terribly oppressed by the absence of light. He set up a medical practice in Lucena, and his status as the ex-physician of the Caliph himself brought him patients; in addition, he used what assets he had to enter modestly into the horse trade, and also financed the making of tinajas , the large earthenware vessels, in which the Jews who were no longer Jews stored and sold olive oil and wine. One day soon after the beginning of his exile, a girl of perhaps sixteen summers appeared outside his door, smiling gently, not knocking or intruding on his thoughts in any way, and simply stood there waiting patiently until he became aware of her presence and invited her in. She told him that she was newly orphaned, that she had no source of income, but preferred not to work in the whorehouse, and that her name was Dunia, which did not sound like a Jewish name because she was not allowed to speak her Jewish name, and, because she was illiterate, she could not write it down. She told him that a traveller had suggested the name and said it was Greek and meant “the world,” and she had liked that idea. Ibn Rushd, the translator of Aristotle, did not quibble with her, knowing that it meant “the world” in enough tongues to make pedantry unnecessary. “Why have you named yourself after the world?” he asked her, and she replied, looking him in the eye as she spoke, “Because a world will flow from me and those who flow from me will spread across the world.” Being a man of reason, Ibn Rushd did not guess that the girl was a supernatural creature, a jinnia, of the tribe of female jinn: a grand princess of that tribe, on an earthly adventure, pursuing her fascination with human men in general and brilliant ones in particular. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
652:he importance and influence of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can scarcely be exaggerated. A century after Darwin’s death, the great evolutionary biologist and historian of science, Ernst Mayr, wrote, ‘The worldview formed by any thinking person in the Western world after 1859, when On the Origin of Species was published, was by necessity quite different from a worldview formed prior to 1859… The intellectual revolution generated by Darwin went far beyond the confines of biology, causing the overthrow of some of the most basic beliefs of his age.’1 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s biographers, contend, ‘Darwin is arguably the best known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker—even Freud or Marx—this affable old-world naturalist from the minor Shropshire gentry has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.’2 In the words of the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Almost no one is indifferent to Darwin, and no one should be. The Darwinian theory is a scientific theory, and a great one, but that is not all it is… Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.’3 Dennett goes on to add, ‘If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I’d give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.’4 The editors of the Cambridge Companion to Darwin begin their introduction by stating, ‘Some scientific thinkers, while not themselves philosophers, make philosophers necessary. Charles Darwin is an obvious case. His conclusions about the history and diversity of life—including the evolutionary origin of humans—have seemed to bear on fundamental questions about being, knowledge, virtue and justice.’5 Among the fundamental questions raised by Darwin’s work, which are still being debated by philosophers (and others) are these: ‘Are we different in kind from other animals? Do our apparently unique capacities for language, reason and morality point to a divine spark within us, or to ancestral animal legacies still in evidence in our simian relatives? What forms of social life are we naturally disposed towards—competitive and selfish forms, or cooperative and altruistic ones?’6 As the editors of the volume point out, virtually the entire corpus of the foundational works of Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes to Kant to Hegel, has had to be re-examined in the light of Darwin’s work. Darwin continues to be read, discussed, interpreted, used, abused—and misused—to this day. As the philosopher and historian of science, Jean Gayon, puts it, ‘[T]his persistent positioning of new developments in relation to a single, pioneering figure is quite exceptional in the history of modern natural science. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
653:But we may fairly say that they alone are engaged in the true duties of life who shall wish to have Zeno, Pythagoras, Democritus, and all the other high priests of liberal studies, and Aristotle and Theophrastus, as their most intimate friends every day. No one of these will be "not at home," no one of these will fail to have his visitor leave more happy and more devoted to himself than when he came, no one of these will allow anyone to leave him with empty hands; all mortals can meet with them by night or by day.
No one of these will force you to die, but all will teach you how to die; no one of these will wear out your years, but each will add his own years to yours; conversations with no one of these will bring you peril, the friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will take whatever you wish; it will be no fault of theirs if you do not draw the utmost that you can desire. What happiness, what a fair old age awaits him who has offered himself as a client to these! He will have friends from whom he may seek counsel on matters great and small, whom he may consult every day about himself, from whom he may hear truth without insult, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself.
We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.
But those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing. ~ Seneca,#NFDB
654:Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being that they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting that there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering. To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. Yet how He eludes us! For He is everywhere while He is nowhere, for "where" has to do with matter and space, and God is independent of both. He is unaffected by time or motion, is wholly self-dependent and owes nothing to the worlds His hands have made. Timeless, spaceless, single, lonely, Yet sublimely Three, Thou art grandly, always, only God is Unity! Lone in grandeur, lone in glory, Who shall tell Thy wondrous story? Awful Trinity! FREDERICK W. FABER It is not a cheerful thought that millions of us who live in a land of Bibles, who belong to churches and labor to promote the Christian religion, may yet pass our whole life on this earth without once having thought or tried to think seriously about the being of God. Few of us have let our hearts gaze in wonder at the I AM, the self-existent Self back of which no creature can think. Such thoughts are too painful for us. We prefer to think where it will do more good - about how to build a better mousetrap, for instance, or how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. And for this we are now paying a too heavy price in the secularlzation of our religion and the decay of our inner lives. Perhaps some sincere but puzzled Christian may at this juncture wish to inquire about the practicality of such concepts as I am trying to set forth here. "What bearing does this have on my life?" he may ask. "What possible meaning can the self-existence of God have for me and others like me in a world such as this and in times such as these?" To this I reply that, because we are the handiwork of God, it follows that all our problems and their solutions are theological. Some knowledge of what kind of God it is that operates the universe is indispensable to a sound philosophy of life and a sane outlook on the world scene. The much-quoted advice of Alexander Pope, "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan: The proper study of mankind is man," if followed literally would destroy any possibility of man's ever knowing himself in any but the most superficial way. We can never know who or what we are till we know at least something of what God is. For this reason the self-existence of God is not a wisp of dry doctrine, academic and remote; it is in fact as near as our breath and as practical as the latest surgical technique. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
655:The thought turned him topsy-turvy. It seemed to summarize the whole worthless way of the world--if there was one. And versions of it began to flutter wildly through his head. You have to look round to see straight. Good enough. Useful. And the rough places plain. But all that's geometry. But it measures the earth. You have to go slow to catch up. Eat to get thin? no, but fast to grow fat, that was a fine one. Then lose to win? fail to succeed? Risky. Stop to begin. The form made noiseless music--lumly lum lum or lum-lee-lee lum--like fill to empty, every physical extreme. Die to live was a bit old hat. But default to repay. And lie to be honest. He liked the ring of that. Flack! I'm white in order to be black. Sin first and saint later. Cruel to be kind, of course, and the hurts in the hurter--that's what they say--a lot of blap. That's my name, my nomination: Saint Later. Now then: humble to be proud; poor to be rich. Enslave to make free? That moved naturally. Also multiply to subtract. Dee dee dee. Young Saint Later. A list of them, as old as Pythagoras had. Even engenders odd. How would that be? Eight is five and three. There were no middle-aged saints--they were all old men or babies. Ah, god--the wise fool. The simpleton sublime. Babe in the woods, roach in the pudding, prince in the pauper, enchanted beauty in the toad. This was the wisdom of the folk and the philosopher alike--the disorder of the lyre, or the drawn-out bow of that sane madman, the holy Heraclitus. The poet Zeno. The logician Keats. Discovery after discovery: the more the mice eat, the fatter the cats. There were tears and laughter, for instance--how they shook and ran together into one gay grief. Dumb eloquence, swift still waters, shallow deeps. Let's see: impenitent remorse, careless anxiety, heedless worry, tense repose. So true of tigers. Then there was the friendly enmity of sun and snow, and the sweet disharmony of every union, the greasy mate of cock and cunt, the cosmic poles, war that's peace, the stumble that's an everlasting poise and balance, spring and fall, love, strife, health, disease, and the cold duplicity of Number One and all its warm divisions. The sameness that's in difference. The limit that's limitless. The permanence that's change. The distance of the near at home. So--to roam, stay home. Then pursue to be caught, submit to conquer. Method--ancient--of Chinese. To pacify, inflame. Love, hate. Kiss, kill. In, out, up, down, start, stop. Ah . . . from pleasure, pain. Like circumcision of the heart. Judgement and mercy. Sin and grace. It little mattered; everything seemed to Furber to be magically right, and his heart grew fat with satisfaction. Therefore there is good in every evil; one must lower away to raise; seek what's found to mourn its loss; conceive in stone and execute in water; turn profound and obvious, miraculous and commonplace, around; sin to save; destroy in order to create; live in the sun, though underground. Yes. Doubt in order to believe--that was an old one--for this the square IS in the circle. O Phaedo, Phaedo. O endless ending. Soul is immortal after all--at last it's proved. Between dead and living there's no difference but the one has whiter bones. Furber rose, the mosquitoes swarming around him, and ran inside. ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
656:In the EPJ results, there were two statistically distinguishable groups of experts. The first failed to do better than random guessing, and in their longer-range forecasts even managed to lose to the chimp. The second group beat the chimp, though not by a wide margin, and they still had plenty of reason to be humble. Indeed, they only barely beat simple algorithms like “always predict no change” or “predict the recent rate of change.” Still, however modest their foresight was, they had some. So why did one group do better than the other? It wasn’t whether they had PhDs or access to classified information. Nor was it what they thought—whether they were liberals or conservatives, optimists or pessimists. The critical factor was how they thought. One group tended to organize their thinking around Big Ideas, although they didn’t agree on which Big Ideas were true or false. Some were environmental doomsters (“We’re running out of everything”); others were cornucopian boomsters (“We can find cost-effective substitutes for everything”). Some were socialists (who favored state control of the commanding heights of the economy); others were free-market fundamentalists (who wanted to minimize regulation). As ideologically diverse as they were, they were united by the fact that their thinking was so ideological. They sought to squeeze complex problems into the preferred cause-effect templates and treated what did not fit as irrelevant distractions. Allergic to wishy-washy answers, they kept pushing their analyses to the limit (and then some), using terms like “furthermore” and “moreover” while piling up reasons why they were right and others wrong. As a result, they were unusually confident and likelier to declare things “impossible” or “certain.” Committed to their conclusions, they were reluctant to change their minds even when their predictions clearly failed. They would tell us, “Just wait.” The other group consisted of more pragmatic experts who drew on many analytical tools, with the choice of tool hinging on the particular problem they faced. These experts gathered as much information from as many sources as they could. When thinking, they often shifted mental gears, sprinkling their speech with transition markers such as “however,” “but,” “although,” and “on the other hand.” They talked about possibilities and probabilities, not certainties. And while no one likes to say “I was wrong,” these experts more readily admitted it and changed their minds. Decades ago, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote a much-acclaimed but rarely read essay that compared the styles of thinking of great authors through the ages. To organize his observations, he drew on a scrap of 2,500-year-old Greek poetry attributed to the warrior-poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” No one will ever know whether Archilochus was on the side of the fox or the hedgehog but Berlin favored foxes. I felt no need to take sides. I just liked the metaphor because it captured something deep in my data. I dubbed the Big Idea experts “hedgehogs” and the more eclectic experts “foxes.” Foxes beat hedgehogs. And the foxes didn’t just win by acting like chickens, playing it safe with 60% and 70% forecasts where hedgehogs boldly went with 90% and 100%. Foxes beat hedgehogs on both calibration and resolution. Foxes had real foresight. Hedgehogs didn’t. ~ Philip E Tetlock, #NFDB
657:There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world.
Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs.
It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone.
It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been.
Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen?
We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth.
It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold. ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
658:She gives just enough hints about him to make you wonder why he became so villainous. And if he dies, I’ll never learnt the answer.”
Oliver eyes her closely. “Perhaps he was born villainous.”
“No one is born villainous.”
“Oh?” he said with raised eyebrow. “So we’re all born good?”
“Neither. We start as animals, with an animal’s needs and desires. It takes parents and teachers and other good examples to show us how to restrain those needs and desires, when necessary, for the greater good. But it’s still our choice whether to heed that education or to do as we please.”
“For a woman who loves murder and mayhem, you’re quite the philosopher.”
“I like to understand how things work. Why people behave as they do.”
He digested that for a moment. “I happen to think that some of us, like Rockton, are born with a wicked bent.”
She chose her words carefully. “That certainly provides Rockton with a convenient excuse for his behavior.”
His features turned stony. “What do you mean?”
“Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all-one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral. By claiming to be born wicked, Rockton ensures that he doesn’t have to struggle to be god. He can just protest that he can’t help himself.”
“Perhaps he can’t,” he clipped out.
“Or maybe he’s simply unwilling to fight his impulses. And I want to know the reason for that. That’s why I keep reading Minerva’s books.”
Did Oliver actually believe he’d been born irredeemably wicked? How tragic! It lent a hopelessness to his life that helped to explain his mindless pursuit of pleasure.
“I can tell you the reason for Rockton’s villainy.” Oliver rose to round the desk. Propping his hip on the edge near her, he reached out to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear.
A sweet shudder swept over her. Why must he have this effect on her? It simply wasn’t fair. “Oh?” she managed.
“Rockton knows he can’t have everything he wants,” he said hoarsely, his hand drifting to her cheek. “He can’t have the heroine, for example. She would never tolerate his…wicked impulses. Yet he still wants her. And his wanting consumes him.”
Her breath lodged in her throat. It had been days since he’d touched her, and she hadn’t forgotten what it was like for one minute. To have him this near, saying such things…
She fought for control over her volatile emotions. “His wanting consumes him precisely because he can’t have her. If he thought he could, he wouldn’t want her after all.”
“Not true.” His voice deepening, he stroked the line of her jaw with a tenderness that roused an ache in her chest. “Even Rockton recognizes when a woman is unlike any other. Her very goodness in the face of his villainy bewitches him. He thinks if he can just possess that goodness, then the dark cloud lying on his soul will lift, and he’ll have something other than villainy to sustain him.”
“Then he’s mistaken.” Her pulse trebled as his finger swept the hollow of her throat. “The only person who can lift the dark cloud on his soul is himself.”
He paused in his caress. “So he’s doomed, then?”
“No!” Her gaze flew to his. “No one is doomed, and certainly not Rockton. There’s still hope for him. There is always hope.”
His eyes burned with a feverish light, and before she could look away, he bent to kiss her. It was soft, tender…delicious. Someone moaned, she wasn’t sure who. All she knew was that his mouth was on hers again, molding it, tasting it, making her hungry in the way that only he seemed able to do.
“Maria…” he breathed. Seizing her by the arms, he drew her up into his embrace. “My God, I’ve thought of nothing but you since that day in the carriage. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
659:THE STILLEST HOUR
What happened to me, my friends? You see me distracted, driven away, unwillingly obedient, prepared to
go-alas, to go away from you. Indeed, Zarathustra
must return once more to his solitude; but this time
the bear goes back to his cave without joy. What happened to me? Who ordered this? Alas, my angry mistress wants it, she spoke to me; have I ever yet
mentioned her name to you? Yesterday, toward evening,
there spoke to me my stillest hour: that is the name of
my awesome mistress. And thus it happened; for I must
tell you everything lest your hearts harden against me
for departing suddenly.
Do you know the fright of him who falls asleep? He
is frightened down to his very toes because the ground
gives under him and the dream begins. This I say to
you as a parable. Yesterday, in the stillest hour, the
ground gave under me, the dream began. The hand
moved, the clock of my life drew a breath; never had
I heard such stillness around me: my heart took fright.
Then it spoke to me without voice: "You know it,
Zarathustra?" And I cried with fright at this whispering,
and the blood left my face; but I remained silent.
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You know
it, Zarathustra, but you do not say itl" And at last I
answered defiantly: "Yes, I know it, but I do not want
to say itl"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You do
not want to, Zarathustra? Is this really true? Do not
hide in your defiance." And I cried and trembled like
a child and spoke: "Alas, I would like to, but how can
I? Let me off from this! It is beyond my strength!"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
146
you matter, Zarathustra? Speak your word and break"
And I answered: "Alas, is it my word? Who am l?
I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even of being
broken by it."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
you matter? You are not yet humble enough for me.
Humility has the toughest hide." And I answered:
'
at the foot of my height. How high are my peaks? No
one has told me yet. But my valleys I know well."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "O Zarathustra, he who has to move mountains also moves
valleys and hollows." And I answered: "As yet my
words have not moved mountains, and what I said did
not reach men. Indeed, I have gone to men, but as yet
I have not arrived."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What do
you know of that? The dew falls on the grass when the
night is most silent." And I answered: "They mocked
me when I found and went my own way; and in truth
my feet were trembling then. And thus they spoke to
me: 'You have forgotten the way, now you have also
forgotten how to walk.'"
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "What
matters their mockery? You are one who has forgotten
how to obey: now you shall command. Do you not
know who is most needed by all? He that commands
great things. To do great things is difficult; but to
comm and great things is more difficult. This is what
is most unforgivable in you: you have the power, and
you do not want to rule." And I answered: "I lack the
lion's voice for commanding."
Then it spoke to me again as a whisper: "It is the
stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that
come on doves' feet guide the world. 0 Zarathustra, you
147
shall go as a shadow of that which must come: thus you
will comm and and, commanding, lead the way." And I
answered: "I am ashamed."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You must
yet become as a child and without shame. The pride of
youth is still upon you; you have become young late;
but whoever would become as a child must overcome
his youth too." And I reflected for a long time and
trembled. But at last I said what I had said at first; "I
do not want to."
Then laughter surrounded me. Alas, how this laughter tore my entrails and slit open my heart! And it
spoke to me for the last time: "O Zarathustra, your
fruit is ripe, but you are not ripe for your fruit. Thus
you must return to your solitude again; for you must
yet become mellow." And again it laughed and fled;
then it became still around me as with a double stillness. But I lay on the ground and sweat poured from
my limbs.
Now you have heard all, and why I must return to
my solitude. Nothing have I kept from you, my friends.
But this too you have heard from me, who is still the
most taciturn of all men-and wants to be. Alas, my
friends, I still could tell you something, I still could
give you something. Why do I not give it? Am I stingy?
But when Zarathustra had spoken these words he was
overcome by the force of his pain and the nearness of
his parting from his friends, and he wept loudly; and
no one knew how to comfort him. At night, however,
he went away alone and left his friends.
148
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Third Part
You look up when you feel the need for elevation.
And I look down because I am elevated. Who
among you can laugh and be elevated at the same
time? Whoever climbs the highest mountains
laughs at all tragic plays and tragic seriousness.
(Zarathustra, "On Reading and Writing," I, p.
40)
TRANSLATOR S NOTES
1. The Wanderer: The contrast between Zarathustra's sentimentality and his praise of hardness remains characteristic
of the rest of the book.
2. On the Vision and the Riddle: Zarathustra's first account
of the eternal recurrence (see my Nietzsche, .i, II) is
followed by a proto-surrealistic vision of a triumph over
nausea.
3. On Involuntary Bliss: Zarathustra still cannot face the
thought of the eternal recurrence.
4. Before Sunrise: An ode to the sky. Another quotation
from Zweig's essay on Nietzsche seems pertinent: "His
nerves immediately register every meter of height and
every pressure of the weather as a pain in his organs, and
they react rebelliously to every revolt in nature. Rain or
gloomy skies lower his vitality ('overcast skies depress me
deeply'), the weight of low clouds he feels down into his
very intestines, rain 'lowers the potential,' humidity debilitates, dryness vivifies, sunshine is salvation, winter is a kind
of paralysis and death. The quivering barometer needle of
his April-like, changeable nerves never stands still-most
nearly perhaps in cloudless landscapes, on the windless tablelands of the Engadine." In this chapter the phrase "beyond
good and evil" is introduced; also one line, slightly varied,
of the "Drunken Song" (see below). Another important
149
theme in Nietzsche's thought: the praise of chance and "a
little reason" as opposed to any divine purpose.
5. On Virtue That Makes Small: "Do whatever you will,
but . . .": What Nietzsche is concerned with is not casuistry but character, not a code of morals but a kind of man,
not a syllabus of behavior but a state of being.
6. Upon the Mount of Olives: "'The ice of knowledge will
yet freeze him to death!' they moan." Compare Stefan
George's poem on the occasion of Nietzsche's death (my
Nietzsche, Prologue, II): "He came too late who said to thee
imploring: There is no way left over icy cliffs."
7. On Passing By: Zarathustra's ape, or "grunting swine,"
unintentionally parodies Zarathustra's attitude and style.
His denunciations are born of wounded vanity and vengefulness, while Zarathustra's contempt is begotten by love;
and "where one can no longer love, there one should pass
by."
8. On Apostates: Stylistically, Zarathustra is now often little
better than his ape. But occasional epigrams show his old
power: the third paragraph in section 2, for instance.
9. The Return Home: "Among men you will always seem
wild and strange," his solitude says to Zarathustra. But
"here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter
you, for they want to ride on your back. On every parable
you ride to every truth." The discipline of communication might have served the philosopher better than the
indiscriminate flattery of his solitude. But in this respect
too, it was not given to Nietzsche to live in blissful
ignorance: compare, for example, "The Song of Melancholy" in Part Four.
io. On the Three Evils: The praise of so-called evil as an
ingredient of greatness is central in Nietzsche's thought,
from his early fragment, Homer's Contest, to his Antichrist.
There are few problems the self-styled immoralist pursued
so persistently. Whether he calls attention to the element
of cruelty in the Greek agon or denounces Christianity for
vilifying sex, whether he contrasts sublimation and extirpation or the egoism of the creative and the vengeful: all
these are variations of one theme. In German, the three
evils in this chapter are Wollust, Herrschsucht, Selbstsucht.
For the first there is no exact equivalent in English. In
this chapter, "lust" might do in some sentences, "voluptuousness" in others, but each would be quite inaccurate
half the time, and the context makes it imperative that
the same word be used throughout. There is only one
word in English that renders Nietzsche's meaning perfectly
in every single sentence: sex. Its only disadvantage: it is,
to put it mildly, a far less poetic word than Wollust, and
hence modifies the tone though not Nietzsche's meaning.
But if we reflect on the three things which, according to
Nietzsche, had been maligned most, under the influence of
Christianity, and which he sought to rehabilitate or revaluate-were they not selfishness, the will to power, and sex?
Nietzsche's early impact was in some ways comparable to
that of Freud or Havelock Ellis. But prudery was for him
at most one of three great evils, one kind of hypocrisy, one
aspect of man's betrayal of the earth and of himself.
i1. On the Spirit of Gravity: It is not only the metaphor
of the camel that points back to the first chapter of Part
One: the dead weight of convention is a prime instance of
what is meant by the spirit of gravity; and the bird that
outsoars tradition is, like the child and the self-propelled
wheel at the beginning of the book, a symbol of creativity.
The creator, however, is neither an "evil beast" nor an
"evil tamer of beasts"-neither a profligate nor an ascetic:
he integrates what is in him, perfects and lavishes himself, and says, "This is my way; where is yours?" Michelangelo and Mozart do not offer us "the way" but a challenge and a promise of what is possible.
12. On Old and New Tablets: Attempt at a grand summary,
full of allusions to, and quotations from, previous chapters
Its unevenness is nowhere more striking than in section 12,
with its puns on "crusades." Such sections as 5, 7, and 8,
on the other hand, certainly deserve attention. The despot
in section ii, who has all history rewritten, seems to point
forward in time to Hitler, of whose racial legislation it
151
could indeed be said: "with the grandfa ther, however,
time ends." Section 15 points back to Luther. Section zo
exposes in advance Stefan George's misconception when he
ended his second poem on Nietzsche (my Nietzsche, p.
iil):
"The warner went-the wheel that downward rolls /
To emptiness no arm now tackles in the spokes." The
penultimate paragraph of this section is more "playful"
in the original: Ein Vorspiel bin ich besserer Spieler, oh
meine Braiderl Ein Beispiell In section 25 the key word is
Versuch, one of Nietzsche's favorite words, which means
experiment, attempt, trial. Sometimes he associates it with
suchen, searching. (In Chapter 2, "On the Vision and
the Riddle," Sucher, Versucher has been rendered "searchers, researchers.") Section 29, finally, is used again, with
minute changes, to conclude Twilight of the Idols.
13. The Convalescent: Zarathustra still cannot face the
thought of the eternal recurrence but speaks about human
speech and cruelty. In the end, his animals expound the
eternal recurrence.
14 On the Great Longing: Hymn to his soul: Zarathustra
and his soul wonder which of them should be grateful to
the other.
15. The Other Dancing Song: Life and wisdom as women
again; but in this dancing song, life is in complete control,
and when Zarathustra's imagination runs away with him
he gets his face slapped. What he whispers into the ear
of life at the end of section 2 is, no doubt, that after his
death he will yet recur eternally. The song at the end,
punctuated by the twelve strokes of the bell, is interpreted
in "The Drunken Song" in Part Four.
i6. The Seven Seals: The eternal recurrence of the small
man no longer nauseates Zarathustra. His affirmation now is
boundless and without reservation: "For I love you, 0
eternity."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, THE STILLEST HOUR
,#NFDB
660:The Farewell
_P_. Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell
To all the follies which in Europe dwell;
To Eastern India now, a richer clime,
Richer, alas! in everything but rhyme,
The Muses steer their course; and, fond of change,
At large, in other worlds, desire to range;
Resolved, at least, since they the fool must play,
To do it in a different place, and way.
_F_. What whim is this, what error of the brain,
What madness worse than in the dog-star's reign?
Why into foreign countries would you roam,
Are there not knaves and fools enough at home?
If satire be thy object--and thy lays
As yet have shown no talents fit for praise-If satire be thy object, search all round,
Nor to thy purpose can one spot be found
Like England, where, to rampant vigour grown,
Vice chokes up every virtue; where, self-sown,
The seeds of folly shoot forth rank and bold,
And every seed brings forth a hundredfold.
_P_. No more of this--though Truth, (the more our shame,
The more our guilt) though Truth perhaps may claim,
And justify her part in this, yet here,
For the first time, e'en Truth offends my ear;
Declaim from morn to night, from night to morn,
Take up the theme anew, when day's new-born,
I hear, and hate--be England what she will,
With all her faults, she is my country still.
_F_. Thy country! and what then? Is that mere word
Against the voice of Reason to be heard?
Are prejudices, deep imbibed in youth,
To counteract, and make thee hate the truth?
'Tis sure the symptom of a narrow soul
To draw its grand attachment from the whole,
And take up with a part; men, not confined
Within such paltry limits, men design'd
Their nature to exalt, where'er they go,
Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow,
Where'er the blessed sun, placed in the sky
165
To watch this subject world, can dart his eye,
Are still the same, and, prejudice outgrown,
Consider every country as their own;
At one grand view they take in Nature's plan,
Not more at home in England than Japan.
_P_. My good, grave Sir of Theory, whose wit,
Grasping at shadows, ne'er caught substance yet,
'Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine
On vain refinements vainly to refine,
To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
To boast of apathy when out of pain,
And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault
That into practice they can ne'er be brought.
At home, and sitting in your elbow-chair,
You praise Japan, though you was never there:
But was the ship this moment under sail,
Would not your mind be changed, your spirits fail?
Would you not cast one longing eye to shore,
And vow to deal in such wild schemes no more?
Howe'er our pride may tempt us to conceal
Those passions which we cannot choose but feel,
There's a strange something, which, without a brain,
Fools feel, and which e'en wise men can't explain,
Planted in man to bind him to that earth,
In dearest ties, from whence he drew his birth.
If Honour calls, where'er she points the way
The sons of Honour follow, and obey;
If need compels, wherever we are sent
'Tis want of courage not to be content;
But, if we have the liberty of choice,
And all depends on our own single voice,
To deem of every country as the same
Is rank rebellion 'gainst the lawful claim
Of Nature, and such dull indifference
May be philosophy, but can't be sense.
_F_. Weak and unjust distinction, strange design,
Most peevish, most perverse, to undermine
Philosophy, and throw her empire down
By means of Sense, from whom she holds her crown,
Divine Philosophy! to thee we owe
166
All that is worth possessing here below;
Virtue and wisdom consecrate thy reign,
Doubled each joy, and pain no longer pain.
When, like a garden, where, for want of toil
And wholesome discipline, the rich, rank soil
Teems with incumbrances; where all around,
Herbs, noxious in their nature, make the ground,
Like the good mother of a thankless son,
Curse her own womb, by fruitfulness undone;
Like such a garden, when the human soul,
Uncultured, wild, impatient of control,
Brings forth those passions of luxuriant race,
Which spread, and stifle every herb of grace;
Whilst Virtue, check'd by the cold hand of Scorn,
Seems withering on the bed where she was born,
Philosophy steps in; with steady hand,
She brings her aid, she clears the encumber'd land;
Too virtuous to spare Vice one stroke, too wise
One moment to attend to Pity's cries-See with what godlike, what relentless power
She roots up every weed!
_P_. And every flower.
Philosophy, a name of meek degree,
Embraced, in token of humility,
By the proud sage, who, whilst he strove to hide,
In that vain artifice reveal'd his pride;
Philosophy, whom Nature had design'd
To purge all errors from the human mind,
Herself misled by the philosopher,
At once her priest and master, made us err:
Pride, pride, like leaven in a mass of flour,
Tainted her laws, and made e'en Virtue sour.
Had she, content within her proper sphere,
Taught lessons suited to the human ear,
Which might fair Virtue's genuine fruits produce,
Made not for ornament, but real use,
The heart of man, unrivall'd, she had sway'd,
Praised by the good, and by the bad obey'd;
But when she, overturning Reason's throne,
Strove proudly in its place to plant her own;
When she with apathy the breast would steel,
And teach us, deeply feeling, not to feel;
167
When she would wildly all her force employ,
Not to correct our passions, but destroy;
When, not content our nature to restore,
As made by God, she made it all new o'er;
When, with a strange and criminal excess,
To make us more than men, she made us less;
The good her dwindled power with pity saw,
The bad with joy, and none but fools with awe.
Truth, with a simple and unvarnish'd tale,
E'en from the mouth of Norton might prevail,
Could she get there; but Falsehood's sugar'd strain
Should pour her fatal blandishments in vain,
Nor make one convert, though the Siren hung,
Where she too often hangs, on Mansfield's tongue.
Should all the Sophs, whom in his course the sun
Hath seen, or past, or present, rise in one;
Should he, whilst pleasure in each sentence flows,
Like Plato, give us poetry in prose;
Should he, full orator, at once impart
The Athenian's genius with the Roman's art;
Genius and Art should in this instance fail,
Nor Rome, though join'd with Athens, here prevail.
'Tis not in man, 'tis not in more than man,
To make me find one fault in Nature's plan.
Placed low ourselves, we censure those above,
And, wanting judgment, think that she wants love;
Blame, where we ought in reason to commend,
And think her most a foe when most a friend.
Such be philosophers--their specious art,
Though Friendship pleads, shall never warp my heart,
Ne'er make me from this breast one passion tear,
Which Nature, my best friend, hath planted there.
_F_. Forgiving as a friend, what, whilst I live,
As a philosopher I can't forgive,
In this one point at last I join with you,
To Nature pay all that is Nature's due;
But let not clouded Reason sink so low,
To fancy debts she does not, cannot owe:
Bear, to full manhood grown, those shackles bear,
Which Nature meant us for a time to wear,
As we wear leading-strings, which, useless grown,
Are laid aside, when we can walk alone;
168
But on thyself, by peevish humour sway'd,
Wilt thou lay burdens Nature never laid?
Wilt thou make faults, whilst Judgment weakly errs,
And then defend, mistaking them for hers?
Darest thou to say, in our enlighten'd age,
That this grand master passion, this brave rage,
Which flames out for thy country, was impress'd
And fix'd by Nature in the human breast?
If you prefer the place where you were born,
And hold all others in contempt and scorn,
On fair comparison; if on that land
With liberal, and a more than equal hand,
Her gifts, as in profusion, Plenty sends;
If Virtue meets with more and better friends;
If Science finds a patron 'mongst the great;
If Honesty is minister of state;
If Power, the guardian of our rights design'd,
Is to that great, that only end, confined;
If riches are employ'd to bless the poor;
If Law is sacred, Liberty secure;
Let but these facts depend on proofs of weight,
Reason declares thy love can't be too great,
And, in this light could he our country view,
A very Hottentot must love it too.
But if, by Fate's decrees, you owe your birth
To some most barren and penurious earth,
Where, every comfort of this life denied,
Her real wants are scantily supplied;
Where Power is Reason, Liberty a joke,
Laws never made, or made but to be broke;
To fix thy love on such a wretched spot,
Because in Lust's wild fever there begot;
Because, thy weight no longer fit to bear,
By chance, not choice, thy mother dropp'd thee there,
Is folly, which admits not of defence;
It can't be Nature, for it is not sense.
By the same argument which here you hold,
(When Falsehood's insolent, let Truth be told)
If Propagation can in torments dwell,
A devil must, if born there, love his Hell.
_P_. Had Fate, to whose decrees I lowly bend,
And e'en in punishment confess a friend,
169
Ordain'd my birth in some place yet untried,
On purpose made to mortify my pride,
Where the sun never gave one glimpse of day,
Where Science never yet could dart one ray,
Had I been born on some bleak, blasted plain
Of barren Scotland, in a Stuart's reign,
Or in some kingdom, where men, weak, or worse,
Turn'd Nature's every blessing to a curse;
Where crowns of freedom, by the fathers won,
Dropp'd leaf by leaf from each degenerate son;
In spite of all the wisdom you display,
All you have said, and yet may have to say,
My weakness here, if weakness I confess,
I, as my country, had not loved her less.
Whether strict Reason bears me out in this,
Let those who, always seeking, always miss
The ways of Reason, doubt with precious zeal;
Theirs be the praise to argue, mine to feel.
Wish we to trace this passion to the root,
We, like a tree, may know it by its fruit;
From its rich stem ten thousand virtues spring,
Ten thousand blessings on its branches cling;
Yet in the circle of revolving years
Not one misfortune, not one vice, appears.
Hence, then, and what you Reason call, adore;
This, if not Reason, must be something more.
But (for I wish not others to confine;
Be their opinions unrestrain'd as mine)
Whether this love's of good or evil growth,
A vice, a virtue, or a spice of both,
Let men of nicer argument decide;
If it is virtuous, soothe an honest pride
With liberal praise; if vicious, be content,
It is a vice I never can repent;
A vice which, weigh'd in Heaven, shall more avail
Than ten cold virtues in the other scale.
_F_. This wild, untemper'd zeal (which, after all,
We, candour unimpeach'd, might madness call)
Is it a virtue? That you scarce pretend;
Or can it be a vice, like Virtue's friend,
Which draws us off from and dissolves the force
Of private ties, nay, stops us in our course
170
To that grand object of the human soul,
That nobler love which comprehends the whole?
Coop'd in the limits of this petty isle,
This nook, which scarce deserves a frown or smile,
Weigh'd with Creation, you, by whim undone,
Give all your thoughts to what is scarce worth one.
The generous soul, by Nature taught to soar,
Her strength confirm'd in philosophic lore,
At one grand view takes in a world with ease,
And, seeing all mankind, loves all she sees.
_P_. Was it most sure, which yet a doubt endures,
Not found in Reason's creed, though found in yours,
That these two services, like what we're told,
And know, of God's and Mammon's, cannot hold
And draw together; that, however both,
We neither serve, attempting to serve both,
I could not doubt a moment which to choose,
And which in common reason to refuse.
Invented oft for purposes of art,
Born of the head, though father'd on the heart,
This grand love of the world must be confess'd
A barren speculation at the best.
Not one man in a thousand, should he live
Beyond the usual term of life, could give,
So rare occasion comes, and to so few,
Proof whether his regards are feign'd, or true.
The love we bear our country is a root
Which never fails to bring forth golden fruit;
'Tis in the mind an everlasting spring
Of glorious actions, which become a king,
Nor less become a subject; 'tis a debt
Which bad men, though they pay not, can't forget;
A duty, which the good delight to pay,
And every man can practise every day.
Nor, for my life (so very dim my eye,
Or dull your argument) can I descry
What you with faith assert, how that dear love,
Which binds me to my country, can remove,
And make me of necessity forego,
That general love which to the world I owe.
Those ties of private nature, small extent,
In which the mind of narrow cast is pent,
171
Are only steps on which the generous soul
Mounts by degrees till she includes the whole.
That spring of love, which, in the human mind,
Founded on self, flows narrow and confined,
Enlarges as it rolls, and comprehends
The social charities of blood and friends,
Till, smaller streams included, not o'erpast,
It rises to our country's love at last;
And he, with liberal and enlarged mind,
Who loves his country, cannot hate mankind.
_F_. Friend, as you would appear, to Common Sense,
Tell me, or think no more of a defence,
Is it a proof of love by choice to run
A vagrant from your country?
_P_. Can the son
(Shame, shame on all such sons!) with ruthless eye,
And heart more patient than the flint, stand by,
And by some ruffian, from all shame divorced,
All virtue, see his honour'd mother forced?
Then--no, by Him that made me! not e'en then,
Could I with patience, by the worst of men,
Behold my country plunder'd, beggar'd, lost
Beyond redemption, all her glories cross'd,
E'en when occasion made them ripe, her fame
Fled like a dream, while she awakes to shame.
_F_. Is it not more the office of a friend,
The office of a patron, to defend
Her sinking state, than basely to decline
So great a cause, and in despair resign?
_P_. Beyond my reach, alas! the grievance lies,
And, whilst more able patriots doubt, she dies.
From a foul source, more deep than we suppose,
Fatally deep and dark, this grievance flows.
'Tis not that peace our glorious hopes defeats:
'Tis not the voice of Faction in the streets;
'Tis not a gross attack on Freedom made;
Tis not the arm of Privilege display'd,
Against the subject, whilst she wears no sting
To disappoint the purpose of a king;
These are no ills, or trifles, if compared
With those which are contrived, though not declared.
Tell me, Philosopher, is it a crime
172
To pry into the secret womb of Time;
Or, born in ignorance, must we despair
To reach events, and read the future there?
Why, be it so--still 'tis the right of man,
Imparted by his Maker, where he can,
To former times and men his eye to cast,
And judge of what's to come, by what is past.
Should there be found, in some not distant year,
(Oh, how I wish to be no prophet here!)
Amongst our British Lords should there be found
Some great in power, in principles unsound,
Who look on Freedom with an evil eye,
In whom the springs of Loyalty are dry;
Who wish to soar on wild Ambition's wings,
Who hate the Commons, and who love not Kings;
Who would divide the people and the throne,
To set up separate interests of their own;
Who hate whatever aids their wholesome growth,
And only join with, to destroy them both;
Should there be found such men in after-times,
May Heaven, in mercy to our grievous crimes,
Allot some milder vengeance, nor to them,
And to their rage, this wretched land condemn,
Thou God above, on whom all states depend,
Who knowest from the first their rise, and end,
If there's a day mark'd in the book of Fate,
When ruin must involve our equal state;
When law, alas! must be no more, and we,
To freedom born, must be no longer free;
Let not a mob of tyrants seize the helm,
Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm;
Let not, whatever other ills assail,
A damned aristocracy prevail.
If, all too short, our course of freedom run,
'Tis thy good pleasure we should be undone,
Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring,
Be slaves to one, and be that one a king.
_F_. Poets, accustom'd by their trade to feign,
Oft substitute creations of the brain
For real substance, and, themselves deceived,
Would have the fiction by mankind believed.
Such is your case--but grant, to soothe your pride,
173
That you know more than all the world beside,
Why deal in hints, why make a moment's doubt?
Resolved, and like a man, at once speak out;
Show us our danger, tell us where it lies,
And, to ensure our safety, make us wise.
_P_. Rather than bear the pain of thought, fools stray;
The proud will rather lose than ask their way:
To men of sense what needs it to unfold,
And tell a tale which they must know untold?
In the bad, interest warps the canker'd heart,
The good are hoodwink'd by the tricks of art;
And, whilst arch, subtle hypocrites contrive
To keep the flames of discontent alive;
Whilst they, with arts to honest men unknown,
Breed doubts between the people and the throne,
Making us fear, where Reason never yet
Allow'd one fear, or could one doubt admit,
Themselves pass unsuspected in disguise,
And 'gainst our real danger seal our eyes.
_F_. Mark them, and let their names recorded stand
On Shame's black roll, and stink through all the land.
_P_. That might some courage, but no prudence be;
No hurt to them, and jeopardy to me.
_F_. Leave out their names.
_P_. For that kind caution, thanks;
But may not judges sometimes fill up blanks?
_F_. Your country's laws in doubt then you reject?
_P_. The laws I love, the lawyers I suspect.
Amongst twelve judges may not one be found
(On bare, bare possibility I ground
This wholesome doubt) who may enlarge, retrench,
Create, and uncreate, and from the bench,
With winks, smiles, nods, and such like paltry arts,
May work and worm into a jury's hearts?
Or, baffled there, may, turbulent of soul,
Cramp their high office, and their rights control;
Who may, though judge, turn advocate at large,
And deal replies out by the way of charge,
Making Interpretation all the way,
In spite of facts, his wicked will obey,
And, leaving Law without the least defence,
May damn his conscience to approve his sense?
174
_F_. Whilst, the true guardians of this charter'd land,
In full and perfect vigour, juries stand,
A judge in vain shall awe, cajole, perplex.
_P_. Suppose I should be tried in Middlesex?
_F_. To pack a jury they will never dare.
_P_. There's no occasion to pack juries there.
_F_. 'Gainst prejudice all arguments are weak;
Reason herself without effect must speak.
Fly then thy country, like a coward fly,
Renounce her interest, and her laws defy.
But why, bewitch'd, to India turn thine eyes?
Cannot our Europe thy vast wrath suffice?
Cannot thy misbegotten Muse lay bare
Her brawny arm, and play the butcher there?
_P_. Thy counsel taken, what should Satire do?
Where could she find an object that is new?
Those travell'd youths, whom tender mothers wean,
And send abroad to see, and to be seen;
With whom, lest they should fornicate, or worse,
A tutor's sent by way of a dry nurse;
Each of whom just enough of spirit bears
To show our follies, and to bring home theirs,
Have made all Europe's vices so well known,
They seem almost as natural as our own.
_F_. Will India for thy purpose better do?
_P_. In one respect, at least--there's something new.
_F_. A harmless people, in whom Nature speaks
Free and untainted,'mongst whom Satire seeks,
But vainly seeks, so simply plain their hearts,
One bosom where to lodge her poison'd darts.
_P_. From knowledge speak you this? or, doubt on doubt
Weigh'd and resolved, hath Reason found it out?
Neither from knowledge, nor by Reason taught,
You have faith every where, but where you ought.
India or Europe--what's there in a name?
Propensity to vice in both the same,
Nature alike in both works for man's good,
Alike in both by man himself withstood.
Nabobs, as well as those who hunt them down,
Deserve a cord much better than a crown,
And a Mogul can thrones as much debase
As any polish'd prince of Christian race.
175
_F_. Could you,--a task more hard than you suppose,-Could you, in ridicule whilst Satire glows,
Make all their follies to the life appear,
'Tis ten to one you gain no credit here;
Howe'er well drawn, the picture, after all,
Because we know not the original,
Would not find favour in the public eye.
_P_. That, having your good leave, I mean to try:
And if your observations sterling hold,
If the piece should be heavy, tame, and cold,
To make it to the side of Nature lean,
And meaning nothing, something seem to mean:
To make the whole in lively colours glow,
To bring before us something that we know,
And from all honest men applause to win,
I'll group the Company, and put them in.
_F_. Be that ungenerous thought by shame suppress'd,
Add not distress to those too much distress'd;
Have they not, by blind zeal misled, laid bare
Those sores which never might endure the air?
Have they not brought their mysteries so low,
That what the wise suspected not, fools know?
From their first rise e'en to the present hour,
Have they not proved their own abuse of power,
Made it impossible, if fairly view'd,
Ever to have that dangerous power renew'd,
Whilst, unseduced by ministers, the throne
Regards our interests, and knows its own?
_P_. Should every other subject chance to fail,
Those who have sail'd, and those who wish'd to sail
In the last fleet, afford an ample field,
Which must beyond my hopes a harvest yield.
_F_. On such vile food Satire can never thrive.
_P_. She cannot starve, if there was only Clive.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
661:or Callistratus. Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon
"dragging me into court" over "last year's play" but here again it is not clear if
this was said on behalf of ~ Aristophanes
or Callistratus, either of whom might
have been prosecuted by Cleon.
Comments made by the Chorus on behalf of ~ Aristophanes
in The Clouds have
been interpreted as evidence that he can have been hardly more than 18 years
old when his first play The Banqueters was produced. The second parabasis in
Wasps appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary
accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over The Babylonians
or a subsequent controversy over The Knights.[ It has been inferred from
statements in The Clouds and Peace that ~ Aristophanes
was prematurely bald.
We know that ~ Aristophanes
was probably victorious at least once at the City
Dionysia (with Babylonians in 427)and at least three times at the Lenaia, with
Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs in fact won the
unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. We know
that a son of ~ Aristophanes
, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have
been heavily involved in the production of his father's play Wealth II in s is also
thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now
lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus, and it is possible that the last of these won
the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was
twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus’
comedies.A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by
the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the
first probably in the late 370s.
Plato's The Symposium appears to be a useful source of biographical information
about ~ Aristophanes
, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record
of conversations at a dinner party at which both ~ Aristophanes
and Socrates are
guests, held some seven years after the performance of The Clouds, the play in
which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades, even
quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there is
no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and ~ Aristophanes
. Plato's
~ Aristophanes
is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as
evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be
corroborated by an epitaph for ~ Aristophanes
, reputedly written by Plato, in which
the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces). Plato was
only a boy when the events in The Symposium are supposed to have occurred
and it is possible that his ~ Aristophanes
is in fact based on a reading of the plays.
For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and
~ Aristophanes
explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device
he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccoughs
and this might be a humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays.
He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is
wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his
declaration in The Knights that he embarked on a career of comic playwright
warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had
incurred.
~ Aristophanes
survived The Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two
democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he was not
actively involved in politics despite his highly political plays. He was probably
appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth
century but such appointments were very common in democratic tes, in the trial
leading up to his own death, put the issue of a personal conscience in those
troubled times quite succinctly:
"...he who will really fight for the right, if he would live even for a little while,
must have a private station and not a public one.
~ Aristophanes
the Poet
The language in ~ Aristophanes
' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued
by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian
believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an
example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these
respects only to the works of
A full appreciation of ~ Aristophanes
' plays requires an understanding of the poetic
forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and
associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter
verses and lyrics:
Iambic dialogue: ~ Aristophanes
achieves an effect resembling natural speech
through the use of the iambic hexameter (corresponding to the effects achieved
by English poets such as
based on words that are similar rather than identical, and it has been observed
that there could be more of them than scholars have yet been able to identify.
Others are based on double meanings. Sometimes entire scenes are constructed
on puns, as in The Acharnians with the Megarian farmer and his pigs: the
Megarian farmer defies the Athenian embargo against Megarian trade, and tries
to trade his daughters disguised as pigs, except "pig" was ancient slang for
"vagina". Since the embargo against Megara was the pretext for the
Peloponnesian War, ~ Aristophanes
naturally concludes that this whole mess
happened because of "three cunts".
It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is
imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In
'The Knights', for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are
represented as parasols that open and close.In The Frogs, Aeschylus is said to
compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature
revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in
character, such as the marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus's paramour in
The Birds and the 'recreation' of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of
The Knights.
~ Aristophanes
and Old Comedy
The Greek word for 'comedy' (komoidía) derives from the words for 'revel' and
'song' (komos and ode) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually
developed from song. The first, official comedy at the City Dionysia was not
staged until 487/6 BC, by which time tragedy had already been long established
there. The first comedy at the Lenaia was staged later still, only about 20 years
before the performance there of The Acharnians, the first of ~ Aristophanes
'
surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official
acceptance because nobody took it seriously yet, only sixty years after comedy
first appeared at 'The City Dionysia', ~ Aristophanes
observed that producing
comedies was the most difficult work of tition at the Dionysian festivals needed
dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations.
Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle was able to distinguish between
'old' and 'new' comedy by 330 BC. The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy
saw a move away from highly topical concerns with real individuals and local
issues towards generalized situations and stock characters. This was partly due
to the internationalization of cultural perspectives during and after the
Peloponnesian War. For ancient commentators such as Plutarch, New Comedy
was a more sophisticated form of drama than Old Comedy. However Old Comedy
was in fact a complex and sophisticated dramatic form incorporating many
approaches to humour and entertainment. In ~ Aristophanes
' early plays, the
genre appears to have developed around a complex set of dramatic conventions
and these were only gradually simplified and abandoned.
The City Dionysia and the Lenaia were celebrated in honour of Dionysus, a god
who represented Man's darker nature (Euripides' play The Bacchae offers the
best insight into 5th Century ideas about this god). Old Comedy can be
understood as a celebration of the exuberant sense of release inherent in his
worship It was more interested in finding targets for satire than in any kind of
advocacy. During the City Dionysia, a statue of the god was brought to the
theatre from a temple outside the city and it remained in the theatre throughout
the festival, overseeing the plays like a privileged member of the audience.[102]
In The Frogs, the god appears also as a dramatic character and he enters the
theatre ludicrously disguised as Hercules. He observes to the audience that every
time he is on hand to hear a joke from a comic dramatist like Phrynichus (one of
~ Aristophanes
' rivals) he ages by more than a year. The scene opens the play and
it is a reminder to the audience that nobody is above mockery in Old Comedy —
not even its patron god and its practitioners! Gods, artists, politicians and
ordinary citizens were legitimate targets, comedy was a kind of licensed
buffoonery and there was no legal redress for anyone who was slandered in a
play. There were some limits to the scope of the satire, but they are not easily
defined. Impiety could be punished in 5th century Athens but absurdities implicit
in traditional religion were open to ridicule. The polis was not allowed to be
slandered but, as stated in the biography section of this article, that could
depend on who was in the audience and which festival was involved.
For convenience, Old Comedy, as represented by ~ Aristophanes
' early plays, is
analysed below in terms of three broad characteristics — topicality, festivity and
complexity. Dramatic structure contributes to the complexity of ~ Aristophanes
'
plays. However it is associated with poetic rhythms and meters that have little
relevance to English translations and it is therefore treated in a separate section.
Influence and legacy
The tragic dramatists, Sophocles and Euripides, died near the end of the
Peloponnesian War and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet
comedy did continue to develop after the defeat of Athens and it is possible that
it did so because, in ~ Aristophanes
, it had a master craftsman who lived long
enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source
(Platonius, c.9th Century AD), one of ~ Aristophanes
's last plays, Aioliskon, had
neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy),
while Kolakos anticipated all the elements of New Comedy, including a rape and
a recognition scene. ~ Aristophanes
seems to have had some appreciation of his
formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in
Clouds that his audience would be judged by other times according to its
reception of his plays. Clouds was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original
performance and the text that has come down to the modern age was a
subsequent draft that ~ Aristophanes
intended to be read rather than circulation of
his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience,
over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did
not affect the career of Cleon, they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an
honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in
the trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public
animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades),
exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the plays, in manuscript
form, have been put to some surprising uses — as indicated earlier, they were
used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by
students of the Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible
that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might
learn about Athenian life and government.
Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated
widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by
translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine, for example, drew Les
Plaideurs (1668) from The Wasps.
winged."
Drama
1909: Wasps, original Greek, Cambridge University undergraduate production,
music by Vaughan Williams;
2004, July–October: The Frogs (musical), adapted by Nathan Lane, music and
lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, performed at The Vivian Beaumont Theatre
Broadway;
1962-2006: various plays by students and staff, Kings College London, in the
original Greek:Frogs 1962,1971,1988; Thesmophoriazusae 1965, 1974, 1985;
Acharnians 1968, 1992, 2004; Clouds 1977, 1990; Birds 1982, 2000;
Ecclesiazusae 2006; Peace 1970; Wasps 1981
2002: Lysistrata, adapted by Robert Brustein, music by Galt McDermot,
performed by American Repertory Theatre, Boston U.S.A.;
10
2008, May–June: Frogs, adapted by David Greenspan, music by Thomas
Cabaniss, performed by Classic Stage Company, New York, U.S.A.
Literature
The romantic poet, Percy Shelley, wrote a comic, lyrical drama (Swellfoot the
Tyrrant) in imitation of ~ Aristophanes
' play The Frogs after he was reminded of
the Chorus in that play by a herd of pigs passing to market under the window of
his lodgings in San Giuliano, Italy.
~ Aristophanes
(particularly in reference to The Clouds) is mentioned frequently by
the character Menedemos in the Hellenic Traders series of novels by H N
Turteltaub.
A liberal version of the comedies have been published in comic book format,
initially by "Agrotikes Ekdoseis" during the 1990s and republished over the years
by other companies. The plot was written by Tasos Apostolidis and the sketches
were of George Akokalidis. The stories feature either ~ Aristophanes
narrating
them, directing the play, or even as a character inside one of his stories.
Electronic Media
The Wasps, radio play adapted by David Pountney, music by Vaughan Williams,
recorded 26–28 July 2005, Albert Halls, Bolten, in association with BBC, under
Halle label;
Acropolis Now is a comedy radio show for the BBC set in Ancient Greece. It
features ~ Aristophanes
, Socrates and many other famous Greeks. (Not to be
confused with the Australian sitcom of the same name.) ~ Aristophanes
is
characterised as a celebrity playwright, and most of his plays have the title
formula: One of Our [e.g] Slaves has an Enormous Knob (a reference to the
exaggerated appendages worn by Greek comic actors)
~ Aristophanes
Against the World was a radio play by Martyn Wade and broadcast
on BBC Radio 4. Loosely based on several of his plays, it featured Clive Merrison
as ~ Aristophanes
.
In The Odd Couple, Oscar and Felix are on Password, and when the password is
bird, Felix’s esoteric clue is "~ Aristophanes
" because of his play The Birds. During
the commercial break (having failed to guess the password and lost the round),
Oscar orders Felix not to give any more Greek clues and angrily growls,
"~ Aristophanes
is ridiculous"! Then when it's Oscar’s turn to give the clue on the
11
team’s next shot, the password is ridiculous and Oscar angrily growls
"~ Aristophanes
", to which Felix gleefully responds, "Ridiculous!"
Music
Satiric Dances for a Comedy by ~ Aristophanes
is a three-movement piece for
concert band composed by Norman Dello Joio. It was commissioned in
commemoration of the Bicentennial of April 19, 1775 (the start of the American
Revolutionary War) by the Concord (Massachusetts) Band. The commission was
funded by the Town of Concord and assistance was given by the Eastern National
Park and Monument Association in cooperation with the National Park Service.
12
A Parody On Euripides's Lyric Verse
Halcyons ye by the flowing sea
Waves that warble twitteringly,
Circling over the tumbling blue,
Dipping your down in its briny dew,
Spi-i-iders in corners dim
Spi-spi-spinning your fairy film,
Shuttles echoing round the room
Silver notes of the whistling loom,
Where the light-footed dolphin skips
Down the wake of the dark-prowed ships,
Over the course of the racing steed
Where the clustering tendrils breed
Grapes to drown dull care in delight,
Oh! mother make me a child again just for to-night!
I don't exactly see how that last line is to scan,
But that's a consideration I leave to our musical man.
~ Aristophanes,#NFDB
662:IV - THE STUDY
FAUST MEPHISTOPHELES
FAUST
A knock? Come in! Again my quiet broken?
MEPHISTOPHELES
'Tis I!
FAUST
Come in!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Thrice must the words be spoken.
FAUST
Come in, then!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Thus thou pleasest me.
I hope we'll suit each other well;
For now, thy vapors to dispel,
I come, a squire of high degree,
In scarlet coat, with golden trimming,
A cloak in silken lustre swimming,
A tall cock's-feather in my hat,
A long, sharp sword for show or quarrel,
And I advise thee, brief and flat,
To don the self-same gay apparel,
That, from this den released, and free,
Life be at last revealed to thee!
FAUST
This life of earth, whatever my attire,
Would pain me in its wonted fashion.
Too old am I to play with passion;
Too young, to be without desire.
What from the world have I to gain?
Thou shalt abstainrenouncerefrain!
Such is the everlasting song
That in the ears of all men rings,
That unrelieved, our whole life long,
Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings.
In very terror I at morn awake,
Upon the verge of bitter weeping,
To see the day of disappointment break,
To no one hope of minenot oneits promise keeping:
That even each joy's presentiment
With wilful cavil would diminish,
With grinning masks of life prevent
My mind its fairest work to finish!
Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously
Upon my couch of sleep I lay me:
There, also, comes no rest to me,
But some wild dream is sent to fray me.
The God that in my breast is owned
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
The God, above my powers enthroned,
He cannot change external forces.
So, by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And yet is never Death a wholly welcome guest.
FAUST
O fortunate, for whom, when victory glances,
The bloody laurels on the brow he bindeth!
Whom, after rapid, maddening dances,
In clasping maiden-arms he findeth!
O would that I, before that spirit-power,
Ravished and rapt from life, had sunken!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And yet, by some one, in that nightly hour,
A certain liquid was not drunken.
FAUST
Eavesdropping, ha! thy pleasure seems to be.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Omniscient am I not; yet much is known to me.
FAUST
Though some familiar tone, retrieving
My thoughts from torment, led me on,
And sweet, clear echoes came, deceiving
A faith bequea thed from Childhood's dawn,
Yet now I curse whate'er entices
And snares the soul with visions vain;
With dazzling cheats and dear devices
Confines it in this cave of pain!
Cursed be, at once, the high ambition
Wherewith the mind itself deludes!
Cursed be the glare of apparition
That on the finer sense intrudes!
Cursed be the lying dream's impression
Of name, and fame, and laurelled brow!
Cursed, all that flatters as possession,
As wife and child, as knave and plow!
Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures
To restless action spurs our fate!
Cursed when, for soft, indulgent leisures,
He lays for us the pillows straight!
Cursed be the vine's transcendent nectar,
The highest favor Love lets fall!
Cursed, also, Hope!cursed Faith, the spectre!
And cursed be Patience most of all!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS (invisible)
Woe! woe!
Thou hast it destroyed,
The beautiful world,
With powerful fist:
In ruin 'tis hurled,
By the blow of a demigod shattered!
The scattered
Fragments into the Void we carry,
Deploring
The beauty perished beyond restoring.
Mightier
For the children of men,
Brightlier
Build it again,
In thine own bosom build it anew!
Bid the new career
Commence,
With clearer sense,
And the new songs of cheer
Be sung thereto!
MEPHISTOPHELES
These are the small dependants
Who give me attendance.
Hear them, to deeds and passion
Counsel in shrewd old-fashion!
Into the world of strife,
Out of this lonely life
That of senses and sap has betrayed thee,
They would persuade thee.
This nursing of the pain forego thee,
That, like a vulture, feeds upon thy breast!
The worst society thou find'st will show thee
Thou art a man among the rest.
But 'tis not meant to thrust
Thee into the mob thou hatest!
I am not one of the greatest,
Yet, wilt thou to me entrust
Thy steps through life, I'll guide thee,
Will willingly walk beside thee,
Will serve thee at once and forever
With best endeavor,
And, if thou art satisfied,
Will as servant, slave, with thee abide.
FAUST
And what shall be my counter-service therefor?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The time is long: thou need'st not now insist.
FAUST
Nono! The Devil is an egotist,
And is not apt, without a why or wherefore,
"For God's sake," others to assist.
Speak thy conditions plain and clear!
With such a servant danger comes, I fear.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Here, an unwearied slave, I'll wear thy tether,
And to thine every nod obedient be:
When There again we come together,
Then shalt thou do the same for me.
FAUST
The There my scruples naught increases.
When thou hast dashed this world to pieces,
The other, then, its place may fill.
Here, on this earth, my pleasures have their sources;
Yon sun beholds my sorrows in his courses;
And when from these my life itself divorces,
Let happen all that can or will!
I'll hear no more: 'tis vain to ponder
If there we cherish love or hate,
Or, in the spheres we dream of yonder,
A High and Low our souls await.
MEPHISTOPHELES
In this sense, even, canst thou venture.
Come, bind thyself by prompt indenture,
And thou mine arts with joy shalt see:
What no man ever saw, I'll give to thee.
FAUST
Canst thou, poor Devil, give me whatsoever?
When was a human soul, in its supreme endeavor,
E'er understood by such as thou?
Yet, hast thou food which never satiates, now,
The restless, ruddy gold hast thou,
That runs, quicksilver-like, one's fingers through,
A game whose winnings no man ever knew,
A maid that, even from my breast,
Beckons my neighbor with her wanton glances,
And Honor's godlike zest,
The meteor that a moment dances,
Show me the fruits that, ere they're gathered, rot,
And trees that daily with new leafage clo the them!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Such a demand alarms me not:
Such treasures have I, and can show them.
But still the time may reach us, good my friend.
When peace we crave and more luxurious diet.
FAUST
When on an idler's bed I stretch myself in quiet.
There let, at once, my record end!
Canst thou with lying flattery rule me,
Until, self-pleased, myself I see,
Canst thou with rich enjoyment fool me,
Let that day be the last for me!
The bet I offer.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Done!
FAUST
And heartily!
When thus I hail the Moment flying:
"Ah, still delaythou art so fair!"
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
My final ruin then declare!
Then let the death-bell chime the token.
Then art thou from thy service free!
The clock may stop, the hand be broken,
Then Time be finished unto me!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Consider well: my memory good is rated.
FAUST
Thou hast a perfect right thereto.
My powers I have not rashly estimated:
A slave am I, whate'er I do
If thine, or whose? 'tis needless to debate it.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Then at the Doctors'-banquet I, to-day,
Will as a servant wait behind thee.
But one thing more! Beyond all risk to bind thee,
Give me a line or two, I pray.
FAUST
Demand'st thou, Pedant, too, a document?
Hast never known a man, nor proved his word's intent?
Is't not enough, that what I speak to-day
Shall stand, with all my future days agreeing?
In all its tides sweeps not the world away,
And shall a promise bind my being?
Yet this delusion in our hearts we bear:
Who would himself therefrom deliver?
Blest he, whose bosom Truth makes pure and fair!
No sacrifice shall he repent of ever.
Nathless a parchment, writ and stamped with care,
A spectre is, which all to shun endeavor.
The word, alas! dies even in the pen,
And wax and leather keep the lordship then.
What wilt from me, Base Spirit, say?
Brass, marble, parchment, paper, clay?
The terms with graver, quill, or chisel, stated?
I freely leave the choice to thee.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Why heat thyself, thus instantly,
With eloquence exaggerated?
Each leaf for such a pact is good;
And to subscribe thy name thou'lt take a drop of blood.
FAUST
If thou therewith art fully satisfied,
So let us by the farce abide.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Blood is a juice of rarest quality.
FAUST
Fear not that I this pact shall seek to sever?
The promise that I make to thee
Is just the sum of my endeavor.
I have myself inflated all too high;
My proper place is thy estate:
The Mighty Spirit deigns me no reply,
And Nature shuts on me her gate.
The thread of Thought at last is broken,
And knowledge brings disgust unspoken.
Let us the sensual deeps explore,
To quench the fervors of glowing passion!
Let every marvel take form and fashion
Through the impervious veil it wore!
Plunge we in Time's tumultuous dance,
In the rush and roll of Circumstance!
Then may delight and distress,
And worry and success,
Alternately follow, as best they can:
Restless activity proves the man!
MEPHISTOPHELES
For you no bound, no term is set.
Whether you everywhere be trying,
Or snatch a rapid bliss in flying,
May it agree with you, what you get!
Only fall to, and show no timid balking.
FAUST
But thou hast heard, 'tis not of joy we're talking.
I take the wildering whirl, enjoyment's keenest pain,
Enamored hate, exhilarant disdain.
My bosom, of its thirst for knowledge sated,
Shall not, henceforth, from any pang be wrested,
And all of life for all mankind created
Shall be within mine inmost being tested:
The highest, lowest forms my soul shall borrow,
Shall heap upon itself their bliss and sorrow,
And thus, my own sole self to all their selves expanded,
I too, at last, shall with them all be stranded!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Believe me, who for many a thousand year
The same tough meat have chewed and tested,
That from the cradle to the bier
No man the ancient leaven has digested!
Trust one of us, this Whole supernal
Is made but for a God's delight!
He dwells in splendor single and eternal,
But us he thrusts in darkness, out of sight,
And you he dowers with Day and Night.
FAUST
Nay, but I will!
MEPHISTOPHELES
A good reply!
One only fear still needs repeating:
The art is long, the time is fleeting.
Then let thyself be taught, say I!
Go, league thyself with a poet,
Give the rein to his imagination,
Then wear the crown, and show it,
Of the qualities of his creation,
The courage of the lion's breed,
The wild stag's speed,
The Italian's fiery blood,
The North's firm fortitude!
Let him find for thee the secret tether
That binds the Noble and Mean together.
And teach thy pulses of youth and pleasure
To love by rule, and hate by measure!
I'd like, myself, such a one to see:
Sir Microcosm his name should be.
FAUST
What am I, then, if 'tis denied my part
The crown of all humanity to win me,
Whereto yearns every sense within me?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Why, on the whole, thou'rtwhat thou art.
Set wigs of million curls upon thy head, to raise thee,
Wear shoes an ell in height,the truth betrays thee,
And thou remainestwhat thou art.
FAUST
I feel, indeed, that I have made the treasure
Of human thought and knowledge mine, in vain;
And if I now sit down in restful leisure,
No fount of newer strength is in my brain:
I am no hair's-breadth more in height,
Nor nearer, to the Infinite,
MEPHISTOPHELES
Good Sir, you see the facts precisely
As they are seen by each and all.
We must arrange them now, more wisely,
Before the joys of life shall pall.
Why, Zounds! Both hands and feet are, truly
And head and virile forcesthine:
Yet all that I indulge in newly,
Is't thence less wholly mine?
If I've six stallions in my stall,
Are not their forces also lent me?
I speed along, completest man of all,
As though my legs were four-and-twenty.
Take hold, then! let reflection rest,
And plunge into the world with zest!
I say to thee, a speculative wight
Is like a beast on moorlands lean,
That round and round some fiend misleads to evil plight,
While all about lie pastures fresh and green.
FAUST
Then how shall we begin?
MEPHISTOPHELES
We'll try a wider sphere.
What place of martyrdom is here!
Is't life, I ask, is't even prudence,
To bore thyself and bore the students?
Let Neighbor Paunch to that attend!
Why plague thyself with threshing straw forever?
The best thou learnest, in the end
Thou dar'st not tell the youngstersnever!
I hear one's footsteps, hither steering.
FAUST
To see him now I have no heart.
MEPHISTOPHELES
So long the poor boy waits a hearing,
He must not unconsoled depart.
Thy cap and mantle straightway lend me!
I'll play the comedy with art.
(He disguises himself.)
My wits, be certain, will befriend me.
But fifteen minutes' time is all I need;
For our fine trip, meanwhile, prepare thyself with speed!
[Exit FAUST.
MEPHISTOPHELES
(In FAUST'S long mantle.)
Reason and Knowledge only thou despise,
The highest strength in man that lies!
Let but the Lying Spirit bind thee
With magic works and shows that blind thee,
And I shall have thee fast and sure!
Fate such a bold, untrammelled spirit gave him,
As forwards, onwards, ever must endure;
Whose over-hasty impulse drave him
Past earthly joys he might secure.
Dragged through the wildest life, will I enslave him,
Through flat and stale indifference;
With struggling, chilling, checking, so deprave him
That, to his hot, insatiate sense,
The dream of drink shall mock, but never lave him:
Refreshment shall his lips in vain implore
Had he not made himself the Devil's, naught could save him,
Still were he lost forevermore!
(A STUDENT enters.)
STUDENT
A short time, only, am I here,
And come, devoted and sincere,
To greet and know the man of fame,
Whom men to me with reverence name.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Your courtesy doth flatter me:
You see a man, as others be.
Have you, perchance, elsewhere begun?
STUDENT
Receive me now, I pray, as one
Who comes to you with courage good,
Somewhat of cash, and healthy blood:
My mother was hardly willing to let me;
But knowledge worth having I fain would get me.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Then you have reached the right place now.
STUDENT
I'd like to leave it, I must avow;
I find these walls, these vaulted spaces
Are anything but pleasant places.
Tis all so cramped and close and mean;
One sees no tree, no glimpse of green,
And when the lecture-halls receive me,
Seeing, hearing, and thinking leave me.
MEPHISTOPHELES
All that depends on habitude.
So from its mother's breasts a child
At first, reluctant, takes its food,
But soon to seek them is beguiled.
Thus, at the breasts of Wisdom clinging,
Thou'lt find each day a greater rapture bringing.
STUDENT
I'll hang thereon with joy, and freely drain them;
But tell me, pray, the proper means to gain them.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Explain, before you further speak,
The special faculty you seek.
STUDENT
I crave the highest erudition;
And fain would make my acquisition
All that there is in Earth and Heaven,
In Nature and in Science too.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Here is the genuine path for you;
Yet strict attention must be given.
STUDENT
Body and soul thereon I'll wreak;
Yet, truly, I've some inclination
On summer holidays to seek
A little freedom and recreation.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Use well your time! It flies so swiftly from us;
But time through order may be won, I promise.
So, Friend (my views to briefly sum),
First, the collegium logicum.
There will your mind be drilled and braced,
As if in Spanish boots 'twere laced,
And thus, to graver paces brought,
'Twill plod along the path of thought,
Instead of shooting here and there,
A will-o'-the-wisp in murky air.
Days will be spent to bid you know,
What once you did at a single blow,
Like eating and drinking, free and strong,
That one, two, three! thereto belong.
Truly the fabric of mental fleece
Resembles a weaver's masterpiece,
Where a thousand threads one treadle throws,
Where fly the shuttles hither and thither.
Unseen the threads are knit together.
And an infinite combination grows.
Then, the philosopher steps in
And shows, no otherwise it could have been:
The first was so, the second so,
Therefore the third and fourth are so;
Were not the first and second, then
The third and fourth had never been.
The scholars are everywhere believers,
But never succeed in being weavers.
He who would study organic existence,
First drives out the soul with rigid persistence;
Then the parts in his hand he may hold and class,
But the spiritual link is lost, alas!
Encheiresin natures, this Chemistry names,
Nor knows how herself she banters and blames!
STUDENT
I cannot understand you quite.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Your mind will shortly be set aright,
When you have learned, all things reducing,
To classify them for your using.
STUDENT
I feel as stupid, from all you've said,
As if a mill-wheel whirled in my head!
MEPHISTOPHELES
And afterfirst and foremost dutyOf
Metaphysics learn the use and beauty!
See that you most profoundly gain
What does not suit the human brain!
A splendid word to serve, you'll find
For what goes inor won't go inyour mind.
But first, at least this half a year,
To order rigidly adhere;
Five hours a day, you understand,
And when the clock strikes, be on hand!
Prepare beforeh and for your part
With paragraphs all got by heart,
So you can better watch, and look
That naught is said but what is in the book:
Yet in thy writing as unwearied be,
As did the Holy Ghost dictate to thee!
STUDENT
No need to tell me twice to do it!
I think, how useful 'tis to write;
For what one has, in black and white,
One carries home and then goes through it.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Yet choose thyself a faculty!
STUDENT
I cannot reconcile myself to Jurisprudence.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Nor can I therefore greatly blame you students:
I know what science this has come to be.
All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race,
From generation unto generation fitted,
And shifted round from place to place.
Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry:
Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee!
The right born with us, ours in verity,
This to consider, there's, alas! no hurry.
STUDENT
My own disgust is streng thened by your speech:
O lucky he, whom you shall teach!
I've almost for Theology decided.
MEPHISTOPHELES
I should not wish to see you here misguided:
For, as regards this science, let me hint
'Tis very hard to shun the false direction;
There's so much secret poison lurking in 't,
So like the medicine, it baffles your detection.
Hear, therefore, one alone, for that is best, in sooth,
And simply take your master's words for truth.
On words let your attention centre!
Then through the safest gate you'll enter
The temple-halls of Certainty.
STUDENT
Yet in the word must some idea be.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Of course! But only shun too over-sharp a tension,
For just where fails the comprehension,
A word steps promptly in as deputy.
With words 'tis excellent disputing;
Systems to words 'tis easy suiting;
On words 'tis excellent believing;
No word can ever lose a jot from thieving.
STUDENT
Pardon! With many questions I detain you.
Yet must I trouble you again.
Of Medicine I still would fain
Hear one strong word that might explain you.
Three years is but a little space.
And, God! who can the field embrace?
If one some index could be shown,
'Twere easier groping forward, truly.
MEPHISTOPHELES (aside)
I'm tired enough of this dry tone,
Must play the Devil again, and fully.
(Aloud)
To grasp the spirit of Medicine is easy:
Learn of the great and little world your fill,
To let it go at last, so please ye,
Just as God will!
In vain that through the realms of science you may drift;
Each one learns onlyjust what learn he can:
Yet he who grasps the Moment's gift,
He is the proper man.
Well-made you are, 'tis not to be denied,
The rest a bold address will win you;
If you but in yourself confide,
At once confide all others in you.
To lead the women, learn the special feeling!
Their everlasting aches and groans,
In thousand tones,
Have all one source, one mode of healing;
And if your acts are half discreet,
You'll always have them at your feet.
A title first must draw and interest them,
And show that yours all other arts exceeds;
Then, as a greeting, you are free to touch and test them,
While, thus to do, for years another pleads.
You press and count the pulse's dances,
And then, with burning sidelong glances,
You clasp the swelling hips, to see
If tightly laced her corsets be.
STUDENT
That's better, now! The How and Where, one sees.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My worthy friend, gray are all theories,
And green alone Life's golden tree.
STUDENT
I swear to you, 'tis like a dream to me.
Might I again presume, with trust unbounded,
To hear your wisdom thoroughly expounded?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Most willingly, to what extent I may.
STUDENT
I cannot really go away:
Allow me that my album first I reach you,
Grant me this favor, I beseech you!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Assuredly.
(He writes, and returns the book.)
STUDENT (reads)
Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
(Closes the book with reverence, and withdraws)
MEPHISTOPHELES
Follow the ancient text, and the snake thou wast ordered to trample!
With all thy likeness to God, thou'lt yet be a sorry example!
(FAUST enters.)
FAUST
Now, whither shall we go?
MEPHISTOPHELES
As best it pleases thee.
The little world, and then the great, we'll see.
With what delight, what profit winning,
Shalt thou sponge through the term beginning!
FAUST
Yet with the flowing beard I wear,
Both ease and grace will fail me there.
The attempt, indeed, were a futile strife;
I never could learn the ways of life.
I feel so small before others, and thence
Should always find embarrassments.
MEPHISTOPHELES
My friend, thou soon shalt lose all such misgiving:
Be thou but self-possessed, thou hast the art of living!
FAUST
How shall we leave the house, and start?
Where hast thou servant, coach and horses?
MEPHISTOPHELES
We'll spread this cloak with proper art,
Then through the air direct our courses.
But only, on so bold a flight,
Be sure to have thy luggage light.
A little burning air, which I shall soon prepare us,
Above the earth will nimbly bear us,
And, if we're light, we'll travel swift and clear:
I gratulate thee on thy new career!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, THE STUDY (The Compact)
,#NFDB
663:No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?
These hot long ceremonies of our church
Cost us a littleoh, they pay the price,
You take meamply pay it! Now, we'll talk.
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinners done.
And body gets its sop and holds its noise
And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time:
'T is break of day! You do despise me then.
And if I say, "despise me,"never fear!
I know you do not in a certain sense
Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,
I well imagine you respect my place
( Status, entourage , worldly circumstance)
Quite to its valuevery much indeed:
Are up to the protesting eyes of you
In pride at being seated here for once
You'll turn it to such capital account!
When somebody, through years and years to come,
Hints of the bishop,names methat's enough:
"Blougram? I knew him"(into it you slide)
"Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,
"All alone, we two; he's a clever man:
"And after dinner,why, the wine you know,
"Oh, there was wine, and good!what with the wine . .
"'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!
"He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen
"Something of mine he relished, some review:
"He's quite above their humbug in his heart,
"Half-said as much, indeedthe thing's his trade.
"I warrant, Blougram's sceptical at times:
"How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!"
Che che , my dear sir, as we say at Rome,
Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;
You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:
The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.
Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays
You do despise me; your ideal of life
Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.
You would like better to be Goethe, now,
Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,
Count D'Orsay,so you did what you preferred,
Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,
Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,
So long as on that point, whate'er it was,
You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.
That, my ideal never can include,
Upon that element of truth and worth
Never be based! for say they make me Pope
(They can'tsuppose it for our argument!)
Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached
My height, and not a height which pleases you:
An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say.
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,
Of how some actor on a stage played Death,
With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,
And called himself the monarch of the world;
Then, going in the tire-room afterward,
Because the play was done, to shift himself,
Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly,
The moment he had shut the closet door,
By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope
At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,
And whose part he presumed to play just now?
Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
So, drawing comfortable breath again,
You weigh and find, whatever more or less
I boast of my ideal realized,
Is nothing in the balance when opposed
To your ideal, your grand simple life,
Of which you will not realize one jot.
I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,
I would be merely much: you beat me there.
No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!
The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,
Isnot to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be,but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means: a very different thing!
No abstract intellectual plan of life
Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,
But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,
May lead within a world which (by your leave)
Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.
Embellish Rome, idealize away,
Make paradise of London if you can,
You're welcome, nay, you're wise.
A simile!
We mortals cross the ocean of this world
Each in his average cabin of a life;
The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.
Now for our six months' voyagehow prepare?
You come on shipboard with a landsman's list
Of things he calls convenient: so they are!
An India screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy's self,the marvellous Modenese!
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name?
The captain, or whoever's master here
You see him screw his face up; what's his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"
If you won't understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Barewhy, you cut a figure at the first
While sympathetic landsmen see you off;
Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,
You peep up from your utterly naked boards
Into some snug and well-appointed berth,
Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug
Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)
And mortified you mutter "Well and good;
"He sits enjoying his sea-furniture;
"'T is stout and proper, and there's store of it:
"Though I've the better notion, all agree,
"Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter,
"Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances
"I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!"
And meantime you bring nothing: never mind
You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't
You might bring, so despise me, as I say.
Now come, let's backward to the starting-place.
See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.
Prepare together for our voyage, then;
Each note and check the other in his work,
Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!
What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?
Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,
(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly
And absolutely and exclusively)
In any revelation called divine.
No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains
But say so, like the honest man you are?
First, therefore, overhaul theology!
Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,
Must find believing every whit as hard:
And if I do not frankly say as much,
The ugly consequence is clear enough.
Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe
If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,
Absolute and exclusive, as you say.
You're wrongI mean to prove it in due time.
Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie
I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,
So give up hope accordingly to solve
(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then
With both of us, though in unlike degree,
Missing full credenceoverboard with them!
I mean to meet you on your own premise:
Good, there go mine in company with yours!
And now what are we? unbelievers both,
Calm and complete, determinately fixed
To-day, to-morrow and for ever, pray?
You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!
In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,
As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,
Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's
The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,
Make it bear fruit to us?the problem here.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are
This good God,what he could do, if he would,
Would, if he couldthen must have done long since:
If so, when, where and how? some way must be,
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"
That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon
Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;
While, if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakeable! what's a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?
And so we stumble at truth's very test!
All we have gained then by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt:
We called the chess-board white,we call it black.
"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;
"We've reason for both colours on the board:
"Why not confess then, where I drop the faith
"And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"
Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,
And both things even,faith and unbelief
Left to a man's choice,we'll proceed a step,
Returning to our image, which I like.
A man's choice, yesbut a cabin-passenger's
The man made for the special life o' the world
Do you forget him? I remember though!
Consult our ship's conditions and you find
One and but one choice suitable to all;
The choice, that you unluckily prefer,
Turning things topsy-turvythey or it
Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief
Bears upon life, determines its whole course,
Begins at its beginning. See the world
Such as it is,you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is,and you,
Not so you'll take it,though you get nought else.
I know the special kind of life I like,
What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,
Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit
In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.
I find that positive belief does this
For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.
For you, it does, however?that, we'll try!
'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably,
Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,
"I absolutely and peremptorily
"Believe!"I say, faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking's the main point with us
And my provision's for life's waking part.
Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;
And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight
To be consistent you should keep your bed,
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
Live through the day and bustle as you please.
And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
To unbelieve as I to still believe?
Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
Bed-ridden,and its good things come to me.
Its estimation, which is half the fight,
That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!
Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;
You can't but own that!
Next, concede again,
If once we choose belief, on all accounts
We can't be too decisive in our faith,
Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,
To suit the world which gives us the good things.
In every man's career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game, and losing life.
He may care little or he may care much
For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,
Since various theories of life and life's
Success are extant which might easily
Comport with either estimate of these;
And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,
Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool
Because his fellow would choose otherwise:
We let him choose upon his own account
So long as he's consistent with his choice.
But certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most
Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need
For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate'er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith
I happened to be born inwhich to teach
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myselfby no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,
Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world
And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
It does so,which for me's a great point gained,
Who have a soul and body that exact
A comfortable care in many ways.
There's power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
In many ways I need mankind's respect,
Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:
While at the same time, there's a taste I have,
A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my handof course the Church's hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine.
You'll reply,
So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
But were I made of better elements,
With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
I hardly would account the thing success
Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend,
We speak of what is; not of what might be,
And how't were better if't were otherwise.
I am the man you see here plain enough:
Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made.
Orour first similethough you prove me doomed
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive
To make what use of each were possible;
And as this cabin gets upholstery,
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast
I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently,
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
In this particular life I choose to lead
No fit provision for them. Can you not?
Say you, my fault is I address myself
To grosser estimators than should judge?
And that's no way of holding up the soul,
Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'
Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
And am a knave,approve in neither case,
Withhold their voices though I look their way:
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end
(The thing they gave at Florence,what's its name?)
While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here
That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,
Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?
You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;
Him you must watchhe's sure to fall, yet stands!
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demirep
That loves and saves her soul in new French books
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages,just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there's a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!
It's through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"
And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."
But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet
"How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.
Whereas, step off the line on either side
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less
You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
Lord So-and-sohis coat bedropped with wax,
All Peter's chains about his waist, his back
Brave with the needlework of Noodledom
Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
But I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,
You don't. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minuteoh, make haste
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know
We're still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you findapart from, towering o'er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise
Where do you find his star?his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it's alive
And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his,
Nor bring a moment's trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve
Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!
What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millionsspatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
"The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own;
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old rgime ?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrongthere's judgment, life to come!
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all?you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.
Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othellomake the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can'tto put the strongest reason first.
"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;
"The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
"Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"
Spare my self-knowledgethere's no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,
His power and consciousness and self-delight
And all we want in common, shall I find
Trying for ever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alikeI'll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imaginedsomewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; stick to that!
Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works
"Your world is worthless and I touch it not
"Lest I should wrong them"I'll withdraw my plea.
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."
Why then should I who play that personage,
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I've gained themcrossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hithis Stratford house, a coat of arms,
Successful dealings in his grain and wool,
While I receive heaven's incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?
Believeand our whole argument breaks up.
Enthusiasm's the best thing, I repeat;
Only, we can't command it; fire and life
Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:
And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,
The fact's the same,belief's fire, once in us,
Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself:
We penetrate our life with such a glow
As fire lends wood and ironthis turns steel,
That burns to ashall's one, fire proves its power
For good or ill, since men call flare success.
But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.
Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!
Why, to be Lutherthat's a life to lead,
Incomparably better than my own.
He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says,
Sets up God's rule again by simple means,
Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.
He flared out in the flaring of mankind;
Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?
If he succeeded, nothing's left to do:
And if he did not altogetherwell,
Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be
I might be also. But to what result?
He looks upon no future: Luther did.
What can I gain on the denying side?
Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,
Read the text right, emancipate the world
The emancipated world enjoys itself
With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first
It could not owe a farthing,not to him
More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?
Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance
Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run
For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured
A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,
Supposing death a little altered things.
"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,
"You run the same risk really on all sides,
"In cool indifference as bold unbelief.
"As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.
"It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,
"No more available to do faith's work
"Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"
Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point
Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.
We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?
By life and man's free will, God gave for that!
To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:
That's our one act, the previous work's his own.
You criticize the soul? it reared this tree
This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!
What matter though I doubt at every pore,
Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,
Doubts in the trivial work of every day,
Doubts at the very bases of my soul
In the grand moments when she probes herself
If finally I have a life to show,
The thing I did, brought out in evidence
Against the thing done to me underground
By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?
I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?
All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?
It is the idea, the feeling and the love,
God means mankind should strive for and show forth
Whatever be the process to that end,
And not historic knowledge, logic sound,
And metaphysical acumen, sure!
"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,
Like you this Christianity or not?
It may be false, but will you wish it true?
Has it your vote to be so if it can?
Trust you an instinct silenced long ago
That will break silence and enjoin you love
What mortified philosophy is hoarse,
And all in vain, with bidding you despise?
If you desire faiththen you've faith enough:
What else seeks Godnay, what else seek ourselves?
You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,
On hearsay; it's a favourable one:
"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,
"Because of contradiction in the facts.
"One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,
"This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him
"I see he figures as an Englishman."
Well, the two things are reconcileable.
But would I rather you discovered that,
Subjoining"Still, what matter though they be?
"Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."
Pure faith indeedyou know not what you ask!
Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much
The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.
It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:
I say it's meant to hide him all it can,
And that's what all the blessed evil's for.
Its use in Time is to environ us,
Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough
Against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain
And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart
Less certainly would wither up at once
Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.
But time and earth case-harden us to live;
The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child
Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
Plays on and grows to be a man like us.
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.
Or, if that's too ambitious,here's my box
I need the excitation of a pinch
Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose
Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.
"Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:
Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,
Say Ilet doubt occasion still more faith!
You'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,
In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.
How you'd exult if I could put you back
Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,
Geology, ethnology, what not
(Greek endings, each the little passing-bell
That signifies some faith's about to die),
And set you square with Genesis again,
When such a traveller told you his last news,
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!
How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,
How act? As other people felt and did;
With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,
Believeand yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate
Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!
No, when the fight begins within himself,
A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
Satan looks up between his feetboth tug
He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes
And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!
Never leave growing till the life to come!
Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks
That used to puzzle people wholesomely:
Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.
What are the laws of nature, not to bend
If the Church bid them?brother Newman asks.
Up with the Immaculate Conception, then
On to the rack with faith!is my advice.
Will not that hurry us upon our knees,
Knocking our breasts, "It can't beyet it shall!
"Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?
"Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.
That's better than acquitting God with grace
As some folk do. He's triedno case is proved,
Philosophy is lenienthe may go!
You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete
But men believe still: ay, but who and where?
King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet
The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;
But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint
Believes God watches him continually,
As he believes in fire that it will burn,
Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law,
Sin against rain, although the penalty
Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles;
"Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."
The sum of all isyes, my doubt is great,
My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.
I have read much, thought much, experienced much,
Yet would die rather than avow my fear
The Naples' liquefaction may be false,
When set to happen by the palace-clock
According to the clouds or dinner-time.
I hear you recommend, I might at least
Eliminate, decrassify my faith
Since I adopt it; keeping what I must
And leaving what I cansuch points as this.
I won'tthat is, I can't throw one away.
Supposing there's no truth in what I hold
About the need of trial to man's faith,
Still, when you bid me purify the same,
To such a process I discern no end.
Clearing off one excrescence to see two,
There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,
That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!
First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last
But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?
Experimentalize on sacred things!
I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain
To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.
The first step, I am master not to take.
You'd find the cutting-process to your taste
As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,
Nor see more danger in it,you retort.
Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise
When we consider that the steadfast hold
On the extreme end of the chain of faith
Gives all the advantage, makes the difference
With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:
We are their lords, or they are free of us,
Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
So, others matters equal, we'll revert
To the first problemwhich, if solved my way
And thrown into the balance, turns the scale
How we may lead a comfortable life,
How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.
I act for, talk for, live for this world now,
As this world prizes action, life and talk:
No prejudice to what next world may prove,
Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge
To observe then, is that I observe these now,
Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.
Let us concede (gratuitously though)
Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use
May be to make the next life more intense?
Do you know, I have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month's article)
Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being
In the evolution of successive spheres
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?
I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
I take and like its way of life; I think
My brothers, who administer the means,
Live better for my comfortthat's good too;
And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
Approves my service, which is better still.
If he keep silence,why, for you or me
Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"
What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?
You meet me at this issue: you declare,
All special-pleading done withtruth is truth,
And justifies itself by undreamed ways.
You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,
To say so, act up to our truth perceived
However feebly. Do then,act away!
'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts
Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:
And how you'll act is what I fain would see
If, like the candid person you appear,
You dare to make the most of your life's scheme
As I of mine, live up to its full law
Since there's no higher law that counterchecks.
Put natural religion to the test
You've just demolished the revealed withquick,
Down to the root of all that checks your will,
All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve,
Or even to be an atheistic priest!
Suppose a pricking to incontinence
Philosophers deduce you chastity
Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
Threw club down and forewent his brains beside,
So, stood a ready victim in the reach
Of any brother savage, club in hand;
Hence saw the use of going out of sight
In wood or cave to prosecute his loves:
I read this in a French book t' other day.
Does law so analysed coerce you much?
Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,
But you who reach where the first thread begins,
You'll soon cut that!which means you can, but won't,
Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,
You dare not set aside, you can't tell why,
But there they are, and so you let them rule.
Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,
A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,
Without the good the slave expects to get,
In case he has a master after all!
You own your instincts? why, what else do I,
Who want, am made for, and must have a God
Ere I can be aught, do aught?no mere name
Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,
To wit, a relation from that thing to me,
Touching from head to footwhich touch I feel,
And with it take the rest, this life of ours!
I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)
Disfigure such a life and call it names,
While, to your mind, remains another way
For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,
But ignorance and weakness have rights too.
There needs no crucial effort to find truth
If here or there or anywhere about:
We ought to turn each side, try hard and see,
And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least
The right, by one laborious proof the more,
To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage.
Men are not angels, neither are they brutes:
Something we may see, all we cannot see.
What need of lying? I say, I see all,
And swear to each detail the most minute
In what I think a Pan's faceyou, mere cloud:
I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,
For fear, if once I drop the emphasis,
Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all.
You take the simple lifeready to see,
Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)
And leaving quiet what no strength can move,
And which, who bids you move? who has the right?
I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine:
" Pastor est tui Dominus ." You find
In this the pleasant pasture of our life
Much you may eat without the least offence,
Much you don't eat because your maw objects,
Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock
Open great eyes at you and even butt,
And thereupon you like your mates so well
You cannot please yourself, offending them;
Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,
You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats
And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears
Restrain you, real checks since you find them so;
Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks:
And thus you graze through life with not one lie,
And like it best.
But do you, in truth's name?
If so, you beatwhich means you are not I
Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill
Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,
But motioned to the velvet of the sward
By those obsequious wethers' very selves.
Look at me, sir; my age is double yours:
At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,
What now I should beas, permit the word,
I pretty well imagine your whole range
And stretch of tether twenty years to come.
We both have minds and bodies much alike:
In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric,
My daily bread, my influence and my state?
You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day;
Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,
Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls
From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch
Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring
With much beside you know or may conceive?
Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,
Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,
While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase
Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek.
But youthe highest honour in your life,
The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days,
Isdining here and drinking this last glass
I pour you out in sign of amity
Before we part for ever. Of your power
And social influence, worldly worth in short,
Judge what's my estimation by the fact,
I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,
Hint secrecy on one of all these words!
You're shrewd and know that should you publish one
The world would brand the liemy enemies first,
Who'd sneer"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite
"And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool."
Whereas I should not dare for both my ears
Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile,
Before the chaplain who reflects myself
My shade's so much more potent than your flesh.
What's your reward, self-abnegating friend?
Stood you confessed of those exceptional
And privileged great natures that dwarf mine
A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,
A poet just about to print his ode,
A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,
An artist whose religion is his art
~ Robert Browning, Bishop Blougram's Apology
,#NFDB
38 Integral Yoga
36 Psychology
32 Occultism
30 Philosophy
29 Christianity
16 Yoga
11 Poetry
4 Hinduism
3 Fiction
2 Sufism
2 Baha i Faith
1 Thelema
1 Philsophy
1 Cybernetics
1 Alchemy
34 Sri Aurobindo
34 Carl Jung
19 Saint Augustine of Hippo
14 Nolini Kanta Gupta
10 Sri Ramakrishna
10 Plotinus
8 Plato
7 Swami Vivekananda
6 The Mother
6 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Aldous Huxley
5 Satprem
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Jordan Peterson
3 James George Frazer
3 H P Lovecraft
3 Aleister Crowley
2 Robert Browning
2 Henry David Thoreau
2 Baha u llah
2 Al-Ghazali
2 A B Purani
21 Mysterium Coniunctionis
17 City of God
9 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
8 The Synthesis Of Yoga
7 The Practice of Psycho therapy
6 The Perennial Philosophy
5 The Human Cycle
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
4 Twilight of the Idols
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
4 Raja-Yoga
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Essays On The Gita
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
3 The Golden Bough
3 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
3 Lovecraft - Poems
3 Labyrinths
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
2 Walden
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 The Problems of Philosophy
2 The Life Divine
2 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
2 The Alchemy of Happiness
2 Talks
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 Liber ABA
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 Browning - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Aion
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(It is to be observed that the Philosopher having first
committed the syllogistic error quaternis terminorum,
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the gulf between actual life and the temperament of the thinker is too great, we see as the result a sort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its own sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist absorbed in his art, the Philosopher thinking out the problems of the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only for their studies and their experiments, were often in former days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the work they have done for humanity, all its past bears record.
But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the Philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience.
This mixing with life may, however, be pursued for the sake of the individual mind and with an entire indifference to the forms of the material existence or the uplifting of the race. This indifference is seen at its highest in the Epicurean discipline and is not entirely absent from the Stoic; and even altruism does the works of compassion more often for its own sake than for the sake of the world it helps. But this too is a limited fulfilment. The progressive mind is seen at its noblest when it strives to elevate the whole race to its own level whether by sowing broadcast the image of its own thought and fulfilment or by changing the material life of the race into fresh forms, religious, intellectual, social or political, intended to represent more nearly that ideal of truth, beauty, justice, righteousness with which the man's own soul is illumined. Failure in such a field matters little; for the mere attempt is dynamic and creative. The struggle of Mind to elevate life is the promise and condition of the conquest of life by that which is higher even than Mind.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
all but lost in the resonance of the Philosopher's voice and the eloquent tones of the
preacher. Nor have the other treatises the learning and the authority of these.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The philosophical trend in poetry has an interesting history with a significant role: it has acted as a force of purification, of sublimation, of katharsis. As man has risen from his exclusively or predominantly vital nature into an increasing mental poise, in the same way his creative activities too have taken this new turn and status. In the earlier stages of evolution the mental life is secondary, subordinate to the physico-vital life; it is only subsequently that the mental finds an independent and self-sufficient reality. A similar movement is reflected in poetic and artistic creation too: the thinker, the Philosopher remains in the background at the outset, he looks out; peers through chinks and holes from time to time; later he comes to the forefront, assumes a major role in man's creative activity.
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
--
Poetry, actually however, has been, by and large, a profane and mundane affair: for it expresses the normal man's perceptions and feelings and experiences, human loves and hates and desires and ambitions. True. And yet there has also always been an attempt, a tendency to deal with them in such a way as can bring calm and puritykatharsisnot trouble and confusion. That has been the purpose of all Art from the ancient days. Besides, there has been a growth and development in the historic process of this katharsis. As by the sublimation of his bodily and vital instincts and impulses., man is gradually growing into the mental, moral and finally spiritual consciousness, even so the artistic expression of his creative activity has followed a similar line of transformation. The first and original transformation happened with religious poetry. The religious, one may say, is the profane inside out; that is to say, the religious man has almost the same tone and temper, the same urges and passions, only turned Godward. Religious poetry too marks a new turn and development of human speech, in taking the name of God human tongue acquires a new plasticity and flavour that transform or give a new modulation even to things profane and mundane it speaks of. Religious means at bottom the colouring of mental and moral idealism. A parallel process of katharsis is found in another class of poetic creation, viz., the allegory. Allegory or parable is the stage when the higher and inner realities are expressed wholly in the modes and manner, in the form and character of the normal and external, when moral, religious or spiritual truths are expressed in the terms and figures of the profane life. The higher or the inner ideal is like a loose clothing upon the ordinary consciousness, it does not fit closely or fuse. In the religious, however, the first step is taken for a mingling and fusion. The mystic is the beginning of a real fusion and a considerable ascension of the lower into the higher. the Philosopher poet follows another line for the same katharsisinstead of uplifting emotions and sensibility, he proceeds by thought-power, by the ideas and principles that lie behind all movements and give a pattern to all things existing. The mystic can be of either type, the religious mystic or the Philosopher mystic, although often the two are welded together and cannot be very well separated. Let us illustrate a little:
The spacious firmament on high,
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the Philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did you ever hear the story of the Philosopher who lived in the South of France? I dont recall his name, a very well-known man.
He was a professor at Montpellier University and lived nearby. And there were several roads leading to his house. This man would leave the university and come to the crossing where all those roads branched out, all eventually leading to his house, one this way, one that way, one from this side. So he himself used to explain how every day he would stop there at the crossroads and deliberate, Which one shall I take? Each had its advantages and disadvantages. So all this would go through his head, the advantages and disadvantages and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing which road to take home!
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Only an observation, which is really very interesting: its that everyone has said the same thing, all those who have had the Experience have said the same thing but each one in his own way, so it looks like something different. Yesterday it was so clear, and again the whole morning, from early morning: this way, that way, this one here, that one there (Mother shows different facets), the Philosophers, founders of religions, sages of all countries they have always said the same thing. For instance, the Buddhas teaching and, say, the Christian teaching, seem to be so different, but its always the same thing. That is to say, there is ONE state (if you catch hold of it), ONE state in which you are conscious of the divine Consciousness (not conscious of: conscious through or conscious with, I dont know how to explain its the divine Consciousness which is conscious, that is, the Consciousness in its essence), and there are no more problems there, no more complications, no more explanations, nothing anymoreeverything is as clear as can be. So then, each one has tried to explain that, and naturally it has become confused, incomplete, incorrect, with one explanation clashing with anotherwhile everyone is talking about the same thing!
It came yesterday in relation to a boy who sent me the letter from one of his friends, in which he said the usual nonsense: I dont believe in God because I cant see him. The usual little stupidity. And in that connection, I saw (I looked, like that, looked for a long time), I saw that the one who rejects, the one who asserts, the one all that, all of it is (how could I put it?) variations on the same theme, even when it appears to be saying the contrary.
03.01 - Humanism and Humanism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Appendix the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineHumanism and Humanism
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Appendix the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
03.02 - The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:03.02 - the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and Divine the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art
I wonder why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is divine and charming:
--
In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of philosophyperhaps the very large element of philosophy that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of au thentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the Philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the question. I am not trying to enter into the philosophy the metaphysicsof it, but only into the science the physicsof it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly formkavi kavitva divi rpam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the Philosopher? the Philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the Philosopher's taskit is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a my as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to doand nothing lessthan to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things the two terms used by philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.
Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of Hegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of thought each one has reared! How cogent and compact, organised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara's reminds me of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and tapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the characteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the otherhand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian Dialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, a balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: thereis something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of harmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding degree of altitude).
--
But the Philosopher's stone is not, after all, a myth, as is being proved by modern science. Even so, the Philosopher's truth the truth, that is to say, in the noumenal sense, to which he aspires in his heart of heartsis also existent. There is a reality apart from and beyond all relativities and contingencies: truth is not mere self-consistence, it is self-existence. Art and philosophy as an art may not comprehend it, but they circuit round it and even have glimpses of it and touch it, though the vision they have more often aberrates, distorting a rope into a snake.
It is a grain of this truth that is the substance and the core of all true art and philosophy. Philosophy works upon this secret strand by its logic, art by imaginationalthough logic and imagination may not be so incommensurable as they are commonly thought to be; even so, both art and philosophy arrive at the same result, viz., the building of a beautiful superstructure.
--
For we must remember that Plato himself was really more of a poet than a philosopher. Very few among the great representative souls of humanity surpassed him in the true poetic afflatus. The poet and the mysticKavi and Rishiare the same in our ancient lore. However these two, Plato and Aristotle, the mystic and the Philosopher, the master and the disciple, combine to form one of these dual personalities which Nature seems to like and throws up from time to time in her evolutionary marchnot as a mere study in contrast, a token of her dialectical process, but rather as a movement of polarity making for a greater comprehensiveness and richer values. They may be taken as the symbol of a great synthesis that humanity needs and is preparing. The role of the mystic is to envisage and unveil the truth, the supernal reality which the mind cannot grasp nor all the critical apparatus of human reason demonstrate and to bring it down and present it to the understanding and apprehending consciousness. the Philosopher comes at this stage: he receives and gathers all that is given to him, arranges and systematises, puts the whole thing in a frame as it were.
The poet-philosopher or the Philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge.
Comus, I, 477-8.
03.03 - A Stainless Steel Frame, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Man, Human and DivineA Stainless Steel Frame
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the Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art Towardsa New Ideology
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In these latter the human consciousness has reached its high water-mark of normal development. They are the finest expression of mans capacities and powers in the ordinary nature. Here we have the play of the higher, even perhaps the highest ranges of the Mind the mind, that is to say, of the poet and the Philosopher. But here also stands revealed the counterfoil, the obverse of that high achievement the feet of clay on which is reared the head of gold, the flesh that is tied irrevocably to the spirit.
The human soul, as represented in Hamlet, has evolved so far as to stand on a summit from where it can contemplate the entire creation. It has attained a kind of universal consciousness and has the vision of a global movement of natureeven as Arjuna had of the Lord's universal body, and like him is awed and overwhelmeda harsh world, in which one draws one's breath in pain. But this is a mental summit, and the contradiction that is revealed here can be resolved only by passing beyond into a higher domain of consciousness.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have spoken of the Inner Consciousness. But there is also, we must now point out, an Inmost Consciousness. As the Superconsciousness is a consciousness-energy in height, the Inmost Consciousness is a consciousness-energy in depth, the deepest depth, beyond or behind the Inner Consciousness. If we wish to put it geometrically, we can say, the vertical section of consciousness represents the line from the superconsciousness to the subconscious or vice versa; the horizontal section represents the normal waking state of consciousness; and there is a transverse section leading from the surface first to the Inner and finally to the Inmost. This inmost consciousness the consciousness most profound and secreted in the cave of the heart, guhhitam gahvaretham,is the consciousness of the soul, the Psychic Being, as Sri Aurobindo calls it: it is the immortal in the mortal. It is, as has often been described, the nucleus round which is crystallised and organised the triple nature of man consisting of his mind and life and body, the centre of dynamic energy that secretly vivifies them, gradually purifies and transforms them into higher functions and embodiments of consciousness. As a matter of fact, it is this inmost consciousness that serves as the link, at least as the most powerful link, between the higher and lower forms of consciousness, between the Superconscient and the Subsconscient or Inconscient. It takes up within itself all the elements of consciousness that the past in its evolutionary career from the very lowest and basic levels has acquired and elaborated, and by its inherent pressure and secret gestation delivers what was crude and base and unformed as the purest luminous noble substance of the perfectly organised superconscient reality. Indeed, that is the mystic alchemy which the Philosophers experimented in the Middle Ages. In this context, the Inner Consciousness, we may note, serves as a medium through which the action of the Inmost (as well as that of the Uppermost) takes place.
We can picture the whole phenomenon in another way and say in the devotional language of the Mystics that the Inmost Consciousness is the Divine Child, the Superconscient is the Divine Father and the Inferior Consciousness is the Great Mother (Magna Mater): the Inner and the Outer Consciousness are the field of play and the instrument of action as well of this Divine Trinity.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The difficulty that modern Science encounters is not, how-ever, at all a difficulty: it may be so to the Philosopher, but not to the mystic, the difficulty, that is to say, of positing a real objective world when all that we know or seize of it seems to be our own mental constructions that we impose upon it. Science has come to such a pass that it can do no more than take an objective world on trust.
Things need not, however, be so dismal looking. The difficulty arises because of a fundamental attitude the attitude of a purely reasoning being. But Reason or Mind is only one layer or vein of the reality, and to see and understand and explain that reality through one single track of approach will naturally bias the view, it will present only what is real or immediate to it, and all the rest will appear as secondary or a formation of it. That is, of course, a truth that has been clearly brought out by the anti-intellectualist. But the vitalist's view is also likewise vitiated by a similar bias, as he contacts reality only through this prism of vital force. It is the old story of the Upanishad in which the seeker takes the Body, the Life and the Mind one after another and declares each in its turn to be the only and ultimate reality, the Brahman.
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Science means objectivity, that is to say, elimination of the personal elementtruth as pure fact without being distorted or coloured by the feelings and impressions and notions of the observer. It is the very opposite of the Philosopher's standpoint who says that a thing exists because (and so long as) it is perceived. The scientist swears that a thing exists whether you perceive it or not, perception is possible because it exists, not the other way. And yet Descartes is considered not only as the father of modern philosophy, but also as the founder o( modern mathematical science. But more of that anon. The scientific observer observes as a witness impartial and aloof: he is nothing more than a recording machine, a sort of passive mirror reflecting accurately and faithfully what is presented to it. This is indeed the great revolution brought about by Science in the world of human inquiry and in human consciousness, viz.,the isolation of the observer from the observed.
In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and the observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified himself with what he observed and the result was not a scientific statement but a poetic description. Personal feelings, ideas, judgments entered into the presentation of facts and the whole mass passed as truth, the process often being given the high-sounding name of Intuition, Vision or Revelation but whose real name is fancy. And if there happened to be truth off act somewhere, it was almost by chance. Once we thought of the eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and pestilence due to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was born out of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of worlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing the element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events and objects. Even today Nazi race history and Soviet Genetics carry that unscientific prescientific tradition.
07.19 - Bad Thought-Formation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You go into the very origin of things. Why are there inconscience, ignorance and obscurity? You ask for the why and wherefore of the universe. Why is creation like this and not otherwise? Everyone has explained in his own way. the Philosophers have done so, the scientists have done so on different lines. But, none has found the way out. You ask why there is bad will, but the truly interesting and important thing is to find a means whereby there would be no bad will. What is the use of asking why there is pain and suffering and misery, unless it is to find out the remedy? If you look for the why, you may find as many explanations as you like, each may be useful in a way, but none leads you anywhere, except into a blind alley.
There are many things in the world you do not approve of. Some people who, as they put it, wish to have the knowledge, want to find out why it is so. It is a line of knowledge. But I say it is much more important to find out how to make things otherwise than they are at present. That is exactly the problem Buddha set before himself. He sat under a tree and continued till he found the solution. The solution, however, is not very satisfactory: You say, the world is bad, let us then do away with the world; but to whose profit, as Sri Aurobindo asks very pertinently? The world will no longer be bad, since it will exist no more. The world will have to be rolled back into its origin, the original pure existence or non-existence. Then man will be, in Sri Aurobindo's words, the all-powerful master of something that does not exist, an emperor without an empire, a king without a kingdom. It is a solution. But there are others, which are better. We consider ours to be the best. There are some who say, like the Buddha, evil comes from ignorance, remove the ignorance and evil will disappear. Others say that evil comes from division, from separation; if the universe were not separated from its origin, there would be no evil. Others again declare that it is an evil will that is the cause of all, of separation and ignorance. Then the question is, where does this bad will come from? If it were at the origin of things, it must have been in the origin itself. And then some question the bad will itself,there is no such thing, essentially, fundamentally, it is pure illusion.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
or is it not? the Philosophers of the Yoga school answer
emphatically that it is. They say that mans present state is a
1.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There is Sri Aurobindo the Philosopher, and Sri Aurobindo the poet, which he was essentially, a visionary of evolution; but not everyone is a philosopher or a poet, much less a seer. But would we not be content if he gave us a way to believe in our own possibilities,
not only our human but our superhuman and divine possibilities, and not only to believe in them but to discover them ourselves, step by step, to see for ourselves and to become vast, as vast as the earth we love and all the lands and all the seas we hold within us? For there is Sri Aurobindo the explorer, who was also a yogi; did he not say that Yoga is the art of conscious self-finding? 3 It is this exploration of consciousness that we would like to undertake with him. If we proceed calmly, patiently, and with sincerity, bravely facing the difficulties of the road and God knows it is rugged enough there is no reason that the window should not open at some point and let the sun shine on us forever. Actually, it is not one but several windows that open one after another, each time on a wider perspective, a new dimension of our own kingdom; and each time it means a change of consciousness as radical as going from sleep to the waking state. We are going to outline the main stages of these changes of consciousness,
1.00 - Introduction to Alchemy of Happiness, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Mohammedan scholars of the present day still hold him in such high respect, that his name is never mentioned by them without some such distinctive epithet, as the "Scientific [6] Imaum," or "Chief witness for Islamism." His rank in the eastern world, as a philosopher and a theologian, had naturally given his name some distinction in our histories of philosophy, and it is enumerated in connection with those of Averroes (Abu Roshd) and Avicenna (Abu Sina) as illustrating the intellectual life and the philosophical schools of the Mohammedans. Still his writings were less known than either of the two others. His principal work, The Destruction of the Philosophers, called forth in reply one of the two most important works of Averroes entitled The Destruction of the Destruction. Averroes, in his commentary upon Aristotle, extracts from Ghazzali copiously for the purpose of refuting bis views. A short treatise of his had been published at Cologne, in 1506, and Pocock had given in Latin his interpretation of the two fundamental articles of the Mohammedan creed. Von Hammer printed in 1838, at Vienna, a translation of a moral essay, Eyuha el Weled, as a new year's token for youth.
It has been reserved to our own times to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with Ghazzali, and this chiefly by means of a translation by M. Pallia, into French, of his Confessions, wherein he announces very clearly his philosophical views; and from an essay on his writings by M. Smolders. In consequence, Mr. Lewes, who in his first edition of the Biographical History of Philosophy, found no place for Ghazzali, is induced in his last edition, from the evidenee which that treatise contains that he was one of the controlling minds of his age, to devote an entire section to an exhibition of his opinions in the same series with Abclard and Bruno, and to make him the typical figure to represent Arabian philosophy. For a full account of Ghazzali's [7] school of philosophy, we refer to his history and to the two essays, just mentioned. We would observe, very briefly however, that like most of the learned Mohammedans of his age, he was a student of Aristotle. While they regarded all the Greek philosophers as infidels, they availed themselves of their logic and their principles of philosophy to maintain, as far possible, the dogmas of the Koran. Ghazzali's mind possessed however Platonizing tendencies, and he affiliated himself to the Soofies or Mystics in his later years. He was in antagonism with men who to him appeared, like Avicenna, to exalt reason above the Koran, yet he himself went to the extreme limits of reasoning in his endeavors to find an intelligible basis for the doctrines of the Koran, and a philosophical basis for a holy rule of life. His character, and moral and intellectual rank are vividly depicted in the following extract from the writings of Tholuck, a prominent leader of the modern Evangelical school of Germany.
1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
replete. He even had a way of jesting with a straight face, which never left him: Sense of humour? It is the salt of existence. Without it the world would have got utterly out of balance it is unbalanced enough already and rushed to a blaze long ago. 9 For there is also Sri Aurobindo the humorist, and that Sri Aurobindo is perhaps more important than the Philosopher whom Western universities speak of so solemnly. Philosophy, for Sri Aurobindo, was only a way of reaching those who could not understand anything without explanations; it was only a language, just as poetry was another, clearer and truer language. But the essence of his being was humor, not the sarcastic humor of the so-called spiritual man, but a kind of joy that cannot help dancing wherever is passes. Now and then, in a flash that leaves us somewhat mystified, we sense behind the most tragic, the most distressing human situations an almost facetious laughter, as if a child were playing a tragedy and suddenly made a face at himself because it is his nature to laugh, and ultimately because nothing in the world and no one can affect that place inside ourselves where we are ever a king.
Indeed, perhaps this is the true meaning of Sri Aurobindo's humor: a refusal to see things tragically, and, even more so, a sense of inalienable royalty.
1.01 - Appearance and Reality, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
'appearance' and 'reality', between what things seem to be and what they are. The painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the Philosopher want to know what they are; but the Philosopher's wish to know this is stronger than the practical man's, and is more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour which pre-eminently appears to be _the_ colour of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table--it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a given point of view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table will be unchanged. This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in ordinary life, we speak of _the_ colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real; and therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one particular colour.
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Now obviously this point in which the Philosophers are agreed--the view that there _is_ a real table, whatever its nature may be--is vitally important, and it will be worth while to consider what reasons there are for accepting this view before we go on to the further question as to the nature of the real table. Our next chapter, therefore, will be concerned with the reasons for supposing that there is a real table at all.
Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it is that we have discovered so far. It has appeared that, if we take any common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the senses, what the senses _immediately_ tell us is not the truth about the object as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain sense-data which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between us and the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely 'appearance', which we believe to be a sign of some 'reality' behind. But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? the Philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.
1.01 - MAXIMS AND MISSILES, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
bear nor throw off? This is the case of the Philosopher.
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1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
This little song is an interesting theme for the Philosopher
and the historian of science, in that it puts side by side two sci-
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
There are, however, in our times certain weak persons and indifferent to religious truth for the most part, who in the guise of soofees,1 after learning a few of their obscure phrases and ornamenting themselves with their cap and robes, treat knowledge and the doctors of the law2 as inimical to themselves, and continually find fault with them. They are devils and deserve judicial death. They are enemies of God, and of the apostle of God. For God has extolled knowledge and the doctors of the law; and the [33] established way of salvation, with which God has inspired the prophets, has its basis in external knowledge. These miserable and weak men, since they have no acquaintance with science, and no education, and knowledge of external things, why should they indulge in such corrupt fancies, and unfounded language? They resemble, beloved, a person who having heard it said that alchemy was of more value than gold, because that whatsoever thing should be touched with the Philosophers' stone would turn to gold, should be proud of the idea and should be carried away with a passion for alchemy. And when gold in full bags is offered him, he replies : "Shall I turn my attention to gold, when I am dissolving the Philosophers' stone?" And he finishes with being deprived of the gold, and with only hearing the name of the Philosophers' stone. He becomes forever a miserable, destitute, and naked vagabond, who wastes his life upon alchemy.
The science then of revelation, or of infused spiritual knowledge, resembles alchemy, and the science of the doctors of the law resembles gold; but it is folly and pure loss not to accept and be satisfied with solid gold, on account of one's ardor to discover the Philosophers' stone, which latter knowledge is not acquired by one in a thousand.
There is still one farther observation that deserves to be made. If a person by the payment of a thousand pieces of gold, could become master of alchemy, yet the condition of the man who is absolutely master of ten thousand pieces of gold would be better and preferable. And this illustrates the position of the soofees. If a person follow their method and attain to the knowledge of some things, he still does not equal in excellence, the doctors of the law. Just as we see, that books on alchemy, and students of alchemy are very numerous, while those who are successful are the least of few, so the path of mysticism is sought for by all men, and longed for by all classes of society, yet those who [34] attain to the end are exceedingly rare. Perhaps, as in the case of alchemy, it only exists now in name and form. The greater part of the notions and fancies of most of the mystics, which they esteem as revelations and mysteries, are nothing but vain triflings and pure self complacency; just as that while visions are a reality, still mere confused dreams are very abundant. The mystic, however, who by spiritual revelation has learned all that a doctor of the law has been able to learn after many years of study, and who has no remaining doubts in matters of internal or external knowledge, is certainly more excellent than the doctor of the law who is learned only in external knowledge, and this should not be denied. And it follows that the way of the mystics must be acknowledged to be a true one, and that you must not destroy the belief of those weak minded and vain persons who follow them; for, the reason why they cast reproaches upon knowledge and calumniate the doctors of law is that they have no acquirements or knowledge themselves.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Western consciousness not least through the actions of the ancient Hebrew prophets. the Philosopher of
religion Huston Smith draws two examples from the Bible, to illustrate this point:
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Prnyma is not, as many think, something about breath; breath indeed has very little to do with it, if anything. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real Pranayama. Pranayama means the control of Prna. According to the Philosophers of India, the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call ksha. It is the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha. It is the Akasha that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasha that becomes the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the comets; it is the Akasha that becomes the human body, the animal body, the plants, every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Akasha. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasha.
By what power is this Akasha manufactured into this universe? By the power of Prana. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prana; in the next cycle, out of this Prana is evolved everything that we call energy, everything that we call force. It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion; it is the Prana that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prana that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manifestation of Prana. The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana. "When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akasha existed without motion." The physical motion of the Prana was stopped, but it existed all the same.
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
mensch (literally overman) was the Philosopher en vogue,
together with Henri Bergson and his vitalism, and Sigmund
1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Who is Ishvara? Janmdyasya yatah "From whom is the birth, continuation, and dissolution of the universe," He is Ishvara "the Eternal, the Pure, the Ever-Free, the Almighty, the AllKnowing, the All-Merciful, the Teacher of all teachers"; and above all, Sa Ishvarah anirvachaniyapremasvarupah "He the Lord is, of His own nature, inexpressible Love." These certainly are the definitions of a Personal God. Are there then two Gods the "Not this, not this," the Sat-chit-nanda, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss of the Philosopher, and this God of Love of the Bhakta? No, it is the same Sat-chit-ananda who is also the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one. It has always to be understood that the Personal God worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the Bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is, Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler. To use a simile: Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they are all one; but form or manifestation differentiates them. Before every one of them was made, they all existed potentially in the clay, and, of course, they are identical substantially; but when formed, and so long as the form remains, they are separate and different; the clay-mouse can never become a clay-elephant, because, as manifestations, form alone makes them what they are, though as unformed clay they are all one.
Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.
1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Incidentally, one of the greatest difficulties experienced by the Philosopher-s-a difficulty almost insurmountable by the student; one which continually tends to increase rather than diminish with the advance in knowledge-is this: it is practically impossible to gain any clear intellectual comprehension of the meaning of philosophical terms employed. Every thinker has his own private conception of, and meaning for, even such common and universally used terms as " soul" and " mind"; and in the vast majority of cases he does not so much as suspect that other writers may employ the same term under a different connotation. Even technical writers, those who sometimes take the trouble of defining their terms before using them, are too often at variance with each other. The diversity is very great, as stated above, in the case of the word
" soul". We find one writer predicating of the soul that it is a, b, and c, while his fellow-students protest vehemently that it is nothing of the sort, but d, e, andf. However, let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle we obtain a clear idea of the meaning of the word. The trouble has merely begun. For there immediately arises the question of the relation of one term to the others.
1.02 - Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the Philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger! The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week,for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one,with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, Pause!
Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This orderly and harmonious country was ruled by a king who was king simply because he was the most intelligent and wise, because he alone was capable of fulfilling the needs of all, he alone was both enlightened enough to follow and even to guide the Philosophers in their loftiest speculations, and practical enough to watch over the organisation and well-being of his people, whose needs were well known to him.
At the time when our narrative begins, this remarkable ruler had reached a great age - he was more than two hundred years old - and although he still retained all his lucidity and was still full of energy and vigour, he was beginning to think of retirement, a little weary of the heavy responsibilities which he had borne for so many years. He called his young son Meotha to him. The prince was a young man of many and varied accomplishments. He was more handsome than men usually are, his charity was of such perfect equity that it achieved justice, his intelligence shone like a sun and his wisdom was beyond compare; for he had spent part of his youth among workmen and craftsmen to learn by personal experience the needs and requirements of their life, and he had spent the rest of his time alone, or with one of the Philosophers as his tutor, in seclusion in the square tower of the palace, in study or contemplative repose.
Meotha bowed respectfully before his father, who seated him at his side and spoke to him in these words:
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
sented chiefly by the work of the Philosopher Theodore Flour-
noy, of Geneva, in his account of the psychology of an unusual
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
ingredients was applied, as the Philosopher explains, not to the
wound but to the weapon, and that even though the injured man was at
1.03 - THE ORPHAN, THE WIDOW, AND THE MOON, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Nevertheless the Philosophers have put to death the woman who slays her husbands, for the body of that woman is full of weapons and poison. Let a grave be dug for that dragon, and let that woman be buried with him, he being chained fast to that woman; and the more he winds and coils himself about her, the more will he be cut to pieces by the female weapons which are fashioned in the body of the woman. And when he sees that he is mingled with the limbs of the woman, he will be certain of death, and will be changed wholly into blood. But when the Philosophers see him changed into blood, they leave him a few days in the sun, until his softness is consumed, and the blood dries, and they find that poison. What then appears, is the hidden wind.103
The coniunctio can therefore take more gruesome forms than the relatively harmless one depicted in the Rosarium.104
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After this151 is completed, you will know that you have the substance which penetrates all substances, and the nature which contains nature, and the nature which rejoices in nature.152 It is named the Tyriac153 of the Philosophers, and it is also called the poisonous serpent, because, like this, it bites off the head of the male in the lustful heat of conception, and giving birth it dies and is divided through the midst. So also the moisture of the moon,154 when she receives his light, slays the sun, and at the birth of the child of the Philosophers she dies likewise, and at death the two parents yield up their souls to the son, and die and pass away. And the parents are the food of the son . . .
[22] In this psychologem all the implications of the Sol-Luna allegory are carried to their logical conclusion. The daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon, or with her position midway between heaven and the sublunary world,155 displays its full effect. Sun and moon reveal their antithetical nature, which in the Christian Sol-Luna relationship is so obscured as to be unrecognizable, and the two opposites cancel each other out, their impact resultingin accordance with the laws of energeticsin the birth of a third and new thing, a son who resolves the antagonisms of the parents and is himself a united double nature. The unknown author of the Consilium156 was not conscious of the close connection of his psychologem with the process of transubstantiation, although the last sentence of the text contains clearly enough the motif of teoqualo, the god-eating of the Aztecs.157 This motif is also found in ancient Egypt. The Pyramid text of Unas (Vth dynasty) says: Unas rising as a soul, like a god who liveth upon his fathers and feedeth upon his mothers.158 It should be noted how alchemy put in the place of the Christian sponsus and sponsa an image of totality that on the one hand was material, and on the other was spiritual and corresponded to the Paraclete. In addition, there was a certain trend in the direction of an Ecclesia spiritualis. The alchemical equivalent of the God-Man and the Son of God was Mercurius, who as an hermaphrodite contained in himself both the feminine element, Sapientia and matter, and the masculine, the Holy Ghost and the devil. There are relations in alchemy with the Holy Ghost Movement which flourished in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was chiefly connected with the name of Joachim of Flora (11451202), who expected the imminent coming of the third kingdom, namely that of the Holy Ghost.159
1.03 - The Psychic Prana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Thus the rousing of the Kundalini is the one and only way to attaining Divine Wisdom, superconscious perception, realisation of the spirit. The rousing may come in various ways, through love for God, through the mercy of perfected sages, or through the power of the analytic will of the Philosopher. Wherever there was any manifestation of what is ordinarily called supernatural power or wisdom, there a little current of Kundalini must have found its way into the Sushumna. Only, in the vast majority of such cases, people had ignorantly stumbled on some practice which set free a minute portion of the coiled-up Kundalini. All worship, consciously or unconsciously, leads to this end. The man who thinks that he is receiving response to his prayers does not know that the fulfilment comes from his own nature, that he has succeeded by the mental attitude of prayer in waking up a bit of this infinite power which is coiled up within himself. What, thus, men ignorantly worship under various names, through fear and tribulation, the Yogi declares to the world to be the real power coiled up in every being, the mother of eternal happiness, if we but know how to approach her. And Rja-Yoga is the science of religion, the rationale of all worship, all prayers, forms, ceremonies, and miracles.
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Qabalah is the most suitable system for the basis of our magical alphabet, to which we shall be able to refer the sum total of all our knowledge and experience- reli- gious, philosophical, and scientific. The Qabalistic Alpha- bet is, as we shall proceed to explain, an elaborate system of attri butions and correspondences ; a convenient method of classification enabling the Philosopher to docket his experiences and ideas as he obtains them. It is comparable to a filing cabinet of thirty-two jackets in which an exten- sive system of information is filed.
It would be fallacious for the student to expect a concrete definition of everything which the cabinet contains. That is a sheer impossibility for quite obvious reasons. Each student must work for himself, once given the method of putting the whole of his mental and moral constitution into these thirty-two filing jackets. The necessity for personal work becomes apparent when one realizes that in normal business procedure, for instance, one would not purchase a filing cabinet with the names of all past, present, and future correspondents already indexed. It becomes quite evident that the Qabalistic cabinet (our thirty-two Paths) has a system of letters and numbers meaningless in them- selves, but as the files are completed, ready to take on a meaning, different for each student. As experience increased, each letter and number would receive fresh accessions of meaning and significance, and by adopting this orderly arrangement we would be enabled to grasp our inner life much more comprehensively than might otherwise be the case. The object of the theoretical (as separate from the Practical) Qabalah, insofar as this thesis is concerned, is to enable the student to do three main things :
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Vidyasagar was very reticent about giving religious instruction to others. He had studied Hindu philosophy. Once, when M. had asked him his opinion of it, Vidyasagar had said, "I think the Philosophers have failed to explain what was in their minds." But in his daily life he followed all the rituals of Hindu religion and wore the sacred thread of a brahmin.
About God he had once declared: "It is indeed impossible to know Him. What, then, should be our duty? It seems to me that we should live in such a way that, if others followed our example, this very earth would be heaven. Everyone should try to do good to the world."
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
experience something which is very like madness. They speak incoherently and unnaturally, utter sound without sense, and their faces suddenly change expression...in fact they are truly beside themselves (ibid., pp. 129-33). In 1815, the Philosopher F.WJ. Schelling discussed divine madness in a manner that has a certain proximity to Jung's discussion, noting that The ancients did not speak in vain of a divine and holy madness. Schelling related this to the inner selflaceration of nature. He held that nothing great can be accomplished without a constant solicitation of madness, which should always be overcome, but should never be entirely lacking.
On the one hand, there were sober spirits in whom there was no trace of madness, together with men of understanding who produced cold intellectual works. On the other, there is one kind of person that governs madness and precisely in this overwhelming shows the highest force of the intellect. The other kind of person is governed by madness and is someone who is really mad
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
What then is the Dhyana devoted to the examination of meaning? It is the one practised by those who, having gone beyond the egolessness of things, beyond individuality and generality, beyond the untenability of such ideas as self, other and both, which are held by the Philosophers, proceed to examine and follow up the meaning of the various aspects of Bodhisattvahood. This is the Dhyana devoted to the examination of meaning.
What is the Dhyana with Ta thata (or Suchness) as its object? When the Yogin recognizes that the discrimination of the two forms of egolessness is mere imagination and that where he establishes himself in the reality of Suchness there is no rising of discriminationthis I call the Dhyana with Suchness for its object.
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It is in the Indian and Far Eastern formulations of the Perennial Philosophy that this subject is most systematically treated. What is prescribed is a process of conscious discrimination between the personal self and the Self that is identical with Brahman, between the individual ego and the Buddha-womb or Universal Mind. The result of this discrimination is a more or less sudden and complete revulsion of consciousness, and the realization of a state of no-mind, which may be described as the freedom from perceptual and intellectual attachment to the ego-principle. This state of no-mind exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit. When no-mind is sought after by a mind, says Huang Po, that is making it a particular object of thought. There is only testimony of silence; it goes beyond thinking. In other words, we, as separate individuals, must not try to think it, but rather permit ourselves to be thought by it. Similarly, in the Diamond Sutra we read that if a Bodhisattva, in his attempt to realize Suchness, retains the thought of an ego, a person, a separate being, or a soul, he is no longer a Bodhisattva. Al Ghazzali, the Philosopher of Sufism, also stresses the need for intellectual humbleness and docility. If the thought that he is effaced from self occurs to one who is in fana (a term roughly corresponding to Zens no-mind, or mushin), that is a defect. The highest state is to be effaced from effacement. There is an ecstatic effacement-from-effacement in the interior heights of the Atman-Brahman; and there is another, more comprehensive effacement-from-effacement, not only in the inner heights, but also in and through the world, in the waking, everyday knowledge of God in his fulness.
A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as he was when he was born. And I tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfill the will of God and have any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.
1.04 - Of other imperfections which these beginners are apt to have with respect to the third sin, which is luxury., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
2. The first cause from which they often proceed is the pleasure which human nature takes in spiritual things. For when the spirit and the sense are pleased, every part of a man is moved by that pleasure34 to delight according to its proportion and nature. For then the spirit, which is the higher part, is moved to pleasure 35 and delight in God; and the sensual nature, which is the lower part, is moved to pleasure and delight of the senses, because it cannot possess and lay hold upon aught else, and it therefore lays hold upon that which comes nearest to itself, which is the impure and sensual. Thus it comes to pass that the soul is in deep prayer with God according to the spirit, and, on the other hand, according to sense it is passively conscious, not without great displeasure, of rebellions and motions and acts of the senses, which often happens in Communion, for when the soul receives joy and comfort in this act of love, because this Lord bestows it (since it is to that end that He gives Himself), the sensual nature takes that which is its own likewise, as we have said, after its manner. Now as, after all, these two parts are combined in one individual, they ordinarily both participate in that which one of them receives, each after its manner; for, as the Philosopher says, everything that is received is in the recipient after the manner of the same recipient. And thus, in these beginnings, and even when the soul has made some progress, its sensual part, being imperfect, oftentimes receives the Spirit of God with the same imperfection. Now when this sensual part is renewed by the purgation of the dark night which we shall describe, it no longer has these weaknesses; for it is no longer this part that receives aught, but rather it is itself received into the Spirit. And thus it then has everything after the manner of the Spirit.
3. The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayerwhich is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. And not only so, but he succeeds in portraying to them very vividly things that are most foul and impure, and at times are very closely related to certain spiritual things and persons that are of profit to their souls, in order to terrify them and make them fearful; so that those who are affected by this dare not even look at anything or meditate upon anything, because they immediately encounter this temptation. And upon those who are inclined to melancholy this acts with such effect that they become greatly to be pitied since they are suffering so sadly; for this trial reaches such a point in certain persons, when they have this evil humour, that they believe it to be clear that the devil is ever present with them and that they have no power to prevent this, although some of these persons can prevent his attack by dint of great effort and labour. When these impurities attack such souls through the medium of melancholy, they are not as a rule freed from them until they have been cured of that kind of humour, unless the dark night has entered the soul, and rids them of all impurities, one after another.36
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7. Some of these persons make friendships of a spiritual kind with others, which oftentimes arise from luxury and not from spirituality; this may be known to be the case when the remembrance of that friendship causes not the remembrance and love of God to grow, but occasions remorse of conscience. For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also. For the spirit of God has this property, that it increases good by adding to it more good, inasmuch as there is likeness and conformity between them. But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it produces the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. If that sensual love grows, it will at once be observed that the soul's love of God is becoming colder, and that it is forgetting Him as it remembers that love; there comes to it, too, a certain remorse of conscience. And, on the other hand, if the love of God grows in the soul, that other love becomes cold and is forgotten; for, as the two are contrary to one another, not only does the one not aid the other, but the one which predominates quenches and confounds the other, and becomes streng thened in itself, as the Philosophers say. Wherefore Our Saviour said in the Gospel: 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.'38
That is to say, the love which is born of sensuality ends in sensuality, and that which is of the spirit ends in the spirit of God and causes it to grow. This is the difference that exists between these two kinds of love, whereby we may know them.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the Philosopher must say to
himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, I think, I find a whole series of
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the Philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.
It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,a path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man,when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament, and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, I am my life and body, and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.
1.04 - THE STUDY (The Compact), #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Then, the Philosopher steps in
And shows, no otherwise it could have been:
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
internal transformations in the alchemical psyche, making it ever-more akin to the Philosophers stone:
making it something that could turn base matter into spiritual gold making it something that had, in
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5.3.2. The Alchemical Procedure and the Philosophers Stone
5.3.2.1. Introductory Note
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phases of the process of transmutation: that is, of the procurement of the Philosophers Stone. The first
phase (the nigredo) the regression to the fluid state of matter corresponds to the death of the
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however, the paradoxical character of the materia prima and of the Philosophers Stone. According to
the alchemists, they both are to be found everywhere, and under all forms; and they are designated by
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Khunrath, a celebrated Hermeticist of the sixteenth century, identified the Philosophers Stone with
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Macrocosm; he thought besides that the discovery of the Stone would
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Alchemy can be most simply understood as the attempt to produce the Philosophers stone the lapis
philosophorum. The lapis philosophorum had the ability to turn base metals into gold; furthermore, it
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of the fantasy of the Philosophers stone. This idea provided the motive power underlying disciplined
investigation into the secrets of matter a difficult, painstaking, expensive procedure. The idea that matter
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the new king or even as the Philosophers stone itself, in one of its many potential forms. This much more
complex process of conceptualization which accounts for the vast symbolic production of alchemy is
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nature. The transformation of this prima materia into gold or into the Philosophers stone therefore
signified a moral transformation, which could be brought about through moral means. The alchemists were
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The chemical putrefaction is compared to the study of the Philosophers, because as the Philosophers are
disposed to knowledge by study, so natural things are disposed by putrefaction to solution. To this is
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immersion in life is the mystical peregrination of the medieval alchemist, in search of the Philosophers
stone is the journey of Buddha through the complete sensory, erotic, and philosophical realms, prior to
--
loses his hair, and is reborn as bald as a babe.... the Philosopher makes the journey to hell as a
redeemer.641
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form, the Philosophers stone, the lapis, was composed of the most paradoxical elements: it was base,
cheap, immature and volatile; perfect, precious, ancient and solid; visible to all yet mysterious; costly, dark,
1.06 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
40:The ordinary man sees the falsity and disconnectedness and purposelessness of dreams; he ascribes them (rightly) to a disordered mind. the Philosopher looks upon waking life with similar contempt; and the person who has experienced Dhyana takes the same view, but not by mere pale intellectual conviction. Reasons, however cogent, never convince utterly; but this man in Dhyana has the same commonplace certainty that a man has on waking from a nightmare. "I wasn't falling down a thousand flights of stairs, it was only a bad dream."
41:Similarly comes the reflection of the man who has had experience of Dhyana: "I am not that wretched insect, that imperceptible parasite of earth; it was only a bad dream." And as you could not convince the normal man that his nightmare was more real than his awakening, so you cannot convince the other that his Dhyana was hallucination, even though he is only too well aware that he has fallen from that state into "normal" life.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his commonsense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artistand the Philosopher and the man of science are also artistsknows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
1.06 - The Sign of the Fishes, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
pupil Thomas Aquinas, the Philosopher of the Church and an
adept in alchemy (as also was Albertus); Roger Bacon (c. 1214-c.
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66 Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622), p. 112: "Whence the Philosopher brought
forth water from the rock and oil out of the flinty stone."
1.07 - On Our Knowledge of General Principles, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
This principle is really involved--at least, concrete instances of it are involved--in all demonstrations. Whenever one thing which we believe is used to prove something else, which we consequently believe, this principle is relevant. If any one asks: 'Why should I accept the results of valid arguments based on true premisses?' we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact, the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the Philosopher, for they show that we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense.
The above principle is merely one of a certain number of self-evident logical principles. Some at least of these principles must be granted before any argument or proof becomes possible. When some of them have been granted, others can be proved, though these others, so long as they are simple, are just as obvious as the principles taken for granted. For no very good reason, three of these principles have been singled out by tradition under the name of 'Laws of Thought'.
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "If a man truly feels like that, then he has only the semblance of lust, anger, and the like. If, after attaining God, he looks on himself as the servant or the devotee of God, then he cannot injure anyone. By touching the Philosopher's stone a sword is turned into gold. It keeps the appearance of a sword but cannot injure.
"When the dry branch of a coconut palm drops to the ground, it leaves only a mark on the trunk indicating that once there was a branch at that place. In like manner, he who has attained God keeps only an appearance of ego; there remains in him only a semblance of anger and lust. He becomes like a child. A child has no attachment to the three gunas-sattva, rajas, and tamas. He becomes as quickly detached from a thing as he becomes attached to it. You can cajole him out of a cloth worth five rupees with a doll worth an nn, though at first he may say with great determination: 'No, I won't give it to you. My daddy bought it for me.' Again, all persons are the same to a child.
1.07 - The Three Schools of Magick 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The analysis of the Philosophers of this School refers every phenomenon to the category of sorrow. It is quite useless to point out to them that certain events are accompanied with joy: they continue their ruthless calculations, and prove to your satisfaction, or rather dissatisfaction, that the more apparently pleasant an event is, the more malignantly deceptive is its fascination. There is only one way of escape even conceivable, and this way is quite simple, annihilation. (Shallow critics of Buddhism have wasted a great deal of stupid ingenuity on trying to make out that Nirvana or Nibbana means something different from what etymology, tradition and the evidence of the Classics combine to define it. The word means, quite simply, cessation: and it stands to reason that, if everything is sorrow, the only thing which is not sorrow is nothing, and that therefore to escape from sorrow is the attainment of nothingness.)
Western philosophy has on occasion approached this doctrine. It has at least asserted that no known form of existence is exempt from sorrow. Huxley says, in his Evolution and Ethics, "Suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things."
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IN RELIGIOUS literature the word truth is used indiscriminately in at least three distinct and very different senses. Thus, it is sometimes treated as a synonym for fact, as when it is affirmed that God is Truthmeaning that He is the primordial Reality. But this is clearly not the meaning of the word in such a phrase as worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Here, it is obvious, truth signifies direct apprehension of spiritual Fact, as opposed to second-hand knowledge about Reality, formulated in sentences and accepted on authority or because an argument from previously granted postulates was logically convincing. And finally there is the more ordinary meaning of the word, as in such a sentence as, This statement is the truth, where we mean to assert that the verbal symbols of which the statement is composed correspond to the facts to which it refers. When Eckhart writes that whatever thou sayest of God is untrue, he is not affirming that all theological statements are false. Insofar as there can be any correspondence between human symbols and divine Fact, some theological statements are as true as it is possible for us to make them. Himself a theologian, Eckhart would certainly have admitted this. But besides being a theologian, Eckhart was a mystic. And being a mystic, he understood very vividly what the modern semanticist is so busily (and, also, so unsuccessfully) trying to drum into contemporary mindsnamely, that words are not the same as things and that a knowledge of words about facts is in no sense equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves. What Eckhart actually asserts is this: whatever one may say about God can never in any circumstances be the truth in the first two meanings of that much abused and ambiguous word. By implication St. Thomas Aquinas was saying exactly the same thing when, after his experience of infused contemplation, he refused to go on with his theological work, declaring that everything he had written up to that time was as mere straw compared with the immediate knowledge, which had been vouchsafed to him. Two hundred years earlier, in Bagdad, the great Mohammedan theologian, Al Ghazzali, had similarly turned from the consideration of truths about God to the contemplation and direct apprehension of Truth-the-Fact, from the purely intellectual discipline of the Philosophers to the moral and spiritual discipline of the Sufis.
The moral of all this is obvious. Whenever we hear or read about truth, we should always pause long enough to ask ourselves in which of the three senses listed above the word is, at the moment, being used. By taking this simple precaution (and to take it is a genuinely virtuous act of intellectual honesty), we shall save ourselves a great deal of disturbing and quite unnecessary mental confusion.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To the Philosopher new states of consciousness will be dis- closed ; states which, because of the very path he has been pursuing, have hitherto been barred from his examination.
From the psychological point of view, the following are true of the experience under discussion :
1.08 - Introduction to Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Now the question arises: Is going back to God the higher state, or not? the Philosophers of the Yoga school emphatically answer that it is. They say that man's present state is a degeneration. There is not one religion on the face of the earth which says that man is an improvement. The idea is that his beginning is perfect and pure, that he degenerates until he cannot degenerate further, and that there must come a time when he shoots upward again to complete the circle. The circle must be described. However low he may go, he must ultimately take the upward bend and go back to the original source, which is God. Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God. This is the method of putting it in the dualistic form. The monistic form is that man is God, and goes back to Him again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it? If this is the higher state, why does it end? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diabolical, so unsatisfying? It is only excusable, inasmuch as through it we are taking a higher groove; we have to pass through it in order to become regenerate again. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves after a time, and out of that dissolution comes the splendid tree. Every soul must disintegrate to become God. So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call "man" the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That will be making it worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through, the better. It must always be remembered that man-state is not the highest state.
The really difficult part to understand is that this state, the Absolute, which has been called the highest, is not, as some fear, that of the zoophyte or of the stone. According to them, there are only two states of existence, one of the stone, and the other of thought. What right have they to limit existence to these two? Is there not something infinitely superior to thought? The vibrations of light, when they are very low, we do not see; when they become a little more intense, they become light to us; when they become still more intense, we do not see them it is dark to us. Is the darkness in the end the same darkness as in the beginning? Certainly not; they are different as the two poles. Is the thoughtlessness of the stone the same as the thoughtlessness of God? Certainly not. God does not think; He does not reason. Why should He? Is anything unknown to Him, that He should reason? The stone cannot reason; God does not. Such is the difference. These philosophers think it is awful if we go beyond thought; they find nothing beyond thought.
1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
able to borrow much from the Philosophers, and so medical psychology,
on encountering an unconscious psyche right at the beginning of its career,
--
always knows in advance what he is going to say; the Philosopher, because
he never says anything of the slightest practical value. And the odd thing is
1.09 - Man - About the Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Great Work or the preparation of the Philosophers Stone is visibly performed.
Herewith the chapter dealing with the body is finished. I do not assert that all has been regarded, but in any case, with respect to the elements, I mean to say, the four-pole magnet, I have treated the most important problems and revealed the secret of the Tetragrammaton in view of the body.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
it was the sight of them alone that set the soul of the Philosopher
reeling with erotic passion, and allowed it no rest until it had
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what the Philosopher cannot abide.
33
--
unit, the "individual," as the people and the Philosopher have always
understood him, is certainly an error: he is nothing in himself, no
1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He treads down his emotions, because emotion distorts reason and replaces it by passions, desires, preferences, prejudices, prejudgments. He avoids life, because life awakes all his sensational being and puts his reason at the mercy of egoism, of sensational reactions of anger, fear, hope, hunger, ambition, instead of allowing it to act justly and do disinterested work. It becomes merely the paid pleader of a party, a cause, a creed, a dogma, an intellectual faction. Passion and eagerness, even intellectual eagerness, so disfigure the greatest minds that even Shankara becomes a sophist and a word-twister, and even Buddha argues in a circle. the Philosopher wishes above all to preserve his intellectual righteousness; he is or should be as careful of his mental rectitude as the saint of his moral stainlessness. Therefore he avoids, as far as the world will let him, the conditions which disturb. But in this way he cuts himself off from experience and only the gods can know without experience. Sieyes said that politics was a subject of which he had made a science.
He had, but the pity was that though he knew the science of politics perfectly, he did not know politics itself in the least and when he did enter political life, he had formed too rigidly the logical habit to replace it in any degree by the practical. If he had reversed the order or at least coordinated experiment with his theories before they were formed, he might have succeeded better. His readymade Constitutions are monuments of logical perfection and practical ineffectiveness. They have the weakness
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Both the logician and the Philosopher are apt to forget that they are dealing with words and words divorced from experience can be the most terrible misleaders in the world. Precisely because they are capable of giving us so much light, they are also capable of lighting us into impenetrable darkness. Tato bhuya iva te tamo ya u vidyayam ratah; "Deeper is the darkness into which they enter who are addicted to knowledge alone." This sort of word worship and its resultant luminous darkness is very common in India and nowhere more than in the intellectualities of religion, so that when a man talks to me about the One and
Maya and the Absolute, I am tempted to ask him, "My friend, how much have you experienced of these things in which you instruct me or how much are you telling me out of a vacuum or merely from intellectual appreciation? If you have merely ideas and no experience, you are no authority for me and your logic is to me but the clashing of cymbals good to deafen an opponent into silence, but of no use for knowledge. If you say you have experienced, then I have to ask you, 'Are you sure you have measured all possible experience?' If you have not, then how can you be sure that my contradictory experience is not equally true? If you say you have, then I know you to be deluded or a pretender, one who has experienced a fragment or nothing; for
1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its limitations at once appear, when we look back at its prominent examples. Early Rome and Sparta were barren of thought, art, poetry, literature, the larger mental life, all the amenity and pleasure of human existence; their art of life excluded or discouraged the delight of living. They were distrustful, as the exclusively ethical man is always distrustful, of free and flexible thought and the aesthetic impulse. The earlier spirit of republican Rome held at arms length as long as possible the Greek influences that invaded her, closed the schools of the Greek teachers, banished the Philosophers, and her most typical minds looked upon the Greek language as a peril and Greek culture as an abomination: she felt instinctively the arrival at her gates of an enemy, divined a hostile and destructive force fatal to her principle of living. Sparta, though a Hellenic city, admitted as almost the sole aesthetic element of her deliberate ethical training and education a martial music and poetry, and even then, when she wanted a poet of war, she had to import an Athenian. We have a curious example of the repercussion of this instinctive distrust even on a large and aesthetic Athenian mind in the utopian speculations of Plato who felt himself obliged in his Republic first to censure and then to banish the poets from his ideal polity. The end of these purely ethical cultures bears witness to their insufficiency. Either they pass away leaving nothing or little behind them by which the future can be attracted and satisfied, as Sparta passed, or they collapse in a revolt of the complex nature of man against an unnatural restriction and repression, as the early Roman type collapsed into the egoistic and often orgiastic licence of later republican and imperial Rome. The human mind needs to think, feel, enjoy, expand; expansion is its very nature and restriction is only useful to it in so far as it helps to steady, guide and streng then its expansion. It readily refuses the name of culture to those civilisations or periods, however noble their aim or even however beautiful in itself their order, which have not allowed an intelligent freedom of development.
On the other hand, we are tempted to give the name of a full culture to all those periods and civilisations, whatever their defects, which have encouraged a freely human development and like ancient Athens have concentrated on thought and beauty and the delight of living. But there were in the Athenian development two distinct periods, one of art and beauty, the Athens of Phidias and Sophocles, and one of thought, the Athens of the Philosophers. In the first period the sense of beauty and the need of freedom of life and the enjoyment of life are the determining forces. This Athens thought, but it thought in the terms of art and poetry, in figures of music and drama and architecture and sculpture; it delighted in intellectual discussion, but not so much with any will to arrive at truth as for the pleasure of thinking and the beauty of ideas. It had its moral order, for without that no society can exist, but it had no true ethical impulse or ethical type, only a conventional and customary morality; and when it thought about ethics, it tended to express it in the terms of beauty, to kalon, to epieikes, the beautiful, the becoming. Its very religion was a religion of beauty and an occasion for pleasant ritual and festivals and for artistic creation, an aesthetic enjoyment touched with a superficial religious sense. But without character, without some kind of high or strong discipline there is no enduring power of life. Athens exhausted its vitality within one wonderful century which left it enervated, will-less, unable to succeed in the struggle of life, uncreative. It turned indeed for a time precisely to that which had been lacking to it, the serious pursuit of truth and the evolution of systems of ethical self-discipline; but it could only think, it could not successfully practise. The later Hellenic mind and Athenian centre of culture gave to Rome the great Stoic system of ethical discipline which saved her in the midst of the orgies of her first imperial century, but could not itself be stoical in its practice; for to Athens and to the characteristic temperament of Hellas, this thought was a straining to something it had not and could not have; it was the opposite of its nature and not its fulfilment.
This insufficiency of the aesthetic view of life becomes yet more evident when we come down to its other great example, Italy of the Renascence. The Renascence was regarded at one time as pre-eminently a revival of learning, but in its Mediterranean birth-place it was rather the efflorescence of art and poetry and the beauty of life. Much more than was possible even in the laxest times of Hellas, aesthetic culture was divorced from the ethical impulse and at times was even anti-ethical and reminiscent of the licence of imperial Rome. It had learning and curiosity, but gave very little of itself to high thought and truth and the more finished achievements of the reason, although it helped to make free the way for philosophy and science. It so corrupted religion as to provoke in the ethically minded Teutonic nations the violent revolt of the Reformation, which, though it vindicated the freedom of the religious mind, was an insurgence not so much of the reason,that was left to Science,but of the moral instinct and its ethical need. The subsequent prostration and loose weakness of Italy was the inevitable result of the great defect of its period of fine culture, and it needed for its revival the new impulse of thought and will and character given to it by Mazzini. If the ethical impulse is not sufficient by itself for the development of the human being, yet are will, character, self-discipline, self-mastery indispensable to that development. They are the backbone of the mental body.
1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
To think of God as mere Power, and not also, at the same time as Power, Love and Wisdom, comes quite naturally to the ordinary, unregenerate human mind. Only the totally selfless are in a position to know experimentally that, in spite of everything, all will be well and, in some way, already is well. the Philosopher who denies divine providence, says Rumi, is a stranger to the perception of the saints. Only those who have the perception of the saints can know all the time and by immediate experience that divine Reality manifests itself as a Power that is loving, compassionate and wise. The rest of us are not yet in a spiritual position to do more than accept their findings on faith. If it were not for the records they have left behind, we should be more inclined to agree with Job and the primitives.
Inspirations prevent us, and even before they are thought of make themselves felt; but after we have felt them it is ours either to consent to them, so as to second and follow their attractions, or else to dissent and repulse them. They make themselves felt without us, but they do not make us consent without us.
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The modern world cares little for orthodox Hindu opinion, for the opinion of its Pandits or for the ancient authority of its received guides; putting these things aside as the heavy and now useless baggage of the dead past it moves on free and unhampered to its objective, seeking ever fresh vistas of undiscovered knowledge. But a Hindu writer, still holding the faith of his ancestors, owes a certain debt to the immediate past, not so much as to hamper his free enquiry and outlook upon truth, but enough to demand from him a certain respect for whatever in it is really respectworthy and some attempt to satisfy his coreligionists that in opening out a fresh outlook on ancient knowledge he is not uprooting truths that are essential to their common religion. Nothing in those truths compels us to accept the plenary authority of Sayana or the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas. The hymns of the Veda are, for us, inspired truth and therefore infallible; it follows that the only interpretative authority on them which can claim also to be infallible is one which itself works by the faculty of divine inspiration. The only works for which the ordinary tradition claims this equal authority are the Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads. Even among these authorities, if we accept them as all and equally inspired and authoritative, and on this point Hindus are not in entire agreement,the Brahmanas which deal with the ceremonial detail of Vedic sacrifice, are authoritative for the ritual only; for the inner sense the Upanishads are the fit authority. Sayana can lay claim to no such sanctity for his opinions. He is no ancient Rishi, nor even an inspired religious teacher, but a grammarian and scholar writing in the twelfth century after Christ several millenniums subsequent to the Rishis to whom Veda was revealed. By his virtues & defects as a scholar his interpretation must be judged. His erudition is vast, his industry colossal; he has so occupied the field that everyone who approaches the Veda must pass to it under his shadow; his commentary is a mine of knowledge about Vedic Sanscrit and full of useful hints for the interpretation of Veda. But there the tale of his merits ends. Other qualities are needed for a successful Vedic commentary which in Sayana are conspicuous by their absence; and his defects as a critic are almost as colossal as his industry and erudition. He is not a disinterested mind seeking impartially the truth of Veda but a professor of the ritualistic school of interpretation intent upon reading the traditional ceremonial sense into the sacred hymns; even so he is totally wanting in consistency, coherence and settled method. Not only is he frequently uncertain of himself, halts and qualifies his interpretation with an alternative or not having the full courage of his ritualistic rendering introduces it as a mere possibility,these would be meritorious failings,but he wavers in a much more extraordinary fashion, forcing the ritualistic sense of a word or passage where it cannot possibly hold, abandoning it unaccountably where it can well be sustained. The Vedas are masterpieces of flawless literary style and logical connection. But Sayana, like many great scholars, is guiltless of literary taste and has not the least sense of what is or is not possible to a good writer. His interpretation of any given term is seldom consistent even in similar passages of different hymns, but he will go yet farther and give two entirely different renderings to the same word though occurring in successive riks & in an obviously connected strain of thought. The rhythm and balance of a sentence is nothing to him, he will destroy it ruthlessly in order to get over a difficulty of interpretation; he will disturb the arrangement of a sentence sometimes in the most impossible manner, connecting absolutely disconnected words, breaking up inseparable connections, inserting a second and alien sentence in between the head & tail of the first, and creating a barbarous complexity & confusion where the symbolic movement of the Rishis, unequalled in its golden ease, lucidity and straightforwardness, demands an equal lucidity & straightforwardness in the commentator. A certain rough coherence of thought he attempts to keep, but his rendering makes oftenest a clumsy sense & not unoften no ascertainable sense at all; while he has no scruple in breaking up the coherence entirely in favour of his ritualism. These are, after all, faults common in a scholastic mentality, but even were they less prominent & persistent in him than I have found them to be, they liberate us from all necessity for an exaggerated deference to his authority as an interpreter. Nor, indeed, were Sayana an ideal commentator, could he possibly be relied upon to give us the true sense of Veda; for the language of these hymns, whatever the exact date of their Rishis, goes back to an immense antiquity and long before Sayana the right sense of many Vedic words and the right clue to many Vedic allusions and symbols were lost to the scholars of India. Much indeed survived in tradition, but more had been lost or disfigured, and the two master clues, intellectual & spiritual, on which we can yet rely for the recovery of these losses, a sound philology and the renewal in ourselves of the experiences which form the subject of the Vedic hymns, were the one entirely wanting, the other grown more & more inaccessible with time not only to the Pandit but to the Philosopher. Even in our days the sound philology is yet wanting, though the seeds have been sown & even the first beginnings made; nor are the Vedic experiences any longer pursued in their entirety by the Indian Yogins who have learned to follow in this Kali Yuga less difficult paths and more modern systems.
But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
1.10 - THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
last disciple of the Philosopher Dionysus,--I, the prophet of eternal
recurrence.
1.11 - Correspondence and Interviews, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
I have purposely given long quotations in order to dispel our ignorant notions that Yogis live in a rarefied atmosphere of the Spirit and are indifferent to what passes on this plane of Matter; we forget that Spirit and Matter are two ends of existence. I shall give another minor, even humorous, instance of Matter's reality to Sri Aurobindo the Yogi, the poet and the Philosopher. Sri Aurobindo was taking his meal, the Mother was serving him and we were standing nearby. She said, "X promised to offer us a big sum, but he has given only Rs.100 with a promise that the rest will follow. Shall we accept or refuse, Lord?" Sri Aurobindo quietly replied "Accept it and hope for the best." All of us, including the Mother, burst out laughing.
Another interview with Sri Aurobindo, which Surendra Mohan almost succeeded in bringing about, but which did not materialise, was with Mahatma Gandhi, in spite of both the parties' willingness to meet. Sri Aurobindo said, "He can come now. You may tell him this." Fate stepped in and foiled what could have been a momentous meeting!
1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the other hand, when it attempts a higher action reason separates itself from life. Its very attempt at a disinterested and dispassionate knowledge carries it to an elevation where it loses hold of that other knowledge which our instincts and impulses carry within themselves and which, however imperfect, obscure and limited, is still a hidden action of the universal KnowledgeWill inherent in existence that creates and directs all things according to their nature. True, even Science and Philosophy are never entirely dispassionate and disinterested. They fall into subjection to the tyranny of their own ideas, their partial systems, their hasty generalisations and by the innate drive of man towards practice they seek to impose these upon the life. But even so they enter into a world either of abstract ideas or of ideals or of rigid laws from which the complexity of life escapes. The idealist, the thinker, the Philosopher, the poet and artist, even the moralist, all those who live much in ideas, when they come to grapple at close quarters with practical life, seem to find themselves something at a loss and are constantly defeated in their endeavour to govern life by their ideas. They exercise a powerful influence, but it is indirectly, more by throwing their ideas into Life which does with them what the secret Will in it chooses than by a direct and successfully ordered action. Not that the pure empiric, the practical man really succeeds any better by his direct action; for that too is taken by the secret Will in life and turned to quite other ends than the practical man had intended. On the contrary, ideals and idealists are necessary; ideals are the savour and sap of life, idealists the most powerful diviners and assistants of its purposes. But reduce your ideal to a system and it at once begins to fail; apply your general laws and fixed ideas systematically as the doctrinaire would do, and Life very soon breaks through or writhes out of their hold or transforms your system, even while it nominally exists, into something the originator would not recognise and would repudiate perhaps as the very contradiction of the principles which he sought to eternise.
The root of the difficulty is this that at the very basis of all our life and existence, internal and external, there is something on which the intellect can never lay a controlling hold, the Absolute, the Infinite. Behind everything in life there is an Absolute, which that thing is seeking after in its own way; everything finite is striving to express an infinite which it feels to be its real truth. Moreover, it is not only each class, each type, each tendency in Nature that is thus impelled to strive after its own secret truth in its own way, but each individual brings in his own variations. Thus there is not only an Absolute, an Infinite in itself which governs its own expression in many forms and tendencies, but there is also a principle of infinite potentiality and variation quite baffling to the reasoning intelligence; for the reason deals successfully only with the settled and the finite. In man this difficulty reaches its acme. For not only is mankind unlimited in potentiality; not only is each of its powers and tendencies seeking after its own absolute in its own way and therefore naturally restless under any rigid control by the reason; but in each man their degrees, methods, combinations vary, each man belongs not only to the common humanity, but to the Infinite in himself and is therefore unique. It is because this is the reality of our existence that the intellectual reason and the intelligent will cannot deal with life as its sovereign, even though they may be at present our supreme instruments and may have been in our evolution supremely important and helpful. The reason can govern, but only as a minister, imperfectly, or as a general arbiter and giver of suggestions which are not really supreme commands, or as one channel of the sovereign authority, because that hidden Power acts at present not directly but through many agents and messengers. The real sovereign is another than the reasoning intelligence. Mans impulse to be free, master of Nature in himself and his environment cannot be really fulfilled until his self-consciousness has grown beyond the rational mentality, become aware of the true sovereign and either identified itself with him or entered into constant communion with his supreme will and knowledge.
1.12 - Independence, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The Yogis claim that these powers can be gained by chemical means. All of you know that chemistry originally began as alchemy; men went in search of the Philosopher's stone and elixirs of life, and so forth. In India there was a sect called the Rsyanas. Their idea was that ideality, knowledge, spirituality, and religion were all very right, but that the body was the only instrument by which to attain to all these. If the body came to an end every now and again, it would take so much more time to attain to the goal. For instance, a man wants to practice Yoga, or wants to become spiritual. Before he has advanced very far he dies. Then he takes another body and begins again, then dies, and so on. In this way much time will be lost in dying and being born again. If the body could be made strong and perfect, so that it would get rid of birth and death, we should have so much more time to become spiritual. So these Rasayanas say, first make the body very strong. They claim that this body can be made immortal. Their idea is that if the mind manufactures the body, and if it be true that each mind is only one outlet to the infinite energy, there should be no limit to each outlet getting any amount of power from outside. Why is it impossible to keep our bodies all the time? We have to manufacture all the bodies that we ever have. As soon as this body dies, we shall have to manufacture another. If we can do that, why cannot we do it just here and now, without getting out of the present body? The theory is perfectly correct. If it is possible that we live after death, and make other bodies, why is it impossible that we should have the power of making bodies here, without entirely dissolving this body, simply changing it continually? They also thought that in mercury and in sulphur was hidden the most wonderful power, and that by certain preparations of these a man could keep the body as long as he liked. Others believed that certain drugs could bring powers, such as flying through the air. Many of the most wonderful medicines of the present day we owe to the Rasayanas, notably the use of metals in medicine. Certain sects of Yogis claim that many of their principal teachers are still living in their old bodies. Patanjali, the great authority on Yoga, does not deny this.
The power of words. There are certain sacred words called Mantras, which have power, when repeated under proper conditions, produce these extraordinary powers. We are living in the midst of such a mass of miracles, day and night, that we do not think anything of them. There is no limit to man's power, the power of words and the power of mind.
1.1.2 - Intellect and the Intellectual, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I agree also that labels are unsatisfactoryeven when applied to less developed persons; what we really do is to pick out something prominent and label with that as if it were all the person. But classification is impossible without that and mans intellect is driven always to classify, fix distinctions, set apart with a label. the Philosophers have pointed out that Science does that too rigidly and in doing so cuts falsely across the truth of Nature. But if we dont do that, we cant have any Science.
***
1.12 - The Office and Limitations of the Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This view of human life and of the process of our development, to which subjectivism readily leads us, gives us a truer vision of the place of the intellect in the human movement. We have seen that the intellect has a double working, dispassionate and interested, self-centred or subservient to movements not its own. The one is a disinterested pursuit of truth for the sake of Truth and of knowledge for the sake of Knowledge without any ulterior motive, with every consideration put away except the rule of keeping the eye on the object, on the fact under enquiry and finding out its truth, its process, its law. The other is coloured by the passion for practice, the desire to govern life by the truth discovered or the fascination of an idea which we labour to establish as the sovereign law of our life and action. We have seen indeed that this is the superiority of reason over the other faculties of man that it is not confined to a separate absorbed action of its own, but plays upon all the others, discovers their law and truth, makes its discoveries serviceable to them and even in pursuing its own bent and end serves also their ends and arrives at a catholic utility. Man in fact does not live for knowledge alone; life in its widest sense is his principal preoccupation and he seeks knowledge for its utility to life much more than for the pure pleasure of acquiring knowledge. But it is precisely in this putting of knowledge at the service of life that the human intellect falls into that confusion and imperfection which pursues all human action. So long as we pursue knowledge for its own sake, there is nothing to be said: the reason is performing its natural function; it is exercising securely its highest right. In the work of the Philosopher, the scientist, the savant labouring to add something to the stock of our ascertainable knowledge, there is as perfect a purity and satisfaction as in that of the poet and artist creating forms of beauty for the aesthetic delight of the race. Whatever individual error and limitation there may be, does not matter; for the collective and progressive knowledge of the race has gained the truth that has been discovered and may be trusted in time to get rid of the error. It is when it tries to apply ideas to life that the human intellect stumbles and finds itself at fault.
Ordinarily, this is because in concerning itself with action the intelligence of man becomes at once partial and passionate and makes itself the servant of something other than the pure truth. But even if the intellect keeps itself as impartial and disinterested as possible, and altogether impartial, altogether disinterested the human intellect cannot be unless it is content to arrive at an entire divorce from practice or a sort of large but ineffective tolerantism, eclecticism or sceptical curiosity,still the truths it discovers or the ideas it promulgates become, the moment they are applied to life, the plaything of forces over which the reason has little control. Science pursuing its cold and even way has made discoveries which have served on one side a practical humanitarianism, on the other supplied monstrous weapons to egoism and mutual destruction; it has made possible a gigantic efficiency of organisation which has been used on one side for the economic and social amelioration of the nations and on the other for turning each into a colossal battering-ram of aggression, ruin and slaughter. It has given rise on the one side to a large rationalistic and altruistic humanitarianism, on the other it has justified a godless egoism, vitalism, vulgar will to power and success. It has drawn mankind together and given it a new hope and at the same time crushed it with the burden of a monstrous commercialism. Nor is this due, as is so often asserted, to its divorce from religion or to any lack of idealism. Idealistic philosophy has been equally at the service of the powers of good and evil and provided an intellectual conviction both for reaction and for progress. Organised religion itself has often enough in the past hounded men to crime and massacre and justified obscurantism and oppression.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
A second, even more important observation commands our attention. To return to the rocket analogy: the rocket can break through the earth's atmosphere at any point, taking off either from New York or from the equator, and still reach the sun. There is no need to climb Mt. Everest to set up the launching pad! Similarly, the yogi can realize cosmic consciousness in any point, or at any level, of his being in his mind, in his heart, and even in his body because the cosmic Spirit is everywhere, in every point of the universe. The experience can begin anywhere, at any level, by concentrating on a rock or a sparrow, an idea, a prayer, a feeling, or what people scornfully call an idol. Cosmic consciousness is not the highest point of human consciousness; we do not go above the individual to reach it, but outside. It is hardly necessary to ascend in consciousness, or to become Plotinus, in order to attain the universal Spirit. On the contrary, the less mental one is, the easier it is to experience it; a shepherd beneath the stars or a fisherman of Galilee has a better chance at it than all the Philosophers of the world put together. What, then, is the use of all this development of consciousness if folk-like mysticism works better? We must admit that either we are all on the wrong track, or else those mystical escapades do not represent the whole meaning of evolution. On the other hand, if we accept that the proper evolutionary course is that of the peak figures of earthly consciousness Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Alexander the Great, Dante we are still forced to acknowledge that none of these great men has been able to transform life. Thus, the summits of the mind or the heart do not give us, any more than the cosmic summits, the key to the riddle and the power to change the world: another principle of consciousness is required. But it must be another principle without any break in continuity with the others, because if the line is broken or if the individual is lost, we fall back into cosmic or mystical dispersion, thereby losing our link with the earth. To be conscious of Oneness and of the Transcendent is certainly an indispensable basis for any realization (without which we might as well try to build a house without foundations), but it must be done in ways that respect evolutionary continuity; it must be an evolution, not a revolution. In other words, we must get out without getting out. Instead of a rocket that ends up crashing on the sun, we need a rocket that harpoons the Sun of the supreme consciousness and is able to bring it down to all points of our earthly consciousness: The ultimate knowledge is that which perceives and accepts God in the universe as well as beyond the universe and the integral Yoga is that which, having found the Transcendent, can return upon the universe and possess it, retaining the power freely to descend as well as ascend the great stair of existence.171 This double movement of ascent and descent of the individual consciousness is the basic principle of the supramental discovery. But in the process Sri Aurobindo was to touch an unknown spring which would change everything.
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MANI: "Tulsi also said: 'At the touch of the Philosopher's stone, the eight metals become gold. Likewise all castes, even the butcher and the untouchable, become pure by repeating Hari's name. Without Hari's name the people of the four castes are but butchers.'"
MASTER: "The hide that the scriptures forbid one to touch can be taken inside the temple after it has been tanned.
--
"If you break a jackfruit after rubbing your hands with oil, then its sticky milk will not smear your hands. While playing the game of hide-and-seek, you are safe if you but once touch the 'granny'. Be turned into gold by touching the Philosopher's stone. After that you may remain buried underground a thousand years; when you are taken out you will still be gold.
"The mind is like milk. If you keep the mind in the world, which is like water, then the milk and water will get mixed. That is why people keep milk in a quiet place and let it set into curd, and then churn butter from it. Likewise, through spiritual discipline practised in solitude, churn the butter of knowledge and devotion from the milk of the mind. Then that butter can easily be kept in the water of the world. It will not get mixed with the world. The mind will float detached on the water of the world."
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
which the son of the Philosophers is begotten. Therefore they
have named it tincture, blood, and egg.*' 65 The three alembics
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to M.): "Why should the universe be unreal? That is a speculation of the Philosophers. After realizing God, one sees that it is God Himself who has become the universe and all living beings.
Divine Mother is the Universal Consciousness
--
MASTER: "Yes. The Jnni gets rid of all desire if any is left, it does not hurt him. At the touch of the Philosopher's stone the sword is transformed into gold. Then that sword cannot do any killing. Just so, the Jnni keeps only a semblance of anger and passion.
They are anger and passion only in name and cannot injure him."
1.18 - The Infrarational Age of the Cycle, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As reason and spirituality develop, they begin to become a larger and more diffused force, less intense perhaps, but wider and more effective on the mass. The mystics become the sowers of the seed of an immense spiritual development in which whole classes of society and even men from all classes seek the light, as happened in India in the age of the Upanishads. The solitary individual thinkers are replaced by a great number of writers, poets, thinkers, rhetoricians, sophists, scientific inquirers, who pour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the thought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised activity of the intelligence,as happened in Greece in the age of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed by reason in an infrarational society, has often a tendency to outrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For the greatest illuminating force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot last; the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the Philosopher-mystic, the religious thinker and even the Philosopher pure and simple.
For a time the new growth and impulse may seem to take possession of a whole community as in Athens or in old Aryan India. But these early dawns cannot endure in their purity, so long as the race is not ready. There is a crystallisation, a lessening of the first impetus, a new growth of infrarational forms in which the thought or the spirituality is overgrown with inferior accretions or it is imbedded in the form and may even die in it, while the tradition of the living knowledge, the loftier life and activity remains the property of the higher classes or a highest class. The multitude remains infrarational in its habit of mind, though perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain from the past. So long as the hour of the rational age has not arrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind; and that arrival can only be when not a class or a few but the multitude has learned to think, to exercise its intelligence activelyit matters not at first however imperfectlyupon their life, their needs, their rights, their duties, their aspirations as human beings. Until then we have as the highest possible development a mixed society, infrarational in the mass, but saved for civilisation by a higher class whose business it is to seek after the reason and the spirit, to keep the gains of mankind in these fields, to add to them, to enlighten and raise with them as much as possible the life of the whole.
1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Where then is the difference between this and the larger equality taught by the Gita? It lies in the difference between the intellectual and philosophic discernment and the spiritual, the Vedantic knowledge of unity on which the Gita founds its teaching. the Philosopher maintains his equality by the power of the buddhi, the discerning mind; but even that by itself is a doubtful foundation. For, though master of himself on the whole by a constant attention or an acquired habit of mind, in reality he is not free from his lower nature, and it does actually assert itself in many ways and may at any moment take a violent revenge for its rejection and suppression. For, always, the play of the lower nature is a triple play, and the rajasic and tamasic qualities are ever lying in wait for the sattwic man. "Even the mind of the
Equality
--
wise man who labours for perfection is carried away by the vehement insistence of the senses." Perfect security can only be had by resorting to something higher than the sattwic quality, something higher than the discerning mind, to the Self, - not the Philosopher's intelligent self, but the divine sage's spiritual self which is beyond the three gunas. All must be consummated by a divine birth into the higher spiritual nature.
And the Philosopher's equality is like the Stoic's, like the world-fleeing ascetic's, inwardly a lonely freedom, remote and aloof from men; but the man born to the divine birth has found the Divine not only in himself, but in all beings. He has realised his unity with all and his equality is therefore full of sympathy and oneness. He sees all as himself and is not intent on his lonely salvation; he even takes upon himself the burden of their happiness and sorrow by which he is not himself affected or subjected. The perfect sage, the Gita more than once repeats, is ever engaged with a large equality in doing good to all creatures and makes that his occupation and delight, sarvabhutahite ratah.. The perfect Yogin is no solitary musing on the Self in his ivory tower of spiritual isolation, but yuktah. kr.tsna-karma-kr.t, a many-sided universal worker for the good of the world, for
God in the world. For he is a bhakta, a lover and devotee of the Divine, as well as a sage and a Yogin, a lover who loves
1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The knowledge of the Philosopher is that of the true nature of mundane existence, the transience of outward things, the
208
1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
(To Prankrishna) But there are signs that distinguish the man of Knowledge. Some people think they have Knowledge. What are the characteristics of Knowledge? A Jnni cannot injure anybody. He becomes like a child. If a steel sword touches the Philosopher's stone, it is transformed into gold. Gold can never cut. It may seem from the outside that a Jnni also has anger or egotism, but in reality he has no such thing.
The ego of a Jnni
1.22 - ON THE GIFT-GIVING VIRTUE, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
masters: the people and the truth. the Philosophers of
the past have too often rationalized popular prejudices. But
1.2.2 - The Place of Study in Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I dont know that there is anything false in your philosophical reflections. Philosophy is of course a creation of the mind but its defect is not that it is false, but that a philosophical system is only a section of the Truth which the Philosopher takes as a whole. If one does not shut oneself up like that but looks at all sides, there is no harm in philosophising.
***
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
But in many cases He keeps a trace of ego. But that doesn't injure anybody. It is like the ego of a child. A five-year-old child no doubt says 'I', but that ego doesn't harm anybody. At the touch of the Philosopher's stone, steel is turned into gold; the steel sword becomes a sword of gold.
The gold sword has the form of a sword, no doubt, but it cannot injure anybody. One cannot cut anything with a gold sword.
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Being in water, water will flow into his mouth if he were to open the mouth for speaking. Is it not simple? But the Philosopher is not content with this simple fact. He explains, saying that fire is the deity presiding over speech; that it is inimical to water and therefore cannot function! This is called philosophy and the learners are struggling to learn all this! Is it not a sheer waste of time? Again the
Gods are said to preside over the limbs and senses of the individual
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Bhaktiyoga is the religion for this age. But that does not mean that the lover of God will reach one goal and the Philosopher and worker another. It means that if a person seeks the Knowledge of Brahman he can attain It by following the path of bhakti, too. God, who loves His devotee, can give him the Knowledge of Brahman if He so desires.
"But the bhakta wants to realize the Personal God endowed with form and talk to Him.
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In his exercise the Yogin sees (imaginatively) the form of the sun or moon, or something looking like a lotus, or the underworld, or various forms, such as sky, fire and the like. All these appearances lead him in the way of the Philosophers; they throw him down into the state of Sravakahood, into the realm of the Pratyekabuddhas. When all these are put aside and there is a state of imagelessness, then a condition in conformity with Suchness presents itself, and the Buddhas will come together from all their countries and with their shining hands will touch the head of this benefactor.
Lankavatara Sutra
1.27 - CONTEMPLATION, ACTION AND SOCIAL UTILITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Similar views are expressed by Al-Ghazzali, who regards the mystics not only as the ultimate source of our knowledge of the soul and its capacities and defects, but as the salt which preserves human societies from decay. In the time of the Philosophers, he writes, as at every other period, there existed some of these fervent mystics. God does not deprive this world of them, for they are its sustainers. It is they who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit.
next chapter: 2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.29 - The Myth of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
however it may vex the soul of the Philosopher, rarely troubles the
common man; indeed he is seldom even aware of it. His affair is to
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Being in water, water will flow into his mouth if he were to open the mouth for speaking. Is it not simple? But the Philosopher is not content with this simple fact. He explains, saying that fire is the deity presiding over speech; that it is inimical to water and therefore cannot function! This is called philosophy and the learners are struggling to learn all this! Is it not a sheer waste of time? Again the
Gods are said to preside over the limbs and senses of the individual
1.69 - Farewell to Nemi, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of the sun. Yet the Philosopher who trembles at the idea of such
distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these
1951-03-12 - Mental forms - learning difficult subjects - Mental fortress - thought - Training the mind - Helping the vital being after death - ceremonies - Human stupidities, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take any general idea; for example: Is the worlds duration indefinite? or Has it a beginning and an end? Who has a precise thought on this subject? Or again: How did the earth begin and how did humanity commence on earth? The mind is incapable of resolving this question; it will find itself before an indefinite number of possibilities and will not know how to choose. Then, what does it do, how does it choose? by personal preference, the thought that gives it an agreeable, comfortable feeling; it says, Yes, that must be it. But if you are quite honest and scrupulous and do not allow your preferences to come into play, how will you decide? It is a subject close enough to humanity for it to take an interest in it, isnt it? Earth is, after all, its domain. Well, if you read one book, it will tell you one thing; if you read another, it will tell you another. Then the religions with their theories take a hand in the matter and, moreover, they will tell you that such and such an idea is the absolute Truth and you must believe it, otherwise you will be damned! You read the scientists they will tell you scientific things. You read the Philosophers they will tell you philosophical things. You read the spiritualists, they will dish up spirituality for you and you will be exactly at the same point from which you started. But there are people who like to have a kind of stability in their mind (precisely those who build fortresses they like to be in a fortress very much, it gives them a comfortable sensation), so they make a choice, and if they have sufficient mental strength, they make a choice out of a considerable number of ideas; then they trim it up for you, set up a fine wall by putting each thing in what they consider to be its proper place (that is, there must not be too many contradictions close together lest they clash! It must make a proper organisation) and they tell you, Now, I know!They know nothing at all!
It is quite interesting, for the more mental activity one has, the more does one indulge in this little game. And there are ideas to which one clings! One hangs on to them as though all life depended upon it! I have known people who had fixed upon one central idea in their formation and said, All the rest may go to pieces, I dont care, but this idea will stand: this is the truth. And when they come to yoga, amusingly enough it is this idea which is constantly battered, all the time! All events, all circumstances come and strike at it until it begins to totter, and then one fine day they say in despair, Ah, my idea has gone.
1953-07-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My child, it is as though you asked me why there is inconscience, ignorance, darkness in the nature! It is the why of the world you are asking me! Why is the world like this and not otherwise? There are people who have written volumes on the subject. And each one explains it in his own way and that changes nothing, in fact. You may ask me: Why is there ill-will? Why is there ignorance? Why is there stupidity? Why is there wickedness? Why is there all the evil? Why is the world not a very charming place? All the Philosophers explain it to you, each in his own way. The materialists explain it in their way, the scientists explain it in their way, but nobody in all that can find the means of getting out of it! and after all, the one thing thats truly important is, it would be just (you ask me: Why is there ill-will?) it would be to find the way so that there may no longer be any ill-will. That would be worth the trouble. If you tell me: Why is there suffering, why is there misery? What can that do to you, this why, unless it be a means of finding a remedy? But I dont believe it would, for (we have said that here) if you seek for the why, you will find within yourself simply all sorts of explanations which will be more or less useless and will lead you nowhere.
The fact is that it is so, isnt it? and the second fact is that one doesnt want it thus, and the third is to find the means that it may no longer exist. That is our problem. The world is not as we think it ought to be. There are lots of things in the world which we do not approve of. Well, there are people who like what they call knowledge very much and begin to inquire why it is like that. In a way this is very well, but as I said, it would be much more important to find out what to do so that it may be otherwise. This is exactly the problem the Buddha put to himself. He sat under a tree, it is said, until he found the solution. But his solution is not very good, for when you tell me: The world is bad, well, his solution is: Do away with the world.For whose benefit? as Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere. Then the world will no longer be bad, for it will not exist! But what is the use of its no longer being bad, since it will not exist? It is very simple logic. It is like those who want the whole world to return to its Origin; and so Sri Aurobindo answers: You will be the all-powerful master of something that no longer exists, an emperor without an empire or a king without a kingdom, thats all. It is one solution. But there are other better ones. I believe we have found better ones.
1962 02 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know the story of the Philosopher who lived in the south of France I do not remember his name, a very well-known man who was a professor at the University of Montpellier and who lived on the outskirts of the city? There were several roads leading to his house. Every day this man would leave his university and arrive at the crossroads where all the roads leading to his house branched outthis way, that way, another way. And every day he would stop and ask himself, Which one shall I take? Each one had its advantages and disadvantages. And all this went on in his head, the advantages and disadvantages, and this and that, and he would waste half an hour choosing his way home.
He used to give that as an example of the thoughts incapacity for action: if one begins to think, one can no longer act.
1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
alchemistwould not be long in finding the Philosophers Stone. The
nearest neighbours to this farmthe Fenners, a quarter of a mile
1f.lovecraft - The History of the Necronomicon, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
surreptitious circulation amongst the Philosophers of the age, was
secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople
1f.lovecraft - The Strange High House in the Mist, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
weariness, the Philosopher has laboured and eaten and slept and done
uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a citizen. Not any more does he
1.hs - A New World, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery Original Language Persian/Farsi Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation, split open the skies and start anew on creation. If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins, cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation. With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup; we'll sugar the fire to sweeten smoke's emanation. Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song; let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration. As dust, O West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens, floating free in Creator's glow of elation. If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay, here's a quarrel for love's deliberation. Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land; come, Hafez, let's create a new generation. [1509.jpg] -- from The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love, by Haleh Pourafzal / Roger Montgomery
1.jlb - Browning Decides To Be A Poet, #Borges - Poems, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
who sought the Philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
1.jr - God is what is nearer to you than your neck-vein,, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by E. H. Whinfield Original Language Persian/Farsi & Turkish God is "what is nearer to you than your neck-vein," You have cast the arrow of speculation afar off. O you, who have made ready your bow and arrows, The game is close to you, and you shoot too far off. The further a man shoots, the further off he is, And the more removed from the treasure he seeks. the Philosopher kills himself with thinking, Tell him that his back is turned to that treasure; Tell him that the more he runs to and fro, The further he is removed from his heart's desire. The Almighty says, "Make efforts in our ways," Not "Make efforts away from us," O restless one. [1502.jpg] -- from The Mathnawi: Rumi, Translated by E. H. Whinfield <
1.nmdv - The drum with no drumhead beats, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Nirmal Dass Original Language Hindi The drum with no drumhead beats; clouds thunder without the monsoon; rain falls without clouds. Can anyone guess this riddle? I have met Ram the beautiful, and I too have become beautiful. the Philosopher's stone turns lead into gold; costly rubies I string with my words and thoughts. I discovered real love; doubts, fears have left me. I found comfort in what my guru taught me. A pitcher will fill when plunged in water, so Ram is the One in all. The guru's heart and the disciple's heart are one. Thus has the slave Namdeva perceived Truth. [2184.jpg] -- from Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth, Translated by Nirmal Dass <
1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Since all this is undeniable: since the choice of the mind is to be made between impossibilities of conception: since one impossibility cannot be greater than another: and since, thus, one cannot be preferred to another: the Philosophers who not only maintain, on the grounds mentioned, man's idea of infinity but, on account of such supposititious idea, infinity itself -are plainly engaged in demonstrating one impossible thing to be possible by showing how it is that some one other thing -is impossible too. This, it will be said, is nonsense; and perhaps it is: -indeed I think it very capital nonsense -but forego all claim to it as nonsense of mine.
The readiest mode, however, of displaying the fallacy of the philosophical argument on this question, is by simply adverting to a fact respecting it which has been hitherto quite overlooked -the fact that the argument alluded to both proves and disproves its own proposition. "The mind is impelled," say the theologians and others, "to admit a First Cause, by the superior difficulty it experiences in conceiving cause beyond cause without end." The quibble, as before, lies in the word "difficulty" -but here what is it employed to sustain? A First Cause. And what is a First Cause? An ultimate termination of causes. And what is an ultimate termination of causes? Finity -the Finite. Thus the one quibble, in two processes, by God knows how many philosophers, is made to support now Finity and now Infinity -could it not be brought to support something besides? As for the quibblers -they, at least, are insupportable. But -to dismiss them: -what they prove in the one case is the identical nothing which they demonstrate in the other.
--
The Nebular Theory of Laplace has lately received far more confirmation than it needed, at the hands of the Philosopher, Compte. These two have thus together shown -not, to be sure, that Matter at any period actually existed as described, in a state of nebular diffusion, but that, admitting it so to have existed throughout the space and much beyond the space now occupied by our solar system, and to have commenced a movement towards a centre it must gradually have assumed the various forms and motions which are now seen, in that system, to obtain. A demonstration such as this -a dynamical and mathematical demonstration, as far as demonstration can be -unquestionable and unquestioned -unless, indeed, by that unprofitable and disreputable tribe, the professional questioners -the mere madmen who deny the Newtonian law of Gravity on which the results of the French mathematicians are based -a demonstration, I say, such as this, would to most intellects be conclusive -and I confess that it is so to mine -of the validity of the nebular hypothesis upon which the demonstration depends.
That the demonstration does not prove the hypothesis, according to the common understanding of the word "proof," I admit, of course. To show that certain existing results -that certain established facts may be, even mathematically, accounted for by the assumption of a certain hypothesis, is by no means to establish the hypothesis itself. In other words: -to show that, certain data being given, a certain existing result might, or even must, have ensued, will fail to prove that this result did ensue, FR until such time as it shall be also shown that there are, and can be, no other data from which the result in question might equally have ensued. But, in the case now discussed, although all must admit the deficiency of what we are in the habit of terming "proof," still there are many intellects, and those of the loftiest order to which no proof could bring one iota of additional Conviction. Without going into details which might impinge upon the Cloud-Land of Metaphysics, I may as well here observe that the force of conviction, in cases such as this, will always, with the right-thinking, be proportional to the amount of Complexity intervening between the hypothesis and the result. To be less abstract: -The greatness of the complexity found existing among cosmical conditions, by rendering great in the same proportion the difficulty of accounting for all these conditions at once, strengthens, also in the same proportion, our faith in that hypothesis which does, in such manner, satisfactorily account for them: -and as no complexity can well be conceived greater than that of the astronomical conditions, so no conviction can be stronger -to my mind at least -than that with which I am impressed by an hypothesis that not only reconciles these conditions, with mathematical accuracy, and reduces them into a consistent and intelligible whole, but is, at the same time, the sole hypothesis by means of which the human intellect has been ever enabled to account for them at all.
1.rb - Bishop Blougram's Apology, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
You, the Philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight
1.rb - Cleon, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
The motto is from St. Paul's speech to the Philosophers
of Athens, Acts. 17: 28. Cleon and King Protus are both
1.rwe - The Adirondacs, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Of science, not from the Philosophers,
Had won the brightest laurel of all time.
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
This is not to say that man has not made progress. It is true that the Philosopher of today is not superior to Plato but there are many who can philosophise today. Also there are many more today who can understand philosophy than in the time of Plato.
17 JANUARY 1939
2.01 - On the Concept of the Archetype, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
which only the Philosopher may indulge, who always takes it
for granted that his own disposition and attitude are universal,
2.01 - THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE AND THE POINT, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
). In the treatise of Komarios, where the Philosopher Komarios teaches the Philosophy to Cleopatra, it is said: He showed with his hand the unity of the whole.7 Pelagios asks: Why speak ye of the manifold matter? The substance of natural things is one, and of one nature that which conquers all.8
[37] Further paradoxes: I am the black of the white and the red of the white and the yellow of the red;9 or The principle of the art is the raven, who flies without wings in the blackness of night and in the brightness of day.10 The stone is cold and moist in its manifest part, and in its hidden part is hot and dry.11 In lead is the dead life,12 or Burn in water and wash in fire.13 The Allegoriae sapientum speak of two figures, one of which is white and lacking a shadow, the other red and lacking the redness.14 A quotation from Socrates runs: Seek the coldness of the moon and ye shall find the heat of the sun.15 The opus is said to be a running without running, moving without motion.16 Make mercury with mercury.17 The philosophical tree has its roots in the air18 (this is probably a reference to the tree of the Sefiroth). That paradox and ambivalence are the keynotes of the whole work is shown by The Chymical Wedding: over the main portal of the castle two words are written: Congratulor, Condoleo.19
--
[41] John Dee (15271607) speculates as follows: It is not unreasonable to suppose, that by the four straight lines which run in opposite directions from a single, individual point, the mystery of the four elements is indicated. According to him, the quaternity consists of four straight lines meeting in a right angle. Things and beings have their first origin in the point and the monad.30 The centre of nature is the point originated by God,31 the sun-point in the egg.32 This, a commentary on the Turba says, is the germ of the egg in the yolk.33 Out of this little point, says Dorn in his Physica Genesis, the wisdom of God made with the creative Word the huge machine of the world.34 The Consilium coniugii remarks that the point is the chick (pullus).35 Mylius adds that this is the bird of Hermes,36 or the spirit Mercurius. The same author places the soul in the midpoint of the heart together with the spirit, which he compares with the angel who was infused with the soul at this point (i.e., in the womb).37 Paracelsus says that the anima iliastri dwells in the fire in the heart. It is incapable of suffering, whereas the anima cagastris is capable of suffering and is located in the water of the pericardium.38 Just as earth corresponds to the triangle and water to the line, so fire corresponds to the point.39 Democritus stresses that fire consists of fiery globules.40 Light, too, has this round form, hence the designation sun-point. This point is on the one hand the worlds centre, the salt-point in the midst of the great fabric of the whole world, as Khunrath calls it (salt = Sapientia). Yet it is not only the bond but also the destroyer of all destructible things. Hence this world-egg is the ancient Saturn, the . . . most secret lead of the sages, and the ambisexual Philosophic Man of the Philosophers, the Catholick Androgyne of the Sophists, the Rebis, etc.41 The most perfect form is round, because it is modelled on the point. The sun is round and so is fire, since it is composed of the fiery globules of Democritus. God fashioned the sphere of light round himself. God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.42 The point symbolizes light and fire, also the Godhead in so far as light is an image of God or an exemplar of the Deity. This spherical light modelled on the point is also the shining or illuminating body that dwells in the heart of man. The light of nature is the radical moisture (humidum radicale) which, as balsam, works from the heart, like the sun in the macrocosm and, we must conclude, like God in the supracelestial world. Thus does Steeb describe the
, the second God in man.43 The same author derives the gold from the dew or supracelestial balsam sinking into the earth. Here he is probably referring to the older formulations of Maier,44 where the sun generates the gold in the earth. Hence the gold, as Maier says, obtains a simplicity approaching that of the circle (symbol of eternity) and the indivisible point. The gold has a circular form.45 This is the line which runs back upon itself, like the snake that with its head bites its own tail, wherein that supreme and eternal painter and potter, God, may rightly be discerned.46 The gold is a twice-bisected circle, i.e., one divided into four quadrants and therefore a quaternity, a division made by nature that contraries may be bound together by contraries.47 It can therefore, he says, be compared to the sacred city, Jerusalem48 (cf. Revelation 21 : 10ff.). It is a golden castle engirt with a triple wall,49 a visible image of eternity.50 Though gold be mute so far as sound or voice is concerned, yet by virtue of its essence it proclaims and everywhere bears witness to God. And just as God is one in essence, so the gold is one homogeneous substance.51 For Dorn the unity of God,52 the unarius, is the centre of the ternarius, the latter corresponding to the circle drawn round the centre.53 The point as the centre of the quaternio of the elements is the place where Mercurius digests and perfects.54
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: If you mean "Everything is One" then it merely comes to the old Adwaitavada of Shankaracharya. Really speaking, it is not a matter for the mind to decide. It is a matter of experience. In a certain experience you find that "All is One" and Shankara is right. But there are other experiences in which the Vishishtadwaita and even the Dwaita finds justification. Mind only cuts, differentiates, analyses, represents. You can't push these questions too far with the mind, otherwise you bring in the old quarrel of the Philosophers. You can't say: "It is that", or "It must be like this", or "It can't be anything else"; for, it may be all these things at the same time. You can't approach the Highest with thought and express it in speech. Of course, you can express it, but then you diminish it also.
True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become; that is to say, you have the knowledge because you are That. That is the reason why I insist on the attainment of the Supermind as the condition for the experience of the highest Truth, because the mind cannot really know it. In the Supermind thoughts convey different aspects of the same Truth, so different, indeed, that the first aspect is the diametrically opposite of the last and they are all thrown into the One.
2.02 - THE SCINTILLA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[45] The scintillae often appear as golden and silver, and are found in multiple form in the earth.73 They are then called oculi piscium (fishes eyes).74 The fishes eyes are frequently mentioned by the authors, probably first by Morienus Romanus75 and in the Tractatus Aristotelis,76 and then by many later ones.77 In Manget there is a symbol, ascribed to the Philosopher Malus,78 which shows eyes in the stars, in the clouds, in the water and in the earth. The caption says: This stone is under you, and near you, and above you, and around you.79 The eyes indicate that the lapis is in the process of evolution and grows from these ubiquitous eyes.80 Ripley remarks that at the desiccation of the sea a substance is left over that shines like a fishs eye.81 According to Dorn, this shining eye is the sun,82 which plunges the centre of its eye into the heart of man, as if it were the secret of warmth and illumination. The fishs eye is always open, like the eye of God.83 Something of the sort must have been in the mind of the alchemists, as is evidenced by the fact that Eirenaeus Orandus84 used as a motto for his edition of Nicolas Flamel85 the words of Zechariah 4 : 10: And they shall rejoice and see the plummet [lapidem stanneum] in the hand of Zorobabel. These are the seven eyes of the Lord that run to and fro through the whole earth. 3 : 9 is also relevant: Upon one stone there are seven eyes (DV). Firmicus Maternus may be referring to the latter passage when he says:86 The sign of one profane sacrament is
. . . [god from the rock].87 The other is the stone which God promised to send to streng then the foundations of the promised Jerusalem.88 Christ is signified to us by the venerable stone.89 Just as the one stone meant, for the alchemists, the lapis,90 so the fishes eyes meant the seven eyes or the one eye of God, which is the sun.
2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[87] Cadmus is interpreted alchemically as Mercurius in his masculine form (Sol). He seeks his feminine counterpart, the quicksilver, which is his sister (Luna), but she meets him in the shape of the Mercurial serpent, which he must first kill because it contains the furious conflict of warring elements (the chaos). From this arises the harmony of the elements, and the coniunctio can now take place. The spoils of the struggle, in this case the dragons skin, are, according to ancient custom, offered to the hollow oak, the mother, who is the representative of the sacred grove and the fount. In other words, it is offered up to the unconscious as the source of life, which produces harmony out of disharmony.231 Out of the hostility of the elements there arises the bond of friendship between them, sealed in the stone, and this bond guarantees the indissolubility and incorruptibility of the lapis. This piece of alchemical logic is borne out by the fact that, according to the myth, Cadmus and Harmonia turned to stone (evidently because of an embarras de richesse: perfect harmony is a dead end). In another version, they turn into snakes, and even into a basilisk, Dom Pernety232 remarks, for the end-product of the work, incorporated with its like, acquires the power ascribed to the basilisk, so the Philosophers say. For this fanciful author Harmonia is naturally the prima materia, and the marriage of Cadmus,233 which took place with all the gods assisting, is the coniunctio of Sol and Luna, followed by the production of the tincture or lapis. Pernetys interpretation of Harmonia would be correct only if she were still allied with the dragon. But since she lost the reptile, she had logically to change herself and her husb and into snakes.
[88] Thus Malvasius, as well as the more interesting of the commentators, remain within the magic circle of alchemical mythologems. This is not surprising, since Hermetic philosophy, in the form it then took, was the only intellectual instrument that could help fill the dark gaps in the continuity of understanding. The Enigma of Bologna and its commentaries are, in fact, a perfect paradigm of the method of alchemy in general. It had exactly the same effect as the unintelligibility of chemical processes: the Philosopher stared at the paradoxes of the Aelia inscription, just as he stared at the retort, until the archetypal structures of the collective unconscious began to illuminate the darkness.234 And, unless we are completely deluded, the inscription itself seems to be a fantasy sprung from that same paradoxical massa confusa of the collective unconscious. The contradictoriness of the unconscious is resolved by the archetype of the nuptial coniunctio, by which the chaos becomes ordered. Any attempt to determine the nature of the unconscious state runs up against the same difficulties as atomic physics: the very act of observation alters the object observed. Consequently, there is at present no way of objectively determining the real nature of the unconscious.
[89] If we are not, as Malvasius was, convinced of the antiquity of the Aelia inscription, we must look round in the medieval literature for possible sources or at least analogies. Here the motif of the triple prediction, or triple cause, of death might put us on the right trail.235 This motif occurs in the Vita Merlini in the old French romance Merlin, as well as in its later imitations in the Spanish and English literature of the fifteenth century. But the most important item, it seems to me, is the so-called Epigram of the Hermaphrodite, attri buted to Mathieu de Vendme (ca. 1150):
2.05 - Universal Love and how it leads to Self-Surrender, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
How can we love the Vyashti, the particular, without first loving the Samashti, the universal? God is the Samashti, the generalised and the abstract universal whole; and the universe that we see is the Vyashti, the particularised thing. To love the whole universe is possible only by way of loving the Samashti the universalwhich is, as it were, the one unity in which are to be found millions and millions of smaller unities. the Philosophers of India do. not stop I at the particulars; they cast a hurried glance at the particulars, and immediately start to find the generalised forms whieh will include all the particulars. The search after the universal is the one search of Indian philosophy and religion. The Jnni aims at the wholeness of things, at that one absolute and generalised Being, knowing which he knows everything.
The Bhakta wishes to realise that one generalised abstract Person in loving whom he loves the whole universe. The Yogi wishes to have possession of that one generalised form of power, by controlling which he controls this whole universe. The Indian mind, throughout its history, has been directed to this kind of singular search after the universal in everythingin science, in psychology, in love, in philosophy. So the conclusion to which the Bhakta comes is, that, if you go on merely loving one person after another, you may go on loving them so for an infinite length of time, without being in the least able to love the world as a whole.
2.06 - Two Tales of Seeking and Losing, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
If you look carefully, the destination for both the alchemist and the knight-errant should be the Ace of Cups which, for the one, contains phlogiston or the Philosopher's stone or the elixir of long life, and for the other the talisman guarded by the Fisher King, the mysterious vessel whose first poet lacked time-or else was unwilling-to explain it to us; and thus, since then, rivers of ink have flown in conjectures about the Grail, still contended between the Roman religion and the Celtic. (Perhaps the Champagne troubadour wanted precisely this: to keep alive the battle between The Pope and the Druid-Hermit. There is no better place to keep a secret than in an unfinished novel.)
So then the problem that these two companions of ours wanted to solve, arranging the cards around the Ace of Cups, was at once the Great Work of Alchemy and the Quest for the Grail. In the same cards, one after the other, both can recognize the stages of their Art or Adventure: in The Sun, the star of gold or the innocence of the warrior youth; in The Wheel, perpetual motion or the spell of the forest; in Judgment, death and resurrection (of metals and of the soul) or the heavenly call.
2.08 - God in Power of Becoming, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The metaphysical synthesis is complete. Sankhya has been admitted for the separation of the soul from the lower nature, - a separation that must be effected by self-knowledge through the discriminating reason and by transcendence of our subjection to the three gunas constituent of that nature. It has been completed and its limitations exceeded by a large revelation of the unity of the supreme Soul and supreme Nature, para purus.a, para prakr.ti. Vedanta of the Philosophers has been admitted for the self-effacement of the natural separative personality built round the ego. Its method has been used to replace the little personal by the large impersonal being, to annul the separative illusion in the unity of the Brahman and to substitute for the blind seeing of the ego the truer vision of all things in one Self and one Self in all things. Its truth has been completed by the impartial revelation of the Parabrahman from whom originate both the mobile and the immobile, the mutable and the immutable, the action and the silence. Its possible limitations have been transcended by the intimate revelation of the supreme Soul and Lord who becomes here in all Nature, manifests himself in all personality and puts forth the power of his Nature in all action. Yoga has
356
2.08 - The Sword, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Here is another parable. Peter, the Stone of the Philosophers, cuts off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the High Priest the ear is the organ of Spirit). In analysis the spiritual part of Malkuth must be separated from it by the philosophical stone, and then Christus, the
Anointed One, makes it whole once more. "Solve et coagula!"
--
Wine-the airy portion of wine. But the word "inspire" was perhaps derived from observing the derangement of the breathing of persons in divine ecstasy. bringing it into harmony and proportion you will find the hidden stone, the same stone of the Philosophers of which mention has already been made, which turns all into gold. This oil which can eat into the steel, is further that which is written, Liber LXV, i, 16: "As an acid eats into steel . . . so am I unto the Spirit of Man."
Note how closely woven into itself is all this symbolism.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
When one remembers that in almost all nations the Philosopher is only a
further development of the priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood,
--
the church is seconded by the Philosophers: _the_ of "a moral order
of the universe" permeates the whole development even of more modern
--
of Bible: by means of it the _noble classes,_ the Philosophers and the
warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values,
2.13 - The Difficulties of the Mental Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Further, there are two kinds of realisation of Self or Sachchidananda. One is that of the silent passive quietistic, self-absorbed, self-sufficient existence, consciousness and delight, one, impersonal, without play of qualities, turned away from the infinite phenomenon of the universe or viewing it with indifference and without participation. The other is that of the same existence, consciousness, delight sovereign, free, lord of things, acting out of an inalienable calm, pouring itself out in infinite action and quality out of an eternal self-concentration, the one supreme Person holding in himself all this play of personality in a vast equal impersonality, possessing the infinite phenomenon of the universe without attachment but without any inseparable aloofness, with a divine mastery and an innumerable radiation of his eternal luminous self-delight -- as a manifestation which he holds, but by which he is not held, which he governs freely and by which therefore he is not bound. This is not the personal God of the religions or the qualified Brahman of the Philosophers, but that in which personal and impersonal, quality and non-quality are reconciled. It is the Transcendent possessing them both in His being and employing them both as modes for His manifestation. This then is the object of realisation for the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga.
We see at once that from this point of view the realisation of the pure quiescent self which we gain by withdrawing from mind, life and body, is for us only the acquisition of the necessary basis for this greater realisation. Therefore that process is not sufficient for our Yoga; something else is needed more ernbracingly positive. As we drew back from all that constitutes our apparent self and the phenomenon of the universe in which it dwells to the self-existent, self-conscious Brahman, so we must now repossess our mind, life and body with the all-embracing self-existence, self-consciousness and self-delight of the Brahman. We must not only have the possession of a pure self-existence independent of the world-play, but possess all existence as our own; not only know ourselves as an infinite unegoistic consciousness beyond all change in Time and Space, but become one with all the outpouring of consciousness and its creative force in Time and Space; not only be capable of a fathomless peace and quiescence, but also of a free and an infinite delight in universal things. For that and not only pure calm is Sachchidananda, is the Brahman.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
But admittedly, the Philosopher-sages' explanations of why all holons are "self-contradictory" are not very clear, and have caused a great deal of confusion. I think the situation can be explained more easily and a bit more clearly.
The point, as I would put it, is that every holon is a whole/part. There are no wholes and no parts anywhere in the manifest universe; there are only whole/parts. If actual wholes or actual parts really existed somewhere, then they could rest; they would simply be what they were; there would be no massive instability, no internal "selfcontradiction."
2.15 - CAR FESTIVAL AT BALARMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
And, touching the Philosopher's Stone,
Transmute my body's worthless iron
2.18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Above this level of vital mentality and yet more inly extended, is a mind-plane of pure thought and intelligence to which the things of the mental world are the most important realities; those who are under its influence, the Philosopher, thinker, scientist, intellectual creator, the man of the idea, the man of the written or spoken word, the idealist and dreamer are the present mental being at his highest attained summit. This mental man has his life-part, his life of passions and desires and ambitions and life-hopes of all kinds and his lower sensational and physical existence, and this lower part can often equibalance or weigh down his nobler mental element so that, although it is the highest portion of him, it does not become dominant and formative in his whole nature: but this is not typical of him in his greatest development, for there the vital and physical are controlled and subjected by the thinking will and intelligence. The mental man cannot transform his nature, but he can control and harmonise it and lay on it the law of a mental ideal, impose a balance or a sublimating and refining influence, and give a high consistency to the multipersonal confusion and conflict or the summary patchwork of our divided and half-constructed being. He can be the observer and governor of his own mind and life, can consciously develop them and become to that extent a self-creator.
This mind of pure intelligence has behind it our inner or subliminal mind which senses directly all the things of the mindplane, is open to the action of a world of mental forces, and can feel the ideative and other imponderable influences which act upon the material world and the life-plane but which at present we can only infer and cannot directly experience: these intangibles and imponderables are to the mental man real and patent and he regards them as truths demanding to be realised in our or the earth's nature. On the inner plane mind and mindsoul independent of the body can become to us an entire reality, and we can consciously live in them as much as in the body. Thus to live in mind and the things of the mind, to be an intelligence rather than a life and a body, is our highest position, short of spirituality, in the degrees of Nature. The mental man, the man of a self-dominating and self-formative mind and will conscious of an ideal and turned towards its realisation, the high intellect, the thinker, the sage, less kinetic and immediately effective than the vital man, who is the man of action and outer swift lifefulfilment, but as powerful and eventually even more powerful to open new vistas to the race, is the normal summit of Nature's evolutionary formation on the human plane. These three degrees of mentality, clear in themselves, but most often mixed in our composition, are to our ordinary intelligence only psychological types that happen to have developed, and we do not discover any other significance in them; but in fact they are full of significance, for they are the steps of Nature's evolution of mental being towards its self-exceeding, and, as thinking mind is the highest step she can now attain, the perfected mental man is the rarest and highest of her normal human creatures. To go farther she has to bring into the mind and make active in mind, life and body the spiritual principle.
2.2.01 - The Problem of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
inexplicably aware. But such an explanation may account, - if we admit this impossible magic of the conscious response of an inconscient to the inconscient, - for sense and reflex action [yet] becomes absurd if we try to explain by it thought and will, the imagination of the poet, the attention of the scientist, the reasoning of the Philosopher. Call it mechanical cerebration, if you will, but no mere mechanism of grey stuff of brain can explain these things; a gland cannot write Hamlet or pulp of brain work out a system of metaphysics. There is no parity, kinship or visible equation between the alleged cause or agent on the one side and on the other the effect and its observable process. There is a gulf here that cannot be bridged by any stress of forcible affirmation or crossed by any stride of inference or violent leap of argumentative reason. Consciousness and an inconscient substance may be connected, may interpenetrate, may act on each other, but they are and remain things opposite, incommensurate with each other, fundamentally diverse. An observing and active consciousness emerging as a character of an eternal Inconscience is a self-contradictory affirmation, an unintelligible phenomenon, and the contradiction must be healed or explained before this affirmation can be accepted. But it cannot be healed unless either the Inconscient has a latent power for consciousness - and then its inconscience is phenomenal only, not fundamental, - or else is the veil of a Consciousness which emerges out of a state of involution which appears to us as an inconscience.
There is no doubt a connection and interdependence between consciousness and the inconscient substance in which it resides and through which it seems to operate. Consciousness depends upon the body and its functionings, on the brain, nerves, gland-action, right physiological working, for its own firm state and action. It uses them as its instruments and, if they are injured or unable to act, the action of the consciousness may also be in part or whole impaired, impeded or suspended. But this does not prove that the action of consciousness is an action of the body and nothing else. There is an instrumentation and if the instrument is impaired, the user of the instrument can no longer manifest himself rightly through it; if it is destroyed, he
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"A man will cherish the illusion that he is the doer as long as he has not seen God, as long as he has not touched the Philosopher's Stone. So long will he know the distinction between his good and bad actions. This awareness of distinction is due to God's my; and it is necessary for the purpose of running His illusory world. But a man can realize God if he takes shelter under His Vidy-my and follows the path of righteousness. He who knows God and realizes Him is able to go beyond my. He who firmly believes that God alone is the Doer and he himself a mere instrument is a jivanmukta, a free soul though living in a body. I said this to Keshab Chandra Sen."
GIRISH (to the doctor): "How do you know that free will exists?"
2.22 - THE STILLEST HOUR, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
you ride to every truth." The discipline of communication might have served the Philosopher better than the
indiscriminate flattery of his solitude. But in this respect
2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Highest, as the inmost spirit and motive of the supreme action and the crown and core of the supreme knowledge. The phrases used and the spiritual emotion with which they vibrate seem to give the most intense prominence possible and an utmost importance to the personal truth and presence of the Godhead. It is no abstract Absolute of the Philosopher, no indifferent impersonal
Presence or ineffable Silence intolerant of all relations to whom this complete surrender of all our works can be made and this closeness and intimacy of oneness with him in all the parts of our conscious existence imposed as the condition and law of our perfection or of whom this divine intervention and protection and deliverance are the promise. It is a Master of our works, a Friend and Lover of our soul, an intimate Spirit of our life, an indwelling and overdwelling Lord of all our personal and impersonal self and nature who alone can utter to us this near and moving message. And yet this is not the common relation established by the religions between man living in his sattwic or
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But after some aeons, looking out once more on that vain panorama, he might have detected in one small corner at least of the universe this phenomenon, a corner where Matter had been prepared, its operations sufficiently fixed, organised, made stable, adapted as a scene of a new development, - the phenomenon of a living matter, a life in things that had emerged and become visible: but still the Witness would have understood nothing, for evolutionary Nature still veils her secret. He would have seen a Nature concerned only with establishing this outburst of life, this new creation, but life living for itself with no significance in it, - a wanton and abundant creatrix busy scattering the seed of her new power and establishing a multitude of its forms in a beautiful and luxurious profusion or, later, multiplying endlessly genus and species for the pure pleasure of creation: a small touch of lively colour and movement would have been flung into the immense cosmic desert and nothing more. The Witness could not have imagined that a thinking mind would appear in this minute island of life, that a consciousness could awake in the Inconscient, a new and greater subtler vibration come to the surface and betray more clearly the existence of the submerged Spirit. It would have seemed to him at first that Life had somehow become aware of itself and that was all; for this scanty new-born mind seemed to be only a servant of life, a contrivance to help life to live, a machinery for its maintenance, for attack and defence, for certain needs and vital satisfactions, for the liberation of life-instinct and life-impulse. It could not have seemed possible to him that in this little life, so inconspicuous amid the immensities, in one sole species out of this petty multitude, a mental being would emerge, a mind serving life still but also making life and matter its servants, using them for the fulfilment of its own ideas, will, wishes, - a mental being who would create all manner of utensils, tools, instruments out of Matter for all kinds of utilities, erect out of it cities, houses, temples, theatres, laboratories, factories, chisel from it statues and carve cave-cathedrals, invent architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry and a hundred crafts and arts, discover the mathematics and physics of the universe and the hidden secret of its structure, live for the sake of mind and its interests, for thought and knowledge, develop into the thinker, the Philosopher and scientist and, as a supreme defiance to the reign of Matter, awake in himself to the hidden Godhead, become the hunter after the invisible, the mystic and the spiritual seeker.
But if after several ages or cycles the Witness had looked again and seen this miracle in full process, even then perhaps, obscured by his original experience of the sole reality of Matter in the universe, he would still not have understood; it would still seem impossible to him that the hidden Spirit could wholly emerge, complete in its consciousness, and dwell upon the earth as the self-knower and world-knower, Nature's ruler and possessor. "Impossible!" he might say, "all that has happened is nothing much, a little bubbling of sensitive grey stuff of brain, a queer freak in a bit of inanimate Matter moving about on a small dot in the Universe." On the contrary, a new Witness intervening at the end of the story, informed of the past developments but unobsessed by the deception of the beginning, might cry out,
3.00.2 - Introduction, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the same time panacea, the Philosophers son, sapientia Dei, and donum
Spiritus Sancti.
30.06 - The Poet and The Seer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Perhaps Plato would not accept this kind of philosophy. He would not be prepared to give an equal importance to the two phenomena - the ardours of the life-process and the pleasures of poetry - balanced side by side as two separate entities of the same value. It is well and good if the poetical work can be made an aid to the discipline of life. Otherwise, just for the sake of creation of beauty, for mere enjoyment, for the skilful and sweet display of the ordinary intelligence and of the unregenerated vital, poetry should not be harboured in our consciousness. Therefore Plato wants us to become hermits of an absolute purity. Not the creation of the poet but that of the Philosopher is the thing needed.
The poet wants to snatch beauty from the longings of the natural vital, Platos wisdom is all for the ultimate truth seized out of the moral sense. But there is no necessity of this duel between the poet and the Philosopher. The true poet will seize beauty through the pure sense of delight in the purified vital and at the same time intuit the absolute truth with the divine vision. The vision of the Truth breaks out of the sense of delight, while the sense of delight finds its foundation in the truth-vision. Thus the poet and the seer become united and the delightful and the good stand identified.
Whatever may be the case of the poet, it is not that such a notion does not prevail in India at least about the votaries of other arts. The Buddhist Vishuddhi Magga has classed the painter with the cook, that is, both are taken to serve the same purpose, both cater only to the pleasure of the senses.
30.12 - The Obscene and the Ugly - Form and Essence, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
O artist, have you realised the bliss with which the Divine has filled the ugly and the filthy to the brim? If so, then you have acquired the Philosopher's stone which transforms even the ugly into the beautiful.
When Duhshasana, the second Kaurava, unrobed Draupadi, it must have been something indecent to look at. But when Sri Krishna robbed the bathing gopi girls of their clothes, it was supremely beautiful.
3.01 - INTRODUCTION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[104] The alchemists endeavours to unite the opposites culminate in the chymical marriage, the supreme act of union in which the work reaches its consummation. After the hostility of the four elements has been overcome, there still remains the last and most formidable opposition, which the alchemist expressed very aptly as the relationship between male and female. We are inclined to think of this primarily as the power of love, of passion, which drives the two opposite poles together, forgetting that such a vehement attraction is needed only when an equally strong resistance keeps them apart. Although enmity was put only between the serpent and the woman (Genesis 3 : 15), this curse nevertheless fell upon the relationship of the sexes in general. Eve was told: Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And Adam was told: Cursed is the ground for thy sake . . . because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife (3 : 16f.). Primal guilt lies between them, an interrupted state of enmity, and this appears unreasonable only to our rational mind but not to our psychic nature. Our reason is often influenced far too much by purely physical considerations, so that the union of the sexes seems to it the only sensible thing and the urge for union the most sensible instinct of all. But if we conceive of nature in the higher sense as the totality of all phenomena, then the physical is only one of her aspects, the other is pneumatic or spiritual. The first has always been regarded as feminine, the second as masculine. The goal of the one is union, the goal of the other is discrimination. Because it overvalues the physical, our contemporary reason lacks spiritual orientation, that is, pneuma. The alchemists seem to have had an inkling of this, for how otherwise could they have come upon that strange myth of the country of the King of the Sea, where only like pairs with like and the land is unfruitful?1 It was obviously a realm of innocent friendship, a kind of paradise or golden age, to which the Philosophers, the representatives of the physical, felt obliged to put an end with their good advice. But what happened was not by any means a natural union of the sexes; on the contrary it was a royal incest, a sinful deed that immediately led to imprisonment and death and only afterwards restored the fertility of the country. As a parable the myth is certainly ambiguous; like alchemy in general, it can be understood spiritually as well as physically, tam moralis quam chymica.2 The physical goal of alchemy was gold, the panacea, the elixir of life; the spiritual one was the rebirth of the (spiritual) light from the darkness of Physis: healing self-knowledge and the deliverance of the pneumatic body from the corruption of the flesh.
[105] A subtle feature of the Visio Arislei is that the very one who is meditating a pairing of the sexes is king of the land of innocence. Thus the rex marinus says: Truly I have a son and a daughter, and therefore I am king over my subjects, because they possess nothing of these things. Yet I have borne a son and a daughter in my brain.3 Hence the king is a potential traitor to the paradisal state of innocence because he can generate in his head, and he is king precisely because he is capable of this sin against the previous state of innocence. Since he can be different from them he is more than any of his subjects and therefore rightly their king, although, from the physical standpoint, he is counted a bad ruler.4
3.01 - Love and the Triple Path, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Since then in the union of these three powers lies our base of perfection, the seeker of an integral self-fulfilment in the Divine must avoid or throw away, if he has them at all, the misunderstanding and mutual depreciation which we often find existent between the followers of the three paths. Those who have the cult of knowledge seem often, if not to despise, yet to look downward from their dizzy eminence on the path of the devotee as if it were a thing inferior, ignorant, good only for souls that are not yet ready for the heights of the Truth. It is true that devotion without knowledge is often a thing raw, crude, blind and dangerous, as the errors, crimes, follies of the religious have too often shown. But this is because devotion in them has not found its own path, its own real principle, has not therefore really entered on the path, but is fumbling and feeling after it, is on one of the bypaths that lead to it; and knowledge too at this stage is as imperfect as devotion, dogmatic, schismatic, intolerant, bound up in the narrowness of some single and exclusive principle, even that being usually very imperfectly seized. When the devotee has grasped the power that shall raise him, has really laid hold on love, that in the end purifies and enlarges him as effectively as knowledge can; they are equal powers, though their methods of arriving at the same goal are different. The pride of the Philosopher looking down on the passion of the devotee arises, as does all pride, from a certain deficiency of his nature; for the intellect too exclusively developed misses what the heart has to offer. The intellect is not in every way superior to the heart; if it opens more readily doors at which the heart is apt to fumble in vain, it is, itself, apt to miss truths which to the heart are very near and easy to hold. And if when the way of thought deepens into spiritual experience, it arrives readily at the ethereal heights, pinnacles, skyey widenesses, it cannot without the aid of the heart fathom the intense and rich abysses and oceanic depths of the divine being and the divine Ananda.
The way of Bhakti is supposed often to be necessarily inferior because it proceeds by worship which belongs to that stage of spiritual experience where there is a difference, an insufficient unity between the human soul and the Divine, because its very principle is love and love means always two, the lover and the beloved, a dualism therefore, while oneness is the highest spiritual experience, and because it seeks after the personal God while the Impersonal is the highest and the eternal truth, if not even the sole Reality. But worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; that deepens into the intensity of divine love; that love leads to the joy of closeness in our relations with the Divine; the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. Love too as well as knowledge brings us to a highest oneness and it gives to that oneness its greatest possible depth and intensity. It is true that love returns gladly upon a difference in oneness, by which the oneness itself becomes richer and sweeter. But here we may say that the heart is wiser than the thought, at least than that thought which fixes upon opposite ideas of the Divine and concentrates on one to the exclusion of the other which seems its contrary, but is really its complement and a means of its greatest fulfilment. This is the weakness of the mind that it limits itself by its thoughts, its positive and negative ideas, the aspects of the Divine Reality that it sees, and tends too much to pit one against the other.
3.02 - King and Queen, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
magisterium nothing is concealed by the Philosophers except the secret of
the art which may not be revealed to all and sundry. For were that to
3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[110] In alchemy, the sun signifies first of all gold, whose sign it shares. But just as the philosophical gold is not the common gold,5 so the sun is neither just the metallic gold6 nor the heavenly orb.7 Sometimes the sun is an active substance hidden in the gold and is extracted as the tinctura rubea (red tincture). Sometimes, as the heavenly body, it is the possessor of magically effective and transformative rays. As gold and a heavenly body8 it contains an active sulphur of a red colour, hot and dry.9 Because of this red sulphur the alchemical sun, like the corresponding gold, is red.10 As every alchemist knew, gold owes its red colour to the admixture of Cu (copper), which he interpreted as Kypris (the Cyprian, Venus), mentioned in Greek alchemy as the transformative substance.11 Redness, heat, and dryness are the classical qualities of the Egyptian Set (Gk. Typhon), the evil principle which, like the alchemical sulphur, is closely connected with the devil. And just as Typhon has his kingdom in the forbidden sea, so the sun, as sol centralis, has its sea, its crude perceptible water, and as sol coelestis its subtle imperceptible water. This sea water (aqua pontica) is extracted from sun and moon. Unlike the Typhonian sea, the life-giving power of this water is praised, though this does not mean that it is invariably good.12 It is the equivalent of the two-faced Mercurius, whose poisonous nature is often mentioned. The Typhonian aspect of the active sun-substance, of the red sulphur, of the water that does not make the hands wet,13 and of the sea water should not be left out of account. The author of the Novum lumen chemicum cannot suppress a reference to the latters paradoxical nature: Do not be disturbed because you sometimes find contradictions in my treatises, after the custom of the Philosophers; these are necessary, if you understand that no rose is found without thorns.14
[111] The active sun-substance also has favourable effects. As the so-called balsam it drips from the sun and produces lemons, oranges, wine, and, in the mineral kingdom, gold.15 In man the balsam forms the radical moisture, from the sphere of the supracelestial waters; it is the shining or lucent body which from mans birth enkindles the inner warmth, and from which come all the motions of the will and the principle of all appetition. It is a vital spirit, and it has its seat in the brain and its governance in the heart.16
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[114] The miraculous power of the sun, says Dorn, is due to the fact that all the simple elements are contained in it, as they are in heaven and in the other heavenly bodies. We say that the sun is a single element, he continues, tacitly identifying it with the quintessence. This view is explained by a remarkable passage from the Consilium coniugii: the Philosophers maintained that the father of the gold and silver is the animating principle [animal] of earth and water, or man or part of a man, such as hair, blood, menstruum, etc.25 The idea at the back of this is that primitive conception of a universal power of growth, healing, magic, and prestige,26 which is to be found as much in the sun as in men and plants, so that not only the sun but man too, and especially the enlightened man, the adept, can generate the gold by virtue of this universal power. It was clear to Dorn (and to other alchemists as well) that the gold was not made by the usual chemical procedures,27 for which reason he called gold-making (chrysopoeia) a miracle. The miracle was performed by a natura abscondita (hidden nature), a metaphysical entity perceived not with the outward eyes, but solely by the mind.28 It was infused from heaven,29 provided that the adept had approached as closely as possible to things divine and at the same time had extracted from the substances the subtlest powers fit for the miraculous act. There is in the human body a certain aethereal substance, which preserves its other elemental parts and causes them to continue,30 he says. This substance or virtue is hindered in its operations by the corruption of the body; but the Philosophers, through a kind of divine inspiration, knew that this virtue and heavenly vigour can be freed from its fetters, not by its contrary . . . but by its like.31 Dorn calls it veritas. It is the supreme power, an unconquerable fortress, which hath but very few friends, and is besieged by innumerable enemies. It is defended by the immaculate Lamb, and signifies the heavenly Jerusalem in the inner man. In this fortress is the true and indubitable treasure, which is not eaten into by moths, nor dug out by thieves, but remaineth for ever, and is taken hence after death.32
[115] For Dorn, then, the spark of divine fire implanted in man becomes what Goe the in his original version of Faust called Fausts entelechy, which was carried away by the angels. This supreme treasure the animal man understandeth not. . . . We are made like stones, having eyes and seeing not.33
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[118] To the alchemical way of thinking the shadow is no mere privatio lucis; just as the bell and its clapper are of a tangible substantiality, so too are light and shadow. Only thus can the saying of Hermes be understood. In its entirety it runs: Son, extract from the ray its shadow, and the corruption that arises from the mists which gather about it, befoul it and veil its light; for it is consumed by necessity and by its redness.43 Here the shadow is thought of quite concretely; it is a mist that is capable not only of obscuring the sun but of befouling it (coinquinarea strong expression). The redness (rubedo) of the suns light is a reference to the red sulphur in it, the active burning principle, destructive in its effects. In man the natural sulphur, Dorn says, is identical with an elemental fire which is the cause of corruption, and this fire is enkindled by an invisible sun unknown to many, that is, the sun of the Philosophers. The natural sulphur tends to revert to its first nature, so that the body becomes sulphurous and fitted to receive the fire that corrupts man back to his first essence.44 The sun is evidently an instrument in the physiological and psychological drama of return to the prima materia, the death that must be undergone if man is to get back to the original condition of the simple elements and attain the incorrupt nature of the pre-worldly paradise. For Dorn this process was spiritual and moral as well as physical.
[119] Sol appears here in a dubious, indeed a sulphurous light: it corrupts, obviously because of the sulphur it contains.45
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[121] The metaphorical designation of Christ as Sol50 in the language of the Church Fathers was taken quite literally by the alchemists and applied to their sol terrenus. When we remember that the alchemical Sol corresponds psychologically to consciousness, the diurnal side of the psyche, we must add the Christ analogy to this symbolism. Christ appears essentially as the son the son of his mother-bride. The role of the son does in fact devolve upon ego-consciousness since it is the offspring of the maternal unconscious. Now according to the arch authority, the Tabula smaragdina, Sol is the father of Mercurius, who in the above quotation appears as feminine and as the mother-bride. In that capacity Mercurius is identical with Luna, andvia the Luna-Mary-Ecclesia symbolismis equated with the Virgin. Thus the treatise Exercitationes in Turbam says: As blood is the origin of flesh, so is Mercurius the origin of Sol . . . and thus Mercurius is Sol and Sol is Mercurius.51 Sol is therefore father and son at once, and his feminine counterpart is mother and daughter in one person; furthermore, Sol and Luna are merely aspects of the same substance that is simultaneously the cause and the product of both, namely Mercurius duplex, of whom the Philosophers say that he contains everything that is sought by the wise. This train of thought is based on a quaternity:
[122] Although the Sol symbolism is reminiscent of the dogmatic models, its basic schema is very different; for the dogmatic schema is a Trinity embracing only the Deity but not the universe.52 The alchemical schema appears to embrace only the material world, yet, on account of its quaternary character, it comes near to being a representation of totality as exemplified in the symbol of the cross erected between heaven and earth. The cross is by implication the Christian totality symbol: as an instrument of torture it expresses the sufferings on earth of the incarnate God, and as a quaternity it expresses the universe, which also includes the material world. If we now add to this cruciform schema the four protagonists of the divine world-drama the Father as auctor rerum, the Son, his counterpart the Devil (to fight whom he became man), and the Holy Ghost, we get the following quaternity:
3.02 - The Psychology of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
truth hears both the Stone and the Philosopher speaking as if
out of one mouth." 29 the Philosopher is Hermes, and the
Stone is identical with Mercurius, the Latin Hermes. 30 From
3.03 - SULPHUR, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[136] This intimate connection with Mercurius makes it evident that sulphur is a spiritual or psychic substance of universal import, of which nearly everything may be said that is said of Mercurius. Thus sulphur is the soul not only of metals but of all living things; in the Tractatus aureus it is equated with nostra anima (our soul).96 The Turba says: The sulphurs are souls that were hidden in the four bodies.97 Paracelsus likewise calls sulphur the soul.98 In Mylius sulphur produces the ferment or soul which gives life to the imperfect body.99 The Tractatus Micreris says: . . . until the green son appears, who is its100 soul, which the Philosophers have called the green bird and bronze and sulphur.101 The soul is also described as the hidden part [occultum] of the sulphur.102
[137] In the sphere of Christian psychology, green has a spermatic, procreative quality, and for this reason it is the colour attributed to the Holy Ghost as the creative principle.103 Accordingly Dorn says: The male and universal seed, the first and most potent, is the solar sulphur, the first part and most potent cause of all generation.104 It is the life-spirit itself. In his De tenebris contra naturam Dorn says: We have said before that the life of the world is the light of nature and the celestial sulphur, whose substrate [subiectum] is the aetheric moisture and the heat of the firmament, namely Sol and Luna.105 Sulphur has here attained cosmic significance and is equated with the light of nature, the supreme source of knowledge for the natural philosophers. But this light does not shine unhindered, says Dorn. It is obscured by the darkness of the elements in the human body. For him, therefore, sulphur is a shining, heavenly being. Though this sulphur is a son who comes from imperfect bodies, he is ready to put on the white and purple garments.106 In Ripley he is a spirit of generative power, who works in the moisture.107 In the treatise De sulphure he is the virtue of all things and the source of illumination and of all knowledge.108 He knows, in fact, everything.109
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[139] These unfavourable accounts evidently impressed one of the adepts so much that, in a marginal note, he added diabolus to the causae corruptionis.115 This remark is illuminating: it forms the counterpoint to the luminous role of sulphur, for sulphur is a Lucifer or Phosphorus (light-bringer), from the most beautiful star in the chymic firmament down to the candelulae,little bits of sulphurous tow such as old women sell for lighting fires.116 In addition to so many other qualities, sulphur shares this extreme paradox with Mercurius, besides having like him a connection with Venus, though here the allusion is veiled and more discreet: Our Venus is not the common sulphur, which burns and is consumed with the combustion of the fire and of the corruption; but the whiteness of the Venus of the Sages is consumed with the combustion of the white and the red [albedinis et rubedinis], and this combustion is the entire whitening [dealbatio] of the whole work. Therefore two sulphurs are mentioned and two quicksilvers,117 and these the Philosophers have named one and one,118 and they rejoice in one another,119 and the one contains the other.120
[140] Another allusion to Venus occurs in one of the parables in De sulphure,121 about an alchemist who is seeking the sulphur. His quest leads him to the grove of Venus, and there he learns through a voice, which later turns out to be Saturns, that Sulphur is held a prisoner at the comm and of his own mother. He is praised as the artificer of a thousand things, as the heart of all things, as that which endows living things with understanding, as the begetter of every flower and blossom on herb and tree, and finally as the painter of all colours.122 This might well be a description of Eros. In addition we learn that he was imprisoned because in the view of the alchemists he had shown himself too obliging towards his mother. Although we are not told who his mother was, we may conjecture that it was Venus herself who shut up her naughty Cupid.123 This interpretation is corroborated by the fact, firstly, that Sulphur, unknown to the alchemist, was in the grove of Venus124 (woods, like trees, have a maternal significance); secondly, that Saturn introduced himself as the governor of the prison, and all alchemists with knowledge of astrology would have been familiar with the secret nature of Saturn;125 thirdly, that after the disappearance of the voice the alchemist, falling asleep, saw in the same grove a fountain and near it the personified Sulphur; and, finally, that the vision ends with the chymical embrace in the bath. Here Venus is undoubtedly the amor sapientiae who puts a check on Sulphurs roving charms. The latter may well derive from the fact that his seat in the Uroboros is in the tail of the dragon.126 Sulphur is the masculine element par excellence, the sperma homogeneum;127 and since the dragon is said to impregnate himself, his tail is the masculine and his mouth the feminine organ. Like Beya,128 who engulfed her brother in her own body and dissolved him into atoms, the dragon devours himself from the tail upwards until his whole body has been swallowed into his head.129 Being the inner fire of Mercurius,130 Sulphur obviously partakes of his most dangerous and most evil nature, his violence being personified in the dragon and the lion, and his concupiscence in Hermes Kyllenios.131 The dragon whose nature sulphur shares is often spoken of as the dragon of Babel or, more accurately, the dragons head (caput draconis), which is a most pernicious poison, a poisonous vapour breathed out by the flying dragon. The dragons head comes with great swiftness from Babylon. However, the winged dragon that stands for quicksilver becomes a poison-breathing monster only after its union with the wingless dragon, which corresponds to sulphur.132 Sulphur here plays an evil role that accords well with the sinful Babel. Furthermore, this dragon is equated with the human-headed serpent of paradise, which had the imago et similitudo Dei in its head, this being the deeper reason why the dragon devours its hated body. His head lives in eternity, and therefore it is called glorious life, and the angels serve him.133 This is a reference to Matthew 4: 11: Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
3.04 - Immersion in the Bath, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
journey, as the Visio Arislei proves. There the Philosophers are shut
21up with the brother-sister pair in a triple glass-house at the bottom of the
3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
), which Christianos190 calls the ichor of the Philosopher (
).191 The relation of the moon to the soul, much stressed in antiquity,192 also occurs in alchemy though with a different nuance. Usually it is said that from the moon comes the dew, but the moon is also the aqua mirifica193 that extracts the souls from the bodies or gives the bodies life and soul. Together with Mercurius, Luna sprinkles the dismembered dragon with her moisture and brings him to life again, makes him live, walk, and run about, and change his colour to the nature of blood.194 As the water of ablution, the dew falls from heaven, purifies the body, and makes it ready to receive the soul;195 in other words, it brings about the albedo, the white state of innocence, which like the moon and a bride awaits the bridegroom.
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[157] The age-old belief that the moon promotes the growth of plants led in alchemy not only to similar statements but also to the curious idea that the moon is itself a plant. Thus the Rosarium says that Sol is called a great animal whereas Luna is a plant.196 In the alchemical pictures there are numerous sun-and-moon trees.197 In the Super arborem Aristotelis, the circle of the moon perches in the form of a stork on a wonderworking tree by the grave of Hermes.198 Galen199 explains the arbor philosophica as follows: There is a certain herb or plant, named Lunatica or Berissa,200 whose roots are metallic earth, whose stem is red, veined with black, and whose flowers are like those of the marjoram; there are thirty of them, corresponding to the age of the moon in its waxing and waning. Their colour is yellow.201 Another name for Lunatica is Lunaria, whose flowers Dorn mentions, attri buting to them miraculous powers.202 Khunrath says: From this little salty fountain grows also the tree of the sun and moon, the red and white coral-tree of our sea, which is that same Lunaria and whose salt is called Luna Philosophorum et dulcedo sapientum (sweetness of the sages).203 The Allegoriae super librum Turbae describe the moon-plant thus: In the lunar sea204 there is a sponge planted, having blood and sentience [sensum],205 in the manner of a tree that is rooted in the sea and moveth not from its place. If thou wouldst handle the plant, take a sickle to cut it with, but have good care that the blood floweth not out, for it is the poison of the Philosophers.206
[158] From all this it would seem that the moon-plant is a kind of mandrake and has nothing to do with the botanical Lunaria (honesty). In the herbal of Tabernaemontanus, in which all the magico-medicinal properties of plants are carefully listed, there is no mention of the alchemical Lunatica or Lunaria. On the other hand it is evident that the Lunatica is closely connected with the tree of the sea in Arabian alchemy207 and hence with the arbor philosophica,208 which in turn has parallels with the Cabalistic tree of the Sefiroth209 and with the tree of Christian mysticism210 and Hindu philosophy.211
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Belinus, as Ruska is probably right in conjecturing, is the same as Apollonius of Tyana,225 to whom some of the sermons in the Turba are attributed. In Sermo 32, Bonellus discusses the problem of death and transformation, likewise touched on in our text. The other sermons of Bonellus have nothing to do with our text, however, nor does the motif of resurrection, on account of its ubiquity, signify much, so that the Dicta in all probability have no connection with the Turba. A more likely source for the Dicta would be the (Harranite?) treatise of Artefius, Clavis maioris sapientiae:226 Our master, the Philosopher Belenius, said, Set your light in a vessel of clear glass, and observe that all the wisdom of this world revolves round the following three . . .227 And again: But one day my master, the Philosopher Bolemus, called me and said, Eh! my son, I hope that thou art a man of spiritual understanding and canst attain to the highest degree of wisdom.228 Then follows an explanation about how two contrary natures, active and passive, arose from the first simple substance. In the beginning God said without uttering a word, Let there be such a creature, and thereupon the simple (simplex) was there. Then God created nature or the prima materia, the first passive or receptive [principle], in which everything was present in principle and in potency. In order to end this state of suspension God created the causa agens, like to the circle of heaven, which he resolved to call Light. But this Light received a certain sphere, the first creature, within its hollowness. The properties of this sphere were heat and motion. It was evidently the sun, whereas the cold and passive principle would correspond to the moon.229
[165] It seems to me not unlikely that the Dicta Belini are connected with this passage from Artefius rather than with the Turba, since they have nothing to do with the sermons of Apollonius. They may therefore represent a tradition independent of the Turba, and this is the more likely since Artefius seems to have been a very ancient author of Arabic provenance.230 He shares the doctrine of the simplex with the Liber quartorum,231 which too is probably of Harranite origin. I mention his theory of the creation here despite the fact that it has no parallels in the Dicta. It seemed to me worth noting because of its inner connection with the Apophasis megale of Simon Magus. The Dicta are not concerned with the original separation of the natures but rather with the synthesis which bears much the same relation to the sublimation of the human mind (exaltatio intellectus) as the procedures of the Liber quartorum.232
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[176] Kalids son of the dog is the same as the much extolled son of the Philosophers. The ambiguity of this figure is thus stressed: it is at once bright as day and dark as night, a perfect coincidentia oppositorum expressing the divine nature of the self. This thought, which seems an impossible one for our Christian feelings, is nevertheless so logical and so irresistible that, by however strange and devious a route, it forced its way into alchemy. And because it is a natural truth it is not at all surprising that it became articulate very much earlier. We are told in the Elenchos of Hippolytus that, according to Aratus,
Cynosura286 is the [little] Bear, the Second Creation, the small, narrow way,287 and not the great Bear [
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[212] Herewith we end our contemplation of the text. The question now arises: Did the alchemists really have such thoughts and conceal them in their ornate metaphors? In other words, did Philaletha, the pseudonymous author of our text, have anything like the thoughts and ideas which I have put forward by way of interpretation? I regard this as out of the question, and yet I believe that these authors invariably said the best, most apposite, and clearest thing they could about the matter in hand. For our taste and our intellectual requirements this performance is, however, so unsatisfactory that we ourselves feel compelled to make a renewed attempt to say the same thing in still clearer words. It seems obvious to us that what we think about it was never thought by the alchemists, for if it had been it would doubtless have come out long ago. the Philosophers took the greatest pains to unearth and reveal the secret of the stone, accusing the ancients of having written too copiously and too obscurely. If they, on their own admission, wrote typice, symbolice, metaphorice, this was the best they could do, and it is thanks to their labours that we are today in a position to say anything at all about the secrets of alchemy.
[213] All understanding that is not directly of a mathematical nature (which, incidentally, understands nothing but merely formulates) is conditioned by its time. Fundamental to alchemy is a true and genuine mystery which since the seventeenth century has been understood unequivocally as psychic. Nor can we moderns conceive it to be anything except a psychic product whose meaning may be elicited by the methods and empirical experience of our twentieth century medical psychology. But I do not imagine for a moment that the psychological interpretation of a mystery must necessarily be the last word. If it is a mystery it must have still other aspects. Certainly I believe that psychology can unravel the secrets of alchemy, but it will not lay bare the secret of these secrets. We may therefore expect that at some time in the future our attempt at explanation will be felt to be just as metaphorical and symbolical as we have found the alchemical one to be, and that the mystery of the stone, or of the self, will then develop an aspect which, though still unconscious to us today, is nevertheless foreshadowed in our formulations, though in so veiled a form that the investigator of the future will ask himself, just as we do, whether we knew what we meant.
3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[290] These articles (whose subject is sometimes masculine and sometimes neuter) describe the sun-moon child who is laid in the cradle of the four elements, attains full power through them and the earth, rises to heaven and receives the power of the upper world, and then returns to earth, accomplishing, it seems, a triumph of wholeness (gloria totius mundi). The words So wilt thou have are evidently addressed to the Philosopher, for he is the artifex of the filius philosophorum. If he succeeds in transforming the arcane substance he will simultaneously accomplish his own wholeness, which will manifest itself as the glory of the whole world.
[291] There can be no doubt that the arcane substance, whether in neuter or personified form, rises from the earth, unites the opposites, and then returns to earth, thereby achieving its own transformation into the elixir. He riseth up and goeth down in the tree of the sun, till he becomes the elixir, says the Consilium coniugii.541 The text continues:
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As to how the son of man [filius hominis] is generated by the Philosopher and the fruit of the virgin is produced, it is necessary that he be exalted from the earth and cleansed of all earthliness; then he rises as a whole into the air and is changed into spirit. Thus the word of the Philosopher is fulfilled: He ascends from earth to heaven and puts on the power of Above and Below, and lays aside his earthly and uncleanly nature.560
This complete identification of the lapis with the son of man must obviously end with its ascension. But that contradicts the original and widespread conception of the lapis as the tincture or medicine, which has meaning and value only if it applies itself to the base substances of the lower world. The upper world is in need of no medicine, since it is incorruptible anyway. A redeemer who proceeds from matter and returns to matter gradually became unthinkable. Those who identified the lapis absolutely with Christ stopped working in the laboratory, and those who preferred laboratory work slowly gave up their mystic language.
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[321] Some light is thrown on the numerous overlapping significations of salt, and the obscurity begins to clear up, when we are informed, further, that one of its principal meanings is soul. As the white substance it is the white woman, and the salt of our magnesia629 is a spark of the anima mundi.630 For Glauber the salt is feminine and corresponds to Eve.631 The Gloria mundi says: The salt of the earth is the soul.632 This pregnant sentence contains within it the whole ambiguity of alchemy. On the one hand the soul is the aqua permanens, which dissolves and coagulates, the arcane substance which is at once the transformer and the transformed, the nature which conquers nature. On the other hand it is the human soul imprisoned in the body as the anima mundi is in matter, and this soul undergoes the same transformations by death and purification, and finally by glorification, as the lapis. It is the tincture which coagulates all substances, indeed it even fixes (figit) itself; it comes from the centre of the earth and is the destroyed earth, nor is there anything on the earth like to the tincture.633 The soul is therefore not an earthly but a transcendental thing, regardless of the fact that the alchemists expected it to appear in a retort. This contradiction presented no difficulties to the medieval mind. There was a good reason for this: the Philosophers were so fascinated by their own psychisms that, in their navet, they faithfully reproduced the inner psychic situation externally. Although the unconscious, personified by the anima, is in itself transcendental, it can appear in the sphere of consciousness, that is, in this world, in the form of an influence on conscious processes.
[322] Just as the world-soul pervades all things, so does salt. It is ubiquitous and thus fulfils the main requirement of an arcane substance, that it can be found everywhere. No doubt the reader will be as conscious as I am of how uncommonly difficult it is to give an account of salt and its ubiquitous connections. It represents the feminine principle of Eros, which brings everything into relationship, in an almost perfect way. In this respect it is surpassed only by Mercurius, and the notion that salt comes from Mercurius is therefore quite understandable. For salt, as the soul or spark of the anima mundi, is in very truth the daughter of the spiritus vegetativus of creation. Salt is far more indefinite and more universal than sulphur, whose essence is fairly well defined by its fiery nature.
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mentioned earlier. Just as the numerous synonyms and attri butes of the lapis stress now one and now another of its aspects, so do the symbols of the self. Apart from its preservative quality salt has mainly the metaphorical meaning of sapientia. With regard to this aspect the Tractatus aureus states: It is said in the mystic language of our sages, He who works without salt will never raise dead bodies. . . . He who works without salt draws a bow without a string. For you must know that these sayings refer to a very different kind of salt from the common mineral. . . . Sometimes they call the medicine itself Salt. 652 These words are ambiguous: here salt means wit as well as wisdom. As to the importance of salt in the opus, Johannes Grasseus says of the arcane substance: And this is the Lead of the Philosophers, which they also call the lead of the air. In it is found the shining white dove, named the salt of the metals, wherein is the whole magistery of the work. This [dove] is the pure, chaste, wise, and rich Queen of Sheba.653 Here salt, arcane substance (the paradoxical lead of the air), the white dove (spiritus sapientiae), wisdom, and femininity appear in one figure. The saying from the Gloria mundi is quite clear: No man can understand this Art who does not know the salt and its preparation.654 For the Aquarium sapientum the sal sapientiae comes from the aqua benedicta or aqua pontica, which, itself an extract, is named heart, soul, and spirit. At first the aqua is contained in the prima materia and is of a blood-red colour; but after its preparation it becomes of a bright, clear, transparent white, and is called by the sages the Salt of Wisdom.655 Khunrath boldly summarizes these statements about the salt when he says: Our water cannot be made without the salt of wisdom, for it is the salt of wisdom itself, say the Philosophers; a fire, and a salt fire, the true Living Universal Menstruum. Without salt the work has no success.656 Elsewhere he remarks: Not without good reason has salt been adorned by the wise with the name of Wisdom. Salt is the lapis, a mystery to be hidden.657 Vigenerus says that the Redeemer chose his disciples that they might be the salt of men and proclaim to them the pure and incorruptible doctrine of the gospel. He reports the Cabalists as saying that the computatio658 of the Hebrew word for salt (melach) gives the number 78. This number could be divided by any divisor and still give a word that referred to the divine Name. We will not pursue the inferences he draws from this but will only note that for all those reasons salt was used for the service of God in all offerings and sacrifices.659 Glauber calls Christ the sal sapientiae and says that his favourite disciple John was salted with the salt of wisdom.660
[330] Apart from its lunar wetness and its terrestrial nature, the most outstanding properties of salt are bitterness and wisdom. As in the double quaternio of the elements and qualities, earth and water have coldness in common, so bitterness and wisdom would form a pair of opposites with a third thing between. (See diagram on facing page.) The factor common to both, however incommensurable the two ideas may seem, is, psychologically, the function of feeling. Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness. Salt, as the carrier of this fateful alternative, is co-ordinated with the nature of woman. The masculine, solar nature in the right half of the quaternio knows neither coldness, nor a shadow, nor heaviness, melancholy, etc., because, so long as all goes well, it identifies as closely as possible with consciousness, and that as a rule is the idea which one has of oneself. In this idea the shadow is usually missing: first because nobody likes to admit to any inferiority, and second because logic forbids something white to be called black. A good man has good qualities, and only the bad man has bad qualities. For reasons of prestige we pass over the shadow in complete silence. A famous example of masculine prejudice is Nietzsches Superman, who scorns compassion and fights against the Ugliest Man the ordinary man that everyone is. The shadow must not be seen, it must be denied, repressed, or twisted into something quite extraordinary. The sun is always shining and everything smiles back. There is no room for any prestige-diminishing weakness, so the sol niger is never seen. Only in solitary hours is its presence feared.
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[341] The Gloria mundi says that the aqua permanens is a very limpid water, so bitter as to be quite undrinkable.679 In a hymn-like invocation the text continues: O water of bitter taste, that preservest the elements! O nature of propinquity, that dissolvest nature! O best of natures, which overcomest nature herself! . . . Thou art crowned with light and art born . . . and the quintessence ariseth from thee.680 This water is like none on earth, with the exception of that fount in Judaea which is named the Fount of the Saviour or of Blessedness. With great efforts and by the grace of God the Philosophers found that noble spring. But the spring is in a place so secret that only a few know of its gushing, and they know not the way to Judaea where it might be found. Therefore the Philosopher681 cries out: O water of harsh and bitter taste! For it is hard and difficult for any man to find that spring.682 This is an obvious allusion to the arcane nature and moral significance of the water, and it is also evident that it is not the water of grace or the water of the doctrine but that it springs from the lumen naturae. Otherwise the author would not have emphasized that Judaea was in a secret place, for if the Churchs teachings were meant no one would need to find them in a secret place, since they are accessible to everyone. Also, it would be quite incomprehensible why the Philosopher should exclaim: O water, held worthless by all! By reason of its worthlessness and tortuousness683 no one can attain perfection in the art, or perceive its mighty virtue; for all four elements are, as it were, contained in it. There can be no doubt that this is the aqua permanens or aqua pontica, the primal water which contains the four elements.
[342] The psychological equivalent of the chaotic water of the beginning684 is the unconscious, which the old writers could grasp only in projected form, just as today most people cannot see the beam in their own eye but are all too well aware of the mote in their brothers. Political propaganda exploits this primitivity and conquers the naive with their own defect. The only defence against this overwhelming danger is recognition of the shadow. The sight of its darkness is itself an illumination, a widening of consciousness through integration of the hitherto unconscious components of the personality. Freuds efforts to bring the shadow to consciousness are the logical and salutary answer to the almost universal unconsciousness and projection-proneness of the general public. It is as though Freud, with sure instinct, had sought to avert the danger of nation-wide psychic epidemics that threatened Europe. What he did not see was that the confrontation with the shadow is not just a harmless affair that can be settled by reason. The shadow is the primitive who is still alive and active in civilized man, and our civilized reason means nothing to him. He needs to be ruled by a higher authority, such as is found in the great religions. Even when Reason triumphed at the beginning of the French Revolution it was quickly turned into a goddess and enthroned in Notre-Dame.
3.08 - Purification, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
14of the masters as the donum Spiritus Sancti which enables the Philosopher
to understand the miracula operis. Therefore he might easily be tempted to
3.09 - The Return of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
mystification in the sayings of the Philosophers is of no avail where the
teaching of the Holy Ghost is at work).
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pure Tincture. You know the fire of the Philosophers, it was the key they
36kept concealed.... The fire is the love-fire, the life that flows forth from the
3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
in you the Philosophers find it, and, that I may speak more plainly, from
you they take it. And when you have experienced this, the love and desire
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therefore, that the stone is the master of the Philosophers, as if he [the
philosopher] were to say that he does of his own nature that which he is
compelled to do; and so the Philosopher is not the master, but rather the
minister, of the stone. Consequently, he who attempts through the art and
3.2.02 - The Veda and the Upanishads, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It [the identification of buddhi with the vijnamaya koa] is the error that came with the excessive intellectualism of the Philosophers and commentators. I dont think buddhi includes intuition as something separate in kind from intellect the intellectualists considered intuition to be only a rapid process of intellectual thoughtand they still think that. In the Taittiriya Upanishad the sense of vijna is very clearits essence is tam, the spiritual Truth; but afterwards the identification with buddhi became general.
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3.2.04 - The Conservative Mind and Eastern Progress, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But Nature has still more subtle and disguised movements in her dealings with men by which she leads them to change without their knowing that they have changed. It is because she has employed chiefly this method in the vast masses of the East that the conservative habit of mind is so much stronger there than in the West. It is able to nourish the illusion that it has not changed, that it is immovably faithful to the ideas of remote forefa thers, to their religion, their traditions, their institutions, their social ideals, that it has preserved either a divine or an animal immobility both in thought and in the routine of life and has been free from the human law of mutation by which man and his social organisations must either progress or degenerate but can in no case maintain themselves unchanged against the attack of Time. Buddhism has come and gone and the Hindu still professes to belong to the Vedic religion held and practised by his Aryan forefa thers; he calls his creed the Aryan dharma, the eternal religion. It is only when we look close that we see the magnitude of the illusion. Buddha has gone out of India indeed, but Buddhism remains; it has stamped its giant impress on the spirit of the national religion, leaving the forms to be determined by the Tantricism with which itself had made alliance and some sort of fusion in its middle growth; what it destroyed no man has been able to restore, what it left no man has been able to destroy. As a matter of fact, the double cycle which India has described from the early Vedic times to India of Buddha and the Philosophers and again from Buddha to the time of the European irruption was in its own way as vast in change religious, social, cultural, even political and administrative as the double cycle of Europe; but because it preserved old names for new things, old formulas for new methods and old coverings for new institutions and because the change was always marked in the internal but quiet and unobtrusive in the external, we have been able to create and preserve the fiction of the unchanging East. There has also been this result that while the European conservative has learned the law of change in human society, knows that he must move and quarrels with the progressist only over the right pace and the exact direction, the Eastern or rather the Indian conservative still imagines that stability may be the true law of mortal being, practises a sort of Yogic sana on the flood of Time and because he does not move himself, thinks for he keeps his eyes shut and is not in the habit of watching the banks that he can prevent the stream also from moving on.
This conservative principle has its advantages even as rapid progress has its vices and its perils. It helps towards the preservation of a fundamental continuity which makes for the longevity of civilisations and the persistence of what was valuable in humanitys past. So, in India, if religion has changed immensely its form and temperament, the religious spirit has been really eternal, the principle of spiritual discipline is the same as in the earliest times, the fundamental spiritual truths have been preserved and even enriched in their contents and the very forms can all be traced back through their mutations to the seed of the Veda. On the other hand this habit of mind leads to the accumulation of a great mass of accretions which were once valuable but have lost their virtue and to the heaping up of dead forms and shibboleths which no longer correspond to any vital truth nor have any understood and helpful significance. All this putrid waste of the past is held to be too sacred to be touched by any profane hand and yet it chokes up the streams of the national life or corrupts its waters. And if no successful process of purification takes place, a state of general ill-health in the social body supervenes in which the principle of conservation becomes the cause of dissolution.
32.07 - The God of the Scientist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The reasoning faculty, the intellectual power of the mental being is the instrument by which the scientist carries on his search after truth. If he wants to remain strictly faithful to reality as it appears, then he cannot exceed the realm of sense-perceptions. But without reason he will simply indulge in chimeras and build castles in the air which are but deformations of: sense-perceptions. Bergson the Philosopher, however, opines that the intellect by itself cannot go beyond the domain of sense-knowledge, because it comes into being and exists in the field of the senses by way of a necessity and as a reaction of the senses to their objects. The intellectual faculty develops in man so that he may handle material things properly and effectively. The so-called universal truths or laws of Nature that the scientist discovers by virtue of his keen intellect have their chief advantage in enabling one to deal with the external world with considerable ease. That is why the scientist is blind to any other mystery than that of Matter. This is a defect pertaining to and inherent in his nature. Be that as it may, we have still to say that the intellect has attained its acme in the scientist. The speciality of the intellect has found its best manifestation in him. On the basis of the wealth of sense-perceptions and by their analysis and synthesis and by observation and experimentation, to arrive at a universal law as wide as possible marks the special genius of the scientist.
The mysteries of Nature that have been discovered by scientific methods are not the last word or the whole of her truth. However, it may be said: There is no other means of arriving at the realistic truth. By treading any other path we can get into the worlds of imagination, poetry, illusion and delusion, surely not into the world of realities. We shall have occasion to say something about the possibility of other ways of knowledge and enquiry into the truth. For the present, we shall try to investigate whether the scientific method can lead us any further. And the scientists who have made such an advancement in knowledge - where have they arrived and what is the value of their work?
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Nevertheless it must be admitted that however subtle and high or even theistic and religious may be this scientific faculty it has not come up to the level of genuine integral spirituality. Many philosophers must have had easily and naturally some realisation of this kind. The intuition of infinity in. the Philosopher Spinoza and in the scientist Einstein is of the same quality and status - impersonal, abstract, a mathematical infinitude, an x as it were. The scientist has reached the acme of his specific faculty as a result of the sublimation of his sense-perception, the Philosopher by the sublimation of his conceptual ideation. But both are unable to surpass the boundary of the brain and the intellect. The true spirituality lies in exceeding this limit - in piercing through the six centres, as the Tantras would say. The amor intellectualis Deiof Spinoza may signify the theism of the scientist, but it has not reached the status of spirituality.
We do not know how many have given due regard to this remarkable fact that the rational mind of modern times, inspired by the spirit of science which has turned towards spirituality for whatever reason, is often attracted to the pure Vedanta or the Buddhistic philosophy of India. The chief reason for this appears to me to be this that the truth and the essence of religion are looked upon as anthropomorphic by the scientist. The scientist can hardly accept this position. For, the very speciality of the scientific procedure is to keep aside the human factor from human knowledge. A particular knowledge bears the stamp of the knower, but science aims at knowledge independent of its knower. Now the scientific attitude from its summit declares, I do not know the unknown and the unknowable that is beyond. This learned ignorance which is called agnosticism, and is, in a little altered form, known as scepticism - that is the legitimate consummation of scientific rationalism. But when one looks upon this unknown and unknowable with religious reverence, one says, "Therefrom speech returns baffled along with the mind." This is verily the Brahman, beyond speech and mind; and its other name is then Nihil.. Mind can understand mind or its absence or disintegration. It is extremely difficult for it to comprehend anything that is apart from these two extreme terms. It is not so difficult for the rational mind to accept the spiritual doctrine of 'not this, not this'; but the other aspects of spirituality - the truth about divine Forms and Incarnations, about Purushottama, the supreme Being, even the transmigration of the soul, - all these are senseless enigmas to reason-bound mind. The triune principle of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss of the Vedanta is such a general, neutral and indefinite principle that it seems to be intuited and felt by the pure intellect when it climbs up to its acme. In other words, at the highest level of the brain, as it were, there takes place the first revelation of spirituality, a glow and reflection amounting to the perception of a formless infinite, whose true nature is separately or simultaneously an existence, consciousness and bliss or a non-Being pregnant with all the essence of Being.
3.7.1.01 - Rebirth, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
How comforting it would be if we could tell a good man and even the amount of his goodness,for should not the Supreme be a strict and honourable accountant?by the amount of ghee that he is allowed to put into his stomach and the number of rupees he can jingle into his bank and the various kinds of good luck that accrue to him. Yes, and how comforting too if we could point our finger at the wicked stripped of all concealment and cry at him, O thou wicked one! for if thou wert not evil, wouldst thou in a world governed by God or at least by good, be thus ragged, hungry, unfortunate, pursued by griefs, void of honour among men? Yes, thou art proved wicked, because thou art ragged. Gods justice is established. The Supreme Intelligence being fortunately wiser and nobler than mans childishness, this is impossible But let us take comfort! It appears that if the good man has not enough good luck and ghee and rupees, it is because he is really a scoundrel suffering for his crimes,but a scoundrel in his past life who has suddenly turned a new leaf in his mothers womb; and if yonder wicked man flourishes and tramples gloriously on the world, it is because of his goodnessin a past life, the saint that was then having since been convertedwas it by his experience of the temporal vanity of virtue?to the cult of sin. All is explained, all is justified. We suffer for our sins in another body; we shall be rewarded in another body for our virtues in this; and so it will go on ad infinitum. No wonder, the Philosophers found this a bad business and proposed as a remedy to get rid of both sin and virtue and even as our highest good to scramble anyhow out of a world so amazingly governed.
Obviously, this scheme of things is only a variation of the old spiritual-material bribe and menace, the bribe of a Heaven of fat joys for the good and the threat of a hell of eternal fire or bestial tortures for the wicked. The idea of the Law of the world as primarily a dispenser of rewards and punishments is cognate to the idea of the Supreme Being as a judge, father and school-master who is continually rewarding with lollipops his good boys and continually caning his naughty urchins. It is cognate also to the barbarous and unthinking system of sometimes savage and always degrading punishment for social offences on which human society, unable still to find out or organise a more satisfactory way, is still founded. Man insists continually on making God in his own image instead of seeking to make himself more and more in the image of God, and all these ideas are the reflection of the child and the savage and the animal in us which we have still failed to transform or outgrow. We should be inclined to wonder how these fancies of children found their way into such profound philosophical religions as Buddhism and Hinduism, if it were not so patent that men will not deny themselves the luxury of tacking on the rubbish from their past to the deeper thoughts of their sages.
3.7.1.06 - The Ascending Unity, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Johnson thought with the royal force dear to all strong men when he destroyed Berkeley's whole philosophy by simply kicking a stone and saying "There I prove the reality of matter," is not alone affected by this turn towards simple solutions. Even the Philosopher, though he inclines to an intricate reasoning by the way, is best delighted when he can get by it to some magnificently conclusive conclusion, some clean-cutting distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman, Reality and unreality or any of the host of mental oppositions on which so many "isms" have been founded. These royal roads of philosophy have the advantage that they are highly and grandly cut for the steps of
308
3.7.2.04 - The Higher Lines of Karma, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is in the third movement of highest mind when it is preparing to disengage itself, its pure self of will and intelligence, the radiant head of its endeavour from subjection to the vital motive that this imperative of nature, this intrinsic need that creates in the mind of man the urge towards knowledge, becomes something much greater, becomes instead more and more plainly the ideal absolute imperative of the soul emerging from the husks and sheaths of ignorance and pushing towards the truth, towards the light as the condition of its fulfilment and the very call of the Divine upon its being. The lure of an external utility ceases to be at all needed as an incentive towards knowledge, just as the lure of a vital reward offered now or hereafter ceases on the same high level of our ascent to be needed as an incentive to virtue, and to attach importance to it under whatever specious colour is even felt to be a degradation of the disinterestedness, a fall from the high purity of the soul motive. Already even in the more outward forms of intellectual seeking something of this absoluteness begins to be felt and to reign. The scientist pursues his discoveries in order that he may know the law and truth of the process of the universe and their practical results are only a secondary motive of the enquiring mind and no motive at all to the higher scientific intelligence. the Philosopher is driven from within to search for the ultimate truth of things for the one sake of Truth only and all else but to see the very face of Truth becomes to him, to his absorbing mind and soul of knowledge, secondary or of no importance; nothing can be allowed to interfere with that one imperative. And there is the tendency to the same kind of exclusiveness in the interest and the process of this absolute. The thinker is concerned to seek out and enforce the truth on himself and the world regardless of any effect it may have in disturbing the established bases of life, religion, ethics, society, regardless of any other consideration whatsoever: he must express the word of the Truth whatever its dynamic results on life. And this absolute becomes most absolute, this imperative most imperative when the inner action surpasses the strong coldness of intellectual search and becomes a fiery striving for truth experience, a luminous inner truth living, a birth into a new truth consciousness. The enamoured of light, the sage, the Yogin of knowledge, the seer, the Rishi live for knowledge and in knowledge, because it is the absolute of light and truth that they seek after and its claim on them is single and absolute.
At the same time this also is a line of the world energy,for the world Shakti is a Shakti of consciousness and knowledge and not only a Power of force and action, and the output of the energy of knowledge brings its results as surely as the energy of the will seeking after success in action or after right ethical conduct. But the result that it brings on this higher plane of the seeking in mind is simply and purely the upward growth of the soul in light and truth; that and whatever happiness it brings is the one supreme reward demanded by the soul of knowledge and the darkening of the light within, the pain of the fall from truth, the pain of the imperfection of not living only by its law and wholly in the light is its one penalty of suffering. The outward rewards and the sufferings of life are small things to the higher soul of knowledge in man: even his high mind of knowledge will often face all that the world can do to afflict it, just as it is ready to make all manner of sacrifices in the pursuit and the affirmation of the truth it knows and lives for. Bruno burning in the Roman fire, the martyrs of all religions suffering and welcoming as witnesses to the light within them torture and persecution, Buddha leaving all to discover the dark cause of universal suffering in this world of the impermanence and the way of escape into the supreme Permanence, the ascetic casting away as an illusion life in the world and its activities, enjoyments, attractions with the one will to enter into the absolute truth and the supreme consciousness are witnesses to this imperative of knowledge, its extreme examples and exponents.
4.03 - THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[361] In our parable the wonderful water already has that decomposing and dissolving property which anticipates the kings dismemberment.46 The dissolution of the initial material plays a great role in alchemy as an integral part of the process. Here I will mention only the unique interpretation of the solutio given by Dorn. In his Speculativa philosophia he discusses the seven stages of the work. The first stage begins with the study of the Philosophers, which is the way to the investigation of truth.
But the truth is that from which nothing can be missing, to which nothing can be added, nay more, to which nothing can be opposed. . . . The truth therefore is a great strength and an impregnable fortress . . ., an unconquerable pledge to them that possess it. In this citadel is contained the true and undoubted stone and treasure of the Philosophers, which is not eaten into by moths, nor dug out by thieves, but remaineth for ever when all things else are dissolved, and is appointed for the ruin of many, but for the salvation of others. This is a thing most worthless to the vulgar, spurned above all things and hated exceedingly, yet it is not hateful but lovable, and to philosophers precious above gems.47
[362] In his Recapitulation of the First Stage Dorn says:
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The chemical putrefaction is compared to the study of the Philosophers, because as the Philosophers are disposed to knowledge by study, so natural things are disposed by putrefaction to solution [ad solutionem]. To this is compared philosophical knowledge, for as by solution bodies are dissolved [solvuntur], so by knowledge are the doubts of the Philosophers resolved [resolvuntur].54
He says in his Physica Trithemii:
4.05 - THE DARK SIDE OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[466] The seven stars are a reference to Rev. 1 : 16: And he had in his right hand seven stars. He who held them was like unto the Son of man, in agreement with the puellus regius in the Introitus. The king sinking in the sea is the arcane substance, which Maier calls the antimony of the Philosophers. 280 The arcane substance corresponds to the Christian dominant, which was originally alive and present in consciousness but then sank into the unconscious and must now be restored in renewed form. Antimony is associated with blackness: antimony trisulphide is a widely used Oriental hair-dye (kohl). On the other hand antimony pentasulphide, gold-sulphur (Sulphur auratum antimonii) is orange-red.
[467] The sunken king of alchemy went on living as the metal king, the regulus of metallurgy. This is the name for the lumps of metal formed beneath the slag in melting and reducing ores. The term Sulphur auratum antimonii, like gold-sulphur, indicates the strong predominance of sulphur in combination with antimony. Sulphur, as we have seen, is the active substance of Sol and is foul-smelling: sulphur dioxide and sulphuretted hydrogen give one a good idea of the stink of hell. Sulphur is an attribute of Sol as Leo is of Rex. Leo, too, is ambiguous: on the one hand he is an allegory of the devil and on the other is connected with Venus. The antimony compounds known to the alchemists (Sb2S5, Sb2S3) therefore contained a substance which clearly exemplified the nature of Rex and Leo, hence they spoke of the triumph of antimony.281
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So, too, the king rises from his infernal fire as a crowned dragon.286 He is the Mercurial serpent, which is especially connected with evil-smelling places (it is found on the dunghills).287 The fact that the passage in the Ancoratus stresses the one day may perhaps throw some light on the apparently unique reference in Khunraths Amphitheatrum to the filius unius (SVI) diei288 as a designation for the Hermaphrodite of nature, i.e., the arcane substance. He is there synonymous with Saturn,289 the ambisexual Philosophic Man of the Philosophers, the lead of the sages, the Philosophic World-Egg . . . the greatest wonder of the world, the Lion, green and red . . . A lily among thorns.290
[473] As we have seen, the filius regius is identical with Mercurius and at this particular stage also with the Mercurial serpent. This stage is indicated in Khunrath by Saturn, the dark, cold maleficus; by the world-egg, obviously signifying the initial state, and finally by the green and red lion, representing the animal soul of the king. All this is expressed by the dragon or serpent as the summa summarum. The dragon as the lowest and most inchoate form of the king is, we are constantly told, at first a deadly poison but later the alexipharmic itself.
4.06 - THE KING AS ANTHROPOS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
) and injuries. the Philosopher Petasios (Petesis), quoted by Olympiodorus, expresses himself even more strongly: So bedevilled (
) and shameless (
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[494] These passages from Dorn refer less to the dangers of the work than to the healing through the outcome of the work. But the means of healing come from Mercurius, that spirit367 of whom the Philosophers said: Take the old black spirit, and destroy therewith the bodies until they are changed.367a The destruction of the bodies is depicted as a battle, as in Sermo 42 of the Turba: Excite war between the copper and the quicksilver, since they strive to perish and first become corrupt. Excite the battle between them and destroy the body of the copper, till it becomes powder.368 This battle is the separatio, divisio, putrefactio, mortificatio, and solntio, which all represent the original chaotic state of conflict between the four hostile elements. Dorn describes this vicious, warlike quaternity allegorically as the four-horned serpent, which the devil, after his fall from heaven, sought to infix in the mind of man.369 Dorn puts the motif of war on a moral plane370 and thereby approximates it to the modern concept of psychic dissociation, which, as we know, lies at the root of the psychogenic psychoses and neuroses. In the furnace of the cross and in the fire, says the Aquarium sapientum, man, like the earthly gold, attains to the true black Ravens Head; that is, he is utterly disfigured and is held in derision by the world,371 and this not only for forty days and nights, or years,372 but often for the whole duration of his life; so much so that he experiences more heartache in his life than comfort and joy, and more sadness than pleasure . . . Through this spiritual death his soul is entirely freed.373 Evidently the nigredo brought about a deformation and a psychic suffering which the author compared to the plight of the unfortunate Job. Jobs unmerited misfortune, visited on him by God, is the suffering of Gods servant and a prefiguration of Christs Passion. One can see from this how the figure of the Son of Man gradually lodged itself in the ordinary man who had taken the work upon his own shoulders.
[495] In the second century of our era Wei Po-yang, quite uninfluenced by Western alchemy and unhampered by the preconceptions of our Christian psychology, gave a drastic account of the sufferings caused by a technical blunder during the opus:
4.07 - THE RELATION OF THE KING-SYMBOL TO CONSCIOUSNESS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[507] The Cantilena shows us what that dominant was which is subjected to transformation not only in Ripley but in many other alchemists: it was the Christian view of the world in the Middle Ages. This problem is of such dimensions that one cannot expect a medieval man to have been even remotely conscious of it. It was bound to work itself out in projection, unconsciously. For this reason, too, it can hardly be grasped even todaywhich is why the psychological interpretation of the One, the filius regius, meets with the greatest difficulties. From the hymnlike manner in which the alchemists praised their son it is quite evident that they meant by this symbol either Christ himself or something that corresponded to him. Naturally they were not concerned with the historical personality of Jesus, which at that time was completely covered up by the dogmatic figure of the second Person of the Trinity. The latter symbol had slowly crystallized out in the course of the centuries, though it was clearly prefigured in the Logos of St. John. Nor was the conception of God as senex and puer peculiar to the alchemists, for many clerics who were not alchemists took it as a transformation of the wrathful and vindictive Yahweh of the Old Testament into the God of Love of the New. Thus the archetype of the kings renewal manifested itself not only among the Philosophers but also in ecclesiastical circles.390
[508] There can be a psychological explanation of the filius regius only when this image has sloughed off its projected form and become a purely psychic experience. The Christ-lapis parallel shows clearly enough that the filius regius was more a psychic event than a physical one, since as a physical event it can demonstrably never occur and as a religious experience it is beyond question. There are many passages in the texts that can be interpretedstrange as this may soundas an experience of Christ in matter. Others, again, lay so much emphasis on the lapis that one cannot but see in it a renewal and completion of the dogmatic image. An unequivocal substitution of the filius regius for Christ does not, to my knowledge, occur in the literature, for which reason one must call alchemy Christian even though heretical. The Christ-lapis remains an ambiguous figure.
4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[520] Consciousness is renewed through its descent into the unconscious, whereby the two are joined. The renewed consciousness does not contain the unconscious but forms with it a totality symbolized by the son. But since father and son are of one being, and in alchemical language King Sol, representing the renewed consciousness, is the son, consciousness would be absolutely identical with the King as dominant. For the alchemists this difficulty did not exist, because the King was projected into a postulated substance and hence behaved merely as an object to the consciousness of the artifex. But if the projection is withdrawn by psychological criticism, we encounter the aforesaid difficulty that the renewed consciousness apparently coincides with the renewed king, or son. I have discussed the psychological aspect of this problem in the second of the Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, in the chapter on the mana personality. The difficulty cannot be resolved by purely logical argument but only by careful observation and analysis of the psychic state itself. Rather than launch out into a detailed discussion of case-histories I would prefer to recall the well-known words of Paul, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20), which aptly describe the peculiar nature of this state. From this we can see that that other, earlier state, when the king aged and disappeared, is marked by a consciousness in which a critical ego knowingly took the place of the sick king, looking back to an earlier mythical time when this ego still felt absolutely dependent on a higher and mightier non-ego. The subsequent disappearance of the feeling of dependence and the simultaneous streng thening of criticism are felt as progress, enlightenment, liberation, indeed as redemption, although a one-sided and limited being has usurped the throne of a king. A personal ego seizes the reins of power to its own destruction; for mere egohood, despite possessing an anima rationalis, is not even sufficient for the guidance of personal life, let alone for the guidance of men. For this purpose it always needs a mythical dominant, yet such a thing cannot simply be invented and then believed in. Contemplating our own times we must say that though the need for an effective dominant was realized to a large extent, what was offered was nothing more than an arbitrary invention of the moment. The fact that it was also believed in goes to prove the gullibility and cluelessness of the public and at the same time the profoundly felt need for a spiritual authority transcending egohood. An authority of this kind is never the product of rational reflection or an invention of the moment, which always remains caught in the narrow circle of ego-bound consciousness; it springs from traditions whose roots go far deeper both historically and psychologically. Thus a real and essentially religious renewal can be based, for us, only on Christianity. The extremely radical reformation of Hinduism by the Buddha assimilated the traditional spirituality of India in its entirety and did not thrust a rootless novelty upon the world. It neither denied nor ignored the Hindu pantheon swarming with millions of gods, but boldly introduced Man, who before that had not been represented at all. Nor did Christ, regarded simply as a Jewish reformer, destroy the law, but made it, rather, into a matter of conviction. He likewise, as the regenerator of his age, set against the Greco-Roman pantheon and the speculations of the Philosophers the figure of Man, not intending it as a contradiction but as the fulfilment of a mythologem that existed long before him the conception of the Anthropos with its complex Egyptian, Persian, and Hellenistic background.
[521] Any renewal not deeply rooted in the best spiritual tradition is ephemeral; but the dominant that grows from historical roots act like a living being within the ego-bound man. He does not possess it, it possesses him; therefore the alchemists said that the artifex is not the master but rather the minister of the stoneclearly showing that the stone is indeed a king towards whom the artifex behaves as a subject.
4.09 - REGINA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[543] The Queen of Sheba, Wisdom, the royal art, and the daughter of the Philosophers are all so interfused that the underlying psychologem clearly emerges: the art is queen of the alchemists heart, she is at once his mother, his daughter, and his beloved, and in his art and its allegories the drama of his own soul, his individuation process, is played out.
4.09 - The Liberation of the Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But these are only predominant powers in each part of our complex system. The three qualities mingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member of our intricate psychology. The mental character is made by them, the character of our reason, the character of our will, the character of our moral, aesthetic, emotional, dynamic, sensational being. Tamas brings in all the ignorance, inertia, weakness, incapacity which afflicts our nature, a clouded reason, nescience, unintelligence, a clinging to habitual notions and mechanical ideas, the refusal to think and know, the small mind, the closed avenues, the trotting round of mental habit, the dark and the twilit places. Tamas brings in the impotent will, want of faith and self-confidence and initiative, the disinclination to act, the shrinking from endeavour and aspiration, the poor and little spirit, and in our moral and dynamic being the inertia, the cowardice, baseness, sloth, lax subjection to small and ignoble motives, the weak yielding to our lower nature. Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit. Rajas contri butes our normal active nature with all its good and evil; when unchastened by a sufficient element of Sattwa, it turns to egoism, self-will and violence, the perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice, attachment to opinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence to our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the sectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust, greed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the vices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas in its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature. Rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the breath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher type. The gifts of Sattwa are the mind of reason and balance, clarity of the disinterested truth-seeking open intelligence, a will subordinated to the reason or guided by the ethical spirit, self-control, equality, calm, love, sympathy, refinement, measure, fineness of the aesthetic and emotional mind, in the sensational being delicacy, just acceptivity, moderation and poise, a vitality subdued and governed by the mastering intelligence. The accomplished types of the sattwic man are the Philosopher, saint and sage, of the rajasic man the statesman, warrior, forceful man of action. But in all men there is in greater or less proportions a mingling of the gunas, a multiple personality and in most a good deal of shifting and alternation from the predominance of one to the prevalence of another Guna; even in the governing form of their nature most human beings are of a mixed type. All the colour and variety of life is made of the intricate pattern of the weaving of the gunas.
But richness of life, even a sattwic harmony of mind and nature does not constitute spiritual perfection. There is a relative possible perfection, but it is a perfection of incompleteness, some partial height, force, beauty, some measure of nobility and greatness, some imposed and precariously sustained balance. There is a relative mastery, but it is a mastery of the body by life or of the life by mind, not a free possession of the instruments by the liberated and self-possessing spirit. The gunas have to be transcended if we would arrive at spiritual perfection. Tamas evidently has to be overcome, inertia and ignorance and incapacity cannot be elements of a true perfection; but it can only be overcome in Nature by the force of Rajas aided by an increasing force of Sattwa. Rajas has to be overcome, egoism, personal desire and self-seeking passion are not elements of the true perfection; but it can only be overcome by force of Sattwa enlightening the being and force of Tamas limiting the action. Sattwa itself does not give the highest or the integral perfection; Sattwa is always a quality of the limited nature; sattwic knowledge is the light of a limited mentality; sattwic will is the government of a limited intelligent force. Moreover, Sattwa cannot act by itself in Nature, but has to rely for all action on the aid of Rajas, so that even sattwic action is always liable to the imperfections of Rajas; egoism, perplexity, inconsistency, a one-sided turn, a limited and exaggerated will, exaggerating itself in the intensity of its limitations, pursue the mind and action even of the saint, philosopher and sage. There is a sattwic as well as a rajasic or tamasic egoism, at the highest an egoism of knowledge or virtue; but the mind's egoism of whatever type is incompatible with liberation. All the three gunas have to be transcended. Sattwa may bring us near to the Light, but its limited clarity falls away from us when we enter into the luminous body of the divine Nature.
4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
430. the Philosophers who reject the world as Maya, are very wise and austere and holy; but I cannot help thinking sometimes that they are also just a little stupid and allow God to cheat them too easily.
431. For my part, I think I have a right to insist on God giving Himself to me in the world as well as out of it. Why did He make it at all, if He wanted to escape that obligation?
5.01 - ADAM AS THE ARCANE SUBSTANCE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[545] Ruland defines Adam as a synonym for the aqua permanens, in contradistinction to Eve, who signifies earth. Water is the prime arcane substance, and is therefore the agent of transformation as well as the substance to be transformed. As water is synonymous with Mercurius, we can understand the remark of John Dee that that other Mercurius who appears in the course of the work is the Mercurius of the Philosophers, that most renowned Microcosm and Adam.1 Adam is mentioned as the arcane substance in Rosinus. His correlates are lead and Azoch, 2 both, like Adam,3 of hermaphroditic nature. Similarly, Dorn says that the lapis was called Adam, who bore his invisible Eve hidden in his body. 4 This archaic idea occasionally turns up in the products of the insane today.5 The dual nature of Adam is suggested in the Gloria mundi: When Almighty God had created Adam and set him in paradise, he showed him two things in the future, saying, Behold, Adam, here are two things: one fixed and constant, the other fugitive.6
[546] As the transformative substance, therefore, Adam is also the king7 who is renewed in the bath. Basilius Valentinus says in his poem: Adam sat in the bath which the old Dragon had prepared, and in which Venus found her companion.8
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[552] We must now turn to the question of why it was that Adam should have been selected as a symbol for the prima materia or transformative substance. This was probably due, in the first place, to the fact that he was made out of clay, the ubiquitous materia vilis that was axiomatically regarded as the prima materia and for that very reason was so tantalizingly difficult to find, although it was before all eyes. It was a piece of the original chaos, of the massa confusa, not yet differentiated but capable of differentiation; something, therefore, like shapeless, embryonic tissue. Everything could be made out of it.17 For us the essential feature of the prima materia is that it was defined as the massa confusa and chaos, referring to the original state of hostility between the elements, the disorder which the artifex gradually reduced to order by his operations. Corresponding to the four elements there were four stages of the process (tetrameria), marked by four colours, by means of which the originally chaotic arcane substance finally attained to unity, to the One, the lapis, which at the same time was an homunculus.18 In this way the Philosopher repeated Gods work of creation described in Genesis 1. No wonder, therefore, that he called his prima materia Adam and asserted that it, like him, consisted or was made out of the four elements. For out of the four elements were created our Father Adam and his children, says the Turba.19 And Gabir ibn Hayyan (Jabir)20 says in his Book of Balances:
The Pentateuch says, regarding the creation of the first being, that his body was composed of four things, which thereafter were transmitted by heredity: the warm, the cold, the moist, and the dry. He was in fact composed of earth and water, a body and a soul. Dryness came to him from the earth, moisture from the water, heat from the spirit, and cold from the soul.21
5.06 - THE TRANSFORMATION, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[610] The Shulamites reversion to type is not a stroke of genius on the part of our author, but merely the traditional alchemical view that our infant, the son of the Philosophers, is the child of sun and moon. But in so far as he represents the hermaphroditic Primordial Man himself, the son is at the same time the father of his parents. Alchemy was so saturated with the idea of the mother-son incest that it automatically reduced the Shulamite of the Song of Songs to her historical prototype.215
[611] We have paid due attention to the recalcitrant nature of the Shulamites blackness. Now it is significant that the old Adam is mentioned at the very moment when the perfect, prelapsarian Adam, the shining Primordial Man, is obviously meant. Just as the black Shulamite misses the final apotheosis, the total albedo, so we lack the necessary confirmation that the first Adam is changed into the second, who at the same time is the father of the first. We cannot suppress the suspicion that, just as the blackness will not disappear, so the old Adam will not finally change. This may be the deeper reason why the expression the old Adam did not worry the author but, on the contrary, seemed just right. It is, unfortunately, far truer to say that a change for the better does not bring a total conversion of darkness into light and of evil into good, but, at most, is a compromise in which the better slightly exceeds the worse. The complication introduced by the old Adam, therefore, does not seem to be merely fortuitous, since it forms a factor in an archetypal quaternio composed as follows:
5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[642] The Lapis Sapphireus or Sapphirinus is derived from Ezekiel 1 : 22 and 26, where the firmament above the living creature was like a terrible crystal and a sapphire stone (also 10 : 1), and from Exodus 24 : 10: And they saw the God of Israel: and under his feet as it were a work of sapphire stone, and as the heaven, when clear (DV). In alchemy our gold is crystalline;339 the treasure of the Philosophers is a certain glassy heaven, like crystal, and ductile like gold;340 the tincture of gold is transparent as crystal, fragile as glass.341 The Book of the Cave of Treasures says that Adams body shone like the light of a crystal.342 The crystal, which appears equally pure within and without, refers in ecclesiastical language to the unimpaired purity of the Virgin.343 The throne in Ezekiels vision, says Gregory the Great, is rightly likened to the sapphire, for this stone has the colour of air.344 He compares Christ to the crystal in a way that served as a model for the language and ideas of the alchemists.345
[643] The combination of water and crystal is found also in the Cabalistic Sifra de Zeniutha. 178 of Lurias commentary says: The second form is called crystalline dew, and this is formed of the Severity of the Kingdom346 of the first Adam, which entered into the Wisdom of Macroprosopus:347 hence in the crystal there appears a distinct red colour. And this [form] is the Wisdom whereof they said, that Judgments are rooted in it.348 Although alchemy was undoubtedly influenced by such comparisons, the stone cannot be traced back to Christ, despite all the analogies.349 It was the mystical property of alchemy, this stone that is no stone, or the stone that hath a spirit and is found in the streamings of the Nile.350 It is a symbol that cannot be explained away as yet another supererogatory attempt to obscure the Christian mystery. On the contrary, it appears as a new and singular product which in early times gradually crystallized out through the assimilation of Christian ideas into Gnostic material; later, clear attempts were made in turn to assimilate the alchemical ideas to the Christian, though, as Eleazars text shows, there was an unbridgeable difference between them. The reason for this is that the symbol of the stone, despite the analogy with Christ, contains an element that cannot be reconciled with the purely spiritual assumptions of Christianity. The very concept of the stone indicates the peculiar nature of this symbol. Stone is the essence of everything solid and earthly. It represents feminine matter, and this concept intrudes into the sphere of spirit and its symbolism. The Churchs hermeneutic allegories of the cornerstone and the stone cut out of a mountain without hands,351 which were interpreted as Christ, were not the source of the lapis symbol, but were used by the alchemists in order to justify it, for the
6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
] sought by the Philosophers.7 The substances seemed to them hermaphroditic, and the conjunction they strove for was a philosophical operation, namely the union of form and matter.8 This inherent duality explains the duplications that so often occur, e.g., two sulphurs, two quicksilvers,9 Venus alba et rubea,10 aurum nostrum and aurum vulgi.
[655] It is therefore not surprising that the adepts, as we have seen in the previous chapters, piled up vast numbers of synonyms to express the mysterious nature of the substancesan occupation which, though it must seem utterly futile to the chemist, affords the psychologist a welcome explanation concerning the nature of the projected contents. Like all numinous contents, they have a tendency to self-amplification, that is to say they form the nuclei for an aggregation of synonyms. These synonyms represent the elements to be united as a pair of opposites;11 for instance as man and woman, god and goddess, son and mother,12 red and white,13 active and passive, body and spirit,14 and so on. The opposites are usually derived from the quaternio of elements,15 as we can see very clearly from the anonymous treatise De sulphure, which says:
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[657] The alchemical description of the beginning corresponds psychologically to a primitive consciousness which is constantly liable to break up into individual affective processesto fall apart, as it were, in four directions. As the four elements represent the whole physical world, their falling apart means dissolution into the constituents of the world, that is, into a purely inorganic and hence unconscious state. Conversely, the combination of the elements and the final synthesis of male and female is an achievement of the art and a product of conscious endeavour. The result of the synthesis was consequently conceived by the adept as self-knowledge,18 which, like the knowledge of God, is needed for the preparation of the Philosophers Stone.19 Piety is needed for the work, and this is nothing but knowledge of oneself.20 This thought occurs not only in late alchemy but also in Greek tradition, as in the Alexandrian treatise of Krates (transmitted by the Arabs), where it is said that a perfect knowledge of the soul enables the adept to understand the many different names which the Philosophers have given to the arcane substance.21 The Liber quartorum emphasizes that there must be self-observation in the work as well as of events in due time.22 It is evident from this that the chemical process of the coniunctio was at the same time a psychic synthesis. Sometimes it seems as if self-knowledge brought about the union, sometimes as if the chemical process were the efficient cause. The latter alternative is decidedly the more frequent: the coniunctio takes place in the retort23 or, more indefinitely, in the natural vessel or matrix.24 The vessel is also called the grave, and the union a shared death.25 This state is named the eclipse of the sun.26
[658] The coniunctio does not always take the form of a direct union, since it needsor occurs ina medium: Only through a medium can the transition take place,27 and, Mercurius is the medium of conjunction.28 Mercurius is the soul (anima), which is the mediator between body and spirit.29 The same is true of the synonyms for Mercurius, the green lion30 and the aqua permanens or spiritual water,31 which are likewise media of conjunction. The Consilium coniugii mentions as a connective agent the sweet smell or smoky vapour,32 recalling Basilides idea of the sweet smell of the Holy Ghost.33 Obviously this refers to the spiritual nature of Mercurius, just as the spiritual water, also called aqua aris (aerial water or air-water), is a life principle and the marriage maker between man and woman.34 A common synonym for the water is the sea, as the place where the chymical marriage is celebrated. The Tractatus Micreris mentions as further synonyms the Nile of Egypt, the Sea of the Indians, and the Meridian Sea. The marvels of this sea are that it mitigates and unites the opposites.35 An essential feature of the royal marriage is therefore the sea-journey, as described by Christian Rosencreutz.36 This alchemical motif was taken up by Goe the in Faust II, where it underlies the meaning of the Aegean Festival. The archetypal content of this festival has been elaborated by Kernyi in a brilliant amplificatory interpretation. The bands of nereids on Roman sarcophagi reveal the epithalamic and the sepulchral element, for basic to the antique mysteries . . . is the identity of marriage and death on the one hand, and of birth and the eternal resurgence of life from death on the other.37
6.07 - THE MONOCOLUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[723] In the next picture (p. 335) the two figures are united again (Pl. 6). Their colours and other attributes are the same. Each figure has only one blue foot. The inscription runs: Wherefore saith the Philosopher: He obtaineth the Art who can manifest that which is hidden, and conceal that which is manifest. And underneath: Hic artem digne est consecutus (Here is the art worthily followed, or: This man worthily followed the art), and: The blue colour after the yellow which will lead to the complete blackness or putrefaction after a very long time.
[724] On page 337 the (spiritual) king from the previous picture is joined to a similarly crowned queen (Pl. 7). He wears a black upper garment and a blue under garment. His crown has a black rim, but the mitre-like part is gold, as in the previous picture. He has one blue foot tipped with black, as if he had dipped it in black paint. The green-clad queen has her hand in his left sleeve, presumably indicating that she takes the place of the leftworldly or bodilyhalf of the king and appears as his better half, so to speak. Her feet are black. The text runs: There comes about an inconstant fixation, then after a little the soft hardens. The watery becomes earthy and dry; thus a change of nature is made from one to the other; and a single colour in the form of a black Raven, and the
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and of the female, have become of the same nature. The inscription says: Take therefore in Gods almighty name this black earth, reduce it very subtly and it will become like the head of a Raven. As if explaining the caput corvi the text remarks that the Silne endormy is bound by the shepherds with garlands of flowers in all colours of the rainbow and, after quaffing his wine, says: I laugh at my bond. So say the Philosophers that when the blackness appears one must rejoice.153 The text adds that Troy was reduced to ashes after ten years of siege.
[725] This picture represents the union of the monocolus with the earth (the body). As the sulphur of the male Mercurius he is a very active power,154 for he is the red sulphur of the gold or the active principle of the sun. The king in the saffron-yellow robe was originally gold and the sun but has now become totally black the sol niger and even his blue robe, signifying heaven, is covered with a black one.155 Only the top of his crown displays the solar gold. Dame Earth wears the same crown (only it is all gold) and thus reveals that her nature is equivalent to his: both are sulphur. One could call the sulphur of the king the spirit, which, hiding its light in the darkness, unites with the queen.
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[732] The round vessel or stronghold is the skull. The divine organ, says the Liber quartorum, is the head, for it is the abode of the divine part, namely the soul. That is why the Philosopher must surround this organ with greater care than other organs. Because of its roundness, it attracts the firmament and is by it attracted; and it is attracted in similar manner by the attracter, until the attraction reaches its end in the understanding. Man is worthier than the beasts and closer to the simple, and this on account of his understanding. The simple (simplex or res simplex) is the One,199 the natura caelestis of Dorn, the round and perfect, the firmament or heaven in man.200 Plato is of the opinion that the man whose righteousness is the greatest attains to the bountiful [largam] upper substance when he is assimilated by his work to the highest place.201 This shows us how the production of the caelum attracts the starry firmament and the influences (or spirits) of the planets into the Microcosm, just as by the same operation man is likened to the upper substance, the anima mundi or res simplex or the One.
[733] In the nigredo the brain turns black. Thus a Hermes recipe cited in the Rosarium says: Take the brain . . . grind it up with very strong vinegar, or with boys urine,202 until it turns black.203 The darkening or benightedness is at the same time a psychic state which, as we have seen, was called melancholia. In the Aurelia occulta there is a passage where the transformative substance in the nigredo state says of itself (cf. Pl. 10):
6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[743] Their spirit was their own belief in the lighta spirit which drew the soul to itself from its imprisonment in the body; but the soul brought with it the darkness of the chthonic spirit, the unconscious. The separation was so important because the dark deeds of the soul had to be checked. The unio mentalis signified, therefore, an extension of consciousness and the governance of the souls motions by the spirit of truth. But since the soul made the body to live and was the principle of all realization, the Philosophers could not but see that after the separation the body and its world were dead.217 They therefore called this state the grave, corruption, mortification, and so on, and the problem then arose of reanimation, that is, of reuniting the soul with the inanimate body. Had they brought about this reanimation in a direct way, the soul would simply have snapped back a foreign and possibly more advanced civilization, or through an expansion of consciousness brought about by new discoveries and new knowledge, then the rite loses its meaning and degenerates into mere superstition. Examples of this on a grand scale are the extinction of the ancient Egyptian civilization and the dying out of the gods of Greece and Rome. A similar phenomenon can be observed in China today.
[744] The demand that arises under such conditions is for a new interpretation, in accord with the spirit of the age, of the archetypes that compensate the altered situation of consciousness. Christianity, for instance, was a new and more suitable formulation of the archetypal myth, which in its turn gave the rite its vitality. The archetype is a living idea that constantly produces new interpretations through which that idea unfolds. This was correctly recognized by Cardinal Newman in regard to Christianity.218 Christian doctrine is a new interpretation and development of its earlier stages, as we can see very clearly from the ancient tradition of the God-man. This tradition is continued in the unfolding of ecclesiastical dogma, and it is naturally not only the archetypes mentioned in the canonical writings of the New Testament that develop, but also their near relatives, of which we previously knew only the pagan forerunners. An example of this is the newest dogma concerning the Virgin; it refers unquestionably to the mother goddess who was constantly associated with the young dying son. She is not even purely pagan, since she was very distinctly prefigured in the Sophia of the Old Testament. For this reason the definition of the new dogma does not really go beyond the depositum fidei, for the mother goddess is naturally implied in the archetype of the divine son and accordingly underwent a consistent development in the course of the centuries.219 The depositum fidei corresponds in empirical reality to the treasure-house of the archetypes, the gazophylacium of the alchemists, and the collective unconscious of modern psychology.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
threshold of consciousness. Unlike the Philosophers, they tend
to derive its subliminal functions from the conscious mind.
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twv iAoctothe Philosophers) in Greek alchemy,
and that it stood for the rube do stage of the transforming sub-
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cinnabar of the Philosophers and the copper man (xaWvflpwTros),
turned to gold." 35 Cinnabar was also supposed to be identical
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of the Philosophers lies hidden in the deep sea, like the son of the King."
41 Praised as Hercules Morbicida, "slayer of diseases" (ibid., p. 378).
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
in his own way. the Philosophers have done so, the
scientists have done so on different lines. But, none has
Apology, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to comm and me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing deathif now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the Philosophers mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretence of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is not this ignorance of a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that a man knows what he does not know? And in this respect only I believe myself to differ from men in general, and may perhaps claim to be wiser than they are:that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonourable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil. And therefore if you let me go now, and are not convinced by Anytus, who said that since I had been prosecuted I must be put to death; (or if not that I ought never to have been prosecuted at all); and that if I escape now, your sons will all be utterly ruined by listening to my wordsif you say to me, Socrates, this time we will not mind Anytus, and you shall be let off, but upon one condition, that you are not to enquire and speculate in this way any more, and that if you are caught doing so again you shall die;if this was the condition on which you let me go, I should reply: Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend,a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says: Yes, but I do care; then I do not leave him or let him go at once; but I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And I shall repeat the same words to every one whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For know that this is the comm and of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.
Men of Athens, do not interrupt, but hear me; there was an understanding between us that you should hear me to the end: I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out. I would have you know, that if you kill such an one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytusthey cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may, perhaps, kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is inflicting a great injury upon him: but there I do not agree. For the evil of doing as he is doingthe evil of unjustly taking away the life of anotheris greater far.
Averroes Search, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
there is a God; then, of the alchemists who sought the Philosopher's stone;
then, of the vain trisectors of the angle and squarers of the circle. Later I
BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But I have still some things to say in confutation of those who refer the disasters of the Roman republic to our religion, because it prohibits the offering of sacrifices to the gods. For this end I must recount all, or as many as may seem sufficient, of the disasters which befell that city and its subject provinces, before these sacrifices were prohibited; for all these disasters they would doubtless have attri buted to us, if at that time our religion had shed its light upon them, and had prohibited their sacrifices. I must then go on to show what social well-being the true God, in whose hand are all kingdoms, vouchsafed to grant to them that their empire might increase. I must show why He did so, and how their false gods, instead of at all aiding them, greatly injured them by guile and deceit. And, lastly, I must meet those who, when on this point convinced and confuted by irrefragable proofs, endeavour to maintain that they worship the gods, not hoping for the present advantages of this life, but for those which are to be enjoyed after death. And this, if I am not mistaken, will be the most difficult part of my task, and will be worthy of the loftiest argument; for we must then enter the lists with the Philosophers, not the mere common herd of philosophers, but the most renowned, who in many points agree with ourselves, as regarding the immortality of the soul, and that the true God created the world, and by His providence rules all He has created. But as they differ from us on other points, we must not shrink from the task of exposing their errors, that, having refuted the gainsaying of the wicked with such ability as God may vouchsafe, we may assert the city of God, and true piety, and the worship of God, to which alone the promise of true and everlasting felicity is attached. Here, then, let us conclude, that we may enter on these subjects in a fresh book.
[Pg 48]
BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But will they perhaps remind us of the schools of the Philosophers, and their disputations? In the first place, these belong not to Rome, but to Greece; and even if we yield to them that they are now Roman, because Greece itself has become a Roman province, still the teachings of the Philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative ability, made efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature, and the right and wrong in ethics, and in dialectic what was consequent according to the rules of logic, and what was inconsequent and erroneous. And some of them, by God's help, made great discoveries; but when left to themselves they were betrayed by human infirmity, and fell into mistakes. And this was ordered by divine providence, that their pride might be restrained, and that by their example it might be pointed out that it is humility which has access to the highest regions.[Pg 56] But of this we shall have more to say, if the Lord God of truth permit, in its own place.[92] However, if the Philosophers have made any discoveries which are sufficient to guide men to virtue and blessedness, would it not have been greater justice to vote divine honours to them? Were it not more accordant with every virtuous sentiment to read Plato's writings in a "Temple of Plato," than to be present in the temples of devils to witness the priests of Cybele[93] mutilating themselves, the effeminate being consecrated, the raving fanatics cutting themselves, and whatever other cruel or shameful, or shamefully cruel or cruelly shameful, ceremony is enjoined by the ritual of such gods as these? Were it not a more suitable education, and more likely to prompt the youth to virtue, if they heard public recitals of the laws of the gods, instead of the vain laudation of the customs and laws of their ancestors? Certainly all the worshippers of the Roman gods, when once they are possessed by what Persius calls "the burning poison of lust,"[94] prefer to witness the deeds of Jupiter rather than to hear what Plato taught or Cato censured. Hence the young profligate in Terence, when he sees on the wall a fresco representing the fabled descent of Jupiter into the lap of Dana in the form of a golden shower, accepts this as authoritative precedent for his own licentiousness, and boasts that he is an imitator of God. "And what God?" he says. "He who with His thunder shakes the loftiest temples. And was I, a poor creature compared to Him, to make bones of it? No; I did it, and with all my heart."[95]
[Pg 57]
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
to the Philosopher -- especially the Initiate -- Hesiod's theogony is as historical as any history can be.
Plato accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges permitted him.
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
it. He is at one in this with all the Philosophers . . . For us these angels are spirits separated from the
objects . . . whereas for the Philosophers (pagan) they were gods." Considering the Ritual established
by the Roman Catholic Church for "Spirits of the Stars," the latter look suspiciously like "Gods," and
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
forestalled the Philosopher. Milton ('Paradise Lost,' Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to
Adam, instinct with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
such worship shows, in its details and rites, that the Philosophers who evolved those systems of nature,
subjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and were acquainted with many facts
BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is recorded that the very learned pontiff Scvola[174] had distinguished about three kinds of godsone introduced by the poets, another by the Philosophers, another by the statesmen. The first kind he declares to be trifling, because many unworthy things have been invented by the poets concerning the gods; the second does not suit states, because it contains some things that are superfluous, and some, too, which it would be prejudicial for the people to know. It is no great matter about the superfluous things, for it is a common saying of skilful lawyers, "Superfluous things do no harm."[175] But what are those things which do harm when brought before the multitude? "These," he says, "that Hercules, sculapius, Castor and Pollux, are not gods; for it is declared by learned men that these were but men, and yielded to the common[Pg 167] lot of mortals." What else? "That states have not the true images of the gods; because the true God has neither sex, nor age, nor definite corporeal members." The pontiff is not willing that the people should know these things; for he does not think they are false. He thinks it expedient, therefore, that states should be deceived in matters of religion; which Varro himself does not hesitate even to say in his books about things divine. Excellent religion! to which the weak, who requires to be delivered, may flee for succour; and when he seeks for the truth by which he may be delivered, it is believed to be expedient for him that he be deceived. And, truly, in these same books, Scvola is not silent as to his reason for rejecting the poetic sort of gods,to wit, "because they so disfigure the gods that they could not bear comparison even with good men, when they make one to commit theft, another adultery; or, again, to say or do something else basely and foolishly; as that three goddesses contested (with each other) the prize of beauty, and the two vanquished by Venus destroyed Troy; that Jupiter turned himself into a bull or swan that he might copulate with some one; that a goddess married a man, and Saturn devoured his children; that, in fine, there is nothing that could be imagined, either of the miraculous or vicious, which may not be found there, and yet is far removed from the nature of the gods." O chief pontiff Scvola, take away the plays if thou art able; instruct the people that they may not offer such honours to the immortal gods, in which, if they like, they may admire the crimes of the gods, and, so far as it is possible, may, if they please, imitate them. But if the people shall have answered thee, You, O pontiff, have brought these things in among us, then ask the gods themselves at whose instigation you have ordered these things, that they may not order such things to be offered to them. For if they are bad, and therefore in no way to be believed concerning the majority of the gods, the greater is the wrong done the gods about whom they are feigned with impunity. But they do not hear thee, they are demons, they teach wicked things, they rejoice in vile things; not only do they not count it a wrong if these things are feigned about them, but it is a wrong they are quite unable to bear if they[Pg 168] are not acted at their stated festivals. But now, if thou wouldst call on Jupiter against them, chiefly for that reason that more of his crimes are wont to be acted in the scenic plays, is it not the case that, although you call him god Jupiter, by whom this whole world is ruled and administered, it is he to whom the greatest wrong is done by you, because you have thought he ought to be worshipped along with them, and have styled him their king?
28. Whether the worship of the gods has been of service to the Romans in obtaining and extending the empire.
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Cicero the augur laughs at auguries, and reproves men for regulating the purposes of life by the cries of crows and jackdaws.[177] But it will be said that an academic philosopher, who argues that all things are uncertain, is unworthy to have any authority in these matters. In the second book of his De Natura Deorum,[178] he introduces Lucilius Balbus, who, after showing that superstitions have their origin in physical and philosophical truths, expresses his indignation at the setting up[Pg 171] of images and fabulous notions, speaking thus: "Do you not therefore see that from true and useful physical discoveries the reason may be drawn away to fabulous and imaginary gods? This gives birth to false opinions and turbulent errors, and superstitions well-nigh old-wifeish. For both the forms of the gods, and their ages, and clothing, and ornaments, are made familiar to us; their genealogies, too, their marriages, kinships, and all things about them, are debased to the likeness of human weakness. They are even introduced as having perturbed minds; for we have accounts of the lusts, cares, and angers of the gods. Nor, indeed, as the fables go, have the gods been without their wars and battles. And that not only when, as in Homer, some gods on either side have defended two opposing armies, but they have even carried on wars on their own account, as with the Titans or with the Giants. Such things it is quite absurd either to say or to believe: they are utterly frivolous and groundless." Behold, now, what is confessed by those who defend the gods of the nations. Afterwards he goes on to say that some things belong to superstition, but others to religion, which he thinks good to teach according to the Stoics. "For not only the Philosophers," he says, "but also our forefa thers, have made a distinction between superstition and religion. For those," he says, "who spent whole days in prayer, and offered sacrifice, that their children might outlive them, are called superstitious."[179] Who does not see that he is trying, while he fears the public prejudice, to praise the religion of the ancients, and that he wishes to disjoin it from superstition, but cannot find out how to do so? For if those who prayed and sacrificed all day were called superstitious by the ancients, were those also called so who instituted (what he blames) the images of the gods of diverse age and distinct clothing, and invented the genealogies of gods, their marriages, and kinships? When, therefore, these things are found fault with as superstitious, he implicates in that fault the ancients who instituted and worshipped such images. Nay, he implicates himself, who, with whatever eloquence he may strive to extricate himself[Pg 172] and be free, was yet under the necessity of venerating these images; nor dared he so much as whisper in a discourse to the people what in this disputation he plainly sounds forth. Let us Christians, therefore, give thanks to the Lord our God,not to heaven and earth, as that author argues, but to Him who has made heaven and earth; because these superstitions, which that Balbus, like a babbler,[180] scarcely reprehends, He, by the most deep lowliness of Christ, by the preaching of the apostles, by the faith of the martyrs dying for the truth and living with the truth, has overthrown, not only in the hearts of the religious, but even in the temples of the superstitious, by their own free service.
31. Concerning the opinions of Varro, who, while reprobating the popular belief, thought that their worship should be confined to one god, though he was unable to discover the true God.
BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Among the Philosophers there are two opinions about these mental emotions, which the Greeks call , while some of our own writers, as Cicero, call them perturbations,[331] some[Pg 356] affections, and some, to render the Greek word more accurately, passions. Some say that even the wise man is subject to these perturbations, though moderated and controlled by reason, which imposes laws upon them, and so restrains them within necessary bounds. This is the opinion of the Platonists and Aristotelians; for Aristotle was Plato's disciple, and the founder of the Peripatetic school. But others, as the Stoics, are of opinion that the wise man is not subject to these perturbations. But Cicero, in his book De Finibus, shows that the Stoics are here at variance with the Platonists and Peripatetics rather in words than in reality; for the Stoics decline to apply the term "goods" to external and bodily advantages,[332] because they reckon that the only good is virtue, the art of living well, and this exists only in the mind. The other philosophers, again, use the simple and customary phraseology, and do not scruple to call these things goods, though in comparison of virtue, which guides our life, they are little and of small esteem. And thus it is obvious that, whether these outward things are called goods or advantages, they are held in the same estimation by both parties, and that in this matter the Stoics are pleasing themselves merely with a novel phraseology. It seems, then, to me that in this question, whether the wise man is subject to mental passions, or wholly free from them, the controversy is one of words rather than of things; for I think that, if the reality and not the mere sound of the words is considered, the Stoics hold precisely the same opinion as the Platonists and Peripatetics. For, omitting for brevity's sake other proofs which I might adduce in support of this opinion, I will state but one which I consider conclusive. Aulus Gellius, a man of extensive erudition, and gifted with an eloquent and graceful style, relates, in his work entitled Noctes Attic,[333] that he once made a voyage with an eminent Stoic philosopher; and he goes on to relate fully and with gusto what I shall barely state, that when the ship was tossed and in danger from a violent storm, the Philosopher[Pg 357] grew pale with terror. This was noticed by those on board, who, though themselves threatened with death, were curious to see whether a philosopher would be agitated like other men. When the tempest had passed over, and as soon as their security gave them freedom to resume their talk, one of the passengers, a rich and luxurious Asiatic, begins to banter the Philosopher, and rally him because he had even become pale with fear, while he himself had been unmoved by the impending destruction. But the Philosopher availed himself of the reply of Aristippus the Socratic, who, on finding himself similarly bantered by a man of the same character, answered, "You had no cause for anxiety for the soul of a profligate debauchee, but I had reason to be alarmed for the soul of Aristippus." The rich man being thus disposed of, Aulus Gellius asked the Philosopher, in the interests of science and not to annoy him, what was the reason of his fear? And he, willing to instruct a man so zealous in the pursuit of knowledge, at once took from his wallet a book of Epictetus the Stoic,[334] in which doctrines were advanced which precisely harmonized with those of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the Stoical school. Aulus Gellius says that he read in this book that the Stoics maintain that there are certain impressions made on the soul by external objects which they call phantasi, and that it is not in the power of the soul to determine whether or when it shall be invaded by these. When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable objects, it must needs be that they move the soul even of the wise man, so that for a little he trembles with fear, or is depressed by sadness, these impressions anticipating the work of reason and self-control; but this does not imply that the mind accepts these evil impressions, or approves or consents to them. For this consent is, they think, in a man's power; there being this difference between the mind of the wise man and that of the fool, that the fool's mind yields to these passions and consents to them, while that of the wise man, though it cannot help being invaded by them, yet retains with unshaken firmness a true and steady persuasion of those things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid. This account of what[Pg 358] Aulus Gellius relates that he read in the book of Epictetus about the sentiments and doctrines of the Stoics I have given as well as I could, not, perhaps, with his choice language, but with greater brevity, and, I think, with greater clearness. And if this be true, then there is no difference, or next to none, between the opinion of the Stoics and that of the other philosophers regarding mental passions and perturbations, for both parties agree in maintaining that the mind and reason of the wise man are not subject to these. And perhaps what the Stoics mean by asserting this, is that the wisdom which characterizes the wise man is clouded by no error and sullied by no taint, but, with this reservation that his wisdom remains undisturbed, he is exposed to the impressions which the goods and ills of this life (or, as they prefer to call them, the advantages or disadvantages) make upon them. For we need not say that if that philosopher had thought nothing of those things which he thought he was forthwith to lose, life and bodily safety, he would not have been so terrified by his danger as to betray his fear by the pallor of his cheek. Nevertheless, he might suffer this mental disturbance, and yet maintain the fixed persuasion that life and bodily safety, which the violence of the tempest threatened to destroy, are not those good things which make their possessors good, as the possession of righteousness does. But in so far as they persist that we must call them not goods but advantages, they quarrel about words and neglect things. For what difference does it make whether goods or advantages be the better name, while the Stoic no less than the Peripatetic is alarmed at the prospect of losing them, and while, though they name them differently, they hold them in like esteem? Both parties assure us that, if urged to the commission of some immorality or crime by the threatened loss of these goods or advantages, they would prefer to lose such things as preserve bodily comfort and security rather than commit such things as violate righteousness. And thus the mind in which this resolution is well grounded suffers no perturbations to prevail with it in opposition to reason, even though they assail the weaker parts of the soul; and not only so, but it rules over them, and, while it refuses its consent and resists them, administers[Pg 359] a reign of virtue. Such a character is ascribed to neas by Virgil when he says,
"He stands immovable by tears, Nor tenderest words with pity hears."[335]
BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
We shall require to apply our mind with far greater intensity to the present question than was requisite in the solution and unfolding of the questions handled in the preceding books; for it is not with ordinary men, but with philosophers that we must confer concerning the theology which they call natural. For it is not like the fabulous, that is, the theatrical; nor the civil, that is, the urban theology: the one of which displays the crimes of the gods, whilst the other manifests their criminal desires, which demonstrate them to be rather malign demons than gods. It is, we say, with philosophers we have to confer with respect to this theology,men whose very name, if rendered into Latin, signifies those who profess the love of wisdom. Now, if wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth,[291] then the Philosopher is a lover of God. But since the thing itself, which is called by this name, exists not in all who glory in the name,for it does not follow, of course, that[Pg 306] all who are called philosophers are lovers of true wisdom,we must needs select from the number of those with whose opinions we have been able to acquaint ourselves by reading, some with whom we may not unworthily engage in the treatment of this question. For I have not in this work undertaken to refute all the vain opinions of the Philosophers, but only such as pertain to theology, which Greek word we understand to mean an account or explanation of the divine nature. Nor, again, have I undertaken to refute all the vain theological opinions of all the Philosophers, but only of such of them as, agreeing in the belief that there is a divine nature, and that this divine nature is concerned about human affairs, do nevertheless deny that the worship of the one unchangeable God is sufficient for the obtaining of a blessed life after death, as well as at the present time; and hold that, in order to obtain that life, many gods, created, indeed, and appointed to their several spheres by that one God, are to be worshipped. These approach nearer to the truth than even Varro; for, whilst he saw no difficulty in extending natural theology in its entirety even to the world and the soul of the world, these acknowledge God as existing above all that is of the nature of soul, and as the Creator not only of this visible world, which is often called heaven and earth, but also of every soul whatsoever, and as Him who gives blessedness to the rational soul,of which kind is the human soul,by participation in His own unchangeable and incorporeal light. There is no one, who has even a slender knowledge of these things, who does not know of the Platonic philosophers, who derive their name from their master Plato. Concerning this Plato, then, I will briefly state such things as I deem necessary to the present question, mentioning beforeh and those who preceded him in time in the same department of literature.
2. Concerning the two schools of philosophers, that is, the Italic and Ionic, and their founders.
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The remaining part of philosophy is morals, or what is called by the Greeks , in which is discussed the question concerning the chief good,that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be blessed, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake. Therefore it is called the end, because we wish other things on account of it, but itself only for its own sake. This beatific good, therefore, according to some, comes to a man from the body, according to others, from the mind, and, according to others, from both together. For they saw that man himself consists of soul and body; and therefore they believed that from either of these two, or from both together, their well-being must proceed, consisting in a certain final good, which could render them blessed, and to which they might refer all their actions, not requiring anything ulterior to which to refer that good itself. This is why those who have added a third kind of good things, which they call extrinsic,as honour, glory, wealth, and the like,have not regarded them as part of the final good, that is, to be sought after for their own sake, but as things which are to be sought for the sake of something else, affirming that this kind of good is good to the good, and evil to the evil. Wherefore, whether they have sought the good of man from the mind or from the body, or from both together, it is still only from man they have supposed that it must be sought. But they who have sought it from the body have sought it from the inferior part of man; they who have sought it from the mind, from the superior part; and they who have sought it from both, from the whole man. Whether, therefore, they[Pg 318] have sought it from any part, or from the whole man, still they have only sought it from man; nor have these differences, being three, given rise only to three dissentient sects of philosophers, but to many. For diverse philosophers have held diverse opinions, both concerning the good of the body, and the good of the mind, and the good of both together. Let, therefore, all these give place to those philosophers who have not affirmed that a man is blessed by the enjoyment of the body, or by the enjoyment of the mind, but by the enjoyment of God,enjoying Him, however, not as the mind does the body or itself, or as one friend enjoys another, but as the eye enjoys light, if, indeed, we may draw any comparison between these things. But what the nature of this comparison is, will, if God help me, be shown in another place, to the best of my ability. At present, it is sufficient to mention that Plato determined the final good to be to live according to virtue, and affirmed that he only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God,which knowledge and imitation are the only cause of blessedness. Therefore he did not doubt that to philosophize is to love God, whose nature is incorporeal. Whence it certainly follows that the student of wisdom, that is, the Philosopher, will then become blessed when he shall have begun to enjoy God. For though he is not necessarily blessed who enjoys that which he loves (for many are miserable by loving that which ought not to be loved, and still more miserable when they enjoy it), nevertheless no one is blessed who does not enjoy that which he loves. For even they who love things which ought not to be loved do not count themselves blessed by loving merely, but by enjoying them. Who, then, but the most miserable will deny that he is blessed, who enjoys that which he loves, and loves the true and highest good? But the true and highest good, according to Plato, is God, and therefore he would call him a philosopher who loves God; for philosophy is directed to the obtaining of the blessed life, and he who loves God is blessed in the enjoyment of God.
9. Concerning that philosophy which has come nearest to the Christian faith.
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Certain partakers with us in the grace of Christ, wonder when they hear and read that Plato had conceptions concerning God, in which they recognise considerable agreement with the truth of our religion. Some have concluded from this, that when he went to Egypt he had heard the prophet Jeremiah, or, whilst travelling in the same country, had read the prophetic scriptures, which opinion I myself have expressed in certain of my writings.[301] But a careful calculation of dates, contained in chronological history, shows that Plato was born about a hundred years after the time in which Jeremiah prophesied, and, as he lived eighty-one years, there are found to have been about seventy years from his death to that time when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, requested the prophetic scriptures of the Hebrew people to be sent to him from Judea, and committed them to seventy Hebrews, who also knew the Greek tongue, to be translated and kept. Therefore, on that voyage of his, Plato could neither have seen Jeremiah, who was dead so long before, nor have read those same scriptures[Pg 322] which had not yet been translated into the Greek language, of which he was a master, unless, indeed, we say that, as he was most earnest in the pursuit of knowledge, he also studied those writings through an interpreter, as he did those of the Egyptians,not, indeed, writing a translation of them (the facilities for doing which were only gained even by Ptolemy in return for munificent acts of kindness,[302] though fear of his kingly authority might have seemed a sufficient motive), but learning as much as he possibly could concerning their contents by means of conversation. What warrants this supposition is the opening verses of Genesis: "In the beginning God made the heaven and earth. And the earth was invisible, and without order; and darkness was over the abyss: and the Spirit of God moved over the waters."[303] For in the Timus, when writing on the formation of the world, he says that God first united earth and fire; from which it is evident that he assigns to fire a place in heaven. This opinion bears a certain resemblance to the statement, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." Plato next speaks of those two intermediary elements, water and air, by which the other two extremes, namely, earth and fire, were mutually united; from which circumstance he is thought to have so understood the words, "The Spirit of God moved over the waters." For, not paying sufficient attention to the designations given by those scriptures to the Spirit of God, he may have thought that the four elements are spoken of in that place, because the air also is called spirit.[304] Then, as to Plato's saying that the Philosopher is a lover of God, nothing shines forth more conspicuously in those sacred writings. But the most striking thing in this connection, and that which most of all inclines me almost to assent to the opinion that Plato was not ignorant of those writings, is the answer which was given to the question elicited from the holy Moses when the words of God were conveyed to him by the angel; for, when he asked what was the name of that God who was commanding him to go and deliver the Hebrew people out of Egypt, this answer was[Pg 323] given: "I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me unto you;"[305] as though compared with Him that truly is, because He is unchangeable, those things which have been created mutable are not,a truth which Plato vehemently held, and most diligently commended. And I know not whether this sentiment is anywhere to be found in the books of those who were before Plato, unless in that book where it is said, "I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Who is sent me unto you."
12. That even the Platonists, though they say these things concerning the one true God, nevertheless thought that sacred rites were to be performed in honour of many gods.
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But herein, no doubt, lies the great necessity for this absurdity, so unworthy of the gods, that the ethereal gods, who are concerned about human affairs, would not know what terrestrial men were doing unless the aerial demons should bring them intelligence, because the ether is suspended far away from the earth and far above it, but the air is contiguous[Pg 336] both to the ether and to the earth. O admirable wisdom! what else do these men think concerning the gods who, they say, are all in the highest degree good, but that they are concerned about human affairs, lest they should seem unworthy of worship, whilst, on the other hand, from the distance between the elements, they are ignorant of terrestrial things? It is on this account that they have supposed the demons to be necessary as agents, through whom the gods may inform themselves with respect to human affairs, and through whom, when necessary, they may succour men; and it is on account of this office that the demons themselves have been held as deserving of worship. If this be the case, then a demon is better known by these good gods through nearness of body, than a man is by goodness of mind. O mournful necessity! or shall I not rather say detestable and vain error, that I may not impute vanity to the divine nature! For if the gods can, with their minds free from the hindrance of bodies, see our mind, they do not need the demons as messengers from our mind to them; but if the ethereal gods, by means of their bodies, perceive the corporeal indices of minds, as the countenance, speech, motion, and thence understand what the demons tell them, then it is also possible that they may be deceived by the falsehoods of demons. Moreover, if the divinity of the gods cannot be deceived by the demons, neither can it be ignorant of our actions. But I would they would tell me whether the demons have informed the gods that the fictions of the poets concerning the crimes of the gods displease Plato, concealing the pleasure which they themselves take in them; or whether they have concealed both, and have preferred that the gods should be ignorant with respect to this whole matter, or have told both, as well the pious prudence of Plato with respect to the gods as their own lust, which is injurious to the gods; or whether they have concealed Plato's opinion, according to which he was unwilling that the gods should be defamed with falsely alleged crimes through the impious licence of the poets, whilst they have not been ashamed nor afraid to make known their own wickedness, which make them love theatrical plays, in which the infamous deeds of the gods are celebrated. Let them choose which[Pg 337] they will of these four alternatives, and let them consider how much evil any one of them would require them to think of the gods. For if they choose the first, they must then confess that it was not possible for the good gods to dwell with the good Plato, though he sought to prohibit things injurious to them, whilst they dwelt with evil demons, who exulted in their injuries; and this because they suppose that the good gods can only know a good man, placed at so great a distance from them, through the mediation of evil demons, whom they could know on account of their nearness to themselves.[314] If they shall choose the second, and shall say that both these things are concealed by the demons, so that the gods are wholly ignorant both of Plato's most religious law and the sacrilegious pleasure of the demons, what, in that case, can the gods know to any profit with respect to human affairs through these mediating demons, when they do not know those things which are decreed, through the piety of good men, for the honour of the good gods against the lust of evil demons? But if they shall choose the third, and reply that these intermediary demons have communicated, not only the opinion of Plato, which prohibited wrongs to be done to the gods, but also their own delight in these wrongs, I would ask if such a communication is not rather an insult? Now the gods, hearing both and knowing both, not only permit the approach of those malign demons, who desire and do things contrary to the dignity of the gods and the religion of Plato, but also, through these wicked demons, who are near to them, send good things to the good Plato, who is far away from them; for they inhabit such a place in the concatenated series of the elements, that they can come into contact with those by whom they are accused, but not with him by whom they are defended,knowing the truth on both sides, but not being able to change the weight of the air and the earth. There remains the fourth supposition; but it is worse than the rest. For who will suffer it to be said that the demons have made known the calumnious fictions of the poets concerning the immortal gods, and also the disgraceful mockeries of the theatres, and their own most ardent lust after, and most sweet[Pg 338] pleasure in these things, whilst they have concealed from them that Plato, with the gravity of a philosopher, gave it as his opinion that all these things ought to be removed from a well-regulated republic; so that the good gods are now compelled, through such messengers, to know the evil doings of the most wicked beings, that is to say, of the messengers themselves, and are not allowed to know the good deeds of the Philosophers, though the former are for the injury, but these latter for the honour of the gods themselves?
22. That we must, notwithstanding the opinion of Apuleius, reject the worship of demons.
BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Let him return from this, which he thinks to be natural theology, back to that from which he went out, in order to rest from the fatigue occasioned by the many turnings and windings of his path. Let him return, I say, let him return to the civil theology. I wish to detain him there a while. I have somewhat to say which has to do with that theology. I am not yet saying, that if the earth and stones are similar to our bones and nails, they are in like manner devoid of intelligence, as they are devoid of sensation. Nor am I saying that, if our bones and nails are said to have intelligence, because they are in a man who has intelligence, he who says that the things analogous to these in the world are gods, is as stupid as he is who says that our bones and nails are men. We shall perhaps have occasion to dispute these things with the Philosophers. At present, however, I wish to deal with Varro as a political theologian. For it is possible that, though he may seem to have wished to lift up his head, as it were, into the liberty of natural theology, the consciousness that the book with which he was occupied was one concerning a subject belonging to civil theology, may have caused him to relapse into the point of view of that theology, and to[Pg 288] say this in order that the ancestors of his nation, and other states, might not be believed to have bestowed on Neptune an irrational worship. What I am to say is this: Since the earth is one, why has not that part of the soul of the world which permeates the earth made it that one goddess which he calls Tellus? But had it done so, what then had become of Orcus, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis?[277] And where, in that case, had been his wife Proserpine, who, according to another opinion given in the same book, is called, not the fecundity of the earth, but its lower part?[278] But if they say that part of the soul of the world, when it permeates the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis, but when it pervades the nether part of the same the goddess Proserpine; what, in that case, will that Tellus be? For all that which she was has been divided into these two parts, and these two gods; so that it is impossible to find what to make or where to place her as a third goddess, except it be said that those divinities Orcus and Proserpine are the one goddess Tellus, and that they are not three gods, but one or two, whilst notwithstanding they are called three, held to be three, worshipped as three, having their own several altars, their own shrines, rites, images, priests, whilst their own false demons also through these things defile the prostituted soul. Let this further question be answered: What part of the earth does a part of the soul of the world permeate in order to make the god Tellumo? No, says he; but the earth being one and the same, has a double life,the masculine, which produces seed, and the feminine, which receives and nourishes the seed. Hence it has been called Tellus from the feminine principle, and Tellumo from the masculine. Why, then, do the priests, as he indicates, perform divine service to four gods, two others being added,namely, to Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? We have already spoken concerning Tellus and Tellumo. But why do they worship Altor?[279] Because, says he, all that springs of the earth is nourished by the earth. Wherefore do they worship Rusor?[280] Because all things return back again to the place whence they proceeded.
[Pg 289]
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For Numa himself also, to whom no prophet of God, no holy angel was sent, was driven to have recourse to hydromancy, that he might see the images of the gods in the water (or, rather, appearances whereby the demons made sport of him), and might learn from them what he ought to ordain and observe in the sacred rites. This kind of divination, says Varro, was introduced from the Persians, and was used by Numa himself, and at an after time by the Philosopher Pythagoras. In this divination, he says, they also inquire at the inhabitants of the nether world, and make use of blood; and this the Greeks call . But whether it be called necromancy or hydromancy it is the same thing, for in either case the dead are supposed to foretell future things. But by what artifices these things are done, let themselves consider; for I am unwilling to say that these artifices were wont to be prohibited by the laws, and to be very severely punished even in the Gentile states, before the advent of our Saviour. I am unwilling, I say, to affirm this, for perhaps[Pg 303] even such things were then allowed. However, it was by these arts that Pompilius learned those sacred rites which he gave forth as facts, whilst he concealed their causes; for even he himself was afraid of that which he had learned. The senate also caused the books in which those causes were recorded to be burned. What is it, then, to me, that Varro attempts to adduce all sorts of fanciful physical interpretations, which if these books had contained, they would certainly not have been burned? For otherwise the conscript fathers would also have burned those books which Varro published and dedicated to the high priest Csar.[289] Now Numa is said to have married the nymph Egeria, because (as Varro explains it in the forementioned book) he carried forth[290] water wherewith to perform his hydromancy. Thus facts are wont to be converted into fables through false colourings. It was by that hydromancy, then, that that over-curious Roman king learned both the sacred rites which were to be written in the books of the priests, and also the causes of those rites,which latter, however, he was unwilling that any one besides himself should know. Wherefore he made these causes, as it were, to die along with himself, taking care to have them written by themselves, and removed from the knowledge of men by being buried in the earth. Wherefore the things which are written in those books were either abominations of demons, so foul and noxious as to render that whole civil theology execrable even in the eyes of such men as those senators, who had accepted so many shameful things in the sacred rites themselves, or they were nothing else than the accounts of dead men, whom, through the lapse of ages, almost all the Gentile nations had come to believe to be immortal gods; whilst those same demons were delighted even with such rites, having presented themselves to receive worship under pretence of being those very dead men whom they had caused to be thought immortal gods by certain fallacious miracles, performed in order to establish that belief. But, by the hidden providence of the true God, these demons were permitted to confess these things to their friend Numa, having been gained by those arts through which necromancy could be performed, and yet[Pg 304] were not constrained to admonish him rather at his death to burn than to bury the books in which they were written. But, in order that these books might be unknown, the demons could not resist the plough by which they were thrown up, or the pen of Varro, through which the things which were done in reference to this matter have come down even to our knowledge. For they are not able to effect anything which they are not allowed; but they are permitted to influence those whom God, in His deep and just judgment, according to their deserts, gives over either to be simply afflicted by them, or to be also subdued and deceived. But how pernicious these writings were judged to be, or how alien from the worship of the true Divinity, may be understood from the fact that the senate preferred to burn what Pompilius had hid, rather than to fear what he feared, so that he could not dare to do that. Wherefore let him who does not desire to live a pious life even now, seek eternal life by means of such rites. But let him who does not wish to have fellowship with malign demons have no fear for the noxious superstition wherewith they are worshipped, but let him recognise the true religion by which they are unmasked and vanquished.
[Pg 305]
BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Now, as, in the next place (as the promised order demands), those are to be refuted and taught who contend that the gods of the nations, which the Christian truth destroys, are to be worshipped not on account of this life, but on account of that which is to be after death, I shall do well to commence my disputation with the truthful oracle of the holy psalm, "Blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord God, and who respecteth not Vanities and lying follies."[226] Nevertheless, in all vanities and lying follies the Philosophers are to be listened to with far more toleration, who have repudiated those opinions and errors of the people; for the people set up images to the deities, and either feigned concerning those whom they call immortal gods many false and unworthy things, or believed them, already feigned, and, when believed, mixed them up with their worship and sacred rites.
With those men who, though not by free avowal of their convictions, do still testify that they disapprove of those things by their muttering disapprobation during disputations on the subject, it may not be very far amiss to discuss the following question: Whether, for the sake of the life which is to be after death, we ought to worship, not the one God, who made all creatures spiritual and corporeal, but those many gods who, as some of these philosophers hold, were made by that one God, and placed by Him in their respective sublime spheres, and are therefore considered more excellent and more noble than all the others?[227] But who will assert that it must be affirmed and[Pg 230] contended that those gods, certain of whom I have mentioned in the fourth book,[228] to whom are distributed, each to each, the charges of minute things, do bestow eternal life? But will those most skilled and most acute men, who glory in having written for the great benefit of men, to teach on what account each god is to be worshipped, and what is to be sought from each, lest with most disgraceful absurdity, such as a mimic is wont for the sake of merriment to exhibit, water should be sought from Liber, wine from the Lymphs,will those men indeed affirm to any man supplicating the immortal gods, that when he shall have asked wine from the Lymphs, and they shall have answered him, "We have water, seek wine from Liber," he may rightly say, "If ye have not wine, at least give me eternal life?" What more monstrous than this absurdity? Will not these Lymphs,for they are wont to be very easily made laugh,[229]laughing loudly (if they do not attempt to deceive like demons), answer the suppliant, "O man, dost thou think that we have life (vitam) in our power, who thou hearest have not even the vine (vitem)?" It is therefore most impudent folly to seek and hope for eternal life from such gods as are asserted so to preside over the separate minute concernments of this most sorrowful and short life, and whatever is useful for supporting and propping it, as that if anything which is under the care and power of one be sought from another, it is so incongruous and absurd that it appears very like to mimic drollery,which, when it is done by mimics knowing what they are doing, is deservedly laughed at in the theatre, but when it is done by foolish persons, who do not know better, is more deservedly ridiculed in the world. Wherefore, as concerns those gods which the states have established, it has been cleverly invented and handed down to memory by learned men, what god or goddess is to be supplicated in relation to every particular thing,what, for instance, is to be sought from Liber, what from the Lymphs, what from Vulcan, and so of all the rest, some of whom I have mentioned in the fourth book, and some I have thought right to omit. Further, if it is an error to seek wine from Ceres, bread from Liber, water from Vulcan, fire from the[Pg 231] Lymphs, how much greater absurdity ought it to be thought, if supplication be made to any one of these for eternal life?
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Now what are we to say of this proposition of his, namely, that there are three kinds of theology, that is, of the account which is given of the gods; and of these, the one is called mythical, the other physical, and the third civil? Did the Latin usage permit, we should call the kind which he has placed first in order fabular,[235] but let us call it fabulous,[236] for mythical is derived from the Greek , a fable; but that the second should be called natural, the usage of speech now admits; the third he himself has designated in Latin, calling it civil.[237] Then he says, "they call that kind mythical which the poets chiefly use; physical, that which the Philosophers use; civil, that which the people use. As to the first I have mentioned," says he, "in it are many fictions, which are contrary to the dignity and nature of the immortals. For we find in it that one god has been born from the head, another from the thigh, another from drops of blood; also, in this we find that gods have stolen, committed adultery, served men; in a word, in this all manner of things are attributed to the gods, such as may befall, not merely any man, but even the most contemptible man." He certainly, where he could, where he dared, where he thought he could do it with impunity, has manifested, without any of the haziness of ambiguity, how great injury was done to the nature of the gods by lying fables; for he was speaking, not concerning natural theology, not concerning civil, but concerning[Pg 239] fabulous theology, which he thought he could freely find fault with.
Let us see, now, what he says concerning the second kind. "The second kind which I have explained," he says, "is that concerning which philosophers have left many books, in which they treat such questions as these: what gods there are, where they are, of what kind and character they are, since what time they have existed, or if they have existed from eternity; whether they are of fire, as Heraclitus believes; or of number, as Pythagoras; or of atoms, as Epicurus says; and other such things, which men's ears can more easily hear inside the walls of a school than outside in the Forum." He finds fault with nothing in this kind of theology which they call physical, and which belongs to philosophers, except that he has related their controversies among themselves, through which there has arisen a multitude of dissentient sects. Nevertheless he has removed this kind from the Forum, that is, from the populace, but he has shut it up in schools. But that first kind, most false and most base, he has not removed from the citizens. Oh, the religious ears of the people, and among them even those of the Romans, that are not able to bear what the Philosophers dispute concerning the gods! But when the poets sing and stage-players act such things as are derogatory to the dignity and the nature of the immortals, such as may befall not a man merely, but the most contemptible man, they not only bear, but willingly listen to. Nor is this all, but they even consider that these things please the gods, and that they are propitiated by them.
But some one may say, Let us distinguish these two kinds of theology, the mythical and the physical,that is, the fabulous and the natural,from this civil kind about which we are now speaking. Anticipating this, he himself has distinguished them. Let us see now how he explains the civil theology itself. I see, indeed, why it should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the civil itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that it should be excluded? And if this which is called civil be not[Pg 240] natural, what merit has it that it should be admitted? This, in truth, is the cause why he wrote first concerning human things, and afterwards concerning divine things; since in divine things he did not follow nature, but the institution of men. Let us look at this civil theology of his. "The third kind," says he, "is that which citizens in cities, and especially the priests, ought to know and to administer. From it is to be known what god each one may suitably worship, what sacred rites and sacrifices each one may suitably perform." Let us still attend to what follows. "The first theology," he says, "is especially adapted to the theatre, the second to the world, the third to the city." Who does not see to which he gives the palm? Certainly to the second, which he said above is that of the Philosophers. For he testifies that this pertains to the world, than which they think there is nothing better. But those two theologies, the first and the third,to wit, those of the theatre and of the city,has he distinguished them or united them? For although we see that the city is in the world, we do not see that it follows that any things belonging to the city pertain to the world. For it is possible that such things may be worshipped and believed in the city, according to false opinions, as have no existence either in the world or out of it. But where is the theatre but in the city? Who instituted the theatre but the state? For what purpose did it constitute it but for scenic plays? And to what class of things do scenic plays belong but to those divine things concerning which these books of Varro's are written with so much ability?
6. Concerning the mythic, that is, the fabulous, theology, and the civil, against Varro.
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When we say these things, it may perchance seem to some one who is very ignorant of these matters that only those things concerning the gods which are sung in the songs of the poets and acted on the stage are unworthy of the divine majesty, and ridiculous, and too detestable to be celebrated, whilst those sacred things which not stage-players but priests perform are pure and free from all unseemliness. Had this been so, never would any one have thought that these theatrical abominations should be celebrated in their honour, never would the gods themselves have ordered them to be performed to them. But men are in nowise ashamed to perform these things in the theatres, because similar things are carried on in the temples. In short, when the fore-mentioned author attempted to distinguish the civil theology from the fabulous and natural, as a sort of third and distinct kind, he wished it to be understood to be rather tempered by both than separated from either. For he says that those things which the poets write are less than the people ought to follow, whilst what the Philosophers say is more than it is expedient for the people to pry into. "Which," says he, "differ in such a way, that nevertheless not a few things from both of them have been taken to the account of the civil theology; wherefore we will indicate what the civil theology has in common with that of the poet, though it ought to be more closely connected with[Pg 243] the theology of philosophers." Civil theology is therefore not quite disconnected from that of the poets. Nevertheless, in another place, concerning the generations of the gods, he says that the people are more inclined toward the poets than toward the physical theologists. For in this place he said what ought to be done; in that other place, what was really done. He said that the latter had written for the sake of utility, but the poets for the sake of amusement. And hence the things from the poets' writings, which the people ought not to follow, are the crimes of the gods; which, nevertheless, amuse both the people and the gods. For, for amusement's sake, he says, the poets write, and not for that of utility; nevertheless they write such things as the gods will desire, and the people perform.
7. Concerning the likeness and agreement of the fabulous and civil theologies.
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And, nevertheless, it is called the fabulous theology, and is censured, cast off, rejected, together with all such interpretations belonging to it. And not only by the natural theology, which is that of the Philosophers, but also by this civil theology, concerning which we are speaking, which is asserted to pertain to cities and peoples, it is judged worthy of repudiation, because it has invented unworthy things concerning the gods. Of which, I wot, this is the secret: that those most acute and learned men, by whom those things were written, understood that both theologies ought to be rejected,to wit, both that fabulous and this civil one,but the former they dared to reject, the latter they dared not; the former they set forth to be censured, the latter they showed to be very like it; not that it might be chosen to be held in preference to the other, but that it might be understood to be worthy of being rejected together with it. And thus, without danger to those who feared to censure the civil theology, both of them being brought into contempt, that theology which they call natural might find a place in better disposed minds; for the civil and the fabulous are both fabulous and both civil. He who shall wisely inspect the vanities and obscenities of both will find that they are both fabulous; and he who shall direct his attention to the scenic plays pertaining to the fabulous theology[Pg 248] in the festivals of the civil gods, and in the divine rites of the cities, will find they are both civil. How, then, can the power of giving eternal life be attri buted to any of those gods whose own images and sacred rites convict them of being most like to the fabulous gods, which are most openly reprobated, in forms, ages, sex, characteristics, marriages, generations, rites; in all which things they are understood either to have been men, and to have had their sacred rites and solemnities instituted in their honour according to the life or death of each of them, the demons suggesting and confirming this error, or certainly most foul spirits, who, taking advantage of some occasion or other, have stolen into the minds of men to deceive them?
9. Concerning the special offices of the gods.
BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The cause, then, of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither fortuitous nor fatal, according to the judgment or[Pg 178] opinion of those who call those things fortuitous which either have no causes, or such causes as do not proceed from some intelligible order, and those things fatal which happen independently of the will of God and man, by the necessity of a certain order. In a word, human kingdoms are established by divine providence. And if any one attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language. For why does he not say at first what he will say afterwards, when some one shall put the question to him, What he means by fate? For when men hear that word, according to the ordinary use of the language, they simply understand by it the virtue of that particular position of the stars which may exist at the time when any one is born or conceived, which some separate altogether from the will of God, whilst others affirm that this also is dependent on that will. But those who are of opinion that, apart from the will of God, the stars determine what we shall do, or what good things we shall possess, or what evils we shall suffer, must be refused a hearing by all, not only by those who hold the true religion, but by those who wish to be the worshippers of any gods whatsoever, even false gods. For what does this opinion really amount to but this, that no god whatever is to be worshipped or prayed to? Against these, however, our present disputation is not intended to be directed, but against those who, in defence of those whom they think to be gods, oppose the Christian religion. They, however, who make the position of the stars depend on the divine will, and in a manner decree what character each man shall have, and what good or evil shall happen to him, if they think that these same stars have that power conferred upon them by the supreme power of God, in order that they may determine these things according to their will, do a great injury to the celestial sphere, in whose most brilliant senate, and most splendid senate-house, as it were, they suppose that wicked deeds are decreed to be done,such deeds as that if any terrestrial state should decree them, it would be condemned to overthrow by the decree of the whole human race. What judgment, then, is left to God concerning the deeds of men, who is Lord both of the stars and of men, when to these deeds[Pg 179] a celestial necessity is attri buted? Or, if they do not say that the stars, though they have indeed received a certain power from God, who is supreme, determine those things according to their own discretion, but simply that His commands are fulfilled by them instrumentally in the application and enforcing of such necessities, are we thus to think concerning God even what it seemed unworthy that we should think concerning the will of the stars? But, if the stars are said rather to signify these things than to effect them, so that that position of the stars is, as it were, a kind of speech predicting, not causing future things,for this has been the opinion of men of no ordinary learning,certainly the mathematicians are not wont so to speak, saying, for example, Mars in such or such a position signifies a homicide, but makes a homicide. But, nevertheless, though we grant that they do not speak as they ought, and that we ought to accept as the proper form of speech that employed by the Philosophers in predicting those things which they think they discover in the position of the stars, how comes it that they have never been able to assign any cause why, in the life of twins, in their actions, in the events which befall them, in their professions, arts, honours, and other things pertaining to human life, also in their very death, there is often so great a difference, that, as far as these things are concerned, many entire strangers are more like them than they are like each other, though separated at birth by the smallest interval of time, but at conception generated by the same act of copulation, and at the same moment?
2. On the difference in the health of twins.
BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
As far as one can judge, it is for the same reason that philosophers have aimed at a threefold division of science, or rather, were enabled to see that there was a threefold division[Pg 467] (for they did not invent, but only discovered it), of which one part is called physical, another logical, the third ethical. The Latin equivalents of these names are now naturalized in the writings of many authors, so that these divisions are called natural, rational, and moral, on which I have touched slightly in the eighth book. Not that I would conclude that these philosophers, in this threefold division, had any thought of a trinity in God, although Plato is said to have been the first to discover and promulgate this distribution, and he saw that God alone could be the author of nature, the bestower of intelligence, and the kindler of love by which life becomes good and blessed. But certain it is that, though philosophers disagree both regarding the nature of things, and the mode of investigating truth, and of the good to which all our actions ought to tend, yet in these three great general questions all their intellectual energy is spent. And though there be a confusing diversity of opinion, every man striving to establish his own opinion in regard to each of these questions, yet no one of them all doubts that nature has some cause, science some method, life some end and aim. Then, again, there are three things which every artificer must possess if he is to effect anything,nature, education, practice. Nature is to be judged by capacity, education by knowledge, practice by its fruit. I am aware that, properly speaking, fruit is what one enjoys, use [practice] what one uses. And this seems to be the difference between them, that we are said to enjoy that which in itself, and irrespective of other ends, delights us; to use that which we seek for the sake of some end beyond. For which reason the things of time are to be used rather than enjoyed, that we may deserve to enjoy things eternal; and not as those perverse creatures who would fain enjoy money and use God,not spending money for God's sake, but worshipping God for money's sake. However, in common parlance, we both use fruits and enjoy uses. For we correctly speak of the "fruits of the field," which certainly we all use in the present life. And it was in accordance with this usage that I said that there were three things to be observed in a man, nature, education, practice. From these the Philosophers have elaborated, as I said, the threefold division of that science by[Pg 468] which a blessed life is attained: the natural having respect to nature, the rational to education, the moral to practice. If, then, we were ourselves the authors of our nature, we should have generated knowledge in ourselves, and should not require to reach it by education, i.e., by learning it from others. Our love, too, proceeding from ourselves and returning to us, would suffice to make our life blessed, and would stand in need of no extraneous enjoyment. But now, since our nature has God as its requisite author, it is certain that we must have Him for our teacher that we may be wise; Him, too, to dispense to us spiritual sweetness that we may be blessed.
26. Of the image of the supreme Trinity, which we find in some sort in human nature even in its present state.
BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
16. Concerning the Philosophers who think that the separation of soul and body is not penal, though Plato represents the supreme Deity as promising to the inferior gods that they shall never be dismissed from their bodies.
But the Philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God, that is, His Church, seem to themselves to have good cause to deride us, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be held as part of man's punishment. For they suppose that the blessedness of the soul then only is complete, when it is quite denuded of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple, and, as it were, naked soul. On this point, if I should find nothing in their own literature to refute this opinion, I should be forced laboriously to demonstrate that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of the body, which is a burden to the soul. Hence that sentence of Scripture we quoted in a foregoing book, "For the corruptible body presseth down the soul."[593] The word corruptible is added to show that the soul is burdened, not by any body whatsoever, but by the body such as it has become in consequence of sin. And even though the word had not been added, we could understand nothing else. But when Plato most expressly declares that the gods who are made by the Supreme have immortal bodies, and when he introduces their Maker himself promising them as a great boon that they should abide in their bodies eternally, and never by any death be loosed from them, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling the Christian faith, feign to be ignorant of what they quite well know, and even prefer to contradict themselves rather than lose an opportunity of contradicting us? Here are Plato's words, as Cicero[Pg 537] has translated them,[594] in which he introduces the Supreme addressing the gods He had made, and saying, "Ye who are sprung from a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author. These (your bodies) are indestructible so long as I will it; although all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve what reason has compacted. But, seeing that ye have been born, ye cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible; yet ye shall by no means be destroyed, nor shall any fates consign you to death, and prove superior to my will, which is a stronger assurance of your perpetuity than those bodies to which ye were joined when ye were born." Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the connection of the body and soul, and yet are rendered immortal by the will and decree of their Maker. If, therefore, it is a punishment to the soul to be connected with any body whatever, why does God address them as if they were afraid of death, that is, of the separation of soul and body? Why does He seek to reassure them by promising them immortality, not in virtue of their nature, which is composite and not simple, but by virtue of His invincible will, whereby He can effect that neither things born die, nor things compounded be dissolved, but preserved eternally?
Whether this opinion of Plato's about the stars is true or not, is another question. For we cannot at once grant to him that these luminous bodies or globes, which by day and night shine on the earth with the light of their bodily substance, have also intellectual and blessed souls which animate each its own body, as he confidently affirms of the universe itself, as if it were one huge animal, in which all other animals were contained.[595] But this, as I said, is another question, which we[Pg 538] have not undertaken to discuss at present. This much only I deemed right to bring forward, in opposition to those who so pride themselves on being, or on being called Platonists, that they blush to be Christians, and who cannot brook to be called by a name which the common people also bear, lest they vulgarize the Philosophers' coterie, which is proud in proportion to its exclusiveness. These men, seeking a weak point in the Christian doctrine, select for attack the eternity of the body, as if it were a contradiction to contend for the blessedness of the soul, and to wish it to be always resident in the body, bound, as it were, in a lamentable chain; and this although Plato, their own founder and master, affirms that it was granted by the Supreme as a boon to the gods He had made, that they should not die, that is, should not be separated from the bodies with which He had connected them.
17. Against those who affirm that earthly bodies cannot be made incorruptible and eternal.
These same philosophers further contend that terrestrial bodies cannot be eternal, though they make no doubt that the whole earth, which is itself the central member of their god,not, indeed, of the greatest, but yet of a great god, that is, of this whole world,is eternal. Since, then, the Supreme made for them another god, that is, this world, superior to the other gods beneath Him; and since they suppose that this god is an animal, having, as they affirm, a rational or intellectual soul enclosed in the huge mass of its body, and having, as the fitly situated and adjusted members of its body, the four elements, whose union they wish to be indissoluble and eternal, lest perchance this great god of theirs might some day perish; what reason is there that the earth, which is the central member in the body of a greater creature, should be eternal, and the bodies of other terrestrial creatures should not possibly be eternal if God should so will it? But earth, say they, must return to earth, out of which the terrestrial bodies of the animals have been taken. For this, they say, is the reason of the necessity of their death and dissolution, and this the manner of their restoration to the solid and eternal earth whence they came. But if any one says the same thing of fire, holding that the bodies which are derived from it to make[Pg 539] celestial beings must be restored to the universal fire, does not the immortality which Plato represents these gods as receiving from the Supreme evanesce in the heat of this dispute? Or does this not happen with those celestials because God, whose will, as Plato says, overpowers all powers, has willed it should not be so? What, then, hinders God from ordaining the same of terrestrial bodies? And since, indeed, Plato acknowledges that God can prevent things that are born from dying, and things that are joined from being sundered, and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain that the souls once allotted to their bodies should never abandon them, but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss, why may He not also effect that terrestrial bodies die not? Is God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian's creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire? the Philosophers, forsooth, have been admitted to a knowledge of the divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets! The truth is, that the Spirit of God taught His prophets so much of His will as He thought fit to reveal, but the Philosophers, in their efforts to discover it, were deceived by human conjecture.
But they should not have been so led astray, I will not say by their ignorance, but by their obstinacy, as to contradict themselves so frequently; for they maintain, with all their vaunted might, that in order to the happiness of the soul, it must abandon not only its earthly body, but every kind of body. And yet they hold that the gods, whose souls are most blessed, are bound to everlasting bodies, the celestials to fiery bodies, and the soul of Jove himself (or this world, as they would have us believe) to all the physical elements which compose this entire mass reaching from earth to heaven. For this soul Plato believes to be extended and diffused by musical numbers,[596] from the middle of the inside of the earth, which geometricians call the centre, outwards through all its parts to the utmost heights and extremities of the heavens; so that this world is a very great and blessed immortal animal, whose soul has both the perfect blessedness of wisdom, and never leaves its own body, and whose body has life everlasting[Pg 540] from the soul, and by no means clogs or hinders it, though itself be not a simple body, but compacted of so many and so huge materials. Since, therefore, they allow so much to their own conjectures, why do they refuse to believe that by the divine will and power immortality can be conferred on earthly bodies, in which the souls would be neither oppressed with the burden of them, nor separated from them by any death, but live eternally and blessedly? Do they not assert that their own gods so live in bodies of fire, and that Jove himself, their king, so lives in the physical elements? If, in order to its blessedness, the soul must quit every kind of body, let their gods flit from the starry spheres, and Jupiter from earth to sky; or, if they cannot do so, let them be pronounced miserable. But neither alternative will these men adopt. For, on the one hand, they dare not ascribe to their own gods a departure from the body, lest they should seem to worship mortals; on the other hand, they dare not deny their happiness, lest they should acknowledge wretches as gods. Therefore, to obtain blessedness, we need not quit every kind of body, but only the corruptible, cumbersome, painful, dying,not such bodies as the goodness of God contrived for the first man, but such only as man's sin entailed.
18. Of earthly bodies, which the Philosophers affirm cannot be in heavenly places, because whatever is of earth is by its natural weight attracted to earth.
But it is necessary, they say, that the natural weight of earthly bodies either keep them on earth or draw them to it; and therefore they cannot be in heaven. Our first parents were indeed on earth, in a well-wooded and fruitful spot, which has been named Paradise. But let our adversaries a little more carefully consider this subject of earthly weight, because it has important bearings, both on the ascension of the body of Christ, and also on the resurrection body of the saints. If human skill can by some contrivance fabricate vessels that float, out of metals which sink as soon as they are placed on the water, how much more credible is it that God, by some occult mode of operation, should even more certainly effect that these earthy masses be emancipated from the downward pressure of their weight? This cannot be impossible to that God by whose almighty will, according to[Pg 541] Plato, neither things born perish, nor things composed dissolve, especially since it is much more wonderful that spiritual and bodily essences be conjoined than that bodies be adjusted to other material substances. Can we not also easily believe that souls, being made perfectly blessed, should be endowed with the power of moving their earthy but incorruptible bodies as they please, with almost spontaneous movement, and of placing them where they please with the readiest action? If the angels transport whatever terrestrial creatures they please from any place they please, and convey them whither they please, is it to be believed that they cannot do so without toil and the feeling of burden? Why, then, may we not believe that the spirits of the saints, made perfect and blessed by divine grace, can carry their own bodies where they please, and set them where they will? For, though we have been accustomed to notice, in bearing weights, that the larger the quantity the greater the weight of earthy bodies is, and that the greater the weight the more burdensome it is, yet the soul carries the members of its own flesh with less difficulty when they are massive with health, than in sickness when they are wasted. And though the hale and strong man feels heavier to other men carrying him than the lank and sickly, yet the man himself moves and carries his own body with less feeling of burden when he has the greater bulk of vigorous health, than when his frame is reduced to a minimum by hunger or disease. Of such consequence, in estimating the weight of earthly bodies, even while yet corruptible and mortal, is the consideration not of dead weight, but of the healthy equilibrium of the parts. And what words can tell the difference between what we now call health and future immortality? Let not the Philosophers, then, think to upset our faith with arguments from the weight of bodies; for I don't care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body can be in heaven, while the whole earth is suspended on nothing. For perhaps the world keeps its central place by the same law that attracts to its centre all heavy bodies. But this I say, if the lesser gods, to whom Plato committed the creation of man and the other terrestrial creatures, were able, as he affirms, to withdraw from the fire its quality of burning, while[Pg 542] they left it that of lighting, so that it should shine through the eyes; and if to the supreme God Plato also concedes the power of preserving from death things that have been born, and of preserving from dissolution things that are composed of parts so different as body and spirit;are we to hesitate to concede to this same God the power to operate on the flesh of him whom He has endowed with immortality, so as to withdraw its corruption but leave its nature, remove its burdensome weight but retain its seemly form and members? But concerning our belief in the resurrection of the dead, and concerning their immortal bodies, we shall speak more at large, God willing, in the end of this work.
19. Against the opinion of those who do not believe that the primitive men would have been immortal if they had not sinned.
BOOK XII. - Of the creation of angels and men, and of the origin of evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Some, too, in advocating these recurring cycles that restore all things to their original, cite in favour of their supposition what Solomon says in the book of Ecclesiastes: "What is that which hath been? It is that which shall be. And what is that which is done? It is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Who can speak and say, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us."[539] This he said either of those things of which he had just been speaking the succession of generations, the orbit of the sun, the course of rivers,or else of all kinds of creatures that are born and die. For men were before us, are with us, and shall be after us; and so all living things and all plants. Even monstrous and irregular productions, though differing from one another, and though some are reported as solitary instances, yet resemble one another generally, in so far as they are miraculous and monstrous, and, in this sense, have been, and shall be, and are no new and recent things under the sun. However, some would understand these words as meaning that in the predestination of God all things have already existed, and that thus there is no new thing under the sun. At all events, far be it from any true believer to suppose that by these words of Solomon those cycles are meant, in which, according to those philosophers, the same periods and events of time are repeated; as if, for example, the Philosopher Plato, having taught in the school at Athens which is called the Academy, so, numberless ages before, at long but certain intervals, this same Plato, and the same school, and the same disciples existed, and so also are to be repeated during the countless cycles that are yet be be,far be it, I say, from us to believe this. For once Christ died for our sins; and, rising from the dead, He dieth no more. "Death hath no more dominion over Him;"[540] and we ourselves after the resurrection shall be "ever with the Lord,"[541] to whom we now say, as the sacred Psalmist dictates, "Thou shalt keep us, O Lord, Thou shalt preserve us from this generation."[Pg 500][542] And that too which follows, is, I think, appropriate enough: "The wicked walk in a circle;" not because their life is to recur by means of these circles, which these philosophers imagine, but because the path in which their false doctrine now runs is circuitous.
14. Of the creation of the human race in time, and how this was effected without any new design or change of purpose on God's part.
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And now that we have exploded these cycles which were supposed to bring back the soul at fixed periods to the same miseries, what can seem more in accordance with godly reason than to believe that it is possible for God both to create new things never before created, and in doing so, to preserve His will unaltered? But whether the number of eternally redeemed souls can be continually increased or not, let the Philosophers themselves decide, who are so subtle in determining where infinity cannot be admitted. For our own part, our reasoning holds in either case. For if the number of souls can be indefinitely increased, what reason is there to deny that what had never before been created, could be created? since the number of ransomed souls never existed before, and has yet not only been once made, but will never cease to be anew coming into being. If, on the other hand, it be more suitable that the number of eternally ransomed souls be definite, and that this number will never be increased, yet this number, whatever it be, did assuredly never exist before, and it cannot increase, and reach the amount it signifies, without having some beginning; and this beginning never before existed. That this beginning, therefore, might be, the first man was created.
21. That there was created at first but one individual, and that the human race was created in him.
BOOK XIV. - Of the punishment and results of mans first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion that charity or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the Philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great account of love (amor) placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas; and we have already shown that amor is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, "He that loveth (diligit) iniquity hateth his own soul;"[27] and the words of the Apostle John, "If any man love (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him."[28] Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, "For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money."[29]
The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us prove from Scripture. The apostle "desires to depart, and to be with Christ."[30] And, "My soul desired to long for Thy judgments;"[31] or if it is more appropriate to say, "My soul longed to desire Thy judgments." And, "The desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom."[Pg 12][32] Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But joy is used in a good sense: "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous."[33] And, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart."[34] And, "Thou wilt fill me with joy with Thy countenance."[35] Fear is used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."[36] And, "Be not high-minded, but fear."[37] And, "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."[38] But with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefers to call sickness (gritudo), and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he says, "Dolent gaudentque"[39]), but which I prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering,with respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.
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Hence it is that even the Philosophers who have approximated to the truth have avowed that anger and lust are vicious mental emotions, because, even when exercised towards objects which wisdom does not prohibit, they are moved in an ungoverned and inordinate manner, and consequently need the regulation of mind and reason. And they assert that this third part of the mind is posted as it were in a kind of citadel, to give rule to these other parts, so that, while it rules and they serve, man's righteousness is preserved without a breach.[110] These parts, then, which they acknowledge to be vicious even in a wise and temperate man, so that the mind, by its composing and restraining influence, must bridle and recall them from those objects towards which they are unlawfully moved, and give them access to those which the law of wisdom sanctions,that anger, e.g., may be allowed for the enforcement of a just authority, and lust for the duty of propagating offspring,these parts, I say, were not vicious in Paradise before sin, for they were never moved in opposition to a holy will towards any object from which it was necessary that they should be withheld by the restraining bridle of reason. For though now they are moved in this way, and are regulated by a bridling and restraining power, which those who live temperately, justly, and godly exercise, sometimes with ease, and sometimes with greater difficulty, this is not the sound health of nature, but the weakness which results from sin. And how is it that shame does not hide the acts and words dictated by anger or other emotions, as it covers the motions of lust, unless because the members of the body which we employ for accomplishing them are moved, not by the emotions themselves, but by the authority of the consenting will? For he who in his anger rails at or even strikes some one, could not do so were not his tongue and hand moved by the authority of the will, as also they are moved when there is no anger. But the organs of generation are so subjected to the rule of lust, that they have no motion but what it communicates. It is this we are ashamed of; it is this which blushingly[Pg 36] hides from the eyes of onlookers. And rather will a man endure a crowd of witnesses when he is unjustly venting his anger on some one, than the eye of one man when he innocently copulates with his wife.
20. Of the foolish beastliness of the Cynics.
BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
IN THIS BOOK THE END OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY, IS DISCUSSED. AUGUSTINE REVIEWS THE OPINIONS OF the PhilosopherS REGARDING THE SUPREME GOOD, AND THEIR VAIN EFFORTS TO MAKE FOR THEMSELVES A HAPPINESS IN THIS LIFE; AND, WHILE HE REFUTES THESE, HE TAKES OCCASION TO SHOW WHAT THE PEACE AND HAPPINESS BELONGING TO THE HEAVENLY CITY, OR THE PEOPLE OF CHRIST, ARE BOTH NOW AND HEREAFTER.
1. That Varro has made out that two hundred and eighty-eight different sects of philosophy might be formed by the various opinions regarding the supreme good.
As I see that I have still to discuss the fit destinies of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly, I must first explain, so far as the limits of this work allow me, the reasonings by which men have attempted to make for themselves a happiness in this unhappy life, in order that it may be evident, not only from divine authority, but also from such reasons as can be adduced to unbelievers, how the empty dreams of the Philosophers differ from the hope which God gives to us, and from the substantial fulfilment of it which He will give us as our blessedness. Philosophers have expressed a great variety of diverse opinions regarding the ends of goods and of evils, and this question they have eagerly canvassed, that they might, if possible, discover what makes a man happy. For the end of our good is that for the sake of which other things are to be desired, while it is to be desired for its own sake; and the end of evil is that on account of which other things are to be shunned, while it is avoided on its own account. Thus, by the end of good, we at present mean, not that by which good is destroyed, so that it no longer exists, but that by which it is finished, so that it becomes complete; and by the end of evil we mean, not that which abolishes it, but that which completes its development. These two ends, therefore, are the supreme good and the supreme evil; and, as I have[Pg 294] said, those who have in this vain life professed the study of wisdom have been at great pains to discover these ends, and to obtain the supreme good and avoid the supreme evil in this life. And although they erred in a variety of ways, yet natural insight has prevented them from wandering from the truth so far that they have not placed the supreme good and evil, some in the soul, some in the body, and some in both. From this tripartite distribution of the sects of philosophy, Marcus Varro, in his book De Philosophia,[619] has drawn so large a variety of opinions, that, by a subtle and minute analysis of distinctions, he numbers without difficulty as many as 288 sects,not that these have actually existed, but sects which are possible.
To illustrate briefly what he means, I must begin with his own introductory statement in the above-mentioned book, that there are four things which men desire, as it were by nature without a master, without the help of any instruction, without industry or the art of living which is called virtue, and which is certainly learned:[620] either pleasure, which is an agreeable stirring of the bodily sense; or repose, which excludes every bodily inconvenience; or both these, which Epicurus calls by the one name, pleasure; or the primary objects of nature,[621] which comprehend the things already named and other things, either bodily, such as health, and safety, and integrity of the members, or spiritual, such as the greater and less mental gifts that are found in men. Now these four thingspleasure, repose, the two combined, and the primary objects of natureexist in us in such sort that we must either desire virtue on their account, or them for the sake of virtue, or both for their own sake; and consequently there arise from this distinction twelve sects, for each is by this consideration tripled. I will illustrate this in one instance, and, having done so, it will not be difficult to understand the others. According, then, as bodily pleasure is subjected, preferred, or united to virtue, there are three sects. It is subjected to virtue when it is chosen as subservient to virtue. Thus it is[Pg 295] a duty of virtue to live for one's country, and for its sake to beget children, neither of which can be done without bodily pleasure. For there is pleasure in eating and drinking, pleasure also in sexual intercourse. But when it is preferred to virtue, it is desired for its own sake, and virtue is chosen only for its sake, and to effect nothing else than the attainment or preservation of bodily pleasure. And this, indeed, is to make life hideous; for where virtue is the slave of pleasure it no longer deserves the name of virtue. Yet even this disgraceful distortion has found some philosophers to patronize and defend it. Then virtue is united to pleasure when neither is desired for the other's sake, but both for their own. And therefore, as pleasure, according as it is subjected, preferred, or united to virtue, makes three sects, so also do repose, pleasure and repose combined, and the prime natural blessings, make their three sects each. For as men's opinions vary, and these four things are sometimes subjected, sometimes preferred, and sometimes united to virtue, there are produced twelve sects. But this number again is doubled by the addition of one difference, viz. the social life; for whoever attaches himself to any of these sects does so either for his own sake alone, or for the sake of a companion, for whom he ought to wish what he desires for himself. And thus there will be twelve of those who think some one of these opinions should be held for their own sakes, and other twelve who decide that they ought to follow this or that philosophy not for their own sakes only, but also for the sake of others whose good they desire as their own. These twenty-four sects again are doubled, and become forty-eight by adding a difference taken from the New Academy. For each of these four and twenty sects can hold and defend their opinion as certain, as the Stoics defended the position that the supreme good of man consisted solely in virtue; or they can be held as probable, but not certain, as the New Academics did. There are, therefore, twenty-four who hold their philosophy as certainly true, other twenty-four who hold their opinions as probable, but not certain. Again, as each person who attaches himself to any of these sects may adopt the mode of life either of the Cynics or of the other philosophers, this distinction will double the number,[Pg 296] and so make ninety-six sects. Then, lastly, as each of these sects may be adhered to either by men who love a life of ease, as those who have through choice or necessity addicted themselves to study, or by men who love a busy life, as those who, while philosophizing, have been much occupied with state affairs and public business, or by men who choose a mixed life, in imitation of those who have apportioned their time partly to erudite leisure, partly to necessary business: by these differences the number of the sects is tripled, and becomes 288.
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4. What the Christians believe regarding the supreme good and evil, in opposition to the Philosophers, who have maintained that the supreme good is in themselves.
If, then, we be asked what the city of God has to say upon these points, and, in the first place, what its opinion regarding the supreme good and evil is, it will reply that life eternal is the supreme good, death eternal the supreme evil, and that to obtain the one and escape the other we must live rightly. And thus it is written, "The just lives by faith,"[623] for[Pg 302] we do not as yet see our good, and must therefore live by faith; neither have we in ourselves power to live rightly, but can do so only if He who has given us faith to believe in His help do help us when we believe and pray. As for those who have supposed that the sovereign good and evil are to be found in this life, and have placed it either in the soul or the body, or in both, or, to speak more explicitly, either in pleasure or in virtue, or in both; in repose or in virtue, or in both; in pleasure and repose, or in virtue, or in all combined; in the primary objects of nature, or in virtue, or in both,all these have, with a marvellous shallowness, sought to find their blessedness in this life and in themselves. Contempt has been poured upon such ideas by the Truth, saying by the prophet, "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men" (or, as the Apostle Paul cites the passage, "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise") "that they are vain."[624]
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the Philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read,[637] sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God's mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness. And is this not a great misery of human life, that we are involved in such ignorance as, but for God's mercy, makes us a prey to these demons? And it is very certain that the Philosophers of the godless city, who have maintained that the gods were their friends, had fallen a prey to the malignant demons who rule that city, and whose eternal punishment is to be shared by it. For the nature of these beings is sufficiently evinced by the sacred or rather sacrilegious observances which form their worship, and by the filthy games in which their crimes are celebrated, and which they themselves originated and exacted from their worshippers as a fit propitiation.
[Pg 314]
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And thus we may say of peace, as we have said of eternal life, that it is the end of our good; and the rather because the Psalmist says of the city of God, the subject of this laborious work, "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion: for He hath streng thened the bars of thy gates; He hath blessed thy children within thee; who hath made thy borders peace."[638] For when the bars of her gates shall be streng thened, none shall go in or come out from her; consequently we ought to understand the peace of her borders as[Pg 315] that final peace we are wishing to declare. For even the mystical name of the city itself, that is, Jerusalem, means, as I have already said, "Vision of Peace." But as the word peace is employed in connection with things in this world in which certainly life eternal has no place, we have preferred to call the end or supreme good of this city life eternal rather than peace. Of this end the apostle says, "But now, being freed from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end life eternal."[639] But, on the other hand, as those who are not familiar with Scripture may suppose that the life of the wicked is eternal life, either because of the immortality of the soul, which some of the Philosophers even have recognised, or because of the endless punishment of the wicked, which forms a part of our faith, and which seems impossible unless the wicked live for ever, it may therefore be advisable, in order that every one may readily understand what we mean, to say that the end or supreme good of this city is either peace in eternal life, or eternal life in peace. For peace is a good so great, that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we desire with such zest, or find to be more thoroughly gratifying. So that if we dwell for a little longer on this subject, we shall not, in my opinion, be wearisome to our readers, who will attend both for the sake of understanding what is the end of this city of which we speak, and for the sake of the sweetness of peace which is dear to all.
12. That even the fierceness of war and all the disquietude of men make towards this one end of peace, which every nature desires.
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But it may be replied, Who is this God, or what proof is there that He alone is worthy to receive sacrifice from the Romans? One must be very blind to be still asking who this God is. He is the God whose prophets predicted the things we see accomplished. He is the God from whom Abraham received the assurance, "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed."[658] That this was fulfilled in Christ, who according to the flesh sprang from that seed, is recognised, whether they will or no, even by those who have continued to be the enemies of this name. He is the God whose divine Spirit spake by the men whose predictions I cited in the preceding books, and which are fulfilled in the Church which has extended over all the world. This is the God whom Varro, the most learned of the Romans, supposed to be Jupiter, though he knows not what he says; yet I think it right to note the circumstance that a man of such learning was unable to suppose that this God had no existence or was contemptible, but believed Him to be the same as the supreme God. In fine, He is the God whom Porphyry, the most learned of the Philosophers, though the bitterest enemy of the Christians, confesses to be a great God, even according to the oracles of those whom he esteems gods.
[Pg 334]
BOOK X. - Porphyrys doctrine of redemption, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men desire to be happy. But who are happy, or how they become so, these are questions about which the weakness of human understanding stirs endless and angry controversies, in which philosophers have wasted their strength and expended their leisure. To adduce and discuss their various opinions would be tedious, and is unnecessary. The reader may remember what we said in the eighth book, while making a selection of the Philosophers with whom we might discuss the question regarding the future life of happiness, whether we can reach it by paying divine honours to the one true God, the Creator of all gods, or by worshipping many gods, and he will not expect us to repeat here the same argument, especially as, even if he has forgotten it, he may refresh his memory by reperusal. For we made selection of the Platonists, justly esteemed the noblest of the Philosophers, because they had the wit to perceive that the human soul, immortal and rational, or intellectual, as it is, cannot be happy except by partaking of the light of that God by whom both itself and the world were made; and also that the happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love to that one supreme good,[Pg 383] the unchangeable God. But as even these philosophers, whether accommodating to the folly and ignorance of the people, or, as the apostle says, "becoming vain in their imaginations,"[364] supposed or allowed others to suppose that many gods should be worshipped, so that some of them considered that divine honour by worship and sacrifice should be rendered even to the demons (an error I have already exploded), we must now, by God's help, ascertain what is thought about our religious worship and piety by those immortal and blessed spirits, who dwell in the heavenly places among dominations, principalities, powers, whom the Platonists call gods, and some either good demons, or, like us, angels,that is to say, to put it more plainly, whether the angels desire us to offer sacrifice and worship, and to consecrate our possessions and ourselves, to them, or only to God, theirs and ours.
For this is the worship which is due to the Divinity, or, to speak more accurately, to the Deity; and, to express this worship in a single word, as there does not occur to me any Latin term sufficiently exact, I shall avail myself, whenever necessary, of a Greek word. , whenever it occurs in Scripture, is rendered by the word service. But that service which is due to men, and in reference to which the apostle writes that servants must be subject to their own masters,[365] is usually designated by another word in Greek,[366] whereas the service which is paid to God alone by worship, is always, or almost always, called in the usage of those who wrote from the divine oracles. This cannot so well be called simply "cultus," for in that case it would not seem to be due exclusively to God; for the same word is applied to the respect we pay either to the memory or the living presence of men. From it, too, we derive the words agriculture, colonist, and others.[367] And the hea then call their gods "clicol," not because they worship heaven, but because they dwell in it, and as it were colonize it,not in the sense in which we call those colonists who are attached to their native soil to cultivate it[Pg 384] under the rule of the owners, but in the sense in which the great master of the Latin language says, "There was an ancient city inhabited by Tyrian colonists."[368] He called them colonists, not because they cultivated the soil, but because they inhabited the city. So, too, cities that have hived off from larger cities are called colonies. Consequently, while it is quite true that, using the word in a special sense, "cult" can be rendered to none but God, yet, as the word is applied to other things besides, the cult due to God cannot in Latin be expressed by this word alone.
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However, he pursues this subject, and, still in the character of an inquirer, mentions some things which no sober judgment could attri bute to any but malicious and deceitful powers.[Pg 399] He asks why, after the better class of spirits have been invoked, the worse should be commanded to perform the wicked desires of men; why they do not hear a man who has just left a woman's embrace, while they themselves make no scruple of tempting men to incest and adultery; why their priests are commanded to abstain from animal food for fear of being polluted by the corporeal exhalations, while they themselves are attracted by the fumes of sacrifices and other exhalations; why the initiated are forbidden to touch a dead body, while their mysteries are celebrated almost entirely by means of dead bodies; why it is that a man addicted to any vice should utter threats, not to a demon or to the soul of a dead man, but to the sun and moon, or some of the heavenly bodies, which he intimidates by imaginary terrors, that he may wring from them a real boon,for he threatens that he will demolish the sky, and such like impossibilities,that those gods, being alarmed, like silly children, with imaginary and absurd threats, may do what they are ordered. Porphyry further relates that a man Chremon, profoundly versed in these sacred or rather sacrilegious mysteries, had written that the famous Egyptian mysteries of Isis and her husb and Osiris had very great influence with the gods to compel them to do what they were ordered, when he who used the spells threatened to divulge or do away with these mysteries, and cried with a threatening voice that he would scatter the members of Osiris if they neglected his orders. Not without reason is Porphyry surprised that a man should utter such wild and empty threats against the gods,not against gods of no account, but against the heavenly gods, and those that shine with sidereal light, and that these threats should be effectual to constrain them with resistless power, and alarm them so that they fulfil his wishes. Not without reason does he, in the character of an inquirer into the reasons of these surprising things, give it to be understood that they are done by that race of spirits which he previously described as if quoting other people's opinions,spirits who deceive not, as he said, by nature, but by their own corruption, and who simulate gods and dead men, but not, as he said, demons, for demons they really are. As to his idea that by means of herbs, and stones, and animals, and[Pg 400] certain incantations and noises, and drawings, sometimes fanciful, and sometimes copied from the motions of the heavenly bodies, men create upon earth powers capable of bringing about various results, all that is only the mystification which these demons practise on those who are subject to them, for the sake of furnishing themselves with merriment at the expense of their dupes. Either, then, Porphyry was sincere in his doubts and inquiries, and mentioned these things to demonstrate and put beyond question that they were the work, not of powers which aid us in obtaining life, but of deceitful demons; or, to take a more favourable view of the Philosopher, he adopted this method with the Egyptian who was wedded to these errors, and was proud of them, that he might not offend him by assuming the attitude of a teacher, nor discompose his mind by the altercation of a professed assailant, but, by assuming the character of an inquirer, and the humble attitude of one who was anxious to learn, might turn his attention to these matters, and show how worthy they are to be despised and relinquished. Towards the conclusion of his letter, he requests Anebo to inform him what the Egyptian wisdom indicates as the way to blessedness. But as to those who hold intercourse with the gods, and pester them only for the sake of finding a runaway slave, or acquiring property, or making a bargain of a marriage, or such things, he declares that their pretensions to wisdom are vain. He adds that these same gods, even granting that on other points their utterances were true, were yet so ill-advised and unsatisfactory in their disclosures about blessedness, that they cannot be either gods or good demons, but are either that spirit who is called the deceiver, or mere fictions of the imagination.
12. Of the miracles wrought by the true God through the ministry of the holy angels.
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Will some one say that these miracles are false, that they never happened, and that the records of them are lies? Whoever says so, and asserts that in such matters no records whatever can be credited, may also say that there are no gods who care for human affairs. For they have induced men to worship them only by means of miraculous works, which the hea then histories testify, and by which the gods have made a display of their own power rather than done any real service. This is the reason why we have not undertaken in this work,[Pg 409] of which we are now writing the tenth book, to refute those who either deny that there is any divine power, or contend that it does not interfere with human affairs, but those who prefer their own god to our God, the Founder of the holy and most glorious city, not knowing that He is also the invisible and unchangeable Founder of this visible and changing world, and the truest bestower of the blessed life which resides not in things created, but in Himself. For thus speaks His most trustworthy prophet: "It is good for me to be united to God."[408] Among philosophers it is a question, what is that end and good to the attainment of which all our duties are to have a relation? The Psalmist did not say, It is good for me to have great wealth, or to wear imperial insignia, purple, sceptre, and diadem; or, as some even of the Philosophers have not blushed to say, It is good for me to enjoy sensual pleasure; or, as the better men among them seemed to say, My good is my spiritual strength; but, "It is good for me to be united to God." This he had learned from Him whom the holy angels, with the accompanying witness of miracles, presented as the sole object of worship. And hence he himself became the sacrifice of God, whose spiritual love inflamed him, and into whose ineffable and incorporeal embrace he yearned to cast himself. Moreover, if the worshippers of many gods (whatever kind of gods they fancy their own to be) believe that the miracles recorded in their civil histories, or in the books of magic, or of the more respectable theurgy, were wrought by these gods, what reason have they for refusing to believe the miracles recorded in those writings, to which we owe a credence as much greater as He is greater to whom alone these writings teach us to sacrifice?
19. On the reasonableness of offering, as the true religion teaches, a visible sacrifice to the one true and invisible God.
BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
While Romulus reigned, Thales the Milesian is said to have lived, being one of the seven sages, who succeeded the theological poets, of whom Orpheus was the most renowned, and were called , that is, sages. During that time the ten tribes, which on the division of the people were called Israel, were conquered by the Chaldeans and led captive into their lands, while the two tribes which were called Judah, and had the seat of their kingdom in Jerusalem, remained in the land of Judea. As Romulus, when dead, could nowhere be found, the Romans, as is everywhere notorious, placed him among the gods,a thing which by that time had already ceased to be done, and which was not done afterwards till the time of the Csars, and then not through error, but in flattery; so that Cicero ascribes great praises to Romulus, because he merited such honours not in rude and unlearned times, when men[Pg 245] were easily deceived, but in times already polished and learned, although the subtle and acute loquacity of the Philosophers had not yet culminated. But although the later times did not deify dead men, still they did not cease to hold and worship as gods those deified of old; nay, by images, which the ancients never had, they even increased the allurements of vain and impious superstition, the unclean demons effecting this in their heart, and also deceiving them by lying oracles, so that even the fabulous crimes of the gods, which were not once imagined by a more polite age, were yet basely acted in the plays in honour of these same false deities. Numa reigned after Romulus; and although he had thought that Rome would be better defended the more gods there were, yet on his death he himself was not counted worthy of a place among them, as if it were supposed that he had so crowded heaven that a place could not be found for him there. They report that the Samian sibyl lived while he reigned at Rome, and when Manasseh began to reign over the Hebrews,an impious king, by whom the prophet Isaiah is said to have been slain.
25. What philosophers were famous when Tarquinius Priscus reigned over the Romans, and Zedekiah over the Hebrews, when Jerusalem was taken and the temple overthrown.
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In the time of our prophets, then, whose writings had already come to the knowledge of almost all nations, the Philosophers of the nations had not yet arisen,at least, not those who were called by that name, which originated with Pythagoras the Samian, who was becoming famous at the time when the Jewish captivity ended. Much more, then, are the other philosophers found to be later than the prophets. For even Socrates the Athenian, the master of all who were then most famous, holding the pre-eminence in that department that is called the moral or active, is found after Esdras in the chronicles. Plato also was born not much later, who far outwent the other disciples of Socrates. If, besides these, we take their predecessors, who had not yet been styled philosophers, to wit, the seven sages, and then the physicists, who succeeded Thales, and imitated his studious search into the nature of things, namely, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxagoras, and some others, before Pythagoras first professed himself a philosopher, even these did not precede the whole of our prophets in antiquity of time, since Thales, whom the others succeeded, is said to have flourished in the reign of Romulus, when the stream of prophecy burst forth from the fountains of Israel in those writings which spread over the whole world. So that only those theological poets, Orpheus, Linus, and Musus, and, it may be, some others[Pg 264] among the Greeks, are found earlier in date than the Hebrew prophets whose writings we hold as authoritative. But not even these preceded in time our true divine, Moses, who au thentically preached the one true God, and whose writings are first in the authoritative canon; and therefore the Greeks, in whose tongue the literature of this age chiefly appears, have no ground for boasting of their wisdom, in which our religion, wherein is true wisdom, is not evidently more ancient at least, if not superior. Yet it must be confessed that before Moses there had already been, not indeed among the Greeks, but among barbarous nations, as in Egypt, some doctrine which might be called their wisdom, else it would not have been written in the holy books that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,[573] as he was, when, being born there, and adopted and nursed by Pharaoh's daughter, he was also liberally educated. Yet not even the wisdom of the Egyptians could be antecedent in time to the wisdom of our prophets, because even Abraham was a prophet. And what wisdom could there be in Egypt before Isis had given them letters, whom they thought fit to worship as a goddess after her death? Now Isis is declared to have been the daughter of Inachus, who first began to reign in Argos when the grandsons of Abraham are known to have been already born.
38. That the ecclesiastical canon has not admitted certain writings on account of their too great antiquity, lest through them false things should be inserted instead of true.
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But let us omit further examination of history, and return to the Philosophers from whom we digressed to these things. They seem to have laboured in their studies for no other end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples dissented from their masters, and the fellow-disciples from one another, except because as men they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasonings? Now, although there might be among them a desire of glory, so that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute than another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others, but the inventor of his own dogma and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any[Pg 268] respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of them, lest on account of their multitude what ought to be religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few that their agreement should not be wonderful. For among the multitude of philosophers, who in their works have left behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will easily find any who agree in all their opinions. But to show this is too long a task for this work.
But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping city, that the rest who have differed from or opposed him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans asserted that human affairs were not under the providence of the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite opinion, agreed that they were ruled and defended by favourable and tutelary gods. Yet were not both sects famous among the Athenians? I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime for saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it was a god at all; while in the same city Epicurus flourished gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not believe that the sun or any star was a god, but contended that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might reach them! Were not both Aristippus and Antis thenes there, two noble philosophers and both Socratic? yet they placed the chief end of life within bounds so diverse and contradictory, that the first made the delight of the body the chief good, while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly by the virtue of the mind. The one also said that the wise man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should administer its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous and well-known porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and private, they openly strove in bands each for his own opinion, some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds;[Pg 269] some that this world had a beginning, others that it had not; some that it would perish, others that it would exist always; some that it was governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal, and of those who asserted their immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts, others that it was by no means so, while of those who asserted their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the body, others that they survived either a little while or a longer time, but not always; some fixing supreme good in the body, some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind and body external good things; some thinking that the bodily senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of the impious city has ever taken care to judge between all these and other well-nigh innumerable dissensions of the Philosophers, approving and accepting some, and disapproving and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom at random, without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies of men at variance, not about fields, houses, or anything of a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered with the same licence; so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the mystic Babylon. For Babylon means confusion, as we remember we have already explained. Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety.
But that nation, that people, that city, that republic, these Israelites, to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, by no means confounded with similar licence false prophets with the true prophets; but, agreeing together, and differing in nothing, acknowledged and upheld the au thentic authors of their sacred books. These were their philosophers, these were their sages, divines, prophets, and teachers of probity and piety. Whoever was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived not according to men, but according to God who hath spoken by them. If sacrilege is forbidden there, God hath forbidden[Pg 270] it. If it is said, "Honour thy father and thy mother,"[576] God hath commanded it. If it is said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,"[577] and other similar commandments, not human lips but the divine oracles have enounced them. Whatever truth certain philosophers, amid their false opinions, were able to see, and strove by laborious discussions to persuade men of,such as that God has made this world, and Himself most providently governs it, or of the nobility of the virtues, of the love of country, of fidelity in friendship, of good works and everything pertaining to virtuous manners, although they knew not to what end and what rule all these things were to be referred,all these, by words prophetic, that is, divine, although spoken by men, were commended to the people in that city, and not inculcated by contention in arguments, so that he who should know them might be afraid of contemning, not the wit of men, but the oracle of God.
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But the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted, and the human race running to the name of the liberating Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian name to resist the Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept in[Pg 284] the city of God indifferently without any correction, just as the city of confusion indifferently held the Philosophers who were of diverse and adverse opinions. Those, therefore, in the Church of Christ who savour anything morbid and depraved, and, on being corrected that they may savour what is wholesome and right, contumaciously resist, and will not amend their pestiferous and deadly dogmas, but persist in defending them, become heretics, and, going without, are to be reckoned as enemies who serve for her discipline. For even thus they profit by their wickedness those true catholic members of Christ, since God makes a good use even of the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love Him.[605] For all the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they exercise her wisdom: but at the same time, if these enemies are loved, they exercise her benevolence, or even her beneficence, whether she deals with them by persuasive doctrine or by terrible discipline. And thus the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without doubt the divine providence procures for her both consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other, as we recognise in the Psalms that voice which arises from no other cause, "According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart, Thy consolations have delighted my soul."[606] Hence also is that saying of the apostle, "Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation."[607]
For it is not to be thought that what the same teacher says can at any time fail, "Whoever will live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution."[608] Because even when those who are without do not rage, and thus there seems to be, and really is, tranquillity, which brings very much consolation, especially to the weak, yet there are not wanting, yea, there[Pg 285] are many within who by their abandoned manners torment the hearts of those who live piously, since by them the Christian and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to those who will live piously in Christ, the more do they grieve that through the wicked, who have a place within, it comes to be less loved than pious minds desire. The heretics themselves also, since they are thought to have the Christian name and sacraments, Scriptures, and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the pious, both because many who wish to be Christians are compelled by their dissensions to hesitate, and many evil-speakers also find in them matter for blaspheming the Christian name, because they too are at any rate called Christians. By these and similar depraved manners and errors of men, those who will live piously in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one molests or vexes their body; for they suffer this persecution, not in their bodies, but in their hearts. Whence is that word, "According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart;" for he does not say, in my body. Yet, on the other hand, none of them can perish, because the immutable divine promises are thought of. And because the apostle says, "The Lord knoweth them that are His;[609] for whom He did foreknow, He also predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of His Son,"[610] none of them can perish; therefore it follows in that psalm, "Thy consolations have delighted my soul."[611] But that grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to perish or to hinder the salvation of others. Finally, great consolations grow out of their chastisement, which imbue the souls of the pious with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they were troubled concerning their own perdition. Thus in this world, in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and His apostles, but even from that of Abel, whom first his wicked brother slew because he was righteous,[612] and thenceforth even to the end of this world, the Church has[Pg 286] gone forward on pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God.
BOOK XV. - The progress of the earthly and heavenly cities traced by the sacred history, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Yet He does not dismiss him without counsel, holy, just, and good. "Fret not thyself," He says, "for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou shalt rule over him." Over his brother, does He mean? Most certainly not. Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, "Thou hast sinned," and then He added, "Fret not thyself, for to thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it."[151] And the "turning" of sin to the man can be understood of his conviction that the guilt of sin can be laid at no other man's door but his own. For this is the health-giving medicine of penitence, and the fit plea for pardon; so that, when it is said, "To thee its turning," we must not supply "shall be," but we must read, "To thee let its turning be," understanding it as a command, not as a prediction. For then shall a man rule over his sin when he does not prefer it to himself and defend it, but subjects it by repentance; otherwise he that becomes protector of it shall surely become its prisoner. But if we understand this sin to be that carnal concupiscence of which the apostle says, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit,"[152] among the fruits of which lust he[Pg 60] names envy, by which assuredly Cain was stung and excited to destroy his brother, then we may properly supply the words "shall be," and read, "To thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt rule over it." For when the carnal part which the apostle calls sin, in that place where he says, "It is not I who do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,"[153] that part which the Philosophers also call vicious, and which ought not to lead the mind, but which the mind ought to rule and restrain by reason from illicit motions,when, then, this part has been moved to perpetrate any wickedness, if it be curbed and if it obey the word of the apostle, "Yield not your members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin,"[154] it is turned towards the mind and subdued and conquered by it, so that reason rules over it as a subject. It was this which God enjoined on him who was kindled with the fire of envy against his brother, so that he sought to put out of the way him whom he should have set as an example. "Fret not thyself," or compose thyself, He says: withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal body to fulfil it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. "For to thee shall be its turning," so long as you do not encourage it by giving it the rein, but bridle it by quenching its fire. "And thou shalt rule over it;" for when it is not allowed any external actings, it yields itself to the rule of the governing mind and righteous will, and ceases from even internal motions. There is something similar said in the same divine book of the woman, when God questioned and judged them after their sin, and pronounced sentence on them all,the devil in the form of the serpent, the woman and her husb and in their own persons. For when He had said to her, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children," then He added, "and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."[155] What is said to Cain about his sin, or about the vicious concupiscence of his flesh, is here said of the woman who had sinned; and we are to understand that the husb and is to rule his wife as the soul rules the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle, "He that loveth his wife, loveth himself; for no man[Pg 61] ever yet hated his own flesh."[156] This flesh, then, is to be healed, because it belongs to ourselves: is not to be abandoned to destruction as if it were alien to our nature. But Cain received that counsel of God in the spirit of one who did not wish to amend. In fact, the vice of envy grew stronger in him; and, having entrapped his brother, he slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. He was also a figure of the Jews who slew Christ the Shepherd of the flock of men, prefigured by Abel the shepherd of sheep: but as this is an allegorical and prophetical matter, I forbear to explain it now; besides, I remember that I have made some remarks upon it in writing against Faustus the Manichan.[157]
8. What Cain's reason was for building a city so early in the history of the human race.
BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But granting that this was once incredible, behold, now, the world has come to the belief that the earthly body of Christ was received up into heaven. Already both the learned and unlearned have believed in the resurrection of the flesh and its ascension to the heavenly places, while only a very few either of the educated or uneducated are still staggered by it. If this is a credible thing which is believed, then let those who do not believe see how stolid they are; and if it is incredible,[Pg 478] then this also is an incredible thing, that what is incredible should have received such credit. Here then we have two incredibles,to wit, the resurrection of our body to eternity, and that the world should believe so incredible a thing; and both these incredibles the same God predicted should come to pass before either had as yet occurred. We see that already one of the two has come to pass, for the world has believed what was incredible; why should we despair that the remaining one shall also come to pass, and that this which the world believed, though it was incredible, shall itself occur? For already that which was equally incredible has come to pass, in the world's believing an incredible thing. Both were incredible: the one we see accomplished, the other we believe shall be; for both were predicted in those same Scriptures by means of which the world believed. And the very manner in which the world's faith was won is found to be even more incredible, if we consider it. Men uninstructed in any branch of a liberal education, without any of the refinement of hea then learning, unskilled in grammar, not armed with dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric, but plain fishermen, and very few in number,these were the men whom Christ sent with the nets of faith to the sea of this world, and thus took out of every race so many fishes, and even the Philosophers themselves, wonderful as they are rare. Let us add, if you please, or because you ought to be pleased, this third incredible thing to the two former. And now we have three incredibles, all of which have yet come to pass. It is incredible that Jesus Christ should have risen in the flesh and ascended with flesh into heaven; it is incredible that the world should have believed so incredible a thing; it is incredible that a very few men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, should have been able so effectually to persuade the world, and even its learned men, of so incredible a thing. Of these three incredibles, the parties with whom we are debating refuse to believe the first; they cannot refuse to see the second, which they are unable to account for if they do not believe the third. It is indubitable that the resurrection of Christ, and His ascension into heaven with the flesh in which He rose, is already preached and believed in[Pg 479] the whole world. If it is not credible, how is it that it has already received credence in the whole world? If a number of noble, exalted, and learned men had said that they had witnessed it, and had been at pains to publish what they had witnessed, it were not wonderful that the world should have believed it, but it were very stubborn to refuse credence; but if, as is true, the world has believed a few obscure, inconsiderable, uneducated persons, who state and write that they witnessed it, is it not unreasonable that a handful of wrong-headed men should oppose themselves to the creed of the whole world, and refuse their belief? And if the world has put faith in a small number of men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, it is because the divinity of the thing itself appeared all the more manifestly in such contemptible witnesses. The eloquence, indeed, which lent persuasion to their message, consisted of wonderful works, not words. For they who had not seen Christ risen in the flesh, nor ascending into heaven with His risen body, believed those who related how they had seen these things, and who testified not only with words but wonderful signs. For men whom they knew to be acquainted with only one, or at most two languages, they marvelled to hear speaking in the tongues of all nations. They saw a man, lame from his mother's womb, after forty years stand up sound at their word in the name of Christ; that handkerchiefs taken from their bodies had virtue to heal the sick; that countless persons, sick of various diseases, were laid in a row in the road where they were to pass, that their shadow might fall on them as they walked, and that they forthwith received health; that many other stupendous miracles were wrought by them in the name of Christ; and, finally, that they even raised the dead. If it be admitted that these things occurred as they are related, then we have a multitude of incredible things to add to those three incredibles. That the one incredibility of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ may be believed, we accumulate the testimonies of countless incredible miracles, but even so we do not bend the frightful obstinacy of these sceptics. But if they do not believe that these miracles were wrought by Christ's apostles to gain credence to their preaching of His[Pg 480] resurrection and ascension, this one grand miracle suffices for us, that the whole world has believed without any miracles.
6. That Rome made its founder Romulus a god because it loved him; but the Church loved Christ because it believed Him to be God.
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The foremost of the Philosophers agree with us about the spiritual felicity enjoyed by the blessed in the life to come; it is only the resurrection of the flesh they call in question, and with all their might deny. But the mass of men, learned and unlearned, the world's wise men and its fools, have believed, and have left in meagre isolation the unbelievers, and have turned to Christ, who in His own resurrection demonstrated the reality of that which seems to our adversaries absurd. For the world has believed this which God predicted, as it was also predicted that the world would believe,a prediction[Pg 530] not due to the sorceries of Peter,[1024] since it was uttered so long before. He who has predicted these things, as I have already said, and am not ashamed to repeat, is the God before whom all other divinities tremble, as Porphyry himself owns, and seeks to prove, by testimonies from the oracles of these gods, and goes so far as to call Him God the Father and King. Far be it from us to interpret these predictions as they do who have not believed, along with the whole world, in that which it was predicted the world would believe in. For why should we not rather understand them as the world does, whose belief was predicted, and leave that handful of unbelievers to their idle talk and obstinate and solitary infidelity? For if they maintain that they interpret them differently only to avoid charging Scripture with folly, and so doing an injury to that God to whom they bear so notable a testimony, is it not a much greater injury they do Him when they say that His predictions must be understood otherwise than the world believed them, though He Himself praised, promised, accomplished this belief on the world's part? And why cannot He cause the body to rise again, and live for ever? or is it not to be believed that He will do this, because it is an undesirable thing, and unworthy of God? Of His omnipotence, which effects so many great miracles, we have already said enough. If they wish to know what the Almighty cannot do, I shall tell them He cannot lie. Let us therefore believe what He can do, by refusing to believe what He cannot do. Refusing to believe that He can lie, let them believe that He will do what He has promised to do; and let them believe it as the world has believed it, whose faith He predicted, whose faith He praised, whose faith He promised, whose faith He now points to. But how do they prove that the resurrection is an undesirable thing? There shall then be no corruption, which is the only evil thing about the body. I have already said enough about the order of the elements, and the other fanciful objections men raise; and in the thirteenth book I have, in my own judgment, sufficiently illustrated the facility of movement which the incorruptible body shall enjoy, judging from the ease and vigour we experience even now, when the body[Pg 531] is in good health. Those who have either not read the former books, or wish to refresh their memory, may read them for themselves.
26. That the opinion of Porphyry, that the soul, in order to be blessed, must be separated from every kind of body, is demolished by Plato, who says that the supreme God promised the gods that they should never be ousted from their bodies.
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For if that reasoning of the Philosophers, by which they attempt to make out that intelligible or mental objects are so seen by the mind, and sensible or bodily objects so seen by the body, that the former cannot be discerned by the mind through the body, nor the latter by the mind itself without the body,if this reasoning were trustworthy, then it would certainly follow that God could not be seen by the eye even of a spiritual body. But this reasoning is exploded both by true reason and by prophetic authority. For who is so little acquainted with the truth as to say that God has no cognisance of sensible objects? Has He therefore a body, the eyes of which give Him this knowledge? Moreover, what we have just been relating of the prophet Elisha, does this not sufficiently show that bodily things can be discerned by the spirit without the help of the body? For when that servant received the gifts, certainly this was a bodily or material transaction, yet the prophet saw it not by the body, but by the spirit. As, therefore, it is agreed that bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body shall be so great that spirit also is seen by the body? For God is a spirit. Besides, each man recognises his own life that life by which he now lives in the body, and which vivifies these earthly members and causes them to growby an interior sense, and not by his bodily eye; but the life of other men, though it is invisible, he sees with the bodily eye. For how do we distinguish between living and dead bodies, except by seeing at once both the body and the life which we cannot see save by the eye? But a life without a body we cannot see thus.
Wherefore it may very well be, and it is thoroughly credible, that we shall in the future world see the material forms of the new heavens and the new earth in such a way that we shall most distinctly recognise God everywhere present and governing all things, material as well as spiritual, and shall see Him, not as now we understand the invisible things of God, by the things which are made,[1046] and see Him darkly, as[Pg 540] in a mirror, and in part, and rather by faith than by bodily vision of material appearances, but by means of the bodies we shall wear and which we shall see wherever we turn our eyes. As we do not believe, but see that the living men around us who are exercising vital functions are alive, though we cannot see their life without their bodies, but see it most distinctly by means of their bodies, so, wherever we shall look with those spiritual eyes of our future bodies, we shall then, too, by means of bodily substances behold God, though a spirit, ruling all things. Either, therefore, the eyes shall possess some quality similar to that of the mind, by which they may be able to discern spiritual things, and among these God,a supposition for which it is difficult or even impossible to find any support in Scripture,or, which is more easy to comprehend, God will be so known by us, and shall be so much before us, that we shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in one another, in Himself, in the new heavens and the new earth, in every created thing which shall then exist; and also by the body we shall see Him in every body which the keen vision of the eye of the spiritual body shall reach. Our thoughts also shall be visible to all, for then shall be fulfilled the words of the apostle, "Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then shall every one have praise of God."[1047]
COSA - BOOK V, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
had read and well remembered much of the Philosophers, I compared some
things of theirs with those long fables of the Manichees, and found the
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compared things, I judged the tenets of most of the Philosophers to have
been much more probable. So then after the manner of the Academics (as
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already preferred some of the Philosophers; to which philosophers
notwithstanding, for that they were without the saving Name of Christ,
COSA - BOOK VIII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
so many works of the Philosophers; the instructor of so many noble
Senators, who also, as a monument of his excellent discharge of his
Deutsches Requiem, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
to the sincerity of the Philosopher of history, to his essentially German
(kerndeutsch) and military spirit. In 1929 I entered the Party.
ENNEAD 01.03 - Of Dialectic, or the Means of Raising the Soul to the Intelligible World., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
RETURN OF THE SOUL OF the Philosopher, MUSICIAN AND LOVER.
The latter road of progress must here be left aside (to be taken up later),345 to discuss here fully the first, explaining the operation of the return of the soul to the intelligible world. Three kinds of men offer themselves to our examination: the Philosopher, the musician, and the lover. These three must clearly be distinguished, beginning by determining the nature and character of the musician.
HOW THE MUSICIAN RISES TO THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.
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HOW the Philosopher RISES TO THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.
3. the Philosopher is naturally disposed to rise to the intelligible world. Borne on by light wings, he rushes thither without needing to learn to disengage himself from sense-objects, as do the preceding men. His only uncertainty will concern the road to be followed, all he will need will be a guide. He must therefore be shown the road; he must be helped to detach himself entirely from sense-objects, himself already possessing, as he does, the desire, being since a long while already detached therefrom by his nature. For this purpose he will be invited to apply himself to272 mathematics, so as to accustom him to think of incorporeal things, to believe in their existence. Being desirous of instruction, he will learn them easily; as, by his nature, he is already virtuous, he will need no more than promotion to the perfection of virtue. After mathematics, he will be taught dialectics, which will perfect him.
WHAT DIALECTICS IS.
ENNEAD 01.04 - Whether Animals May Be Termed Happy., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
3. Dismissing these theories, we return to our own definition of happiness. We do not necessarily make life synonymous with happiness by attri buting happiness to a living being. Otherwise, we would be implying that all living beings can achieve it, and we would be admitting to real complete enjoyment thereof all those who possessed that union and identity which all living beings are naturally capable of possessing. Finally, it would be difficult to grant this privilege to the reasonable being, while refusing it to the brute; for both equally possess life. They should, therefore, be capable of achieving happinessfor, on this hypothesis, happiness could be no more than a kind of life. Consequently, the Philosophers who make it consist in the rational life, not in the life common to all beings, do not perceive that they implicitly suppose that happiness is something different from life. They are then obliged to say that happiness resides in a pure quality, in the rational faculty. But the subject (to which they should refer happiness) is the rational life, since happiness can belong only to the totality (of life joined to reason). They therefore, really limit the life they speak of to a certain kind of life; not that they have the right to consider these two kinds of life (life1024 in general, and rational life) as being ranked alike, as both members of a single division would be, but another kind of distinction might be established between them, such as when we say that one thing is prior, and the other posterior. Since "life" may be understood in different senses, and as it possesses different degrees, and since by mere verbal similarity life may be equally predicated of plants and of irrational animals, and since its differences consist in being more or less complete, analogy demands a similar treatment of "living well." If, by its life, a being be the image of some other being, by its happiness it will also be the image of the happiness of this other being. If happiness be the privilege of complete life, the being that possesses a complete life will also alone possess happiness; for it possesses what is best since, in the order of these existences, the best is possession of the essence (being) and perfection of life. Consequently, the Good is not anything incidental, for no subject could owe its good to a quality that would be derived from elsewhere. What indeed could be added to complete life, to render it excellent?
THE GOOD CONSISTS IN INTELLIGENCE.
ENNEAD 02.09 - Against the Gnostics; or, That the Creator and the World are Not Evil., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
They also pride themselves on expelling diseases. If this were done through temperance, by a well regulated life, as do the Philosophers, this claim might be respected. But they insist that diseases are demons, which they can expel by their words, and they boast of this in order to achieve reputation among the common people, that is always inclined to stand in awe of magic. They could not persuade rational individuals that diseases do not have natural causes, such as fatigue, satiety, lack of food, corruption, or some change depending on an interior or exterior principle. This is proved by the nature of diseases. Sometimes628 a disease is expelled by moving the bowels, or by the administration of some potion; diet and bleeding are also often resorted to. Is this because the demon is hungry, or the potion destroys him? When a person is healed on the spot, the demon either remains or departs. If he remain, how does his presence not hinder recovery? If he depart, why? What has happened to him? Was he fed by the disease? In this case, the disease was something different from the demon. If he enter without any cause for the disease, why is the individual into whose body he enters not always sick? If he enter into a body that contains already a natural cause of disease, how far does he contri bute to the disease? The natural cause is sufficient to produce the disease. It would be ridiculous to suppose that the disease would have a cause, but that, as soon as this cause is active there would be a demon ready to come and assist it.
THE GENUINE VALUE OF GNOSTICISM SEEN IN ITS LOW MORAL ASPECTS.
ENNEAD 03.01 - Concerning Fate., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
The same objections apply to the doctrine of the Philosophers who explain everything by other physical causes (such as "elements"). Principles of inferior nature might well warm us, cool us, or even make us perish; but they could not beget any of the operations which the soul produces; these have an entirely different cause.
RESTATEMENT OF HERACLITUS'S POSITION.
ENNEAD 03.05 - Of Love, or Eros., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
1. Is Love a divinity, a guardian, or a passion of the human soul? Or is it all three under different points of view? In this case, what is it under each of these points of view? These are the questions we are to consider, consulting the opinions of men, but chiefly those of the Philosophers. The divine Plato, who has written much about love, here deserves particular attention. He says that it is not only a passion capable of being born in souls, but he calls it also a guardian, and he gives many details about its birth and parents.115
PASSIONAL LOVE IS TWOFOLD.
ENNEAD 03.07 - Of Time and Eternity., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
THE OPINIONS OF the PhilosopherS ABOUT TIME MUST BE STUDIED.
If those blessed ancient philosophers had not already uttered their views about time, we would only need to add to the idea of eternity what we have to say of the idea of time, and to set forth our opinion on the subject, trying to make it correspond with the already expressed notion of eternity. But we now must examine the most reasonable opinions that have been advanced about time, and observe how far our own opinion may conform thereto.
ENNEAD 04.04 - Questions About the Soul., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
We have therefore two points to examine: we first have to explain that if we do attri bute memory to the stars, it is only in a sense agreeing with our former statements, and not for the reason advanced by other people; we shall later have to show that it is a mistake to attri bute evil actions to them. In view of this, we shall try, as is the duty of the Philosopher, to refute the complaints formed against the divinities which reside in the heavens, and against the universe which is equally accused, in the case that any credence whatever is to be attached to such as pretend that heaven can be magically swayed by the arts of audacious men; last, we shall explain the administration of the ministry of guardians, unless the latter point have been explained incidentally to the solution of the former problems.
NATURAL ACTIONS ARE BOTH ON WHOLES AND ON PARTS.
ENNEAD 06.01 - Of the Ten Aristotelian and Four Stoic Categories., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
As to the Philosophers (Plato, for instance), who have taught other opinions about essences and their principles, considered as finite or infinite, corporeal or incorporeal, or both simultaneously corporeal or incorporeal, we will examine each of these opinions separately, considering also the historic objections of the ancient (philosophers).
891
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
Numenius, who teaches that the faculty of assent (or, combining faculty) is capable of producing various operations, says that representation (fancy) is an accessory of this faculty, that it does not, however, constitute either an operation or function of it, but a consequence of it. The Stoics, on the contrary, not only make sensation consist in representation, but even reduce representation to (combining) assent. According to them sense-imagination (or sense-fancy) is assent, or the sensation of the determination of assent. Longinus, however, does not acknowledge any faculty of assent. the Philosophers of the ancient Academy (the Platonists) believe that sensation does not comprise sense-representation, and that, consequently, it does not have any original property, since it does not participate in assent. If sense representation consisted of assent added to sensation, sensation, by itself, will have no virtue, since it is not the assent given to the things we possess.
OF THE PARTS OF THE SOUL.
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The Christian origins in Stoicism have been widely discussed; for instance, by Chaignet. But it is likely that this influence affected Christianity indirectly through Plotinos, along with the other Christian ideas we shall later find. At any rate Plotinos is the Philosopher who uses the term "spiritual body" most like the Christians.510 The soul is a slave to the body,511 and has a celestial body512 as well as a spiritual body.513 Within us are two men opposing each other,514 the better part often being mastered by the worse part, as thought St.1309 Paul,515 in the struggle between the inner and outer man.516
With Plotinos the idea of "procession" is not only cosmic but psychological. In other words, when Plotinos speaks of the "procession" of the God-head, he is not, as in Christian doctrine, depicting something unique, which has no connection with the world. He is only referring to the cosmic aspect of an evolution which, in the soul, appears as educational development.517 As the opposite of the soul's procession upwards, there is the soul's descent into hell,518 or, in other words, the soul's descent and ascension.519 This double aspect of man's fate upward or downward is referred to by Plotinos in the regular Christian term "sin," as consisting in missing one's aim.520 The soul repents,521 and its duty is conversion.522 As a result of this conversion comes forgiveness.523
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Time must be studied comparatively among the Philosophers, iii. 7.6 (45-996).
Time none, only a single day for world-souls, iv. 4.7 (28-450).
ENNEAD 06.06 - Of Numbers., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03, #Plotinus, #Christianity
It may be objected that having this unity in our soul depends on receiving from the exterior object a notion and an image, which is a conception furnished by this object. As the Philosophers who profess this opinion do not differentiate the species of one and of number, and as they allow them no other hypostatic existence (than to be conceived by our soul), if they (practically do) allow them any sort of hypostatic existence, it will be very interesting to scrutinize the opinions of these.24 They then say that the notion or conception that we have of the one or of the number derives from the objects themselves, is a notion as much "a posteriori" as those of "that,"25 "something," "crowd," "festival," "army," or of "multitude"; for, just as the manifold is nothing without the multiple objects, nor a festival without the men gathered to celebrate the religious ceremony, thus "the One" is nothing without the one object, when we posit the one, conceiving it alone, having made an abstraction of everything else. The partisans of this opinion will cite many examples of the same kind, as the "right hand side," "the upper part," and their contraries. What reality indeed (to speak as they do), can the "right hand side" possess outside of a person who stands or sits here or there26? The case is similar with "the upper side," which refers to a certain part of the universe, and the "lower side" to another.27 Our first answer to this argument is that we will allow663 that there is a certain kind of existence in the things themselves of which we have just spoken; but that this mode of existence is not identical in all things, considered either in respect to each other, or each in respect to the One which is in all. Further, we intend to refute one by one these arguments that have been opposed to us.
THE NOTION OF THE SUBJECT ONE DOES NOT COME FROM THE SUBJECT ITSELF.
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16. The first objection might be, Where do you locate, or how do you classify these primary and veritable Numbers? All the Philosophers (who follow Aristotle) classify numbers in the genus of quantity. It seems that we have above treated of quantity, and classified both discrete and continuous quantity38 among other "beings." Here however we seem to say that these Numbers form part of the primary Essences, and add that there are, in addition, numbers that serve for enumerations. We are now asked how we make these statements agree, for they seem to give rise to several questions. Is the unity which is found among sense-beings a quantity? Or is unity a quantity when repeated, while, when considered alone and in itself, it is the principle of quantity, but not a quantity itself? Besides, if unity be the principle of quantity, does it share the nature of quantity, or has it a different nature? Here are a number of points we ought to expound. We shall answer these questions, and here is what we consider our starting-point.
UNITY CONTAINED IN SENSE-OBJECTS IS NOT UNITY IN ITSELF.
Gorgias, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Socrates of the Gorgias may be compared with the Socrates of the Protagoras and Meno. As in other dialogues, he is the enemy of the Sophists and rhetoricians; and also of the statesmen, whom he regards as another variety of the same species. His behaviour is governed by that of his opponents; the least forwardness or egotism on their part is met by a corresponding irony on the part of Socrates. He must speak, for philosophy will not allow him to be silent. He is indeed more ironical and provoking than in any other of Plato's writings: for he is 'fooled to the top of his bent' by the worldliness of Callicles. But he is also more deeply in earnest. He rises higher than even in the Phaedo and Crito: at first enveloping his moral convictions in a cloud of dust and dialectics, he ends by losing his method, his life, himself, in them. As in the Protagoras and Phaedrus, throwing aside the veil of irony, he makes a speech, but, true to his character, not until his adversary has refused to answer any more questions. The presentiment of his own fate is hanging over him. He is aware that Socrates, the single real teacher of politics, as he ventures to call himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be justified in the world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things 'unfit for ears polite' which Callicles has prophesied as likely to happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the similar reversal of the position of the lawyer and the Philosopher in the Theaetetus).
There is an interesting allusion to his own behaviour at the trial of the generals after the battle of Arginusae, which he ironically attributes to his ignorance of the manner in which a vote of the assembly should be taken. This is said to have happened 'last year' (B.C. 406), and therefore the assumed date of the dialogue has been fixed at 405 B.C., when Socrates would already have been an old man. The date is clearly marked, but is scarcely reconcilable with another indication of time, viz. the 'recent' usurpation of Archelaus, which occurred in the year 413; and still less with the 'recent' death of Pericles, who really died twenty-four years previously (429 B.C.) and is afterwards reckoned among the statesmen of a past age; or with the mention of Nicias, who died in 413, and is nevertheless spoken of as a living witness. But we shall hereafter have reason to observe, that although there is a general consistency of times and persons in the Dialogues of Plato, a precise dramatic date is an invention of his commentators (Preface to Republic).
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Socrates professes to have found in Callicles the Philosopher's touchstone; and he is certain that any opinion in which they both agree must be the very truth. Callicles has all the three qualities which are needed in a criticknowledge, good-will, frankness; Gorgias and Polus, although learned men, were too modest, and their modesty made them contradict themselves. But Callicles is well-educated; and he is not too modest to speak out (of this he has already given proof), and his good-will is shown both by his own profession and by his giving the same caution against philosophy to Socrates, which Socrates remembers hearing him give long ago to his own clique of friends. He will pledge himself to retract any error into which he may have fallen, and which Callicles may point out. But he would like to know first of all what he and Pindar mean by natural justice. Do they suppose that the rule of justice is the rule of the stronger or of the better?' 'There is no difference.' Then are not the many superior to the one, and the opinions of the many better? And their opinion is that justice is equality, and that to do is more dishonourable than to suffer wrong. And as they are the superior or stronger, this opinion of theirs must be in accordance with natural as well as conventional justice. 'Why will you continue splitting words? Have I not told you that the superior is the better?' But what do you mean by the better? Tell me that, and please to be a little milder in your language, if you do not wish to drive me away. 'I mean the worthier, the wiser.' You mean to say that one man of sense ought to rule over ten thousand fools? 'Yes, that is my meaning.' Ought the physician then to have a larger share of meats and drinks? or the weaver to have more coats, or the cobbler larger shoes, or the farmer more seed? 'You are always saying the same things, Socrates.' Yes, and on the same subjects too; but you are never saying the same things. For, first, you defined the superior to be the stronger, and then the wiser, and now something else;what DO you mean? 'I mean men of political ability, who ought to govern and to have more than the governed.' Than themselves? 'What do you mean?' I mean to say that every man is his own governor. 'I see that you mean those dolts, the temperate. But my doctrine is, that a man should let his desires grow, and take the means of satisfying them. To the many this is impossible, and therefore they combine to prevent him. But if he is a king, and has power, how base would he be in submitting to them! To invite the common herd to be lord over him, when he might have the enjoyment of all things! For the truth is, Socrates, that luxury and self-indulgence are virtue and happiness; all the rest is mere talk.'
Socrates compliments Callicles on his frankness in saying what other men only think. According to his view, those who want nothing are not happy. 'Why,' says Callicles, 'if they were, stones and the dead would be happy.' Socrates in reply is led into a half-serious, half-comic vein of reflection. 'Who knows,' as Euripides says, 'whether life may not be death, and death life?' Nay, there are philosophers who maintain that even in life we are dead, and that the body (soma) is the tomb (sema) of the soul. And some ingenious Sicilian has made an allegory, in which he represents fools as the uninitiated, who are supposed to be carrying water to a vessel, which is full of holes, in a similarly holey sieve, and this sieve is their own soul. The idea is fanciful, but nevertheless is a figure of a truth which I want to make you acknowledge, viz. that the life of contentment is better than the life of indulgence. Are you disposed to admit that? 'Far otherwise.' Then hear another parable. The life of self-contentment and self-indulgence may be represented respectively by two men, who are filling jars with streams of wine, honey, milk,the jars of the one are sound, and the jars of the other leaky; the first fils his jars, and has no more trouble with them; the second is always filling them, and would suffer extreme misery if he desisted. Are you of the same opinion still? 'Yes, Socrates, and the figure expresses what I mean. For true pleasure is a perpetual stream, flowing in and flowing out. To be hungry and always eating, to be thirsty and always drinking, and to have all the other desires and to satisfy them, that, as I admit, is my idea of happiness.' And to be itching and always scratching? 'I do not deny that there may be happiness even in that.' And to indulge unnatural desires, if they are abundantly satisfied? Callicles is indignant at the introduction of such topics. But he is reminded by Socrates that they are introduced, not by him, but by the maintainer of the identity of pleasure and good. Will Callicles still maintain this? 'Yes, for the sake of consistency, he will.' The answer does not satisfy Socrates, who fears that he is losing his touchstone. A profession of seriousness on the part of Callicles reassures him, and they proceed with the argument. Pleasure and good are the same, but knowledge and courage are not the same either with pleasure or good, or with one another. Socrates disproves the first of these statements by showing that two opposites cannot coexist, but must alternate with one anotherto be well and ill together is impossible. But pleasure and pain are simultaneous, and the cessation of them is simultaneous; e.g. in the case of drinking and thirsting, whereas good and evil are not simultaneous, and do not cease simultaneously, and therefore pleasure cannot be the same as good.
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We do Plato violence in pressing his figures of speech or chains of argument; and not less so in asking questions which were beyond the horizon of his vision, or did not come within the scope of his design. The main purpose of the Gorgias is not to answer questions about a future world, but to place in antagonism the true and false life, and to contrast the judgments and opinions of men with judgment according to the truth. Plato may be accused of representing a superhuman or transcendental virtue in the description of the just man in the Gorgias, or in the companion portrait of the Philosopher in the Theaetetus; and at the same time may be thought to be condemning a state of the world which always has existed and always will exist among men. But such ideals act powerfully on the imagination of mankind. And such condemnations are not mere paradoxes of philosophers, but the natural rebellion of the higher sense of right in man against the ordinary conditions of human life. The greatest statesmen have fallen very far short of the political ideal, and are therefore justly involved in the general condemnation.
Subordinate to the main purpose of the dialogue are some other questions, which may be briefly considered:
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Socrates, who is not a politician at all, tells us that he is the only real politician of his time. Let us illustrate the meaning of his words by applying them to the history of our own country. He would have said that not Pitt or Fox, or Canning or Sir R. Peel, are the real politicians of their time, but Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, Ricardo. These during the greater part of their lives occupied an inconsiderable space in the eyes of the public. They were private persons; nevertheless they sowed in the minds of men seeds which in the next generation have become an irresistible power. 'Herein is that saying true, One soweth and another reapeth.' We may imagine with Plato an ideal statesman in whom practice and speculation are perfectly harmonized; for there is no necessary opposition between them. But experience shows that they are commonly divorcedthe ordinary politician is the interpreter or executor of the thoughts of others, and hardly ever brings to the birth a new political conception. One or two only in modern times, like the Italian statesman Cavour, have created the world in which they moved. the Philosopher is naturally unfitted for political life; his great ideas are not understood by the many; he is a thousand miles away from the questions of the day. Yet perhaps the lives of thinkers, as they are stiller and deeper, are also happier than the lives of those who are more in the public eye. They have the promise of the future, though they are regarded as dreamers and visionaries by their own contemporaries. And when they are no longer here, those who would have been ashamed of them during their lives claim kindred with them, and are proud to be called by their names. (Compare Thucyd.)
Who is the true poet?
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There is a further paradox of ethics, in which pleasure and pain are held to be indifferent, and virtue at the time of action and without regard to consequences is happiness. From this elevation or exaggeration of feeling Plato seems to shrink: he leaves it to the Stoics in a later generation to maintain that when impaled or on the rack the Philosopher may be happy (compare Republic). It is observable that in the Republic he raises this question, but it is not really discussed; the veil of the ideal state, the shadow of another life, are allowed to descend upon it and it passes out of sight. The martyr or sufferer in the cause of right or truth is often supposed to die in raptures, having his eye fixed on a city which is in heaven. But if there were no future, might he not still be happy in the performance of an action which was attended only by a painful death? He himself may be ready to thank God that he was thought worthy to do Him the least service, without looking for a reward; the joys of another life may not have been present to his mind at all. Do we suppose that the mediaeval saint, St. Bernard, St. Francis, St. Catharine of Sienna, or the Catholic priest who lately devoted himself to death by a lingering disease that he might solace and help others, was thinking of the 'sweets' of heaven? No; the work was already heaven to him and enough. Much less will the dying patriot be dreaming of the praises of man or of an immortality of fame: the sense of duty, of right, and trust in God will be sufficient, and as far as the mind can reach, in that hour. If he were certain that there were no life to come, he would not have wished to speak or act otherwise than he did in the cause of truth or of humanity. Neither, on the other hand, will he suppose that God has forsaken him or that the future is to be a mere blank to him. The greatest act of faith, the only faith which cannot pass away, is his who has not known, but yet has believed. A very few among the sons of men have made themselves independent of circumstances, past, present, or to come. He who has attained to such a temper of mind has already present with him eternal life; he needs no arguments to convince him of immortality; he has in him already a principle stronger than death. He who serves man without the thought of reward is deemed to be a more faithful servant than he who works for hire. May not the service of God, which is the more disinterested, be in like manner the higher? And although only a very few in the course of the world's historyChrist himself being one of themhave attained to such a noble conception of God and of the human soul, yet the ideal of them may be present to us, and the remembrance of them be an example to us, and their lives may shed a light on many dark places both of philosophy and theology.
THE MYTHS OF PLATO.
The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are four longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic. That in the Republic is the most elaborate and finished of them. Three of these greater myths, namely those contained in the Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic, relate to the destiny of human souls in a future life. The magnificent myth in the Phaedrus treats of the immortality, or rather the eternity of the soul, in which is included a former as well as a future state of existence. To these may be added, (1) the myth, or rather fable, occurring in the Statesman, in which the life of innocence is contrasted with the ordinary life of man and the consciousness of evil: (2) the legend of the Island of Atlantis, an imaginary history, which is a fragment only, commenced in the Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (3) the much less artistic fiction of the foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced in the preface to the Laws, but soon falls into the background: (4) the beautiful but rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus narrated in his rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called after him: (5) the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a parody of the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the recantation of it. To these may be added (6) the tale of the grasshoppers, and (7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the Phaedrus: (8) the parable of the Cave (Republic), in which the previous argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees of knowledge having been previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society: (10) the myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.: (11) the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Republic), in which is represented the relation of the better part of the world, and of the Philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12) the ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that he is uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gor.): (13) the treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves by their apprentices,a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to illustrate the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws). There also occur in Plato continuous images; some of them extend over several pages, appearing and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are generated in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite animal, having the form of a man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the parricide, who 'beats his father, having first taken away his arms': the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:on these figures of speech the changes are rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from seeing into or being seen by one another.
The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological, and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which they put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth which we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from the world above, and is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the shores of the ocean are to us. A part of the myth consists of description of the interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity of introducing several mythological names and of providing places of torment for the wicked. There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits beneath the earth are spoken of as souls only, yet they retain a sort of shadowy form when they cry for mercy on the shores of the lake; and the Philosopher alone is said to have got rid of the body. All the three myths in Plato which relate to the world below have a place for repentant sinners, as well as other homes or places for the very good and very bad. It is a natural reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two extremes of human character are rarely met with, and that the generality of mankind are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In the myth of the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the Acherusian lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, and receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners, who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for mercy; which if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology; abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the incidents of travel, and mythological personages are associated with human beings: they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and with other fragments of Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the Philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' but Plato only raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.
The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental, or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to the mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything like them in other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they are mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion in all ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is only affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life. Plato seems to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing on the outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style; a few touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained by the employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of the words of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any subject, have a power of their own. They are a substitute for poetry and mythology; and they are also a reform of mythology. The moral of them may be summed up in a word or two: After death the Judgment; and 'there is some better thing remaining for the good than for the evil.'
Liber 111 - The Book of Wisdom - LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
To the Mind of the Philosopher, therefore, in the Youth of an Age, any
variation in type must appear as a Disaster; yea, intelligence itself
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
the living and life-giving gold of the Philosophers, the universal
metallic productive agent, is MAGNETIZED ELECTRICITY.<
Maps of Meaning text, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
5.3.2. The Alchemical Procedure and the Philosophers Stone ______________________________________
5.3.2.1. Introductory Note ________________________________________________________________
Meno, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There may be some trace of irony in this curious passage, which forms the concluding portion of the Dialogue. But Plato certainly does not mean to intimate that the supernatural or divine is the true basis of human life. To him knowledge, if only attainable in this world, is of all things the most divine. Yet, like other philosophers, he is willing to admit that 'probability is the guide of life (Butler's Analogy.);' and he is at the same time desirous of contrasting the wisdom which governs the world with a higher wisdom. There are many instincts, judgments, and anticipations of the human mind which cannot be reduced to rule, and of which the grounds cannot always be given in words. A person may have some skill or latent experience which he is able to use himself and is yet unable to teach others, because he has no principles, and is incapable of collecting or arranging his ideas. He has practice, but not theory; art, but not science. This is a true fact of psychology, which is recognized by Plato in this passage. But he is far from saying, as some have imagined, that inspiration or divine grace is to be regarded as higher than knowledge. He would not have preferred the poet or man of action to the Philosopher, or the virtue of custom to the virtue based upon ideas.
Also here, as in the Ion and Phaedrus, Plato appears to acknowledge an unreasoning element in the higher nature of man. the Philosopher only has knowledge, and yet the statesman and the poet are inspired. There may be a sort of irony in regarding in this way the gifts of genius. But there is no reason to suppose that he is deriding them, any more than he is deriding the phenomena of love or of enthusiasm in the Symposium, or of oracles in the Apology, or of divine intimations when he is speaking of the daemonium of Socrates. He recognizes the lower form of right opinion, as well as the higher one of science, in the spirit of one who desires to include in his philosophy every aspect of human life; just as he recognizes the existence of popular opinion as a fact, and the Sophists as the expression of it.
This Dialogue contains the first intimation of the doctrine of reminiscence and of the immortality of the soul. The proof is very slight, even slighter than in the Phaedo and Republic. Because men had abstract ideas in a previous state, they must have always had them, and their souls therefore must have always existed. For they must always have been either men or not men. The fallacy of the latter words is transparent. And Socrates himself appears to be conscious of their weakness; for he adds immediately afterwards, 'I have said some things of which I am not altogether confident.' (Compare Phaedo.) It may be observed, however, that the fanciful notion of pre-existence is combined with a true but partial view of the origin and unity of knowledge, and of the association of ideas. Knowledge is prior to any particular knowledge, and exists not in the previous state of the individual, but of the race. It is potential, not actual, and can only be appropriated by strenuous exertion.
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The difficulty in framing general notions which has appeared in this and in all the previous Dialogues recurs in the Gorgias and Theaetetus as well as in the Republic. In the Gorgias too the statesmen reappear, but in stronger opposition to the Philosopher. They are no longer allowed to have a divine insight, but, though acknowledged to have been clever men and good speakers, are denounced as 'blind leaders of the blind.' The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also carried further, being made the foundation not only of a theory of knowledge, but of a doctrine of rewards and punishments. In the Republic the relation of knowledge to virtue is described in a manner more consistent with modern distinctions. The existence of the virtues without the possession of knowledge in the higher or philosophical sense is admitted to be possible. Right opinion is again introduced in the Theaetetus as an account of knowledge, but is rejected on the ground that it is irrational (as here, because it is not bound by the tie of the cause), and also because the conception of false opinion is given up as hopeless. The doctrines of Plato are necessarily different at different times of his life, as new distinctions are realized, or new stages of thought attained by him. We are not therefore justified, in order to take away the appearance of inconsistency, in attri buting to him hidden meanings or remote allusions.
There are no external criteria by which we can determine the date of the Meno. There is no reason to suppose that any of the Dialogues of Plato were written before the death of Socrates; the Meno, which appears to be one of the earliest of them, is proved to have been of a later date by the allusion of Anytus.
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Not very different from Descartes in his relation to ancient philosophy is his successor Spinoza, who lived in the following generation. The system of Spinoza is less personal and also less dualistic than that of Descartes. In this respect the difference between them is like that between Xenophanes and Parmenides. The teaching of Spinoza might be described generally as the Jewish religion reduced to an abstraction and taking the form of the Eleatic philosophy. Like Parmenides, he is overpowered and intoxicated with the idea of Being or God. The greatness of both philosophies consists in the immensity of a thought which excludes all other thoughts; their weakness is the necessary separation of this thought from actual existence and from practical life. In neither of them is there any clear opposition between the inward and outward world. The substance of Spinoza has two attri butes, which alone are cognizable by man, thought and extension; these are in extreme opposition to one another, and also in inseparable identity. They may be regarded as the two aspects or expressions under which God or substance is unfolded to man. Here a step is made beyond the limits of the Eleatic philosophy. The famous theorem of Spinoza, 'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' is already contained in the 'negation is relation' of Plato's Sophist. The grand description of the Philosopher in Republic VI, as the spectator of all time and all existence, may be paralleled with another famous expression of Spinoza, 'Contemplatio rerum sub specie eternitatis.' According to Spinoza finite objects are unreal, for they are conditioned by what is alien to them, and by one another. Human beings are included in the number of them. Hence there is no reality in human action and no place for right and wrong. Individuality is accident. The boasted freedom of the will is only a consciousness of necessity. Truth, he says, is the direction of the reason towards the infinite, in which all things repose; and herein lies the secret of man's well-being. In the exaltation of the reason or intellect, in the denial of the voluntariness of evil (Timaeus; Laws) Spinoza approaches nearer to Plato than in his conception of an infinite substance. As Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, so Spinoza would have maintained that knowledge alone is good, and what contri butes to knowledge useful. Both are equally far from any real experience or observation of nature. And the same difficulty is found in both when we seek to apply their ideas to life and practice. There is a gulf fixed between the infinite substance and finite objects or individuals of Spinoza, just as there is between the ideas of Plato and the world of sense.
Removed from Spinoza by less than a generation is the Philosopher Leibnitz, who after deepening and intensifying the opposition between mind and matter, reunites them by his preconcerted harmony (compare again Phaedrus). To him all the particles of matter are living beings which reflect on one another, and in the least of them the whole is contained. Here we catch a reminiscence both of the omoiomere, or similar particles of Anaxagoras, and of the world-animal of the Timaeus.
In Bacon and Locke we have another development in which the mind of man is supposed to receive knowledge by a new method and to work by observation and experience. But we may remark that it is the idea of experience, rather than experience itself, with which the mind is filled. It is a symbol of knowledge rather than the reality which is vouchsafed to us. The Organon of Bacon is not much nearer to actual facts than the Organon of Aristotle or the Platonic idea of good. Many of the old rags and ribbons which defaced the garment of philosophy have been stripped off, but some of them still adhere. A crude conception of the ideas of Plato survives in the 'forms' of Bacon. And on the other hand, there are many passages of Plato in which the importance of the investigation of facts is as much insisted upon as by Bacon. Both are almost equally superior to the illusions of language, and are constantly crying out against them, as against other idols.
Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
the Philosopher desires deathwhich the wicked world will insinuate that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in any sense which they are capable of understanding. Enough of them: the real question is, What is the nature of that death which he desires? Death is the separation of soul and bodyand the Philosopher desires such a separation. He would like to be freed from the dominion of bodily pleasures and of the senses, which are always perturbing his mental vision. He wants to get rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the mind only to behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities and necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why then should he repine when the hour of separation arrives? Why, if he is dead while he lives, should he fear that other death, through which alone he can behold wisdom in her purity?
Besides, the Philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike those of other men. For they are courageous because they are afraid of greater dangers, and temperate because they desire greater pleasures. But he disdains this balancing of pleasures and pains, which is the exchange of commerce and not of virtue. All the virtues, including wisdom, are regarded by him only as purifications of the soul. And this was the meaning of the founders of the mysteries when they said, 'Many are the wand-bearers but few are the mystics.' (Compare Matt. xxii.: 'Many are called but few are chosen.') And in the hope that he is one of these mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to any one who charges him with indifference at the prospect of leaving the gods and his friends.
Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body may vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead are in the world below, and that the living come from them. This he attempts to found on a philosophical assumption that all oppositese.g. less, greater; weaker, stronger; sleeping, waking; life, deathare generated out of each other. Nor can the process of generation be only a passage from living to dying, for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper (Endymion) would be no longer distinguished from the rest of mankind. The circle of nature is not complete unless the living come from the dead as well as pass to them.
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But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal, and has no eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down by the bodily appetites, cannot attain to this abstraction. In her fear of the world below she lingers about the sepulchre, loath to leave the body which she loved, a ghostly apparition, saturated with sense, and therefore visible. At length entering into some animal of a nature congenial to her former life of sensuality or violence, she takes the form of an ass, a wolf or a kite. And of these earthly souls the happiest are those who have practised virtue without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into gentle and social natures, such as bees and ants. (Compare Republic, Meno.) But only the Philosopher who departs pure is permitted to enter the company of the gods. (Compare Phaedrus.) This is the reason why he abstains from fleshly lusts, and not because he fears loss or disgrace, which is the motive of other men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought him out of the 'miry clay,' and purged away the mists of passion and the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped from the influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will not return; and therefore she abstains from bodily pleasuresnot from a desire of having more or greater ones, but because she knows that only when calm and free from the dominion of the body can she behold the light of truth.
Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling to raise objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their reluctance. Let them regard him rather as the swan, who, having sung the praises of Apollo all his life long, sings at his death more lustily than ever. Simmias acknowledges that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the bottom. 'And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let a man take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him sail through life.' He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has been argued that the soul is invisible and incorporeal, and therefore immortal, and prior to the body. But is not the soul acknowledged to be a harmony, and has she not the same relation to the body, as the harmonywhich like her is invisiblehas to the lyre? And yet the harmony does not survive the lyre. Cebes has also an objection, which like Simmias he expresses in a figure. He is willing to admit that the soul is more lasting than the body. But the more lasting nature of the soul does not prove her immortality; for after having worn out many bodies in a single life, and many more in successive births and deaths, she may at last perish, or, as Socrates afterwards restates the objection, the very act of birth may be the beginning of her death, and her last body may survive her, just as the coat of an old weaver is left behind him after he is dead, although a man is more lasting than his coat. And he who would prove the immortality of the soul, must prove not only that the soul outlives one or many bodies, but that she outlives them all.
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20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state of being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the Philosopher is seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in these aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind, the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the body, with the soul of the good and wise. (Compare Republic.) Such a confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul and body. The soul in her own essence, and the soul 'clothed upon' with virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because on a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can hardly be maintained.
21. The ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived from the necessity of retri bution. The wicked would be too well off if their evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an Ardiaeus, an Archelaus, an Ismenias could ever have suffered the penalty of their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retri bution is accomplished Plato represents under the figures of mythology. Doubtless he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give verisimilitude to the myth. The myth too is far more probable to that age than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as 'one guess among many' about the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the indications of geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of his own particular notions: 'no man of sense will be confident in such matters; but he will be confident that something of the kind is true.' As in other passages (Gorg., Tim., compare Crito), he wins belief for his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like Dante or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.
The Dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators at the time, we cannot pity Socrates; his mien and his language are so noble and fearless. He is the same that he ever was, but milder and gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics; he will not forego the delight of an argument in compliance with the jailer's intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. At such a time he naturally expresses the hope of his life, that he has been a true mystic and not a mere retainer or wand-bearer: and he refers to passages of his personal history. To his old enemies the Comic poets, and to the proceedings on the trial, he alludes playfully; but he vividly remembers the disappointment which he felt in reading the books of Anaxagoras. The return of Xanthippe and his children indicates that the Philosopher is not 'made of oak or rock.' Some other traits of his character may be noted; for example, the courteous manner in which he inclines his head to the last objector, or the ironical touch, 'Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls;' or the depreciation of the arguments with which 'he comforted himself and them;' or his fear of 'misology;' or his references to Homer; or the playful smile with which he 'talks like a book' about greater and less; or the allusion to the possibility of finding another teacher among barbarous races (compare Polit.); or the mysterious reference to another science (mathematics?) of generation and destruction for which he is vainly feeling. There is no change in him; only now he is invested with a sort of sacred character, as the prophet or priest of Apollo the God of the festival, in whose honour he first of all composes a hymn, and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay. Perhaps the extreme elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and the ordinary interests of life (compare his jeu d'esprit about his burial, in which for a moment he puts on the 'Silenus mask'), create in the mind of the reader an impression stronger than could be derived from arguments that such a one has in him 'a principle which does not admit of death.'
The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1) private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.
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Why do you say, enquired Cebes, that a man ought not to take his own life, but that the Philosopher will be ready to follow the dying?
Socrates replied: And have you, Cebes and Simmias, who are the disciples of Philolaus, never heard him speak of this?
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Yes, Socrates, said Cebes, there seems to be truth in what you say. And yet how can you reconcile this seemingly true belief that God is our guardian and we his possessions, with the willingness to die which we were just now attri buting to the Philosopher? That the wisest of men should be willing to leave a service in which they are ruled by the gods who are the best of rulers, is not reasonable; for surely no wise man thinks that when set at liberty he can take better care of himself than the gods take of him. A fool may perhaps think sohe may argue that he had better run away from his master, not considering that his duty is to remain to the end, and not to run away from the good, and that there would be no sense in his running away. The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself. Now this, Socrates, is the reverse of what was just now said; for upon this view the wise man should sorrow and the fool rejoice at passing out of life.
The earnestness of Cebes seemed to please Socrates. Here, said he, turning to us, is a man who is always inquiring, and is not so easily convinced by the first thing which he hears.
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There is another question, which will probably throw light on our present inquiry if you and I can agree about it:Ought the Philosopher to care about the pleasuresif they are to be called pleasuresof eating and drinking?
Certainly not, answered Simmias.
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And in this the Philosopher dishonours the body; his soul runs away from his body and desires to be alone and by herself?
That is true.
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And is not courage, Simmias, a quality which is specially characteristic of the Philosopher?
Certainly.
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Then all but the Philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.
Very true.
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Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest some evil eye should put to flight the word which I am about to speak. That, however, may be left in the hands of those above, while I draw near in Homeric fashion, and try the mettle of your words. Here lies the point:You want to have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal, and the Philosopher who is confident in death appears to you to have but a vain and foolish confidence, if he believes that he will fare better in the world below than one who has led another sort of life, unless he can prove this; and you say that the demonstration of the strength and divinity of the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men, does not necessarily imply her immortality. Admitting the soul to be longlived, and to have known and done much in a former state, still she is not on that account immortal; and her entrance into the human form may be a sort of disease which is the beginning of dissolution, and may at last, after the toils of life are over, end in that which is called death. And whether the soul enters into the body once only or many times, does not, as you say, make any difference in the fears of individuals. For any man, who is not devoid of sense, must fear, if he has no knowledge and can give no account of the soul's immortality. This, or something like this, I suspect to be your notion, Cebes; and I designedly recur to it in order that nothing may escape us, and that you may, if you wish, add or subtract anything.
But, said Cebes, as far as I see at present, I have nothing to add or subtract: I mean what you say that I mean.
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
touch of the Philosopher's stone. It retains its former shape, but can no longer hurt anyone.
124. If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great
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128. So long as one is not blessed with the vision Divine, So long as the touch of the Philosopher's stone
has not transmuted the base metal in one into gold, there will be the illusive feeling: 'I am the doer.' And
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sand as the staircase. That which is the Supreme Brahman, has become the Jiva and Jagat-the twentyfour categories of the Philosophers. That which is the Atman has become the five elements. You may ask
why the earth is so hard if it has come out of the Atman. Through His will everything is possible. Are not
Sophist, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist. The most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field of argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who is described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the withdrawal of Socrates that he is passing beyond the limits of his teaching; and in the Sophist and Statesman, as well as in the Parmenides, he probably means to imply that he is making a closer approach to the schools of Elea and Megara. He had much in common with them, but he must first submit their ideas to criticism and revision. He had once thought as he says, speaking by the mouth of the Eleatic, that he understood their doctrine of Not-being; but now he does not even comprehend the nature of Being. The friends of ideas (Soph.) are alluded to by him as distant acquaintances, whom he criticizes ab extra; we do not recognize at first sight that he is criticizing himself. The character of the Eleatic stranger is colourless; he is to a certain extent the reflection of his father and master, Parmenides, who is the protagonist in the dialogue which is called by his name. Theaetetus himself is not distinguished by the remarkable traits which are attributed to him in the preceding dialogue. He is no longer under the spell of Socrates, or subject to the operation of his midwifery, though the fiction of question and answer is still maintained, and the necessity of taking Theaetetus along with him is several times insisted upon by his partner in the discussion. There is a reminiscence of the old Theaetetus in his remark that he will not tire of the argument, and in his conviction, which the Eleatic thinks likely to be permanent, that the course of events is governed by the will of God. Throughout the two dialogues Socrates continues a silent auditor, in the Statesman just reminding us of his presence, at the commencement, by a characteristic jest about the statesman and the Philosopher, and by an allusion to his namesake, with whom on that ground he claims relationship, as he had already claimed an affinity with Theaetetus, grounded on the likeness of his ugly face. But in neither dialogue, any more than in the Timaeus, does he offer any criticism on the views which are propounded by another.
The style, though wanting in dramatic power,in this respect resembling the Philebus and the Laws,is very clear and accurate, and has several touches of humour and satire. The language is less fanciful and imaginative than that of the earlier dialogues; and there is more of bitterness, as in the Laws, though traces of a similar temper may also be observed in the description of the 'great brute' in the Republic, and in the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in the Theaetetus. The following are characteristic passages: 'The ancient philosophers, of whom we may say, without offence, that they went on their way rather regardless of whether we understood them or not;' the picture of the materialists, or earth-born giants, 'who grasped oaks and rocks in their hands,' and who must be improved before they can be reasoned with; and the equally humourous delineation of the friends of ideas, who defend themselves from a fastness in the invisible world; or the comparison of the Sophist to a painter or maker (compare Republic), and the hunt after him in the rich meadow-lands of youth and wealth; or, again, the light and graceful touch with which the older philosophies are painted ('Ionian and Sicilian muses'), the comparison of them to mythological tales, and the fear of the Eleatic that he will be counted a parricide if he ventures to lay hands on his father Parmenides; or, once more, the likening of the Eleatic stranger to a god from heaven.All these passages, notwithstanding the decline of the style, retain the impress of the great master of language. But the equably diffused grace is gone; instead of the endless variety of the early dialogues, traces of the rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to appear; and already an approach is made to the technical language of Aristotle, in the frequent use of the words 'essence,' 'power,' 'generation,' 'motion,' 'rest,' 'action,' 'passion,' and the like.
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The chief points of interest in the dialogue are: (I) the character attri buted to the Sophist: (II) the dialectical method: (III) the nature of the puzzle about 'Not-being:' (IV) the battle of the Philosophers: (V) the relation of the Sophist to other dialogues.
I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits-faux, the hireling who is not a teacher, and who, from whatever point of view he is regarded, is the opposite of the true teacher. He is the 'evil one,' the ideal representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and intellectual tendencies of his own age; the adversary of the almost equally ideal Socrates. He seems to be always growing in the fancy of Plato, now boastful, now eristic, now clothing himself in rags of philosophy, now more akin to the rhetorician or lawyer, now haranguing, now questioning, until the final appearance in the Politicus of his departing shadow in the disguise of a statesman. We are not to suppose that Plato intended by such a description to depict Protagoras or Gorgias, or even Thrasymachus, who all turn out to be 'very good sort of people when we know them,' and all of them part on good terms with Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as imaginary as the wise man of the Stoics, and whose character varies in different dialogues. Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected.
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The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhibited in many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety of forms. There is some want of the higher Platonic art in the Eleatic Stranger eliciting his true character by a labourious process of enquiry, when he had already admitted that he knew quite well the difference between the Sophist and the Philosopher, and had often heard the question discussed;such an anticipation would hardly have occurred in the earlier dialogues. But Plato could not altogether give up his Socratic method, of which another trace may be thought to be discerned in his adoption of a common instance before he proceeds to the greater matter in hand. Yet the example is also chosen in order to damage the 'hooker of men' as much as possible; each step in the pedigree of the angler suggests some injurious reflection about the Sophist. They are both hunters after a living prey, nearly related to tyrants and thieves, and the Sophist is the cousin of the parasite and flatterer. The effect of this is heightened by the accidental manner in which the discovery is made, as the result of a scientific division. His descent in another branch affords the opportunity of more 'unsavoury comparisons.' For he is a retail trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like those of other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character of a liberal profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of him is, that he is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A feature of the Eristic here seems to blend with Plato's usual description of the Sophists, who in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are frequently depicted as endeavouring to save themselves from disputing with Socrates by making long orations. In this character he parts company from the vain and impertinent talker in private life, who is a loser of money, while he is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be also supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification is descended education, and the new principle of education is to interrogate men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach themselves. Here again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or Eristic than of a Sophist in the ordinary sense of the term. And Plato does not on this ground reject the claim of the Sophist to be the true philosopher. One more feature of the Eristic rather than of the Sophist is the tendency of the troublesome animal to run away into the darkness of Not-being. Upon the whole, we detect in him a sort of hybrid or double nature, of which, except perhaps in the Euthydemus of Plato, we find no other trace in Greek philosophy; he combines the teacher of virtue with the Eristic; while in his omniscience, in his ignorance of himself, in his arts of deception, and in his lawyer-like habit of writing and speaking about all things, he is still the antithesis of Socrates and of the true teacher.
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We may proceed now to the less exact sort of philosophers. Some of them drag down everything to earth, and carry on a war like that of the giants, grasping rocks and oaks in their hands. Their adversaries defend themselves warily from an invisible world, and reduce the substances of their opponents to the minutest fractions, until they are lost in generation and flux. The latter sort are civil people enough; but the materialists are rude and ignorant of dialectics; they must be taught how to argue before they can answer. Yet, for the sake of the argument, we may assume them to be better than they are, and able to give an account of themselves. They admit the existence of a mortal living creature, which is a body containing a soul, and to this they would not refuse to attri bute qualitieswisdom, folly, justice and injustice. The soul, as they say, has a kind of body, but they do not like to assert of these qualities of the soul, either that they are corporeal, or that they have no existence; at this point they begin to make distinctions. 'Sons of earth,' we say to them, 'if both visible and invisible qualities exist, what is the common nature which is attri buted to them by the term "being" or "existence"?' And, as they are incapable of answering this question, we may as well reply for them, that being is the power of doing or suffering. Then we turn to the friends of ideas: to them we say, 'You distinguish becoming from being?' 'Yes,' they will reply. 'And in becoming you participate through the bodily senses, and in being, by thought and the mind?' 'Yes.' And you mean by the word 'participation' a power of doing or suffering? To this they answerI am acquainted with them, Theaetetus, and know their ways better than you dothat being can neither do nor suffer, though becoming may. And we rejoin: Does not the soul know? And is not 'being' known? And are not 'knowing' and 'being known' active and passive? That which is known is affected by knowledge, and therefore is in motion. And, indeed, how can we imagine that perfect being is a mere everlasting form, devoid of motion and soul? for there can be no thought without soul, nor can soul be devoid of motion. But neither can thought or mind be devoid of some principle of rest or stability. And as children say entreatingly, 'Give us both,' so the Philosopher must include both the moveable and immoveable in his idea of being. And yet, alas! he and we are in the same difficulty with which we reproached the dualists; for motion and rest are contradictionshow then can they both exist? Does he who affirms this mean to say that motion is rest, or rest motion? 'No; he means to assert the existence of some third thing, different from them both, which neither rests nor moves.' But how can there be anything which neither rests nor moves? Here is a second difficulty about being, quite as great as that about not-being. And we may hope that any light which is thrown upon the one may extend to the other.
Leaving them for the present, let us enquire what we mean by giving many names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which tyros old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds refuse to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good, and man is man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making the many one and the one many. Let us place them in a class with our previous opponents, and interrogate both of them at once. Shall we assume (1) that being and rest and motion, and all other things, are incommunicable with one another? or (2) that they all have indiscriminate communion? or (3) that there is communion of some and not of others? And we will consider the first hypothesis first of all.
(1) If we suppose the universal separation of kinds, all theories alike are swept away; the patrons of a single principle of rest or of motion, or of a plurality of immutable ideasall alike have the ground cut from under them; and all creators of the universe by theories of composition and division, whether out of or into a finite or infinite number of elemental forms, in alternation or continuance, share the same fate. Most ridiculous is the discomfiture which attends the opponents of predication, who, like the ventriloquist Eurycles, have the voice that answers them in their own breast. For they cannot help using the words 'is,' 'apart,' 'from others,' and the like; and their adversaries are thus saved the trouble of refuting them. But (2) if all things have communion with all things, motion will rest, and rest will move; here is a reductio ad absurdum. Two out of the three hypotheses are thus seen to be false. The third (3) remains, which affirms that only certain things communicate with certain other things. In the alphabet and the scale there are some letters and notes which combine with others, and some which do not; and the laws according to which they combine or are separated are known to the grammarian and musician. And there is a science which teaches not only what notes and letters, but what classes admit of combination with one another, and what not. This is a noble science, on which we have stumbled unawares; in seeking after the Sophist we have found the Philosopher. He is the master who discerns one whole or form pervading a scattered multitude, and many such wholes combined under a higher one, and many entirely aparthe is the true dialectician. Like the Sophist, he is hard to recognize, though for the opposite reasons; the Sophist runs away into the obscurity of not-being, the Philosopher is dark from excess of light. And now, leaving him, we will return to our pursuit of the Sophist.
Agreeing in the truth of the third hypothesis, that some things have communion and others not, and that some may have communion with all, let us examine the most important kinds which are capable of admixture; and in this way we may perhaps find out a sense in which not-being may be affirmed to have being. Now the highest kinds are being, rest, motion; and of these, rest and motion exclude each other, but both of them are included in being; and again, they are the same with themselves and the other of each other. What is the meaning of these words, 'same' and 'other'? Are there two more kinds to be added to the three others? For sameness cannot be either rest or motion, because predicated both of rest and motion; nor yet being; because if being were attri buted to both of them we should attri bute sameness to both of them. Nor can other be identified with being; for then other, which is relative, would have the absoluteness of being. Therefore we must assume a fifth principle, which is universal, and runs through all things, for each thing is other than all other things. Thus there are five principles: (1) being, (2) motion, which is not (3) rest, and because participating both in the same and other, is and is not (4) the same with itself, and is and is not (5) other than the other. And motion is not being, but partakes of being, and therefore is and is not in the most absolute sense. Thus we have discovered that not-being is the principle of the other which runs through all things, being not excepted. And 'being' is one thing, and 'not-being' includes and is all other things. And not-being is not the opposite of being, but only the other. Knowledge has many branches, and the other or difference has as many, each of which is described by prefixing the word 'not' to some kind of knowledge. The not-beautiful is as real as the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the essence of the not-beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a certain kind of existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition and negation is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of being. Thus, in spite of Parmenides, we have not only discovered the existence, but also the nature of not-beingthat nature we have found to be relation. In the communion of different kinds, being and other mutually interpenetrate; other is, but is other than being, and other than each and all of the remaining kinds, and therefore in an infinity of ways 'is not.' And the argument has shown that the pursuit of contradictions is childish and useless, and the very opposite of that higher spirit which criticizes the words of another according to the natural meaning of them. Nothing can be more unphilosophical than the denial of all communion of kinds. And we are fortunate in having established such a communion for another reason, because in continuing the hunt after the Sophist we have to examine the nature of discourse, and there could be no discourse if there were no communion. For the Sophist, although he can no longer deny the existence of not-being, may still affirm that not-being cannot enter into discourse, and as he was arguing before that there could be no such thing as falsehood, because there was no such thing as not-being, he may continue to argue that there is no such thing as the art of image-making and phantastic, because not-being has no place in language. Hence arises the necessity of examining speech, opinion, and imagination.
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The unity of opposites was the crux of ancient thinkers in the age of Plato: How could one thing be or become another? That substances have attri butes was implied in common language; that heat and cold, day and night, pass into one another was a matter of experience 'on a level with the cobbler's understanding' (Theat.). But how could philosophy explain the connexion of ideas, how justify the passing of them into one another? The abstractions of one, other, being, not-being, rest, motion, individual, universal, which successive generations of philosophers had recently discovered, seemed to be beyond the reach of human thought, like stars shining in a distant heaven. They were the symbols of different schools of philosophy: but in what relation did they stand to one another and to the world of sense? It was hardly conceivable that one could be other, or the same different. Yet without some reconciliation of these elementary ideas thought was impossible. There was no distinction between truth and falsehood, between the Sophist and the Philosopher. Everything could be predicated of everything, or nothing of anything. To these difficulties Plato finds what to us appears to be the answer of common sensethat Not-being is the relative or other of Being, the defining and distinguishing principle, and that some ideas combine with others, but not all with all. It is remarkable however that he offers this obvious reply only as the result of a long and tedious enquiry; by a great effort he is able to look down as 'from a height' on the 'friends of the ideas' as well as on the pre-Socratic philosophies. Yet he is merely asserting principles which no one who could be made to understand them would deny.
The Platonic unity of differences or opposites is the beginning of the modern view that all knowledge is of relations; it also anticipates the doctrine of Spinoza that all determination is negation. Plato takes or gives so much of either of these theories as was necessary or possible in the age in which he lived. In the Sophist, as in the Cratylus, he is opposed to the Heracleitean flux and equally to the Megarian and Cynic denial of predication, because he regards both of them as making knowledge impossible. He does not assert that everything is and is not, or that the same thing can be affected in the same and in opposite ways at the same time and in respect of the same part of itself. The law of contradiction is as clearly laid down by him in the Republic, as by Aristotle in his Organon. Yet he is aware that in the negative there is also a positive element, and that oppositions may be only differences. And in the Parmenides he deduces the many from the one and Not-being from Being, and yet shows that the many are included in the one, and that Not-being returns to Being.
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The system of Hegel frees the mind from the dominion of abstract ideas. We acknowledge his originality, and some of us delight to wander in the mazes of thought which he has opened to us. For Hegel has found admirers in England and Scotl and when his popularity in Germany has departed, and he, like the Philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves not only above the opinions of men but above their modes of thinking, is a great height of philosophy. This dearly obtained freedom, however, we are not disposed to part with, or to allow him to build up in a new form the 'beggarly elements' of scholastic logic which he has thrown down. So far as they are aids to reflection and expression, forms of thought are useful, but no further:we may easily have too many of them.
And when we are asked to believe the Hegelian to be the sole or universal logic, we naturally reply that there are other ways in which our ideas may be connected. The triplets of Hegel, the division into being, essence, and notion, are not the only or necessary modes in which the world of thought can be conceived. There may be an evolution by degrees as well as by opposites. The word 'continuity' suggests the possibility of resolving all differences into differences of quantity. Again, the opposites themselves may vary from the least degree of diversity up to contradictory opposition. They are not like numbers and figures, always and everywhere of the same value. And therefore the edifice which is constructed out of them has merely an imaginary symmetry, and is really irregular and out of proportion. The spirit of Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own system, and the terms Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion, and the like challenged and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great many distinctions, he obliterates a great many others by the help of the universal solvent 'is not,' which appears to be the simplest of negations, and yet admits of several meanings. Neither are we able to follow him in the play of metaphysical fancy which conducts him from one determination of thought to another. But we begin to suspect that this vast system is not God within us, or God immanent in the world, and may be only the invention of an individual brain. The 'beyond' is always coming back upon us however often we expel it. We do not easily believe that we have within the compass of the mind the form of universal knowledge. We rather incline to think that the method of knowledge is inseparable from actual knowledge, and wait to see what new forms may be developed out of our increasing experience and observation of man and nature. We are conscious of a Being who is without us as well as within us. Even if inclined to Pantheism we are unwilling to imagine that the meagre categories of the understanding, however ingeniously arranged or displayed, are the image of God;that what all religions were seeking after from the beginning was the Hegelian philosophy which has been revealed in the latter days. The great metaphysician, like a prophet of old, was naturally inclined to believe that his own thoughts were divine realities. We may almost say that whatever came into his head seemed to him to be a necessary truth. He never appears to have criticized himself, or to have subjected his own ideas to the process of analysis which he applies to every other philosopher.
Hegel would have insisted that his philosophy should be accepted as a whole or not at all. He would have urged that the parts derived their meaning from one another and from the whole. He thought that he had supplied an outline large enough to contain all future knowledge, and a method to which all future philosophies must conform. His metaphysical genius is especially shown in the construction of the categoriesa work which was only begun by Kant, and elaborated to the utmost by himself. But is it really true that the part has no meaning when separated from the whole, or that knowledge to be knowledge at all must be universal? Do all abstractions shine only by the reflected light of other abstractions? May they not also find a nearer explanation in their relation to phenomena? If many of them are correlatives they are not all so, and the relations which subsist between them vary from a mere association up to a necessary connexion. Nor is it easy to determine how far the unknown element affects the known, whether, for example, new discoveries may not one day supersede our most elementary notions about nature. To a certain extent all our knowledge is conditional upon what may be known in future ages of the world. We must admit this hypothetical element, which we cannot get rid of by an assumption that we have already discovered the method to which all philosophy must conform. Hegel is right in preferring the concrete to the abstract, in setting actuality before possibility, in excluding from the Philosopher's vocabulary the word 'inconceivable.' But he is too well satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at least has all the elements of knowledge under his hand.
Hegelianism may be said to be a transcendental defence of the world as it is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any: 'What is actual is rational, what is rational is actual.' But a good man will not readily acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course that all things proceed according to law whether for good or evil. But when he sees the misery and ignorance of mankind he is convinced that without any interruption of the uniformity of nature the condition of the world may be indefinitely improved by human effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times and countries, but this is very far from being the fulfilment of their higher natures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankindPlato, Dante, Sir Thomas Moremeet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which separates them. They are 'the spectators of all time and of all existence;' their works live for ever; and there is nothing to prevent the force of their individuality breaking through the uniformity which surrounds them. But such disturbers of the order of thought Hegel is reluctant to acknowledge.
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The Hegelian philosophy claims, as we have seen, to be based upon experience: it abrogates the distinction of a priori and a posteriori truth. It also acknowledges that many differences of kind are resolvable into differences of degree. It is familiar with the terms 'evolution,' 'development,' and the like. Yet it can hardly be said to have considered the forms of thought which are best adapted for the expression of facts. It has never applied the categories to experience; it has not defined the differences in our ideas of opposition, or development, or cause and effect, in the different sciences which make use of these terms. It rests on a knowledge which is not the result of exact or serious enquiry, but is floating in the air; the mind has been imperceptibly informed of some of the methods required in the sciences. Hegel boasts that the movement of dialectic is at once necessary and spontaneous: in reality it goes beyond experience and is unverified by it. Further, the Hegelian philosophy, while giving us the power of thinking a great deal more than we are able to fill up, seems to be wanting in some determinations of thought which we require. We cannot say that physical science, which at present occupies so large a share of popular attention, has been made easier or more intelligible by the distinctions of Hegel. Nor can we deny that he has sometimes interpreted physics by metaphysics, and confused his own philosophical fancies with the laws of nature. The very freedom of the movement is not without suspicion, seeming to imply a state of the human mind which has entirely lost sight of facts. Nor can the necessity which is attri buted to it be very stringent, seeing that the successive categories or determinations of thought in different parts of his writings are arranged by the Philosopher in different ways. What is termed necessary evolution seems to be only the order in which a succession of ideas presented themselves to the mind of Hegel at a particular time.
The nomenclature of Hegel has been made by himself out of the language of common life. He uses a few words only which are borrowed from his predecessors, or from the Greek philosophy, and these generally in a sense peculiar to himself. The first stage of his philosophy answers to the word 'is,' the second to the word 'has been,' the third to the words 'has been' and 'is' combined. In other words, the first sphere is immediate, the second mediated by reflection, the third or highest returns into the first, and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful. First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a difficult and elaborate explanation. The simplicity of the words contrasts with the hardness of their meaning. Secondly, the use of technical phraseology necessarily separates philosophy from general literature; the student has to learn a new language of uncertain meaning which he with difficulty remembers. No former philosopher had ever carried the use of technical terms to the same extent as Hegel. The language of Plato or even of Aristotle is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was introduced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the scholastic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy, the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of language as mechanical and technical.
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STRANGER: Then the Philosopher, who has the truest reverence for these qualities, cannot possibly accept the notion of those who say that the whole is at rest, either as unity or in many forms: and he will be utterly deaf to those who assert universal motion. As children say entreatingly 'Give us both,' so he will include both the moveable and immoveable in his definition of being and all.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
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STRANGER: How are we to call it? By Zeus, have we not lighted unwittingly upon our free and noble science, and in looking for the Sophist have we not entertained the Philosopher unawares?
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
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STRANGER: And the art of dialectic would be attri buted by you only to the Philosopher pure and true?
THEAETETUS: Who but he can be worthy?
STRANGER: In this region we shall always discover the Philosopher, if we look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered, but for a different reason.
THEAETETUS: For what reason?
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STRANGER: And the Philosopher, always holding converse through reason with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of the divine.
THEAETETUS: Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.
STRANGER: Well, the Philosopher may hereafter be more fully considered by us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist must clearly not be allowed to escape until we have had a good look at him.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
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STRANGER: And what shall we call the other? Is he the Philosopher or the Sophist?
THEAETETUS: the Philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view he is ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a name which is formed by an adaptation of the word sophos. What shall we name him? I am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in terming him the true and very Sophist.
STRANGER: Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making a chain from one end of his genealogy to the other?
Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
Phaedrus (speech begins 178a):[19] an Athenian aristocrat associated with the inner-circle of the Philosopher Socrates, familiar from Phaedrus and other dialogues
Pausanias (speech begins 180c): the legal expert
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Socrates asks: Who are his father and mother? To this Diotima replies that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of both, and is full and starved by turns. Like his mother he is poor and squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias); like his father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources. Further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:in this he resembles the Philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. Such is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the beloved.
But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does he desire of the beautiful? He desires, of course, the possession of the beautiful;but what is given by that? For the beautiful let us substitute the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession of the good to be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness, although the meaning of the word has been too often confined to one kind of love. And Love desires not only the good, but the everlasting possession of the good. Why then is there all this flutter and excitement about love? Because all men and women at a certain age are desirous of bringing to the birth. And love is not of beauty only, but of birth in beauty; this is the principle of immortality in a mortal creature. When beauty approaches, then the conceiving power is benign and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and morose.
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The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen. Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the Philosopher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beautya worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attri buted to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.' We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
Tablets of Baha u llah text, #Tablets of Baha u llah, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Verily, the Philosophers have not denied the Ancient of Days. Most of them passed away deploring their failure to fathom His mystery, even as some of them have testified. Verily, thy Lord is the Adviser, the All-Informed.
Consider Hippocrates, the physician. He was one of the eminent philosophers who believed in God and acknowledged His sovereignty. After him came Socrates who was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous. He practiced self-denial, repressed his appetites for selfish desires and turned away from material pleasures. He withdrew to the mountains where he dwelt in a cave. He dissuaded men from worshipping idols and taught them the way of God, the Lord of Mercy, until the ignorant rose up against him. They arrested him and put him to death in prison. Thus relateth to thee this swift-moving Pen. What a penetrating vision into philosophy this eminent man had! He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom. We testify that he is one of the heroes in this field and an outstanding champion dedicated unto it. He had a profound knowledge of such sciences as were current amongst men as well as of those which were veiled from their minds. Methinks he drank one draught when the Most Great Ocean overflowed with gleaming and life-giving waters. He it is who perceived a unique, a tempered, and a pervasive nature in things, bearing the closest likeness to the human spirit, and he discovered this nature to be distinct from the substance of things in their refined form. He hath a special pronouncement on this weighty theme. Wert thou to ask from the worldly wise of this generation about this exposition, thou wouldst witness their incapacity to grasp it. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth but most people comprehend not.
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This man hath said: 'I am Balínús, the wise one, the performer of wonders, the producer of talismans.' He surpassed everyone else in the diffusion of arts and sciences and soared unto the loftiest heights of humility and supplication. Give ear unto that which he hath said, entreating the All-Possessing, the Most Exalted: 'I stand in the presence of my Lord, extolling His gifts and bounties and praising Him with that wherewith He praiseth His Own Self, that I may become a source of blessing and guidance unto such men as acknowledge my words.' And further he saith: 'O Lord! Thou art God and no God is there but Thee. Thou art the Creator and no creator is there except Thee. Assist me by Thy grace and strengthen me. My heart is seized with alarm, my limbs tremble, I have lost my reason and my mind hath failed me. Bestow upon me strength and enable my tongue to speak forth with wisdom.' And still further he saith: 'Thou art in truth the Knowing, the Wise, the Powerful, the Compassionate.' It was this man of wisdom who became informed of the mysteries of creation and discerned the subtleties which lie enshrined in the Hermetic writings. 1 1. In one of His Tablets Bahá'u'lláh wrote: 'The first person who devoted himself to philosophy was Idrís. Thus was he named. Some called him also Hermes. In every tongue he hath a special name. He it is who hath set forth in every branch of philosophy thorough and convincing statements. After him Balínús derived his knowledge and sciences from the Hermetic Tablets and most of the Philosophers who followed him made their philosophical and scientific discoveries from his words and statements...'. In the Qur'án, Súra 19, verses 57 and 58, is written: 'And commemorate Idrís in the Book; for he was a man of truth, a Prophet; And we uplifted him to a place on high.'
148
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
And yet we cannot declare man has made no progress. True, the Philosopher today is not superior to Plato, but there are many who can philosophise
today, also many more who can understand philosophy than in Plato's time.
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
greatness of the Philosophers of the scientific revolution consisted not
so much in finding the right answers but in asking the right questions;
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saw two pieces of advice for finding the Philosopher's Stone
printed side by side:
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I. H. Echte (a psychologist, son of the Philosopher) postulated the
existence of pre-conscious states:
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make Gothic cathedrals. the Philosophers of classicism, from Pliny to
Leonardo and Durer, saw beauty wherever mortal flesh testified to
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that he knows? . . . the Philosopher is thinking of a problem. He is
aware that he is thinking of this problem. Is he aware that he is aware,
Theaetetus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The other digression is the famous contrast of the lawyer and philosopher. This is a sort of landing-place or break in the middle of the dialogue. At the commencement of a great discussion, the reflection naturally arises, How happy are they who, like the Philosopher, have time for such discussions (compare Republic)! There is no reason for the introduction of such a digression; nor is a reason always needed, any more than for the introduction of an episode in a poem, or of a topic in conversation. That which is given by Socrates is quite sufficient, viz. that the Philosopher may talk and write as he pleases. But though not very closely connected, neither is the digression out of keeping with the rest of the dialogue. the Philosopher naturally desires to pour forth the thoughts which are always present to him, and to discourse of the higher life. The idea of knowledge, although hard to be defined, is realised in the life of philosophy. And the contrast is the favourite antithesis between the world, in the various characters of sophist, lawyer, statesman, speaker, and the Philosopher,between opinion and knowledge,between the conventional and the true.
The greater part of the dialogue is devoted to setting up and throwing down definitions of science and knowledge. Proceeding from the lower to the higher by three stages, in which perception, opinion, reasoning are successively examined, we first get rid of the confusion of the idea of knowledge and specific kinds of knowledge,a confusion which has been already noticed in the Lysis, Laches, Meno, and other dialogues. In the infancy of logic, a form of thought has to be invented before the content can be filled up. We cannot define knowledge until the nature of definition has been ascertained. Having succeeded in making his meaning plain, Socrates proceeds to analyze (1) the first definition which Theaetetus proposes: 'Knowledge is sensible perception.' This is speedily identified with the Protagorean saying, 'Man is the measure of all things;' and of this again the foundation is discovered in the perpetual flux of Heracleitus. The relativeness of sensation is then developed at length, and for a moment the definition appears to be accepted. But soon the Protagorean thesis is pronounced to be suicidal; for the adversaries of Protagoras are as good a measure as he is, and they deny his doctrine. He is then supposed to reply that the perception may be true at any given instant. But the reply is in the end shown to be inconsistent with the Heraclitean foundation, on which the doctrine has been affirmed to rest. For if the Heraclitean flux is extended to every sort of change in every instant of time, how can any thought or word be detained even for an instant? Sensible perception, like everything else, is tumbling to pieces. Nor can Protagoras himself maintain that one man is as good as another in his knowledge of the future; and 'the expedient,' if not 'the just and true,' belongs to the sphere of the future.
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'I like his doctrine that what appears is; but I wonder that he did not begin his great work on Truth with a declaration that a pig, or a dog-faced baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is a measure of all things; then, while we were reverencing him as a god, he might have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that he was no wiser than a tadpole. For if sensations are always true, and one man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own judge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then what need of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and why should we be less knowing than he is, or have to go to him, if every man is the measure of all things? My own art of midwifery, and all dialectic, is an enormous folly, if Protagoras' "Truth" be indeed truth, and the Philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving oracles out of his book.'
Theodorus thinks that Socrates is unjust to his master, Protagoras; but he is too old and stiff to try a fall with him, and therefore refers him to Theaetetus, who is already driven out of his former opinion by the arguments of Socrates.
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I will illustrate my meaning by the jest of the witty maid-servant, who saw Thales tumbling into a well, and said of him, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet. This is applicable to all philosophers. the Philosopher is unacquainted with the world; he hardly knows whether his neighbour is a man or an animal. For he is always searching into the essence of man, and enquiring what such a nature ought to do or suffer different from any other. Hence, on every occasion in private life and public, as I was saying, when he appears in a law-court or anywhere, he is the joke, not only of maid-servants, but of the general herd, falling into wells and every sort of disaster; he looks such an awkward, inexperienced creature, unable to say anything personal, when he is abused, in answer to his adversaries (for he knows no evil of any one); and when he hears the praises of others, he cannot help laughing from the bottom of his soul at their pretensions; and this also gives him a ridiculous appearance. A king or tyrant appears to him to be a kind of swine-herd or cow-herd, milking away at an animal who is much more troublesome and dangerous than cows or sheep; like the cow-herd, he has no time to be educated, and the pen in which he keeps his flock in the mountains is surrounded by a wall. When he hears of large landed properties of ten thousand acres or more, he thinks of the whole earth; or if he is told of the antiquity of a family, he remembers that every one has had myriads of progenitors, rich and poor, Greeks and barbarians, kings and slaves. And he who boasts of his descent from Amphitryon in the twenty-fifth generation, may, if he pleases, add as many more, and double that again, and our philosopher only laughs at his inability to do a larger sum. Such is the man at whom the vulgar scoff; he seems to them as if he could not mind his feet. 'That is very true, Socrates.' But when he tries to draw the quick-witted lawyer out of his pleas and rejoinders to the contemplation of absolute justice or injustice in their own nature, or from the popular praises of wealthy kings to the view of happiness and misery in themselves, or to the reasons why a man should seek after the one and avoid the other, then the situation is reversed; the little wretch turns giddy, and is ready to fall over the precipice; his utterance becomes thick, and he makes himself ridiculous, not to servant-maids, but to every man of liberal education. Such are the two pictures: the one of the Philosopher and gentleman, who may be excused for not having learned how to make a bed, or cook up flatteries; the other, a serviceable knave, who hardly knows how to wear his cloak,still less can he awaken harmonious thoughts or hymn virtue's praises.
'If the world, Socrates, were as ready to receive your words as I am, there would be greater peace and less evil among mankind.'
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Many (1) fine expressions, and (2) remarks full of wisdom, (3) also germs of a metaphysic of the future, are scattered up and down in the dialogue. Such, for example, as (1) the comparison of Theaetetus' progress in learning to the 'noiseless flow of a river of oil'; the satirical touch, 'flavouring a sauce or fawning speech'; or the remarkable expression, 'full of impure dialectic'; or the lively images under which the argument is described,'the flood of arguments pouring in,' the fresh discussions 'bursting in like a band of revellers.' (2) As illustrations of the second head, may be cited the remark of Socrates, that 'distinctions of words, although sometimes pedantic, are also necessary'; or the fine touch in the character of the lawyer, that 'dangers came upon him when the tenderness of youth was unequal to them'; or the description of the manner in which the spirit is broken in a wicked man who listens to reproof until he becomes like a child; or the punishment of the wicked, which is not physical suffering, but the perpetual companionship of evil (compare Gorgias); or the saying, often repeated by Aristotle and others, that 'philosophy begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas'; or the superb contempt with which the Philosopher takes down the pride of wealthy landed proprietors by comparison of the whole earth. (3) Important metaphysical ideas are: a. the conception of thought, as the mind talking to herself; b. the notion of a common sense, developed further by Aristotle, and the explicit declaration, that the mind gains her conceptions of Being, sameness, number, and the like, from reflection on herself; c. the excellent distinction of Theaetetus (which Socrates, speaking with emphasis, 'leaves to grow') between seeing the forms or hearing the sounds of words in a foreign language, and understanding the meaning of them; and d. the distinction of Socrates himself between 'having' and 'possessing' knowledge, in which the answer to the whole discussion appears to be contained.
...
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Within or behind space there is another abstraction in many respects similar to ittime, the form of the inward, as space is the form of the outward. As we cannot think of outward objects of sense or of outward sensations without space, so neither can we think of a succession of sensations without time. It is the vacancy of thoughts or sensations, as space is the void of outward objects, and we can no more imagine the mind without the one than the world without the other. It is to arithmetic what space is to geometry; or, more strictly, arithmetic may be said to be equally applicable to both. It is defined in our minds, partly by the analogy of space and partly by the recollection of events which have happened to us, or the consciousness of feelings which we are experiencing. Like space, it is without limit, for whatever beginning or end of time we fix, there is a beginning and end before them, and so on without end. We speak of a past, present, and future, and again the analogy of space assists us in conceiving of them as coexistent. When the limit of time is removed there arises in our minds the idea of eternity, which at first, like time itself, is only negative, but gradually, when connected with the world and the divine nature, like the other negative infinity of space, becomes positive. Whether time is prior to the mind and to experience, or coeval with them, is (like the parallel question about space) unmeaning. Like space it has been realized gradually: in the Homeric poems, or even in the Hesiodic cosmogony, there is no more notion of time than of space. The conception of being is more general than either, and might therefore with greater plausibility be affirmed to be a condition or quality of the mind. The a priori intuitions of Kant would have been as unintelligible to Plato as his a priori synthetical propositions to Aristotle. the Philosopher of Konigsberg supposed himself to be analyzing a necessary mode of thought: he was not aware that he was dealing with a mere abstraction. But now that we are able to trace the gradual developement of ideas through religion, through language, through abstractions, why should we interpose the fiction of time between ourselves and realities? Why should we single out one of these abstractions to be the a priori condition of all the others? It comes last and not first in the order of our thoughts, and is not the condition precedent of them, but the last generalization of them. Nor can any principle be imagined more suicidal to philosophy than to assume that all the truth which we are capable of attaining is seen only through an unreal medium. If all that exists in time is illusion, we may well ask with Plato, 'What becomes of the mind?'
Leaving the a priori conditions of sensation we may proceed to consider acts of sense. These admit of various degrees of duration or intensity; they admit also of a greater or less extension from one object, which is perceived directly, to many which are perceived indirectly or in a less degree, and to the various associations of the object which are latent in the mind. In general the greater the intension the less the extension of them. The simplest sensation implies some relation of objects to one another, some position in space, some relation to a previous or subsequent sensation. The acts of seeing and hearing may be almost unconscious and may pass away unnoted; they may also leave an impression behind them or power of recalling them. If, after seeing an object we shut our eyes, the object remains dimly seen in the same or about the same place, but with form and lineaments half filled up. This is the simplest act of memory. And as we cannot see one thing without at the same time seeing another, different objects hang together in recollection, and when we call for one the other quickly follows. To think of the place in which we have last seen a thing is often the best way of recalling it to the mind. Hence memory is dependent on association. The act of recollection may be compared to the sight of an object at a great distance which we have previously seen near and seek to bring near to us in thought. Memory is to sense as dreaming is to waking; and like dreaming has a wayward and uncertain power of recalling impressions from the past.
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2. The second question, namely, that concerning the relation of the mind to external objects, is really a trifling one, though it has been made the subject of a famous philosophy. We may if we like, with Berkeley, resolve objects of sense into sensations; but the change is one of name only, and nothing is gained and something is lost by such a resolution or confusion of them. For we have not really made a single step towards idealism, and any arbitrary inversion of our ordinary modes of speech is disturbing to the mind. The youthful metaphysician is delighted at his marvellous discovery that nothing is, and that what we see or feel is our sensation only: for a day or two the world has a new interest to him; he alone knows the secret which has been communicated to him by the Philosopher, that mind is allwhen in fact he is going out of his mind in the first intoxication of a great thought. But he soon finds that all things remain as they werethe laws of motion, the properties of matter, the qualities of substances. After having inflicted his theories on any one who is willing to receive them 'first on his father and mother, secondly on some other patient listener, thirdly on his dog,' he finds that he only differs from the rest of mankind in the use of a word. He had once hoped that by getting rid of the solidity of matter he might open a passage to worlds beyond. He liked to think of the world as the representation of the divine nature, and delighted to imagine angels and spirits wandering through space, present in the room in which he is sitting without coming through the door, nowhere and everywhere at the same instant. At length he finds that he has been the victim of his own fancies; he has neither more nor less evidence of the supernatural than he had before. He himself has become unsettled, but the laws of the world remain fixed as at the beginning. He has discovered that his appeal to the fallibility of sense was really an illusion. For whatever uncertainty there may be in the appearances of nature, arises only out of the imperfection or variation of the human senses, or possibly from the deficiency of certain branches of knowledge; when science is able to apply her tests, the uncertainty is at an end. We are apt sometimes to think that moral and metaphysical philosophy are lowered by the influence which is exercised over them by physical science. But any interpretation of nature by physical science is far in advance of such idealism. The philosophy of Berkeley, while giving unbounded license to the imagination, is still grovelling on the level of sense.
We may, if we please, carry this scepticism a step further, and deny, not only objects of sense, but the continuity of our sensations themselves. We may say with Protagoras and Hume that what is appears, and that what appears appears only to individuals, and to the same individual only at one instant. But then, as Plato asks,and we must repeat the question,What becomes of the mind? Experience tells us by a thousand proofs that our sensations of colour, taste, and the like, are the same as they were an instant agothat the act which we are performing one minute is continued by us in the nextand also supplies abundant proof that the perceptions of other men are, speaking generally, the same or nearly the same with our own. After having slowly and laboriously in the course of ages gained a conception of a whole and parts, of the constitution of the mind, of the relation of man to God and nature, imperfect indeed, but the best we can, we are asked to return again to the 'beggarly elements' of ancient scepticism, and acknowledge only atoms and sensations devoid of life or unity. Why should we not go a step further still and doubt the existence of the senses of all things? We are but 'such stuff as dreams are made of;' for we have left ourselves no instruments of thought by which we can distinguish man from the animals, or conceive of the existence even of a mollusc. And observe, this extreme scepticism has been allowed to spring up among us, not, like the ancient scepticism, in an age when nature and language really seemed to be full of illusions, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when men walk in the daylight of inductive science.
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SOCRATES: Do you hear, Theaetetus, what Theodorus says? the Philosopher, whom you would not like to disobey, and whose word ought to be a comm and to a young man, bids me interrogate you. Take courage, then, and nobly say what you think that knowledge is.
THEAETETUS: Well, Socrates, I will answer as you and he bid me; and if I make a mistake, you will doubtless correct me.
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SOCRATES: I am charmed with his doctrine, that what appears is to each one, but I wonder that he did not begin his book on Truth with a declaration that a pig or a dog-faced baboon, or some other yet stranger monster which has sensation, is the measure of all things; then he might have shown a magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset that while we were reverencing him like a God for his wisdom he was no better than a tadpole, not to speak of his fellow-menwould not this have produced an overpowering effect? For if truth is only sensation, and no man can discern another's feelings better than he, or has any superior right to determine whether his opinion is true or false, but each, as we have several times repeated, is to himself the sole judge, and everything that he judges is true and right, why, my friend, should Protagoras be preferred to the place of wisdom and instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and we poor ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is the measure of his own wisdom? Must he not be talking 'ad captandum' in all this? I say nothing of the ridiculous predicament in which my own midwifery and the whole art of dialectic is placed; for the attempt to supervise or refute the notions or opinions of others would be a tedious and enormous piece of folly, if to each man his own are right; and this must be the case if Protagoras' Truth is the real truth, and the Philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving oracles out of the shrine of his book.
THEODORUS: He was a friend of mine, Socrates, as you were saying, and therefore I cannot have him refuted by my lips, nor can I oppose you when I agree with you; please, then, to take Theaetetus again; he seemed to answer very nicely.
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SOCRATES: In the leisure spoken of by you, which a freeman can always command: he has his talk out in peace, and, like ourselves, he wanders at will from one subject to another, and from a second to a third,if the fancy takes him, he begins again, as we are doing now, caring not whether his words are many or few; his only aim is to attain the truth. But the lawyer is always in a hurry; there is the water of the clepsydra driving him on, and not allowing him to expatiate at will: and there is his adversary standing over him, enforcing his rights; the indictment, which in their phraseology is termed the affidavit, is recited at the time: and from this he must not deviate. He is a servant, and is continually disputing about a fellow-servant before his master, who is seated, and has the cause in his hands; the trial is never about some indifferent matter, but always concerns himself; and often the race is for his life. The consequence has been, that he has become keen and shrewd; he has learned how to flatter his master in word and indulge him in deed; but his soul is small and unrighteous. His condition, which has been that of a slave from his youth upwards, has deprived him of growth and uprightness and independence; dangers and fears, which were too much for his truth and honesty, came upon him in early years, when the tenderness of youth was unequal to them, and he has been driven into crooked ways; from the first he has practised deception and retaliation, and has become stunted and warped. And so he has passed out of youth into manhood, having no soundness in him; and is now, as he thinks, a master in wisdom. Such is the lawyer, Theodorus. Will you have the companion picture of the Philosopher, who is of our brotherhood; or shall we return to the argument? Do not let us abuse the freedom of digression which we claim.
THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, not until we have finished what we are about; for you truly said that we belong to a brotherhood which is free, and are not the servants of the argument; but the argument is our servant, and must wait our leisure. Who is our judge? Or where is the spectator having any right to censure or control us, as he might the poets?
SOCRATES: Then, as this is your wish, I will describe the leaders; for there is no use in talking about the inferior sort. In the first place, the lords of philosophy have never, from their youth upwards, known their way to the Agora, or the dicastery, or the council, or any other political assembly; they neither see nor hear the laws or decrees, as they are called, of the state written or recited; the eagerness of political societies in the attainment of officesclubs, and banquets, and revels, and singing-maidens,do not enter even into their dreams. Whether any event has turned out well or ill in the city, what disgrace may have descended to any one from his ancestors, male or female, are matters of which the Philosopher no more knows than he can tell, as they say, how many pints are contained in the ocean. Neither is he conscious of his ignorance. For he does not hold aloof in order that he may gain a reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human things, is 'flying all abroad' as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach.
THEODORUS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I will illustrate my meaning, Theodorus, by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet. This is a jest which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the Philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a man or an animal; he is searching into the essence of man, and busy in enquiring what belongs to such a nature to do or suffer different from any other;I think that you understand me, Theodorus?
THEODORUS: I do, and what you say is true.
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SOCRATES: But, O my friend, when he draws the other into upper air, and gets him out of his pleas and rejoinders into the contemplation of justice and injustice in their own nature and in their difference from one another and from all other things; or from the commonplaces about the happiness of a king or of a rich man to the consideration of government, and of human happiness and misery in generalwhat they are, and how a man is to attain the one and avoid the otherwhen that narrow, keen, little legal mind is called to account about all this, he gives the Philosopher his revenge; for dizzied by the height at which he is hanging, whence he looks down into space, which is a strange experience to him, he being dismayed, and lost, and stammering broken words, is laughed at, not by Thracian handmaidens or any other uneducated persons, for they have no eye for the situation, but by every man who has not been brought up a slave. Such are the two characters, Theodorus: the one of the freeman, who has been trained in liberty and leisure, whom you call the Philosopher,him we cannot blame because he appears simple and of no account when he has to perform some menial task, such as packing up bed-clothes, or flavouring a sauce or fawning speech; the other character is that of the man who is able to do all this kind of service smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear his cloak like a gentleman; still less with the music of discourse can he hymn the true life aright which is lived by immortals or men blessed of heaven.
THEODORUS: If you could only persuade everybody, Socrates, as you do me, of the truth of your words, there would be more peace and fewer evils among men.
The Book of Certitude - P1, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
And now, concerning His words: "And He shall send His angels...." By "angels" is meant those who, reinforced by the power of the spirit, have consumed, with the fire of the love of God, all human traits and limitations, and have clothed themselves with the attributes of the most exalted Beings and of the Cherubim. That holy man, Sádiq, 1 in his eulogy of the Cherubim, saith: "There stand a company of our fellow-Shí'ihs behind the Throne." Divers and manifold are the interpretations of the words "behind the Throne." In one sense, they indicate that no true Shí'ihs exist. Even as he hath said in another passage: "A true believer is likened unto the Philosopher's stone." Addressing subsequently his listener, he saith: "Hast thou ever seen the Philosopher's stone?" Reflect, how this symbolic language, more eloquent than any speech, however direct, testifieth to the non-existence of a true believer. Such is the testimony of Sádiq. And now consider, how unfair and numerous are those who, although they themselves have failed to inhale the fragrance of belief, have condemned as infidels those by whose word belief itself is recognized and established. 1. The sixth Imám of the Shí'ihs.
79
The Divine Names Text (Dionysis), #The Divine Names, #unset, #Zen
But, if the Philosopher Clemens thinks good, that the higher amongst beings should be called |82 exemplars in relation to something, his statement advances, not through correct and perfect and simple names. But, when we have conceded even this, to be correctly said, we must call to mind the Word of God, which says, "I have not shewn thee these things for the purpose of going after them, but that through the proportionate knowledge of these we may be led up to the Cause of all, as we are capable."
We must attribute, then, all existing things to It, as beseems One Union pre-eminent above all, since by starting from Being, the essentiating Progression and Goodness, both penetrating all, and filling all things with Its own being, and rejoicing over all things being, pre-holds all things in Itself, rejecting all duplicity by an one superfluity of simplicity. But It grasps all things in the same way, as beseems its super-simplified Infinity, and is participated in by all uniquely, even as a voice, whilst being one and the same, is participated in by many ears as one.
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:The Dwellings of the Philosophers
author class:Fulcanelli
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The Dwellings of the Philosophers
FULCANELLI
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propose to study under the general title of Dwellings of the Philosophers.
(1) Charles de Remusat: Critiques et Etudes Litterarires (Literary Critics and Studies).
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unscrambling of the enigmas of the high science. Such is the Philosopher that the poets
imagination or the painters brush like to depict for us.
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rights to the old science. Spinoza and Leibnitz believed in the Philosophers Stone, the
chrysopea; Pascal became certain of it (8) . Nearer to us, a few celebrated minds, among others
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success to the search for the Philosophers Stone... We must therefore consult
experimentation, and experimentation, it must be said, is until now not in opposition the
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Alchemy is obscure only because it is hidden. the Philosophers who wanted to transmit the
exposition of their doctrine and the fruit of their labors to posterity took great care not to
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themselves. We shall answer that the Philosophers had no other means at their disposal to
steal from the ones what they wanted to expose to the others, but this confusion of metaphors,
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powerful, to indicate the surprising power of the Philosophers stone. The word Eirenaeus
Philale thes appears to be composed of three Greek words: [ *73-2 ] ( Eirenaios ), peaceful, [
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of the Philosophers egg (ovum, ovi). Arcahelaus is rather the title of a book than the name of
an author, i.e., the principle of the stone, from the Greek word [*73-7] (Arche), principle, and
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seated on the natural stone of the Philosophers.
30
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disdainful expression of the alchemists for these side activities unworthy of the Philosopher.
Without scorning these useful researchers, let us recognize that very often the most fortunate
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Such are the opinions of the Philosophers about their own works. How can we be surprised
then, that so many excellent chemists took the wrong path, and that they deluded themselves
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of Hermes would be known to them, and the Philosophers stone would long have ceased to
be considered a chimera.
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certainty than we would be inclined to attri bute to them. May the Philosophers, our brothers
whose indulgence we claim, condescend to forgive us these divulgations. However, besides
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worked for 50 years in search of the Philosophers stone, and in vain as far as the stone, but
with good results as far as other transmutations of metals. In proof of which, I often saw him
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certain powder which is not otherwise described. This powder is not the Philosophers stone
but it possesses one of its properties: it operates the transmutation. The mixture is heated for
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his talent, in other words, an Adept, possessor of the Philosophers stone. We also certify that
his affiliation with some esoteric center that had many points of contact with the dispersed
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Castle of Flers, whose owner was Grosparmy, "where they accomplished the Philosophers
Work and wrote their books". The original error, conscious or not, comes from an anonym,
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Its traditional name, the stone of the Philosophers, is descriptive enough of the body to serve
as a useful basis for its identification. It is, indeed, genuinely a stone, for, out of the mine, it
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the purest seed and the closest substance there is to minerals and metals. the Philosophers
matter is therefore of mineral and metallic origin. Hence, one must only seek it in the mineral
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the sacred stone of the Philosophers with the hope of encountering this little world in
substances alien to the mineral and metallic kingdoms, will never reach his goals. To turn the
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St Matthew is none other than the Mercury of the Philosophers, double in nature and
quality, partly fixed and material, partly volatile and spiritual, which suffices to begin, achieve
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the salt of our stone, since the stone of the Philosophers, which is this mercury of which we
speak, is the subject of the Philosophers Stone. Hence several Adepts, intending to create
confusion, called it nitre or saltpeter ( sal petri, salt of stone), and copied the sign of the one
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effect for the Philosophers art. This pure fire, of the same essence as the specific sulphur of
gold but less digested, is, on the other hand, more abundant than that of the precious metal.
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the occult circles of our time, people often speak of the Philosophers stone without knowing
what it is in reality. Many educated people call the hermetic gem a mysterious body; they
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passed from ashy color to pure white, then to yellow, you will see the Philosophers stone, our
King raised above the dominators, come out of his glassy sepulcher, arise from his bed and
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these as transmutations brought about by the Philosophers stone in its special state of powder
of projection. All the tinctures meet this criterion. Their subjection to a particular metal, their
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important to remember that the Philosophers stone appears in the shape of a crystalline,
diaphanous body, red in mass, yellow after pulverization, dense and very fusible, although
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sepulchers. Thus radiant and liquid, the Philosophers stone is not likely, in our opinion, to be
pushed further; desiring to amplify its igneous quality would seem dangerous to us; the least
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considerations, that the Philosophers stone or universal Medicine, in spite of its undeniable
metallic origin, is not uniquely made from metallic matter. If it were otherwise, and if one had
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along with all the Philosophers, is not the union of a metallic body with a metallic spirit, but
rather the condensation, the agglomeration of this spirit into a coherent, tenacious and
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diplomas, seals, and parchments for the humble mantle of the Philosopher. At age 24 we had
to drain this chalice filled with a bitter beverage. Heart-wounded, ashamed of the errors of our
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Such is the hieroglyph adopted by the Philosophers to express metallic inertia, that is to say,
the special state that human industry gives to reduced and molten metals> Hermetic esoteric
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"Abbot Chapaty thought to have discovered the Philosophers stone but, unfortunately for
him, the crucible burst asunder, the metal exploded against him, attached itself to his face,
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body, fixed, which marks the first stage of the stone of the Philosophers. Such is, we have
said, the griffin, half eagle, half lion, a symbol which corresponds to the basket of Bacchus
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principles, whose conjunction engenders the Philosophers matter. This hieroglyph of the
agent and the patient, of sulphur and mercury, of sun and moon, the philosophical parents of
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Under the biblical tradition of the first mans Fall, the Philosophers, with their customary
skill, hid a secret of alchemical nature. Clearly we owe to this fact the existence of the
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marriage. But what about this steel called [*172-6] ( adamas ) about which the Philosophers
say so much? Plato, in Timaeus , gives us the following explanation.
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contain the Philosophers wine or mercury, they are eloquent enough by themselves to spare
us the explanation of their esoteric meaning.
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conceive more clearly where the stumbling-block lies which the Philosophers have thrown
across our paths when they assert in common agreement that mercury is the unique, sole
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sulphur, sun of the Philosophers, metallic seed and father of the stone.
Do not be mistaken; there lies the Gordian Knot of the Work, the one that beginners must try
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Nessus represents the Philosophers stone, not yet determined or assigned to any one of the
great natural realms, whose color varies from carmine to brilliant scarlet. [*180-1] ( nesos ), in
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As for the symbolic dog, direct successor of the Egyptian cynocephalus, the Philosopher
Artephius has granted it civil rights among the figures of alchemical iconography. Indeed, he
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Be that as it may, this leads us to believe that the search for the Philosophers stone in the 16th
and 17th centuries was more active than we tend to believe, and, that its fortunate owners did
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substance to which, say the Philosophers, all metals owe their origin. "You must know",
writes Limojon de Saint-Didier (2) , "that our old man is our mercury; that the name suits it
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of the Philosopher. In his right hand he holds a zither (4) . In his left hand he raises a bulging
phial somewhat like the pilgrims calabash. Standing between the posts of a throne, he
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[*201-5] (gala), milk, which corresponds to Virgins Milk (maris Stella ) or Mercury of the Philosophers. We
will avoid speaking about another etymology even more revealing because we must obey philosophical
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(30) Cf. Azoth ou Moyen de faire IOr cache des Philosophes (Azoth or the Means to Make the Philosophers
Hidden Gold)', Paris, Pierre Molet, 1659.
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furnace of the Philosophers is useless. We will not say any more here because we will have
the opportunity to resume to topic and develop later on the major Arcanum of the great art.
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cooperated with the building of the Temple of Solomon, which means that the Philosophers
stone must have played some part in it. But nearer to us, dont our gothic cathedrals,
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the beautiful Meda and whose discourse so filled the books of the Philosophers, that no
philosopher ever existed who did not write about them, from the true Hermes Trismegistus,
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vile, abject, despised, more sought after by the Philosopher than natural gold; the stick that the
high priest Aaron changed into a serpent and the one which Moses (Ex. 17:5-6) imitated in
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that, "If the Philosophers stone is made in the same manner that villagers make butter", by
churning or shaking the cream which represents, in this similarity, our philosophical mercury.
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its most noble particles, the Philosopher is right to affirm tha the wind is the matrix of our
mercury, quintessence of the gold of the sages and pure mineral seed: "He who has mollified
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in substance. The sages are therefore right to teach that "the stone of the Philosophers, or our
mercury, and the Philosophers stone are one and the same thing, of one and the same kind",
although one is more mature and more excellent than the other. Relative to this mercury,
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sentences. "The Stone of the Philosophers", says our author, is Ruach Elohim (which rested
- incubebat on the waters [Gen. I], conceived by the mediation of heaven, (God alone,
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believe, along with the Philosopher (35) , "that it is more worthy of human nature and more
instructive to first admit the marvelous by trying to extract from it what is true than to first
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In being born, we die every day. A serious thought of Seneca, the Philosopher, an axiom
which we would hardly expect to find here. Evidently, this profound albeit ethical truth,
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Saint-Didier states a primordial truth when he affirms: "The stone of the Philosophers is bom
from the destruction of two bodies". We add that the Philosophers stone or our mercury,
its next matter is also born from the fight, the mortification, and the ruin of two opposite
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tincted it will not tinct". And the Philosophers mercury opens with the color black, seal of its
mortification, the chromatic series of the philosophical spectrum. It is its first tincture and it is
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preparation of the Philosophers mercury.
After the shields, the bucranes indicate the two mortifications marking the beginning of the
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corrupted, which are characterized in the Philosophers work by an oily, greasy appearance, a
strong and disgusting odor, a viscous and sticky condition, a quicksilver-like consistency, a
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As for the Philosophers mercury, whose elaboration is never revealed, not even under the
hieroglyphics veil, we find nonetheless its image on one of the decorative shields adjacent to
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Wisdom, the crown of the Philosopher, the seal of Science and Faith united with the double
spiritual and temporal power of Knighthood.
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and never lazy worker, the secret agent and faithful and loyal servant of the Philosopher. This
incessant collaboration of human foresight with natural activity, this duality of effort
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for the means through which the Philosophers mercury makes itself known and can be
identified, we are now going to disclose it.
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are five in number. Four among them bear the mantle of the Philosopher, which they open to
show the different emblems of their duties. The furthest one from the Man of the Woods is
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reaction yields, at the end of the Philosophers fight, the first substance of the Work. Some
authors Nicolas Flamel and Basil Valentine in particular have given to these elements
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the Great Work. Here is the first secret, the one which the Philosophers do not reveal and
which they keep under the enigmatic expression of the Path of St James (15) .
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the example of the internal agent the Great Adept obeyed the rules of the Philosophers
discipline and followed the example of his predecessors. Rayond Lully tells us that he made,
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the matter from which the stone of the Philosophers is made was immediately made when
man was first created, and its name is philosophical earth... But no one knows it, except the
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to reality. It tells us of the famous alchemist Hujumsin, ranked among the gods for having discovered the Philosophers stone;
he had killed a horrible dragon which ravaged the country and he had attached the corpse of this monster on the top of a
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And so the opinion is confirmed according to which the Philosopher to whom we owe all
the embellishments of the castle paintings and sculptures is unknown to us and will
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when apportioning substances according to the rules of the Philosophers weights and
measures. As for the rolls of gold coins, they clearly indicate the nature of the final result and
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knight who, thanks to divine grace, achieved the Philosophers stone. However, while this
emblem brings us proof that the unknown Adept of Dampierre had knowledge, it also
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Ordinarily, they are reckoned to be seven. To each regimen the Philosophers have attri buted
on of the higher divinities of the Olympus and one of the celestial planets, whose influence is
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Panel 5 For having ascertained it experimentally, the Philosophers certify that their stone is
nothing else but a complete coagulation of mercurial water. The fact is translated by our bas-
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form by which we can identify them. This is why the Philosophers have compared the
molecular binding of the mercurial solid, under the secret action of spirit, to that of a bag
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Trismegistus of the Philosophers, the Mercury of the Romans.
147
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fabrication of precious metals, and the Philosophers stone itself is but the first positive step
enabling the Adept to raise himself all the way to the most sublime knowledge. Even if we
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This fruit is none other than the hermetic gem, the Philosophers stone of the Great Work or
the Medicine of the ancient sages, also called the Absolute, Little Coal or precious Carbuncle
--
knowledge shows a more or less important virtue. For it is undeniable that the Philosophers
stone used for the transmutation of metals is never endowed with the same power. Historical
--
But while the Philosophers spoke little of the variable yield of the chrysopeus, on the other
hand they displayed more prolixity toward the medical properties o the Elixir, as well as on
--
Among the other marvelous properties attri buted to the Philosophers stone, some ancient
authors quote many examples of the transformation of crystal into ruby and quartz into
--
need. So, according to the Philosopher of Dampierres advice, the prudent artist will strive to
make the hidden manifest and to "make that which is below to be above", if he wishes to see
--
things". Note therefore that the Philosopher recommends to separate, to divide, and not to
destroy or sacrifice one to save the other. For if it were so, we ask you, from which body
--
If the reader is acquainted with the traditional manner of writing of the Philosophers which
manner we try to imitate correctly so that the Ancients can be explained through us and se we
--
and our true solvent, is precisely the substance which the Philosophers named the unique
matrix, the mother of the Work; without her, it would be impossible for us to achieve the
--
mercury of the sages, which truly is the stone of the Philosophers. In such a way that whoever
claims to make the mercury or the stone with all the metals as well as whoever asserts the
--
servus fugitivus, the fugitive slave. We could therefore answer the Philosophers question by
saying that, given the very difference in their conditions, the student will never rise above the
--
him preferably concentrate his attention on the mercury, which the Philosophers sometimes
called double, not without cause, sometimes ardent or sharp and actuated with its own salt. He
--
symbol of the way in which the stone of the Philosophers, the first being or subject of the
Philosophers Stone, is bom.
--
course he quickly followed at the beginning of his labor. So as not to get lost, the Philosophers
advise him to mark his path from his starting point for the operations, which we could call
--
It is obvious that the Philosopher, having reached the tangible result of the hermetic labor, no
longer ignored the power, the preponderance of the spirit, or the truly prodigious influence it
--
the comprehension of the inaccessible. There is the newly-bom idea, in the Philosophers
ideal, of the fusion of human and divine spirit, of he return of the creature to the Creator, of
--
elements of the Philosophers stone. Now this stone, by the certain knowledge it brings, by the
169
truths it reveals to the Philosopher, enables him to overcome the moral sufferings which affect
other men and to vanquish physical pains by suppressing the cause and the effects of many
--
two principles restored to unity in the Philosophers stone, this universality allows the use and
attri bution to the various stages of the Work, since all of them aim at the same goal and are
--
As for the mercurial nature of the support of the star (which is the sky of the Philosophers),
Nicolas Valois (13) makes it rather clear in the following passage: "The sages", he says, "name
--
body of the Philosophers in that particular manner. "Nature", he says, "is not visible although
it acts visibly, for it is but a volatile spirit, that operates in bodies and that is animated by the
--
Light coming by itself out of the Darkness, or True Theory of the Stone of the Philosophers), written in Italian
verses; Paris, Libr, d. Houry, 1687, p. 271.
--
nauseous odor which the Philosophers define as toxicum et venenum, it stains fingers when it
is touched and seems to assemble within itself all that which can displease. Yet it is, this
--
the great alkahest, the first matter of all the Philosophers has been known for a long time in
Africa by the most skilled Mohammedan artists".
--
attracting their sulphur, or their true blood, and allows the Philosopher to liken it to the
nocturnal vampire of oriental legends.
--
sulphur, say the Philosophers, is the flower of all metals hopes to regain existence, thanks
to the specific virtue of the waters which provoked its death. If he cannot extract his image
--
this active sulphur so as to obtain the mercury of the Philosophers, a pure, subtle, responsive,
and living substance. Here is the operation that the sages have reserved under the expression
--
the molten core of the earth (archaeus), the igneous matter, basis of the Philosophers stone.
The Greek word [*372-1] ( arke ) means beginning, principle, source, origin. Under the agency
--
have named the island of the Philosopher (12) , the first manifestation of the thickening and
coagulation. This is the famous island of Delos, in Greek [*373-1] {Delos), that is to say
--
founded on a resemblance; the Philosophers have also given to the compost that has reached
the point of decomposition the expressive name of "corps bleu" (blue body that gave the
--
under that of the Philosophers stone. So, whatever it may be, mercury remains submitted to
sulphur because it is the servant and the slave which, allowing itself to be absorbed,
--
also brought it the name of Moon of the Philosophers and Mother of the Stone; it is this sense
that Hermes means when he says, speaking of the Work "the Sun is its father and the Moon its
--
urchin, sea urchin), is a rather exact figuration of the Philosophers stone such as it can be
obtained through the brief way. Indeed it appears to be made of a sort of crystalline and
--
natural mineral bed to be lost. This is why the Philosophers qualify them as dead and
recognize them as being improper to the labor of the Great Work until they have been
--
Therefore the Philosophers deemed, not without reason, that the refractory qualities of the
sulphur, its resistance to fire, could only belong to fire or to some spirit of an igneous nature.
--
from the Void, it bears its imprint and its name: Nothing. But the Philosophers have
discovered that in its elementary and disorganized nature, consisting all of darkness and of
--
character linked to it, had been chosen by the Philosophers to designate the spirit, the
universal soul of things, or the active and almighty principle which is recognized to be, in
--
what the Philosophers from Antiquity have fixed in their corona radiata (radiant crown),
ornamented with protruding rays only attri buted to God, or to deified heroes. So shall we
--
ignored like the matter of the Philosophers.
The dragons general appearance, its well-known ugliness, its ferocity, and its unusual vital
--
While the Philosophers have always hidden the common name of their matter under an
infinity of qualifiers, they were, on the other hand, often quite prolix as far as describing its
--
mercury of the Philosophers, Geber exclaimed: "Blessed be the Almighty, who created our
mercury and who gave it a nature to which nothing resists; for, without it, the alchemists
--
philosophy and matter of the Philosophers. His winged scepter bears the explanation of the
enigma he proposes, and the revelation of the mystery hiding the compound of the compound,
--
sea, ocean; it is the pontic water of the Philosophers, our mercury, the sea purged again with
its own sulphur, sometimes simply the water of our sea, which must be read as the water of
--
And yet the Philosophers themselves attest that they never speak more obscurely than when
they seem to express themselves with precision; their apparent clarity deludes those who let
--
development of these works are guarded by the Philosophers and always shrouded in silence,
the special characteristic which the coction, understood in that way, takes on will nevertheless
--
No subject of meditation seems to be more profitable to the Philosopher; nothing solicits more
the exercise of his thought. Fire surrounds us and bathes us from everywhere; it comes to us
--
the center of the composition, it indicates the mineral substance out of which the Philosophers
draw the elements of the miraculous rebirth of the Phoenix, and it is this work of rebirth as a
--
(6) A hermetic expression only used for the Philosophersstone.
(7) We encounter once more the symbolical palm tree of Delos, against which Latona leaned when she gave birth to Apollo,
--
one cannot see there a testimony of their presence in the Philosophers dwelling of Bourges.
Be that as it may, her personal wealth was considerable. Crafted goldware, gold ingots, and
--
mystical rose, the flower of the Great Work, better known as the Philosophers Stone. So that
it becomes easy to understand the relationship between the expression of the veil and that of
--
When the Philosophers consider the weight ratios among matters, they mean to speak of one
or the other part of a double esoteric knowledge: the weight of nature and the weights of art
--
principles united in the Philosophers mercury, it is the weight of nature which is then
considered. And we shall add in order to remove all confusion from the readers mind that,
--
the spirit of a demon, a devil, or Satan; for the Philosopher and alchemist, it was always used
to represent their volatile and dissolving first matter, otherwise called common mercury.
--
figurative expression of the stone of the Philosophers, a dragon enclosed in its fortress, the
extraction of which has always been considered a true feat of strength. On the other hand, the
--
Mysterious language of the Philosophers and disciples of Hermes, the cabala dominates the
entire didactics of the Great Art, just as symbolism embraces all its iconography. Art and
--
(5) The sacred Temple of Light is the name given to the Philosophers stone our microcosm, in relationship to the temple
of Jerusalem, the image of the universe or of the macrocosm
--
(13) Constellation of the Zodiac of the Philosophers, sign of the increase of fire.
(14) Graphic symbol of the philosophical vitriol, The points of suspension are part of the original text.
--
(19) The Stone of the Philosophers, the first matter, subject of the art drawn from the original chaos, of black color, but
primum ens, formed by nature, of the Philosophers' stone.
(20) A few historians called her Seriamira half miraculous. At once vile and precious, abject and sought after, she is the
--
the impossibility of getting anything out of it. It is because the Philosophers skillfully welded
two successive works into one, with all the more ease because they are similar operations
--
the sky are not the heavenly bodies of the Philosophers". Whereby it must be understood that
the artist will never find the partners of the stone, directly prepared in nature, and that he will
--
philosophical or animated mercury, the matter of the Philosophers stone. If that which we
have tried to translate above has been well understood, and if that which is said here is
--
about it, it is the genuine menstruum of Weidenfeld, or the wine spirit of the Philosophers,
since the white and red wines of Raymond Lully can be extracted from this same matter. This
--
instruction but by letting the Philosophers speak who have very specially treated this matter.
Here then is a translation of a rather suggestive chapter by Daniel Mylius (3) , devoted to the
--
means all metals and gems can be dissolved in one moment, which the Philosopher will keep
to himself as much as he will deem appropriate. But I want to remain as obscure on this point
--
Dwellings of the Philosophers, the beautiful and very revealing composition, God's Precious Gift, "written by
George Aurach and hand-painted by him, in the year of the Saved adn Redeemed Humanity, 1415" (Plate
--
hidden translation of the Gnostic Work, of the Great Work of the Philosophers. For us, the
purpose of this little monument is not only to indicate the daily hours, but also the progress of
the sun of the Sages in the Philosophers Work. And this progress is regulated by the
icosahedron, which is this unknown crystal, the salt of Sapience, spirit or fire incarnate, the
--
Emerald of the Philosophers first analogy with the saline matter of the Sages; that it was
written by Hermes, second analogy, since this matter bears the name of Mercury, Roman
--
who speaks, but rather the Emerald of the Philosophers or the Isaiac Table itself (4) .
The initial idea behind the Edinburgh sundial reflects a similar preoccupation. However, apart
--
when they teach us that the salt of metals is the Stone of the Philosophers (5) .
We can therefore reasonable see in this sundial a monument erected to the Philosophical
Vitriol, the initial subject and primum ens of the Philosophers stone. Yet, all the metals are
nothing but salts, which their textures prove and which the ease by which they form
--
nomenclature. In addition, the Philosophers, reversing the order, chose to design green things
by hermetic names probably to emphasize the significance assigned this color in alchemy.
--
Emerald of the Philosophers is green and that the Adept Cyliani metaphorically declares this
vehicle to be essential for the work. Thus, we do not claim to insinuate that it is necessary to
--
For the Philosopher, death is simply the peg which joins the material plane to the diving
plane. It is the terrestrial door opening onto the sky, the link between nature and divinity; it is
--
Thus, we understand why the Philosophers emphasized so much the absolute necessity of
material death. Through death, does the imperishable and always active spirit stir, sieve,
--
peoples, the Philosophers always refused to openly teach the truths they had acquired or
received from Antiquity. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre proves he knew this rule of wisdom when
--
signature of the physical Great Work and of its result, the Philosophers Stone.
The work, quite stylish, is made of three distinct parts: an oblong strongly built base, with a
--
be esoteric. This is why the Philosophers, aiming to hide its principles from the masses, have
concealed the ancient knowledge in the mystery of words and the veil of allegories.
--
the material form of the book The Dwellings of the Philosophers.
Eugene Canseliet
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
37) If iron is once changed to gold by the touch of the Philosopher's stone, it may be kept in the earth or thrown into a mass of ordure, but always it will be gold and can never go back to its first condition. So is it with him whose heart has touched, were it but a single time, the feet of the Almighty; let him dwell amidst the tumult of the world or in the solitude of the forest, by nothing can he again be polluted. ~ Ramakrishna
The Instruments of the Spirit View Similar A Rationalistic Critic on Indian Culture - III
The Library Of Babel 2, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
if the language of the Philosophers is not sufficient, then the multiform
Library must surely have produced the extraordinary language that is re
Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
HERMOCRATES: 'We will do our best, and have been already preparing; for on our way home, Critias told us of an ancient tradition, which I wish, Critias, that you would repeat to Socrates.' 'I will, if Timaeus approves.' 'I approve.' Listen then, Socrates, to a tale of Solon's, who, being the friend of Dropidas my great-grandfa ther, told it to my grandfa ther Critias, and he told me. The narrative related to ancient famous actions of the Athenian people, and to one especially, which I will rehearse in honour of you and of the goddess. Critias when he told this tale of the olden time, was ninety years old, I being not more than ten. The occasion of the rehearsal was the day of the Apaturia called the Registration of Youth, at which our parents gave prizes for recitation. Some poems of Solon were recited by the boys. They had not at that time gone out of fashion, and the recital of them led some one to say, perhaps in compliment to Critias, that Solon was not only the wisest of men but also the best of poets. The old man brightened up at hearing this, and said: Had Solon only had the leisure which was required to complete the famous legend which he brought with him from Egypt he would have been as distinguished as Homer and Hesiod. 'And what was the subject of the poem?' said the person who made the remark. The subject was a very noble one; he described the most famous action in which the Athenian people were ever engaged. But the memory of their exploits has passed away owing to the lapse of time and the extinction of the actors. 'Tell us,' said the other, 'the whole story, and where Solon heard the story.' He repliedThere is at the head of the Egyptian Delta, where the river Nile divides, a city and district called Sais; the city was the birthplace of King Amasis, and is under the protection of the goddess Neith or Athene. The citizens have a friendly feeling towards the Athenians, believing themselves to be related to them. Hither came Solon, and was received with honour; and here he first learnt, by conversing with the Egyptian priests, how ignorant he and his countrymen were of antiquity. Perceiving this, and with the view of eliciting information from them, he told them the tales of Phoroneus and Niobe, and also of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and he endeavoured to count the generations which had since passed. Thereupon an aged priest said to him: 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old man who is a Hellene.' 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'In mind,' replied the priest, 'I mean to say that you are children; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age; and I will tell you why. Like the rest of mankind you have suffered from convulsions of nature, which are chiefly brought about by the two great agencies of fire and water. The former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who drove his father's horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places, who in their turn are safer when the danger is from water. Now the Nile is our saviour from fire, and as there is little rain in Egypt, we are not harmed by water; whereas in other countries, when a deluge comes, the inhabitants are swept by the rivers into the sea. The memorials which your own and other nations have once had of the famous actions of mankind perish in the waters at certain periods; and the rude survivors in the mountains begin again, knowing nothing of the world before the flood. But in Egypt the traditions of our own and other lands are by us registered for ever in our temples. The genealogies which you have recited to us out of your own annals, Solon, are a mere children's story. For in the first place, you remember one deluge only, and there were many of them, and you know nothing of that fairest and noblest race of which you are a seed or remnant. The memory of them was lost, because there was no written voice among you. For in the times before the great flood Athens was the greatest and best of cities and did the noblest deeds and had the best constitution of any under the face of heaven.' Solon marvelled, and desired to be informed of the particulars. 'You are welcome to hear them,' said the priest, 'both for your own sake and for that of the city, and above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common foundress of both our cities. Nine thousand years have elapsed since she founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our annals record. Many laws exist among us which are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. I will briefly describe them to you, and you shall read the account of them at your leisure in the sacred registers. In the first place, there was a caste of priests among the ancient Athenians, and another of artisans; also castes of shepherds, hunters, and husbandmen, and lastly of warriors, who, like the warriors of Egypt, were separated from the rest, and carried shields and spears, a custom which the goddess first taught you, and then the Asiatics, and we among Asiatics first received from her. Observe again, what care the law took in the pursuit of wisdom, searching out the deep things of the world, and applying them to the use of man. The spot of earth which the goddess chose had the best of climates, and produced the wisest men; in no other was she herself, the Philosopher and warrior goddess, so likely to have votaries. And there you dwelt as became the children of the gods, excelling all men in virtue, and many famous actions are recorded of you. The most famous of them all was the overthrow of the island of Atlantis. This great island lay over against the Pillars of Heracles, in extent greater than Libya and Asia put together, and was the passage to other islands and to a great ocean of which the Mediterranean sea was only the harbour; and within the Pillars the empire of Atlantis reached in Europe to Tyrrhenia and in Libya to Egypt. This mighty power was arrayed against Egypt and Hellas and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Then your city did bravely, and won renown over the whole earth. For at the peril of her own existence, and when the other Hellenes had deserted her, she repelled the invader, and of her own accord gave liberty to all the nations within the Pillars. A little while afterwards there were great earthquakes and floods, and your warrior race all sank into the earth; and the great island of Atlantis also disappeared in the sea. This is the explanation of the shallows which are found in that part of the Atlantic ocean.'
Such was the tale, Socrates, which Critias heard from Solon; and I noticed when listening to you yesterday, how close the resemblance was between your city and citizens and the ancient Athenian State. But I would not speak at the time, because I wanted to refresh my memory. I had heard the old man when I was a child, and though I could not remember the whole of our yesterday's discourse, I was able to recall every word of this, which is branded into my mind; and I am prepared, Socrates, to rehearse to you the entire narrative. The imaginary State which you were describing may be identified with the reality of Solon, and our antediluvian ancestors may be your citizens. 'That is excellent, Critias, and very appropriate to a Pana thenaic festival; the truth of the story is a great advantage.' Then now let me explain to you the order of our entertainment; first, Timaeus, who is a natural philosopher, will speak of the origin of the world, going down to the creation of man, and then I shall receive the men whom he has created, and some of whom will have been educated by you, and introduce them to you as the lost Athenian citizens of whom the Egyptian record spoke. As the law of Solon prescribes, we will bring them into court and acknowledge their claims to citizenship. 'I see,' replied Socrates, 'that I shall be well entertained; and do you, Timaeus, offer up a prayer and begin.'
--
Nature in the aspect which she presented to a Greek philosopher of the fourth century before Christ is not easily reproduced to modern eyes. The associations of mythology and poetry have to be added, and the unconscious influence of science has to be subtracted, before we can behold the heavens or the earth as they appeared to the Greek. the Philosopher himself was a child and also a mana child in the range of his attainments, but also a great intelligence having an insight into nature, and often anticipations of the truth. He was full of original thoughts, and yet liable to be imposed upon by the most obvious fallacies. He occasionally confused numbers with ideas, and atoms with numbers; his a priori notions were out of all proportion to his experience. He was ready to explain the phenomena of the heavens by the most trivial analogies of earth. The experiments which nature worked for him he sometimes accepted, but he never tried experiments for himself which would either prove or disprove his theories. His knowledge was unequal; while in some branches, such as medicine and astronomy, he had made considerable proficiency, there were others, such as chemistry, electricity, mechanics, of which the very names were unknown to him. He was the natural enemy of mythology, and yet mythological ideas still retained their hold over him. He was endeavouring to form a conception of principles, but these principles or ideas were regarded by him as real powers or entities, to which the world had been subjected. He was always tending to argue from what was near to what was remote, from what was known to what was unknown, from man to the universe, and back again from the universe to man. While he was arranging the world, he was arranging the forms of thought in his own mind; and the light from within and the light from without often crossed and helped to confuse one another. He might be compared to a builder engaged in some great design, who could only dig with his hands because he was unprovided with common tools; or to some poet or musician, like Tynnichus (Ion), obliged to accommodate his lyric raptures to the limits of the tetrachord or of the flute.
The Hesiodic and Orphic cosmogonies were a phase of thought intermediate between mythology and philosophy and had a great influence on the beginnings of knowledge. There was nothing behind them; they were to physical science what the poems of Homer were to early Greek history. They made men think of the world as a whole; they carried the mind back into the infinity of past time; they suggested the first observation of the effects of fire and water on the earth's surface. To the ancient physics they stood much in the same relation which geology does to modern science. But the Greek was not, like the enquirer of the last generation, confined to a period of six thousand years; he was able to speculate freely on the effects of infinite ages in the production of physical phenomena. He could imagine cities which had existed time out of mind (States.; Laws), laws or forms of art and music which had lasted, 'not in word only, but in very truth, for ten thousand years' (Laws); he was aware that natural phenomena like the Delta of the Nile might have slowly accumulated in long periods of time (Hdt.). But he seems to have supposed that the course of events was recurring rather than progressive. To this he was probably led by the fixedness of Egyptian customs and the general observation that there were other civilisations in the world more ancient than that of Hellas.
--
Under the influence of such ideas, perhaps also deriving from the traditions of their own or of other nations scraps of medicine and astronomy, men came to the observation of nature. The Greek philosopher looked at the blue circle of the heavens and it flashed upon him that all things were one; the tumult of sense abated, and the mind found repose in the thought which former generations had been striving to realize. The first expression of this was some element, rarefied by degrees into a pure abstraction, and purged from any tincture of sense. Soon an inner world of ideas began to be unfolded, more absorbing, more overpowering, more abiding than the brightest of visible objects, which to the eye of the Philosopher looking inward, seemed to pale before them, retaining only a faint and precarious existence. At the same time, the minds of men parted into the two great divisions of those who saw only a principle of motion, and of those who saw only a principle of rest, in nature and in themselves; there were born Heracliteans or Eleatics, as there have been in later ages born Aristotelians or Platonists. Like some philosophers in modern times, who are accused of making a theory first and finding their facts afterwards, the advocates of either opinion never thought of applying either to themselves or to their adversaries the criterion of fact. They were mastered by their ideas and not masters of them. Like the Heraclitean fanatics whom Plato has ridiculed in the Theaetetus, they were incapable of giving a reason of the faith that was in them, and had all the animosities of a religious sect. Yet, doubtless, there was some first impression derived from external nature, which, as in mythology, so also in philosophy, worked upon the minds of the first thinkers. Though incapable of induction or generalization in the modern sense, they caught an inspiration from the external world. The most general facts or appearances of nature, the circle of the universe, the nutritive power of water, the air which is the breath of life, the destructive force of fire, the seeming regularity of the greater part of nature and the irregularity of a remnant, the recurrence of day and night and of the seasons, the solid earth and the impalpable aether, were always present to them.
The great source of error and also the beginning of truth to them was reasoning from analogy; they could see resemblances, but not differences; and they were incapable of distinguishing illustration from argument. Analogy in modern times only points the way, and is immediately verified by experiment. The dreams and visions, which pass through the Philosopher's mind, of resemblances between different classes of substances, or between the animal and vegetable world, are put into the refiner's fire, and the dross and other elements which adhere to them are purged away. But the contemporary of Plato and Socrates was incapable of resisting the power of any analogy which occurred to him, and was drawn into any consequences which seemed to follow. He had no methods of difference or of concomitant variations, by the use of which he could distinguish the accidental from the essential. He could not isolate phenomena, and he was helpless against the influence of any word which had an equivocal or double sense.
Yet without this crude use of analogy the ancient physical philosopher would have stood still; he could not have made even 'one guess among many' without comparison. The course of natural phenomena would have passed unheeded before his eyes, like fair sights or musical sounds before the eyes and ears of an animal. Even the fetichism of the savage is the beginning of reasoning; the assumption of the most fanciful of causes indicates a higher mental state than the absence of all enquiry about them. The tendency to argue from the higher to the lower, from man to the world, has led to many errors, but has also had an elevating influence on philosophy. The conception of the world as a whole, a person, an animal, has been the source of hasty generalizations; yet this general grasp of nature led also to a spirit of comprehensiveness in early philosophy, which has not increased, but rather diminished, as the fields of knowledge have become more divided. The modern physicist confines himself to one or perhaps two branches of science. But he comparatively seldom rises above his own department, and often falls under the narrowing influence which any single branch, when pursued to the exclusion of every other, has over the mind. Language, two, exercised a spell over the beginnings of physical philosophy, leading to error and sometimes to truth; for many thoughts were suggested by the double meanings of words (Greek), and the accidental distinctions of words sometimes led the ancient philosopher to make corresponding differences in things (Greek). 'If they are the same, why have they different names; or if they are different, why have they the same name?'is an argument not easily answered in the infancy of knowledge. The modern philosopher has always been taught the lesson which he still imperfectly learns, that he must disengage himself from the influence of words. Nor are there wanting in Plato, who was himself too often the victim of them, impressive admonitions that we should regard not words but things (States.). But upon the whole, the ancients, though not entirely dominated by them, were much more subject to the influence of words than the moderns. They had no clear divisions of colours or substances; even the four elements were undefined; the fields of knowledge were not parted off. They were bringing order out of disorder, having a small grain of experience mingled in a confused heap of a priori notions. And yet, probably, their first impressions, the illusions and mirages of their fancy, created a greater intellectual activity and made a nearer approach to the truth than any patient investigation of isolated facts, for which the time had not yet come, could have accomplished.
Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen
He who eats lime (of stone or shells) possesses the Philosopher's stone, chunam that exceeds in the touch of gold, is better to Brahma and the rest.
474
--
If you have hold of the root of a tree why go search all over it? If you possess the Philosopher stone why (grieve) take further trouble regarding the voices of birds that knew where it lies or regarding the caves of the hills where it is?
592
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Integral World - "Beyond My Ken?": Personal Ponderings on the Philosopher Profound, Jordan Gruber
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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone_(film)
https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone
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https://reviewthatbook.fandom.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone
https://reviewthatbook.fandom.com/wiki/Masha07's_"Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher's_Stone"_review_(Chapter_1)
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Fullmetal Alchemist -- -- Bones -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist Fullmetal Alchemist -- Edward Elric, a young, brilliant alchemist, has lost much in his twelve-year life: when he and his brother Alphonse try to resurrect their dead mother through the forbidden act of human transmutation, Edward loses his brother as well as two of his limbs. With his supreme alchemy skills, Edward binds Alphonse's soul to a large suit of armor. -- -- A year later, Edward, now promoted to the fullmetal alchemist of the state, embarks on a journey with his younger brother to obtain the Philosopher's Stone. The fabled mythical object is rumored to be capable of amplifying an alchemist's abilities by leaps and bounds, thus allowing them to override the fundamental law of alchemy: to gain something, an alchemist must sacrifice something of equal value. Edward hopes to draw into the military's resources to find the fabled stone and restore his and Alphonse's bodies to normal. However, the Elric brothers soon discover that there is more to the legendary stone than meets the eye, as they are led to the epicenter of a far darker battle than they could have ever imagined. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 1,197,219 8.15
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- -- Bones -- 64 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Adventure Comedy Drama Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- "In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost." -- -- Alchemy is bound by this Law of Equivalent Exchange—something the young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric only realize after attempting human transmutation: the one forbidden act of alchemy. They pay a terrible price for their transgression—Edward loses his left leg, Alphonse his physical body. It is only by the desperate sacrifice of Edward's right arm that he is able to affix Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Devastated and alone, it is the hope that they would both eventually return to their original bodies that gives Edward the inspiration to obtain metal limbs called "automail" and become a state alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist. -- -- Three years of searching later, the brothers seek the Philosopher's Stone, a mythical relic that allows an alchemist to overcome the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Even with military allies Colonel Roy Mustang, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes on their side, the brothers find themselves caught up in a nationwide conspiracy that leads them not only to the true nature of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, but their country's murky history as well. In between finding a serial killer and racing against time, Edward and Alphonse must ask themselves if what they are doing will make them human again... or take away their humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 2,372,958 9.18
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Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- -- Bones -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Magic Military Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos -- Chasing a runaway alchemist with strange powers, brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric stumble into the squalid valley of the Milos. The Milosians are an oppressed group that seek to reclaim their holy land from Creta: a militaristic country that forcefully annexed their nation. In the eye of the political storm is a girl named Julia Crichton, who emphatically wishes for the Milos to regain their strength and return to being a nation of peace. -- -- Befriending the girl, Edward and Alphonse find themselves in the midst of a rising resistance that involves the use of the very object they have been seeking all along—the Philosopher's Stone. However, their past experiences with the stone cause them reservation, and the brothers are unwilling to help. -- -- But as they discover the secrets behind Creta's intentions and questionable history, the brothers are drawn into the battle between the rebellious Milos, who desire their liberty, and the Cretan military, who seek absolute power. -- -- Movie - Jul 2, 2011 -- 154,554 7.31
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albright_The_Philosopher_1922_Verso.jpg
Constantine the Philosopher
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra
Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (soundtrack)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (video game)
Leo the Philosopher
Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time
Pooh and the Philosophers
Rosary of the Philosophers
The Aims of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Philosopher
The Philosopher's Stone (album)
The Philosopher's Zone
The Philosopher Kings
The Philosopher Kings (album)
The Philosopher Kings (film)
The Philosophers' Magazine
Thrse the Philosopher
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