Hermann Lotze has recourse to the regressus in order not to understand that an alteration of object A can produce an alteration of object B. He reasons that if A and B are independent, to postulate an influence of A on B is to postulate a third element C, an element which in order to affect B will require a fourth element D, which cannot work its effect without E, which cannot work its effect without F . . . In order to elude this multiplication of chimeras, he resolves that in the world there is one sole object: an infinite and absolute substance, comparable to the God of Spinoza. Transitive causes are reduced to immanent causes; phenomena, to manifestations or modalities of the cosmic substance.4
Analogous, but even more alarming, is the case of F. H. Bradley. This thinker (Appearance and Reality, 1897, pages 19–34) does not limit himself to combatting the relation of cause; he denies all relations. He asks if a relation is related to its terms. The answer is yes and he infers that this amounts to admitting the existence of two other relations, and then of two more. In the axiom “the part is less than the whole” he does not perceive two terms and the relation “less than”; he perceives three (“part,” “less than,” “whole”) whose linking implies two more relations, and so on to infinity. In the statement “John is mortal,” he perceives three invariable concepts (the third is the copula) which we can never bring together. He transforms all concepts into incommunicable, solidified objects. To refute him is to become contaminated with unreality.
Lotze inserts Zeno’s periodic chasms between the cause and the effect; Bradley, between the subject and the predicate, if not between the subject and its attributes; Lewis Carroll (Mind, volume four, page 278), between the second premise of the syllogism and the conclusion. He relates an endless dialogue, whose interlocutors are Achilles and the tortoise. Having now reached the end of their interminable race, the two athletes calmly converse about geometry. They study this lucid reasoning:
a) Two things equal to a third are equal to one another.
b) The two sides of this triangle are equal to MN.
c) The two sides of this triangle are equal to one another.
The tortoise accepts the premises a and b, but denies that they justify the conclusion. He has Achilles interpolate a hypothetical proposition:
a) Two things equal to a third are equal to one another.
b) The two sides of this triangle are equal to MN.
c) If a and b are valid, z is valid.
z) The two sides of this triangle are equal to one another.
Having made this brief clarification, the tortoise accepts the validity of a, b and c, but not of z. Achilles, indignant, interpolates:
d) if a, b and c are valid, z is valid.
And then, now with a certain resignation:
e) If a, b, c and d are valid, z is valid.
Carroll observes that the Greek’s paradox involves an infinite series of distances which diminish, whereas in his, the distances grow.
One final example, perhaps the most elegant of all, but also the one differing least from Zeno. William James (Some Problems of Philosophy, 1911, page 182) denies that fourteen minutes can pass, because first it is necessary for seven to pass, and before the seven, three and a half, and before the three and a half, a minute and three quarters, and so on until the end, the invisible end, through tenuous labyrinths of time.
Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Mill, Renouvier, Georg Cantor, Gomperz, Russell and Bergson have formulated explanations—not always inexplicable and vain in nature—of the paradox of the tortoise. (I have registered some of them in my book Discusión, 1932, pages 151–161). Applications abound as well, as the reader has seen. The historical applications do not exhaust its possibilities: the vertiginous regressus in infinitum is perhaps applicable to all subjects. To aesthetics: such and such a verse moves us for such and such a reason, such and such a reason for such and such a reason . . . To the problem of knowledge: cognition is recognition, but it is necessary to have known in order to recognize, but cognition is recognition . . . How can we evaluate this dialectic? Is it a legimate instrument of investigation or only a bad habit?
It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. It is also venturesome to think that of all these illustrious coordinations, one of them—at least in an infinitesimal way—does not resemble the universe a bit more than the others. I have examined those which enjoy certain prestige; I venture to affirm that only in the one formulated by Schopenhauer have I recognized some trait of the universe. According to this doctrine, the world is a fabrication of the will. Art—always—requires visible unrealities. Let it suffice for me to mention one: the metaphorical or numerous or carefully accidental diction of the interlocutors in a drama . . . Let us admit what all idealists admit: the hallucinatory nature of the world. Let us do what no idealist has done: seek unrealities which confirm that nature. We shall find them, I believe, in the antinomies of Kant and in the dialectic of Zeno.
“The greatest magician (Novalis has memorably written) would be the one who would cast over himself a spell so complete that he would take his own phantasmagorias as autonomous appearances. Would not this be our case?” I conjecture that this is so. We (the undivided divinity operating within us) have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it as firm, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and durable in time; but in its architecture we have allowed tenuous and eternal crevices of unreason which tell us it is false.
Translated by J. E . I.
* * *
1 A century later, the Chinese sophist Hui Tzu reasoned that a staff cut in two every day is interminable (H. A. Giles: Chuang Tzu, 1889, page 453).
2 In the Parmenides—whose Zenonian character is irrefutable—Plato expounds a very similar argument to demonstrate that the one is really many. If the one exists, it participates in being; therefore, there are two parts in it, which are being and the one, but each of these parts is one and exists, so that they enclose two more parts, which in turn enclose two more, infinitely. Russell (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919, page 138) substitutes for Plato’s geometrical progression an arithmetical one. If one exists, it participates in being: but since being and the one are different, duality exists; but since being and two are different, trinity exists, etc. Chuang Tzu (Waley: Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, page 25) resorts to the same interminable regressus against the monists who declared that the Ten Thousand Things (the Universe) are one. In the first place—he argues—cosmic unity and the declaration of that unity are already two things; these two and the declaration of their duality are already three; those three and the declaration of their trinity are already four . . . Russell believes that the vagueness of the term being is sufficient to invalidate this reasoning. He adds that numbers do not exist, that they are mere logical fictions.
3 An echo of this proof, now defunct, resounds in the first verse of the Paradiso:
La gloria di Colui che tutto move.
4 I follow the exposition by James (A Pluralistic Universe, 1909, pages 55–60). Cf. Wentscher: Fechner und Lotze, 1924, pages 166–171.
The Mirror of
Enigmas
The idea that the Sacred Scriptures have (aside from their literal value) a symbolic value is ancient and not irrational: it is found in Philo of Alexandria, in the Cabalists, in Swedenborg. Since the events related in the Scriptures are true (God is Truth, Truth cannot lie, etc.), we should admit that men, in acting out those events, blindly represent a secret drama determined and premeditated by God. Going from this to the thought that the history of the universe—and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives—has an incalculable, symbolical value, is a reasonable step. Many have taken that step; no one so astonishingly as Léon Bloy. (In the psychological fragments by Novalis and in that volume of Machen’s autobiography called The London Adventure there is a similar hypothesis: that the outer world—forms, temperatures, the moon—is a language we humans have forgot
ten or which we can scarcely distinguish . . . It is also declared by De Quincey:1 “Even the articulate or brutal sounds of the globe must be all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have their corresponding keys—have their own grammar and syntax; and thus the least things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest.”)
A verse from St. Paul (I Corinthians, 13:12) inspired Léon Bloy. Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate: tunc autem facie ad faciem. Nunc cognosco ex parte: tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. Torres Amat has miserably translated: “At present we do not see God except as in a mirror and beneath dark images; but later we shall see him face to face. I only know him now imperfectly; but later I shall know him in a clear vision, in the same way that I know myself.” 49 words do the work of 22; it is impossible to be more languid and verbose. Cipriano de Valera is more faithful: “Now we see in a mirror, in darkness; but later we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; but later I shall know as I am known.” Torres Amat opines that the verse refers to our vision of the divinity; Cipriano de Valera (and Léon Bloy), to our general vision of things.
So far as I know, Bloy never gave his conjecture a definitive form. Throughout his fragmentary work (in which there abound, as everyone knows, lamentations and insults) there are different versions and facets. Here are a few that I have rescued from the clamorous pages of Le mendiant ingrat, Le Vieux de la Montagne and L’invendable. I do not believe I have exhausted them: I hope that some specialist in Léon Bloy (I am not one) may complete and rectify them.
The first is from June 1894. I translate it as follows: “The statement by St. Paul: Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate would be a skylight through which one might submerge himself in the true Abyss, which is the soul of man. The terrifying immensity of the firmament’s abysses is an illusion, an external reflection of our own abysses, perceived ‘in a mirror.’ We should invert our eyes and practice a sublime astronomy in the infinitude of our hearts, for which God was willing to die . . . If we see the Milky Way, it is because it actually exists in our souls.”
The second is from November of the same year. “I recall one of my oldest ideas. The Czar is the leader and spiritual father of a hundred fifty million men. An atrocious responsibility which is only apparent. Perhaps he is not responsible to God, but rather to a few human beings. If the poor of his empire are oppressed during his reign, if immense catastrophies result from that reign, who knows if the servant charged with shining his boots is not the real and sole person guilty? In the mysterious dispositions of the Profundity, who is really Czar, who is king, who can boast of being a mere servant?”
The third is from a letter written in December. “Everything is a symbol, even the most piercing pain. We are dreamers who shout in our sleep. We do not know whether the things afflicting us are the secret beginning of our ulterior happiness or not. We now see, St. Paul maintains, per speculum in aenigmate, literally: ‘in an enigma by means of a mirror’ and we shall not see in any other way until the coming of the One who is all in flames and who must teach us all things.”
The fourth is from May 1904. “Per speculum in aenigmate, says St. Paul. We see everything backwards. When we believe we give, we receive, etc. Then (a beloved, anguished soul tells me) we are in Heaven and God suffers on earth.”
The fifth is from May 1908. “A terrifying idea of Jeanne’s, about the text Per speculum. The pleasures of this world would be the torments of Hell, seen backwards, in a mirror.”
The sixth is from 1912. It is each of the pages of L’me de Napoléon, a book whose purpose is to decipher the symbol Napoleon, considered as the precursor of another hero—man and symbol as well—who is hidden in the future. It is sufficient for me to cite two passages. One: “Every man is on earth to symbolize something he is ignorant of and to realize a particle or a mountain of the invisible materials that will serve to build the City of God.” The other: “There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light . . . History is an immense liturgical text where the iotas and the dots are worth no less than the entire verses or chapters, but the importance of one and the other is indeterminable and profoundly hidden.”
The foregoing paragraphs will perhaps seem to the reader mere gratuities by Bloy. So far as I know, he never took care to reason them out. I venture to judge them verisimilar and perhaps inevitable within the Christian doctrine. Bloy (I repeat) did no more than apply to the whole of Creation the method which the Jewish Cabalists applied to the Scriptures. They thought that a work dictated by the Holy Spirit was an absolute text: in other words, a text in which the collaboration of chance was calculable as zero. This portentous premise of a book impenetrable to contingency, of a book which is a mechanism of infinite purposes, moved them to permute the scriptural words, add up the numerical value of the letters, consider their form, observe the small letters and capitals, seek acrostics and anagrams and perform other exegetical rigors which it is not difficult to ridicule. Their excuse is that nothing can be contingent in the work of an infinite mind.2 Léon Bloy postulates this hieroglyphical character—this character of a divine writing, of an angelic cryptography—at all moments and in all beings on earth. The superstitious person believes he can decipher this organic writing: thirteen guests form the symbol of death; a yellow opal, that of misfortune.
It is doubtful that the world has a meaning; it is even more doubtful that it has a double or triple meaning, the unbeliever will observe. I understand that this is so; but I understand that the hieroglyphical world postulated by Bloy is the one which best benefits the dignity of the theologian’s intellectual God.
No man knows who he is, affirmed Léon Bloy. No one could illustrate that intimate ignorance better than he. He believed himself a rigorous Catholic and he was a continuer of the Cabalists, a secret brother of Swedenborg and Blake: heresiarchs.
Translated by J. E. I.
* * *
1 Writings, 1896, Vol. I, page 129.
2 What is an infinite mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does not define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.
A Note on (toward)
Bernard Shaw
At the end of the thirteenth century, Raymond Lully (Raimundo Lulio) was prepared to solve all arcana by means of an apparatus of concentric, revolving discs of different sizes, subdivided into sectors with Latin words; John Stuart Mill, at the beginning of the nineteenth, feared that some day the number of musical combinations would be exhausted and there would be no place in the future for indefinite Webers and Mozarts; Kurd Lasswitz, at the end of the nineteenth, toyed with the staggering fantasy of a universal library which would register all the variations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols, in other words, all that it is given to express in all languages. Lully’s machine, Mill’s fear and Lasswitz’s chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propension which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations. Those who practice this game forget that a book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. This dialogue is infinite; the words amica silentia lunae now mean the intimate, silent and shining moon, and in the Aeneid they meant the interlunar period, the darkness which allowed the Greeks to enter the stronghold of Troy . . .1 Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. One literature differs from
another, prior or posterior, less because of the text than because of the way in which it is read: if I were granted the possibility of reading any present-day page—this one, for example—as it will be read in the year two thousand, I would know what the literature of the year two thousand will be like. The conception of literature as a formalistic game leads, in the best of cases, to the fine chiseling of a period or a stanza, to an artful decorum (Johnson, Renan, Flaubert), and in the worst, to the discomforts of a work made of surprises dictated by vanity and chance (Gracián, Herrera y Reissig).
If literature were nothing more than verbal algebra, anyone could produce any book by essaying variations. The lapidary formula “Everything flows” abbreviates in two words the philosophy of Heraclitus: Raymond Lully would say that, with the first word given, it would be sufficient to essay the intransitive verbs to discover the second and obtain, thanks to methodical chance, that philosophy and many others. Here it is fitting to reply that the formula obtained by this process of elimination would lack all value and even meaning; for it to have some virtue we must conceive it in terms of Heraclitus, in terms of an experience of Heraclitus, even though “Heraclitus” is nothing more than the presumed subject of that experience. I have said that a book is a dialogue, a form of relationship; in a dialogue, an interlocutor is not the sum or average of what he says: he may not speak and still reveal that he is intelligent, he may emit intelligent observations and reveal his stupidity. The same happens with literature; d’Artagnan executes innumerable feats and Don Quixote is beaten and ridiculed, but one feels the valor of Don Quixote more. The foregoing leads us to an aesthetic problem never before posed: Can an author create characters superior to himself? I would say no and in that negation include both the intellectual and the moral. I believe that from us cannot emerge creatures more lucid or more noble than our best moments. It is on this opinion that I base my conviction of Shaw’s pre-eminence. The collective and civic problems of his early works will lose their interest, or have lost it already; the jokes in the Pleasant Plays run the risk of becoming, some day, no less uncomfortable than those of Shakespeare (humor, I suspect, is an oral genre, a sudden favor of conversation, not something written); the ideas declared in his prologues and his eloquent tirades will be found in Schopenhauer and Samuel Butler;2 but Lavinia, Blanco Posnet, Keegan, Shotover, Richard Dudgeon and, above all, Julius Caesar, surpass any character imagined by the art of our time. If we think of Monsieur Teste alongside them or Nietzsche’s histrionic Zarathustra, we can perceive with astonishment and even outrage the primacy of Shaw. In 1911, Albert Soergel could write, repeating a commonplace of the time, “Bernard Shaw is an annihilator of the heroic concept, a killer of heroes” (Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit, 214); he did not understand that the heroic might dispense with the romantic and be incarnated in Captain Bluntschli of Arms and the Man, not in Sergius Saranoff.