“True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant”
It is advocacy, or what amounts to the same thing, theology,
that teaches the distrust of reason--not true science, not the science
of investigation, sceptical in the primitive and direct meaning of the
word, which hastens towards no predetermined solution nor proceeds save
by the testing of hypotheses.
Take the _Summa Theologica_ of St. Thomas, the classical monument of the
theology--that is, of the advocacy--of Catholicism, and open it where
you please. First comes the thesis--_utrum_ ... whether such a thing be
thus or otherwise; then the objections--_ad primum sic proceditur_; next
the answers to these objections--_sed contra est_ ... or _respondeo
dicendum_.... Pure advocacy! And underlying many, perhaps most, of its
arguments you will find a logical fallacy which may be expressed _more
scholastico_ by this syllogism: I do not understand this fact save by
giving it this explanation; it is thus that I must understand it,
therefore this must be its explanation. The alternative being that I am
left without any understanding of it at all. True science teaches, above
all, to doubt and to be ignorant; advocacy neither doubts nor believes
that it does not know. It requires a solution.
To the mentality that assumes, more or less consciously, that we must of
necessity find a solution to every problem, belongs the argument based
on the disastrous consequences of a thing. Take any book of
apologetics--that is to say, of theological advocacy--and you will see
how many times you will meet with this phrase--"the disastrous
consequences of this doctrine." Now the disastrous consequences of a
doctrine prove at most that the doctrine is disastrous, but not that it
is false, for there is no proof that the true is necessarily that which
suits us best. The identification of the true and the good is but a
pious wish. In his _Études sur Blaise Pascal_, A. Vinet says: "Of the
two needs that unceasingly belabour human nature, that of happiness is
not only the more universally felt and the more constantly experienced,
but it is also the more imperious. And this need is not only of the
senses; it is intellectual.
“Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.”
Whosoever knows not the Son will never know the Father, and the Father
is only known through the Son; whosoever knows not the Son of Man--he
who suffers bloody anguish and the pangs of a breaking heart, whose soul
is heavy within him even unto death, who suffers the pain that kills and
brings to life again--will never know the Father, and can know nothing
of the suffering God.
He who does not suffer, and who does not suffer because he does not
live, is that logical and frozen _ens realissimum_, the _primum movens_,
that impassive entity, which because of its impassivity is nothing but a
pure idea. The category does not suffer, but neither does it live or
exist as a person. And how is the world to derive its origin and life
from an impassive idea? Such a world would be but the idea of the world.
But the world suffers, and suffering is the sense of the flesh of
reality; it is the spirit's sense of its mass and substance; it is the
self's sense of its own tangibility; it is immediate reality.
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it
is only suffering that makes us persons. And suffering is universal,
suffering is that which unites all us living beings together; it is the
universal or divine blood that flows through us all. That which we call
will, what is it but suffering?
And suffering has its degrees, according to the depth of its
penetration, from the suffering that floats upon the sea of appearances
to the eternal anguish, the source of the tragic sense of life, which
seeks a habitation in the depths of the eternal and there awakens
consolation; from the physical suffering that contorts our bodies to the
religious anguish that flings us upon the bosom of God, there to be
watered by the divine tears.
Anguish is something far deeper, more intimate, and more spiritual than
suffering. We are wont to feel the touch of anguish even in the midst of
that which we call happiness, and even because of this happiness itself,
to which we cannot resign ourselves and before which we tremble. The
happy who resign themselves to their apparent happiness, to a transitory
happiness, seem to be as men without substance, or, at any rate, men who
have not discovered this substance in themselves, who have not touched
it.
“Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.”
See Troeltsch, _Systematische christliche Religion_, in _Die Kultur
der Gegenwart_ series.
[32] _Die Analyse der Empfindigungen und das Verhältniss des Physischen
zum Psychischen_, i., § 12, note.
[33] I have left the original expression here, almost without
translating it--_Existents-Consequents_. It means the existential or
practical, not the purely rational or logical, consequence. (Author's
note.)
[34] Albrecht Ritschl: _Geschichte des Pietismus_, ii., Abt. i., Bonn,
1884, p. 251.
[35] Thou art the cause of my suffering, O non-existing God, for if Thou
didst exist, then should I also really exist.
VII
LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY
CAIN: Let me, or happy or unhappy, learn
To anticipate my immortality.
LUCIFER: Thou didst before I came upon thee.
CAIN: How?
LUCIFER: By suffering.
BYRON: _Cain_, Act II., Scene I.
The most tragic thing in the world and in life, readers and brothers of
mine, is love. Love is the child of illusion and the parent of
disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine
against death, for it is death's brother.
_Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingeneró la sorte_,
as Leopardi sang.
Love seeks with fury, through the medium of the beloved, something
beyond, and since it finds it not, it despairs.
Whenever we speak of love there is always present in our memory the idea
of sexual love, the love between man and woman, whose end is the
perpetuation of the human race upon the earth. Hence it is that we never
succeed in reducing love either to a purely intellectual or to a purely
volitional element, putting aside that part in it which belongs to the
feeling, or, if you like, to the senses. For, in its essence, love is
neither idea nor volition; rather it is desire, feeling; it is something
carnal in spirit itself. Thanks to love, we feel all that spirit has of
flesh in it.
Sexual love is the generative type of every other love. In love and by
love we seek to perpetuate ourselves, and we perpetuate ourselves on the
earth only on condition that we die, that we yield up our life to
others.
“What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.”
And this leaves us as we were before. For it is precisely
this inner contradiction that unifies my life and gives it its practical
purpose.
Or rather it is the conflict itself, it is this self-same passionate
uncertainty, that unifies my action and makes me live and work.
We think in order that we may live, I have said; but perhaps it were
more correct to say that we think because we live, and the form of our
thought corresponds with that of our life. Once more I must repeat that
our ethical and philosophical doctrines in general are usually merely
the justification _a posteriori_ of our conduct, of our actions. Our
doctrines are usually the means we seek in order to explain and justify
to others and to ourselves our own mode of action. And this, be it
observed, not merely for others, but for ourselves. The man who does not
really know why he acts as he does and not otherwise, feels the
necessity of explaining to himself the motive of his action and so he
forges a motive. What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are
usually but the pretexts for it. The very same reason which one man may
regard as a motive for taking care to prolong his life may be regarded
by another man as a motive for shooting himself.
Nevertheless it cannot be denied that reasons, ideas, have an influence
upon human actions, and sometimes even determine them, by a process
analogous to that of suggestion upon a hypnotized person, and this is so
because of the tendency in every idea to resolve itself into action--an
idea being simply an inchoate or abortive act. It was this notion that
suggested to Fouillée his theory of idea-forces. But ordinarily ideas
are forces which we accommodate to other forces, deeper and much less
conscious.
But putting all this aside for the present, what I wish to establish is
that uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our
final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable
dogmatic foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.
He who bases or thinks that he bases his conduct--his inward or his
outward conduct, his feeling or his action--upon a dogma or theoretical
principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a
fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or
shattered, the morality based upon it gives way.
Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
And then people are
surprised at the triumph of those who have the courage to face ridicule
serenely, of those who rid themselves of the herd-instinct.
In the province of Salamanca there was a remarkable man who rose from
the greatest poverty to be a millionaire. The peasants of the district,
with the sheep-like instincts of their kind, were only able to explain
his success by supposing that in his younger days he had embezzled
money, for these wretched peasants, crusted over with common sense
and entirely lacking in moral courage, believe only in theft and the
lottery. But one day I was told of a quixotic feat which this cattle
farmer had performed. It seems that he had brought sea-bream’s spawn
from the Cantabrian coast to put in one of his ponds! When I heard
that, I understood everything. He who has the courage to face the jeers
which are bound to be provoked by bringing the spawn of a salt-water
fish to put in a pond in Castile, he who does that deserves his fortune.
But it was absurd, you say? And who knows what is absurd and what is
not? And even if it were! Only he who attempts the absurd is capable
of achieving the impossible. There is only one way of hitting the nail
on the head and that is by hammering on the shoe a hundred times. And
there is only one way of achieving a real triumph and that is by
facing ridicule with serenity. And it is because our agriculturists
haven’t the courage to face ridicule that our agriculture languishes in
its present backward condition.
Yes, all our ills spring from moral cowardice, from the individual’s
lack of staunch resolution in affirming his own truth, his own faith,
and defending it. The soul of this people, this flock of somnolent
sheep, is smothered and swathed in falsehood, and their stupidity
proceeds from their very excess of prudence.
It is claimed that there are certain principles that are beyond
discussion and when anyone attempts to criticize them the air rings
with shouts of protest. Not long ago I proposed that we should
demand the abolition of certain of the articles of our law of Public
Instruction, and a pack of poltroons began to bellow that such a course
was inopportune and impertinent, not to mention stronger and more
offensive epithets that were used.
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.
Augustine said: "I will seek Thee, Lord, by
calling upon Thee, and I will call upon Thee by believing in Thee. My
faith calls upon Thee, Lord, the faith which Thou hast given me, with
which Thou hast inspired me through the Humanity of Thy Son, through the
ministry of Thy preacher" (_Confessions_, book i., chap. i.). The power
of creating God in our own image and likeness, of personalizing the
Universe, simply means that we carry God within us, as the substance of
what we hope for, and that God is continually creating us in His own
image and likeness.
And we create God--that is to say, God creates Himself in us--by
compassion, by love. To believe in God is to love Him, and in our love
to fear Him; and we begin by loving Him even before knowing Him, and by
loving Him we come at last to see and discover Him in all things.
Those who say that they believe in God and yet neither love nor fear
Him, do not in fact believe in Him but in those who have taught them
that God exists, and these in their turn often enough do not believe in
Him either. Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any
passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty,
without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation,
believe only in the God-Idea, not in God Himself. And just as belief in
God is born of love, so also it may be born of fear, and even of hate,
and of such kind was the belief of Vanni Fucci, the thief, whom Dante
depicts insulting God with obscene gestures in Hell (_Inf._, xxv., 1-3).
For the devils also believe in God, and not a few atheists.
Is it not perhaps a mode of believing in God, this fury with which those
deny and even insult Him, who, because they cannot bring themselves to
believe in Him, wish that He may not exist? Like those who believe,
they, too, wish that God may exist; but being men of a weak and passive
or of an evil disposition, in whom reason is stronger than will, they
feel themselves caught in the grip of reason and haled along in their
own despite, and they fall into despair, and because of their despair
they deny, and in their denial they affirm and create the thing that
they deny, and God reveals Himself in them, affirming Himself by their
very denial of Him.
But it will be objected to all this that to demonstrate that faith
creates its own object is to demonstrate that this object is an object
for faith alone, that outside faith it has no objective reality; just
as, on the other hand, to maintain that faith is necessary because it
affords consolation to the masses of the people, or imposes a wholesome
restraint upon them, is to declare that the object of faith is illusory.
“It is sad not to be loved but it is much sadder not to be able to love”
“A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.”
“If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.”
Life is doubt,And faith without doubt is nothing but death.
At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. -Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)
Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?
It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it is our optimism or pessimism that makes our ideas.
If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.
Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.
A pedant who beheld Solon weeping for the death of a son said to him, ‘Why do you weep thus, if weeping avails nothing?’ And the sage answered him, ‘Precisely for that reason—because it does not avail.
Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.
Science says: We must live and seeks the means of prolonging increasing facilitating and amplifying life of making it tolerable and acceptable wisdom says: We must die and seeks how to make us die well.
