“He
who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and
observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between
those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight
of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into
admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than
to examine them with presumption.”
Blaise Pascal
Prof. William
Poteat passed in 2000. This is in honor to his memory. I
knew him briefly at the University of Texas, Austin philosophy
department in 1970/71 where he was guest lecturer from Duke University. His course was Eroticism, Music and Madness.
Another
of my benefactors instructed that if you bring something to mind again
and again it tends to take on a life of its own and that in fact, if you
are following others who have pursued similar meditations you
eventually tap into that stream of consciousness, as it were, and
benefit from the work of those in whose steps you follow. I have done
that all these years with the knowledge imparted to me by Bill Poteat.
That endeavor has increasingly come to occupy my mental activities and
has been a source of inspiration and discovery. I was blessed to have
the great fortune to have known this wonderful man. I am, of course, not
an academic and am anything but an expert in these things but they
bring me joy and more importantly, peace. It helps me to write this down
in a more formal way than it exists in the books and papers scattered
around my study and in the thought patterns, modifications, of my mind.
Bill
Poteat used this course in part to convey his thoughts about modern
man’s malaise. His thinking is that a large segment of western man has
evolved into a spiritless self, a self filled with despair and self-loathing, that this personal
tendency has roots in a fundamental philosophical conflict between
Greek and Hebrew world views. Hebrew thought, being the basis for
Christianity, is a primary underpinning of the western experience. It is
this influence that creates, or posits, as Kierkegaard (Author A)
wrote, the daemonic in nature, the sensuous genius, the erotic. This
daemonic spirit is expressed most eloquently in the classic work of
Mozart's Don Giovanni but its ramifications are much more than musical.
This spirit informs every aspect of modern life. Poteat thought that it
was the foundation for a madness that permeates modern civilization. He
particularly thought that the development of atomic weapons were the
most egregious manifestation with the accompanying policy of “mutual
assured destruction”. He put together a tape that he played for the
class that combined among other things the sounds of exploding atomic
bombs with the music of Mozart’s Don Juan. At this juncture in my life, I
am not so sure that it would not be more accurate to attribute war like
activities to a more primitive impulse in the human animal than the
sensuous in nature as posited by Hebrew shortcomings that flowered in
Christianity. This is not to say that these attributes have no bearing
whatsoever on the tendency of mankind to make war. It is an ephemera
that we pursue here. Trying to pin down such cause/effect relationships
is an extremely daunting intellectual exercise to which people, like
Bill Poteat, dedicate their entire lives. My efforts pale in comparison.
Having
said all that it is important to point out that Prof. Poteat was a
practicing Christian. So was Kierkegaard, though he was at odds with the
established religion of his time. The ESOTERIC teachings of
Christianity do not carry the same negative baggage as that written of
here. It is but one scenario that might shed some light on western
history, on western man in particular, and how he has evolved as a
sentient being in a world. I happen to believe that Christianity on the
whole has been a positive influence. Take particular note that I, and
not Poteat, focus attention on so called evangelicals. However, it goes
without saying that I find a limited common cause with them in certain
ways, particularly in the political realm. I think we share a common
love of liberty and an attendant rugged individualism. This is an
infinitely complex issue and any attempt to quantify all of the nuances
involved will necessarily fall short. I would note in passing the
parallels, I think obvious, between the activities of intoxicated youth
(and yes, adults too) at rock concerts and those in attendance at an
“old fashioned” revival meeting. As well, it is worth noting that highly
successful political figures, e.g., Adolph Hitler, used the spoken word
in the musical sense herein described and were able thereby to not just
engender a longing in the sense of the sensuous but to make it into a
power base, to use it to hold a whole population in thrall and set them
on a suicidal course of action.
This post is as true a copy of the
syllabus as I could make. Here I presume to insert my personal comments.
I also appended Pascal’s fragments 72, 205, and 427 as well as the
below referenced excerpt from Kierkegaard’s (Author “A”) Either/Or Vol.
I.
In memory of William H. Poteat
"Eroticism Music and Madness"
Course Syllabus
I. "Eroticism, Music and Madness"
As
principle, as power, as self-contained system, sensuousness is first
posited in Christianity; and in that sense it is true that Christianity
brought [the] sensuous into the world.
1. Arche' as Cosmos, logos, psyche.
Arche',
first principle, beginning of the world {as cosmos, i.e., order,
ornament, opposite of chaos; as logos, i.e., fundamental order of the
cosmos, divine word or reason (believed) incarnate in Jesus; as psyche,
i.e., human soul, mind, spirit, universal consciousness}
2. Arche' as davar.
Arche’ (Greek) as davar (Hebrew), word or thing, action of God in space/time. From root word “dibur” meaning “to speak”. “Every davar expresses a dibur—a
spoken message. Every physical object or phenomenon, in addition to its
physical reality, conveys a spiritual comment on existence.”
3. The ordinacy of Cosmos arche' –
Orderly arrangement, disposition of order as first principle.
4. The different ordinacy of davar arche'
Orderly arrangement, disposition of word or thing, action of God as first principle, beginning of the world.
a. Logos is being, is reality, is divine. (Reality does "hide" itself, must be sought behind "appearances".)
b. The relation of "appearances" to logos. Being and nothingness relation.
c. Yet: Being is finite and fully knowable.
d. Davar is not reality, is not being, is not divine.
e. The paradigmatic act -- speech
- Speech and speaker: former manifests latter, but not fully.
- Act and actor: former manifests latter, but not exhaustively.
- The person cannot be known exhaustively -- by another, by himself.
- The Person is fully disclosed only to God.
5. What is the ordinacy of the Davar arche'?
a. Keeping promises -- God's model.
b. Is retaining one's identity
- Cf. Israel vs. Yahweh: "I will be as I will be" -- "absolute relation to the absolute, relative relation to the relative."
- Edward Chamberlain, Bendrix.
II. So -- whether you have the ordinacy of a finite Cosmos, or that of a providential divine will -- faithful Yahweh -- as alternative principles, you still do not have "restlessness and tumult, infinity."
A.
How then does Xianity posit that spiritually (pneumatically) qualified
sensuousness expressed in the musical Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera?
B. Xianity destroyed the finite, harmonious and fully intelligible cosmos of Grk. thought by substituting davar (the speaking and heard word) for logos (the word as written and read).
The
book of Mark, 16:15 “Go into the world and PREACH the gospel…!”
Proselytize, evangelize, stand in a pulpit and exhort the congregation.
Passion is key to success of evangelizing. I would further note that, to
my knowledge Jesus never wrote. Any reference to his teaching always
follows the form “Jesus said so and so.” I think this simple fact goes a
long way towards verifying the thought of Kierkegaard and Poteat.
C. This made the relation between medium and its content more equivocal and contingent.
- Reality does not hide behind appearances -- logos behind aesheta.
- Reality is equivocally manifest as a person is always equivocally manifest in his speech.
- Reality of man is contingently manifest inasmuch as he cannot fully indwell his own speech.
D.
But the medium of speech becomes radically distinct from all cyclical
and organismic forms of ordinacy; and becomes paradigmatic medium to
reality.
E. Let us remember:
- Language has its element in time.
- It passes away in time in an essential sense.
a. Because of verbs with 3 tenses
b.
Reflexive first personal pronouns -- thereby making a constant
reference to the world as radically experienced by each of us in our
bodies.
c. That inasmuch as speech has its element in time:
- The sensuous element is negatived
- Therefore: as a medium, speech frees us from ordinate nature, thereby giving us spirit --while restoring ordinacy at a higher level. (We "hear" the meaning not the "sounds")
F. Yet -- the very equivocalness and contingency of the relation between this medium and its content has consequences:
- Emphasizes the importance of fidelity to the spoken word -- the promise
-- with Yahweh as model. Our words are forever in danger of becoming
"musical".
- Thereby suggests an antithesis to itself.
- The loss of identity in passion finds a perfect expression in another medium which has its element in time, viz., music.
Evangelism
aims to create a sense of passion as an instrumentality of loss of
identity to a separate reality, abode of the divine. Intense emotional
response and so called speaking in tongues is outward appearance of
this. The speech of the evangelist is more music than word. One goes
beyond listening for the meaning and listens for the “beyond” and in a
sense goes there to the point of being in trance like state even at
times, fainting.
a. Sensuousness is pneumaticized, i.e., freed from ordinate nature, by music because it hurries in a perpetual vanishing and has no reflexivity.
Pneuma,
the vital spirit, the soul, or the spirit of God as holy ghost.
Sensuousness comes to be filled with soul, i.e., soul is transfigured as
sensuousness, the erotic in nature, and thus assumes characteristic of
the daemonic. Evil is state of being insatiable, forever seeking
fulfillment through sensual gratification.
b. We hear the "restlessness, tumult and infinity," not the sounds.
c. Eroticism thus becomes a power in itself.
d. It is inordinate, discarnate, spiritual, infinite, erotic longing.
It is a chaotic, disembodied spirit totally given over to infinite, erotic longing. This is the seusuous genius of Don Juanism.
e. Cf. E/O. p. 88 -- "The Middle Ages..."**
E/O is Soren Kierkeegard's "Either/Or, Vol. I"
f. Don Giovanni is "pure, discarnate erotic spirit..."
4.
With neither the ordinacy of finite cosmos nor that of an unfailingly
faithful will, the world is neither eternal (as a Cosmos) nor contingent
(as a creature which might have not been) and becomes "contingent" in the sense that it is underivable, as a meaningless surd.
5. Pascal's Pensee's: Fragments* 72, 205, 427.
6. If psyche (Cosmos) is no longer the locus of numinal power; and, if pneuma no longer corresponds to the Yahwist speech, then psyche (Cosmos) becomes heimarmene, the insensate prison of an alien and restless power in quest of a 'hidden' divinity.
Heimarmene,
divine providence or fate in the sense of God’s justice-dealing
activity. I think Poteat meant something other than this here.
Now
-- both the ancient Cosmos metaphor and the Yahwist metaphor gave
alternative accounts of the background of order and meaning in the
world; they both saw this background as “holy"; and in different ways
commensurate with human existence. When both of these metaphors are
fragmented -- we are left with an impersonal cosmos and a homeless voice
whose questions evoke no (Yahwist) answers. This fragmentation is, of course, what we are trying to understand.
Pascal
advises the wise thing to do is just “contemplate in silence” the
mystery of being. I agree that the default state is silence, peace. But
absent any evidence to the contrary it is as likely as anything that God
is a child with an ant farm and that there is no purpose outside that
parameter. The cynicism of this view is astounding suggesting as it does
that to see what we will do he invents trouble to throw at us, stirs us
up with a stick for the pleasure of watching whether we overcome or
succumb. This is as far as skepticism can take us, I suppose. I am
personally more comfortable with less extreme approaches to achieving an
understanding of being in the world. Coming out of that infinite
silence of Pascal one can make a way to an infinity of destinies. The
main problem with some views is they are just too simple and I think the
purely skeptical, cynical view clearly falls into this category. One
can mold life around the kernel that we live in an “impersonal cosmos”
but it is wrong to do so. At the same time we can evolve unconsciously
into a modality of living that means necessarily that ours is “a
homeless voice whose questions evoke no (Yahwist) answers.” I think this
is the obvious outcome of living a merely materialistic existence. One
can consciously choose to believe that the universe is impersonal but
those that follow the paths of Don Juanism, of the sensuous, the
daemonic spirit that is materialism, make that choice unconsciously. It
is made for them by their nihilistic solipsism. In the complete service
of evil, as a majority of society seems to be, we all suffer from the
combined madness and flounder in a tumultuous malaise of dread, fear,
and anxiety from which there is “no exit.” I think there are good reasons to take different paths.
Plato,
in the Timaeus, defines out of the divine, out of God, an aspect or
facet he names the Demiurge. In Gnosticism this Demiurge is a divinity
that is more builder of the material world than creator of the universe.
He is the Archon, stands between man and God proper, and is capable
only of endowing man with a sensuous soul whereas a rational aspect to
the soul is an additive of the greater God. The Hebrew Jehovah God was
identified as Archon by the Gnostics.
Speaking
from personal experience, ritual activities of evangelical Christians
involve dissipation of self identity in passion. A confused amalgam of
feelings of not just joy, but guilt, anxiety, dread, fear, sorrow, and
awe characterize the passages into these trances. I would point out that
joy is not necessarily peace and also note Kierkegaard thought that
dread was the opposite of faith. I wonder whether Christian faith, for
many, is not also based on feeling? They try the impossible, to “know”
with their body rather than their soul. They intend to “love” God, but
is it not something less than God that they truly love? Is the trance
itself a surrogate for the divine and thus is it not true that they in
reality worship evil? God, thus, eludes them and their embrace sadly
closes merely on the abyss. We are warned that there are serious
pitfalls on the spiritual path, that evil is devious in the extreme and
can appear as the greatest good, as the brightest truth. Tread carefully
the path to God.
Look
again at Don Giovanni, the sensuous genius as expressed in Mozart’s
opera. This mode of worship of which we speak is not unlike Don Juanism,
not unlike the tumultuous musical experience. Meaning is lost to
feeling; feeling IS the whole of the Real, assumes a spirit of its own, a
forever discarnate spirit, disappearing on its appearance, ephemeral
and perpetually vanishing, seeking everywhere anihilation. It can’t be
held and therefore is impossible to truly affirm. It is essentially
empty, a meaningless, purposeless surd. Evil is that. Void of meaning
and purpose is that longing for rapture, union with the divine in a
“separate” realm, a heaven, to be carried away there to permanent bliss,
joy, and release from the bonds of the flesh in order to join with
eternal spirit. It is an impossible dream and those who truly find the
essential truth of reality find that “the end of all our exploring/ will be to arrive where we started/ and know the place for the first time.”
So,
for the simple person, is there a true path to the divine? Yes, and it
is essentially characterized by humility. Fundamentalist Christians, and
others too (secular humanists?), egotistically claim they have the
secret to truth. This is not so, for, in a sense, the secret to the
truth is bound up with doubt. One can never ever hold the truth, hold
God, as his own for how can one hold what he always already has?
“Salvation” is a process and I assure you the more you cling to
certainty the more salvation will slip away.
* Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662)
Fragment 72
Man's
disproportion. - [This is where our innate knowledge leads us. If it be
not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be true, he finds therein
great cause for humiliation, being compelled to abase himself in one
way or another. And since he cannot exist without this knowledge, I wish
that, before entering on deeper researches into nature, he would
consider her both seriously and at leisure, that he would reflect upon
himself also, and knowing what proportion there is ....] Let man then
contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn
his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that
brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let
the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle
described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast
circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described
by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view
be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner
exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material
for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in
the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our
conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in
comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the
centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is
the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that
imagination loses itself in that thought.
Returning
to himself, let man consider what he is in comparison with all
existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of
nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I
mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth,
kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the Infinite?
But
to show him another prodigy equally astonishing, let him examine the
most delicate things he knows. Let a mite be given him, with its minute
body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins
in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the
humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again, let him
exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he
can arrive be now that of our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here
is the smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new
abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all that
he can conceive of nature's immensity in the womb of this abridged atom.
Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its
firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the
visible world; in each earth animals, and in the last mites, in which he
will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others
the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose himself
in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their
vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which
a little ago was imperceptible, in the universe, itself imperceptible
in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a
whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who
regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing
himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two
abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these
marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he
will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine
them with presumption.
For
in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the
Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing
and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the
extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden
from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing
the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is
swallowed up.
What
will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle of things,
in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end.
All things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite.
Who will follow these marvelous processes? The Author of these wonders
understands them. None other can do so.
Through
failure to contemplate these Infinites, men have rashly rushed into the
examination of nature, as though they bore some proportion to her. It
is strange that they have wished to understand the beginnings of things,
and thence to arrive at the knowledge of the whole, with a presumption
as infinite as their object. For surely this design cannot be formed
without presumption or without a capacity infinite like nature.
If
we are well-informed, we understand that, as nature has graven her
image and that of her Author on all things, they almost all partake of
her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in
the extent of their researches. For who doubts that geometry, for
instance, has an infinite infinity of problems to solve? They are also
infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises; for it is
clear that those which are put forward as ultimate are not
self-supporting, but are based on others which, again having others for
their support, do not permit of finality. But we represent some as
ultimate for reason, in the same way as in regard to material objects we
call that an indivisible point beyond which our senses can no longer
perceive anything, although by its nature it is infinitely divisible.
Of
these two Infinites of science, that of greatness is the most palpable,
and hence a few persons have pretended to know all things. "I will
speak of the whole," said Democritus. But the infinitely little is the
least obvious. Philosophers have much oftener claimed to have reached
it, and it is here they have all stumbled. This has given rise to such
common titles as First Principles, Principles of Philosophy, and the
like, as ostentatious in fact, though not in appearance, as that one
which blinds us, De omni scibili. 3
We
naturally believe ourselves far more capable of reaching the centre of
things than of embracing their circumference. The visible extent of the
world visibly exceeds us, but as we exceed little things, we think
ourselves more capable of knowing them. And yet we need no less capacity
for attaining the Nothing than the All. Infinite capacity is required
for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall have understood the
ultimate principles of being might also attain to the knowledge of the
Infinite. The one depends on the other, and one leads to the other.
These extremes meet and reunite by force of distance, and find each
other in God, and in God alone.
Let
us then take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything.
The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first
beginnings which are born of the Nothing; and the littleness of our
being conceals from us the sight of the Infinite. Our intellect holds
the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the
expanse of nature. Limited as we are in every way, this state which
holds the mean between two extremes is present in all our impotence. Our
senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light
dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders our view. Too great
length and too great brevity of discourse tend to obscurity; too much
truth is paralyzing (I know some who cannot understand that to take four
from nothing leaves nothing). First principles are too self-evident for
us; too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying
in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the
wherewithal to over-pay our debts. Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt dum
videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium
redditur. 4 We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold.
Excessive qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the
senses; we do not feel but suffer them. Extreme youth and extreme age
hinder the mind, as also too much and too little education. In short,
extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their
notice. The escape us, or we them.
This
is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge
and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting
in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach
ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and
if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for
ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most
contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground
and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the
Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to
abysses.
Let
us therefore not look for certainty and stability. Our reason is always
deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the finite between the two
Infinites, which both enclose and fly from it.
If
this be well understood, I think that we shall remain at rest, each in
the state wherein nature has placed him. As this sphere which has fallen
to us as our lot is always distant from either extreme, what matters it
that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has
it, he but gets a little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed
from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from
eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?
In
comparison with these Infinites all finites are equal and I see no
reason for fixing our imagination on one more than on another. The only
comparison which we make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.
If
man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable
he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But he may
perhaps aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears some
proportion. But the parts of the world are all so related and linked to
one another, that I believe it impossible to know one without the other
and without the whole.
Man,
for instance, is related to all he knows. He needs a place wherein to
abide, time through which to live, motion in order to live, elements to
compose him, warmth and food to nourish him, air to breathe. He sees
light; he feels bodies; in short, he is in a dependant alliance with
everything. To know man, then, it is necessary to know how it happens
that he needs air to live, and, to know the air, we must know how it is
thus related to the life of man, etc. Flame cannot exist without air;
therefore to understand the one, we must understand the other.
Since
everything then is cause and effect, dependant and supporting, mediate
and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though
imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most
different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without
knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in
detail. [The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish
our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of nature, in
comparison with the continual change which goes on within us, must have
the same effect.]
And
what completes our incapability of knowing things, is the fact that
they are simple, and that we are composed of two opposite natures,
different in kind, soul and body. For it is impossible that our rational
part should be other than spiritual; and if any one maintain that we
are simply corporeal, this would far more exclude us from the knowledge
of things, there being nothing so inconceivable as to say that matter
knows itself. It is impossible to imagine how it should know itself.
So
if we are simply material, we can know nothing at all; and if we are
composed of mind and matter, we cannot know perfectly things which are
simple, whether spiritual or corporeal. Hence it comes that almost all
philosophers have confused ideas of things, and speak of material things
in spiritual terms, and of spiritual things in material terms. For they
say boldly that bodies have a tendency to fall, that they seek after
their centre, that they fly from destruction, that they fear the void,
that they have inclinations, sympathies, antipathies, all of which
attributes pertain only to mind. And in speaking of minds, they consider
them as in a place, and attribute to them movement from one place to
another; and these are qualities which belong only to bodies. Instead
of receiving the ideas of these things in their purity, we colour them
with our own qualities, and stamp with our composite being all the
simple things which we contemplate. Who would not think, seeing us
compose all things of mind and body, but that this mixture would be
quite intelligible to us? Yet it is the very thing we least understand.
Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot
conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all
how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his
difficulties, and yet it is his very being. Modus quo corporibus
adhaerent spiritus comprehendi ab hominibus non potest, et hoc tamen
homo est. 5 Finally, to complete the proof of our weakness, I shall conclude with these two considerations . . .
When
I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity
before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see,
engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and
which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here
rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there,
why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and
direction have this place and time been alloted to me? Memoria hospitis
unius diei praetereuntis. 7
Man
does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone
astray, and fallen from his true place without being able to find it
again. He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in
impenetrable darkness.
**
The Middle Ages had much to say about a mountain, not found on any map,
which is called the mountain of Venus. There the sensuous has its home,
there it has its own wild pleasure, for it is a kingdom, a state. In
this kingdom language has no place, nor sober-minded thought, nor the
toilsome business of reflection. There sound only the voice of elemental
passion, the play of appetites, the wild shouts of intoxication; it
exists solely for pleasure in eternal tumult. The first-born of this
kingdom is Don Juan. That it is the kingdom of sin is not yet affirmed,
for we confine ourselves to the moment at which this kingdom appears in
aesthetic indifference. Not until reflection enters does it appear as
the kingdom of sin….
[Footnote
3: "Concerning everything knowable" - the title under which Pico della
Mirandola announced the 900 propositions which he undertook to defend in
1486.]
[Footnote
4: "Benefits are pleasant while it seems possible to requite them; when
they become much greater, they produce hatred rather than gratitude.
[Footnote 5: "The manner in which spirits are united to bodies cannot be understood by men, yet such is man." - St. Augustine.]
[Footnote 7: "The remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day." - Wisdom, v. 14.]
