Ötödik fejezet

A short digression concerning the outward and the inward view.

The theory of knowledge.

Sick solasis.

A few words touching the "music of the spheres."

It would be tedious to detail in chronological order the history of those few months which elapsed between my arrival in Faremido and that day whereon I could say that, brokenly and clumsily though it were, I could yet express myself in the language of the solasis and understood in the main what they spoke.

It may be, moreover, that this study itself took up a longer time than I then believed: the vast throng of new impressions crowded into my understanding with so feverish a haste that it never once occurred to me to measure the time, the measuring of which is there, in any case, conducted according to other laws.

(In Faremido a day lasts twice or thrice twenty-four hours.)

On the other hand, these very impressions so engrossed my whole interest that whatever befell me in my own person during this first period of my sojourn there I apprehended only cursorily and dimly; and thus in my memory too it is rather the many lessons I gathered up that have remained, while everything touching my bodily life has faded away.

I seemed, as it were, to understand, and I experienced it in myself also, that the understanding, which by our belief is called to the knowledge of things, attains the highest and most penetrating degree of this its labor at that moment when it forgets itself utterly, that it may gather and set in order the phenomena of the outer world.

With my master, Midore, I spoke much of this afterward: upon the occasion when I strove with all my effort to explain to him what we understand by the words the human brain, for this notion he was incapable of grasping, "it being impossible" — so he said — "that an instrument fashioned of such corrupt and decomposed matter as your body" (so he named flesh and blood, having no words for these notions) "should perform the brain's labor: the comprehension of the connection of things."

When, to set his error right, I informed him that our thinkers too are well aware that the aim of the human understanding is the comprehension of the world, he did but shake his head incredulously, and asked how our so-called thinkers went about it.

With joy and gladness I seized the occasion to win, in that far foreign land, glory for our human race and above all for the great philosophers of my adored country.

On the instant I brought up the works of four or five learned thinkers, and briefly sketched the substance of them.

I told him what a gratifying development the theory of knowledge was entering upon, which concerns itself with the laws of the human brain and determines in what order and upon what ground thought comes to be.

I spoke of the great biologists, who examine the working of our organs and inquire in what manner phenomena act upon our brain.

I made mention of those who declare the labor of the human brain to be purely an organic function, and of those who suppose that the operation of the spirit is to be ascribed to some force not to be measured by any matter.

I cited the opinion of certain great logicians, who upon a mathematical basis derive the coming-to-be of feeling and of thought, and of others who speak in metaphysical symbols.

I briefly sketched the present state of philosophy, and remarked triumphantly at the end that we are very near to that time when we shall know what is to be understood by mental operation.

Midore heard me courteously to the end, and then remarked that I had answered everything, save only that which he had asked.

For, from the standpoint of the end, that tool or instrument by which we attain the end is wholly a matter of indifference.

For, is it not so, whoever examines an instrument does not do so in order to learn what the instrument is for (that is the very first thing one must know, and it goes without saying, since if I do not know what it is for, the instrument does not so much as interest me), but simply in order to determine whether it has any fault, or is faultless and serviceable; and thereupon he begins to use the instrument.

He had asked whether we know how to use our brain for that whereto it is fitted, and I had answered, at length and with ardor, that we know the instrument and can even take it to pieces.

From my words he saw that for centuries together we had done nothing else but ceaselessly take our understanding to pieces and put it together again, and that I had named as the greatest thinkers those who perform that lowest and least labor which among them the turners do.

He had asked to what use we put our wits, and upon what we think; but from my answer it appeared that we do nothing else but forever put this very question and rack our brains over that whereupon we rack our brains.

For, if he understood aright, this was what I meant to say by my explanation touching the theory of knowledge.

All this would be well enough, for a like malady occurs among them too, and in the solasi-works a separate repairing shop has been set up for it: for it comes to pass that the pure and rightly compounded fluid of the skull, the solasi's brain-matter (as we should say), goes bad.

I could see that upon the clean earth there is in many places to be found that corrupt and half-decomposing matter which I am wont to call organic compound; this corrupt, poisonous matter somehow gets into the solasi's head and poisons the organ of thought.

At such times a thick, slime-like dross settles upon the golden wall of the skull and disturbs the clearness of the eye's lens; the rays coming from without do not pierce through the brain, but, refracted in the dark dross, alter the true image of things and bring forth false notions.

Such a sick solasi may be known by this, that his eye turns inward; from his confused and feverish words it appears that he sees his own brain in the stead of the world, which he ought to see, and speaks of his brain, that simple and insignificant instrument, which is worth something only through its use, as though it were the world itself.

He makes all manner of absurd and ridiculous declarations; he says, for instance, that there are green spots in the sky and that life is a fluid; he contends that space is properly time, and that within matter there is force, but within force there is no matter; he sets up as an important question to be decided whether I will what I will, or whether nature wills it; whether one can will freely, or whether one can will that a man should will; whether I know what I think, or think what I know; whether I brought consciousness into the world, or consciousness brought me and was already there when I was not; whether there be force without matter, and whether a higher, matterless intelligence be conceivable; whether we think in images, or in our thought we imagine, and so forth.

It is curious that in this malady the vocal cords too go bad; in the place of the pure and pleasant vibrating tones, unpleasant, grating noises break forth from the solasi's throat, sounds which, for the rest, greatly resemble that which I am wont to call speech, and which so painfully scrapes the shell of the ear.

He, Midore, had once studied such a sick solasi, and had even set down one such inarticulate noise; he had discovered that if one rubs lead and soapstone together in a certain manner, it gives just such a sound.

At these words Midore essayed to imitate this diseased noise, and, to my very great astonishment, uttered, tolerably distinctly, two words familiar to me, these: "historical materialism."

After this Midore told me further that the cause of this malady had long been known, and that it might very easily be remedied — in the solasi-works they pour out the sick individual's brain and, mixing it with certain reagents, filter it through a certain compound.

On this occasion the decomposed matters separate out, and the eye regains its original clearness; and if the fluid be already very much infected, then they simply pour it out and apply a fresh one.

"All this," Midore concluded, "I have related only in order to prove how well I have understood that which you set forth; the like derangements of mind may occur, and do indeed occur.

Only this surprised me, that you named as the greatest thinkers of mankind precisely these sick minds, which have become confounded within themselves.

For I grant that the human brain, which some unknown mechanic manufactures and delivers, and that in an imperfect, rudimentary state, so that (if I understood aright) one must wait long years until it develops at the least so far as to become usable: precisely by virtue of this marvelous property it must needs pass through such periods of development in which, being itself as yet imperfect, that too is imperfect which it thinks out and produces.

In this case, if we suppose that you spoke the truth when you asserted that you too strive after the comprehension of the outer world, I must regard the human brain as a kind of raw glass, out of which one would fashion a magnifying-glass.

To attain this, one must filter and purify the liquid substance of the glass until it becomes perfectly transparent, that through it we may behold the object to be magnified.

You, however, do not do this, but on the very contrary put all manner of opaque, raw things into the fluid, such things as self-consciousness, self-knowledge, the notion of the I, that it may be darker and denser, out of your fear that the wholly transparent brain, letting the rays pass through, would itself vanish, being no more to be seen than the glass.