No. IV. Transcendence.
‘Explaining metaphysics to the nation
I wish he would explain his Explanation.’ BYRON.
IT is important to state that it is not by means of systematic logic that truth, properly so called, is ever to be suitably descried. Such systems, for so ultimately must all theories of science and all too elaborately refined theories of philosophy be called, are comparable only to the different lenses which suit different kinds of defective eyesight: of themselves they see nothing, but with nature’s God-given sight they may prove to be of assistance. Fundamentally however they prove only that we are ourselves defective, not that nature is. All is before us, but all is not in us.
It is therefore vital to realise that the truth is Transcendent; it transcends human understanding. Why this notion of transcendence has been ranked the incompatible opposite of the notion of immanence is not altogether clear. If something transcends something else it is because it eclipses the other thing, not because it can have no connection whatsoever with the other thing. A house fire eclipses the tea light which caused it because it is greater than the tea light, not because it is in some unfathomable sense beyond the tea light or disconnected from its reality. Immanence (the term generally used to associate immediate reality with God) is commonly used in a somewhat belittling fashion, as though to say that a requiem is transcendent but a craggy old man immanent. Perhaps the craggy old man wrote the requiem, but whether he did or no, these terms transcendent and immanent are frankly relative and cannot be given an absolute sense. One greater thing transcends a lesser thing; one thing nearer is more immanent than one thing distant; however these prepositional words may be employed, ultimately they do not alter the vital issue which is always concerned with: existence itself.
Yet the paradox is indeed that the doctrine of divine immanence is in itself transcendent, so far as the existence of an ultimate and infinite unity in things so utterly exceeds all simply partial semblances, be they material, mental, or abstract, that truly, by all measure of the human imagination, it transcends them. This is good, for if allowance is made for transcendence then logic is justified. We think in our little ways by the gracious auspices of the almighty, but if allowance is not made for transcendence then logic is not justified, it is ridiculous, it is prancing in chaos.
From these two crude maps of existence, which word I prefer to that of universe, an honest and natural intelligence must form its conclusion. The upper map is the map of modern physics, with its inexplicable dichotomy between the fathomable and the non-existent, with its ever increasing categorisation of space and substance into numbers, becoming at length so large that they are impossible to express even in so many formulæ of expansion. The lower map is the map of mysticism, pantheism, Spinozism, perhaps also Buddhism. It emphasises unity, totality, and essence. It is a view which takes to its heart the concept of reality, quite contrary to the spirit of the finite view which rather implies that all of existence is a kind of effervescent particulate mirage. That the various mental interpretations of the upper map are becoming by far the most dominant in this time is not difficult to understand, the appearances of so many things lend themselves to such a map. Yet it is no more possible to judge the universe by what is seen and deduced on earth than it is possible to judge the earth by what is seen and deduced underground; and if part of a landscape picture is peered at from beneath a curtain, and that part is mud, yet would it be natural to assume that the remaining parts are more various. For surely a celebrated picture is more than mud? Equally sure is it that the celebrated universe is more than the very little we can avouch of it by observation and thought. Even to remark ‘‘t is infinite’ is in some ways to limit it. We cannot understand, we are a part of all we hear and see, like bees which know and work in their hives without ever possibly understanding why or how, so it is with mankind. Man can understand a beehive, that is, he can understand his perceptions of a beehive, but he cannot make honey. So man can make a destiny, but he cannot understand destiny.
Why can no man know the meaning of existence? Because it is the meaning of all of itself for all of itself, for the singular product that is made by pluralities. As the hive understands itself and functions as a collective, but no one bee can quite know why though it is well and happy gathering pollen and working nectar. As a tree is more than its twigs, but its twigs are no less than a tree, as an object is more than its reflection, but a reflection no less than an object, so existence is more than its creatures, but its creatures no less than existence. Scientists find this extremely difficult to accept. They have as Dr. Johnson put it, the tendency to ‘reduce everything to mathematical images’. Of course, if God exists He is not of mathematical images, mathematical images are of Him. Hence there can be no greater idea than that the Supreme is supreme to abstraction. It is certainly not indefensible to describe through abstraction however, as such a thing is second nature to man, but it would seem unwise wholly to answer through abstraction the ultimate question of supremacy.
Hence to exchange verbal truth for a supposedly superior numerical truth is fruitless. To ponder the relations of life and death may be dispiriting, but to divide ten by three is even more so. Equally, to exchange verbal and numerical truth for visual truth is quite as futile. Words and numbers, though troublesome, at least are only symbols. It is easier to resolve sums and phrases than to see how flatlands are curved; how sitting still is still hurtling through space at a speed no flesh may withstand; how water moves on the ground, underground, and in the air; how the air becomes disturbed in the heat and yet clarifies in the cold; how the mind can still see, hear, and touch, when the body is suspended in the darkness and immobility of sleep; how cold things make hot things; how dead things make live things; how units are masses, how masses are units.
This all to say that the entirety of existence is only described absolutely when it is described completely, therefore every magnification of the powers of existence is true, as existence is clearly unlimited in its forms. It is of course true that a thimble cannot hold a bucket’s water, but that is a limitation of the thimble; it is true that the hand cannot speak, but that is a limitation of the hand; it is true that millstones cannot float in water, but that is a limitation of millstones, or of water. Every description of existence which furthers but does not detract must be truer than it is fictitious, but only when the total is kept in mind, not a few parts. Thus piety is wise because it reconciles man with his infinite God, but fanaticism is foolish because it makes a man confuse himself for his infinite God.
Yet somehow even theists tend to dismiss such an image of reality. They find it degrading to their already degraded preconception of God. Of them I would ask, ‘Why do you rankle at the natural and glorious implications of God? Why should you upset yourself or call it heresy to agree with the psalmist? He who sung, ‘O Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.’ knew full well that to assign place or time to God, extent, dogma, or image, were both to err and in fact to blaspheme. How does pantheism sully God? It alone asserts that to restrict God as a mere character in a grander scheme of existence is self-contradictory. Herein people have called pantheism a merely posturing atheism, but what could be more mistaken? That were as though to say that the Duke of Marlborough who extends the definition of his dwelling beyond the pantry, beyond the kitchen, and beyond the corridor, disproves the existence of Blenheim Palace.
It seems to be very difficult for the human mind to grasp the simple truth that infinity is a totality that cannot be judged by its parts. For quite as Blenheim Palace is a magnificent edifice which includes a pantry, and yet is more than a pantry, so God is a magnificent Being whose diminutive parts cannot bear witness to his colossal entirety. Evil is no disproof of this, for the only evil is that which shows itself in those parts of God which have been gifted special degrees of freedom, or opportunity of action, as parents so gift their children. If God’s generosity to his subsistent compositions is not sufficiently understood by these compositions, that is, we mortals, it is no imperfection in Him. He allowed a reasonably free agency to the animals of earth, and the lower animals strove as well as they were able till man emerged, from his misty origins, as the first of God’s mortals to be able to see God Himself behind God’s expressions.
The purpose of which, though some sullenly doubt, is excellently expressed by Elwes in his introduction to Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ‘The mind consists of adequate and inadequate ideas; in so far as it is composed of the former, it is part of the infinite mind of God, which broods, as it were, over the extended universe as its expression in terms of thought.’ When I first read this it struck me at once how superb and accurate the verb broods was to the context of the thought. It does not evoke the upsetting passions or revulsions of human thought and feeling but, on the contrary, illustrates the very grand and surpassing intellect of the Infinite. God’s mind broods over all of His creation. Creation in this sense of course means creation in the only adequate and legitimate sense, the renewal and variation of all things, not the absurdity of making something of nothing.
However, it is not a coincidence that so many find complex philosophy unhelpful and boring. As Scott observed, finessing too much is commonly a fault of desperation, and arguments like these often expose their own faults more than they expose the faults of those which it was their set purpose to ridicule. People often find themselves repelled by the contradictions and entanglements of the most overarching philosophies, they begin to doubt whether they are not all of them equally false and conceited; they look at a spade, touch it, stare at it, feel it, and cannot but think that it is a spade after all. They call it so, and for a while they feel happier. In time however, if they are at all observant, they will find that they have still not escaped, that still the paradoxes thunder in the air, and still darkness haunts about their eyes. We must venture in our efforts to utter the unutterable, even if it is only to cry out at the close of one’s life, ‘it is more than either, it is both!’
For since the twentieth century it has been customary to speak of knowledge as a purely relative concept, something which is vaguely acknowledged and never addressed. We acknowledge thirst, the quenching of thirst, but not the water which causes both. This habit is summarily extended to all things. Political debate is seemingly one vast circle running endlessly over itself, and one must elect to sit on either of its two sides (though each is equal to the other) or fall through the middle. Linguistic philosophy is the same, one must it seems be either useless or wrong to be a philosopher. To be the former is to be an analytic philosopher, which means to know everything about something and nothing of it, and to be the latter is to be something called a dualist, or a monist, or a materialist, or an idealist, which is evidently unforgivable. Mathematics are not excepted. To be so soul-stifling a thing as a mathematician is patently to spend one’s time caught between the ideas of One and Ten, and forever seeking a way out, as also in medicine the purpose is to cure disease but never to prevent death, in construction, to build dwellings which must fall down; all these show the same resignation to the uncertainty of knowledge. By this same resignation people submit to the discomfort of agnosticism; and yet what is all this except to say, ‘‘t is not for us to know but for God!’?
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end. BOETHIUS.
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