Simplicities and Categories.

IT is said that the complex is to be understood by the simple. The house will be known by its bricks, the diamond by its atoms, the animal by its instincts, the universe by its forces. By this standard love is reduced to the impulse for survival, and existence to the smallest corpuscle. What is not said, although it is of necessity implied, is that the simple can only be understood by virtue of the complex. How is a brick to be understood without the concept of a house? None can understand the notion of a building brick without first understanding the notion of the building which designates it. This may be illustrated by a thought experiment. Suppose it is taken as a golden rule that the truth of any thing is always found by an understanding of its components. It would seem necessary therefore that, in such a standard of rationality, the more complex a thing seems the less truthful it actually is and the more false. To this end anything which might be called complex is apparitional, a mirage of mistaken reason, whereas it is the simplest thing which represents the truest reality. Immediately however, a very difficult paradox arises from this method of thinking, though it be the method of the ancient atomist and the modern physicist alike. Namely, it shows that reason itself, intelligence and understanding, is entirely illusory. For if reason is to be understood by its simplest components, going downwards from the brain to the neuron, the neuron to the atom, the atom to the lowest particle, the real truth of reality becomes this: a lifeless, thoughtless, unconscious, weightless, and timeless, granule. This rational method which is, frankly speaking, the most prevalent rational method of present-day science, leads directly to irrationality and oblivion. Many ordinary persons seeing this would be inclined to say this notion of a thoughtless granule is the actual fantasy, and that it is the tangible and subjective reality of our own human lives which is the most convincingly true and confirmable existence. I do not claim to share such an opinion, but I do believe that there is an insoluble problem with the method of understanding existence most trustingly by its lowest denominator. 

   Inexorably the mind is drawn to transcendent truth, striving beyond the basic sensations of animal perception, and the even more trivial classifications of commonplace thought. The word chimera is apt in this question, a mythical beast of preposterous parts whose name is become synonymous with outlandish fiction. To the atheist, God is a chimera, an idle fancy of the imagination, no different from the unicorn, the griffin, the satyr, or the centaur. Setting aside the observation already made that, by the most common and successful method of science, a human being is a thing as absurdly fictional as any one of these legendary animals, it is important to consider the correct classification of such concepts. For in thought as in language everything is a concept, an abstraction drawn from perception, trusting to a faith-founded reality. 

   A man is said to exist because the concept matches the reality. One has only to look at a man to see the familiar shape of his body, to observe his ability to communicate with an extraordinary intricacy, to use his five senses, and to develop complex and meaningful habits. Any number of these can be subtracted to a certain extent without breaking the concept, only it becomes qualified; so that a man without certain limbs, or senses, or thought patterns, becomes a disabled man, but remains a man all the same. Yet beyond that certain threshold the category is broken, and the object no longer has a near enough approximation to its concept. For instance, in the approximation  of the concept of life to an object, much weight is given to the animated parts of an animal, so much weight indeed that death is still primarily verified by absence of motion. Thus there is both cardiac death and brain death. As the object diverges from the concept its classification continually changes;  alien qualities affect its homeostasis, the rudderless ship drifts irresistably into a dark and an unknown sea, till at last it reaches that point when the tethers are broken, and its image is seen no more.

   Furthermore, an extremely convincing and satisfactory notion of a man can be formed by the imagination, without any direct perception of such a character at all. I mean in novels, or books of history, one can come to know a character such as Sherlock Holmes or Samuel Johnson more intimately than the grocer or butcher who is acually seen and met on a weekly basis. The origins of the fictional and the actual acquiantance may vary, but the mind conceives them as one, as individuals about whom information is gathered, and when a real acquaintance dies their memory is become as that of a character in a book. Thus it might be appreciated that 'a hair divides the false and true', though not in fact, only in the mind. It is purely designation that separates one's mother from Lupin; merely custom. If the human mind could be surgically altered so that knowledge of character alone remained, and the senses were removed from their formation, Lupin would indeed be as true an acquaintance as any met in the waking dream of daily life. Only one is named real and the other fictitious. What's in a name? An euphony. 

  Consequently it is necessary amid so many particles to suppose the culmination of all knowledge, in thought and in fact - in thought because in fact, in fact because in thought. Every word, every thought, indeed, every thing, is false to some extent. Some are more false than others because they are less rule-abiding in the game of perception and linguistics, thus the unicorn is not a close enough approximation to a verified object of perception so it is fictitious, but a horse as a concept is made to match to the verified object from whch it was originally drawn. Yet these still are fictitious, though knowing not, it is forgot, for there is no concept perfectly conceived in the imagination, and therefore no absolute or complete truth. This is a most disturbing reflection, but there is nothing which as a thought is so perfectly conceived but that it may not be in some measure objected to. This is well shown in the single example of water. Water is wet, this is truth, but water is a molecule, this also is true, but molecules cannot be wet. Wetness is an emergent property dependent upon perception. Then be it so, water is both wet and dry at the same time, and the categories collide.

   All this is relevant so as to show the way, as much experience 'is the name we give to our mistakes'. For I certainly believe there is a single concept which is made absolutely and completely true, though not by additions of thought or speech, but by an unlimiting of possibilities. This same concept is that concept everything, infinity, existence, and God. There is nothing outside this concept, variably named but identically identified, which can be judged apart from its nature, for it is implicit in the notion that it is everything, and this is why it is a concept completely and absolutely true. That is why it so often is said or implied in the words of Jesus that God is truth and truth is God. It is necessarily so, if the concept of God is adequately conceived as limitless, unbounded, and total. Naturally it is a concept identified with life, goodness, wisdom, and love, for these are positive qualities and extant concepts. Quite as naturally, the concept of God is not identified with death, evil, ignorance, and hatred, for these are only negative notions warped into graspable terms; they only describe what they are not, not what they are. All that properly is meant by each is: lack of life (or variety), lack of goodness (or creative power), lack of knowledge, and impoverishment of appreciation.

   With these considerations, the arrogance of atheism should by rights be broken as the night is by day, and the solacing power of religion be rationally understood. Of course, this is only the merest supplement to religious experience, which already is felt by nature, though it be difficult immediately to comprehend for its vastness and glory.

 

The Deprivation of Faith.

WHEN life is interpreted as matter it is the greatest of miracles. So great is the scale of such an interpretation of matter that, in truth, a transcendent attribute is taken upon its nature. The elements do not degrade life but life exalts the elements.

‘I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more credible, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty, without a divine marshal.’ BACON.

   Atheism is a deprivation alike to drought or starvation. It is not, as many attempt to pretend, a neutrality of thought but a subtraction of wealth. The dog is not an atheist, for he has never known theism in the first place, just as he has never known language. It is no punishment or torture to the dog to be unable to speak, for he has never even once known its joys, whereas to deprive a man of the power of speech would be as terrible a punishment as any could possibly inflict. Quite as the bat is not in mourning for the sight it never possessed, the dog is not at a loss for never knowing theism, but the same cannot be said of mankind to-day. Every society which at the present time is closing around a general tendency against theism is entering into a state of bereavement, for such a tendency constitutes a real deprivation of communal thought. Yet as the origin of all worship is in the simplest of realisations, that nature is extraordinary and not base, it will doubtless be no considerable time before societies at large are restored to the process; and then, as I trust, tradition will be incorporated with modern understanding and present sympathy, so that a foundational system of worship will justify the works of the past and enervate the ambition of the future.