Chapter XIV (part 1)

p. 156 CHAPTER XIV The voices of stones. The wall of a church and the wall of a prison. The mast of a ship and a gallows. The shadow of a hangman and of an ascetic. The soul of a hangman and of an ascetic. The different combinations of known phenomena in higher space. The relationship of phenomena which appear unrelated, and the difference between phenomena which appear similar. How shall we approach the noumenal world? The understanding of things outside the categories of space and time. The reality of many "figures of speech." The occult understanding of energy. The letter of a Hindu occultist. Art as the knowledge of the noumenal world. What we see and what we do not see. Plato's dialogue about the cavern. IT seems to us that we see something and understand something. But in reality all that proceeds around us we sense only very confusedly, just as a snail senses confusedly the sunlight, the darkness, and the rain. Sometimes in things we sense confusedly their difference in function, i.e., their real difference. On one occasion I was crossing the Neva with one of my friends, A, with whom I happened to have had many conversations upon the themes touched on in this book. We had been talking, but both fell silent as we approached the fortress, gazing up at its walls and making probably the same reflection. "Right there are also factory chimneys!" said A. Behind the walls of the fortress indeed appeared some brick chimneys blackened by smoke. On his saying this, I too sensed the difference between the chimneys and the prison walls with unusual clearness and like an electric shock. I realized the difference between the very bricks themselves , and it seemed to me that A realized this difference also. Later in conversation with A, I recalled this episode, and he told me that not only then, but always , he sensed these differences and was deeply convinced of their reality. "Positivism assures itself that a stone is a stone and nothing more," he said, "but any p. 157 simple woman or child knows perfectly that a stone from the wall of a church and one from a prison wall are different things." It seems to me also, that in considering a given phenomenon in connection with all the chains of sequences of which it is a link, we shall see that the subjective sensation of the difference between two physically similar objects—which we are accustomed to think of only as poetic expression, metaphor , and the reality of which we deny— is entirely real ; we shall see that these objects are really different , just as different as the candle and the coin which appear as similar circles (moving lines) in the two-dimensional world of the plane-man. We shall see that things of the same material constitution but different in their functions are really different , and that this difference goes so deep as to make different the very material which is physically the same. There are differences in stone, in wood, in iron, in paper, which no chemistry will ever detect: but these differences exist, and there are men who feel and understand them. The mast of a ship, a gallows, a crucifix at a cross-roads on the steppes—these may be made of the same kind of wood, but in reality they are different objects made of different material . That which we see, touch, investigate, is nothing more than "the circles on the plane" made by the coin and the candle. They are only the shadows of real things, the substance of which is contained in their function . The shadow of a sailor, of a hangman, and of an ascetic may be quite similar—it is impossible to distinguish them by their shadows, just as it is impossible to find any difference between the wood of a mast, of a gallows and of a cross by chemical analysis. But they are different men and different objects—their shadows only are equal and similar.