Those Barren Leaves Aldous Huxley (best biographies to read txt) đ
- Author: Aldous Huxley
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âIt will have profited during the fifty years of healthy life,â said Calamy.
âBut Iâm talking about the unhealthy years,â Mr. Cardan insisted, âwhen the soulâs at the mercy of the body.â
Calamy was silent for a moment. âItâs difficult,â he said pensively, âitâs horribly difficult. The fundamental question is this: Can you talk of the soul being at the mercy of the body, can you give any kind of an explanation of mind in terms of matter? When you reflect that itâs the human mind that has invented space, time and matter, picking them out of reality in a quite arbitrary fashionâ âcan you attempt to explain a thing in terms of something it has invented itself? Thatâs the fundamental question.â
âItâs like the question of the authorship of the Iliad,â said Mr. Cardan. âThe author of that poem is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name. Similarly, philosophically and even, according to the new physics, scientifically speaking, matter may not be matter, really. But the fact remains that something having all the properties we have always attributed to matter is perpetually getting in our way, and that our minds do, in point of fact, fall under the dominion of certain bits of this matter, known as our bodies, changing as they change and keeping pace with their decay.â
Calamy ran his fingers perplexedly through his hair. âYes, of course, itâs devilishly difficult,â he said. âYou canât help behaving as if things really were as they seem to be. At the same time, there is a reality which is totally different and which a change in our physical environment, a removal of our bodily limitations, would enable us to get nearer to. Perhaps by thinking hard enoughâ ââ âŠâ He paused, shaking his head. âHow many days did Gotama spend under the bo-tree? Perhaps if you spend long enough and your mind is the right sort of mind, perhaps you really do get, in some queer sort of way, beyond the limitations of ordinary existence. And you see that everything that seems real is in fact entirely illusoryâ âmaya, in fact, the cosmic illusion. Behind it you catch a glimpse of reality.â
âBut what bosh your mystics talk about it,â said Mr. Cardan. âHave you ever read Boehme, for example? Lights and darknesses, wheels and compunctions, sweets and bitters, mercury, salt and sulphurâ âitâs a rigmarole.â
âItâs only to be expected,â said Calamy. âHow is a man to give an account of something entirely unlike the phenomena of known existence in a language invented to describe these phenomena? You might give a deaf man a most detailed verbal description of the Fifth Symphony; but he wouldnât be much the wiser for it, and heâd think you were talking pure balderdashâ âwhich from his point of view you would be.â ââ âŠâ
âTrue,â said Mr. Cardan; âbut I have my doubts whether any amount of sitting under bo-trees really makes it possible for anyone to wriggle out of human limitations and get behind phenomena.â
âWell, Iâm inclined to think that it does make it possible,â said Calamy. âThere we must agree to differ. But even if it is impossible to get at reality, the fact that reality exists and is manifestly very different from what we ordinarily suppose it to be, surely throws some light on this horrible death business. Certainly, as things seem to happen, itâs as if the body did get hold of the soul and kill it. But the real facts of the case may be entirely different. The body as we know it is an invention of the mind. What is the reality on which the abstracting, symbolizing mind does its work of abstraction and symbolism? It is possible that, at death, we may find out. And in any case, what is death, really?â
âItâs a pity,â put in Chelifer, in his dry, clear, accurate voice, âitâs a pity that the human mind didnât do its job of invention a little better while it was about it. We might, for example, have made our symbolic abstraction of reality in such a way that it would be unnecessary for a creative and possibly immortal soul to be troubled with the haemorrhoids.â
Calamy laughed. âIncorrigible sentimentalist!â
âSentimentalist?â echoed Chelifer, on a note of surprise.
âA sentimentalist inside out,â said Calamy, nodding affirmatively. âSuch wild romanticism as yoursâ âI imagined it had been extinct since the deposition of Louis-Philippe.â
Chelifer laughed good-humouredly. âPerhaps youâre right,â he said. âThough I must say I myself should have handed out the prize for sentimentality to those who regard what is commonly known as realityâ âthe Harrow Road, for example, or the CafĂ© de la Rotonde in Parisâ âas a mere illusion, who run away from it and devote their time and energy to occupations which Mr. Cardan sums up and symbolizes in the word omphaloskepsis. Arenât they the soft-heads, the all-too-susceptible and sentimental imbeciles?â
âOn the contrary,â Calamy replied, âin point of historical fact theyâve generally been men of the highest intelligence. Buddha, Jesus, Lao-tsze, Boehme, in spite of his wheels and compunctions, his salt and sulphur, Swedenborg. And what about Sir Isaac Newton, who practically abandoned mathematics for mysticism after he was thirty? Not that he was a particularly good mystic; he wasnât. But he tried to be; and it canât be said that he was remarkable for the softness of his head. No, itâs not fools who turn mystics. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring whatâs underneath. Theyâre content with appearances, such as your Harrow Road or CafĂ© de la Rotonde, call them realities and proceed to abuse anyone who takes an interest in
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