The Project Gutenberg eBook, Cobwebs of Thought, by Arachne

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Title: Cobwebs of Thought

Author: Arachne

Release Date: October 16, 2004 [eBook #13766]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COBWEBS OF THOUGHT***

E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

COBWEBS OF THOUGHT

by

"ARACHNE"

London

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES

II. CONTRASTS

III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET

IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY

V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND

MOTTO.

"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there must be something within us which produces our thought. That something must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a number; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the same and the other! It is atoms which think in us, said Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter." —VOLTAIRE.

I.

OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES.

Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded those who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive and desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit, monk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result, unless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been the dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it, for being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of self, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental disease.

For fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a clear, definite aim outside self—such as achieving the gain of some special piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in psychology, and certain systems of philosophy—Greek, English, and German, in Plato Locke, Kant, and in the meditations of Descartes, and many others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge, but the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which we obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to ourselves. When a philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result of introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have contributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those who care for thought for thought's sake—the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas and dreams, and who never progress towards any clear issue. Amiel's "Vie Intime" is a study of this kind. It adds nothing to any clear knowledge of self, absorbing and interesting as the record is. It is suggestive to a great degree, and in that lies its value, but it is as vague, as it is sad. It appeals deeply to those who live apart in a world of their own, in thoughtful imaginative reverie, but its effects on the mind were deplored even by Amiel himself in words which are acutely pathetic. The pain which consumed him arose from the concentration of self on self. Self was monopolised by self, self-consciousness was produced, though without a touch of selfish egoism.

Out of this self-conscious introspection, grew that sterility of soul and mind, that dwindling of capacity, and individuality, which Amiel felt was taking place within him. A constant, aimless, inevitable habit of self-introspection was killing his mental life, before the end came physically.

Another philosophical victim to the same habit was John Stuart Mill, at one time of his life. His father analysed almost everything, except himself, and John Stuart Mill had grown up in this logical atmosphere of analysis, and to much profit as his works show. But when he turned the microscope on his own states of feeling, and on the aims of his life, the result was melancholia—almost disease of mind. His grandly developed faculty of analysis when devoted to definite knowledge outside himself, produced splendid results, as in his Logic, and his Essays, but when he analysed himself, he gained no additional knowledge, but a strange morbid horror that all possible musical changes might be exhausted, and that there might be no means of creating fresh ones. He also feared that should all the reforms he, and others, worked for, be accomplished, the lives of the reformers would become meaningless and blank, since they were working for means, not ends in themselves. Out of this hopeless mental condition there was only one outlet possible, and that was to leave self-analysis of this sort alone for ever, and to throw himself into its direct contrary, the unconscious life of the emotions. John Stuart Mill did this, and it saved him. In Wordsworth's poetry he found sanity and healing. Happily for him that was not the age of Browning's "Fifine at the Fair." Had he fallen in with dialectical analysis in the garb of poetry, it must have killed him!

And yet "Know thyself" has always been considered supremely excellent advice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly is disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the Greeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort of self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which can be, at the same time, of vital use? Is all self-analysis when practised for its own sake necessarily harmful, and unprofitable? It is time to ask these questions if we are ever to know how to analyse ourselves with profit, if we are ever to know ourselves. And we none of us do. As students, we are content with every other knowledge but this. After all the self probing of the religious and philosophical, during long centuries, what have we learned? Truly to ourselves, we are enigmas. To know everything else except the self that knows, what a strange position! But it is our condition. The one thing that we do not know—that we feel as if we never could know is the Self in us. Our characters, our powers, our natures, our being—what are they? Our faculties—what can we do? And what can we not do? What is the reason of this faculty, or that want of faculty? We have never reached an understanding of ourselves, which makes us not only know, but perceive what we are capable of knowing; which makes us aware, not only that we can do something, but why we can do it. We are an unknown quantity to ourselves. We can calculate on a given action in a machine, but we cannot calculate on our own, much less on our moods. If we would but take half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a science or art—if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own thoughts as an engineer can on the sequence