No-one, I think, is completely homogenous. We cannot be described, as Descartes thought, simply as free-floating minds — "the body is the tomb of the soul", "the ghost in the machine", and all that. Rather, we are inconveniently-complicated composites of body and soul, reason and emotion, self-conscious will and involuntary reflex.
The part of me that rebelled against the Cartesian prison also made me escape; if it did not hand me the key to the door, it impelled me to make a door of my own. A vital part of me — call it the "heart", if you will — was as certain as anything of what I was hesitant: the real solidity of things, the intrinsic truthfulness of the senses. Or, if you like, I "knew" that reality was reliable; I just needed a logical path to lay my morbidity to rest.
"By faith I know but ne'er can tell ..."
The answer, or the justification for the answer, gradually took definite form: that we must begin all our dealings with the world with a fundamental act of faith. This notion did not so much fall from heaven ready-made as "coalesce" out of more vague notion — first slowly, then more rapidly as a murky supposition hardened into clear conviction.
I took this to heart with all the desperation of a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. I began each day with a sort of credo: "I believe that my senses will not deceive me. I believe that that cloud of green and brown really is a tree. I believe that that combination of eyes and amiability really is a roommate." And so on.
The Road Back
The road back from my own morbidity was initially rather rough; and is responsible for giving me such strong emotions on the subject of skepticism wherever it appears: whether in the silliness of "The Matrix" and its spin-offs, or in the more subtle poison of that reductionistic materialism we all inhabit (about which more will have to be said later).
This is why I cannot but regard with contempt the irresponsible person who airily suggests that all this world we perceive might be merely a dream, or a computer simulation, or something nobody knows what. I have felt the despair of that philosophy all too keenly; I share Romeo's feelings in saying "He jests at scars who never felt a wound".
And I cannot quite get out of my head another quotation (and if sacrilegiously applied, not at my intention): "Blest are those who have not seen and yet believed."
No comments:
Post a Comment