wyndham lewis - physics of the not-self (1932)

8/2/2019 Wyndham Lewis - Physics of the Not-self (1932)

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PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELF

This essay is in the nature of a metaphysical commentaryupon the ideas suggested by the action of Enemy of the Stars.Briefly, it is intended to show the human mind initstraditionalrole of the enemy of life , as an oddity outside the machine. Inthe first of the ensuing sections, for instance, that enti tled'Catonic Truth,' it is shown how the egotistic falsehood ofCato is more generally acceptable than the scrupulousness ofthe philosopher. Of all things in the world liable to arousemen's apprehension, it is clear that ' the scientific truth aboutanything" has a good claim to the first place. In it they scent,with reason, the principle of death. They do not scent this innatural science, because science has disguised itself more effec-tually as 'a thing,' or as 'nature.' No one, to illustrate this, isafraid of being bit ten by a motor-car-though he, of course,might go mad if bitten by a scientist. And he has, of course,recently (1914-18) been slaughtered in very great numbers bywhat living men undeniably had invented.

Disguised as 'nature, ' and taking on the impersonality and'inscrutableness' of natural laws, a small but picked number ofmen have put themselves at the head of the forces of nature, asit were, in their old struggle with Man. The results sofar havebeen startling enough. But it ishoped, shortly, that nature will,with their assistance, achieve a really decisive and annihilatingsuccess-with regardto the human race a really smashingvictory!The guns, bombs and gasin the Great Wardid not enlightenpeople. This was because it was supposed to be merely cruelMother Nature eating up her children-obliged to do so, ofcourse, in consequence of the Darwinian law that exacts suchdestruction. When you are dealing with 'a law'-then there isnothing further to be said! Then, the penalty of lifts, tele-phones and crystal sets must fatally, and as a matter of course,be commensurate with their advantages. High buildings 'grow'-do they not? And the fatigue of climbing them isneutralizedby the escalator. For this advantage life and limb are mortgaged-as we should expect, should we not?Without pursuing the subject further, it will be understoodfrom this brief note what order of things is in question in thepages that follow.

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CATONIC TRUTH'I would not believe it even if Cato told me,' was a Romansaying. But the truthfulness of Cato would be the last refine-ment, of course, of the effrontery of the oligarch. The 'wetruthful ones' of Nietzsche is the lyrical equivalent-perjurybeing the characteristic humiliation imposed by his circum-stances upon the serf. To judge from the accounts of his con-temporaries, Cato must have been as terrible a man asit wouldbe easy to find: and Cato's ' truth' would bewhatCato thought,and his legendary exactitude would include, no doubt, everyvariety of brassy outspokenness. For Cato was not a man to goout of his way to look for truth; he would take 'truth' as hefound it, as, in short, it welled up from the source of hisegotism. He would no doubt suppress anything presentingitself to his mind and claiming to be 'truth' which had not theauthentic hallmark of catonic directness-which was notwished, or was not wanted ".And, like that 'liberty' whichmight not survive the death of Cato, so 'truth', it is a fairassumption, would not survive him either, or anything else' that was his'-so relative must Cato's 'truth ' have been.The philosopher, who is more uncertain about truth, istherefore proverbially unsatisfactory in the catonic sense. Hisscruples brand him as a liar from the start-since he is apt tostammer, if not blush, when first asked a question. Evenwhen,after a painful effort, he reaches an affirmation, it is so besetwith reservations that it remains a particularly offensive sortof l ie for those who prefer the will's truth to that of the intel-lect. The not-self established in the centre of the intellectbetrays at every moment its transient human associate. Thewise man, in consequence (the opposite of that pitiful object,the philosopher), keeps it locked up, a skeleton in a cupboard,or an abnormal offspring that it would be disastrous to exhibit.And if anyone refers to the existence of that unfortunate by-product of the human state, they convict themselves on thespot of being no gentleman, or, at the best , an enemy. Thus todoubt a man's word; a wise man's, can surely be regarded as anoblique reference to this intellectual abortion or death's-headunder lock and key.

PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELF 197 II

THE MAN OF HIS WORDWhat results from these observations may be formulated asfollows. There is a thing popularly referred to as ' truth' some-where or other-never mind where. Of this fact all men born ofwomen are aware. Just as, by analogy with ourselves, and inresponse to the dictates of the physiologic norm, we know thatevery creature of flesh and blood consummates the digestivesequence in a certain manner, so we know that he likewiseharbours this attribute-of ' truth. ' The samerules apply to thisdisgraceful instrument of the intellect as govern the final stagesof that act, the first stage of which is ingestion (which firststage it is recognized shall be permitted to occur in public).If you ask two men, or if two men came to be asked in acourt of law, what happened upon a certain day some monthsearlier, you can tell almost at once which is the truthfuller ofthe two. Probably one, without hesitation-frankly and freely-will give his answer. But the other will be confused, and willdisplay every sign of a most guilty uncertainty. The formerman IS the man you respect-whose 'word,' you know, is

worthy of credence, and probably 'as good ashis bond.' He isthe 'man of his word.' His word is his own word. The otherman's 'word' might be anybody's!The latter man, you would say, isa 'man of words.' But theformer securely possesses, as a lightly-held property, the tameword, which obediently represents the man and his interests.The lat ter (the 'man of words') is a slave, the former (the 'manof his word') is a free-man. The latter isafraid of a 'word': theformer isnot afraid of any 'word.' One will sacrifice himself toa mere 'word,' the other would see any 'word' hanged first.The latter is the man you will instinctively trust.

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THE ENEMY OF THE STARSIf 'truth' is the word we give to that disintegrated not-selfprinciple which every man necessarily must harbour (butwhich he can be trained quite easily to paralyse), then everyaltruism can be traced to the activities of this same principle.But from this i t must not be supposed that the destruction ofthis principle in a man cuts him off from 'his fellows.' Thatwould be a great mistake. The contrary is, in fact,the case.The man who has formed the habit of consulting and ad-hering to the principle of the not-sel/participates, i t is true, in


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19 8 PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELF PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELF 199the life of others outside himself far more than does the con-trary type of man, he who refrains from making any use at allof this speculative organ. But he is not, for that reason, morelike other people. He is less like them. For is he not one in agreat many thousand? And to be like other people he certain-ly .should be less them and more himself. Hence his altruismonly results in differentiating him, and in leaving him withoutas it were a 'class,'even without a 'kind. ' For this ultra-humanactivity is really inhuman: even it frustrates its own purposeby awakening suspicion instead of trust. It is regarded as abreaker-down of walls, a dissolvent of nations, factions, andprotective freemasonries, a radio-active something in themidst of more conservative aggregations, as naturally it is. It isan enemy principle. It is heartily disliked. Since, again, by itsvery nature, it awakens love, that is not in its favour either.Lovebeing the thing that ismost prized by men, the individualwho (in league with the diabolical principle of the not-self)appears to be attempting to obtain it by unlawful means is atonce without the pale. Byway of the intellect he is necessarilyreaching what the force and fraud of brute nature are other-wise combined to obtain (and of which they get very little).The intellect, or the seat of that forbidden principle of thenot-self, is the one thing that every gentleman is sworn, how-ever hard pressed, never to employ. What cannot be obtainedby way of self-by that great public road of private fraud-must be foregone. That is understood, universally recognized(by all White Men and pukka 'sports'). The intellect is thedevil , it could be said. But more than that, there is somethingindefinably disreputable about i t. It is not 'clean.' It cannot bedescribed confidently as 'white.' I t is not ' the thing.' It is un-questionably not 'top drawer.' It is irreparably un-pukka. It is,in the last analysis, the enemy of all the constellations anduniverses.Wehave one life, and we have one individuality. It isa ration,as it Were. It is an 'obligation' (sopeople say sometimes about'art') to devote all our energies to that one self, and not topoach. Wewere not born twenty men, but one. Itisour duty 'toremain in our class.' Equally it isour duty to remain in our self-our one and only. But if we must go out of our 'class, ' thenit is 'a sacred duty' to get into a higher one at least. And if wemust go outside our self-if we are so wrong-headed-then at

least it is our 'bounden duty' to see that we do not, at least,despoil ourselves for others. We must go outside in order totake, not in order togive. But it isfar more dignified to remaincloseted with one 's inalienable physical possessions-l ike asedate hen upon its eggs-from the cradle to the grave. Oh,yes: that certainly is so.THE HUSBANDRY OF 'GOODNESS'If it is true that any lie becomes the 'truth' when one wantsit to be that-that, by merely wishing, a really determined mancan 'make anything of anything, ' and transform black (in thechemistry of his desire) into the most dazzlingwhite-followingthe catonic, the roman, method: then it is also and by thesame token true that altruism, or generosity, can be so rigidlyrelated to his interests that never a drop iswasted: and that, infact with usury, its store is seen constantly to augment.All other sorts of 'givers' are, not unjustifiably, mistrusted.A gift that expects no return is not a human gift. No man has arigh t to bestow in that way. The chances that he is agod or an

angel are so very slender that some peculiarly despicable formof theft is evidently contemplated. It will require all the vic-tim's energy to frustrate this criminal intention. No 'goodness'succeeds like successful 'goodness,' in other words. Ifyou arerespectable, then you can only accept things from a personwho evidently benefits more than you do asa consequence ofhis bounty.Itwill be profitable for this argument at present to examinebriefly the old status of 'goodness,' and to see what it has be-come in our time-after a prolonged association in the popularmind with sexual morality, especially.

GREEK 'GOODNESS'A~ the end of the Symposium, Socrates is desc~ibed as per-suading the last of the revellers that ' the same person isable tocompose both tragedy and comedy, and that the foundationsof the tragic and the comic arts are essentially the same. 'Since there is a unique point of common emotion fromwhich these two activities arise, to which both can be tracedback (and on account of which common source the same poetis enabled to excel at both), so no doubt the different cate-gories of forms, and their archetypes, would be fused, for such


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200 PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELFa mind somewhere or other, into one composite body. No, .doubt beauty, pity, justice and the rest of the socratic pre-dicates would melt into each other in some more generalperfection. Butarete, which we tran~ate good~~ss,. seems lessspecialized than most of them: and goodness III Its modernsense is, as a translation, misleading.

John Burnet tells us that 'goodness,' for a Greek, had noethical significance. 'We are left in no doubt ~s to wh~t "goO?-ness" (arete) meant in the language of the time .. It was, Infact, what we call efficiency. To the Greeks goodness wasalways something positive': and so on. Liddell and Scott havefor arete 'goodness, excellence of any kind, especially ofmanly qualities, valour, etc:' Also. 'exc~llence in any art.'They cite Plato as the authority for Its ethical use. But Burnet,as we see above, does not agree to this. Like 'virtue' in English,it may have traversed several mea~ifl:gs-the utilitari~n, themartial, and something like the chnstIan.E:>ccellenc~ Inany-thing i~, however, what ~urnet sticks to. And ~urn~~ IS a greatauthority: he even says It meant for the sophists little morethan skill in the arts of party intrigue. 'But Socrates has several 'goodnesses': his highest philoso-phical goodness (philosophike arete), is . the one identified wi~knowledge, and which can be taught, like a trade: and there ISa popular 'goodness' of the lower order.In the Phaedo (81-82), Socrates shows what happens at theclose of this life to the bad man; and whatever arete may havemeant to a fifth-century Athenian, it is quite evident what ismeant by it in this socrat ic dialogue. The.soul of the philosophergoes to dwell with ' that which resembles i t, the invisible divine,immortal and wise'; in a place 'excellent, pure and invisible.'The unjust, and the only popularly 'good,' are, in Socrates'ethical Zoo allotted their respective shapes. Asses, wolves,. hawks and kites are inhabited by souls that have shown theiraptitude for such destinies as these lives imply. The 'good' citi-zen, however, may hope tobe~ome.a bee, awasp or ~n ant. ~or,l ike all the ancients, Socrates idealized these small industriousmachines.This goodness which is essential ly an exce1~ence, l ike ex:ceI-lence in craft, and which merges into the WIsdom and pietyof the philosopher, is like the upanis~a~ic .Karma; and t~ereturns to the animal world, or the annihilation and peace In

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PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELF 201the bosom of the Absolute, or Brahman, are similarly parallelto the Indian conception.The 'knowledge' that is identified with 'goodness' is, likegoodness, of two kinds in Plato: the less empirical knowledgebeing called doxa (belief) and only the Eternal lending itself tosuch knowledge as. can deserve the name of episteme. Thisepistemological absolute is much the same as Brahman; and theinferior knowledge of the world of temporal experience ismuch the same as the upanishadic aoidya. The quality of theknown and the object of knowledge, and the impossibility ofanything but a wisdom of metaphors, glimpses and trances, interrestrial life, you get in Socrates and in Plato as with theIndian (ct. the subject of Y a jfiaval Kya. 'Thou canst not seethe seer of seeing, thou canst not hear the hearer of hearing,thou canst not comprehend the comprehender of compre-hending, thou canst not know the knower of knowing').Socrates (in the ecstatic language of physical life, it is true)taught abstention from bodily desire. Philosophy gives freedomfrom the obscenities of existence.' 'Imprisoned' in the body,using it and its senses only just as much as is necessary (other-wise 'the soul reels like an intoxicated man,' inflamed and dis-ordered by contact with the objects of sense), you shouldabstract yourself, and, as far as possible, withdraw your mindtill it passes momentarily into the cathartic peace of the Eter-nal. 'Philosophy ... endeavours to free the soul by showingthat the view of things by means of the eyes is full of depres-sion, as also is that through the ears and the other senses, per-suading an abandonment of these so far as it.is not absolutelynecessary to use them, and to believe nothing else he hears ...for that a thing of this kind (one which differs under differentaspects) is sensible and visible, but what she herself perceives isintelligible and invisible' (Phaedo 83).This is an invitation to plunge into the 'soul,' the oppositeof the plunge into Life suggested by Bergson. Instead of out-side, inside. It is an invitation that has often been repeated.Perhaps 'the soul' is sometimes at home and sometimes not.There may be some ages when you are likely to find it rushingabout outside: others when the inside-plunge is the likeliest tobe rewarded with success. People as far as their own egos areconcerned possess an instinct where this erratic psyche is; and,in fact, in most ages, the great majority have plunged outwards.

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The empirical world, the eidola of Plato, then, coul~ yieldnothing but a spurious knowle?ge . . ~nd 0e concepnon ofknowledge as the highest goal+identified with goodness-wasthe same as the supreme upanishadic conception. To know theatman, to know yourself, appeared the supreme ef~iciency inboth systems. The fusion of the idea of goodness with that ofknowledge we see in the teaching of Mani, for that matter;with his Persian ontology, the principles of Dark and Light, hetaught that as the mind of a person contains increasingly morelight, so it contains correspondingly more goodness. Socratesheld that it was impossible for a man to understand and to ~eevil. This is usually regarded asthe supreme example of socraticunwisdom. the most ' irritating' of all his many challenges.tocommon sense. 'The question involved in the argument withPolemarchus isreally the same. Is it possible to regardgoodnessas a purely neutral accomplishment of th~skind, or isit some-thing that belongs to the very nature of this soul that poss~ssesit so that it is really impossible for the good man to do evilo rto injure anyone?' (J. Burnet).. .'If it is in the introduction of ethical and :rsthetIc forms upona footing of equality with the mathematical that the originalityof Socrates, as the successor of the Pythagor~ans, reposes, thenin a sense ethics is only introduced to be disposed of; fo~ theskill-cum-knowledge-goodness of Socrates, or. the approx.lma-tion to perfect knowledge, are very mathema.tIcal con~eptlOns,when compared with those of more emotional ethIc~. Theidea, in its simplest development, seems ~oamount to t~lS:1. It is the philosopher'S business to dispose of all desire,2. Ifyou know or understand fully you no longer desire..3. It is the philosopher's business to know asfully aspossible.4. In this way the socratic 'goodness' isseento bethe same

as Nirvana.5. And with regard to this statement: You can only be just,moderate and beneficent if you are not involved in what.you are called to act upon-if you are withdrawn from itand 'not interested in it. '6. Therefore the ruler should be a philosopher-in order thathe may dispose of what he rules over,' as though he werean indifferent god.There is in short no emotional value attached to 'goodness',-and its implementation in justice, truth and generosity-

PHYSICS OF THE NOT"SELF 203whatever. It isyour duty to yourself, or the wisest thing to do,to drug yourself, so that you shall not feel fear or disappoint-ment. And no emotional idea of 'power,' even, must beattached to the highest knowledge. For would not that beerecting knowledge into a possession-a thing you would fearto lose? Love, too, is in this category. If 'goodness' were anemotional thing at all (as is, for instance, evangelical christian'goodness') it would necessarily entail suffering. And the ob-ject of the philosopher is to avoid suffering, or the turbulent' intoxication' of action or feeling, in every sense. It isin thesedoctrines of Socrates that you find most readily the ascent tohim claimed by the Stoics; and you see in its first state theircelebrated apatheia, or the 'cynicism' of Antisthenes.You cannot, logically, 'love' or admire, either, if you fullyunderstand. The conclusions to which the intellect and natureo~ Socrates were directed must have been, I think, a completenirvana.

But the promiscuous, sceptical, feverish atmosphere of post-periclean Athens affected the mode and development of histeaching. Discrimination into a prakrita and its opposite couldnot, for instance, in those social conditions, beentertained; andthe underground cults, such as the orphic, were not the samething as a widely accepted religion, with its machinery of emo-tional compulsion. Plato's reasons for the dislike he professedfor the writing-down of philosophic dogma indicated that po-pular uncontrolled instruction must have been a pis aller. And,in any case, the main proof of this is, that, in the case ofSocrates, a popular teaching culminated in political execution.It is a fundamental example of Socratic 'irony' which hasescaped most people, that he should appear in history as essen-tially a popular teacher. Mr Bernard Shaw has put him forwardand held him up to admiration as'the idealjournalist' ofhisage.Whether Mr Shawwould have claimed or notthatthiswasasuper-irony of his own, the fact remains that Socrates, 'always talkingabout great market-asses, andbrass-founders, andleather-cutters ,and skin-dressers' (the raw material of his famous 'induction'),as Alcibiades shows him, lends himself to this interpretation.Yet of 'the real Socrates' we have the exactest descriptionput into the mouth of Alcibiades in the Symposium: 'Knowthat there is not one of you who is aware of the real nature ofSocrates; but since I have begun, I will make him plain to you.

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204 PHYSICS OF THE NOT-SELFYou observe how passionately Socrates affects the intimacy ofthose who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes himselfto be; appearances in themselves excessively silenic. This, myfriends, is. t he external form with which, like one of the sculp-ted Sileni, hehas clothed himself; for if you open him, youwill find within admirable temperance and wisdom. For hecares not for mere beauty, he despises more than anyone canimagine all external possessions, whether it be beauty orwealth, or glory, or any other thing for which the multitudefelicitates the possessor. He esteems these things, and us whohonour them, as nothing, and lives among men, making allthe objects of their admiration the playthings of his irony.'(The Symposium, 2160.)If this is intended to enlighten us, and it seems that such isthe case, what it says is as follows. Not only were 'the greatmarket-asses' and 'the brass-founders' merely the rumblingstock-in-trade of this supreme market-place performer (proper-ties ironically chosen, ironically handled and ironically dis-played), but also it asserts that his celebrated language of love,

'his passionate affectation of intimacy for those who arebeautiful,' his display of the amorousness of a fashionableperversity, likewise were ironical. What it says, in short , is thatSocrates was pulling the leg of the Greek exoletus, whomhe caressed, as much as he was pulling the leg of 'the greatmarket-asses=-or the greater asses, their attic owners. Heknew his public only too well, and the simpering but certainlyvery argumentative epicene young gentlemen of fashion of thetime: and 'the great market-asses' he used only as stalking-horses. Similarly, was not the language of love the cynicalgilding of the pill? We cannot be surprised that this peculiarand very rare sense of fun should have brought him at last toa violent end-or, at least, an abrupt and involuntary one.

APPENDIXUnpublished Poems and Fragments

'THE LIQUID BROWN DETESTABLE EARTH'The liquid brown detestable earthHas the old cage stink, smacks of dearth.It has the prison smell of rats.It preserves the odour of lewd cats.There was once a Mendip chantecleerThat crowed on a big brown bellied bier.I thought from his epileptic songThat he had discovered some congenial wrong.Oh the buxom water rat.Oh the maiden and the fat cat.Oh the fat uncorsetted girlDefending her forgotten pearl.An eternity of this,Will lead us to no epiphanies.Let us make up our packet now:And tie it with a shop jumper's bow.

wyndham lewis - physics of the not-self (1932)

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