Thursday, November 8, 2018

All Knowledge Is A Particle

"There is no true thinker who does not possess an awareness that his thought is a part of an endless context, that his ideas are not taken from the air. All philosophy is but a word in a sentence, just as to a composer the most complete symphony is but a note in an inexhaustible melody. Only when intoxicated with our own ideas do we consider the world of spirit a soliloquy; ideals, thoughts, melodies our own shadows. The rich in spirit do not know how to be proud of what they grasp, for they sense that the things which they comprehend are outbursts of inconceivable significance, that there are no lonely ideas roaming about in a void, to be seized and appropriated. To be implies to stand for, because every being is representative of something that is more than itself; because the seen, the known, stands for the unseen, the unknown.


Even the most abstract mathematical formula to which we may reduce the order of the universe arouses the question: What does it signify? The answer will necessarily be: It represents the majesty of that which is more than itself. At whatever climax of thinking we may arrive, we face transcendent significance. The world’s mystery is either chaos without value of any kind, or is replete with an infinite significance beyond the reach of finite minds; in other words, it is either absolutely meaningless or absolutely meaningful, either too inferior or too superior to be an object of human comprehension. Yet, how would we know of the mystery of being if not through our sense of the Divine, and it is this sense that communicates to us the supremacy and grandeur of the Divine together with the knowledge of its reality. Thus, we cannot deny the superiority of the Divine to our minds, although, for the same reason, we cannot prove it. On the other hand, the fact of our being able to sense it and to be aware of its existence at all is a sure indication that the Divine stands in some relationship to the mind of man. We should, therefore, not label it as irrational, to be disregarded as the residue of knowledge, as dreary remains of speculation unworthy of our attention. The Divine is conceivable in spite of its being unknowable."