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User:VargasMilan/I and Thou/Part 1 (view source)
Revision as of 10:51, July 22, 2019
, 10:51, July 22, 2019+ more sections
{{sc|The life of human beings}} is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some ''thing'' for their object.
{{sc|The life of human beings}} is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some ''thing'' for their object.
I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings
I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone.
does not consist of all this and the like alone.
This and the like together establish the realm of ''It''.
This and the like together establish the realm of ''It''.
I experience something.—If we add "inner" to "outer" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed. We are merely following the uneternal division that springs from the lust of the human race to whittle away the secret of death. Inner things or outer things, what are they but things and things!
I experience something.—If we add "inner" to "outer" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed. We are merely following the uneternal division that springs from the lust of the human race to whittle away the secret of death. Inner things or outer things, what are they but things and things!
I experience something.—If we add "secret" to "open" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed. How self-confident is that wisdom which perceives a
I experience something.—If we add "secret" to "open" experiences, nothing in the situation is changed. How self-confident is that wisdom which perceives a closed compartment in things, reserved for the initiate and manipulated only with the key. O secrecy without a secret! O accumulation of information! It, always It!
closed compartment in things, reserved for the initiate and manipulated only with the key. O secrecy without a secret! O accumulation of information! It, always It!
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Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.
Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.
The tree will have a consciousness, then, similar to our own? Of that I have no experience. But do you wish, through seeming to succeed in it with yourself, once
The tree will have a consciousness, then, similar to our own? Of that I have no experience. But do you wish, through seeming to succeed in it with yourself, once again to disintegrate that which cannot be disintegrated? I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree itself.
again to disintegrate that which cannot be disintegrated? I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree itself.
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True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past.
True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is in the past.
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A{{sc|ppeal to a "world of ideas"}} as a third factor above this opposition will not do away with its essential twofold nature. For I speak of nothing else but the real man, of you and of me, of our life and of our world—not of an ''I'', or a state of being, in itself alone. The real boundary for the actual man cuts right across the world of ideas as well.
To be sure, many a man who is satisfied with the experience and use of the world of things has raised over or about himself a structure of ideas, in which he finds refuge and repose from the oncome of nothingness. On the threshold he lays aside his inauspicious everyday dress, wraps himself in pure linen, and regales himself with the spectacle of primal being, or of necessary being; but his life has no part in it. To proclaim his ways may even fill him with well-being.
But the mankind of mere ''It'' that is imagined, postulated, and propagated by such a man has nothing in common with a living mankind where ''Thou'' may truly be spoken. The noblest fiction is a fetish, the loftiest fictitious sentiment is depraved. Ideas are no more enthroned above our heads than resident in them; they wander amongst us and accost us. The man who leaves the primary word unspoken is to be pitied; but the man who addresses instead these ideas with an abstraction or a password, as if it were their name, is contemptible.
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I{{sc|n one of the three examples}} it is obvious that the direct relation includes an effect on what confronts me. In art the act of the being determines the situation in which the form becomes the work. Through the meeting that which confronts me is fulfilled, and enters the world of things, there to be endlessly active, endlessly
to become ''It'', but also endlessly to become ''Thou'' again, inspiring and blessing. It is "embodied"; its body emerges from the flow of the spaceless, timeless present on the shore of existence.
The significance of the effect is not so obvious in the relation with the ''Thou'' spoken to men. The act of the being which provides directness in this case is usually understood wrongly as being one of feeling. Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it. The accompanying feelings can be of greatly differing kinds. The feeling of Jesus for the demoniac differs from his feeling for the beloved disciple; but the love is the one love. Feelings are "entertained": love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the ''I' in such a way as to have the ''Thou'' only for its "content," its object; but love is ''between I'' and ''Thou''. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. Love ranges in its effect through the whole world. In the eyes of him who takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it, men are cut free from their entanglement in bustling activity. Good people and evil, wise and foolish, beautiful and ugly, become successively real to him; that is, set free they step forth in their singleness, and confront him as ''Thou''. In a wonderful way, from time to time, exclusiveness arises—and so he can be effective, helping, healing, educating, raising up, saving. Love is responsibility of an ''I'' for a ''Thou''. In this lies the likeness—impossible in any feeling whatsoever—of all who love, from the smallest to the greatest and from the blessedly protected man, whose life is rounded in that of a loved being, to him who is all his life nailed to the cross of the world, and who ventures to bring himself to the dreadful point—to love ''all'' men.
Let the significance of the effect in the third example, that of the creature and our contemplation of it, remain sunk in mystery. Believe in the simple magic of life, in service in the universe, and the meaning of that waiting, that alertness, that "craning of the neck" in creatures will dawn upon you. Every word would falsify; but look! round about you beings live their life, and to whatever point you turn you come upon being.
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R{{sc|elation is mutual}}. My ''Thou'' affects me, as I affect it. We are moulded by our pupils and built up by our works. The "bad" man, lightly touched by the holy primary word, becomes one who reveals. How we are educated by children and by animals! We live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe.
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—Y{{sc|ou speak of love}} as though it were the only relation between men. But properly speaking, can you take it even only as an example, since there is such a thing as hate?
—So long as love is "blind," that is, so long as it does not see a ''whole'' being, it is not truly under the sway of the primary word of relation. Hate is by nature blind. Only a part of a being can be hated. He who sees a whole being and is compelled to reject it is no longer in the kingdom of hate, but is in that of human restriction of the power to say ''Thou''. He finds himself unable to say the primary word to the other human being confronting him. This word consistently involves an affirmation of the being addressed. He is therefore compelled to reject either the other or himself. At this barrier the entering on a relation recognises its relativity, and only simultaneously with this will the
barrier be raised.
Yet the man who straightforwardly hates is nearer to relation than the man without hate and love.