Part 17 (1/2)

Emotion--motion!!!

Die away from, _from_, die away (without the _from_).

Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!

Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!

It escapes, it escapes!

But---- What escapes, WHAT escapes?

Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order for there to be a phasis.

No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is _other_.

_In_coherent, coherent--same.

And it fades! And it's infinite! AND it's infinite!

If it was n't _going_, why should you hold on to it?

Don't you see the difference, don't you see the ident.i.ty?

Constantly opposites united!

The same me telling you to write and not to write!

Extreme--extreme, extreme! Within the _ex_tensity that 'extreme' contains is contained the '_extreme_' of intensity.

Something, and _other_ than that thing!

Intoxication, and _otherness_ than intoxication.

Every attempt at betterment,--every attempt at otherment,--is a----.

It fades forever and forever as we move.

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There _is_ a reconciliation!

Reconciliation--_e_conciliation!

By G.o.d, how that hurts! By G.o.d, how it _does n't_ hurt!

Reconciliation of two extremes.

By George, nothing but _o_thing!

That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure _on_sense!

Thought deeper than speech----!

Medical school; divinity school, _school_! SCHOOL! Oh my G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d!

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this:--

There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.

This phrase has the true Hegelian ring, being in fact a regular _sich als sich auf sich selbst beziehende Negativitat_. And true Hegelians will _uberhaupt_ be able to read between the lines and feel, at any rate, what _possible_ ecstasies of cognitive emotion might have bathed these tattered fragments of thought when they were alive. But for the a.s.surance of a certain amount of respect from them, I should hardly have ventured to print what must be such caviare to the general.

But now comes the reverse of the medal. What is the principle of unity in all this monotonous rain of instances? Although I did not see it at first, I soon found that it was in each case nothing but the abstract _genus_ of which the conflicting terms were opposite species. In other words, although the flood of ontologic _emotion_ was Hegelian through and through, the _ground_ for it was nothing but the world-old principle that things are the same only so far and no farther than they _are_ the same, or partake of a common nature,--the principle that Hegel most tramples under foot. At the same time the rapture of beholding a process that was infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dreadful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal and inevitable outcome of the {298} intoxication, if sufficiently prolonged. A pessimistic fatalism, depth within depth of impotence and indifference, reason and silliness united, not in a higher synthesis, but in the fact that whichever you choose it is all one,--this is the upshot of a revelation that began so rosy bright.

Even when the process stops short of this ultimatum, the reader will have noticed from the phrases quoted how often it ends by losing the clue. Something 'fades,' 'escapes;' and the feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more singular sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing particular left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself. It seems, indeed, _a causa sui_, or 'spirit become its own object.'