Transcription

Quest. about Primitive Complexes

Credo

N° XXII

Done

Jan. to Feb 12

1918

For associative action of Logique des sentiments see Denzel’s remark

I want to make myself clear, if not to others (for people readers misunderstand because you because they lack clearness rather than the writer) about this bad business of sacrifice.

I am not advocating what people selfishness and still less self indulgence. If there were less self indulgence, i.e indulgence in our

old lazy prejudices and hot urgent emotions ; if there were less selfishness in my sense of imagining, judging, feeling nothing except as an otherwise non existent concern of insofar as it a fact thereof happening to impinge on our own feelings and habits

if there were in the world less constant, uninterrupted, unsuspected, unsuspicious, legi un torpid, bles dull, blind, deaf, torpid engrossment in the I and the we, there would also be less sacri sacrifice not of the of these sudden

inner and outer cataclysms which result in the sacrifi not only in the sacrifice of others, but in that revulsion against the usual, that helpless despair despairing helpless reaction against

disbelief in the solidarity of all things which is most oftenest at the bottom of sacrifice of self.

If the world’s governing class had been It is the in For life requires perpetual small choices and

small refusals and small givings attention of sympathy & xxx Life _ not meaning thereby a life tolerable & interesting to as many as possible _ requires vigilance, se discrimination, interest, warmth of

heart flame of mind, and a steady hand on the rudder, a clear eye ahead. And it is the lack of all this which makes us awake betw in the between Scylla and Charibdis, in the boiling whirlpool

of eddying VfuriousV events and of our own eddying, feelings, into which we must leap, dragging others down or trying to push them out, and be sucked into the blackness. Life asks much

of our giving ; not much at a time, not cruelly & unreasonably, but, what suits us much less, inceasingly. And we will not give. We p cannot be perpetually dunned for small debts. We prepare prefer an

occasional liquidation. My friend R. Rolland has thrown it in the faces of the priests & philosophers that who were all so ready to bless the killers and damn the adversary that they did not teach those youths whose

souls were in their hands how to avert such a war. I have not R’s had R.R’s belief in priests & philosophers & not expecting anything from them (ajout) believing in the use absolve their futility I have not been much disappointed (ajout).

But this I will say. That if the the men &

women of the classes who, through our wretched economic & educational inequality, set still governed Europe, had given one tenth of the thought to certain subjects one tenth of the attention wh. they gave to money

making, or art pl xxx ,or imp beautifying, or dirtying their own souls or pursuing any of their philantrophic aesthetic or big game shooting or parliamentary sports if they had mind

had disliked cared for peace one tenth as much as they cared for clothes, cards, Russian ballets, post impressionism, xxx, dinner a « getting on », « daring what « has to be done » and suit

even their dealings with their own private sins & with God _ why this war would not have been any more than the black Death of the Middle Ages has been in our scavangered cities.

When I speak of self sacrifice as a thing which so far from drawing, should make us start back as from the questionable horrible and probably the the profane, I want

it to be understood that the world as I conceive it rejects such hos pollutions & profanations but asks, and asks in vain, for something which ou we are unable or

unwilling to give : the gift of ourselves to the self of all other creatures & all other things not in orgiastic or spartan one narrowness

natural going forth of interest, curiosity, imagination and sympathy : the gift of self not to self’s effacement, but to self’s plenitude & fulfillment.

But we are like that poor slow witted lover in Boccaccio tale, who, having wasted his substances without pleasing his winning his lady, found nothing better to do than to kill & roast the

falcon whom she had come to beg from him.

Jan 2.

Selfishness, self sacrifice, w which is to have his way xxx? Which is to be sacrificed ? And And why should either be

who is to decide ? As in all such matters, a tertium quid. … in the hunter essentially, for it need be no is not person. The third/thing in that dispute is, or I mean ought to be in our thought

(and indeed unconsciously & unknown to either !) is the best/rest of thing. I don’t know how else to call. The other. The other s The whatever is not present & uppermost; the other

moment not this present one, the other results, not those we are aiming at ; the other people (the other …) not those we have in our mind ; the last but not least the other self, yours, mine, the self

which has passed out of that stage, become indifferent to that need, wish, shuffled out of those particular feelings & efforts, wanting something else ; the changed self, the self of tomorrow, nay rather the self

of all the tomorrows.

The arbiter who shall decide between self seeking & self repression, between self indulgence & self sacrifice, is the rest of realities, & in the rest I mean the realities which are coming, the changed

ones. To think of reality means to think in terms of change : changed self, ego, changed alter, changed everything. For when we say things or persons we mean not merely how they affect us at this minute & in this posture but how they are, i.e. how they can & will be.

Esse est xxx

Jan 6

From « Lettres d’un Soldat » _ ?HKB 1915 _

Il faut dans ces moment ci se réfugier dans un sacrifice # extra=humain, car il est impossible de dépasser le point où nous sommes. Laissez # toute expérience humaine. Cherchez autre chose, peut-être l’avez vous trouvé. _

We all know what that war gulf means as in (ajout) bodily and spiritual agony ; we are beginning to guess what, to all nations alike, it will mean in improvement. I shall try, in a separate section, to show its contents from the psychological point of view, its inevitable xxx delusions & myths. It may be as well to show parenth remind the reader in this place what the war means implies as a question of cause & effect. One of its peculiarities is that once in, it becomes more & more difficult to get out, which is, perhaps, the most my most invincible objection against getting in.

The re modern War, in under modern conditions (and war should never be di discussed as if it it were the same und under different conditions, as if what one said about 1914 A.D necessarily applied to the days of Xerxes, Hammurabi or even of Joan of Arc) War always appears to those who hav have not been thinking about it as an aggression or a threat of aggression : Belgium & France Germany in a Serbia invaded by Austria, Germany by Russia, France and

Belgium by Germany, and once for her navy, Britain too. Even Italians will doubtless think of this war in the terms of the occupation of Eastern Venetia in after three years of their own occupation of Western Istria ; indeed they had probably persuaded themselves that if they had not joined in that Venetian occupation would have taken place earlier or in a more fatal manner. War always presents itself to the feelings

of each nation as an art of defence, because fear is its first and most permanent emotion. But in reality modern wars are nothing so simple , They are and particularly they are nothing so sudden. They are part of the machinery of national existence, the an ins at best an insurance against risk at best an insurance against risk, at the worst an argument _ ad hominum kept held in reserve, an me

element of negotiation, an appeal to what is thought of as « justice ». For we must bear in mind that wars are prepared, planned, ?should (all armies provided & alliances made) an before in time of peace and for purpose of peace indeed, they on the old plan of si vis pacem para bellum, in order to prevent their own occurrence. Ab Above all wars constitute

part of the machinary of life in so far as they are supposed to be the only honourable manner in which a people can face certain liabilities, answer certain demands (imagine if Spain had asked us for Gibraltar or Italy asked France for Tunis, let alone questions like the Trentino, Alsace etc etc) and wipe out certain affronts, as France, had xxx asked to M. Clemenceau, would,

have like an honourable duelist, have « wiped out » the affront to Capt. Marchand’s flag by rolling an attempt rolling us (& incidentally herself) in « blood & mind. »

These are the ostensible For the use of war is a thre These are war’s ostensible services : there are others, like commercial monopolies, cessions of spheres of influence, partitions (Persia ≠Morocco) of for other countries as defenceless

places which are also obtained by the threat of war. The threat of War. For mark that in modern days conquest is only an incident once war has broken out, a compensat perquisite, a « compensation » an « indemnification » for sacrifices, and the real use of way in which war is employed is a threat; as a possibility,

let shall we a legal, penal or professional blackmail, and one, oddly enough (though the analogy exists wherever bringandage & flourishes) directed VagainstV mainly against main or founded on upon the possibility of its own occurrence. Behind every diplomatist there has stood a general. And the only way to

get any international (& often any national, as in Ireland or Russia) arrangement allowed or to preserve it without alteration, has been, in M. Ll George’s language, a wit at by the voice of the canon, or, at all events such a symbolic mimicry of a canon’s voice

as a wellbred diplomatist or less well bred demagogue could produce with VonV his own vocal cords, this threat xxx of war as an instrument of peaceful advantage (grown out of the older system VrealityV of war as cattle or slave lifting and appropriation of land and goods) has naturally occasionally

resulted in War itself, & notably in Aug. 1914. But to the nations involved only the war itself has been seen, not the systematic employment of its possibility. And the War itself has changes everything xxx xxx entirely ; for war means defence, defence means (if possible) carrying aggression into the enemy’s camp with further need of defence

on the other side. And defence means the need for unanimity, readiness for sacrifice, secrecy, autocracy and above all for bra breaking off all peaceful, rational & decent relations ?better & thoughts of the people one is at war with.

Hence, a Not to mention all the atrocious proceedings which are an essential

or a ?super added method of attaining its objects which is, as we know, crushing the enemy, breaking his will, making him leave off & (it is added) preventing this ever beginning again. All of which processes of defence & assault, assault & defence, tit for tat

naturally create form a living web & double engined mechanism for m continued destruction, into which cannot be interfered with or stopped on either side for one single second ; mostly a mechanism of bluff, spying and

intrigue, of com the most complicated putting forward of falsehood & suppression of truth. Moreover, and this is no small item, a mechanism xxx by the government of each warring country, a government more & more invested

with necessary despotism, in a chain of responsibility in an increasing load of responsibility towards its own subjects. Not only has our enemy to be utterly in the wrong, but our government has to be utterly in the right. We then get an

intricate play of reciprocal VinternalV violence & fraud, of internal despotism & mendacity, which xxx a play of evil the very interests : fear, hatred, pride, clinging to prestige, brazening lies, etc etc wh into whi entirely

excluding the activity of the peaceful VotherV interests, the interests of good sense, fellow feeling, regret remorse, ect etc which would make for peace. And so, at almost any moment of the war’s complicated ups & downs, an attempt

an offer any approvable place terms is either presented as primitive or interpreted as a sign of defeat ; And the war is more & more thought of as en having no conceivable end save the victory of one side ; and it

therefore goes g on, getting worse & worse, more & more intricate & hopeless, until the li its very material, human, economic and affective, soldiers, money, food & anger, begin to give out. And … più che il dolor pote il diguino

Jan 19

Ll G’s « go on or go under » _ That has immense cogency. Partly the cogency dealt in by all rhetoric, of placing two alternatives in isolated opposition, as if t (which is very rarely the case cf who is not with me is against me) there were no other ones, and moreover increasing the feeling of choice, of need for choice wh by this very suppression of all intermediate possibilities : for the perception of extreme opposition is apt to stimulate the feeling that you are threatened in both sides, that there is no steering between Scylla &

Charybdis (which most usually there is in human affairs) and thereby a sense of hurry, of having to come to a decision, of staking having to bet on one side. The cry « auf … auf » is a famous way device for pushing people into the middle of under the wheels of what is supposed to be fate.

B But what really interests me is the « go under ». We all know what that means. Yet M. Ll. G

might be puzzled to tell me translate that it into any concrete &?other, into descriptive or so to speak historical terms. For if he ans said go under means to be beated I should answer that that is a mere synonym, and I should ask again « well & then ? » Supposing we were beaten ? What events, would what concrete changes would that imply ? And xxx N

?Particularly if those concrete changes were so appaling _ well

say a conquest à la Nebuchadnezzar, the Briton Eng the Brit people removed to Berlin to hang up their herbs on the willows of the ?Hafel, or a conquest à la Philip II or James I, with autodafés or alleles & thumbscrews &boots for everyone who disagreed with Treitschke _ an how and such consequences were one of tr only two conceivable alternative alternative outcomes of the

War, how dared any God expose a nation to such an alternative ? Now here we get a VsimpleV example of the operations of the logique des sentiments, which I deal with before coming to my main illustration thereof. For xxx imp in the xx the all advocation of War as n always exclude the third (& in this case more probable) possibility of a draw or dead lock, the very reason which makes them exclude

that, third alw namely its a deadlock being an in too intolerable to incompatible with the combative complex, or in plain English, an enraged fighting person being unable to support endure the thought of a compromise, th that very incompability between an idea & a state of feeling also excludes the entertaining of the otherwise obvious fact that if two parties are

determined to fight until one of the two goes under, why then one of the two must go under will have to go under (the draw & compromise being previously excluded) and there being only two parties there is an equal chance that it may be either. But That is logic, common sense, & you might imagine that part of the like the gambler or cricketer, the nation dealing in war would lea learn consider that to take a defeat was part of the

good form of the matter. But the passions in pl involved are different : games & gaming involve emulation, desire to down the adversary ; but they do not involve fear and consequently they do not involve hate. So in the case of war we get the apparent paradox that A) each nation absolutely refuses to face the possibility of being the loser ; And B) that each nation is nevertheless entertain the

notion of being beaten with every Pelion on Ossa accumulation of sense of hopeless distress & horror connected with it, the paradox explicable itself in a new being explicable in a formula which however (et pour cause) emotional does leaves it to outsider to find viz. I cannot be beaten. I cannot allow myself to be beaten, because if I did (which for that reason I can’t) I should be exposed to the

unthinkable in the xx. In fact the very unendarableness of the thought of defeat is employed to m make us think we can avoid it.

That That is the emotional syllogism, i.e the emotional convergent cogency of G’s go on or go under. Under cannot happen to us ; but we all allow ourselves to feel the full horror of this impossibility just in order to make it impossible by increasing

our resistance.

All this means that the Ll.G formula (& the xxx state of mind of which it is the expression) is represents an emotional process, with its cortège & complexes of images, in Ll.G & his those who feel like him. It is, to us who can decipher it, the expressions, the graphic which tells us that certain phenomenon are happening in certain

connexions in those people’s souls. But to them (and this also is decipherable for using that graphic) that formula is ou does not appear, & is certainly not intended to appear, as the record of their own emotional & imaginative process on under those particular circum=stances. To them that spoken formula appears to be a statement of objective facts,

i. e. of facts in quite xxx outer circumstances and unaffected by their emotions ; wh indeed p the these emotions of them (wh. they do not, of course, analyse) are supposed to result from the recognition (which is supposed to be a correct) of these facts independent of themselves, Ll.G. probably believes, at the moment at least of

finding his formula formula (for I take it he is not a deliberate dissembler) that he sees, and everyone with eyes must see, the fact of that alternative « go on or go under » as clear and as up fataly separated from himself as the writing on Belshazzar’s wall ; and had Ll.G. lived a few centuries ago, say in Cromwells times, he would xxx

believe that those words « go on or go under» were had been oracularly pronounced by God in answer to his prayer for guidance. Since this is the main change in our ways of thinking about our own likings & dislikings, that formerly they were attributed to a duty & nowadays they are attributed to

reality, to those « facts » which angry people are always telling us to look in the face.

Well, to return to Ll. G & his under. I maintain that were we to press him to state s exactly what he meant by under he would be embarassed to tell us. He could not xxx D. 1918 xxx Neb & Philip II, although he would as a matter of fact, be using vague bible & school book & Macaulay’s Armada

vague images & emotional reminiscences to garnish that under. But he could not pretend that an exhausted xxx Germany would occupy England & subject it to a regime like that of his own xxxx A He could not seriously expect that France was in any way under after 1870, except in so far as she was emotionaly under where she had been in her absurd previous Napoleonic « Nous l’avons eu votre Rhin allemand » and

« A Berlin et à Pekin » days. And the mea mention of that real change to France, namely in her prestige, leads us, I think to the recognition of what the True nature of that threatened underness. The Under is an preposition implying being below, the reverse of above, the something else or some previous moment.

Now by some physi mystery wh. psycho physiology would doubtless solve xxx very love, the spatial relation above=below is intimately connected with the VanV emotional relation of for wh which indeed we have to borrow its vocabulary : viz : elation=depression. To be below our level is to feel in a way we most

vitaly abhor ; to recognise or imagine that others think us below them is a source of such diminution or skinking o of our own vital level, & produces very frequently a defensive reaction of extreme anger & hatred & w Now a nothing is so conducive to such a lowering of our

inner VspiritualV level (prob. accompanied by actual lowering of temperature & tone) as disappointment ,and particularly disappointment after effort & boastful effort, moreover balking. More Such lowering of our self feeling is moreover enormously increased by the belief tha suspense that we ha our illsuccess had had spectators in

whose xxx estimation we are also lowered : a balked man is not depressed, but if his failing had had witnesses, he is depressed or thinks himself so. There is a deminutio capitis in the moral sense. And I venture to think that the under of Ll.G really answer not to any clear & coherent image of

objective facts, but to a very strong felt anticipation of the feeling of being lowered, of loss of prestige in others’ eyes, loss of self esteem in one’s own, of those who have failed in something Vin wh.V they have not only expended huge efforts & sacrifices but about which

they have been arrogantly boastfully self confident.

To go under (perhaps with some shadowy images of going under a yoke like Jugurtha or being drowned like a fallen woman) perhaps probably has but one real contents : to have failed.

Jan 20

Excesses in revolution : they are the eggs which are broken, to be sure, but not the eggs which go into the omelette. They are the wasted This is not xx an Va necessityV inherent in revolutionary reform ; it is in a it if inevitable it is a psychological

necessity….

In saying this it flashes on me that I mean it is due to the wantingness of those who, trying for the omelette, waste the eggs. And that I have employed psychological necessity f as for human

incompetence. Well yes ! I have no objection to such a paraphrase. As analogy physiology has grown out of the study of diseases & malformations of the body, so psychology has largely growned out of the need of

understanding the confusions & delusions of the mind. At least such psychology as I deal in.

Jan 20

B. D. ((Bella Duffy)) said yesterday « Do you notice that when people or peoples set to being far sighted they nearly » always see the wrong thing. » Of course. For people’s m imaginative inertia is rarely

broken except by violent feeling. If they set to thinking about the future, whether in this world or, the next, it is usually because they are uncomfortable in the present. And therefore they think of the future in terms of that temporary feeling, and moreover are apt to use that future as the happy hunting ground for

whatever they are denied in the present, i.e as a sort of reversed present. Now, there is no earthly reason why the future should be a reversed present, or a place of compensation for the present, except in so far as the efforts & actions of the present produce such reversal & compensation, which can

only true to a limited extent, because the future is mainly determined by something further back than the present ; the present does not represent, so to speak, the whole atavism & Mendelism in play. People always think of the future (as they think of anything under the influence of desire, hope or fear) as a kind of empty place with plenty of room & no inhabitants or ways of its own. The color future is & the Kingdom of Heaven is for them a colony of the present.

And, because emotion is what makes them think of the future at all (they being little given to thought wh. is not as they say « practical », hence not all interested in the future for its own sake & apart from their own likings), they naturally think of the future as in xx with subspecies praexentis, and moreover, of the most ?warrant of present things, a present ?want or mood. That is why the further they look they the falser their view is.

Feb 2. 1918