[ 4 ] After he said this, he sat back down on a chair at the table. We
meanwhile wandered around his lecture hall, which was very spacious.
Because no sunlight penetrated the building, only a light like that of a
moonlit night, he had a candle on his table. To my amazement I saw
the candle move around the building, illuminating it, although because
the wick had not been trimmed it did not shed much light. As he was
writing, we saw images of various kinds flying from the table toward the
walls. In that light like a moonlit night, they looked like gorgeous
indigo birds. In the light of day when we opened the door, though, they
looked like the webbed-winged creatures that come out in the evening.
They were in fact things basically true becoming false through his argu-
mentation as he ingeniously chained them together.
[ 5 ] After seeing those visions we went over to the table and asked him
what he was writing now. He said, “I’m on point one: whether nature
comes from life or life comes from nature.”He said that he could argue this
point either way and make it true; but because of some deeply hidden
fear, he dared argue only that nature comes from and originates in life.
He did not dare say that life comes from and originates in nature. We
asked him in a kindly way what his deeply hidden fear was. He said he
feared the possibility that clergy would call him a nature-worshiper,
meaning an atheist, and that lay people would call him a man whose rea-
son was not sound, since both lay people and clergy either believe on the
basis of blind faith or adopt the perspective of those who argue for faith.
[ 6 ] At that point, feeling rather indignant because of our passion for
the truth, we spoke to him and said, “Friend, you are seriously wrong.
Your wisdom (which is really a genius for writing) has led you astray, and
your glorious reputation has seduced you into arguing what you don’t
believe. Surely you are aware that the human mind can be raised above
things on the sensory level—things taken into our thoughts from our
bodily senses—and that when the mind is raised up, it sees above it
things that relate to life, but below it things that relate to nature. What
else is life but love and wisdom? What else is nature but a vessel to receive
love and wisdom, through which they achieve results and accomplish
useful things? Life and nature can become one only if life is the primary
force and nature is its agent. Can light be one with the eye, or sound
with the ear? Where do our sensations of light and sound come from if
not from life? Where do the forms of our organs of sensation come from
if not from nature? What else is the human body but an organ of life?
singke
(singke)
#1