THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Wordism: Aldous Huxley

In our thinking we make use of a great variety of symbol-systems - linguistic, mathematical, pictorial, musical, ritualistic. Without such symbol-systems we should have no art, no science, no law, no philosophy, not so much as the rudiments of civilization: in other words, we should be animals. Symbols, then, are indispensable.

But symbols - as the history of our own and every other age makes so abundantly clear - can also be fatal. Consider, for example, the domain of science on the one hand, the domain of politics and religion on the other. Thinking in terms of, and acting in response to, one set of symbols, we have come, in some small measure, to understand and control the elementary forces of nature. Thinking in terms of and acting in response to, another set of symbols, we use these forces as instruments of collective suicide.

In the first case the explanatory symbols were well chosen, carefully analyzed and progressively adapted to the emergent facts of physical existence.

In the second case symbols originally ill chosen were never subjected to thoroughgoing analysis and never re-formulated so as to harmonize with the emergent facts of human existence.

Worse still, these misleading symbols were everywhere treated with a wholly unwarranted respect, as though, in some mysterious way, they were more real than the realities to which they referred.

In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.

Symbols have been used realistically only in those fields which we do not feel to be supremely important.

In every situation involving our deeper impulses we have insisted on using symbols, not merely unrealistically, but idolatrously, even insanely.

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. The fact seems sufficiently obvious.

And yet, throughout the ages, the most profound philosophers, the most learned and acute theologians have constantly fallen into the error of identifying their purely verbal constructions with facts, or into the yet more enormous error of imagining that symbols are somehow more real than what they stand for.

"Only the spirit," said St. Paul, "gives life; the letter kills." "And why," asks Eckhart, "why do you prate of God? Whatever you say of God is untrue."

Such utterances were felt to be profoundly subversive, and respectable people ignored them.

A lie can be extended, propounded and repeated, but not truth; and when you repeat truth, it ceases to be truth, and therefore sacred books are unimportant. It is through self-knowledge, not through belief in somebody else's symbols, that a man comes to the eternal reality, in which his being is grounded.

An education that teaches us not how but what to think is an education that calls for a governing class of pastors and masters.

But the very idea of leading somebody is antisocial and anti-spiritual. To the man who exercises it, leadership brings gratification of the craving for power; to those who are led, it brings the gratification of the desire for certainty and security. But, surely, it is not the voice of reality; for the voice of reality must come to you; it cannot be appealed to, you cannot pray to it.

You cannot entice it into your little cage by placating it, by suppressing yourself or emulating others. That which you ask for you get; but it is not the truth. If you want, and if you petition, you will receive, but you will pay for it in the end.

ME:

Lord, you cannot imagine how great it feels to have someone ELSE, someone who adheres to the basics, stating my basics and expanding on them. I spent half a century coming up with these "simple" things, and finding someone who is able to expound on and restate them accurately gives me a giddy feeling.