The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

17 The Solidification of the World

Let us now return to the explanation of how a world conforming as far as is possible to the materialistic conception has been effectively realized in the modern period. If this is to be understood, it must be remembered above all that, as has been often pointed out, the human order and the cosmic order are not in reality separated, as they are nowadays all too readily imagined to be; they are on the contrary closely bound together, in such a way that each continuously reacts on the other, so that there is always correspondence between their respective states. This correspondence is essentially implied in the whole doctrine of cycles; without it the traditional data with which the said doctrine is concerned would be almost entirely unintelligible; the relationship existing between certain critical phases of human history and certain cataclysms that occur according to a known astronomical periodicity affords perhaps the most striking example, but it is obvious that this is only an extreme case of correspondences of this kind, which in fact subsist continuously, for there is never any break in the correspondence, though this fact is no doubt less apparent when modifications are taking place only gradually and so almost insensibly.

That being the case, it is quite natural that in the course of cyclical development both the cosmic manifestation as a whole and also human mentality, which is of course necessarily included therein, together follow the same descending course, the nature of which has already been specified as consisting in a gradual movement away from the principle, and thus away from the primal spirituality inherent in the essential pole of manifestation. This course can be described in terms of current terminology (thus incidentally bringing out clearly the correlation under consideration), as a sort of progressive ‘materialization’ of the cosmic environment itself, and it is only when this ‘materialization’ has reached a certain stage, by now already very marked, that the materialistic conception can appear in man as its correlative, together with the general attitude that corresponds with it in practice and fits in, as explained, with the picture of ‘ordinary life’; moreover, in the absence of this factual ‘materialization’ there would not be the least semblance of justification for the corresponding theoretical conception, for the surrounding reality would too obviously give the lie to it all the time. The very idea of matter, as understood by the moderns, could certainly not come to birth except in such conditions; what that idea expresses more or less confusedly is in any case no more than a limit, unattainable while the descent of manifestation is still going on, firstly, because matter is regarded as being in itself something purely quantitative, and secondly because it is supposed to be ‘inert’, and a world in which there was anything really ‘inert’ would for that reason forthwith cease to exist; the idea of ‘matter’ is therefore as illusory as it could possibly be, since it corresponds to no reality of any kind, however lowly its position in the hierarchy of manifested existence. In other words it could be said that ‘materialization’ exists as a tendency, but that ‘materiality’, which would be the complete fulfillment of that tendency, is an unrealizable condition. One consequence of this, among others, is that the mechanical laws theoretically formulated by modern science are never susceptible of an exact and rigorous application to the conditions of experience, wherein there always remain elements that are entirely beyond their grasp, even in the phase in which the part played by such elements is in a sense reduced to a minimum. So it is always a case of approximation, and during this phase, leaving out of account cases that will in such times be exceptional, approximation may suffice for immediate practical needs; but a very crude simplification is nevertheless implied, and it deprives the mechanical laws not only of all claim to ‘exactitude’, but even of all value as ‘science’ in the true meaning of the word; it is moreover only through an approximation of the same kind that the sensible world can take on the appearance of a ‘closed system’, either in the eyes of the physicists or in the sequence of the events that constitute ‘ordinary life’.

Instead of speaking as heretofore of ‘materialization’, it would be possible to use the word ‘solidification’ in a sense that is fundamentally the same, and in a manner perhaps more precise and perhaps even more ‘realistic’, for solid bodies, owing to their density and their impenetrability, do in fact give the illusion of ‘materiality’ more strongly than does anything else. At the same time, this recalls how Bergson, as pointed out earlier, speaks of the ‘solid’ as constituting in some way the true domain of reason, and in this he is evidently referring, whether consciously or otherwise (and doubtless not very consciously, for not only is he speaking generally and without making any reservation, but he even thinks it right to speak of ‘intelligence’ in this connection, as he always does when what he is talking about really appertains to reason alone), more particularly to what he sees around him, namely the ‘scientific’ use to which reason is put. Now the actual occurrence of ‘solidification’ is precisely the true reason why modern science ‘succeeds’, certainly not in its theories which remain as false as before, and in any case change all the time, but in its practical applications. In other periods, when ‘solidification’ was not yet so marked, not only could man never have dreamed of industry as we know it today, but any such industry would actually have been completely impossible in its entirety, as would the ‘ordinary life’ in which industry plays so great a part. This, incidentally, is enough to cut short all the fancies of those so-called ‘clairvoyants’ who, imagining the past on the model of the present, attribute to certain ‘prehistoric’ civilizations of a very remote date something quite similar to the contemporary ‘machine civilization’; this is only one of the forms of error that gives rise to the common saying that ‘history repeats itself’, and it implies a total ignorance of what have been called the qualitative determinations of time.

In order to reach the stage that has been described, man must have lost the use of the faculties which in normal times allowed him to pass beyond the bounds of the sensible world, the loss being due to the existence of ‘materialization’ or ‘solidification’, naturally as effective in him as in the rest of the cosmic manifestation of which he is a part, and producing considerable modifications in his ‘psycho-physiological’ constitution. For even if the sensible world is in a very real sense surrounded by barriers that can be said to be thicker than they were in its earlier states, it is nonetheless true that there can never anywhere be an absolute separation between different orders of existence; any such separation would have the effect of cutting off from reality itself the domain thus isolated, so that in any such event the existence of that domain, that of the sensible world in this instance, would instantly vanish. It might however legitimately be asked how so complete and so general an atrophy of certain faculties has actually come about. In order that it might take place, man had first of all to be induced to turn all his attention exclusively to sensible things; the work of deviation had necessarily to begin in this way, that work which could be said to consist in the ‘manufacturing’ of the present world, and it clearly could not ‘succeed’ in its turn except precisely at this phase of the cycle, and by using, in ‘diabolical’ mode, the existing conditions of the environment itself. So much for this matter, which need not be further insisted on for the moment; nevertheless, the solemn silliness of certain declamations dear to scientific (or rather ‘scientistic’) ‘popularizers’ can scarcely be too much admired, when they are pleased to assert on all occasions that modern science ceaselessly pushes back the boundaries of the known world, which is in fact the exact opposite of the truth: never have those boundaries been so close as they are in the conceptions admitted by this profane self-styled science, never have either the world or man been so shrunken, to the point of their being reduced to mere corporeal entities, deprived, by hypothesis, of the smallest possibility of communication with any other order of reality!

There is also yet another aspect of the question, both reciprocal and complementary to the aspect considered hitherto: man is not restricted at any stage to the passive role of a mere spectator, who must confine himself to forming an idea more or less true, or more or less false, of what is happening around him; on the contrary, he is himself one of the factors that intervene actively in the modification of the world he lives in; and it must be added that he is even a particularly important factor, by reason of the characteristically ‘central’ position he occupies in that world. The mention of this human intervention does not imply that the artificial modifications to which industry subjects the terrestrial environment are alone in view, and in any case they are too obvious to be worth spending time on: they are certainly something to be taken into account, but they are not everything, and the matter now particularly to be considered in relation to the point of view of the present discussion is something quite different, and is not willed by man, at least expressly or consciously, though it nonetheless actually covers a much wider field than do any artificial modifications. The truth is that the materialistic conception, once it has been formed and spread abroad in one way or another, can only serve to further reinforce the very ‘solidification’ of the world that in the first place made it possible; and all the consequences directly or indirectly derived from that conception, including the current notion of ‘ordinary life’, tend only toward this same end, for the general reactions of the cosmic environment do actually change according to the attitude adopted by man toward it. It can be said with truth that certain aspects of reality conceal themselves from anyone who looks upon reality from a profane and materialistic point of view, and they become inaccessible to his observation: this is not a more or less ‘picturesque’ manner of speaking, as some people might be tempted to think, but is the simple and direct statement of a fact, just as it is a fact that animals flee spontaneously and instinctively from the presence of anyone who evinces a hostile attitude toward them. That is why there are some things that can never be grasped by men of learning who are materialists or positivists, and this naturally further confirms their belief in the validity of their conceptions by seeming to afford a sort of negative proof of them, whereas it is really neither more nor less than a direct effect of the conceptions themselves. It is of course by no means the case that the things that elude the materialists have in any sense ceased to exist since the time of, or because of, the birth of materialism and positivism, but they do actually ‘cut themselves off from the domain that is within the reach of profane learning, refraining from penetrating into it in any way that could allow their action or even their existence to be suspected, very much as, in another order not unrelated to the order under consideration, the repository of traditional knowledge veils itself and shuts itself in ever more strictly before the invasion of the modern spirit. This is in a sense the ‘counterpart’ of the limitation of the faculties of the human being to those that are by their nature related to the corporeal modality alone: because of that limitation man becomes, as has been explained, incapable of getting out of the sensible world; because of what has just been called its ‘counterpart’ he loses in addition all chance of becoming aware of a manifest intervention of supra-sensible elements in the sensible world itself. So for him that world has become to the greatest possible extent completely ‘closed’, for it has become ever more ‘solid’ as it has become more isolated from every other order of reality, even from those orders that are nearest to it and simply constitute separate modalities of one and the same individual domain. From the inside of such a world it may appear that ‘ordinary life’ has only to roll on henceforward without trouble or unforeseen accidents, just like the movements of a well regulated ‘mechanism’; is not modern man, having ‘mechanized’ the world around him doing his very best to ‘mechanize’ himself, in all the forms of activity that still remain open to his narrowly limited nature?

Nevertheless, the ‘solidification’ of the world, to whatever length it may actually be carried, can never be complete, and there are limits beyond which it cannot go, since, as explained earlier, arrival at its extreme end-point would be incompatible with any real existence, even of the lowest degree; and moreover, the further ‘solidification’ goes the more precarious it becomes, for the lowest reality is also the least stable; the ever-growing rapidity of the changes taking place in the world today provides all too eloquent a testimony to the truth of this. It cannot but be that ‘fissures’ should develop in this imagined ‘closed system’, which has moreover, owing to its ‘mechanical’ character, something ‘artificial’ about it (this word of course being used in a sense much broader than in its usual application to industrial products alone) that is not such as to inspire confidence in its duration; and there are already at this moment numerous signs indicating most clearly that its unstable equilibrium is on the point of being interrupted. So true is this that what has been said about the materialism and mechanism of the modern period could almost in a certain sense be relegated to the past even now; this of course does not mean that their practical consequences may not continue to develop for a certain time to come, nor that their influence on the general mentality will not persist for a more or less considerable period, if only as a consequence of ‘popularization’ in its various forms, including education in schools at all levels, where there are always plenty of ‘survivals’ of that sort hanging on (this point will be expanded shortly); but it is nonetheless true that at the present moment the very notion of ‘matter’, so painfully worked out through so many different theories, seems to be in course of fading away; nevertheless, there is perhaps no reason to be unduly pleased at the occurrence, because, as will become clearer later on, it can only properly be taken to represent yet one more step toward final dissolution.