(Well, until hordes of impatient Readers start jamming my FReepmail box demanding the next installment ... =)
I do hope all is well with you and yours, Dumb_Ox.
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Capitivity as Counter to Death of Secular Hope Now let us suppose, on the contrary, that I am going through a time of trial, either in my private affairs or in those of the group to which I belong. I long for some deliverance which would bring the trial to an end. The "I hope" in all its strength is directed towards salvation. It really is a matter of my coming out of a darkness in which I am at present plunged, and which may be the darkness of illness, of separation, exile or slavery. It is obviously impossible in such cases to separate the "I hope" from a certain type of situation of which it is really a part. Hope is situated within the framework of the trial, not only corresponding to it, but constituting our being's veritable response. I have used the metaphorical term of darkness, but this metaphor has nothing accidental about it. It is, indeed, true that throughout a trial of the kind I have in mind, I find I am deprived for an indefinite period of a certain light for which I long. In fact, I should say that every trial of this order can be considered as a form of captivity. Let us try to get a closer view of the meaning of the word captivity, or rather let us examine the characteristics of any state which can be described as "being a captive or prisoner." A special kind of endurance is, of course, involved, but what are the conditions under which endurance becomes part of the experience of captivity? Here we must emphasise the part played by duration. I should consider myself a captive if I found myself not merely precipitated into, but as it were pledged by external constraint to a compulsory mode of existence involving restrictions of every kind touching my personal actions. In addition, that which characterises all the situations we are evoking at the moment, is that they invariably imply the impossibility, not necessarily of moving or even of acting in a manner which is relatively free, but of rising to a certain fullness of life, which may be in the realms of sensation or even of thought in the strict sense of the word. It is quite clear, for instance, that the artist or the writer who suffers from a prolonged sterility has literally a sense of being in prison, or, if you prefer, in exile, as though he had really been taken out of the light in which he normally has his being. We can, therefore, say that all captivity partakes of the nature of alienation. It may be in reality that, in tearing me out of myself, it gives me an opportunity of realising far more acutely than I should have done without it, the nature of that lost integrity which I now long to regain. This is illustrated in the case of the invalid for whom the word health arouses a wealth of associations generally unsuspected by those who are well. Yet, at the same time, we must determine not only what is positive but what is illusory in this idea of health which the sick man cherishes. A similar problem is presented when the beloved being whose disappearance I deplore seems to me more real and distinct now he is no longer with me than when I was able to enjoy a mutual and direct relationship with him. I will not elaborate the details of the discussion which would take us away from our subject. I will merely remark that this method of reasoning does not seem to open the way for hope to us: quite on the contrary it is likely to land us in an anguish whence there is no escape, to make us prisoners of an experience which tears our hearts, where fact and memory are endlessly. opposed and, far from merging together, are bound to contradict each other unrelentingly. All that we can say is that this form of reasoning brings into stronger relief the fundamental situation to which it is hope's mission to reply as to a signal of distress. But, it may be objected, are not some situations, where the tragic element seems to be absent, of such a nature as nevertheless to encourage or even to invite the exercise of hope? The woman who is expecting a baby, for instance, is literally inhabited by hope. It seems to me, however, that such examples, and I would even include that of the adolescent who anxiously awaits the coming of love, only seem to confirm what was said above. As a matter of fact, the soul always turns towards a light which it does not yet perceive, a light yet to be born, in the hope of being delivered from its present darkness, the darkness of waiting, a darkness which cannot be prolonged without dragging it in some way towards an organic dissolution. And might we not say in passing that it is from this point of view that such peculiarities as the aberrations frequent in adolescents and expectant mothers are to be explained? In reality, we should probably go a step further in this direction and, interpreting the phenomena somewhat differently from Plato and the leaders of traditional spiritualism, recognise that there is quite a general aspect under which human existence appears as a captivity and that, precisely when it takes on this form, it becomes so to speak subject to hope. It would actually be easy to show, and as we proceed we shall probably realise more fully, that there is also an ever-present possibility of degrading this same existence to a state in which it would gradually lose all capacity for hope. By a paradox which need surprise only the very superficial thinker, the less life is experienced as a captivity the less the soul will be able to see the shining of that veiled, mysterious light, which, we feel sure without any analysis, illumines the very centre of hope's dwelling-place. It is incontestable, for instance, that free-thought impregnated with naturalism, however it may struggle, alas with increasing success, to obliterate certain great contrasts and to flood the world with the harsh light of the lecture hall, however it may at the same time advertise what I have elsewhere styled the category of the perfectly natural, it is--I repeat--incontestable that such a dogmatically standardised free-thought eventually runs the risk of depriving souls of the very rudiments of secular hope. |