The Strained Martinet of Rseemeblanc.
It was odd, Hume thought. It was not blackness, so much as a blackness of mind. Thoughts carried on it though. He founds himself caught up in slightly strained set of ideas, t once very familiar, and yet strangely alien. He remember that he had always felt that others mistreated his words. They had read his attacks upon external reality as if they were a theory of knowledge. Hence they had read him, when he claimed that humans involves a shifting amalgam of perception to have been making primarily a statement about what it was o learn. There was of course, as far as philosophy was concerned a dimension one could read him like this. And yet, it really missed most of what was most orignl in this work. He new thought.
By which Hume means that the originality of the supposition lies not in the fact that it exists at the extreme of a philsophicial spectrum, which ran from claims that only perception were real, or the opposite claim that really was what was real. Hume of course in regard to philosophy at least, sets up the spectrum in this manner, and yet that dos not mean that this spectrum was all there was to his thought. Indeed he is clear to attribute the spectrum itself to other philosophers, In his himself, and so very, very carefully he always knew he was hollowing out something else,, namely the consequecne for a world which was moved by hidden sprining, and not merely bland externl realities. What drives a perception is the therefore what is happening in brain, and in the body, and not what was of the world.
This then, leads hi to rembmer Little dorrit herself, as h last saw her, plain aalms frightned of identity. Other thoughts come pling in. he rembmers tht he ha argued tht vivacity by itself was never enough to persuade one the continued existence ofa think. Identity, that is the simple belief that things not present before my mind were real, was hen not immediately tid to her ow domain;
A strained wisper, almosy beyond all hearing stirs in her mind now, ad says, ‘ I knew I never would have liked her, if I had allowed myself an opinion.
Hume listens carefully, wondering if the voice wil lsay soemthign else. There is just the hard velvet of the night.
He continue remembering. The argument he had finished up the discussion on reason would have had a strange corrollary, he recalled. Reason will abstract from custom a relation assuredly,, and according to the second of his definition. A mere sequences of impressions is therefore at once corrected and explained,. But in doing this, one becomes open to a doubt, in that one sees how such a train of thought was of itself vapid and problematic. Reasosn is therefore caught up, as it thins on how an idea would be across time in a law of diminishing eturns. Each thought rises new doubt. Ideas therefore is reason alone devolve into a shadow world, where doubt and truths of reasosn become curiously blened into on thought, and the extrmes of cosciousness. Iwas was he then argued only the rigours of reality itself which saved one from this debacle.
That is, I was only realitywhich was able in one throw, not merely to mitigate the power of reasosn, but also, ven more importantly make it make sene. Reasosn breaks the stangle hold os experience, and it crazy demand that my world (the world of my perceptions alone0 and the world itself were one and he same. Reason teachs us, then the very modest calim that a perception is mine as it is a probability, and therefore as it can always be allowed to be something else. Reason, combined with reality accords ht reality its due. The Doubt, the strange corrosion of thought becomes therefore a positive and vibrant force for life itself.. The twin branches of reason were never simply untied in the conscious mind (and I with reason itself), anymore that one could untie poly-theism and monotheism. Indeed the point was that he two remained apart, ans that whatever stratedhy one pursued, whether it wa the vegetable world or the blind force, always ld into confusions and paradoxs. The two ere then merely united in the practicle engagement of th orld. Or much, buch better, ni the strange act of being able to perceive an act in a rold, as if itweresimply there, when everything, in reasosn at least screamedat one that there as nothing simply in that reality.
Here Hume thought it behoved his genius that every on has ignored this implication, or rather sen it only in the the most negatve of frms.iter as merely a ympotm of scepticism (which s of coursenever was, o never purely: He rembmered that many had thught his effect profoundly negative!0; or as an element testifying to the failre o thought, which needed to be made good by the comfortining milky-drink of sysnthesis.; or that there was a grounding which lay in morality, (whih, whie hum thought was not wrng, so not necessay); or that this attack of reality was made t the coast of creating a random mind 9and therefore ignoring the fact that all ideas simply are not equal, hich was always the point. Thinking of it, that one on morality was almost the most inspid of the lot. Hume himself had afer ll be assiduously careful to pull passions apart from impressions. His point was not that one eneded to look at one system, and then th other, and then allow a simple synthesis of the two. Bt rather the far mre provblematic remak tht inoder to uncover the powers of viviacity one needed to pul lit apart from the powers of passion. Passions endlessly bother the viviacious (as little Dorrit was bithered by society), in tht hey endlessly counterfeit it feeling. The ake its vivacity, and substitutes sherry and sentiement!
Tevoice is there again. It says, it was sure it was sorry, but how was she meant to know? And anyay the reseemblence between the two old and new flame showed the point.
Hume tries o ignore it. Or at least feigns to do so, thinking prhap ony time is needed.
His thought continues.
He no rembmers tht he ha argued , however that the principle of ressemblence was rather different form the other two. The other tow, and the reaossn based pon then had been founded of vivacities pure and simple. The belief in the external world, which was founded on ressemblanc made no such intial movs. On beleifed int thi world not because the thought it inspired were vivid. Indeed most of te time they simply were not. one beleifed in this world because, on the contary on had an idea of pecualir costnacy between impressions. Here one had a thought which was created withn the world,a nd yet which appeared not to have a principle for it own The mind therefore, whether by custom or reaossn, would then always attmot to supply th missing dimension, and conconct argumen either vulgar or philosophic guraantteing the nature of this reality. They therefore of course miss the exact point. This pijt was alays hat such a reality ws never real, by defintion. How could it be when it related merely to the hidden springs of a bodies nature. Those springs were then caught across multidues an strands of actions in the world, or are almot certainly for of coruse he minds cannot know this save in its abltiy to engange).
But…! (it was the strained force again0
But Hume the remember his was what made ressemblanc so strange. Ressemblance he suggetd related to pricess of the brain before it perceives. Different perceptions were of course the cosntrauct of the hidden springs of the world.It was easy to inmgaine the, in a brain which must surely be fininte (or at leas the poit that the human enters intoit must assuredly be so), that the same type of process cane caught up in making the same type of thoughts (anlthou Hume notes with a dry smile this is itsels a resemblance, whuch is why he would no inistst upon it). Perhaos it would be better to say as he did that in temrs of the mind itsel, as t resembles, it is disposed to think, it finds itself thinking in ways that are caught up in each other. To ressmeble is then to find oneself in thinking already disposed to a certain perception, already unable to tell that perception part. The advantage then of this second defintion) was that it allows for the second (or is it the third) aspect of ressemblance , to pul ltu rom the last. For ressemblence os, in turns of the rogan the brin not only the same deployment of reource in the mind, but alo the overspill into other thoughts as well ach thought, each id as it involves itself in eseemblence stops then being solely it own. On the contrary it bleeds, and mingles the blood of its mpresisons with myriad other thought and impressions, all togter coposing an idea.
Ressemblance at once so simple become athre w phenomena. Firstly they are the rpouct of reasosn. Reason, that I consiousness as it doubts and doubs its doubts, gradually hounds out and marginalized vivicaties. It repeats, it ressembles, ad they te ressmblence is only knwn as the mind becomes in giving it, in thinking it progressively less and ess certin. Hence the laim Hue claims that all hilosophcal releations 9which constitue the final point in this process are based ultimately upon ressemblanc, but ressemblanc of the oddest kind. That ressembles are not specific relations, so much as wider generalities which ae capable of straddling very many worlds What then ressembles here is actually what is hardest to fathom , that is it si reasosn, hich breeds of iself it on demands that in a reasosnable orl, things behave in such and such a away.. Hence Identity a relation in philosophy, a relation within reason, which requires then mind to suppose something, abstractly is held onto, inspite of all appearance to the contrary. Or Space and time which run into the very gauntlet of realions andthier perceived resemblances, enorcing te mind o compose a single realtion to embrace all of reality. Here Hume no doubt allows Himself a smile. It was very much on these three last abstract relation that that successor of his had pitched his thinking. He had therefore been prepared to had all of thought over, on a plate to reason and the astrct, and had never really understood that actually the real mystery of the mind lay not in vapid apriori principles, (which any logic, however threadbare might constuct), so much as in thir lack: Hume also notes, wit very dry satification that the ‘Clue’ to the I think, that thinker trumps as his own, but then admits is merely an empirical a posteri principle , when if he had wanted to be more honest, he might have admitted he had filtched, for his own purposes to succeeding section in Hume.
The second incarnation of resemblance is then framed within causaility. Here Hume Notes carefully in the mind this construction. Whathe has not said is that it is baed within causaility. On the contrary he is very clear in hisargument that there can never be a real tran of causes running between objects and heir perceptions. The entire question is essentially a nonsense. Causaility ninternal t th minds tht discover I: And therefore to speak correct internal to perceptions itself. it is then a produc of viviacity, and of Little dorrit. And yet there is point in the deployment of thought, tat those thoughts point to an outside of the mind, an outside beyond any possiblity of thought, an outside which is only attribtuble to a ‘causality’ which is not real cause: A causailty of Brian or of external reality. The challenge then to the sceptic is to think this order without dissolving into either domain. That is one must not simply endorse some straight parreleism o the mind and the bod, where changes of one and changes n the other ae simply synmous. Not only would this then fail to understand the essential difference between the body, as a whole and the perception. I is of course of the evel of the perception the body itself is. But also, and evne more profoundly , if one takes a single organ, say the barin, one ould run the risk of even their confsing brain with perceivings. That is, what makes a brin is no doubt ‘brainy thinking’: it would be perfectl easy to imagine then the brain was a lttile living creature within the mind, with its own needs and emands. But tht is sill different to the mind. The mind is never the brain, but what reaches beyond the brain or body: what includes ohe rdimension to it, and it it. It is hen boh inhaiting a brain 9and therefore bound up by the hard mechaicins of what that brain doe) and yet remains soemthign untterly distinct, whose connection with the external world include the brain simly as a member in it subset.
It is then between these to, between then the inahabitence of the brain and the brain as a subset that ressemblanc finds itself put. It is the medium, the mode which runs across the the two. A ressemblanc ins hen at one he most personal of thought. It related then to the mind and the deployment of ideas themselves, and appears o have no other external cause. Ressembances are then (in a way contiguities and causalities clealy not) my thoughts. They are ht eceonencion, the necessary links the deploying mind makes as it has impressions for its own. And yet at the same time these impressions,a nd the ressembance itself is daged beond the mind itself, it related to the brain, and to its hidden springs. Tht is to he elements of its physical structure. Or, far more importantly to elements hich see that physcal structure already at play in thing beyond it (things from which vivacities come and go within it) . the brain is the the filter in which the world is made personal. As I have a brain, the world becomes my own personal property, in he sense that the deployment of my mind gives the connection between things: gives value added to this connection, :makes this connection their. The Brain then being the physical expression, the axis or lus or nexus of the physical world in which this nexus, this making personal is givien. in owning then a brain, one is possessd by its connections. One ons then (as one owns a limted stock company, or has a stake in society. What owns the brain ae then the rag back of impressions that make ourselves. These togtehr then claim their stake. The demand a legacy in the brain, and a retun. They speculate across its physicality. Or better then form a sepcualtino of tht physicality.
The brain however then possess thse perception, these ideas, in whatever dark chamber of the mind it chooses to place thm. The ideas (and the impressions) are then its hoar. And as their guardian it piles then up or arranges them to its advantge as the mood suits in its Dragon-reality.
To see a ressemblance is to have a world as peculiarly ones own, as on owns a brain, which nonetheless possess one onwn sould. It is then to be makig connectiong, in an axis where strange extra links occur. Links the secptic knows of only too well.
Hume pauses in his thoughts (or were thy someone elses). Nothing no voice. Strange he had hoped there might be. He carries one with the reverie.
This was then the problem with the real world assumptions of both the vulgar world, and reasoned. Both assumptions simply failed to grasp the real robem (but then wht idea could grasp the problem, as the springs must remain hidden); the problem that is of the owning and possing of the brain. In its stead, the vulgar explaination, maxamised as it utilized all the resources of ressmeblance to build itself a world. Rressemablcne therefore einformed the assumption of identieis (which it immediately collected), and gave the mind the thought that who perception a,lhothu sperates by long tim were really one and the same (it therefore built into the world narrative). Here Hume pauses. The point he says here is that what is realy here is the fracture lines: that is what is real (in the absence of Little Drrit rembmer, for ressembance does not start with reality, but the gaps in reality. It is then only causalities or contiguities the occupy his gap…
“ I said as much I said that I would never say anthing until someone new. I just widh it had been him.”
The is the vice again.Hume stops, seeming surprised, he clearly had notquite expected it hear. He still cannot tell much about its owner though. Not even whether is male or female.
He wais to see if there is anything else. There is not. He cairres on. The Point here he supposes is tat the hidden spring are well named. The point I the agency, which is not causaul in which the mind if bound up to perceiving a world a if I were another, and yet no influence is thinkable, under any circumstance between mind and world, is the very stuff of that hiding. The mind is then necessary caught up in forces from without, and yet can never know how those forces occupy it: that is how the springs are themselves hidden in it, and with it. The hiding itself remain essential to its action: it is the hidden force; or better a force which demands always to be hidden, and cannot be grasp save in that hidingor better in the strange agency binding up the two: the agency ta is of ressembance, hich breeds itself within a mind as it inhabits a brain.
Or to put this point better, it is bootless to try the esacpe the problem of the back between thought and world by attempting to maxamise the problem. That is to dron in in a weter of Paths about the differences between what actually is real, and what is givien reality in the mind. This is a version of the standard philosophical move. Likewsie it is pointless to simply hope one can organize oneself out the problem, as if with tuetonic know how, and the correct marshalling of armies, the problem might be defeated. Nor is it for Hume’s money, worth if Baroque baaoque complexitie atmepting to breed within ones thought a junctre poit wherebody and souls meet, a sinous fold were one is caught up by the other which it changes, as it is grasped by it, an as it grasps it. Sch a hazy line, such a sinous fold might indeed be thought, and yet for Hume remains too problematic, too likely to take one far, very far from his own project.
Far better, he would argue to breed a thought which localizes in one organ the proble, the problem is hen a problem of the brain. Ans which then creates a single principle which necessarily straddles this problem: Which as it were condtions the mind by running in the obverse direction to normal rpicniples. Norml principles run the vfrom he real world to the mind which givies itself in habiting that world. The Flow is from impressions to idea: from vivacity to the attempt to preserve that vivacity. Essemblance then is that which runs, and must run the other way. As I have own a body, I imposse on hat body rgours. That is I impose on that scrap of matter an extra btuden,- the burden of being mine. That is the burden of doing things to me because it belongs to me. My ownership then, ofr the brain. My demand that it si mine, and what it does is mine (as a share holder demands the company represent its itnerest0, then gives the hidden spring of the matte,r of the brain it power. these sprinswill thn, as they are givien in the brain possess my soul as heir own immediate property. A am given then in th currency of their action, given by tht cureency. I am their immediate possession. I ressemble in then grasping this fact: Elemts which allow me to own a world by allowing me to own my my brain, giv me the rules into which the the mind tumles into the brain as it property: as what it creates 9and therefore as what has right to o with it as it will0. I own the brian then as its cusondin, its leal guardian. I have rights which I share ith other diemnsino of myself over it0, and yet these rights are founded almost on a patch. On a convention. The brain is mine, and I own it, beause all the part sof me, all the elements in what I might call an idenity have agreed to come togther. If then one pulls away, madenss no doubt results 9and a collapse of idenity),a nd yet the world itself remains the same 9even for the perceptions, which have a reality beyond their pact0. the brian, bu contrastpossess the mind, and needs then to not care for it at all. It has a right to docwith it what it will – or what it can.
This last piont matters, when third form of ressembalnce is considered. Viewed from the persepcive of contiguity, the brain in its glaoing possession, carries not allforthe order of things. It herefoe invariably overspills the makr, and claims to much to itself, and for itself ach de will therefore overspill its dimenions, and include elements which were merely proximate in th brain. In the case of understanding such addional realities will be relatively easy to occlude, as they lack the smar of vivacity (reamin as ey do ideas). the confgure then merely an additional halo a junction box, or set of sockets by which addino truths (one never simply given to thought) might be bolted onto a thinker. The same however is not true for the passions. Each passion will breed into another passion, and it therefore comes absolutely impossible to ever clearly same what feeling is and why. Old passions (and their thoughts) are endlessly being re-invigorated by new passions, and the mind endlessly echoes in memroies of the past.
‘ oh; exclaims the vioce.
Hue pauses. The says slowly. The point here is that these eches are at once of something in the past: The past passin (and its assocated image). But also, and even more important share of the future. I mean here that each passion, as it confuses itself with all the rest, and emerges into them: eachpassion will therefre know in advance were it is likely to lead. That is what other assions, and what other ideas associated within those passions might be. The ressemblence is then also echoing of into a future. All the more so when one considers the effect of time. A baby no doubt is open to numerous dark urges. Is feelings are indistinct. Its thoughts not truly its own: O rathr which slip readily ino other thought. The same is then not the case with an adult. For them, their mind’s psisons have far more substance. They know therefore from experience where a thought migh lead, and can prefigure their feelings (or ven attempt to mtigate their effects).
Again nothing: But Hume can almost feel the listenig presence. He continues.
Past thoughts, are then spawned int a future, and do so acrss eches in the mind.
Nthing: Merely the listening solence louder. The Dkness more opaque. Almost liquid.
Here one nees to rembmer tht all important distinction. The passion peel out from iunder one another. Eh passion prefigures a future because it is already essentially within it. I mean each passions is caught up in other feelings which it ntarally contains, much as the impression of a white light or indeed any cour ctchs up other colurs within it.
‘ I kenw I did not need her. I kew I sayw more, but within different vivacities. I knew I was better, whatever any cleaver one might say. not that I ever noticed her
But, Hume continue, the point is that passions then enrap feeling which are givien already in the process of moveing out from them, even as that feeling is felt. A fa passion, is henat once both what it is in th mind,and yet, as th viviacious impressions also doe, contains elements which it is not yet: Which it is becoming already. It Echoes then into what it is doing. Or rtahr finds itselstubbornly doing soemthign else.
Here what matter is that this stubbornness comes from. It comes say from the natural habit of the mind to desire to annex its thought to and for itself. It finds then elements which it cannot simpy own, and which drag it into other dimensions of itself (in which yet other thoughts are). The future is therefore represent in the overspill of an principle (that is in a ressemblnce), which in this spilling over, or rather by it, forces a mind ino other predelictions. It is the future then in that it is the undden: that which is not pwned (as it realtes to the strange possessions in a soul).
“ Yes: Is is like a ghost. A Past. Or better something tht was told to one along time ago. At th start of the story the props were there: the foundations were unclear. And yet then, the shuddering was lost into the plot lines. One always new there was soemthign else, soemthign hidden, and yet had to ignore it. A lsave M. alone knew the sighng but…’
But perhaps it was more diffult to tell what causes then. Hume adds, smiling. He feelins this second gurss is probably the ay to now continue wth the voice. I seems apprioate to him to double it up.
Hume means, he then continues, that one can only confgre tese links by experience, an hen not entirely. The experienced mind will then possibl be abe to forge a though larg enough to b able to contain very many differing passions. And yet the same mind will also know that some passions will escape (and ha better have ruses to tackle this escape). But even more, the same mind will have also know tht one cannot simply annex this oning. There ill always be thoughts hich must escape the raft of feelings: More needs then resource 9and additional thoughts in readiness. Although hereof course there is the real problem that if ne allows onesthe luxury of thinking these two early then th mind will resolve itself arng. Timeing beoming important: Or as me might discuss tlatter the readiness of the mid to here the pas (understood in its past – as a mere echo) in the name in influencing the future.
‘ if one does not do that what then?’ I isth voice of a women., but Hume stil lcan hardly sar many more abot it.
‘Well’ he addes, being at fist more concersation, but then (as it illicitly no response nore impersonal again : ; well the point of what I say here is that any attemot to master the passions involved here must be violent I mean one cannot simply control them. Or rather The only way to control such illusions is no doubt by a rivl feeling, which is equally as storng, and passionate. The only medicine then for passion, on the one hand is passion ( thevery darkenss seems to recoil, of shudder shadow here, but it is gone in the instant). Hume continues: but here, he adds, there is another option. It is of course possible to simply ignore the effects the passions have here. One could then set ones mind to the passions weel, and claim then all for ones own, in ones pride. Now such a pride might be of two distinct kinds perhaps. On the one ahnd there is the normal direct pride. The pride that thinks the world ishardly large enough for it, and its thoughts. Tis is a pride which the listens to the ressmebances, but listens to then as a part of their story
That is a cleever one then. A man you also knows the truth. One can only ever be an oracle and dream fo such a one if they arealready knowing what wh oasre saying. But there is death there’
Indeed, adds Hume a death. The Pride will look the ressemblnce in the face. It il lsit as it were under the very sord of damolces itself. It will then assert a right of owning an possessing theressemblance, and al lthe affects in the same breadth. All pressures on the body become for it merely its own ( It has communial meals, and yet seeks to enfold its food as its possession therefore.
“ but it is caught up in the ruin: the the deat hof its soul’
Assuredly, Hume replies. I cannot udenrstand that it does not simply hav a ight to own everything Soemthing, even if ‘ even if it were the ruins of an onld house, wil posess it. I sts then of a window ledge, in house held up by props, and is crushed in the ruin”.
Mabe, tht is a good simile, continues then Hume. The other option is to to matsr ownership but possessing. The Mind then migh feel it onlyowns anything as it is possessed by seothing else. Possessed that is by its feelings. It therefore wil lsee itself as the apostle of someone else, or better soemthign else, which it might call a God.
“ this means, that it wil lthink itself a physical vixtim perhaps: One whose remedy is a part of the illness: the physically therefore gives the sense they are possed. Morevoer when latter they come to own there body again thy might find the world ather different’
Hue look here thoughtful. He has not thought this bit through before. But, she then adds, the poijt is that such an indvidual can straddle all their passions, and can indeed gernate a self which contains them. And yet in doing so the cost is very high. They I a sense will not exist save in this attribution. That is they re exist in bein that which inexporaby is diversity: what is arrane across all the things they are. However at the same time as their own abilty to say they are anything other thn this vicim of destiny (or of fate), to all other they will appea as some inexorbitl force. They have the rare ability to claim a right to feelings that more properly might be thought of as something shared between minds. They are therefore almost be defintion therefore inhuman. Or much better the defy humanity: theyecho across it, bending every feeling, and desire of others to their inexorbabl will. As then they are possessed by another, they own not only their own lives, but also the lives of others. Until
“ Until thawted by that which claims to own what can only be possedd. It was then why, ecause hey wer almost the same thing, that they ruined one another. That is clear to me now”
te voice, had, and deep, seema to trai lof here. Hume has an impression the darkness in light, the presene if gong. And yet his curiousity is alight. He wishes more then this odd encounter. He contines.
The argument then is that contguious based ressembance create a surplus in the passions, The mind might seek either to own that surplus, and have it as ts possiesion,: or alternativelyit migh seek to be possied by it (and own everything tht depends upon it). In the first the world, in it material existence appears at the minds beck and call. And yet, as such posess is ultimately bootless. I mean it si impossible, then death anddestruction or at least failure is the likely outcome. Liekwise the opposite is the case.which forces the mind into domains it might not have had, this causes the mind a real povblem. What can I do? It cannot simply oppose these thoughts with Little Dorrit. She is working out quite a different thread of her own, and finds the enagement her oppressive .
It wil lthen resource either of oprression: To giving the passions that is get extra a violent does of soemthign else…
“ No!”: it is not a scream, but rather closer to a ra, or fury or anger;: the darkenss is intese again huem smiles,ere at least was a reponse.
“ no1 I did nto do anything thought. I culd have done. I was stogner than he. But felt in the face of those screing demands I could do nothing, save fear. The violence then he used was really my violence. T was th stength ha, hic he had screwed out of me, as he tried to rew out my mind. Ad he tried pursudae me tht things were other. All the cleverones do. That is why I named them this’
Hume feels he has something to go on now. He continues. That this voilence is natural. How else could a division be given? Her problem was of course was that she could not act, because of her (it is strange he thinks talking to a voice) because if she represents the ressemblong element itself, it is at once all violence (there is nothing more violent then finding ones thought are no ones own: Nothing more violent than finding they Can Not be ones own – now or forever). And yet that violence cannever be itself own by the ressemling. They are merely its handmaidens, or even worse the passive force which needs to be rendered (in order that an integral identity, which it at another level is based upon such ressemlenc is respected).
“ maybe: More that the ressembling is not itself in the world. It is not of itself of the world as it is ressembance. It is caught them by being something else. In a story which is never ones own. That was the problem which no-one could here. They thought it was all that Little Dorrit’s story. It was also mine. And because no-one realized that I but nearly choked often! Although I sipose it turned out right on he was dead and he was in Holland or dead)”
Hume pauses. There is no more. He wonders what to make of this outburst, the longest by far. He decides to start somewhere else, with his own working, and see if h can build back towards the voice.
The thing, he says about identity, is it is based upon a dream. Or better it is based upon a resemblance whose mode of operations is to install counter point into the flow of perceptions. One is then faced with a large number of external perceptions, flowing though ones mind: it is in these impressions resemblance breeds itself, initially perhaps as an identity. That is there appears within all this flow an element that has not changed: which as one thinks links up all the perception one as had in a single idea.To think it is therefore to think neither one nor many. The perceptions themselves are of course one and alone. It is the idea which as it is naturally vivacious in itself (that is as it carried many impressions within it, or itself) is no to be thought as anything other than a plurality.
‘This I think I take to be what you mean by your remark about our Amy. Who mean that resemblance did without and does without the vivacities being transferedby relations between perceptions themselves Radically different impressions become therefore intermeshed into one another. Or, perhaps better, impressions which are seprated by a chasme of time become all the same caught up in each other, and therefore act as if they were vivacious. Ressemblance, as was mentioned so long before is opposed to time. Go perhaps better, it creates an analogue to vivacities as the very directin of temporal fllow. Three further point surely follow from this.
Firstly, and by far the most importantly, the means for determining resemblance is clearly highly problematic. It is not simply given in the impressions themselves, which never could be said to ressemble. Likewise it does not pertain to the identities formed, for if it did the conclusion would needs to made tat hese realtieshas there own reality beyond our perceptions, which is clear nonsense (or at best a dubious and debateble propostion). On the contrary, as said before, resemblance is itself the creature of the soemthign rather undefianble. We could know it either in terms of te brain’s overspill of peception, or some similarity in the minds deployment, which we necessarily experience in a ressembling thought. Rssembalnce then takes one into a slightly different reality than simple perception, a reality were one necessary feels that one is a part in the world one is able to grasp as if one were not a part (and yet of course what exactly that being a part might be is forever lost). There are then no doubt, and quite hidden from us numerous highly effective rules by which resemblance is being constructed in us (rules that almost certainly interconnect our bodies and another) and yet one cannot of course know that. One exists therefore merely in the legacy of a link. Nay in the demand that there is a connection,a nd lacks any real grasp t what that connection of itself could be (or at least does so here).
There is therefore at it were always a tension within the ressembling perception. That is always a problem of whether or not it is really ressembling anything. Here of coruse no doubt experience (and therefre the principle of causaility and contiguity)can play their role. I see my room with its fire soked high, I see it later without a fire at all, and have no difficulty in thinking the difference. And yetas had been said these causalities are based already on the suppositon of a resemblance. To llok (and to uncover) that cause it must already be thought that there is a degeree of ressembling here. Morevoer soemthine the question of ressembling is more complex. Two stories might ressemble each other (say the Odyssey and some tale of pacific isles, and yet one every single point the mind can fix on reamnapart. Nr in this cse can their be any connection between the two dimensions. Th mind (curtosery of its strange deployment) willthen find in itself links, which splice it to a world, as an element within its fabric, and yet without ever knowing exactly what he element is. Nor should this dimension prove too much of a surprise to us. One remembers hat ressemablnce sets its face against Amy (and here relations), or does so initially (or to be more explicit, ressemblance simply ignores her). It therefore needs to carry its own rendition of the split between ideas and impressions within itself. Here to ressemble might of itself breed the idea of the identical, but only does so in between a space of one and many, and in the name of differences between its different ressembling elements, without which the pricnple would have no effect in itself. that is it needs, as it creates an analogue to ivivacity, the difference between the ressembling elements, as it is theredifferences tt allow it to grow.
Perhaps one might then say that resemblance are less like a simple match, for everything I have said so far makes that similarity problematic (it is only my Eye (I) that is capable of saying green and green are the same therefore). Nor is resemblance simply immediate. A deep resemblance between narrative or poems,or memroeis might only emerge across time, or might be highly complex, as all the elements of the impressions reamin distinct, and yet a ressemblacne is thought nonetheless.the former case is that of the stories mentioned above. The latter case is hat of language. For who would not say that languages ressemble one another, and yet at eac point each language is of course itself alone, and lacks all resselmbling. Nor is this a question of simple analogy, if by that one meansa a parreleleism in use. The point of the ressembance of language is not that two sets of grunts orchestrate themselves in similar patterns and so as one then in the other0 but rather that they are caught up in solving, ni their own unique way he sme set of problems. That is the question is one of deployment in thinking, and not mere analogy.the question is then asked of dpelyment, and how and why and when it breeds the ressembling mind. The question is not asked of whole sets of things, but rather of the process into which those things are being given. Hence perhaps, uniquely it might make very little sense to think of resemblance simply in terms of the links it forges within itsef. One must rather ask questions of the forging process of itself. Or to put it another way, perhaps one should underser the ressembling mind as the qestioninng mind. It is a mind where it can feel itself interlinked to a wolrd so much greater than itself. it knows the links are being madw with t, and yet cannot grasp (as yet) the exact nature of those links (for who can grasps a deployment until it is given). To ressemble is therefore to ask of oneself and the world, how the pair are givien in the single throw/ that is where is thepoint one is being deployed within the world, in giving that world? An how does that effect what one can thin, and wht one see. The turte little examples such as the colur green resembling green are then poorly understood I one gets on futtehr that the green itself, the point leis not in the green, and not in the eye and brai that givien me the green, but rather in the fact is seeing green I am deployed across numerous times: a have in one giving of the world an acces point onto any other elements in he orld. It is hen to ask a question of oneself and the world, a uestion as to whtehr this giving matter/ as to what might follow on from it? Where is it leading - ? is it merely an epihenomena of the brain or even wose the mind, or is it of the world itsel.one needs then to ask this question, before one simply givies the idenity, which naturally is formed in this multiple. Or to put ti better, this is the very question, whos solution I experience in an identiy (which is of course always vunlernable, ads the resemblance, an its delpymen miht be pulled elsewhere).
This then leads to the second deep point. The ressemblance one finds oneself caught by share two facets of the dream. On the one hand they are never simply locatable within the world, as is now established. On the other hand, they cannot be anymore separated from that world. The reams a th reality become therefore indsitnguishible. This is no doubt made al lthe more urgent because, taken in themselves (that is as they are before themselves) theressmebncs are numeous, their lins, as it is being constructed witin dlpyment, needs tem to be multiple, and complex. One will then live as it were in two heads, on the one the very bland narraties of everyday life will and much continue pretty much as before. On the other, a secret truth is being fashioned. Nor is the any necessary connection in that fashioning and the explanation, that is the causailities and contiguities bred withn the mnd, as the delpyement os being made…
“ I was right, and right again therefore. I felt in a dream, I felt that the only thing one could do was to cover ones face. I felt Tat someone elses nees to solve the affair, which was too great for me. I merely knew every ws linked. That these seeming evens were somehow caught up in each other. That tey all we not only a dream, bit a part in the same drem’
Hume smiling quickly interrupts ere.
This then leads one to the final point, which likewise has tw dimensions. On the one hand it is clear hat each ressemalnce is necessarily multiple, and that it is this plurality which enables it to set its ace against Amy (as it were). It makes no difference therefore when one saw the impressions one is intermeshing. Very distinct impressions become as one. On thnothr hand, they can of cours only become as another if on mind encessaroly assumes thsoemthign,liem an externa story, a narrativ which includes those objects within it, and runs counter to the the reality of the perception. This is where your violences fit in.
But not again the genuinely ambivalent structure of this vilence. On the one ajnd all this innocent deployment can only be understood in terms of an eruptiv vilence which screw down onto it fro outside.Ad yet this screwing of itsel has two dimension. Firstly It is as once external to the ressembling object, it appeas to erupt upon it, and force it into actipn, and yet on another level is dependent upon it
“ that was him alright. He was so much smaller than Me, and yet was so much more violent”
But secondly, there s always more in th ressembacne than in the object. I mean here than one might well resolve numerous impressions into the histoy of a single knife or fork, and yet that history is also a part in othe deployement (the history of table manner, or of a life), and never simply summed up in the object. In a sense the objects which claim then to be the cause of the ressemblances are the least point of interest within the process, and not the most important. That is the resemblance is always finding extra ways to undermine or interlink what the pbjects claim for their own. There is then an entire shuttle-cock history which opens out there betweent he retences of objects (and the understandings they demand) the ressembences which have already move elsewhere.
“ That was right too! Yoy also are an oriciale. Youmust be a clever one. That was certain it. I said about the ghosts. I knew that somehow all my dreams were interlinked. Ad thet tha interlinking was caught up in the ruin of thehouse. And tht run was caught up in the sound, in the ghost; in the future whose resemblance was awaiting being given. That is in the deployement which was busy mpdiblising itself within the shdders, within the dust far, and would erupt. Perhaps my mistake then, was as yu ay ot being able to tell a past for a future’
Here soe,thing happens hich statrleles Hume. An ey 9and it is only ne0 appears out th gloom, with nothing suppoting it, not even an increae or a decrase of the darkness itself. it is merely an eye, an inveritalbe fact (though hume) an impression, torn asunder from it body, winkin inmthe void. The eye Hue saw looked tires and old. It was also watching him closely.
He stutrred. Sumoned up his never : it was rather out of the ordinary h though, but then that was what made life. He then contined.
The point is a good one he says. Ressemlance by defintion as it dploys strikes across all the chords of time, and yet not qute in the same way. Here perhaps it might be possible to define an order, whose dividing line is the past. In that past, perhaps, are two sets of ideas. on the one hand there are those idea whose deployement is readily givien. these are then pulled buy the mind 9and yet attributed to another) ito external objects. The Past is then seen as the immediate product of an impossible present. A present which in it unity necessarily renders the mind anew. And yet at the same time and lying within the same past there are those future elements which are operating to replhe mind anew (and according to hidden springs). The past is therefoe pertually beckned into a future, which will only be known in an eruption (which gives birth to a new object). the point then being that this process, this becomoning, as a resemblance always overflows the objects given is permenat, in dewelling. Your mistake, by the sound of it was to then make th natral assumption tha the deploymentof te future, was a deployement in the perception.In the name of my rivalous succeeder, this was an antinomoy. That is, in my, perhaps more precise terms, you were guilty of adding an extra principle to the conjunction another principle, that of the premerged present, that is, that of the ghost itself, or as I call it a soul or a substance
That is faced with the consts interlinng of perceptions, that is the constant deployment of the mind across its thoughts: A deployment at once unique to each case, and yet necessariy caught up with all the other cases, the mind resprts to creating within iself an image a principle where this deployment (or the overspill of thoughts into one another0 might be naturally contained. This is then the subject or self or substance (or in you case a ghost)..
Now several things then need to be said of this delpoment. Firstly it is clear it realtes to us alone, and our perception.. changes occur then in the object which is grasped in its identity, and yet we wil lignore them it those chanes are not grat enough to effet the overall delplment in our mind. That is, every resemblance even as it ressembles involves a certain level or layer or pitch (and will do so, even though as it contains other levels, other deployments, it might well not be aware of this fact). One is the caught up in oe ressemblanc, on object, which is thought identical to itself, and one set of thresholds and limited. The limits here are essentially arbitary., in that whether or not it is seen as one or many, depends on the sense one is making of the deplyment in the mind (that is the way the mind deploysthat which is givien within it itself), and therefore ha nothing to do with the object itself. the deployment saying oh this is so, will then fixe a levl into that being, into that identity: or to put it better each transition will have its own inbuilt ease 9an ease which of course in ultimately linked to the hidden springs of nature, n which our mind is cast). The effect here is tha at each instant it wil leb self evident to the mind hat th object is, or that it is not, depending on whther the deployments of ideas have been enforces or hindered inn impressions. It is of course worth noting that here there s a clear allianc between Amy nd resemblance. The latter is moving across the former, and using it in its own way
“ The Eye closed here. The voice said “ well, indiffering ways we both helped her and loved him, thought differnely”
But then of course a second point opens up here. Each idenity as a deployemn is capable ofchange. Each change might be very slight, and yet the culmative effect be grea. The mind ould then still look to th object to be. That is, it would find at very case that it cold keep the objec before it ccding to the rules of rssemanc, and will do so even thoughover a span of time a change os wought whichno obiovus resemblance would mtch. Here of course one sees the advatge of thinking in terms of deployement in the mind,and not simple and very boring matching. The object would then at once be identical to itself, and yet absolutely different from itself. Invention leaps in at this point, and attbiutes to the change itself it on unity, or final cause. A moster n then bred between causality and ressembling. A ause is thought hich account for a ressemblnce: tht is which can be thought to be what is ressembling itself (and therefore truely identical) across a stream of changes, which resemblance of itself was content to leave blank. It is of course the case that many things, act as rivers. Ach point if then necessarily moving, and must contine to b moving, for us to call it a river at all. The factor of its changing,is then that on which ressemblanc cross breeds itself – giving iself a reality
Now this last point has become, n philosophy caught up by another remark-worthy thoughts. Each Identity,is essential founded on the grounds of not being unique, or at least (withone real great exception), it is drawn of an landscape which merely ressemmbles (and does not conform any unique denomination). Two sounds then might be said to be one and the same, even though the occasion for the sound might well be separated by a gulf of time. Now here one needs to make a further distinction here. On the one hand on can easily imagine the mind to think the sound (or a moved building) really were on and the same. Tnis fantasy s hen only possible when the sounds or the houses or even the retrning adventure is seprated from that which it also is, by a gulf of time. He same is then not true for more mundane ressmelbnace. A butter knfie, or a fisk fork o a dessert spoon, of many a mountain rne, are all identitieis, whose stauts only exist within the minds by paying the price that ressemblence will, and must be able to duplicate he thought across other situations. In these cases therefore a degree of doubling up is vitl. To say a thing is… Is therefore to looe sight of e thing within all its varying doubles.’
“NO!” the eye has gone, but a mouth can now be seen, as it is screaming! “ this is not tru, not true. One maust always start with a duble, in all caus. The doubling up in the process. Yur first example is then folly. Or owrse it is screwed down into order. Screwed down into a coause. It is what others might have one think. I is folly. Can you not do better? Can you not account for the strained doubling up of an impresisons in an idea, or and idea with an idea (start with the last, it is easier)? If you donot think hs way then here wil lyou end up?Surely ideas that are merely a logical conjunction point. Or even worse an idea whose mdel was him; that was identity – which must then be crushed, even as She was coming there!’
hume is clearly taken aback. He starts again very slowly, on the mouthhas fallen sielent (it however remains).
The point might, be made that infact one caould take upthe last point and blend it int earlier poit. That is, the fac that an identity an object is itself caught across a register of other possible obejcs (and is therefoe never itself surely and simply be defintion), was of course tied by man ancient philosoperhs togtehr. To have a certain form, and to have a final purpose in whicj that form is givien were then givien togther. Or I might say the gap that opens up between elements which everyone admits are different things, and yet as they are objecys are one and the same thing, was again in this case inhabitied by teleology.
The is a face To one instance, old and grim, like a female martinet. It shakes it head, looks dissaproiving, the fades, leaving this time only an ey once again 9it is nowthe other eye), which is closed.
Perhaps one might but the last point better, by taking it up within what I said earlier, about where that cause comes from. The point of curs w that ressmblenace, as befits its Mayless dreamstate, necessarily hooks up both deployed images (this is like that), and images whose deployement is always in th giving (hich is of course the problem with telolgoy). What I suppose you might be hining at, is that the division I daw here is by no means straight forad o simple. In that, given it is the dployment which makes thefancy of an object it must always be the case (and reamin so0 tha what is in that fancy, hat allows me to say a thing is, is caugh upn in numerous elements in merely ressemblens (and therefore is, and mus reamin different from). Each impressiosn, but also each ida will th double up into other thoughts. As it os defined in a ressembenace it is dpubld.
“ and” it almost seemed the Eye spoke this time!
“ and this point matter because it means that the sartingpoint is perhaps this double. I meanwhen I grassing an idea, one deplys the mind in a certain way. A certain manner of grasping such as/
“ Mr Flintwhich”
“ to see him is then to see are to pen one to see things hat ae also identical to him 9and yet different). The feeling da, the obejcy therefore doubles into the mind. Once this has occurred, however this ;other’Flintwhich, this doubled element does not necessarily fit into the neat packages of the mind, one would want a parrell idenity to. It remains then as a dream, that is it si caught into a different set of deployements (which it haunts). The Doubling up then in makes an identitiy from perception that oncewere (and are givien so in the ideas of memory), into a present, whose giving, in doubling itself up, in twisting itself into wo elements, opens the was for other deployments (in whci hat image is then caught). To ressemble is therefore to open one to differs utterly different images. It is quite literally to dream therefore.
‘ Better” The the face isback. A stern one even if relaxed, but in this case it is trying to look serve. Hume shudders.
The point then is that resemblance populates the mind both with sideways slips and changes: Nothing is held onto to what it was (be defintion): And the seeing of that change, of unablty to hold onto anything will make everything around it be violent,: Or better it pitches itself in a double heart of vilence. On the one hand the only way one can restrict the ressembing mind (once it allows itself differences, which are so natural to it), is through violent acts. One must therefore screw it into the idea that only the same thing. If one does this he ressembling mind is at once imbecilic as it can only gasp what is absolutely obvious. But also delusinoian as it reamisnobbessed with what is not there (and possibly never was); but also schizophrenic, in is ability to splice togther elements which remain utterly apart; for others hen the ressembler will feel as it they are always rror prone, always caught up in bleeding across a mind, win which anyhtin, could be made to ressemble anything else, if diligient effort is put it. Finally the individual will appear uniquely dangerous. One wil lneed to catch then constantly, to ensure tht extra loops, extra connections are not being illeigally breed into a mind.
A minds deployment of itself is then far from straight forward of confortable.
The Etnire head Nodded at ths point, and did soemthign utterly bizarre. It smiled, but said nothing.
It is then more or less at this point that an aspect of Amy enters it. That is causality.
You mean that talker? I ignored her, and carried not whether I insulted her either’
The matter here is that oddity of personal identity. Here the argument ought to by know clear. Personal identity is kin to the identity one attributes of animals or plants, or to anything else which is said to have identity. But here there is a difference exists in the role of causality. In the case of other creatures the purposes are as it were a single dimension of being: We attribute the idea to another, and that is it. With ourselves, this is not the case. Casaulity, I mean the chasing of thoughts aacross the mind, and ever shifting constealltions, and interconnection, becomes as it were the fountain head of what we are. Morevoer as at every point causes operate, and interconnect in elabourate manner (Hume tred very har dnot to rembmer flora here); then our minds will appear to us one and th same. The causality then allows us to think a connecion whithoutmemroy. A connection beased as it were merely on the woning of the transfer of viviacities . This transerf of tself becomes then the solid principle memory and the ressembances) uncovers. It woll then reamn in the mind, it will serve to ground it, even when memories is no more (for who can rembmer xactly what they were at this date or tht).
Where causaility, tied to ressembanc was then a bind in the case of tothers, for us, it becomes the mainspray of our identity. Itbecomes thepoint one canpull out a self from all the visatutdes of deployment, and think of oneself as something apart in ones own right. It is then worth noting in this regard the unity of personhood is based upon causality treating the very process of deployment, the process by which then the mind or better resemblance is scheming up new ways to interlink its varying parts, is a personal identity: the mind desires then conscious causes (which it baked into a shifting plurality), where resemblance straddling itsel across memories is in th very process of re-breeding itself.
“ but this is rather convenient. It certainly needs not to end in this way! Rember the house falling. There are things, even the clever ones do not see: Event the ones who already know everything, as no doubt your mind feels itself to already so. As no oubt it does. Rembmer the other powers: the ghost’
Hume thinks again carefully enough.
The point here is that the deployement, as it grasped more directly within he hidden hidden spirings of thught, is lso fixing el,ments which tear across identity. That is elements which tht causality in not able to grasp. This is of course natural (and is reciporicated). If one like at this point, perhaos resemblance as it constitutes and recontutites its deployments if spread fowad towars thinks, while causality knows this spreading merely in he knowledge of it own existenc, or as soemthign ti already is. Hence the self over confidence of the idenity founded in causes. It will lool deat in the face: tah tis it will ook the destuction of thos specific causes it has created, in the face, and feel only the extension of it own confidence. Or perhaps to put it otherwise, the conscious identity is at once right and wrong to understand itself with supreme self-consciousness. It is right as it knows what happens within it it will be master , and yet wrong to reasosn from this point that everything therefore must, even within its current masteries behappening within it, as it currently thinks is the case. Its ability then to xpand is empty. It awaits filing within events.
‘Empty? Empty?”
Hume tries again. Not empty, so much as necessarily conjoined. The confuson is therefore necessary. If resemblance cannot here the difference betweent ht esense of one or mmany, even well will identity. It ill therefore assume itself to be adequate, and do so, even though it is necessarily straddling (in causality dimensions of which it has no rights or predilections for). It therefore cannotnhere the outside in its adequacy for comping with every that is in it. Hoever of course the same isnot true fro ressembance. Here the outside is raw and visible. It is caught up in the deployement, and in those hidden spirings. The ressembling mind wil then at time out xtend anything that could be graped in cusailty, or rathr (nd better) caould only be grasped in an empty (and therefore essentially vapid thought: That is an empty assertion of an illusion.
Fuher. Go further
Hm thought evn hrde. Suddenly another odd thing cam to him about ressemblance.
The ressembling perception will convey into my mind the sense that a perception is not mine. The same perception then owns itself, as a perception,and therefore not as mine. I mean here tha tit cold so readily be one thing or be another: which hume is whih therefore? Is Hume just a thinker of perception? A historian? A Diplomat? A precise anatomiser of passion/ Or a Moralist/. The point is that all re n hume: All are articulated by the world, an the picture, by the past of my history (and teefore m causality), and yet are without any direct identity. That is all these aspects, all the deployemens are caught up with a body called Hume, ith an expression, hich deplys tself across (one might say within) these different aspec of a life, ad ecomes known as Hume. The Identity I then inferred. However the same set of rssemglanc withn hume himsfl, and within me, understanding the ume of th past, is only a ressemblanc. I do not know what is there, exactly, my thoughts (even my internal thoughts) merely ressembles it, to a point the difference from it is indistinguishable to the mind. Nothing more. It plls the mind therefore into a place where every link it makes, is in freefall, as it hooks into other links.
It is of course no wonder then that both vulgar and philosophic readings of ressemleance and its link to identity, palce that identity outside the mind, here if nthing the vulgr are mor accurate in tha they do not confuse the perceptin for what they are not, that is for some external truth. On th contrary h ulgaknow objects only really in this inability to gain control over them. the same object,might always also be doing something else, or be a apart of something else. The same object will then never be directly and iotic grasped within consciousess, without making a mockery oof that graspng. The same abilty to say, on an empty level ‘ this Is it’ I understand IT now, allows that objects a degree of latitude in two sense. firstly an another ould have said, ni the concept. Each it can therefore dro nd re-drop into othertoughts. A chair can come back as itself. ut As remarked earlied, this s only he fist move, the first 9and most brin, and imbellic) aspect of ressmablnc. More important is the fact that once a causality such as chair is established, resemblance was dispose that idea across the ind as it sees fit. Hence stones can become chairs, as can bosesses. Ressemblance tears an idea into a thousand differing represenation therefore. Thus far f course the ressemblance has spawened across my own mid. That is It could be argued that I have crated these link. The man of pride would claim so. And yt of course most of these tlinks, although they all occur within m mind arenot thought directly in me. Thy rather come about thorugh me 9if one can make such a dsiinction). Or even better they come about bcause of the fac that a thought I havehad (about caualsity or ontinguity as often asnot) is renderdin my mind external to its circumstance, nd then is freed up to bleed across he mind.
In these two cases, a simple objects comes then as it were a principle, a measuring post, but which the mind might set itself into other objects, and pull then differently. Now this last remark essentially e-footed any tales of essentialism. I mean here, on one front it is clear that the first process would be unthinkable without the second. That is the first process is merely the most bring ast of the second. Once the point si givient hat one can clone a thing across different asects, then ti becomes equally clear that one can clone it in the special case. And yet merely to insist upon this, as if we were dealing with logical principles set into a godhead, is nonese. Without the fis principe, ithout the balsting into th mind of the same idea, and yet different object, the second option might never swim into being. The second knocks a new dimension into the first. It makes the first alive. And yet it still needs the first to be at all. This is then the most radical dimensionto empiricism, to scepticism. On tarts n reality, on accouns for the phenomena of reality (however they are accounted for, and by whatever means one choose). One then knocks into that ccounts wider principles. O better one understands what springs intot hat account. The real world then becomes as a ulre by which the real world is measured.
Once this argument is mad another corrallary aises. There is clearly a thir aspect to ressemanc. The original thought, need not be as it is in the mind. Ny ressemblanc might then eithersimply fall apart, destroying the ideas stitchedinto it.Hence history is full of great lgend, whsr turht appears en;ess to the [eoples inove (say the lgend oromulus and Remus or the Illyad), and yet will fall apar when another age looks at the legend with different eyes (or thinks upon a legend that ressembles that one).
Alternatively ressemlance allows a mind to understand its own well of possibility. Here, and I must be ver y craeful not to talk too much like another. Each indvidual has an accss point onto the orld, each sees green or Corinth or the sun, andy yet that access point can only be said to ressemble the one shared by both other indvidiuals, and he sam indvidiaul at other tims. The world is therefoe free in differ hatit is across these resemblance (which of course of themselves demandsuch differences0. My Corinth, acity of pleasure, could be your of imprisionmenet nddeth. My sunny weather, or lovely day, might be something normal to you. Ressemblance, thefact that we are caught up in a single axis, a single dimension, forcs then a degree of communcation. Or better pitches us at a levl before our mind is fully fixed, where ee mustbe communicing with one another, even though (in terms of more conevntial communication) one has ‘noting to say’. Or put better, all that one has to say differs we Both know weare is aCorinth therefore, but which Corinth, you or mine is subject to a thought within us, and an interelation between such thinkings. Or better such preassumed thoughts. The Corinth that ressmbls somes then a shadow into which all of us are gathered. It becomes the thought we are all caught up by, an in.
. Alternatively, there is nothing in ressembling that allows that theperception is really mine. On the contrary the last example shows me that it cnnot be ever merely mine. The perceptin I grasp, and with it the world into which I place te perceptopn (I mean te set of nrratives0 is terfore ket profoundly open, the percepio couldbe a part in other narratives, which will at time cirss-corss the one I won in my mind, and possess me with different thoughts.
This last point then leads into one last one. For a perception to ressemble is for it to elude ones own claim over it. One cannot grasp it directly, and merely only thinks of an aspect in it, or to it.. Amd yet this aspect, this bing a part in its aspect ounds one into a world which can only be understood in deployements eyond what every one finds in ones mind. I mean here tht the erception self is essentially aready a part or at least could readily be already a parting hat one is not. the sameperceptino might (in a way that nothing else gaspe by another when one no loner is ttheir to see it. A perception, in resemblance will therefore break the bonds of being an indvidual It is bound up into others. From which the dark corrallary follows. Is of course impossible to ever perceive ones own death, or ones own major deployement. This much is clear. However the perception which lead up to that death, and the thoughts of everything that allows one to know it: or better will allow another to know it, are of course given to the mind, and givn as something that would (if only life was possible still0 be perceive. One is caught up in facing deat, wht with perception which are in themseslve, or their rsssermbling self possible an ptesent, and yet never imply present tome.
I said here, carefully that this rigmarole was not merely the concern of the ones own death, which is only known in a epitaph ones rights (for oneself, as I did, or in ones fancy, as Chivery did, I recall). It is also the case that one can imagine this process occur within a mind no slain o much as drastically remodled by the self same process. Is matter,s as t allows on to say that between a baby and the adult that ifant becomes there is nothing formally in common. Body and mind are totally distinct, and the adult at leas knows it. The identy splcing the two is thn of the emptiest imignataible. It amounts merely to the assertion of a necessary order 9all adults need to have been infants0. And yet between anyinfant (including the one one was) and oneself, there exists a bond in that the percepion one sees are, as some organs are shared one and the same., or even in aprt the same. Perhaps even ths similitude itself could spring a trap door into th being of hat child. I mean here, that the grasping of the image, or the perception, as a child, might as other aspecs in the adlt’s mind develop, echo curiously. The thought will then be bound up is strained constellation of its own; in other ways to think the same idea, in what thoughts this one ressembls: te tought that I hve had, or have been made to have, as I think an elusive ressembling prception.
“ enough?” Hume asks, the strangely diffident of the severe face in front of him.
“More!’
Hume has it!
This is the importance error. A erceptin is its own alone. it caes therefore not al all for me. I am then onl able to orcehstate anything like an idneitywithin I (ndeven here it wil be perilous) by errirng. Th ti my asserting a element which runs cinter to the ressembling peception,and raltes to how that percepino is to be thought 9or caught up) within my own narratives.The rr is then not just human: it is humanity. It is in erring, s I grap at a world givienin perceptions, that I am able t claim ths world to mystelf. It is then these errors that the sceptici tracs ih so muh rigour (and yet always knowing that these errors were ncessar somehow to the min). One need thn assume hat there is soemthigne xternal to the world, something fro which one is dstiant: one needs then not to make he world mere percepion to life at all. Or again to ground a notion of idnetnity upon pride, one needs, or at lest it greatly helps to have a notion of divinity. This notion will low one to invent a myth of a human’s place in the world. This myth then allows humans a degree of Pride (God too is Man shaped!) and therefore allows the mind to contain its thoughts across a galaxy of differing passions (with are caught up in the divine purpose God has for that Human) .
It is thence the reading awrong, the resemblance which are not ‘true’ , that is they are not deployments which take one beyond oneself, which will then form the pattern to all minds in general. The same force (and here note the power of the hidden springs, which cut both ways, into the mind made, and the mind being made, the mind shared and the mind mine), that is he same principle, ut now in the sevice of causality. that is ti is notw the the service of udernsandign exactl what is happening to me: Ehat is happenng within these lins, within these strained connection I can also see. I ressemble a thought then into causality. I grasp it as if it were a part in a causaal chain: I err, in that in doing tht I loose sight of the impression itself, I bury it within a tale of vivacity, and of ideas: that is, with a tale of thoughts hav. I buildit into an arror.
“ this was it. The house had secrets: inclduong that most open of secrets, which anyone in th stret knew, the secret of it fallin down. But within those secrtes I could not directly grasp their nature. I took then those secrets and doubled them into the story of a ghost, a story which was not so very wrong. A story which did for sure bind up all the dimension o the secret, and yet did so in a single erring narrative. The thing of course about such an error, is tht as the events which provok it contine in heir own waythey enforce the tal one tells. One will then be awrite in all ones vidence, and yet warong in ones conclusion: Say more though about the double face of ressembance”
Hume feels initially he has no moe to say, but feels he cannot merely stop talking to his sole compainion. He looks for soemthigt osay
What errs in ressemblence is the to ready amplicatino of as thing identity. (if error is the right word here). The source of this error then lies in the sense in which I take the perception into myself. As it s mine,a nd kno it is mine, I ressmeble it within the tale of myown world, my own series of causes which the self same ressembalnce in another head to defy). Or again, each screwing thought, that is each attmot to screw athought as it ressembles down (each act of violence) doubles itself in a twin, which is lesserror, and more hostage to the story. This twin is then allowed for, or bettercreted, because of th story needed. And yet at the same tme, in the sme breath the act to doubling up, into a stoy (and ac which ultiamtel of course will lead to the repetion of n identical element), will also createin the mind the elements that esacpe th self same stoy. The ressembling thought both graps itselfas if in a prision 9it is tol itts owncontribtribution here in nohing,and told so in th interest of causaility), and yet in that prson, in being imprisoned 9and the dreams of tht prosn) not only escape the dimension of the narrative, but also hides (in further errors0 from the unlovel gaz of causality the possibility of realizing that error.
Huem pauses. Think for a momement then proceeds.
Oh, perhaps here there are two dimension to such an error. On the one hand there is what causility wishes to force on resemblance, the doubling up of the same experience. This occurs as if they were a part in the same story. Here however the ressemlbing twin, the elment wihich is saifd to be he same, ma well, nor surely must, even as it is held don within the mind, be a aprt of other narratives. On error then in th claim of dintity, as each impressions gathers to itself other narraties. Th Ideneitical will then be thoughtby thr causal an idea such as fish knife or atom : that is an annadine identity where all part of the same. sUch a perception errs then in that, although the resseblances may well be held down in this fashion, they cannot be so without infecting the casualties which they so attempt to bind. I mean here, that the causailities of another narrative, might climb in and effect htos of the narrative written.
“ this is right. The Twn, was also a drunkard, and te Mise failed to keep him properly. The Twin therefore shered of from Flintwhich’s path, andkept lodger, inefecting what we did there. And yet then my husband becme his twin’
Hume, who does not necessarily get most of this, has listened carefully to it nonetheless, and starts mulling over it.
Many causalities are hen breed upon thoughts which a they are pulled into another story will compromise the story spun by that causaility. Ach act of creative thought is thenc boun into other worlds, other interpretations (and error is necessary). To give two examples. A Noveleist (who mentions me, pride sames he to say) writing thrity years or more fter m time,wrote many noevles were herheroine attmeted rom within thr plot to reork the stor. Her stories were hen almost a battleground of authors,The write herself, an her young youn herpines. Nor do I suspect, rembmering the vivacity of tht auhor’s writinh, such a onesided contenst. I could easily imagine a case wehre one of her heroine came up with a scheme from within th story so novel, ad yet so delighfu, tht the author herself acquiest to it! Be that as it may, the main delight n these books lies in the way the sub-authr the heroine invariably finds herself caughtup in other tale, than the one she felt herself to be it.
Or again it strikes me, or evne more Philo that natural history is full of these kinds of fact. One looks in woder at the world, and thinks th order demands the presence of soekind of acor. The problem then becomes how one unrsands that ctor. Is it a divinity?Or are the parts in the story bund up in other struggles, which allow the overall narrative of order in the natural world to be at all. If this is so where is this story pitched? On the level of the animals themselves – is the narrative of their individual struggles then the narrative upon which the story of order is written? In this case, the ‘ressemblance’ between animals, was ( eighty years or so after me) said to come down to the ability to not only brred, but communicate in that breeding that which one was. The individual threads, the indvidual stories of animals which can interbreed’s lives are then communicates a time, as only those animals which survive bree. Order arises then as a product of the fact that certain features proof more successful to indvidual animals than others, and therefore are bred across the entire population, in time. Order becomes therefore, by the very ressembance it demands (of inter-breeding, an inheritance) into another quite different series of stories.
The Same story can then to a degree be mdfieid if one goes in quest for elements that are identical across these breeding. If this is the case, one needs (as was done) to look to what was for me called Germ `Palsm. Tis woud perhaps be the approach of a Cleanthes, who lokies his order simple. It is then not thought, or the itnetion of a mind which is the same, but rather the neatest smallest of particles, which spread directly across the oder, as they are present in the animals. The system of ressmeblence wouod then once again be drawn into a wol of idnticials, although one not configures by a mind, but by chance which achieves pretty much the same as thought.
At this point, my Philo would leap up to create disorder. He would insist that the two narrative be kept as far aprt as possible, and that blind forces, were at work. Tese forces would the in the ‘aim or an order, straddle the animl world, binding each entity to another in various complex was. Animals would then be at once more powerful thanwas being allowed , as even their random action or intention could effect overall outcome; but also less powerful, as they themselvs acting as individuals had no direct role to pla in the chance and choas they opened for others. Each animal was then a once caught p in manifesting a world of order beyond itself, even as, at any one moement it might undermine the order already established. Here ressembance then refounds another meaning. The resemblance at this point becomes a multifaced phenomena. On the one had a blind force as it creates a certian order in the world. That order then requires similarities of process. It becomes consciveable tht different animals could perform the same tak, in an order. Animals then develop a kinship of function. And yet, in doing this, they then create extra ressembalnce, as not haing any animals at all to perform this process leads itself to an eclipse of a certainw ay to order the world. As Each animals is then more than a single process, it follows firstly that they interbreed stranged connections between clearly different processes that are thereby caught up within each other. More than that each animal will be itself produce of blind forces, and may well relate to its fellows in terms of these forces (and thereby catch itself up in other narratives. The every principle then that complex resemblance bind one p in many narratives, become for Philo, through his blinding forces the motor of living itself. Each ressemblance between to element, each attempt to grasp the world will breed then a link between differing narratives, which then becomes curiously interblended in each other and breed new order in the processes).
I have digressed somewhat but the point I think needs to be made. ressemblances can be bred into causalities (and in a sense must be), but will then warp those causalities, and create stranged effects in radically different stories.
\However there is then the opposite case. That is I mean when one takes up a causality and breed it into the principle of causaility directly, as, a we said a ghost. It is then around such errors, such private thoughts, such half staged ressembalnces between very different memories, which are caught up and related. Our mind then takes that ressembling causes and breed them across each other, in an endless play (Flora again swam in front Hume’s mind) . Causalties in then bred into a plaything. It is the is this playing these most personal of thoughts, in the host of dreams that those one strange resemblances. Echos of something else then appear, in the dreams> that is dreams of things hat might change, or be regiven even at the cost of gutting the private personal ressembling stories).
Hence (although I d not yt wish to disucss this fully), one might say that within th edless orchestrates causaul tales I spawn in my min, other tales slowly emerge tht willpull a mind into another quite distinct direction. Stories therefore tell also of other things. It is often ineed the caset hat one learns tht in tales or even in art one mhears a complex tale, that seems to say one thing, and yet on cn feel, even as that story is being tod another truth in animatig it in soemways, such that the account or recounting it is enough to change the mind (or be caught in anothers change).
Here again I suspect one needs to make a further. Distinction. In the case of a story just ementioned, one could either magine a sudden resolution. All the ressembing elements suddenly pullt h mind anew, and make it either re-deploy, or realiz that it deployement, its current way of thinking demands it to thin of itself anew. At this moement however I think the mind trars out of the resemblances itself,a nd int contiguities (which cares not for the self). That is the mind all of a sudden knows at once that it is externl to what it had been by the fact that I is caught up ithin another, from whom it can onlger simply sperate itself. It becomes then different from what it was 9and so not contguous to itself) by gaining the ability to simply tell itself apart from the effect another has upon it.
“ this then is like the urgency to leave the house, and so leave what I was, because the story I knew had become caught up in the houses fate: and the house had come to an end. I leave what I was, then because I hd already been caught up in another, in the houses blind fate. That ae fell though on what I had been planning as a death. That is all the ressemblnce I saw and noted whee dragged out o thesemvles,and crshed, by this doube contguiguity: that I by my too close realtino to the house, and by that houses susbseqeuent falling.
Maybe. Perhas th more normal case is that of pregnc. A new set of parents know from the strange thought within them, stirrings of a thing to be Love. They run and re-run stories then about their childs live. About what I could be, what I might be. Ech child then forms as it were within a web of ressembed expectations (and will not then develop unless these exist). Tgotehr they moves then allow the mind to bond with the child. Adult and child (once born) cease to simply tell one another apart. The dreams themselves are revealed, by the child, but also by the realities of parentood as fanasties, as a new quite different love is born. And yet without the dream in the first place, without the extra fanatisies, I doub the love would have such a fixed root.The two then run togther, even though the one radually unwinds the other
However there is here another option. The false tale, might then actually contain within its very ressemblne dimensions that take one quie elsewhere. Y fall in love is then perhaps first to spin a romance. One sees someone as a romance of the mind blossoms. The love itself then sparks off that romance, pulling it differently, and yet pulling it from within (if one is to stay in love at least) . a romance then bbollsoms, it becomes as it were a seed in another war wider story, which encompasses an entire life.
The face looks stern here. It clearly does not like he example. Hume trys another
Take then instead the xample e have already meneioned. The rpoblem of the mind I not tht there are not enough principles. On thr contrary the problem merely is tht there are far far too many. An idea could, with cae be knocked into some principle. It could be allowed then a truth. This is why It was felt necessary, ( Amy looking troubled cam into Hume’s mind0 he adds slowly a perhaps. That is this is erhaps hy I felt it so very necessary to start ith the most genrl of principles. The strategy here was not to much about blowing up anything, that ias any old logical categoirs ino genralized principles. Tht is simply wha he mind idshs to do. My aim was rather to encompass eror wthin the principles, and hope thereby to divine from within how error and truth occur on th self same process of the mind. Tah tis it felt reasonable to me, givin my mind cannot very readily tell the two apart, to allow for them in a single throw of th mind. The problem is thenvery much for me, not why can I understand? But the far more troubling why is it so very very difficult to tell understanding I might accpt as true, from those tht are clearl false. But I suppose here I digess.
The point then is that ressembence can always rummage around in the links makes within h storis it tells, to loow other thoughts within, oher ways that story can be thought and givien, other uses it might have. The simple passage then of a narrative becomes as one with a principle.
However to retun to the immediate matter in hand, ineach of these cases the error allows th mindo identify a thought asones own. The the case of causaility this identification is poblemaic. The ownership hen becomes as it were a problem. It givies itsel in being th eproblem which is to be solved (that is in why causes operate as they do). In the case of the causalities within ressembling it is either the case that the feeling that one is, is configures within th rrors, within the ressemblacne, that contiguity will sweep aside; or that on directly encompasses the, in the myriad stories of falling in love allow, I their very error for what blind fanc is ever ourely right) to feel a love as ones own. O better it is thes emyrida tales, and almost the endlessly jo ofbeing able to to tell then, and tell then afrsh, feeling better each time, tat its signifies love. It singiies that is then fact one is caught into something. The rrors thn might make it ones own, and yet do soo by alsoallowing other dimension through.
Although, huem hs pasued for a facion of a scond here); although of curse thlast poojt need not tbe the case. I mean probably what typifies the second set of error, that is the rrrors intergral to rssemblance, as it pondrs a causailtiy, s tht it is perfectly unthinkable wheich ressemblanc one is in, as one errs. It cannot be easily told then whther a man in love, is in love (as they are when that love is reciporicated, in part or full0 or merely mad! Likesie it is impossible to know if a mind is preganat ith a contiguity to co,e ar merely caught in a deleusionary tate, hich has no more reality tht he order of the causes which are bredin the repetion. To Err then founds individuality, because it can very easily tmble away from the elemns it descirbes.
Indeed to link hi back to what we were saying earlier, there is no doubt a sense where this tumbling away form turh is lways the case. For whatcouple are ever perfectly matched in love? Wat pregnancy of expecation is ever complete?ghosts, that is elements which are not resolvd in hw apparent resoltuon reamin therefore absolutely the norm (even if their vivacity is eclipsed sometwhat).
I wil o course be clar here, that this normal, wa it is caught up with the minds own posting itself, as te thing that errs (in defiance almost of peception, willl matter. Many an identiy if formed in large part fom the stable errors left afer the truh has moved elsehere. What in a sense ar old histories = celeberated in custom? In these caseof course a new causality will no doubt be bre, between these elements. But this does not mean, in the eyes of resemblance at least they are not errors.
If ome can have in blsack the figure here flashed, and appeared. Atall spare, stern women, standing all alnoe with Hume in the void. She is erely dictorial (a thig which soehow did not hock Hume, although it appeared toshoc in vision) “ You have not nearly finished here. She says. Fr one needs now to consider sympthay and love, to truly undersand he other asc of my power
Hume demurs slightly now he is faced with her, and the challenge of making here appar us overm his thoughts shift their registers, She becomes, not unsurprising less,= delightful He onders where in the all this blackness May might be. He wonders I she might be summoned, but doubt it. He repleies.
One needs a this point to highlight perhaps fiveelements of ressembling. Firs and ofrmeost is the idea that ressembnce turns th world into a problem without eas soltuon. To have thoughts ressembling I the to hav thoughts caught up in links one cannot ever simply reach, or even demand.it is thereore to be caught up in a worl which includes oneself as a pary. Ressemblance is thn linked to a genuine violence in impressions. It poses a problem to the mind. Either the ind must seek o mster what lies before it, or it qwill be mastered by it. Each perception os therefore already caught up in other dimensions, other thoughts. One needs then to contrain a resemblance into a certain category, or else it will siftquirw otherwise. This leads to a third point. It s a mistake to simply accept causalities words on what a ressembling mind is. Th ind rssembles, assuredly when it poses the world fo identicials, and yt it is not composed of this world. Ont h contrary the world of identicas is merley the lowest and most bebased element in the world whose ressemance are created in deployments, an overspills. Hence ressembances between differing yh=thoughts can be complex, taking time to deploy: a thought will then gradually emerge, and a ressmblong categoriy, which ows as much to what differas in the little cases, as what can be untied in an otherall deployment will emrge. Each thought then needs time to ressemble. That is time to create itself within a mind as its ressembling element; the sense that it also is. Fourthy, and arising form this last point,t he very sense then that allows one to talk of an idneity at all, sets up that thought as soemthign apart from myself, and my mind. The thought then will be, as it ressembles bound up in other minds, where it will also be known (or a thought like ti be known), nd open tomyriad changes. That is, as a ressembling thought is defined by those secret spirings within the mind, it ceases to be readily here: Simply present for me; A city ressmebling Corinth is then never merely mie,a nd that not merel might confiure a orld of ifferent movesThat is once I am created wihin the wolrd, and given in a rssembanc, nd so givn always in the light that thing might so easily be otherwise, no perception is ever merely what I am.This leads to a final point. To claim a peception as my own, is neccessaily to aerr. Ressmeblanc is then the principle or error, as it is in error, in creating as it were ressembling, parrael thoughts ithin itself, the mind actively becomes conscious or better self conscious o its own dimensions. The mind therefore becomes able to insinuate itself, within this error. It therefoe conjoins thoughts in resemblance. Creating a marrying point of truth and error whicha re llowed in a single grasp , a single giving. On see botht eh truth then and the ghost, and sees then in the single throw of tought.
The Figure nodds, rather ungraciously, an indiates that it has not forgotten all o this.
Hume Carrd on.
One final point needs noting. As a thught, by identiy essentially ressembles itsel, nd does do due to the depoyement of he mind: it follows that a ressmbing perception, or better a hought as it is viewed in the principe of ressmblance is always allowed ott be already there , in a sense. that is ones cpacity to resemble is given and the though is givien: As it is pulled into being one thing. Ressemlbing thoughts (even those based on the simplest of identiy) – or say the coulr gren are therefore always opened to being many different eaples. Of course this is not always te case. Mean here it is perfectly possible to readly imagine that the colour Green, may only occur within the mind. Many experience are thius but this does not stop the act that the deployement of thoughts,and the deployemen of thehidden springs in the brin could always give it again. It is then givienat the coos of being itself, and in the light of bing caught in soemthinelse.
Here no doubt one eneds to made a distinction. This price is not paid by impressions. Of course it is not. impressions, and passions are then givien in thesemvles entirely. The cannturllu include other elements, and yet so it by ressembling these elements in the sens ehtta theyse elements are necessary alreasy givien within the imprssions, within the passion. In ideas this ivingis almost external. The Same thought can then very readily be pulled to soemthiing else, soemthign which reamisn external to the idea itself: Which is givien within it, as it is gripped in resselmlbing as something external there is then a very cleardiffernece betweent hose idea which as they ressmelbe are never turely new. Indded the very act of rembmering the patimpressio within an idea makes them already copies: Here then id a very tangible different between impressions and ideas, in impressiosn there are no doubt a sense that a copy is made. Grren maywell contain blue and yellow. But that sens eof a copy, is very different from the idea within me, the idea I makke (curtosery of amy, or soemtthing akin to Amy0 once tht thought is given to my mind. The two are quite different. The result in then that the impression, and the passions can in a sense be related to as if they are new. Each is unique, and once grasps must always be sene as so. The idea those are nothing like this. They can perhaps it is true to say only allow for, only comprehend that uniqueness as the thought of it its giving could bein ideas giviena nd givien gain. It is almost then the price one pays to the uniqueness of an impression, is th fact that this impression only exists wihin the idea in terms of being shared: that is as a thing which lies in a dgree of mutituality. Ideas, which essentially cannever be unique grasp at the unique in repeating it, in llowin as it is so much greater than they, the possibility to be depeloyed, and deployed again. This point needs to be orn in mind.
However before I go on to ecplore the impolciatino of this move, another meeds to be noted. The is a real ambiguity in the idea of ressmebace as I have so far givieb it. Ressembalnc,e as it involves its own way to think vivacity, as it involves its own way of being deploed does not procede quite like other perceptions, with impressions pure and simple. It start rtather fa more near the muddle point of the mind. It osicalltes therefore within th domain of identity: It therefore start often with ideas, and treats impression as if they wer e already ideas (and so caught into others). As an aside this no doubt is why cause treats it as it does. Cause (and contiguity) procede from the immediate world of impressions, and seek to know resselbmance in that world ,even though they of course use the fact.
Now this last poitn is clearly of vital importance, in both the wider issue of how ideas are created, but also in the specific issue of passions. It is to this issue we will not turn.
The Figure actually smiles here. The effect is so creepy Hume chooses to ignore it!b
One cannot do btter than strt within five speratae points, all relting to sympathy, and its founding upon ressembance. Firstly, and most imptantly it is clar that sympathy invert the normal wayof thinking ideas in to senses. Firstly, through it ailtiy to conjure up passins, it converts ideas into impressions. To grasp then soemones thought, to see what they are, n then to feel what hey feel, and feel it violently. On the other hand in making this move, a mind is dragged out of it own concerns, and into the life of others. Since a mind is nothing without perception, resemblance inhabits a double head. I give another perceptions, as I give my own (if to a lesser extent). I find myself therefore thinking as if I were them in the same sense that I am me (if as will become clear in with less intensity). Rseembance then initially, n sympathy cuts right to the quick of the pride in which I am made. or better in having symptahyy for another, I directly share in that feeling whichis allowingthem to know thesemvles to be at all. For them it is a pride, for me it is a feeling of sympthaetic joy. At this oddest, and yet deepest of levels therefore humans are caught into each other, caught up by one another. For me tobfeel myself o be t all is you also to feel in my feeling. Hen these two elements are then combine, what it is to be a human of course subtly shifts its register. Humanity itself, and even more a mind a know well, become in a very small part perceivable to me. Even more they become a perception in me: They becomes an impression I already have. They become tht of which I am already conscious.
From this a second point then follows. Ressembalnce here naturally highlights contiguitit . I mean here that I feel sympathy by degree. My abilty to image what a human is like,, what they can do, and what they can feel, is thn ubect to variius degrees and change. It s anturaky far easier to imagine thosefor whom I already feel close, and who are close at hand.hrder to feel symtpahy for those further away. Hence sympathy taks then mind and pitchs it (as I edluded to above) firmly within the middle of its world that principle, tht sense I am cught up in everything becomes as I am caught up the driving force of the ideas. indeed in a sense the ideas will have no reality, or value beyond that being caught up in everything else: hence the more I am caught, the deeper my sympathy is. Thence, one might say resemblance will matter to contiguity. Ressemblance inhabits a conguity, occupying it, and in so doing ensuring the pichc and strength of its own passions. Therefore the more one is caught up in everything else, that is the richer the thoughts and the feeling are, the deeper the passion is that is inspire, and the more vivacious feels the passions, and so the more like an impression is the idea itself.
In this process, another aspect of sympathy, and therefore ressemblance is given. It is fairly clear from what was sadi before resseblance is not merely about the mind bleeding across its own thoughts in mean it is not merely about the overspill of passions. That is the fact that each thought is almost automatically caught up with many others. On the contrary it is also the case that it involves the minds deployement. There is nothing then to stop two minds from deploying in ver similar manner,s an therefore from being caught up in manufacturing an active rswembnce as it were. Now one needs careful caveats here. This being caught up in, isonly likely to occur when two individuals are experience relatively stable passion (and what stabilizes these passions is another matter). It is therefore only likely that minds are deployed n a mnner that is simlar only whne two inviduals hae notonly a deep bond osf sympathy, but also are undergoing certain relativel straight fowar passions. \ it is then worth dweeling on what hs last point indcviates.
It is certainly worth pondering about one ortwo thngs at thspoint. It is clear enough that something rathe pecualriy I occuring here. One rmbers the last point madeabbove. The self same resemblance brd in ones mind both turth and falsity. It is impossible then ever to straight forwardly know whether a thing is ture or whther it is a fiction, if one follows ressemlance . However n the cse offeelings which have bled across the ind, in ome manner, this, in the sympthay it givies me for another, for fellow human, becomes itself a truth. That is it bcomes as an impression the pair of us share. Impressions therefore in sympathy rock backwards. They breed there very onw externality within the mind. They define what it is for that min to both be as mine, and yet also as a thing which one shares. This hai, which mutul deployement might then prove useful: it might then lead to actions (as all passions beyond pride lead to action); It might then as an impresisona cively create it own truth.
This then leads to my fifth point. Beuty, and much of art presents the defining of the degrees of this passions, which point the to sources of resemblance, cusailtiy and congtiguit impact upon each other. Yto enjoy a beautiful picture, in the to be taken into the picture as if one was there. One this is. As I say not a passive feeling. On the contrary, in art one ois taken into the sympathy as soethignr eal of itself. the act of sharing, of being caught up in a feeling tht others can share (and tht one can also share with a self which is defined within such sharing – ir better in the same process that allows one to share at all) is then given. To share a thought is then to fashiob a reality shared. One this move is then made, a second aspect of dpelyment enters into the frome (which is the fith and final point). This pont founds itself in the curious distinct between deployement and overspill. It s readyily apparent the overspilling mind will of course find its justifcation in the immediate sensation of today. It therefore grasps thoughts very readily, nay claims immediately locaqlized thoughts are then ones that are the most intense. This is of course justified in itself. However once resemblence is known t involve ressemsemble and overall deployment, then two new aspects becomes possible. One theone hand, is clear that in every act of indvidual ustice one can seen an entire socity being deployed. On can then, as it were talk as of a seriality to this deployemtn,, where little action by a justice state appear unjustice, perhaos indded all acts appear unjyst, and thet the whole state remains a justice one, which acts for the befefit of it peile. The equvalent then perhaos of this situation is the first sense within which causaility can be taken up by a cuasaility: Ressembance can move around something depe inside it, soemthi g awaiting emergence from it, in this case a hidden hand of justice, which is always in thr process of being deployed.. Ont the other hand, there is clearly a universal meaure to jstice. As humans are one and th sam,e it becomes quite easy to imagine that and Englishmen and a chinman share sentiements of justice: that is as a certin level they seek to deploy there minds in the same way. A justice is then bred within astraddles all mankind. Relating not to the merely arrangement of contiguos facts, but ratherdeploying of a connection, which as it essrntially binds up the hidden spring of te mind with the mind as we have it places humanity within a wider frame than any that can be thought or lived.
An act becomes caught up then in the deployment of humanity itself, One invents then at this point bottom point in what otherwise amounts to an axis. It establishes then a universal value. This vlue is caregully nuances into other more interested theories. It always then the mind toboth know what humand should do. I mean what humanity shoul of itsel do: And yet also know what it will do: or even to fix all graudations between the two courses. That is one can think a human at multiple levels of actin, and think of thw judgements as it is then just fro humans or just for the country or just for their immediate family.
And yet here is frther subtly is clear. Or rather I is very difficult to undertand what is meant in this second case. Reasosn hearas it and says loudly – oh thtmeans the onlyturth s are global. It then daws of as it were th truth of dployement into a universal conflagrant. It then sees itself no doubt as tolerant when it arranges these constelleations within order, and speheres in which its beingis given. Reasosn demands, and the imaginatin comes up with a cornucopia of different possibles ordibts, and arrange heaven knows what aeguments to fill these gaps. However be that as it may this argument misses the real point fo this humanty. The humanty I not itself whatever the orbi one inds onesfles, so much as the slip in deploying that get you thre. As a result the ethics tha great it are the ethics of depolyement, and constuction. Each mind then develpes was, with the bounds of humanity, to redeploy itself, with another. The Axis is then less a poomt of fixing, ds much as an intial container, was elatic walls are to be challenge, and warped according to the elements ithin it. There is a palsitcality to its axis, and new exact ways of being human are then pssible 9if rather unlikely). I this regard it needs to be rembmer so very much that each deployement, each otrow, as it is deployed exists in multiple registers. It is then not that the registwer contain it, so much a it defines them all in making thn all: it is then a ral resemblance: it rssembles itself acoss there diffeences, ad the mind makes use of the hidden psrings of being a human in deploying itself.
From this last point mny many things, many of which I never wrote down follow. The point os tis ressemblenc, that is at once action, and mutltude is that is will of course have a universaliabiltyy to it. I will wish it for others. And yet in this wih, in making this wish. That does not mean that one has to follow ‘humnaity’ slavishly. On the contrary it is the acing which is giving the human,a n givient hem in their ressembling and never simply the other way around.
Morevoer, it also follows that the action here is lmost what is pivotal.: it is then the deployement, the mind disposing itself sucht hat another I understandong it, which drives the process sownwards and nothing elese. Hence it is this process, this feeling which is at once an actin of the mind, and an impressins: that is at once a deplpyement in the brain, and a deployement of th mind: the two are givien togther, and held in one another, in sympathy. Here one then needs o rembmer yet more points. Firstly that the very proemise of sympthay is not only action, but also the eclipse of simple pride. I is not that one acts without pride. That would be a s nonsense. It is not either that one acts wihut self love. And yet within that pride, one knocs the dimension of th sympthatiec, which at once defies th simple caharcerization of a pride, and opens up the mind to ction. At another time I will show pride is not active (alone of the passions) as alone it is self contained. Here it is the utlaimte continer to fix a sole. It is not the case in sysmtpah however one can hve a thought as of pride (that is a pride in another: an another which no doubt could incde a self) Which is then genuinely active and creative. One acs,a nd ac with others,a nd does so from a feeling of joy, in onesown.
However alwso bea in mind in this provces, that this feeling of joy itself is caught up in being a ressemblanc. As ressmblanc commencies without Amy to hand, and fbrivates an amy pout of the numerous links it forges (links that then encortuage those ideas which are which bind togther in tight assembles of interlinking thoughts and feelings).as, I say this is th case,then it follows that the feelings the sympathies as it is a passin will be the richer as the connections givien within an idea are deeper. All the more so as as tht thought is itself a passions which produces desires and action, it follows that th mind will , in experiencing these thoughts act, and again increase the degree of its thought sin this manner. Each msu thought then extends its connection of itself, and thereforw increases its overall strength across the mind: doing it as it were internally, and as the mind led it onwads.
Hece to breed an ethics funded of ressemblence is no mean feat. On one level hc an ethics is no oubt innate and straight foard. It is then merely an aspect in ones mental furniture. Our mind bleeds across itsel htoguht.and yet this breeding itself creates its own abilty to understand the world through moral eyes. What was then merely a matrer of relating to something external to us (and the rrors that arise in that realtino,the errors which are almost essential to it) then becomes something rather dofferent. The ressembling passions (sympthay) places one as a juncture point: point ones deployement of the mind, become cuafht p in the thoughts one has of others, and in the way oe can step into a beyond to oneself in action. Sll these the are activel given togther, by a simgle throw.
The mind then as it creates its own impressions creates then genruinely as they are: that is as a thing to be held in common with others, and with deplyements. It then becomes akin to thise hidden springs which are surely driving all nature fowars, and which give our minds their inner power.
Once againt his fabrication form within o Amy, this unned of her is utterly remarkable (and yet is the founding point of latter point, later winders tht Amy herself will achieve, which I will retutn to). Each soul then carries as it were a small creative element of their own 9as Berekly once said each mind was a lesser Spirit, a lesser dimension of an all powerful God_. They are then able to under certain circumstnce, and throught he ais f their feleows, to create the wolrd as its own hidden springs/
Huem is now puffed. He instinctively bows to the figure in fornt of hi. Pelase with what was at once a sermin, anda strem of thinking.Where he wondered had he got the stuff about action? Itfelt exactly right, and yet.\ nd yet the face is far from impressed. The sole time she had smiled was when hume talked of the lack of need for Amy. She speaks:
‘ I have no doubt this is all true. I habe no doubt amy would agree with all of this. She always does gree with the clever ones. And yet this is not all. Turn again and think onpasisons. Ythink of those resemblance, and see if you can ever undersand, why I could nt act. That is What did I say in a house confounded by the clever ones, inspite f lnwing enough to ruin them/ why did I then only resist is proxy – by offering fodd to other/ And why hide my face?’
Hum considers long and hard.
It is now with a little caution be start again. He decides to make his startying pont,one f his most original of ideas (or so he had always thought).
There is a very complex oddity when one considers passions. On the one han every passion renders every idea an imporessions. That is it givies that co[;ex and extensive set of simpl ideas which constellate to form and impression, its own integral unity. What was complex then to degree shares theintral unity of the impressions. More thn this, it sares soemthig else. It shares (as mentioned above) that very different ecomony of continment. The idea is always external to itself, the passion, and the impression arenever so. Hence no colr is pure, but rather must always contain other elemtns within it 9as green I yellow and blue in another sense0. the idea, and here I sippoise I mean the simple idea matter at thos [oint as it disposes the level upon which the mind entiers into the process. Tbis level is en initially phsical. The body defiensby the physcal laws hich no doubt 0although of curse one cannot be certain) dispose it to think one awayrather than another. This uch is plain.
However at this point is is very clear one needs to respect the difference between impressions and passions. These difference are founded on perhaps three axese. Firstly the entire abilty to fix a passion depends upon ressemblences in thw first place. A passion such as pride or love only have any stability as ty breed between two assions an resembanc: a joy is then also a pride. The two then, by the above rule become blended into one another, and a single givien seanttion. Resemblance is then not, as it is for impressions a mere additional element price paid, it is rather the very means by which it becomes possible to have a passion as my own (and caught up in another passion,a nd another set of ideas0. this then leads to a second point. The means I shre [assipns is indirect Ithas lready been said thatsympthay shares passins. This si true. And yet that sharing, so necessary as one says to stting up n impressions, is indirect rather than direct. I sdo not feel directly another’s pain, and yet that pain os tangible for me, and almost as real as my own. The hidden spirings of the body, then allow me to read another face as if it were mine, and stat myself in the middle of there feelings. It is this indrectness which no doubt founds ressebance beginning the the hidden of minds (and hence it link to contguitiy).
Finally, the relationship with ideas, which allow ideas to act as impressions is complex, and has its own inner rules. Firstly, in the case of passions whicha re contrary to one another, these can only be ressembled with each other trhough the agency of ideas. the difference then between this case and that of ideas themselves s very marked Deas ressemble or not dure ot the deployments or overspilling of the imagination. PAsisons by contrast have a quality almost a vector of their own. They are not then that which is simply real and present to the mind, with vivacity waiting som free exachnge. On th contrary, opposes passions are not linked and carry no necessaity o interconenct, beond ht of the webbing in ideas producs. However one needs even greater care here. For passions have, in addition to the vecotiral qualtieis and clear scalar allowanc, which is relatively deifned betweent the passions themselves. One passion will then look to itself, and its own being, in comparison to all the rest. It will feel stronger, or poorer by this comparison. Each passion, is the very really opposed to the mechanics of poor May. Each wil lwrap up, or better claim a their own, a degree or pitch of pasisns, and yet that passion will constantly link up with other assions, augmenting itself or empoverishing itself though their agency; each then does not do muchradiate beyond tiselself, as jostle for postion within a harum-scarum of conflicts and alliances, by which it is ordered.
This last point then becomes all the more important when it is rembmer that each idea includes within it, not only a quanta ofvivacity but also of passion. Each idea is then, possibly ven as it transferring viviacites, josteling passons, or even better inflating the other with extra dimensions, extra passions of its own. This last poin matter,s as it allows an extra snse, an extra dimension to the mind’s ordering of tense/ To ahev a thought past (as defined within vivacities: tahtis to have a thought less vivacious than it was, and unreal, will induce passions of joy or regret or relief, depending on the current situation of the mind which hink it. Pasisons therefore infect the mind thinking them, making them think the relations to what has happened and what will be (and evne how what was effect what will be, and what will be pridcs a sense of was) anew. A point we will retutn to eventually.
Now in al lthis hubbub of thought, I would have you notic to qute istinct elements The rist reflects the curious postion of desire withi ressemblanc to desire, is to want to act based upo a passions. Beveloence then funcion as the desire that spins of a love, ands seeks, in the name of that love to aid that person. And yet, this desire, this pstirving breeds also a feelinging of pity. Pity is then the slightly more genralized ntion of shaing within another jous and sorrows, and wishing to promte them, as best one can. Pity then treats beveolence, which was for love a desire, as if it were a passions. As I pity I wish to extend benevolence, which is itself an extensuon f love. Desire then , which always seeks to alter what is in action anyway, tears across any simple account. Or better it naturally breeds other resembemblances in the mind. These ressemblence being based not on the simple interealtin of ideas an passions in the four way grid, I so carefully describe. It is rather the case that eahcdesire, here ressembles all others wih the sam tupe of deployement. To desire is then to open oneself up to multiple voices, it is to also be in other elements, other dimensions, where the same desire, that is the same action also its.Dsrie itself, then, far from being th simpe essence of a man, or even strictly speaking a ;force’ is rather a delopyement with cannot be simply formed to defined, but rather always re-breeds itself in other windows of he mind.
The second paradoxical element here is surely sympathy. Sympathy break any easy connection between myself and action, is a different way. Weere desire, which is rooted in deployement works across many differing registers of te mind, sympathy ensures that whatreally matter in this working is not the diring desire (or th passion to which that desire is interlinked) s much as the effect.here it needs to be rembmer the apparent paradox which lies at the heart of sympathy,t hat it leads ones mind before the thought that it is nothing without its perceptions. Or to put it differently, amind is nothing without the fact hat iit graps others, and tht this grasping, in which it is, suddenly takes it in unforessen directions, and down different passages. Hence the important doemnsion of the mind lies nt tin the stirive or the passion so much as the way the resultant passins and ideas are caught p within each other. It is not the love which defines benevlopence, so much as benevolence that defines the sense one is able to love.
The difference then lies between desire and sympthay, is tht while the former is restriced to the deployments of the mind, the latter is caught up also in corss breeding. To sympthasize in to have already had thought of another, thoughts that nend to be derives int another breed in ones min. it is moreover this sideways jump, this corss realtion into something quite different whichinforms what the mind is: Which essentially givies that mind own being. Symptahy then relfection the asisons takes on the overspill which creates one of the very great brances of ressemblence, with the differenc ein this case, that the passions created withi the sympathteitc mind are not simply confused with the previous passions, but will keep their own intergretiy, and distinction. The point then being, tht as passions are informed by such a sympathy, then will configure, and re-configure themselves. Sympathy thenbreaks into the passions jostlings, and scurryings, forcing them to rework their postions, and dimensions, and breeding new thoughts, in the interliking of desire. Here onc again it is clar that iffering tenses convey the effect of this overspilling. I migh love someone now, and that ill effe t my thoughts upon their future, and m demands of he past o conform to that future. However these noble mves remained of themselves tied into the intial syothy I was inspired with 9that I the abilty to overspill love, based upon what tht love entiails), if then thi I latter eomved,the schemes power will ikewise by lst. Smpthy therefore allows passions to interrelate. Orbetter breeds order and new passions, within ones conception of tenses: It therefore in one tro conve the vector andscalr dmension of an passions. I mean a passion is at once a durection, which enfuses allother related passions, doing so directly, nd; and yet it only does this as it has a degree a stength of tis own.the Vecotr, the abilty to impart a new dirction upon a mind is then caught up by scalr. Whih delimtes the exact circumstances of transfer.
Now these elements are seen operating when an afflection in another is not great enough to inspire one to a depe pity. In this case,t he sympthay works as normal, in its subtrainned fgashion, giving the minda feeling intally perhaps of bevelopence (a feeling which is hover not here founded upon love, but world ather need to breed love, latter,)- here rembmer effect come always before their causes). If however that benvelonece is not strong, then it will fail to produce much overspill within then mind. To one then be thinking like another, and feelin their pain,and will react o tht pain, as norml. That is we wil lseek to exclude it from other thought, and loth the indivual who has inspired it. Hence the feleing of hatred the inspidi inspire: and the hate we have for the wretched who really ought to be better that they appear capable of striving to be. If however the feelinof sympathy and the bevelopenceit creates is ver storng, it might well cease the mind, breeding assocated desires, whch then accord with the desire to help . The dirsire will then likewise be able, through the agency of this sympthay to remake itself in helping another (that is in pity ) Sympathy therefore breeds as it were by proxy another desire, the two desires deploy in the same ,anner and the mind acts accordingly.Pasisons are therefore related in sympathy, which desires breed there own realtion with each other acrosssucy sympathies
Now here it is well to note something in addtion aou the way I undertook to explaina passions.
Works before mine my had often taken towo possibilities as ther touchstones. Eithera xicon’s of definton and formuar, of mixure and admixure of passions was preent to thebemused reader, in a veritable alchemy of possibilities. To think in such a manner, in a sense demeans the staus of each passions, which is seen as the mere product of forces elsewhere. Or to put I tmuch better, as each passins will then be derived from elements which must pull out of te human soul, this lexicaon is quite literally a codex of the beyond [erception. It attempts o conclude soemthgn about the locus points which allows a human obe at all. Or even better, on the level, it ties uphumanity with an external world, on just the level where humans really ought to be a]able to claim that they have a dimension which is uniquely there own: That is on the level were they thesmevles become the forgrer s of impressins,and thereby come ino their ow.
I invert this process, while keeping a dimenin that is of value. I thereb allow passions to pitch into a world as themselves. T require n elbaourate physics for them. A feeling or pride s then not joy. The differenc eneeds o be respected. This spexcting then allows one to uncover the true realtion. For while a pride is not a joy, each pride comprehends within itself a varitet of joys. These joys can then, at another time be pulles out of the pride, and resonate upon their own. I therefore, perhaps uniquely allowe dpasisons therefore botht heir independence but also, explicated, in resemblance a sense they are caught by one anoter, without being synthesized from eaxch other.
On the other hman, other wirtiers (and some times the same writers) had oftentaken ideas and passins otgther in a single throw. Passions had then be conjoined ot our very sense of power I=of te world. To be joyous was therefore tantamount to increasing the number of things one coulddo. So much so that understanding, which I seurely the most dispassionate and ordered on affis became itself a joy. Tese writers lexicon’s wee full then of the condtions by which an idea (whoch akes the burden of the external element without within me) and the passions 9which is itse feect upon e might be miven togther, and so prodce a new passion. Hence such writers simply take it as igiven that the mind, as it has pasisns is caught up in the vice of the world, and see no reasosn to account from that catching.
The result is then of course the bizarrest of doctrines. It seems clear to be that a passion is a sensation like any other. I look then into my mind and know I can laugh, ot I can feel rare and wonderful stabs of joy, without any requirement t change my status in the world, or any special intamcy between the feleing of joy in me, whc is mine and theuniverse beynd tht jo. Once again in these case, then these writers have demeaned to power of the human, for whom surely these pleasures, they little joys are the feelings thatare the closest to their spouls. Why then make such looseness and the power that it brings a mystery, hih cacthed onr in anothers power, and as that other slave?
Here perhaps one needs to go even further th e problem with such an explanation is not that it misses places the genuine wierness of passions. This weirdness, or it you prefer power, lies inthtier ability to mke ones own ideas appear as eternl to ones min (tjat is as impressions0, assuedly, and tey this prodution, this creation, in the most hman of affair. There is then a lack of digininty in simply assumping what needs to be made. The feeling then of being caught up in th world, is genuine,a nd yet is a product of the human mind. Or much better, I si the construction of resemblance within the human mind, which allows a mind, to be pitched as a n idenity, that ossilated between perception of the world, and of thsemvles ideas which remain unutterlibaly different), and the passions whose dffernce is so much more a finally nuanced proble, If one likes then I explore here as other thinkr did not the dimensions of the ‘gtogethr wit’, or conjunctions of: I exalpine what it might mean o be so conjoined.
This leads to a final point I might have yo notice ehre. The other options when thinkers have thought about the passions was o create an artifical deep divide between passion and idea. Now tther eis a divide, andyet that divide is a no deep abyss, o high wide wall. It is rather a very narrow trnch, which numerous paths criss cross, and tht had also a path wednig its on way along the bottom of. The divide isthn more a demarckation than a fotification.Other witers hve never seen this. In order to defen d he right of loic or even more, inorderhe defend the rights fo the mystery of passions,t hyey have imposed a deep divide (or better still demandsed one), and thn left with the unsolvable problem (which at least our other thinkers did not have) of attempting to explain not only why this divide does not lie true in the mid, but also in deciding what lies on teithr side of it.I meanhere, that our feeling of bein caught up the world, is itself in part at least th very product of our passions.it is whatour passions and the ideas wihinwhich they are associated produce. If one thendevalues these passions, and drives a wedge into ones thoughs, one will need perforce say that one sde or the other has the deeper and more ’awesome’ ( I use the word in a technical way here) sense. It is of course that one xide is enshrined in a deep mystery, when one considers that this mystery will need to explan to the mind (or better account for it) how and why this dimension of its thinking was ever able to rest control from the the other side. Far better I always thought t allow a deep resonanac between the the two (all the while respecting that there are differences).
The differnce then are essentially not thos of a wall, but a mirandinering path along a border. It is then. Pehas within or better along with paths meandering way that the mind defines how it is caght in th world. I have alreacy eluded to the fact that the mater of ressembance in the case of passions is not quite the same, as it is withj ideas. Ideareamn sperate, passinsbecome unified such that one cannot very easily catch wwho one is. The difference then. Ni the case f passions, will eb their,a nd will therefore be relayed by a mind which says to itself ‘oh yess of course tht is SO’, and yt th same diffeence will in the giving unite passions. Now ths untiy the breeds a unity between ideas which are linked. Here, though n contrast tas I say the diffeence between the two, that is between say myself, and an object, which together comprise the passions of pride, this difference is not then I say lost. But rather as realated, as caught upin the winding paths of a ressembance that is at once the same and different to it, it change my grapsng of the ideas involves thesmvles. Seprate no doubt to each other, the to togther nonetheless become as it were a single impressions, in which Ii and the orld are given in a single thro of thought, a single stable thinking. Perhaos at this point iressebanc works well a pathandmore an an invisible binding mesh. It holds things togtehr are from outside; it created then a mind so mend the inextricable feeling of being caught up in t a world, being bound up in it, even as it feels at its deepest level a sese that it is.
This being caught up, is then a;l the more powerful in that, while at each and every instance it will appear to be what really is. However the same cord that pulls te mind up within a particular ressembance is also (an here rembmer the path) wneding its way along the ditch dividng deas and psisons. What then appea so tightly bound might well, in another case, and from anpther angle, appear as apart from one another or much better, wil lappear a mere adjunct in another r binding (and aspect in a orpe which knots togtehr other dimensions that is other passions, and ideas , which onetheless also include this ideas) in the mind.
The important difference then I say between my way of reasoning, and other thinkers I have seen, is that mine does not loose sight of the fact that the mind needs not be dissolvd inot h wtwin hoors of philoshpy, depth and unconscious thoughts. The first hoor needs no explaination. Once one allows the mind elements witin lie deep within it, and yet are still an aspect of it, thenone cannot hold the line beween either a dissolving the mind into a bology,ot dissolving it into a theologly, or any other aspet or ology betweent the two which one might care to concoct! It is the far better at one through to recognize the minds own dependence upon biology, and own opccurece wtin thought (for what s an impression, a passion or even an idea but an occurrence of the mid within soemthign) without making any great extensive claims about the pecualiar postion of the mind in it being. The mind is then somthign occuring within perception,a nd that is it.
The provblem of a so called other, unconscious diemnsino to thought is very much more coplex. On the one hand, because thought always occurs within thinking; that is within perceiving, within the links that are, it will therefore always relate to elements which cannot be simply lying conscious for all to see within a mind . this is ture, and I would not seek to deny it (in fact n many way I might claim to have sdsocivered it). And yet, although true enough, it opens the problem of what to do with this truth. Or rather to but this better, geivienthat there are tese dimension to thought, and no one denies them, and yet givien asl that the mind, as one founds it exists and thrives within these dimension how should one understand their provenance over the mind itself? Is it as some dar oppresseser? Or course not, as to argue such would simply toto beimpose the dimension of thinking one has dismissed from the mind itself. Is it then merely an a sum of biolgocial funcin,s and their regulating non0conscious thought. This dimension certainly has more to say for itself: and yet it fails, in one reag. It fils to account for the difference between the mind and those hidden springs. The two become them caught up togther, and thoughts become the hideen spirings of thinking itself, as the pair are givien in the sole thro. What is then distinctive about the mind, and the sense the mind acts, in then dissolved into the appearances of the world.
That is,the thought the mind has, the before houghs hich no soubt make it, possible, and have some sconnection to the body at the same time, are stil lthought I suppose to be real. They are then thoughs which poseme in a doemsnin of death, that is in a dimensio of meat, muscle and bone: they lack tthen th vital flicker of the mind, which allows for perceptions, that is the abilty to situatate oneself within soemthign else (body and world) within.
This last point then a=once again give the lie to the proble,. To ask whether the uncnscous thoughts realyy ought to be the hidden springs of he mind, and running the entire show of thinking, is to have already lost ones way. The mind has then already become a force for acing s if agents acted in the world. Or to put itbetter the idea of an identity which acts has already been exported intot he world of the hidden springs, an nmove which not only tkes one beyond all the capacities of thinks, or percoeveivng the world, but also (and for more worryingly) synthesizes the mystery of being pitch within a wold wiot even anidenity (and with merely the abilty to act, which is nonetheless attribute also to soerthing else, to a bodY0. the esult is adand advance, is one ccepts the athat making what is mysterous, clearlynuances, and also complex is really rather nodyne.
It is far better in my book to start withi where we know we are, that is in impressions, whci carry (in the form o simple dieas) a diemsion of socivsousness witin the. One thereby no only start, froma sensible postion – no really th only palce for thinking0 but also has the inestibalbe advantages that one ahs not predjudges any thought . it is perfectly possible, na even highly probably that other thoughts occur witin our mind, thoughts that we are not conscious of. Or more realtistcially we are only conscious as one of the affects that torment us.So I know then as a poain, or an toothache or maby merely a feeling hot or cold or a feeling of relief. Such links are then perfectly possible for the mind. But the point is that as these impresisn, these inner feelings affect us the are registering across an entire communicated (and constituted) amalagam of thinking, an not as the htought might be in the immediatezone – that is the immediate arrange of action and reaction.
Hre one needs then to put in an additional word of caution. It is aiomatic in what I have just said that the merel prsence of the animal spirits of the brain is not idenitical to the presence of thought. It is of course perfectly possible that the two are dffernt, or better what we call thinking is much much more complex than that; it related then not to the automatical flow o particule, so much as there unpredictable sprad across a mind. Hence in this example, although it feels reasosnable to suppose that there are circuits of the brain which think in a way that is in part similar to us (although there may well not be at all0, what is certain is hat the only way we know of this dimension in orudelves is in the feelings, th impressions tht it bequths to the complex mind itsel. These feelings wil lthen be within that mind as simpe impressions: the only difference then being beween these imporession,a nd the for formal xternal imressions of the world is that were they might drag the mind which sees them beyond its scope externally. One looks then in habing them to a a world (which one of course must at another level attribute to some force). The rimpressions then appear by contrast to orgiante within our bodyes: tah tis we are palced inside a body in thinking them 9and could be no where elese,a spriti then would not have any need of them). the impression itself is then the same, and yet he sense it postions us within what we are is different.
Now this difference, when one rembmers the sttus os ressemblanc, which gives th minda feleing of being in a body within a world matter. The differences of ressembalnces wihin the body, as they are internal, will ultimately be caught up within the difference of passions (which share this externality). So much so that many thinkers have confused having passions and being a body (as we do with the feelings say or hunger, or lust). The links then made in the body, tjrought he body between pleasure and pain, are sublte and comple, as one might well xpec (as are warmth and pleasure, or even wamth and cold, as it exteemes one fingures burn0. the body therefore, that is the physcal realties of the hidden spring which inform our being as that spehere we act across (what which we own, without possessing it) miht then be said to work in a way akain to passions. This no doubt then leads to further comfusion, as it becomes almost impossible in the mind to sperate out the feelings of having a body form passion. Notice also this process runs the two ways. Our feeling of boredome and custom is itself understood only in biology: be become used to a thought, and tired of it as our stomache tires of food. Here it is not ana analogy, or a tires resorting to buolgy tht informs the method, so much as a realization that the ressemebalcne of the body, and of the passins are one and the same.
However it thee needs o be allowed tht lthougn ti s natural, ti is also the pofundest of rrors to confuse the passionswith the body.The body and passion might shae ressembence in many instance , and yet it is almost in this sharing they are runjing in opposte direction. I mean here the body is the thought , nay the sereies of impressions we have of the worle, which we know of as different to hat world. This differenc is then only thought as thing dfferent as my body and not some other heavenly shere) as tht body is understood to be (through a certin kind of ressembanc) enterin into the domain of my ideas and impressons. A Body is then wht moves into me. It is the point into hich I am, an exist. A vortex sucking up th enegeries of the world, hich are trnaferes by its hidden springs into me,: Or again my actions are, as they inovle the body hr way I directly translate the imressions, the idea I have of the world back into the world if impressions. I herefore convert my mind into a form of reality (which is of course different to th mind itself). the body is then obviously enough a site of inport and exppot of thought, with the two being kept apart.
Passions though are clealr soemthign very very differentAs I am passionate, I create an aspect of nysel, hich can logically only be modled withn the mind itself, only in that minds slow porcss. And yet this elements if then set out, exported, pehaos one might say into the world. My fear, my pride m anger, my hate then becomes as soemthihnutterly exetenal, n which I am, I create then the poosite connection: I export perceptions. Dimialrly I creat in the light of this export, acions which are inner. In my will, I learn to feel in the light of these passions a sense of y own existing as an acing thing. This feelin might ssentially be an illusion, or better no different from any other cause 9and therefore no more free0: this is lmost not th point. The point here is that this feeling akes the very ac of xporting and makes it ineer again.
Henc the passionsion and the will, and the perceptions and their action, met up in reseembance, which they sahre, as in a four way grid. Each oenters int (and allows communciateion to the other dimenion which cross ht grid); Ech omorevoermight well vary wht it does by what is happeneing in that other grid, in those other paths,a nd yet th paths do not formally interwineeed, an ave no more true meeting, thndiffernet high passes in he moutninl hich might un togtehr ifor soe way (and create a problem in a fo, within hansover those mountain0, and tyet reamint h same basic bath.
Or aagain, curtoursey of resseanc,e perhaos one might say body and consciousn mind are the mirrprs of one another. One gives perception as the start (or to be more truhiful is ivien as he perception, which elsewhere must as we gap in woder at is speandour be giving eslewherethe [ercepinos we hink and feel), and they givies action , tha is our own powers as afinal point in a process: As the end. Perceptino, tht is the tumbling of the outside int it the statin point to creion, and acion is its end poit. The osncousn mind then reflects this pretty much exactly. I actions, will feel to it the point it is moving towards it mos inner nature: they are then what givies it its own integrwty (and in their dely it will experience itself sense of beign able to choose differently, a move which is noly p[artily ture). Its passions then appear as wht coeorces it as tht in whose gaze it is. Nd yet botht hese two factets of the cosnciouns mind arereflecino, and not a simple inversion. The will is the accurate reflection of the ac,in that pf itself it has no freedom: it merely reflect upon itself as if it had. The actual freedom then lies in passions, which create new lins and strategia within the thinking indvidual.
How the problem of the unconscious is greatly confused when these reflecino are confused. But it is clear also that it is greatly confused also when the ressembance in the passions are mistakeneither for relating to an external underlying reality, or to anything aking to action. The potn thenof these ressembence is that they defy the world of biology, andof circumstlocutino, by effectively using it (tht is using elements akin to Amy) as itself own. Tha is in behavig in ressembling as the boy alone might ressemble, the passions opent he kind up to a fabric of connecio,s which at once canonoyl be understood in the biolgcal frame (one itres, fatigues et),a dn yet claly has nothing to dowith biology. One needs of course a rpocnple to develop these thoughts, and this I wil llk o with another, latte.
Her one needs hoeve to note thwo futher dimensions t this srguement. Firstly, th clear differcne between this argument as hat argumtn which more directly inolve Amy, is I hink now clear enough. The arguments which more directly inolve my, have a clear move in thdirection of vivacitity. One rus from vivacious to vivcious redeemed, from imrpessin idea, from the possession of external didmensions whch cannot be simply rconcilled with anything one is (perceptions); to the wonership of the same thoughts (whichin causality). Now t is clear that passions opeate very much it the counter direction. As on is passinat therefore one has ideas, and these idea reamin cauht within their one prism of bein (and raled toother ideas as such). And yet as each idea also has withinit a passions elemt: that is each flow of ideas has an element a passion, which grasps that feeling within single grasp (in a way that the ida of itself feels no need to desire to), this flow itself becomes as an impresision (and vivacious). This viacity is thenpottntially renderedobtus and hard to fix by the very flow of vivacious ideas. Inmean here,t hat left to itself, eachidea would andr as it would,a nd conjure up passions passions in the process . NowTo fix an idea and an passion, one therefore needs not a single relation, but a double one. Two ideas then need to runtogther, such that to think one, in to be led to think the other. Similariy, although here there are clar difference, two passions must lie togther, an be similar. Each idea conjures up a pssaion which then is like the other. The difference of course one needs to rembmer at this point is that the [asions conjured contains in a different sense the other passion it ressembles. That is each passion are not simply external to one another, but rather, already as it were cotin the other as a ascpet of tht they are. Int eh case of pride this containing is complete. The Pleausre of oneself, an the pleasure of the world are then caught up by one another: ach contains the other in its own orbit, and the two run rounda nd aountd the mind in their mutual jpy.
Weere Vivcities therefore creates a necessary flight og ideas, passions can, as the encompass each other, create a complex union, where ech compreshends the feeling of the other, and therefore passes so naturally intot hose feeling that the to become absoltutly indistinguishable..
So, the mind itself then, rather than the world sets up is passions, as a thing external to itself. I mean then here, that in making this enter ino its own double realtion, and thereby fixing it, the thought itself takes on the unmistakab;r characteristics of the bodies externality. That is the characteristics of rssemblence in the external world. The Pasison then grip us, in being soemthign other to us. It influences then are will just as if it wer external: or toput it better, the passions which then feel urs, in that we know our own body makes them, therefby become for us the very sense thatwe are able to be of the outside world itself: One posess thatbeing, in being able to found a way to own a passion . pride in then that owning, and the feelings it inspires within us, that possiession.
However thereis a necessary conjoined point here. Padisons allow us to indersand ourselves as if twe were external to ourselves. Ta tsi they plac u on the creative outside, as we have passions. However it is impossible for rasosn to ever simply stay on the [lian of that outsaide Ont h contrary it will immediately pop up t this point, and wish a wider morlarge sacl ownershp of such an enticing kingdom of things in themselves.Reason will then attmet todraw more ‘reasosnable’ linkins between the point in this outside dowma, and conconct who know what circumsloctions in order to claim to be th master of such a domaian.
Now ehre that reasosn is at once heleped and hindered by a further aspctof the mind. Each passion, beyond pride, is then caught upeithn every one elese passions. That is I might ow a passions, in the sens ethat my mind knows thtits is mine.and yet as it in turn possess me, that possession, that impulsion is never simply my own. Any human then too will, also vfeel a similr passions and can therefore difedctly symptahize with this feeling (at least to a degree, Each passion, then as the tear out of the flow of simple vivacitietie, and into the world of the resemblance as it is in the body, sdo so in a way that allow all humans to understand themselves, as they are, caught up by, and in on another.Here one eneds so ver much care tp locate what is achieving this apparently miraculous end.What is significalt here is not the owning. As I own an indvidual passions it is mine alone. I and the one how has the ideas hich provokes the feelin. Th pasisont hen remisna s long as those idas are swimking before my minds eye. Likewise as I am possessedin the passions grip, I am its simple product. I have no relity beyond it: A m then its slave (for good or will). Here again the rule I clear it is me alon bfore the passiosn. No where it is shared is in it very inception. To have a feeling of pinis to be able to explain toanother hman that feeling. It is to be then caught up in being eernl, wand yet bound up with others. Moreover this binding is givien in the wfeeling. Tuly thought, each passions is potnetnilly collecive: indeed this is the sense of its externality, n th fist place (and here of course amy , if present would nod). The move th trouble, the challenge the of passions is to keep this dpmainf ree.
‘ Such thoughts have nothingto do with me I care not for this ressemblnc, which is less ressembling itself, as it is in itself, an more he property of Amy. Tell tather of the issues of free will; for this, and the knowledge fo this, explain why I could have no real will of my own’
Hume is uses to tese interpution. He wonders about ignoring it, nd yt it si cold nit he void,and he does not wish to be alone agin. H decided then to acquiess.
The staus of direct passions was always difficult for tother o understand. This can be seen by the fact ht most writers on my work read he important work I do on pride and lov with incredulity. Uses as they are to the account os oasisons I disucussed about, accounts hich look to think of passions in the sense that humans are caught up within a world. Sll such recountsstart then itht he problems of pain and pleaure. Hence in realtion to what I have just said they confuse passions, nd the body (which is so very easy to do). Hence many of my readers trun directly to the idrect passions, and fail to grasp the radiclennes of my argument. Direc passions, be thy the products of pains of the bod or the products of pains and pleasures in the mind, are secondary. The passions shat are able to behave then as external eleemnt;s are the indirect double relations. Direct passions are merely the reactions which spin off these thoughts. Hence I show that the notion of the will, is exactly equvlenet to thte notion of causation (as was discussed before). In terms of our reflecive image then, the actions of the body or of he wider world are the direct reflection of the will, which it those same acion a they are bought into thwe mind. Now I made this lon, whch I suppose which the ages hindsight I now have had I minght hav made a little clearer. The point is, which I hoped that everyone might =have got from the matte rof the will, that drect passins occur within the indirct passions, but ask within these passions a differt question.Where pride asks the wustion, how does noe brred a passion to take over the same role ni the mind as an impressions, direct passions ask the wuestion of the feelings thsmvles. They therefore respond o the feelings as I am possessd by thm, and attempt to use all the rules of ownership 9that is the rules by which apsisons are allowed to myself) in orser to mitigate the effects of an passing passions.
Reasosn therefore here, to be reasosnable at all, will entrer ito a zone where it can no longe,r by any means at all distinguish pains of the midnand of the body. By not making this disitinction it will use all the extra resources of the the physcal world (and its very abritatry ressembence) inorder to comba passions. Eason s thenthe passion engineer, splicing togtyher passions in complex alliances inorder to free up the thinking mind, to feel those passions with are acceptable to the mind.
Int his process reasosna cts as the salves of the passions in a very marked sense. What is meant here (and it si of course somewhat unfortunate a phraz givien how the preachers would use it).: but I meant was that in the process passions has to be te being and the end of the process. It is passions which feelis. It is then passions which diextly must be. The mind is merel tht which experiences this passions for its own. This sis then the sense of the slavery of treasosn. This si of course, it is worth noting the effect of the fact that passions posses ourselves. That is the feeling or pleasure knows itself aswhat I good, and demands a mind to be in: while pain gives itself to be bad,and demands as it were (or amount to a demand) to be excluded. We are the alves of the passions, then because as they begve as itextenral to us, they contin within their own dimensions a sense in which we mus act.
Hence I might say once againt he crentrality of pride, Pride is the onl viable feeling one can have of oneself as a pleasure. It therefore necessarily encompasses ideas within that feeling, ideas within include thn a self. When reasosnt herefoe acts in the interest of that pride it seeks to exernd the sense tht one is a self. Reason might therefore be a slave of the passions I the sense ht it is always woking to the passions eneds, and yet that interest invcldus the creation of what I am alos. Morevoer here, there is another problem to consider. My way of thinking allows it to be reasosn which, if not serving the interests of pride which ensures one is caught up by others. As one levs then, reasosn busies itself ti tht loves interests,a nd does so in a way that migh actually be loathed by the loved indvidual. A sense of outside within is thoroughly within t mind, as it is created bybeing being possed is herefore fashioned. The simplisitic assumptions made by almost all others about the iportanceof the acual outside agent is hen los within this move.
But also note that reaossn si here not working in the same manner, and quite with the same ressembance as the passions thesemvles. Te apsisons use the bodies means aof ressembling wirhout being identicial to it. Reasosn by contrast, as it fails to telll paprt body and mind, naturally also faislt o distinctguish the acual causes of pleasures or paina apart. A ther slave, it then acts in the interests of all pleasures, which it treats as a bodily stte. Mov which actively tears it out from the simple grasp of any one apsisosn. It is the their slave collective, and never indvidualliy. Itah tis Reasosn’s feedom fom any one defining passions is herefore ebsured. Her elight footed Amy no doubt finds here resoances.
Now this last point breeds a new series of confsion o is own. The mind, looking at the thoughts of pelasurs and pains, naturally avail itself o onte biological aspecs of ressembance. Each passions will naurally be able o be redirected by other thoughts, and yet keep it passions. A silder is then caught up in a vice of frea, and courage, of anxiety for there friends and themselves; feeling that the skilful genra blends into great courage r loahing of the enemy. Reason’s bind spot that is its failre to necessarily grasps the differnce between passions,e nbales it, by inventing such categories as Good and Evil to augment wihin the mind rickh and stong passions to fit its own needs. Or to put tis a different way, Reassn in having merely he categories of good an evil, and the knowedge of ressembalcnes has all it needs to rebuild desires, and wp hem accoding to specific aims and goals. Here of coruse one eneds o note it is not reason itself within gives the motivation. It is the desire of the enral you wips up the dsolideres this way.reasosn s then a servant of some passion,e ven as it is the enginner of others feelings Ths last remark matter, as here is a of course an inbuilt insablity in reasosn approach. T is possible for feelings to flip over, love becomes hate, and courage fear (the lover loves the faithless partner, thr army rotus an fear ripps through ti). Reasonsis therefore,asit plays within the bois ressemblacne playing with fire. Chance events external to the world can so very easily, unless a snug double idea-impresisosn set up can be created, rip the feeling away from reasons grasp,a nd make then work quite otherwise (and in a way very detrimental to the mind itself).
Int his regard reaon is of cours epalying with fire. It needs however to be notices tht it is only reasosn that llows one to mitigate the excess of assions. Here passions will sonly stabliz aroufn ideas, Reasosn can, then manage these ideas, otherwiswise,a nd passions wil lfollow. That is is, in the context of what I hve said abov, reasosn adds a further dimension, of conconcting a sense that one does, in the name of ressembance step beyond the passions, or rathr ceian aspects of these passins, inorder to ontrol ones feelings. And yet, notice that I have deleiberately creates a paradox here. The paradox is that passions are the sense we brred in ourdelves external thoughts: that is they are the sense we have impressions. Reasosn is thus fa only their slave. And yet reasosn can then turn around,a nd weave a net which reats a psisons as if it were internal to reasosn own qorld. And yet in dping this that same reasosn reamisnt he save ofsome other passions. Passions wil lthen use reaon to enfold back onto thesemvles. I=that is it is reasons role toactively explotion the point I made before, the pijt of passions being caught up byone another. It is the reaossn funcion o hollow out this element, this manner, this dimension of contact. Reasosnt herefor esocialtes within the overlap of passions, treating it as it that overlap wer the overlap of a body (nd so in terms of paina n pleasures); and yet pleasures and pains, wj=hich can be treated by ideas themselves. It isthen here tht Amy comes back
Affry actuall nodes here. She saus’ We have much else o say, and yet Amy ill come back soon For you are here ar ehte poitnof =dissoltuon, Pride cannot directly own this last thought of yours, as it cannot overarch the differing forms of ressemblacne within it. It looks then in tho the motuh of its own death: it looks into the physical bodiy whuch cruchses it so very readily whothout realizing its death. A deth amy herself bring.Lt Amy yhr death biriner back.!
Hume pasuses no. He is clearythink very carefully what o say next. He wans to see Amy again, ns yet wants to know exactly why she is the death bringer.
He arches his eebows.
Affery adds
Don’t you see? Unil she came along it was all alright. I never expected much better. Once however Arthus was thee,an Amy oo, the dreams becan. It as oy here, with here slow =insistences that these things need to be rel which made in matter. In th dream world, where everyone cold have a share of Mr Clennam’s mal, thi would hardly have mtttered!’
Hum now star h eels h has something to work on.
The aguement here, hebeins is clerl bout the ralionship between death, resemblance and vivacity itself. To ressemble is to cret I own zone, a zone whose sartingpoint is the illict grapin ofvivacity: the vivacious is the blotted out, and spread out,its power borrowed. However the proess, if talkative enough migh I see very well be reversed. He once hneeds caution. Cusaility, which appears so very grarrulos is certainly not enough t work this magic. Cusailit on the cntry is caugt up