Experiment and Proof
When cogito ergo sum came into Descartes’ head, he marked the day—November 10, 1619—as a remarkable day: ‘The light of a wonderful discovery,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘flashed into my mind.’ Schelling relates the same thing of himself: in the year 1801 he ‘saw the light.’ And to Nietzsche when he roamed the mountains and the valleys of the Engadine there came a mighty change: he grasped the doctrine of eternal recurrence. One might name many philosophers, poets, artists, preachers, who like these three suddenly saw the light, and considered their vision the beginning of a new life. It is even probable that all men who have been destined to display to the world something perfectly new and original have without exception experienced that miracle of sudden metamorphosis. Nevertheless, though much is spoken of these miracles and often, in nearly all biographies of great men, we cannot strictly make any use of them. Descartes, Schelling, Nietzsche tell the story of their conversion; and with us, Tolstoi and Dostoevsky tell of theirs; in the less remote past, there are Mahomet and Paul the Apostle; in far antiquity the legend of Moses. But if I had chosen tenfold the number, if thousands even had been collected, it would still be impossible for the mind to make any deduction from them. In other words, all these cases have no value as scientific material, whereas one fossil skeleton or a unique case of an unknown rare disease is a precious windfall to the scientist. What is still more interesting, Descartes was so struck with his cogito ergo sum, Nietzsche with his eternal recurrence, Mahomet with his paradise, Paul the Apostle with his vision, while we remain more or less indifferent to anything they may relate of their experiences. Only the most sensitive among us have an ear for stories of that kind, and even they are obliged to hide their impressions within them, for what can be done with them?
It is even impossible to fix them as indubitable facts, for facts also require a verification and must be proved. There are no proofs. Philosophic and religious teachings offered by men who have had extraordinary inward experiences, not only do not generally confirm, but rather refute their own stories of revelation. For philosophic and religious teaching have always hitherto assigned themselves the task of attracting all and sundry to themselves, and in order to attain this end they had to have recourse to such methods as have effect with the ordinary man, who knows of nothing extraordinary—to proof, to the authority of visible and tangible phenomena, which can be measured, weighed and counted. In their pursuit of proofs, of persuasiveness and popularity, they had to sacrifice the important and essential, and expose for show that which is agreeable to reason—things already more or less known, and therefore of little interest and importance. In course of time, as experimental science, so-called, gained more and more power, the habit of hiding in oneself all that cannot be demonstrated ad oculos, has become more and more firmly rooted, until it is almost man’s second nature. Nowadays we ‘naturally’ share but a small part of an experience with our friends, so that if Mahomet and Paul lived in our time, it would not enter their heads to tell their extraordinary stories. And for all his bravery, Nietzsche nevertheless passes quickly over eternal recurrence, and is much more occupied with preaching the morality of the Superman, which, though it at first astounded people, was after all accepted with more or less modification, because it was demonstrable. Evidently we are confronted with a great dilemma. If we continue to cultivate modern methodology, we run the risk of becoming so accustomed to it that we will lose not only the faculty of sharing all undemonstrable and exceptional experiences with others, but even of retaining them firmly in the memory. They will begin to be forgotten as dreams, they will even seem to be waking dreams. Thus we will cut ourselves off for ever from a vast realm of reality, whose meaning and value have by no means been divined or appreciated. In olden times men could add dreams and madmen’s visions to reality; but we shall curtail the real indubitable reality, transferring it to the realm of hallucinations and dreams. I suppose even a modern man will feel some hesitation in coming over to the side of this methodology, even though he is incapable of thinking, with the ancients, that dreams are by no means worthless things. And if this is so, then the rights of experiences must not be defined by the degree of their demonstrability. However capricious our experiences may be, however little they agree with the rooted and predominant conceptions of the necessary character of events in the inward and outward life—once they have taken place in the soul of man, they acquire, ipso facto, the lawful right of figuring side by side with facts which are most demonstrable and susceptible of control and verification, and even with a deliberate experiment.
It may be said that we would not then be protected against deliberate frauds. People who have never been in paradise will give themselves out for Mahomets. That is true; they will talk and they will he. There will be no method of objective verification. But they will surely tell the truth also. For the sake of that truth we may make up our minds to swim through a whole ocean of lies. Yes, it is not in the least impossible to distinguish truth from lie in this realm, though, certainly, not by the signs which have been evolved by logic; and not even by signs, but by no signs at all. The signs of the beautiful have not yet been even approximately, defined, and, please God—be it said without offence to the Germans—they never will be defined, but yet we distinguish between Apollo and Venus. So it is with truth: she too may be recognised. But what if a man cannot distinguish without signs, and, moreover, does not want to?... What is to be done with him? Really, I do not know; besides, I do not imagine that all men down to the last should act in unison. When did all men act in agreement? Men have mostly acted separately, meeting in certain places, and parting in others. Long may it be so! Some will recognise and seek after truth by signs, others without signs, as they please, and yet others, in both ways.