Cobwebs of Thought

Cobwebs of Thought

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Title: Cobwebs of Thought
Author: Arachne
Release Date: October 16, 2004 [eBook #13766]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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COBWEBS OF THOUGHT
by
"ARACHNE"
London

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES
II. CONTRASTS
III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET

IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY
V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND

MOTTO.
"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there
must be something within us which produces our thought. That
something must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a
quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a number;
it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of
the same and the other! It is atoms which think in us, said Epicurus
after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom think?
Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter." --VOLTAIRE.

I.

OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES.
Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded those
who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive and
desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit, monk or
nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result, unless the
mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been the
dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it, for
being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of self,
but simply centred self on self, producing instead of self-knowledge,
self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental disease.
For fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a clear,
definite aim outside self--such as achieving the gain of some special
piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in psychology, and
certain systems of philosophy--Greek, English, and German, in Plato
Locke, Kant, and in the meditations of Descartes, and many others.
Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge, but the science
has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which we obtain
knowledge of the outer world in relation to ourselves. When a
philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result of
introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have contributed

nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious self-examination
has its dangers, so also has philosophical self-analysis for its own sake.
It is a fascinating study for those who care for thought for thought's
sake--the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are for ever revolving
round the axes of their own ideas and dreams, and who never progress
towards any clear issue. Amiel's "Vie Intime" is a study of this kind. It
adds nothing to any clear knowledge of self, absorbing and interesting
as the record is. It is suggestive to a great degree, and in that lies its
value, but it is as vague, as it is sad. It appeals deeply to those who live
apart in a world of their own, in thoughtful imaginative reverie, but its
effects on the mind were deplored even by Amiel himself in words
which are acutely pathetic. The pain which consumed him arose from
the concentration of self on self. Self was monopolised by self,
self-consciousness was produced, though without a touch of selfish
egoism.
Out of this self-conscious introspection, grew that sterility of soul and
mind, that dwindling of capacity, and individuality, which Amiel felt
was taking place within him. A constant, aimless, inevitable habit of
self-introspection was killing his mental life, before the end came
physically.
Another philosophical victim to the same habit was John Stuart Mill, at
one time of his life. His father analysed almost everything, except
himself, and John Stuart Mill had grown up in this logical atmosphere
of analysis, and to much profit as his works show. But when he turned
the microscope on his own states of feeling, and on the aims of his life,
the result was melancholia--almost disease of mind. His grandly
developed faculty of analysis when devoted to definite knowledge
outside himself, produced splendid results, as in his Logic, and his
Essays, but when he analysed himself, he gained no additional
knowledge, but a strange morbid horror that all possible musical
changes might be exhausted, and that there might be no means of
creating fresh ones. He also feared that should all the reforms he,