Chapter XXXIII · Truth and Revelation Theories
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CHAPTER XXXIII Truth and Revelation Theories
Oh never rudely will I blame his faith In the might of stars and angels! ’Tis not merely The human being’s pride that peoples space With life and mystical predominance; Since likewise for the stricken heart of Love This visible nature, and this common world Is all too narrow . . . . Coleridge, Piccolomini.
Knowledge, it is recognised, is good, and since the experiences which we have been discussing may readily be supposed to give knowledge, there is a strong tradition in criticism which seeks to derive their value from the worth of knowledge. But not all knowledge is equally valuable: the kind of information which we can acquire indefinitely by steady perusal of Whitaker or of an Encyclopædia is of negligible value. Therefore a special kind of knowledge has been alleged.
The problem which ensues is for many people the most interesting part of critical theory. That so many capital-letter words—such as Real, Ideal, Essential, Necessary, Ultimate, Absolute, Fundamental, Profound, and many others—tend to appear in Truth doctrines is evidence of the interest. This heavy artillery is more than anything else a mode of emphasis, analogous to italics, underlining and solemn tones of utterance. It serves to impress upon the reader that he would do well to become serious and attentive, and like all such devices it tends to lose its effect unless cunningly employed.
The extracts which follow are arranged approximately in order of obscurity. They rise from the most matter of fact to the most mystical uses of truth-notions in criticism. All might be taken as glosses upon the phrase ‘Truth to Nature’; they serve to show what different things may be meant by what is apparently simple language.
We may begin with Aristotle. He makes three remarks which bear upon the matter. The first is in connection with the antithesis between Tragedy and History.
“Poetry is a more philosophical and a more serious thing than History: for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general (universal) truth, History about particular. In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily—this is universal; and this is the object of Poetry. But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him—this is particular truth.” (Poetics, IX).
His second remark is made in connection with the requisites of Tragic Character:—
Aristotle’s third observation is in the same chapter:—
Wordsworth’s interpretation carries us a definite stage nearer to the mystical:—
But Coleridge held many mystical views, not always easy to reconcile with one another. In the same Essay he continues:—
“In the objects of nature are presented as in a mirror all the possible elements, steps and processes of intellect antecedent to consciousness, and therefore to the full development of the intelligential act; and man’s mind is the very focus of all the rays of intellect which are scattered throughout the images of nature. Now so to place these images, totalised and fitted to the limits of the human mind, as to elicit from and to superinduce upon the forms themselves the moral reflections to which they approximate, to make the external internal, the internal external, to make nature thought and thought nature—this is the mystery of genius in the Fine Arts.”
For the inquiring mind is simply the human being’s way of finding a place and function for all its experiences and activities, a place and function compatible with the rest of its experience. When the mystical insight is understood, and its claims fitly directed, although it may seem to those who still misunderstand it to have lost all the attributes for which they have sought to retain it, and to be no longer either mystical or an insight, it does not lose but gains in value. But this further adjustment is often very difficult to make.
These Revelation Doctrines, when we know what they are really about, come nearer, we shall see, to supplying an explanation of the value of the arts than any of the other traditional accounts. But the process of translation is no easy matter. They are not what they seem, these utterances apparently about Truth. In interpreting them we shall find ourselves forced to consider language from an angle and with a closeness which are not usual, and to do so, certain very powerful resistances and deeply ingrained habits of the mind have first to be broken down.