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This strange formulation
encapsulates Barfield's contention-- after Rudolf
Steiner--than man's "inner world," his subjectivity, is in fact the
mirror, the microcosm, of the forces of the
external, objective world, the macrocosm.
Although implicit
in Barfield's writings from the beginning, it makes its first appearance
in Unancestral Voice,first in the following passage (a musing of
Burgeon's):
For now it was put
to him that a great change had taken place, almost in his own time, in
the very constitution of Western man. He was no physiologist and did not
bother himself with the question whether the change was one that could
be detected anatomically, though he thought it unlikely. What he did know,
or what he was told [by the Meggid], was . .
. that things had been going on for the last three or four hundred years
of which ordinary physiology as yet knew nothing, although they closely
concerned both the brain and the reproductive organs. Man's interior--the
interior which was also anterior--had been at work, as it had been at work
also in the earlier stages of his existence. It had been at work, gradually
developing and informing some sort of delicate structure or complex of
forces in the front part of the brain and at the same time in the organs
of reproduction. (17)
Later in the Meggid's
explanation to Burgeon of the error of his ways:
"You are using the
term "interior" to yourself, [the Meggid] said, as if it meant deeper and
deeper inside your body. In fact, it means almost the opposite. When I
said "interior is anterior," I was not using it in that way. . . . You
ought to know better than to think that this "interior" is so situated
that it can be reached only by more and more infinitesimal dissection.
You ought to know better than to even half-imagine that by penetrating
the brain you will read the thought." (45)
And finally in this
exchange:
"Toynbee
is hampered in putting forward an evolutionary view of history by failing
to understand the nature of evolution itself. In which failure he is admittedly
in good company. Only in this case it is particularly exasperating because
(a) the failure is due to the very method of thought which he says he rejects--that
is, the attempt to grasp evolution in concepts applicable only to inanimate
objects, and (b) because . . . he comes very near to stating the true principle
[with his concept of etherealization].
"The true principle;
being--"
"That evolution is
determined from the interior. If he could have seen that this is true of
all evolution and not only of the most-up-to-date bits, he might have won
through to a really new historical method, instead of repairs and improvements
to the old one--i.e. the method of physical science transferred."
"But isn't it [Toynbee's]
whole case . . . that this determination from the interior only comes about
towards the end of the journey?"
"Yes. And that is
the fallacy. Interior is--was--always anterior." (80)
See in particular
Unancestral
Voice,
passim. |
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