The Language of God — Part One
Paddrock and bookley chat.
And here are the details.
Tunc. Bymeby, bullocky vampas tappany bobs topside joss pidgin fella Balkelly, archdruid of islish chinchinjoss in the his heptachromatic sevenhued septicoloured roranyellgreenlindigan mantle …
……….
That was thing, bygotter, the thing, boagcotton, the very thing, begad! Even to uptoputty Bilkilly-Belkelly-Balkally. Who was for shouting down the shatton on the lamp of Jeeshees. Sweating on to stonker and throw his seven. As he shuck his thumping fore features apt the hoyhop of His Ards.
Thud.
- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’.
These excerpts are taken from the ‘St Patrick and the Druid’ episode in ‘Finnegans Wake’, wherein is related a discussion between St. Patrick (Paddrock), patron saint of Ireland, and Bishop George Berkeley (archdruid Balkelly), the eighteenth century (subjective) idealist philosopher, author of ‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’, 1710, and ‘An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision’, 1709, who professed a philosophical immaterialism, which holds that perception is the foundation of all reality (‘to be is to be perceived’). This episode occurs within the last chapter of ‘Finnegans Wake’, which focusses upon the central themes of change and rejuvenation, and here nested within the chapter is a debate that raises the issue of the perception of truth and of the enigma of artistic expression; the argument between Paddrock and Balkelly is thus both a provocative address to ‘Finnegans Wake’ itself and a championing of it.
The account of the meeting is inspired by the story of St Patrick’s conversion of Ireland to Christianity via such stratagems as contesting with druids (Celtic priests, magicians, and soothsayers) and lighting a Paschal bonfire on the hill at Slane on Holy Saturday in defiance of the then king of Ireland, King Laoghaire (Leary), a fire that could only be doused by Patrick himself. This latter stunt led to his getting one over the king’s archdruid, Lucat-Mael, (the source of these fanciful fables concerning Patrick is Muirchú moccu Machtheni, 7th century monk, and his ‘Vita sancti Patricii’. Still, as St Paul, (c. 5 ACE — c. 64 or 67 ACE), said: ‘For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?’, (Romans 3.7). And we also have this from Bishop Eusebius, (260/265 ACE — 339/340 ACE), a chapter title to one of his works: ‘How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived’).
The lighting of the bonfire led to a thwarted visitation from agents at the service of King Leary; though the decisive confrontation did not take place until Easter Sunday, in the form of a contest of miracles, performed before the king, by Lucat-Mael and by Patrick. The saint was consistently able to outmatch the druid and finally annihilate him; and a singular miracle to make its appearance in ‘Finnegans Wake’ involved a darkness descending over the land as a result of the invocations of Lucat-Mael, who, upon being requested to dispel it, declared that he would not be able to do so until the following day; whereupon Patrick, of course, caused it to vanish at once; and the sun then shining forth once more, all the people cried out glorifying the God of St. Patrick.
Joyce endows new meaning to, while making new use of, all of this so as to present a conversion of St Patrick by Ireland rather than Ireland being converted by St. Patrick; while Balkelly expatiates upon Berkeley’s theory of colour, that white is the basis of all colour and that any other colour is an illusion. Such is derived from Berkeley’s theory of vision; the contest is in effect between Patrick and Balkelly over their differing visions of the world. Balkelly, also bookley, lover of the book, the artist, while Paddrock is the pragmatist presenting a practical solution to the problem posed.
The druid Balkelly argues thus: given that seeing necessarily involves a selective blindness, the colour we believe we perceive is actually one part of the spectrum that is in fact absent, so in the pursuit of truth we should turn away from such a blocking from view that we impose upon ourselves, that which we inappropriately term vision, and search instead for the image of the rainbow world by looking inward to the microcosm that is our soul. Paddrock proves to be an impatient listener, humming to himself during much of Balkelly’s expatiation, thereby missing a good deal of the multi-layered argument; Paddrock’s monotone responding to Balkelly’s polyphony, so to speak; but, ever the practical one, it does occur to Paddrock that, once all is said and done, what one misses today one can pick up tomorrow, that in effect one can piece together the rainbow, colour by colour, over time; it is simply a matter of one thing at a time; Paddrock’s practical solution.
And the ‘Thud’ registers the artist being defeated by society.
‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’ may be summarised as follows:
1. The belief in abstract ideas had led to the supposition that material objects are quite different from sensations, the fact is that material objects are nothing but sensations given a proper name.
2. Esse is percipi; to be is to be perceived — this is a truth concerning all material objects.
3. If it be argued that ideas are copies of material objects, consider whether anything could be like an idea but an idea.
4. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities (between such structural properties as figure, motion, and shape, on the one hand, and colour, odour, and sound, on the other) on the ground that the former are objective, the latter subjective, cannot be maintained: the primary qualities depend on the secondary; they are equally subjective.
5. There is no independently existing material substratum; a distinction between the world of illusion and the world of reality can be maintained by realizing the greater vividness and coherency to be found in veridical sensations.
6. The order in nature is created and maintained by God, who secures the reality of all things by his perception.
Berkeley’s philosophical immaterialism, (no material objects, only minds, or spirits, and ideas in those minds, or spirits), perhaps particularly so because of the possibilities open for rather obvious word play with mind and matter, has, of course, been the subject of much dismissive ridicule. Lord Byron, (1788–1824), for instance, wrote this, in ‘Don Juan’:
When Bishop Berkeley said ‘there was no matter,’
And proved it — ’twas no matter what he said.
And Samuel Johnson, (1709–1784), supposed himself to have provided proof against Berkeley’s immaterialist philosophy through the act of kicking a large stone and declaring: ‘I refute him thus’. This, of course, is the Paddrockian kind of rebuttal to philosophical theory. It has given its name to a logical fallacy, argumentum ad lapidem, appeal to the stone; it is logically fallacious because a proposition is simply dismissed as absurd with no proof provided of its absurdity.
Then there is Ronald Knox, (1888–1957), who addressed through the art of limerick Berkeley’s contention that the order in nature is created and maintained by God who secures the reality of all things by his perception:
God in the Quad
There was a young man who said ‘God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad’.
Reply:
‘Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God’.
It may therefore be somewhat surprising, especially in the light of Paddrock as supposedly the practical one, that an advocate of the pragmatist theory of truth, (basically, the true is what works), William James, (1842–1910), not only took Berkeley’s ideas to be worthy of serious discussion but also considered him to be a pragmatist:
‘So far from denying the external world which we know, Berkeley corroborated it. It was the scholastic notion of a material substance unapproachable by us, BEHIND the external world, deeper and more real than it, and needed to support it, which Berkeley maintained to be the most effective of all reducers of the external world to unreality. Abolish that substance, he said, believe that God, whom you can understand and approach, sends you the sensible world directly, and you confirm the latter and back it up by his divine authority. Berkeley’s criticism of ‘matter’ was consequently absolutely pragmatistic. Matter is known as our sensations of colour, figure, hardness and the like. They are the cash-value of the term. The difference matter makes to us by truly being is that we then get such sensations; by not being, is that we lack them. These sensations then are its sole meaning. Berkeley doesn’t deny matter, then; he simply tells us what it consists of. It is a true name for just so much in the way of sensations’.
Cash-value is a metaphor employed by James to refer to the practical difference a conception being true or false can make to an individual.
However, as I have said in a previous article, I am not a pragmatist insofar as truth is concerned, I am a coherentist; and Berkeleyan immaterialism can be shown to be incoherent. First, however, although I have repeatedly used the term immaterialism, it is, as it happens, rather unhelpful to say of Berkeley’s philosophy that it is immaterialist; James is correct, though it is also unhelpful to speak of Berkeleyan definition of matter in terms of cash-value, given the vagueness with what exactly is meant by that metaphor. And further, the Johnson/Byron/Knox response follows that of Paddrock in not paying sufficient attention to Berkeley’s multi-layered argument, and in addition demonstrates a lack of acquaintance with the philosophical issues involved; to properly understand what is at stake here requires an incursion into the philosophy of science, for Berkeley’s philosophical stance may be properly characterised as opposed to the philosophy of science propounded by René Descartes, (1596–1650), itself opposed to that propounded by Aristotle, (384 BCE — 322 BCE), which is to say, for Descartes there is nothing more to nature than extension that is describable in mathematical terms, and changes in nature take place mechanically; and the contrast between such an account and the world as we experience it is explained by there being a mind-independent realm of things with primary qualities and a mind-dependent realm of ideas they cause in us. (Side note: according to John Locke, (1632–1704), primary qualities are such qualities as solidity, motion, shape, etc., but he also includes number, which is a bit odd; try asking of a thing: what is the number of that?)
Aristotle and Descartes did concur upon one issue in the philosophy of science; namely, for Aristotle ‘the proper object of unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other than it is’. Scientific knowledge is acquired by demonstration, and from premises which ‘must be true, primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion’. Descartes makes a similar point: ‘I would think I knew nothing in Physics if I could only say how things could be, without proving that they could not be otherwise. This is perfectly possible once one has reduced everything to laws of mathematics’. So, for Aristotle: ‘Since the object of pure scientific knowledge cannot be other than it is, the truth obtained by demonstrative knowledge will be necessary. And since demonstrative knowledge is only present when we have a demonstration, it follows that demonstration is an inference from necessary premisses, i.e. what is their character’.
It was on the character of the premisses that Descartes took issue with Aristotle. For Aristotle they were definable essences of things of various ‘natural kinds’, the essence being definable in terms of the end towards which a thing of that kind developed. That is to say, a teleological explanation is not simply something agreeable to the needs of understanding Nature; the final end is ‘something or other really existing, corresponding to what we call by the name of Nature’; and ‘Nature means a source of movement within the thing itself’. But it was by reducing everything to the laws of mathematics that Descartes was able to discover necessity in nature; in place of Aristotle’s numerous natural kinds, each with its own essence, he substituted matter, with merely one essence throughout, that of extension, which can be defined mathematically; and then everything that happens is demonstrable, at least in in principle, (how easy that phrase trips of the tongue, in principle, possible in theory, but not proven!) from a knowledge of the shapes, sizes, and motions of elementary particles of matter.
Berkeley’s philosophy of science differs from that of Aristotle and Descartes in important respects. Aristotle and Descartes both believed there are necessary connections in nature; which is to say, they were both essentialists, albeit in very different ways. Aristotle holds that to grasp truths that cannot be other than they are one must apprehend a subject’s attributes as inhering in the subject in virtue of the subject’s substance and essential nature. (Substance, in the philosophical sense, is a fundamental entity of reality). Descartes holds, according to Berkeley, ‘that merely from circular motion’s being impressed by the supreme Agent on the particles of extended substance, the whole world, with all its several parts, appurtenances, and phenomena might be produced, by a necessary consequence, from the laws of motion’. Aristotle holds there to be innumerable essences, essences of all the different kinds to which natural things belong; Descartes holds there to be only one essence, definitive of the material world, extension. Berkeley rejected both kinds of essentialism; rather the notion that there are essentialist explanations, of either the Aristotelian or the Cartesian variety, is, for Berkeley, one of the ‘chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences’, and their elimination as ‘a method for rendering the sciences more easy, useful and compendious’.
Whereas Descartes had differed with Aristotle about there being final causes, Berkeley is prepared to permit teleological explanations alongside one in terms of motion. It is, he says, appropriate for philosophers ‘to employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of things’ because ‘the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good agent’.
It is apparent that there is quite a radical difference between the way in which ‘the whole creation is the workmanship of a wise and good agent’ is envisaged by Berkeley and Descartes, for in Descartes’ philosophy God may be needed to sustain the world in existence, but God’s creative work is done once God has set everything in place; from then on it operates according to mechanical laws. Such a deistic view is unacceptable to Berkeley. (Deism, the view that regards God as the intelligent creator of an independent and law-abiding world but denies that God providentially guides it or intervenes in any way with its course or destiny). In Berkeley’s philosophy God is constantly active, willing the ideas of sense which, for us, constitute nature; one might say that these ideas are the language in which God speaks to us (rather than poetry or the music of Mozart, (1756–1791), or whatever similar fanciful notions you may entertain; sorry if you find the title of this article to be a kind of clickbaiting); they are evidence of ‘the Immediate Providence of a Deity’.
Having cleared that up I can now address the incoherence inherent in Berkeley’s philosophy of science; in particular, as it may already have occurred to some of you, if all that exists is ideas and minds, or spirits, why do not the words mind or spirit themselves merely denote Berkeleyan ideas? I will take this up in part two, through considering the nature of knowledge of my own spirit, and that of knowledge of other spirits.
Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.
- James Allen, (1864–1912), ‘As A Man Thinketh’.
To be continued …..
Notes to ‘Finnegans Wake’:
Quotation 1:
1. Paddrock = Patrick, name of the patron saint of Ireland.
2. chat = to talk in a light and informal manner, to converse familiarly and pleasantly.
3. Tunc = tunc (Latin), then; and onamatopiea; and Tunc page of ‘Book of Kells’.
4. Bymeby = by and by, at once, immediately; in a little while, soon, presently; and bymby (Beche-la-Mar): used to indicate future tense.
5. bullocky = resembling a bullock; and Bullocky, 19th century Aboriginal cricketer (toured England as part of an Aboriginal team in 1868).
6. vampas = vamp, to make one’s way on foot, to tramp or trudge
7. tappany = twopenny; and Twopenny,19th century Aboriginal cricketer (toured England as part of an Aboriginal team in 1868).
8. bobs = bob (slang), shilling.
9. topside = the highest level of authority, in a position of authority; the upper side of anything; and topside (Pidgin), superior.
10. joss = a Chinese idol or cult image, foreman; and joss (Pidgin), God.
11. pidgin = a language as spoken in a simplified or altered form by non-natives, especially as a means of communication between people not sharing a common language; a Chinese corruption of English business, used widely for any action, occupation, or affair.
12. fella = representing an affected or vulgar pronunciation of fellow.]
13. Balkelly = Berkeley, George (1685–1752), Anglican bishop of Cloyne, philosopher; and Buckley; and Archdruid Berkeley or Bulkely (Chinese Pidgin English; no known historical figure of that name) speaking in debate with Saint Patrick (Nippon English) before King Leary.
14. druid = one of an order of men among the ancient Celts of Gaul and Britain, who, according to Cæsar were priests or religious ministers and teachers, but who figure in native Irish and Welsh legend as magicians, sorcerers, soothsayers, and the like.
15. chinchin = expression of greeting or farewell; casual talk, chatter; and chin chin joss (Pidgin), religious worship.
16. heptachromatic = hepta (Greek), seven; and chromatic, pertaining to colour; and heptachromatikos (Greek), seven-colored, cf, Flood, ‘Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars’ : ‘an Ollave … was privileged to wear the same number of colours in his clothes as a monarch’ (i.e. seven colours, as opposed to just six colours for regular poets).
17. septicoloured = septicoloratus (Latin), seven-colored.
18. roranyellgreenlindigan = red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (7 colours of a rainbow).
19. mantle = a loose sleeveless cloak of varying length.
Quotation 2:
1. bygotter = begotter — begotten — procreated; and Gotter (German), gods; and begetter.
2, boagcotton = bog cotton, any of several bog seeds; begotten.
3. begad = an exclamation, used to give weight to a statement; and begat.
4. uptoputty = up to putty, worthless, useless (Australian colloq.)
5. shouting = shutting; and Laoghaire’s druid (called Luchru or Lochru) performed a miracle of blotting out the sun.
6. shatton = shutter; and Schatten (German), shadow, shade.
7 stonker = to render useless; to put out of action, thwart. Also, to kill, destroy; to defeat or outwit.
8. thumping =fig. (colloq.) of striking size, extent, or amount; exceptionally large or heavy; and thumb.
9. apt = up
10. Ards = arse (exposed when Patrick kneels); and Ard (ard) (Gaelic), high.
11. Thud = a heavy blow; a thump with the fist; also fig. a severe affliction, a blow.
