CHAPTER XLIV
Remarks by St Teresa.
'Let us look at our own faults, and not at other people's. We ought not to insist on
everyone following our footsteps, nor to take upon ourselves to give
instructions in spirituality when, perhaps, we do not even know what it
is. Zeal for the good of souls, though
given us by God, may often lead us astray.'
To which add this. 'It is a great
grace of God to practise self-examination, but too much is as bad as too
little, as they say; believe me, by God's help, we shall accomplish more by
contemplating the divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves.' God may or may not exist. But there is the empirical fact that
contemplation of the divinity – of goodness in its most unqualified form – is a
method of realizing that goodness to some slight degree in one's life, and
results, often, in an experience as if of help towards that realization of
goodness, help from some being other than one's ordinary self and immensely
superior to it. Christian God and the
Buddhist's primal Mind – interpretations of concrete experiences, the Buddhist
being the rationalization of a state further removed from the normal than the
Christian. Christians, of course, have
often experienced that state and found great difficulties in explaining it in
orthodox terms. Both conceptions
legitimate – just as both macroscopical and microscopical views of matter are
legitimate. We look at the universe with
a certain kind of physico-mental apparatus.
That apparatus can respond only to certain stimuli. Within relatively narrow limits, it is
adjustable. The nature of the facts
which each of us perceives as primary and given depends on the nature of the
individual instrument and on the adjustment we have been brought up, or
deliberately chosen, to give it. From
these data one can draw inferences. Which may be logically sound or unsound. And philosophy is intellectually legitimate
if, one, it starts from facts which, for the philosopher, are data and if, two,
the logical construction based on these facts is sound. But an intellectually is not the same as a
morally legitimate philosophy. We can
adjust our instrument deliberately, by an act of the will. This means that we can will modifications in
the personal experiences which underlie our philosophy, the data from which we
argue. Problem: to build really solid
logical bridges between given facts and philosophical inferences. All but insoluble. No bullet-proof arguments for any of the main
cosmological theories. What, then, shall
we do? Stick, so far
as possible, to the empirical facts – always remembering that these are
modifiable by anyone who chooses to modify the perceiving mechanism. So that one can see, for example, either irremediable senselessness and turpitude, or else
actualizable potentialities for good – whichever one likes; it is a question of
choice.
