THE FOUR KINDS OF LITERATURE

1. No less than philosophy is the 'literature' of religious people, so, by noumenal contrast, poetry is the 'literature' of scientific people, i.e. those for whom fire rather than air is the principal element, and who are accordingly more of the will than of the soul.

2. Similarly, if on comparatively phenomenal and therefore lower-class terms, drama is the 'literature' of political people, i.e. those for whom water is the principal element, as in connection with the tongue, and hence speech, while, on the opposite side of the gender divide, fiction, the literary per se it may well be, is the 'literature' of economic people, or those for whom vegetation (earth) is the principal element, as in connection with the flesh, and hence sex - the carnal mode of knowledge.

3. Doubtless any knowledge is commensurate with a literary disposition, in the specific sense we are here discussing, but carnal knowledge seems to be especially typical of that kind of fiction which aims, in shamelessly commercial vein, to corner the mass market and reap the biggest financial take.

4. Certainly theatre cannot compete with fiction on these terms, though from a political perspective there is nothing to rival the spoken word, whether or not one regards it as the theory behind political praxis.

5. From an analogical standpoint, it could be argued that drama stands to fiction as harmony to melody in music or, equally, as rugby to football in field sports - a thing more supernatural than natural and able, in sensual, or 'once-born', societies to command the moral 'high ground', if only in relation to lower-class phenomenality.

6. For in relation to upper-class noumenality, it is of course poetry which commands the moral 'high ground' in such sensual societies, wherein fire rather than water is the prevailing element.

7. In neither context, however, would one be dealing with anything 'reborn', and hence Christian, much less atheistic and/or deistic (as in the Social Transcendentalist sense already outlined). For poetry and drama can only thrive hegemonically in heathenistic societies, not in those sensible types of society in which either a 'reborn' form of knowledge, and hence fiction, or a 'reborn' form of truth, and hence philosophy, becomes chiefly characteristic, in consequence of a male hegemony.

8. There, on the contrary, beauty and strength are rather the exception, culturally speaking, to the general rule of knowledge or truth, the natural or the subnatural taking precedence, in literary terms, over the supernatural and the unnatural.

9. Thus a society in which the philosopher is 'king' will be as far removed from that in which the poet is 'king' or, more correctly, 'queen' ... as a society in which the novelist is 'king' or, rather, 'lord' from one in which the dramatist is 'queen' or, more correctly, 'lady'.

10. Indeed, a philosopher-respecting society, which can only be religious, will be even further removed from a poet-worshipping one than would be the respective literary protagonists of the phenomenal types of society from each other, given the noumenal gap which exists, in space and time, between religion and science, elemental wavicles and elemental particles, which, unlike their molecular counterparts, are not contiguous.

11. Woman and man are much more interactive than, in comparable terminology, God and the Devil. Water and vegetation (earth) come in between fire and air, and may often turn to mud as they mix indiscriminately, as, indeed, can dramatists and novelists when the former become too prone to description and the latter to dialogue.

12. Whether poetry is as much the theory behind science, or drama as much the theory behind politics, or fiction as much the theory behind economics ... as philosophy is, to my mind, the theory behind religion, one thing there can be absolutely no uncertainty about is that fiction will only appeal a very little, if at all, to the genuine philosopher, who will be too truth-orientated in his metaphysical understanding to allow knowledge, much less beauty and strength, those attributes of poetry and drama, to obscure his literary path as he walks towards the peace of joy, and thus the fulfilment of his theoretical mission in the religious praxis of God and Heaven, the grace and holiness that only applied metaphysics can deliver.

13. The true philosopher will not be overly disposed to love beauty, to take pride in strength, or to take pleasure in knowledge. On the contrary, he will be theoretically joyful in truth, as God is practically joyful in Heaven.

14. And all he has to do to achieve religion is to abandon philosophy for meditation, abandon the subhumanity of truth for the divinity of God (the Son), thereby passing from the subconsciousness of joy to the sublimity of Heaven.