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UNDERSTANDING NOBILITY

1. What is it, essentially, that distinguishes the higher man from the lower, whether literally high born or not? - Is not the answer to that simply the fact of his ability to master space and time?

2. Now by master space and time I, of course, mean to be able to live with himself in solitude and get on with something noble, whether in the objective terms of space-time (metachemistry) or in the subjective terms of time-space (metaphysics).

3. In short, the higher man is not cowered by space and time, the space around him as a solitary individual and the time that is on his hands in solitude, but uses both to the best of his ability or, at any rate, to his noumenal advantage. He does not run away from his solitude in space and time to seek refuge 'down below', in the phenomenality of volume and mass.

4. For the man who cannot handle solitude is not noble but plebeian, is of 'the many', and space and time are not what he can consistently or nobly get along with but, rather, factors to flee from in the interests of his peace of mind.

5. And in fleeing from solitude the lower man, the pleb, embraces multitude; for mass and volume are the planes of the masses, whether bourgeois or proletarian, middle class or working class, and thus in that respect very much of the world.

6. I do not say that lower men invariably flee from their solitude in space and time; for often they do not even wish to embrace it to begin with or would tell you that, in pursuance of their mundane duties, they were never given the chance to live as individuals but were obliged, by necessity, to go out to work and rub shoulders with others in the mass.

7. That may well be, but one remains to be convinced that a lower man, accustomed to living in mass and volume, and probably having a physiology at variance with the more ethereal realms above, would be able to handle time and space to any appreciable or noble extent ... were he given the chance.

8. I, for one, would remain sceptical that the common man, the 'man of the people' and/or 'man in the street' (for the two are approximately synonymous), and thus of 'the many', would be capable of mastering time and space in some solitary individualistic vocation, were he given such a chance.

9. For the higher men are only higher because, genuinely committed to a particular vocation, they have proved, over many years, that they can master time and space and thus live with themselves as individuals. Most people cannot and, lacking vocational resolve or the requisite physiology, would not wish to live the consistently solitary lives of 'the few', and therefore they are happy, after their various worldly fashions, to live the collectivistic lives of 'the many'.

10. Thus the higher man is not something that the lower man can readily despise or treat with contempt; for the genuine higher man can and has proved his ability to live with space and time in pursuance of an individualistic lifestyle, and is therefore always above those who could not and, in all probability, would not want to live such a solitary lifestyle even were they in a position to.

11. He is noble and of 'the few', whereas they are plebeian and of 'the many', who treat mass and volume as the mean and would get bored or intimidated by too much time and space.

12. So the higher man can do or be something, depending on the nature of his nobility, which the lower man can't: namely remain resigned and even committed to space and time, and is therefore his superior to the degree that he is noumenal and the other merely phenomenal; that he is ethereal while the other is corporeal; that he is, in a manner of speaking, immortal while the other is mortal and, in Nietzsche's memorable phrase, 'human-all-too-human'.

13. I esteem the higher men, the nobles, for I, too, am of their ilk, having spent most of my adult life in solitary pursuance of a creative vocation in the Arts, including not only the art of literature, with particular regard to philosophy, the metaphysical branch of literature par excellence, but also the arts of painting (via PC) and, most especially, music.

14. For music is the metaphysical art form par excellence, and therefore the one that stands, with painting, as a properly noble art-form, all the more so to the extent that it reflects metaphysical values and even instrumental or tonal approximations, in wind or pipes, whether literally or in synthetic transmutation, to a metaphysical disposition.

15. Painting, by contrast, is effectively metachemical, and therefore as a rule more fiery than airy, even if equally noble in its noumenal elevation, especially when abstract, over the mass/volume world, including the bulk of literature and sculpture, with particular reference to novels and figure sculptures.

16. For nobility is divisible, after all, between the metachemical will of space-time objectivity and the metaphysical soul of time-space subjectivity, the former fundamentally female in its apparent bias, or bias for appearances, and the latter transcendentally male in its essential bias, or bias for essences, so that the one type of nobility, as of noumenal art form, is ever distinct from the other.

17. And this applies to both sensuality and sensibility, outer sense and inner sense, as between autocrats and aristocrats in space-time objectivity, and theocrats and meritocrats in time-space subjectivity, as nobility descends from sensuality to sensibility, as from eyes to heart, on the one hand, wherein it is damned, but ascends from sensuality to sensibility, as from ears to lungs, on the other hand, wherein it is saved.

18. For nobility is not just an aristocratic thing, even though aristocrats are generally of a noble breed. It is just as much about autocrats, theocrats, and meritocrats, with a division, in consequence, between sensual and sensible modes of noumenal objectivity, viz. autocrats and aristocrats on the one hand, and sensual and sensible modes of noumenal subjectivity, viz. theocrats and meritocrats on the other hand - a hand rather more significant of gods than of devils, and thus of divine as opposed to diabolic modes of immortality, which is to say, foolish (sensually cursed) and wise (sensibly saved) gods as against evil (sensually blessed) and good (sensibly damned) devils.

19. I esteem the metaphysical types of nobility above the metachemical types, because I primarily relate, as a philosopher, to the higher maleness of noumenal subjectivity rather than to the higher femaleness, so to speak, of noumenal objectivity, which is more concerned, in autocratic and/or aristocratic fashion, with rule than leadership, and thus with fire than air.

20. But I esteem the sensibility of metaphysics above the sensuality thereof, spaced space above sequential time in time-space subjectivity, and that is why I identify with meritocracy rather than theocracy, deeming the latter something to be saved from, as from folly to wisdom, in 'Kingdom Come'.