OTHER TYPES OF MORALITY

1. Besides the morality of being, there are of course what may be termed the moralities of taking, of giving, and of doing, this latter equally, if antithetically, noumenal to being.

2. None of these alternative kinds of morality is - or ever can be - the principal concern of the philosopher, since the philosopher who is true to his vocation will sooner or later gravitate to being, thereby indicating that philosophy may well be the soul of literature as distinct from its ego (fiction), its spirit (drama), or its will (poetry). Thus when moral being has been accounted for and properly understood, the philosopher's task is effectively over. He may theorize about taking, giving, or doing, but always from the standpoint of one who is centred in being, specifically metaphysical being, and preferably of a sensible, or 're-born', order. For a literature that is centred or, alternatively, rooted in that which is less than being, one must turn to the novelist, the dramatist, and the poet, whose chief literary preserves are - or should be - taking, giving, and doing respectively. For while fiction is primarily a discipline of the ego, drama is its spiritual counterpart, and poetry, rather more noumenal than phenomenal, is that which lies the furthest removed from philosophy as the discipline, par excellence, of the will.

3. Thus as we have correlated being with soul, soul being the essence of beingfulness, so we can correlate taking with ego, ego being the quality of taking; giving with spirit, spirit being the quantity of giving; and doing with will, doing being the appearance of will. If drama and fiction are respectively feminine and masculine, corresponding to water and to vegetation (earth), then poetry and philosophy are their diabolic and divine counterparts, the former with a correspondence to fire and the latter having a no-less noumenal correspondence to air.

4. Of course, just as there is being in every element, from fire and water to vegetation and air, so doing, giving, and taking are likewise to be found everywhere, though not to the same extent or on identical terms. Just as being is only in its per se manifestation in air, so, conversely, doing is only such in positive relation to fire, while the phenomenal conditions of giving and taking will have their respective per se manifestations in water and vegetation. Thus no less than the soul per se will only be found in the metaphysical context of air, so the will per se, its doing-oriented antithesis, is only to be found in the metachemical context of fire; the spirit per se in the chemical context of water; and the ego per se in the physical context of vegetation.

5. Thus, in gender terms, will and spirit are primarily female attributes, whereas ego and soul are primarily male - certainly when of a per se nature. It is this insight which enables us to distinguish the objective elements (rooted in a vacuum and tending towards direct [straight line] divergence and/or convergence) of fire and water from the subjective elements (centred in a plenum and tending towards indirect [curved line] divergence and/or convergence) of vegetation and air - the former pair female and the latter pair male. Metachemistry and chemistry stand on one side of the gender fence, pretty much like poetry and drama, no less than physics and metaphysics on its other side, the side wherein fiction and philosophy are the principal literary concerns. Thus must doing and giving, the will and the spirit, be set aside, in elemental terms, from taking and being, the ego and the soul.