ON
THE 'NATURES' OF THE ELEMENTS
1. Of the four elements, only one is prohibitive
of life or, more correctly, of the possibility of one's living in it - namely
fire.
2. Fire prohibits life from directly living in
it but is, paradoxically, the foundation of life, the root element from which each
of the other elements, though particularly water, duly emerged.
3. There are life forms who live predominantly
in each of the other elements besides fire - fish in water (the seas, etc.);
animals on land (earth, vegetation, etc.); birds in the air (the sky). Thus they are definable primarily in terms of
their environmental relationship to water, vegetation, or air, as the case may
be.
4. It could be said of mankind that they, too,
are predominantly creatures who live on land, after the fashion of animals, and
certainly this would seem to be the general case.
5. These days more than ever before, however,
mankind live or spend considerable periods of time in the water and in the air,
as well as on land; for submarines at one extreme and aircraft at the other
guarantee that a significant number of people lead fish- and bird-like
existences in addition to animal-like ones.
6. Yet even mankind cannot live in fire, which
remains for that reason an element more usually associated with death.
7. Water is closer to fire than are vegetation
and air in the way that it, too, is a sort of death for all but fish and those
who, lacking gills, have access to artificial breathing equipment or
submarines. Certainly it is ranged with
fire on the objective side of life as a primary element, the kind of element I
have hitherto characterized as female or of female association.
8. In fact, I hold to the theory that whereas
the 'nature' of fire, the metachemical element, is
unnatural, bearing in mind that it is contrary to nature as the one element in
which no living creature is to be found, the 'nature' of water, by contrast, is
supernatural, since it stands to the left, as it were, of nature conceived in
its most natural, or vegetative, terms, i.e. earth, as that which originally
sprang from fire and continues, in a manner of speaking, to do so, like a
geyser rushing up from the fiery bowels of the earth.
9. Thus out of the unnatural has sprung the supernatural,
as water from fire, and, in human terms, woman from the Devil, the feminine
from the diabolic. For women, in the
broadest sense, are not only fiery, they are also somewhat watery, given to
fits of temper followed by tearful remorse, and we recognize in this display of
primary elementalism the more objective 'nature' of
women as creatures from whom both evil and good flow in unnatural and
supernatural torrents of metachemical and chemical
agitation.
10. But if water is supernatural in relation both
to the anterior unnatural 'nature' of fire and to the posterior natural
'nature' of vegetation (earth), the masculine element par excellence, so
that it could be said to stem from the former as it gushes over the latter,
this supernaturalism has nothing whatsoever to do with air, the metaphysical
element, but is rather less divine than feminine in its purgatorial
association, an association at once phenomenal and quantitative, having more to
do, in volume and mass, with chemical giving than with metaphysical being.
11. Thus the association, so popularly upheld, of supernature or the supernatural with metaphysical being
is really quite false, since although being does of course accrue to the
supernatural, it is more in terms of chemistry than of metaphysics, with, for
example, pride rather than joy being the essential correlation.
12. Yet not only being but doing, taking, and
(especially) giving also accrue to the supernatural, as to all other elements
in one degree or another. But giving
remains the principal characteristic of supernature,
just as doing, its apparent counterpart, remains principally characteristic of unnature, the fiery 'nature' of which renders everything
else of subordinate interest.
13. But if doing and giving are the principal characteristics
of fire and water, the unnatural and the supernatural, then the principal
characteristic of vegetation, the natural element par excellence, is
taking, not least of all in relation to what water, in particular, has to give.
14. For vegetation, being physical, is a
qualitative element, an element that should be associated, in its subjective phenomenality, with the masculine, and thus, in a sense,
with men - not, of course, the highest men, or gods (with their noumenal subjectivity in time and space), but man in his
average or general permutation, as a creature who allows himself to be
prevailed upon by women, to take what the supernatural, aided and abetted by
the unnatural, has to give.
15. Beyond vegetation, earth, the land, etc., lies
air, oxygen, the sky, etc., and it is with this fourth and last element that
essence raises its metaphysical banner in the name not of nature, still less of
supernature, but of subnature
- a noumenal advancement over the phenomenality
of nature, which stands to vegetation as God to man or grace to sin or truth to
knowledge or soul to ego.
16. Yes, it is with the essential element, the
metaphysical element of air, unseen but nevertheless omnipresent, that life
evolves to the subnatural, to that which is deeper, profounder,
higher than nature, and antithetical, in the subjectivity of its noumenal standing, to unnature,
as essence to appearance, soul to will.
17 Thus not the supernatural out of nature, as
popular delusion would have one believe, but the subnatural
out of nature, the wisdom of truth out of the folly of knowledge, the holiness
of joy out of the unholiness of pleasure, grace from
sin, and peace from travail.
18. Now both alike, being subjective, appertain to
the male side of life, and are only possible on the basis of the prior
existence, in unnatural and supernatural primacy, of its female side - a side
rather closer, paradoxically, to death than to life, since fire and water are
less conducive to life, as we have seen, than are vegetation and air, even
though they have a primary elemental correspondence and the latter merely a
secondary one - like, in a sense, the Church in relation to the State.
19. One could speak, in relation to the elements,
of the fire of death, the water of life-in-death, the vegetation of
death-in-life, and the air of life, since where the noumenal
elements of fire and air correspond to the absolute, the phenomenal elements of
water and vegetation (earth) are correspondingly relative, having less to do
with extremism than with moderation; less to do, in other words, with the Devil
and God than with woman and man.
20. Thus whereas the fiery unnature
of metachemistry corresponds to (eternal) death and
the airy subnature of metaphysics to (eternal) life,
the watery supernature of chemistry corresponds to
(temporal) life-in-death and the vegetative nature of physics to (temporal)
death-in-life.
21. The evil of death contrasts with the goodness
of life-in-death ... as the Devil with woman, while the folly of death-in-life
contrasts with the wisdom of life ... as man with God.
22. The immortality of devils and gods is premised
upon their association with the noumenal elements of
fire and air, the one commensurate with Eternal Death and the other with
Eternal Life - metachemical will and metaphysical
soul in the absolute contrast of unnature and subnature.
23. The mortality of women and men is premised
upon their association with the phenomenal elements of water and vegetation,
the one commensurate with the temporality of life-in-death and the other with
the temporality of death-in-life - chemical spirit and physical ego in the
relative contrast of supernature and nature.
24. The lower-class categories of women and men,
corresponding to water and vegetation, are mortal in their respective
temporalities, whereas the upper-class categories of devils and gods,
corresponding to fire and air, are immortal in their respective eternalities.
25. In such fashion, mass and volume are mortal,
whether as volume-mass devolution (feminine) or as mass-volume evolution
(masculine), whereas time and space are immortal, whether as space-time
devolution (diabolic) or as time-space evolution (divine).
26. Likewise whereas the unnature
of noumenal objectivity, corresponding to space-time
devolution, and the subnature of noumenal
subjectivity, corresponding to time-space evolution, are immortal (the former
in terms of Eternal Death and the latter in terms of Eternal Life), the supernature of phenomenal objectivity, corresponding to
volume-mass devolution, and the nature of phenomenal subjectivity,
corresponding to mass-volume evolution, are mortal (the former in terms of
life-in-death and the latter in terms of death-in-life).
27. Immortal are both the unconscious and the
subconscious, the former corresponding to unnature
and the latter to subnature.
28. Mortal are both the superconscious
and the conscious (mind), the former corresponding to supernature
and the latter to nature.
29. Just as the unconscious (will) would be
inconceivable without reference to unnature (fire),
so the subconscious (soul) would be inconceivable without reference to subnature (air).
30. Just as the superconscious
(spirit) would be inconceivable without reference to supernature
(water), so the conscious (ego) would be inconceivable without reference to
nature (vegetation).
31. Only the will that is of fire, the unconscious
that is of metachemical unnature,
is of a per
se order of doing.
32. Only the soul that is of air, the subconscious
that is of metaphysical subnature, is of a per se order of
being.
33. Only the spirit that is of water, the superconscious that is of chemical supernature,
is of a per
se order of giving.
34. Only the ego that is of vegetation, the
conscious that is of physical nature, is of a per se order of
taking.
35. All other wills, souls, spirits, and egos are
'bovaryizations' of doing, being, giving, and taking
that accrue, in their respective degrees and ways, to any element but that in
which will, soul, spirit, or ego is in its per se mode.
36. Supernature without unnature is as inconceivable as subnature
without nature. Water can no more exist
totally independently of fire ... than air of vegetation.
37. Similarly, spirit without will is as
inconceivable as soul without ego. Superconsciousness can no more exist totally independently
of unconsciousness ... than subconsciousness of
consciousness.
38. Woman without the Devil is as inconceivable as
God without man. Strength can no more
exist totally independently of beauty than truth ... of knowledge.
39. Purgatory without Hell is as inconceivable as
Heaven without the earth. Pride can no
more exist totally independently of love than joy ... of pleasure.
40. Just as woman needs the Devil to become
properly feminine, so God needs man to become properly divine. There can no more be punishment (for some)
without the crime (of others), than there can be grace (for some) without the
sin (of others).
41. Just as punishment is only intelligible in
relation to crime, and vice versa, so grace is only intelligible in relation to
sin, and vice versa.
42. It is for this reason that although the
genders are intelligible to themselves on the basis of a dichotomy between evil
and good in the female case, and folly and wisdom in the male case, they are
rarely intelligible to each other - crime and grace having as little in common
as punishment and sin or, in broader terms, the State and the Church.
