The Book of the Damned

But that all scientific attempts really to find out something, whereas really there is nothing to find out, are attempts, themselves, really to be something. A seeker of Truth. He will never find it. But the dimmest of possibilities--he may himself become Truth. Or that science is more than an inquiry: That it is a pseudo-construction, or a quasi-organization: that it is an attempt to break away and locally establish harmony, stability, equilibrium, consistency, entity-- Dimmest of possibilities--that it may succeed. That ours is a pseudo-existence, and that all appearances in it partake of its essential fictitiousness-- But that some appearances approximate far more highly to the positive state than do others. We conceive of all "things" as occupying gradations, or steps in series between positiveness and negativeness, or realness and unrealness: that some seeming things are more nearly consistent, just, beautiful, unified, individual, harmonious, stable--than others. We are not realists. We are not idealists. We are intermediatists--that nothing is real, but that nothing is unreal: that all phenomena are approximations one way or the other between realness and unrealness. So then: That our whole quasi-existence is an intermediate stage between positiveness and negativeness or realness and unrealness. Like purgatory, I think. But in our summing up, which was very sketchily done, we omitted to make clear that Realness is an aspect of the positive state. By Realness, I mean that which does not merge away into something else, and that which is not partly something else: that which is not a reaction to, or an imitation of, something else. By a real hero, we mean one who is not partly a coward, or whose actions and motives do not merge away into cowardice. But, if in Continuity, all things do merge, by Realness, I mean the Universal, besides which there is nothing with which to merge.