by Jan Potocki
There are animals which, in respect of their degree of organization, seem much inferior to plants, such as living mucilages, which can be seen floating on the sea, or hydatids, which live in sheep’s brains. There are animals with a higher form of organization in which, none the less, what we call a will cannot be easily detected. Thus when coral extends its capsule to swallow up the small animals which it eats, it is possible to suppose that this act is an effect of the way it is organized, just as we see flowers which close up at night and turn to the light during the day.
The sort of will which a polyp manifests when it stretches out its tentacles and opens up its capsule can be compared with some justice to the will of a child who has just been born and who doesn’t yet think, but who wills; for in children will, being the immediate result of need and pain, precedes thought.
Similarly a limb with cramp wants to stretch out and inspires that will in us. The stomach often refuses the diet imposed upon it. The salivary glands swell in the presence of the desired dish, and the palate also has a will. Often reason has great difficulty in gaining the upper hand.
If one pictures a man who has long not eaten or drunk, has shrunken limbs and has lived a celibate existence, one may see that several parts of his body will make him simultaneously will different things.
These appetites which derive directly from need are found in the adult polyp and new-born child. They are the first elements of the higher will, which develops later in virtue of the organization being perfected.
The will of a new-born child precedes thought but not by much. And thought too has its elements, which I shall describe.
As Velásquez reached this point in the exposition of his ideas, someone came and interrupted us. Rebecca indicated to the duke all the pleasure she had taken in listening to him, and we put off to the next day the next part of a lecture in which I also was deeply interested.
The Thirty-ninth Day
We set off once more and were soon joined by the Wandering Jew, who took up the thread of his story as follows:
THE WANDERING JEW’S STORY CONTINUED
While I was occupied with the fair Sara, Germanus, who did not take the same interest in her, had spent several days listening to the teaching of a master called Josuah, who subsequently became so famous under the name of Jesus. For Jesus is in Greek the same name as Jehoschuah in Hebrew, as one can see in the translation of the Septuagint.
Germanus even wanted to follow his master to Galilee, but the thought that he could be of use to me made him stay in Jerusalem.
One evening Sara took off her veil and tried to tie it to the branches of the balsam tree. But the wind caught hold of the light fabric and made it flutter up and fall into the Cedron. I threw myself into the stream, seized the veil and hung it on some branches below the terrace. Sara threw me a gold chain which she had taken from around her neck. I kissed it and swam back across the stream.
Old Sedekias had been woken by the noise and wanted to know what had happened. Sara began to tell him. He thought himself near the balustrade, but he was standing on rocks where there was none because bushes took its place. The old man lost his footing, the bushes gave way and he rolled down into the stream. I jumped in after him, caught hold of him and brought him back to the bank. All this took but an instant.
Sedekias regained his senses and, seeing himself in my arms, realized that he owed me his life. He asked me who I was. I told him that I was an Alexandrian Jew called Antipas and that, having neither money nor parents, I had come to Jerusalem to try to make my fortune.
‘I wish to take the place of your father,’ said Sedekias to me. ‘You will live in my house.’
I accepted the invitation without mentioning Germanus. He found it not to be a bad idea and continued to live at the cobbler’s house. So it was that I was installed in the house of my great enemy, and every day grew a little in the esteem of the man who would have murdered me if he had known that I was the legitimate heir to the greater part of his fortune. For her part, Sara was more and more pleased to see me as the days went by.
Money-changing was then practised in Jerusalem, as it still is throughout the East. If you go to Cairo or Baghdad, you will see men at the doors of mosques, sitting on the ground with little tables on their knees, with a groove in one of the corners into which money that has been counted rolls away. Next to them are bags of gold and silver, which they disburse to those needing this or that currency. Nowadays these money-changers are called sarafs. The writers of your gospels called them trapesitos, because of the little tables I mentioned. Nearly all the money-changers of Jerusalem worked only for Sedekias, who had an understanding with Roman tax-farmers and customs-men to raise or lower the value of a given currency at will. I soon realized that the surest way to win the good graces of my uncle would be to become a clever money-changer and to follow the rise and fall of rates of exchange. I succeeded so well in this that after two months no operation was undertaken without my first being consulted.
At about that time there was a rumour that Tiberius had ordered a general reminting of all the moneys of the empire; silver money would not be currency any longer and would be melted down into ingots to constitute the imperial treasury. I had not invented this story but I thought that it was within my rights to spread it about. You can well imagine the effect it was bound to have on those involved in money-changing. Sedekias himself did not know what to think, and could not make up his mind about it.
I have told you that throughout the East money-changers can still be seen near the doors of mosques. In Jerusalem we were inside the temple. This was a vast place, and in the corner we occupied we did not get in the way of divine service. But for several days money-changers had not appeared because of the general alarm. Sedekias did not ask my opinion, but he seemed to want to read it in my eyes. Eventually, when I thought that silver money had been sufficiently devalued, I presented my plan to my great-uncle. He listened attentively and looked hesitant and pensive for a long time. At last he said to me, ‘My dear Antipas, I have two million gold sesterces in my vaults. If your speculation succeeds you may aspire to the hand of Sara.’
The hope of possessing fair Sara and the sight of the gold, which is always seductive to a Jew, sent me into a state of ecstasy from which I recovered only to go through the city decrying silver money still more. Germanus helped me as best he could. I won over several merchants who refused to be paid in silver. At last things reached the point at which the inhabitants of Jerusalem acquired a sort of horror and disgust for silver. When we thought that this feeling was running high enough we got ready to put our plan into action.
On the appointed day I had all my gold carried to the temple in covered bronze pots. I let it be known that Sedekias, having a payment to make in silver, had decided to buy two hundred thousand sesterces at the rate of one ounce of gold for twenty-five of silver. That meant that he was making a profit of a hundred per cent or more. Moreover, the rush to profit from this good deal was such that I soon had to change half of all my gold. Our porters carried away the silver as it was changed, and it was thought that I had acquired only twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand sesterces in this way. So all was going well and I was on the point of doubling Sedekias’s fortune when a Pharisee came to tell us that…
When the Wandering Jew reached this point in his story, he turned to Uzeda and said, ‘A more powerful cabbalist than you is forcing me to leave you.’
‘Really?’ said the cabbalist. ‘Or is it that you don’t want to tell us about the fight in the temple, and the blows you received?’
‘The Old Man of Mount Lebanon is calling me,’ said the Jew, and disappeared before our eyes. I confess that I wasn’t too upset and did not want him to come back, because I suspected him of being a fraud who was well-versed in history and who was telling us things which it was not proper for us to hear on the pretext of relating to us the story of his life.
Meanwhile we reached the resting-place and Rebecca asked the duk
e to be so kind as to continue to instruct us in his system. He thought for a few moments and then began as follows:
VELÁSQUEZ’S ACCOUNT OF HIS SYSTEM
CONTINUED
I tried yesterday to impart to you the elements of will and how it precedes thought, and we had decided to go back to the elements of thought.
One of the most profound philosophers of antiquity showed us the true way to follow in metaphysical research. And those who have thought that they have added to his discoveries have not, in my opinion, made any progress at all.
Long before Aristotle the word ‘idea’ meant ‘image’ in Greek. The word ‘idol’ also comes from it. Aristotle, having carefully examined all of his ideas, realized that all came from an image, that is, an impression made on our senses. From this it can be deduced that the most inventive of geniuses cannot invent anything. Mythologists combined a man’s torso with a horse’s body, or the body of a woman with the tail of a fish. They removed an eye from Cyclops and added some arms to Briareus, but they invented nothing. For that is not in the power of man. And since Aristotle it has been accepted that nothing is in thought which was not previously in the senses.
In our time, however, there have been philosophers who believe themselves more profound and who have said, ‘We agree that the soul could not have developed its faculties without the mediation of the senses. But once its faculties have been developed the soul can conceive of things which would never have been in the senses, such as space, eternity and mathematical truths.
I must confess to you that I do not like this new doctrine. Abstraction seems to me to be no more than a subtraction. To abstract you must remove something. If I mentally take away from my room everything that encloses it, even to the point of subtracting air, I have pure space. If I remove from a length of time its beginning and its end I have eternity. If from an intelligent being I take away the body I have the idea of an angel. If from lines I mentally take away their width, only to be left with their length and the two-dimensional figures that they enclose, I have the elements of Euclid. If I take away an eye from a man and I add to his height I am left with the figure of a Cyclops. All of these are images received by the senses. If these new thinkers can provide me with a single abstraction which I cannot reduce to a subtraction I shall declare myself their disciple. Until then I’ll stick to old Aristotle.
The word ‘idea’ or ‘image’ does not refer uniquely to things which make an impression on our sight. Sound strikes our ears and gives us the idea which belongs to the sense of hearing. Lemon sets our teeth on edge and gives us the idea of acidity.
But note that our senses benefit from the faculty of having things impress them in the absence of the object which caused the impression. If it is suggested that we bite into a lemon the mere idea produces saliva and sets our teeth on edge. Loud music resonates in our ears long after the orchestra has stopped playing. In the present state of physiology we can’t yet explain sleep and therefore we cannot yet explain dreams. But we can say that the involuntary activity of our organs puts them in the same state in which they have been put by the impression made on our senses, or rather, to put it in different terms, by the idea once it has been conceived.
From this it follows that, as we wait for advances in physiological knowledge, it is helpful to accept the theory that ideas are impressions made on the brain, impressions in which organs can involuntarily or voluntarily take the place of an absent object. Note that the impression will be less marked if one thinks only of the object, but that in a state of fever it can be as strong as the impression when first received.
After this series of definitions and consequences, which was somewhat difficult to follow, we will turn to certain thoughts which by their nature will throw some new light on the subject.
Animals which are closest in organization to man and which show more or less intelligence all have, as far as I know, the viscera called the brain; but one cannot find this organ in animals whose organization is similar to that of plants.
Plants live, and some have powers of movement, or rather, just move. Among marine animals there are some creatures which, like plants, do not possess locomotive movement or power of displacement. I have seen other marine animals whose movement is always uniform, like that of our lungs, and does not appear to come from any act of will.
The best organized animals have a will and conceive ideas. Man alone possesses the power of abstraction.
But not all men have this faculty to the same degree. A weakness in the glandular system deprives goitrous mountain-dwellers of it, and the deprivation of one or more senses has the effect of making abstraction very difficult.
The deaf and dumb, who are like animals in that they do not have the power of speech, have great difficulty in understanding abstractions. But if they are shown five or ten fingers when fingers themselves are not in question, they can grasp an idea of number. They can see that people pray and prostrate themselves, and from that they derive the idea of an invisible being.
It is much easier with blind people because abstractions are given to them ready-made, as language is the great instrument of intelligence. Besides, an absence of distraction gives blind people a quite particular aptitude for combination.
But if you think about a child born deaf and blind, we can clearly affirm that he will never be capable of a single abstraction. He will have ideas which come to him through taste, smell and feeling. He will be able to dream those same ideas. If he is punished for a piece of misbehaviour he may well desist from it because he is not entirely bereft of memory. But I don’t believe that any degree of persistence by men could introduce into his mind the abstract idea of evil. He won’t have a conscience and will not be susceptible of merit or demerit. If he were to be guilty of a murder he could not in justice be punished for it. Here then are two souls, two very different emanations of the divine breath, and why so different? For the lack of two senses.
A smaller but still considerable difference divides the Eskimo and the Hottentot from the man with the cultivated mind. What causes this difference? It isn’t the lack of a sense. It is the smaller or greater quantity of ideas and the number of combinations. The man who has seen the whole world through the eyes of travellers and has read about1 all the events of history really has an infinity of images in his head which the peasant hasn’t got, and if he combines ideas, associates them and compares them, then this man really has knowledge and intellect.
Newton was perpetually in the habit of combining ideas, and in the mass of ideas he assembled there was found the combination of the apple falling and the moon held in its orbit.
From all this I conclude that difference in intellect lies in the quantity of images and the facility of combining them. Or, if I may be permitted to express myself in this way, it is a ratio of the number of the images to the ease of combining them. Here I must crave your attention.
Animals with mixed organization may have neither will nor ideas. Their movements are involuntary, like those of sensitive plants. But one can always suppose that when the freshwater polyp stretches out its tentacles to swallow up worms, it eats one which it enjoys more than others and which gives it the idea of good, better or bad. And if it has the faculty to reject bad worms, it may also be thought to have a will. The first will was the need which made it stretch out its tentacles. The organisms it devoured gave it two or three ideas. To reject an organism and to swallow another is a will to choose which resulted from one or several ideas.
If we apply the same reasoning to new-born children we will see that their first will is the direct result of need. That is, the will which makes them put their mouth to their nurse’s breasts. But as soon as they have tasted the nurse’s milk they have an idea. Another impression is made on their senses; they acquire another idea, then a third, then a fourth. Ideas are therefore susceptible of enumeration. But we have already seen that they are also susceptible of combination. To them one can therefore apply, if not the method of calculating com
binations, then at least the principles of this calculation. What I call combination is aggregation, not transposition. Thus ab is the same combination as ba. So two letters can be aggregated in only one way.
Three letters taken two by two can be aggregated or combined in three ways, and all three can be taken together as well. That makes four ways.
Four letters taken two by two give six combinations, three by three they give four, all four together one. That makes eleven.
Five letters give sixteen combinations in all.
Six letters give fifty-seven combinations in all.
Seven letters give 121 combinations in all.
Eight letters give 236 combinations in all.
Nine letters give 495 combinations in all.
Ten letters give 1,013 combinations in all.
Eleven letters give 2,035 combinations in all.2
So one can see that one idea more (than two) doubles the number of combinations, and that combinations of five ideas are to combinations of ten ideas as sixteen is to 1,013, or as one is to sixty-nine.
I am not claiming by this material calculation to reduce the mind to numbers, but only to demonstrate the law governing all that is susceptible of combination.
We have said that the difference in minds is a compound ratio of the quantity of ideas to the facility with which they are combined.
We can now represent all these different minds as a scale. Let us suppose Newton is the top of the scale, with a mind represented by the figure 1,000,000, and that a peasant in the Alps has a mind represented by the figure 100,000. We can place an infinite number of proportionals between these two numbers, which will designate minds superior to the peasant but inferior to Newton. In this scale your minds and mine will find their place.
The attribute of minds which are at the top of the scale will be, for example:
to add to Newton’s discoveries,
