From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation

by Umberto Eco

  10.3. Llull’s Trees and the Great Chain of Being

  If Llull’s ideas did not come from the Hebrew Kabbalah, where did he get them from?

  An admiring reader of the Catalan mystic, Leibniz (in his 1666 Dissertatio de arte combinatoria) asked himself why Llull had stopped at such a limited number of elements. Given that the virtues are traditionally seven (four cardinal virtues and three theological), why did Llull, who increases them to nine, not go further? If, among the Absolute Principles, Truth and Wisdom are included, why not Beauty and Number?

  In point of fact, in various of his works, Llull had proposed at one time ten, at another twelve, and at yet another twenty principles, finally settling on nine. Scholars have inferred—given that his Absolute Principles are nine, plus a tenth (labeled with an A) that is left out of the combinatory pool, because it represents divine Unity and Perfection—that he was influenced by the ten Sephirot of the Kabbalah (cf. Millás Vallicrosa 1958). But we have already seen that this analogy will not get us far. Platzeck (1953: 583) observes that a comparable list of Dignities could be found in the Koran, while, in his Compendium artis demonstrativae (“De fine hujus libri”), Llull claims to have borrowed the terms of the Ars from the Arabs.

  Still, we are not obliged to recognize at all costs extra-Christian influences, because the list of divine Dignities could have been handed down to him from a long and venerable Classical, Patristic, and Scholastic tradition. From the Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to the thought of mature Scholasticism, we find an idea, Aristotelian in origin, which runs through the entire reflective tradition of the Christian world, the idea of the transcendental properties of being: there are certain characteristics common to all being and found supereminently in the divine being, such as the One, the Good, the True (some include the Beautiful), and all of these properties are mutually converted into one another, in the sense that everything that is true is good and vice versa, and so on and so forth.

  Furthermore, all the experts concur in identifying in Llull two basic sources of inspiration.

  (i). One has its origin in Augustine Platonism, for which there exists a world of divine ideas which we know by internal enlightenment and innate disposition. In chapter 7 of his De Trinitate, Augustine affirms that God is called great, good, wise, blessed, and true, and His very greatness is His wisdom, while His goodness, which is greatness and wisdom, is truth, and to be blessed and wise means nothing more than to be true and good, and so on. These are pretty much Llull’s Dignities, which, as was the case in Augustine, cannot but be known a priori, since they are imprinted by God himself on our souls. If Llull had not been convinced of this innatism he would not have thought it possible to dialogue with the infidels on the basis of the fundamental notions common to all mankind.

  Platzeck (1953, 1954) has reconstructed a series of sources that Llull could have drawn upon in formulating his own list of divine Dignities, from Boethius to Richard of Saint Victor, from John of Salisbury to Arabic logicians like Algazel (on whom Llull wrote a commentary), not to mention Euclid, filtered through Boethius, who speaks of a number of principles that ought to be well known in and of themselves (dignitas would in that case be a translation of axioma): “The fact that the three religious communities present in the Mediterranean basin—Christian, Arab, and Hebrew—averred that these dignities or perfections were absolute in God authorized Llull to posit them, in imitation of Euclid’s, as prior axioms or dignitates or conceptiones animi communes” (Platzeck 1953: 609).

  (ii). The other source is the idea, Neo-Platonic in origin, of the Great Chain of Being (cf. Lovejoy 1936). Primitive Neo-Platonism, taken up in the Middle Ages in more or less tempered form, taught that the universe, entirely divine in nature, is the emanation of an unknowable and ineffable One, through a series of degrees of being, or hypostases, produced by necessity down to the lowest matter. Beings are thus arranged at progressively increasing distances from the divine One, and participate to an ever-decreasing extent in a divine nature that becomes degraded little by little to the point of disappearing altogether on the lower rungs of the ladder (or chain) of beings. From this state of affairs two principles follow, one cosmological, the other ethical-mystical. In the first place, if every step on the ladder of being is a phase of the same divine emanation, there exist relations of similarity, kinship, analogy between a lower state and the higher states—and from this root are derived all the theories of cosmic similarity and sympathy. In the second place, if the emanational ladder, on the one hand, represents a descent from the inconceivable perfection of the One to the lower degrees of matter, on the other, knowledge, salvation, and mystic union (strongly identified with each other in the Neo-Platonist view) imply an ascent, a return to the higher planes of the Great Chain of Being.

  This tempered medieval Neo-Platonism will endeavor to reduce as much as possible the identity between the divine nature and the various states of creation, and, with Thomas Aquinas, will finally see the chain in terms of participation (which implies, not a necessary emanation of the divinity, but a free act by which God confers existence on his own creatures; and the stages of the chain are related to each other, not by an inevitable inner likeness, but by analogy. Nevertheless, this image of the Great Chain of Being is always in some way present in medieval thought, even when we cannot trace a direct relationship to Neo-Platonism. We have only to recall that every medieval thinker had meditated upon a text of the third or fourth century, the commentary to the Ciceronian Somnium Scipionis by Macrobius, whose Platonic and Neo-Platonic inspiration is obvious. Macrobius places at the top of the ladder of being the Good, the first cause of all things, then the Nous or Intelligence, born of God himself, which contains the Ideas as archetypes of all things. The Nous, contemplating itself and knowing itself, produces a World-Soul, which is diffused—preserving its unity—throughout the multiplicity of the created universe. Not a number, but the origin and matrix of all numbers, the Soul generates the numbered plurality of beings, from the celestial spheres down to the sublunar bodies: “Mind emanates from the Supreme God and Soul from Mind, and Mind, indeed, forms and suffuses all below with life, and since this is the one splendor lighting up everything and visible in all, like a countenance reflected in many mirrors arranged in a row, and since all follow on in continuous succession, degenerating step by step in their downward course, the close observer will find that it creates all the following things and fills them with life, and since this unique light illuminates everything and is reflected in everything, and just as a single countenance may be reflected in various consecutive mirrors, all things follow each other in a continuous succession, degenerating bit by bit down to the end of the series—so that the attentive observer may seize an interconnection of the parts, from God on High down to the last dregs of things, bound to each other without any interruption” (Macrobius 1952).

  There is a passage in Llull’s Rhetorica (ed. 1598: 199) that is practically a literal echo of Macrobius and confirms this basic principle of likeness among the various levels of being, as a result of which what was predicated in the definition of the original Dignities is realized in each being: “things receive from their likeness with the Divine Principle their conceptually defined places that at the same time correspond to their level of being” (Platzeck 1953: 601).

  Through a thorough comparison not only of their texts but also of the illustrations that appear in various manuscripts of the two authors, Yates (1960) believed she could identify an unmediated source in the thought of John Scotus Eriugena. It is significant that for Eriugena the Divine Names or attributes are seen as primordial causes, eternal forms on the basis of which the world is configured, and from them there proceeds a primary matter, hyle or chaos, which we reencounter in the thought of Llull, author of a Liber Chaos or Book of Chaos). Along these lines, Yates (1960: 104 et seq.) identifies the first idea of the Ars in a passage from Eriugena’s De divisione naturae, in which fifteen primordial causes are mentioned (Goodness
, Essence, Life, Reason, Intelligence, Wisdom, Virtue, Beatitude, Truth, Eternity, Greatness, Love, Peace, Unity, Perfection), but Eriugena adds that the number of causes is infinite and that they can therefore be arranged, for purposes of contemplation, in a series of arbitrary successions (the term Eriugena uses is convolvere, to cause them to rotate, so to speak, and Yates moreover reminds us that Eriugena, like other authors of his time, used the method of concentric circles to define the divine attributes and their combinations—though for contemplative and not inventive purposes). Obviously, the analogy with Kabbalistic procedures does not escape Yates, though she does not attempt to explain it in terms of direct dependence: “We should ask, not so much whether Llull was influenced by the Kabbalah, but whether Kabbalism and Llullism, with its Scotist basis, are not phenomena of a similar type, the one arising in the Jewish, and the other in the Christian tradition, which both appear in Spain at about the same time, and which might, so to speak, have encouraged one another by engendering similar atmospheres, or perhaps by actively permeating one another” (1960: 112; Llull and Bruno. Collected Essays 1982, p. 112).

  Maybe Yates allowed herself to be bedazzled by similarities that seem less surprising when we recall that many analogous themes are to be found in other medieval Neo-Platonic texts (of the School of Chartres, for example). But precisely because of this it is undeniable that there are present in Llull’s texts ideas that Eriugena bequeathed to subsequent thinkers. Moreover, in the ninth century, Eriugena had contributed to the diffusion of the treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius On the Divine Names, one of the most important sources of medieval Neo-Platonic thought, at least in its tempered medieval form.

  From the point of view of our investigation, ascertaining exactly where Llull got the idea of the Dignities is less relevant than recognizing that “Llull is a Platonist or a Neo-Platonist from top to bottom” (Platzeck 1953: 595). It is important to stress that the Dignities are not produced by the Ars, but constitute its premises, and they are the premises of the Ars because they are the roots of a chain of being.

  To understand the metaphysical roots of the Ars we must turn to Llull’s theory of the Arbor scientiae (1296). Between the first versions of the Ars and that of 1303, Llull has come a long way (his journey is described by Carreras y Artau and Carreras y Artau 1939: 1:394), making his device capable of resolving, not only theological and metaphysical problems, but also problems of cosmology, law, medicine, astronomy, geometry, and psychology. The Ars becomes more and more a tool to take on the entire encyclopedia of learning, picking up the suggestions found in the countless medieval encyclopedias and looking forward to the encyclopedic utopia of Renaissance and Baroque culture.

  The Ars may appear at first sight to be free from hierarchical structures, because, for example, the divine Dignities are defined in a circular fashion one being used to define the other. The relationships are not arranged in a hierarchical system (though they in fact refer to an implicit hierarchy between things sensitive and things intellectual, or between substances and accidents). But a hierarchical principle insinuates itself into the list of questions (whether something exists, what it is, in what way does it exist, etc.) and the list of Subjects is certainly hierarchical (God, Angel, Heaven, Man, down to the elements and tools). The Dignities are defined in a circular fashion because they are determined by the First Cause: but, it is on the basis of the Dignities that the ladder of being begins. And the Ars is supposed to make it possible to argue about every element in this ladder, or about every element in the furniture of the universe, about every accident and every possible question.

  The image of this ladder of being is the Tree of Science, which has as its roots the nine Dignities and the nine Relations, and is then subdivided into sixteen branches, to each of which corresponds a separate tree. Each of these sixteen trees, to which an individual representation is dedicated, is divided into seven parts (roots, trunk, limbs, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit). Eight trees clearly correspond to eight subjects in the Tabula Generalis, and constitute the Arbor Elementalis (which represents the elementata, that is, the objects of the sublunar world made up of the four elements, stones, trees, animals), the Arbor Vegetalis, the Arbor Sensualis, the Arbor Imaginalis (the mental images that are the likenesses of the things represented in the other trees), the Arbor Humanalis (which concerns memory, understanding, and will and includes the various sciences and arts invented by man), the Arbor Coelestialis (astronomy and astrology), the Arbor Angelicalis and the Arbor Divinalis (the divine Dignities). To this list should be added the Arbor Moralis (virtues and vices), the Arbor Eviternalis (the realms of the afterworld), the Arbor Maternalis (Mariology), the Arbor Christianalis (Christology), the Arbor Imperialis (government), the Arbor Apostolicalis (the Church), the Arbor Exemplificalis (the contents of knowledge), and the Arbor Quaestionalis (which includes 4,000 questions on the various arts). But it can be definitively said that this forest of trees corresponds to the columns of the Tabula Generalis, even if we cannot always identify what term corresponds to what other.

  As Llinares writes (1963: 211–212):

  the various trees are hierarchically arranged, the higher trees participate of the lower. The “vegetable” tree, for instance, participates of the tree of the elements, the “sensual” tree of both, while the tree “of imagination” is constructed on the preceding three, at the same time as it makes comprehensible the tree that follows, in other words, the “human” tree. In this way, in an ascending movement, Ramon Llull constructs a system of the universe and of human knowledge grouped around three central themes: the world, man, and God.… Logic has given way to metaphysics, which is concerned first of all to explain and interpret, since the philosopher considers the primitive and real elements, and through them descends to particular objects, which he studies thanks to them.12

  Carreras y Artau and Carreras y Artau (1939: 1:400), followed by Llinares (1963: 208 et seq.), note that an almost biological dynamism is evident in the trees, in contrast with the logical-mathematical staticity of Llull’s Ars in the preceding period. But we have already observed that the mastery of the Ars presupposes a preliminary knowledge that is precisely that conveyed by the trees. At least this is fully the case with the Ars generalis ultima and the Ars brevis, both subsequent in date to the formulation of the Arbor scientiae.

  As we saw in Chapter 1, medieval thought has recourse to the figure of the tree (the Porphyrian tree) to represent the way in which genera formally include species and species are included in genera. If we observe just one of the illustrations in the Logica nova of 1303, we see a Porphyrian tree to which Llull affixes both the letters from B to K and the list of Questions. We might be tempted to conclude that the Dignities, and all the other entities of the Ars, are themselves the genera and species of the Porphyrian tree. But it is no accident that the illustration should be entitled Arbor naturalis et logicalis. Llull’s tree is not only logical, but natural too.

  A Porphyrian tree is a formal structure. It defines formally the relationship between genera and species. (It is only a didactic convention that in its canonical form it always represents substances like Body or Animal.) The Porphyrian tree is initially an empty tree that anyone and everyone can fill out according to the classification they wish to produce. The trees that Llull presents in his Arbor scientiae on the other hand are “full” trees, or, if you will, representations of the Great Chain of Being as it metaphysically is—and must be. Platzeck (1954: 145 et seq.) is right therefore when he affirms that the analogy between Llull’s trees and the Porphyrian tree is only apparent: “its gradation is not the fruit of a logical framework but of the fact that the dignities manifest themselves, in created things, in different degrees.”

  Llull too (Platzeck reminds us) needs a differentia specifica, but it is not an accident (however essential) that can be abstracted from the species under consideration: instead, it represents the degree of its ontological participation. This is why Llull’s criticism (see De venatione medii
inter subjectum et praedicatum in Opera parva [Palma, 1744], I: 4) of the syllogism Every animal is a substance, Every man is an animal, Therefore every man is a substance is so interesting. The syllogism seems to be formally valid, but for Llull it is not “necessary” because the way in which man is a substance is marked by the distance between man and the first causes in the descent of the Great Chain of Being (therefore, man is indeed a substance, but only to a certain degree). Llull needs to come up with a “natural medium” that is nonlogical, a sort of immediate kinship. He therefore reformulates the syllogism (and accepts it) as follows: Every rational animal is a rational substance, Every man is a rational animal, Therefore every man is a rational substance. This looks like mere terminological wordplay, but for Llull it is a question of finding a kind of soft affinity among things, with neither leap nor interruption. And here we recognize that rationality is a difference that already divides the substance, that reappears at each step of the ladder, and that is conferred upon man alone through a chain of descending steps.

  “The Scholastic logician uses only definitions adapted to the logic of the classes; the Raimondist admits every kind of distinction, as long as they are based on a real relationship between things” (Platzeck 1954: 155).

  Llull’s presumed logic is not formal, it is a rhetoric that serves to express an ontology.13

  In the light of these remarks it is understandable why on the one hand Llull organizes his Ars so as to find, in every possible argument, a middle term that allows him to form a demonstrative syllogism, but excludes some syllogisms, however correct, even if formally there is a middle term. His middle term is not that of formal scholastic logic. It is a middle that binds by likeness the elements of the Great Chain of Being, it is a substantial middle, not a formal one. This is why Llull is able to reject certain premises as unacceptable, even though the combinatory system makes them imaginable. The middle does not unite things formally, it is in things. Llull’s middle is not the middle term of an Aristotelian syllogism, it does not establish the cause identified by the definition, or the genus under which a species is to be subsumed: it is a “general label” that characterizes every form of participation, connection, kinship between two things, to such an extent that, in the elementary predications of his first and third figures, Llull does not even need to insert a copula. The greatness of goodness is not predicated, their consubstantial, incontrovertible, self-evident identity is simply recognized.14