Tertium Organum

what the noumenal world cannot be,
and then, 
what it can 
be,
i.e. which relations are 
impossible
and which are 
possible
in it. 
This is necessary in order that we could, on coming into contact with the real world, 
distinguish it from the phenomenal world and, above all, that we may not take for the 
noumenal world a simple reflection of the phenomenal world. The reason why we are 
ignorant of the world of causes, the reason why we are imprisoned in the phenomenal 
world, is precisely that we do not know how to see where the one ends and the other 
begins. 
We are in constant contact with the world of causes, we live in it, because our mind 
and our function in the world, incomprehensible to us, is a part of it or a reflection of it. 
But we neither see nor know it, because we either deny its existence, consider that 
everything existing 
is phenomenal and that nothing that is not phenomenal exists; or we 
accept it but strive to know it in the forms of the three-dimensional phenomenal world; 
or else we seek and cannot find it, because we lose our way in the midst of the 
deceptions and illusions of the 
reflected 
phenomenal world which we mistake for the 
noumenal world. 
It is in this that the tragedy of our spiritual searchings lies. 
We do not know what it is 
we search for. 
And the only means of freeing ourselves from this tragedy is a 
preliminary 
intellectual 
definition of the properties of 
what we search for.
We must not 
approach the world of causes without these definitions, with nothing but indefinite 
sensations, for in that case we shall 
get lost in its borderland. 
This was understood by Spinoza who wrote that he could not speak of God, 
not 
knowing his attributes. 

---

When I learnt Euclid's elements [he wrote] I first understood that the three angles of a 
triangle are equal to two right angles, and I clearly perceived this property of a 
triangle although I was ignorant of many others. As regards spectres, or ghosts, I 
have never yet heard of an intelligible property of theirs, but only of phantasies which 
no one can grasp.* 
We have established certain criteria which permit us to appraise the world 
of noumena or the 'world of spirits'; and we must make use of them. 
First of all we can say that the 
world of noumena,
i.e. the real world cannot 
be three-dimensional and cannot contain anything three-dimensional, i.e. 
commensurable
with physical objects, similar to them in outside appearance, 
possessing form. 
In other words, the noumenal world cannot contain anything
having extension in space and changing in time. And, above all, it cannot 
contain anything dead, inanimate, 
unconscious,
although the level of 
consciousness may be different. In the world of causes everything must be 
conscious, because it is in itself -
consciousness, 
the soul of the world. 
Moreover, we must bear in mind that the world of causes is the 
world of the 
miraculous. 
That which appears ordinary to us can never be real. 
The real 
appears miraculous to us; we do not believe in it, do not recognize it. 
Consequently we do not feel the 
mysteries 
of which life is full. 
Only the unreal is 
ordinary.
The real must appear miraculous. 
The mystery of time
permeates everything. It is felt in every stone which 
may have witnessed the glacial periods, and the ichthyosaurus and the 
mammoth. It is felt in the tomorrow which we do not see but which perhaps 
sees us and which may prove to be our last day or, on the contrary, a day of 
some achievements of which we know nothing today.