Tertium Organum

The mystery of thought creates
everything. As soon as we understand that 
thought is not a 'function of motion' and that motion itself is only a 
function 
of thought;
as soon as we begin to feel the depth of 
THIS MYSTERY
, we shall 
see that the whole world is a kind of vast hallucination which does not 
frighten us and does not make us think that we are mad, only because we are 
accustomed to it. 
The mystery of infinity 
is the greatest of all mysteries. It tells us that all the 
galaxies - the whole visible universe -
have no dimensions
as compared with 
infinity; that they are 
equal to a point,
a mathematical point which has no 
extension whatever, and that, at the same time, points which are not 
measurable for us may have a different extension and different dimensions. 
* The Correspondence of Spinoza,
trs. A. Wolf, London, George Allen & Unwin, 
1928, Letter LVI - to Boxel, 1674. 

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In 'positivist' thinking we make efforts to 
FORGET ABOUT THIS
,
NOT 
TO THINK ABOUT IT. 
At some future time positivism will be denned as a system which enables 
one not to think about real things and to limit oneself strictly to the domain of 
the unreal and the illusory. 

---

CHAPTER 17 
A living and intelligent universe Different forms and lines of intelligence Animated 
nature Souls of stones and souls of trees The soul of a forest The human 'I' as a 
collective intelligence Man as a complex being 'Mankind' as a being The soul of the 
world 
The face of Mahadeva
Professor James on the animated world Fechner's ideas 
Zendavesta
The living Earth 
If intelligence exists in the world, then intelligence must exist in everything,
although it may be different in its manifestation 
We are accustomed to regard as animate and intelligent, in one or another 
way, only those objects which we call 'beings', i.e. those whom we find 
analogous to ourselves in the functions which, in our eyes, define an 
animate 
being.
Inanimate objects and mechanical phenomena are to us lifeless and devoid 
of intelligence. 
But this cannot be so. 
Only for our limited mind, for our limited power of communion with other 
minds, for our limited capacity of analogy does intelligence and, generally
speaking, all mental life manifest itself in certain 
definite classes
of living
beings, side by side with which there exist long series of dead things and 
mechanical phenomena. 
But if we could not talk with each other, if no one of us could infer the 
existence of intelligence and mental life in another man by analogy with 
himself, each one would regard as a living being only himself and would 
relegate all other people to mechanical 'dead' nature 
In other words, we recognize as animate beings only those possessing a 
mind accessible to our observation in the three-dimensional section of the 
world, i.e. beings whose mind is analogous to ours. About others we do not 
know and cannot know. All beings whose minds manifest themselves 
otherwise than in the three-dimensional section of the world are 
incomprehensible and inaccessible to us. If they come into contact with our 
life at all, we are 
obliged to regard
their manifestations as actions of a dead 
and unconscious nature. Our capacity for analogy is limited to 
this section. 
We cannot think logically beyond the conditions of a three-dimensional 
section. Consequently everything that lives, thinks and feels in a manner not 
completely analogous to ours is bound to appear to us