Tertium Organum

with the help
of 
these very phenomena and by means of them they would be able to tear themselves 
away from their plane, to rise, to soar above it and to see a vast unknown world. 
The question of love occupies exactly the same place in our life. 
Only he who is able to see far beyond 
the facts 
and who can view the facts 
themselves in the light of what is concealed behind them, only he can see the true depth 
of the question. 
Whoever is capable of seeing beyond 'facts' begins to see many new things 
precisely 
in love and through love. 
I shall quote here a poem in prose by Edward Carpenter (from his book 
Towards 
Democracy). 
The Ocean of Sex 
To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of sex, within 
one, With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the 
beloved genitals, Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of 
all 
human beings, 
Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures, How wonderful! 
Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels across it. 
* See pp. 53 and 119. 

---

As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone 
moves, then in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored 
movement 
So on the edge of this Ocean The glory of the human form, even faintly 
outlined under the trees 
or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences; 
(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly to be overpassed;) Till 
maybe to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the 
eyes of one, 
It bursts forth, uncontrollable 0 
wonderful Ocean of Sex, 
Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms 
contained (if they be truly contained) within each person Mirrors of the 
very universe, Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body, Ocean­
river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of Humanity,
From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud' Ocean which 
we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do contain 
thee), and yet who containest us! Sometimes when I feel and know thee 
within, and identify myself
with thee, Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven 
and 
Eternity.* 
Returning to that from which I started, to the relationship between the two 
fundamental laws of our existence, 
love
and 
death,
the true correlation of 
which remains for us mysterious and incomprehensible, I shall only recall the 
words by which Schopenhauer ends his 
Counsels and Maxims 
I should point out how Beginning and End meet together, and how closely and 
intimately Eros is connected with Death, how Orcus, or Amenthus, as the Egyptians 
called him, is not only the receiver but the giver of all things
Death is the great 
reservoir of Life Everything comes from Orcus, - everything that is alive now was 
once there Could we but understand the great trick by which that is done, all would be 
clear'** 
* Edward Carpenter, 
Towards Democracy,
London, George Allen & Unwin and 
New York, Folcroft, 1931 
**'Counsels and Maxims', being the second part of A Schopenhauer's 'Aphonsmen 
zur Lebensweisheit, trs
T Bailey Saunders, London, Swan Sonnenshein, 1899 

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CHAPTER 16
The phenomenal and the noumenal side of man 'Man in himself.' How do we know 
the inner side of man? Can we know of the existence of consciousness in conditions 
of space not analogous to ours? Brain and consciousness. Unity of the world Logical 
impossibility of a simultaneous existence of spirit and matter. Either all is spirit or all 
is matter. Rational and irrational actions in nature and in man's life. Can rational 
actions exist side by side with irrational? The world as an accidentally produced 
mechanical toy. The impossibility of consciousness in a mechanical universe. The 
impossibility of mechanicalness if consciousness exists. The fact of human 
consciousness interfering with the mechanical system. The consciousness of other 
cross-sections of the world. How can we know about them? Kant on 'spirits'. Spinoza 
on the cognition of the invisible world. Necessity for the intellectual definition of 
what is possible and what is impossible in the noumenal world 
We know very imperfectly what man is and our ideas of man are extremely 
erroneous and easily create new illusions. First of all, we are inclined to 
regard man as a certain unity, and to consider different details and functions 
of 
man
as interconnected and all of them dependent on one another. 
Moreover, we see the cause of all man's properties and actions in his physical 
apparatus, in the visible man. In reality man is something very complex, and 
complex in many senses. Many sides of man's life are either totally 
unconnected with each other, or only connected by the fact that they belong to 
one and the same man; and man's life goes on simultaneously as it were, on 
different planes. Moreover, the phenomena of one plane touch another plane 
only partially and rarely, and may not touch it at all. And man's relations to 
the different sides of himself and of other people are not at all the same. 
Man contains in himself all the three kinds of phenomena mentioned 
earlier, i.e. he represents a combination of physical phenomena, phenomena 
of life and psychological phenomena. And the interrelation of these three 
orders of phenomena is infinitely more complex than we are accustomed to 
think. Psychological phenomena in ourselves we feel, sense and are aware of; 
phenomena of life and physical phenomena we observe and form conclusions 
about on the grounds of experience. We do not sense the psychological 
phenomena