Thinking Aloud 1: Exordium
How far my experience suffices to speak upon life, where the boundary of my competence ends, how alluring the harmony that arises as my words pour forth one after another — I do not know. I have not yet met, within my own mind, with any sound answer to these questions. I searched a long while. The more I failed to find, the more I turned the arrows of criticism upon myself, and the more tightly I clung to the road I walk.
Learning and thinking are as an ocean. The deeper I plunged into this ocean, the more I loaded into my saddlebag. And the more I loaded, the more magnificent appeared whatever I next intended to take up. There is a steady delight in inclining toward such magnificence. On the other hand, the bitterest part of this road is to have it flung in one's face, with anguish, that what remains to be taken up is far too much to fit within a human lifetime.
Wandering between this delight and this impotence, the questions I posed above occupied my mind considerably. It is exceedingly hard for my accumulated learning, for the standing that would embolden me to set it down on paper, or for the beauty of conveying these, to obtain leave and a passing mark from my own self-criticism. The sole reason for this is that my mind cannot well grasp how one might pass beyond being a minute fragment of this boundless realm. This condition has long seemed to me a rather audacious one. On the other hand, neither can I claim that it will not persist until my life reaches its end. Indeed, were I compelled to choose a side, I would take my stand with its persisting. Sensing the danger that I might be caught here forever, I set aside these thoughts fluttering about my mind and — as the ant does, according to its own measure — embarked upon this conversation.
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I hold writing to be, beyond a merit, a responsibility and an obligation. When we attain knowledge and experience, we take upon ourselves the duty not merely of using it but equally of sharing it. (If we neither use nor share it, our learning keeps a sullen face, and something of it goes to waste.) There are various forms for the exercise of what is known or experienced. What you have learned may be the key that transforms you into a miracle, and so you may leave your mark upon humanity; or it may afford you nothing but pleasure. Between the two, no pure comparison is possible. Expectations, preferences, qualities come into play; the matter takes on a complex and subjective character. One of the methods to be counted in the column of sharing — to my mind the most precious of them — is writing. These lines are a plain and personal undertaking, remote from assertion and from proof, aimed at discharging my duty to share what I have gathered.
There are subjects upon which I should like to exchange a word or two on paper. I intend to set down the way-stations I have reached in those matters I take pleasure in contemplating. Thus I shall have profited from the instructiveness of writing, and shall come by the chance to see the portrait that my tangled thoughts compose once they are made clear. I should like to preserve in my lines something of the air of conversation. It may be noticed that certain pieces are wholly an instance of a person conversing with himself.
I strive to situate myself at a remove from assertion. For my intention in touching upon certain parts of life is not to supply what is lacking there, nor to repair what is faulty. I am equally far from any intention of admonishing those who wander among these lines, of offering them counsel to carry with them through their lives, or of lighting their way. I wish only this: that if one day, when the years have chased one another onward, I should care to set my past upon the scales, there be firm evidence of the perspective of my outlook. Naturally, what I write may give rise to the very things I listed a moment ago as lying outside my purpose. I am at no pains to prevent it. Indeed, that it should occasion them may well become a source of felicity and pride to me.
The effort I have expended upon writing, since ages that might be counted small, is still at the crawling stage. It may be that it will tarry at this rank until I depart for eternity; yet I shall strive always to carry it one step beyond. The lifeblood of this striving is to try again and again. Again and again I have been trying, this good while now. These lines are one of the stages of essay — and perhaps, in the end, of error.
Assuredly nothing more.