Book Review

A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

E. F. SCHUMACHER

ABACUS       1977

 

PART II

Chapter 2. Levels of Being

 

PART I

• Our task is to look at the world and to see it whole. We see what our ancestors have always seen; a great ‘Chain of Being’ divided naturally into four sections or kingdoms – mineral, plant, animal and human.
• The Chain of Being can be seen as extending downwards from the highest to the lowest – the ancient view – or from the lowest to the highest – the modern view.
• No one has any difficulty in recognizing the astonishing and mysterious difference between a living plant and one that has died and fallen to the lowest Level of Being, inanimate matter. It is what we call ‘life’ or x that has been lost.
• If we call the mineral level ‘m’, we can call the plant level m + x. There is nothing in the laws, concepts and formulae of physics and chemistry to explain or even only describe such powers. x is new and additional and can be called a jump in the Level of Being.
• From plant to animal there is a similar jump, a similar addition of powers, which enable the typical, fully developed animal to do things that are totally outside the range of possibilities of the typical, fully developed plant.
• These additional powers are referred to by the letter ‘y’ and can be labeled ‘consciousness’. The animal has to be described as m + x + y.
• We are able to destroy x and y but not to create them. y is another jump in the Level of Being.
• Moving from the animal level to the human level, Man is able to do innumerable things that lie totally outside the range of possibilities of even the most highly developed animals.
• Man has powers of life like the plant, powers of consciousness like the animal and an additional, mysterious power z.
• This power ‘z’ is not only that man is able to think but also able to be aware of his thinking. There is something able to say ‘I’ and to direct consciousness in accordance with its own purpose; a master or controller, a power at a higher level than consciousness itself.
• This power ‘z’ opens up unlimited possibilities of purposeful learning, investigating, exploring, formulating and accumulating knowledge – self-awareness.
• The 4 great levels of being can be summed up as follows:

• ‘Man’ can be written               m + x + y + z
• ‘Animal’ can be written          m + x + y
• ‘Plant’ can be written              m + x
• ‘Mineral’ can be written          m

• Instead of taking minerals as our baseline and reaching the higher Levels of Being by an addition of powers, we could start with the highest level directly known to us – man – and reach the lower Levels of Being by a progressive subtraction of powers as follows:

• ‘Man’ can be written               M
• ‘Animal’ can be written          M – z
• ‘Plant’ can be written              M – z – y
• ‘Mineral’ can be written          M – z – y – x

• Such a ‘downward’ scheme is easier to understand as it is based on practical experience. Self-awareness can disappear while consciousness continues; and life can disappear leaving an inanimate body. But it is beyond our power to give life to inanimate matter, to give consciousness to living matter, and to add the power of self-awareness to conscious beings.
• What we can do ourselves, we can understand; what we can’t do ourselves, we cannot understand.
• We can see and experience the Universe as a great hierarchic structure of our markedly different Levels of Being.
• Physics and chemistry deal with the lowest level ‘mineral’. At this level, x, y, and z – life, consciousness and self-awareness – do not exist. Physics and chemistry can tell us nothing about them
• All the ‘humanities’, as distinct from the natural sciences, deal in one way or another with factor y – consciousness. But a distinction between consciousness (y) and self-awareness (z) is seldom drawn.
• As a result, modern thinking has become increasingly uncertain of whether or not there is any ‘real’ difference between animal and man.
• While the higher comprises and therefore in a sense understands the lower, no being can understand anything higher than itself.
• We are given definitions of man which make him out to be nothing but an exceptionally intelligent animal with an unduly large brain, or a tool-making animal, or a political animal, or an unfinished animal, or simply a naked ape.
• Because of his power of self-awareness (z), man’s faculties are infinite. The greatest human achievements define man. This ‘open-endedness’ is the wonderful result of the specifically human powers of self-awareness (z).
• The powers of self-awareness are a limitless potentiality rather than an actuality. They have to be developed and realized by each human individual if he is to become truly human, a person.
• The study of this factor z has at all ages – except the present one – been the primary concern of mankind.
• Only man has ‘real’ existence in this world as he alone possesses life, consciousness and self-awareness. Animals, with only life and consciousness have but a shadowy existence, plants have even less.
• The higher does not merely possess powers that are additional to and exceed those possessed by the lower; it also has power over the lower, the power of organizing the lower and using it for its own purposes.
• Are there powers that are higher than self-awareness? Are there Levels of Being above humans? The great majority of mankind, throughout known history, until very recently, has been unshakenly convinced that the Chain of Being extends upward beyond man.
• Those individuals of the past whom we still consider the wisest and the greatest not only shared this belief but considered it of all truths the most important and the most profound.

 

Chapter 3: Progressions

PART I

 

• The four Levels of Being exhibit certain characteristics in a manner which I shall call progressions. Perhaps the most striking progression is the movement from passivity to activity.
• At the lowest level, that of minerals or inanimate matter, there is pure passivity; a plant is mainly, but not totally, passive.
• At the level of animal there is a striking shift from passivity to activity. The power of doing, organizing and utilizing is immeasurably extended; there is evidence of an ‘inner life’, of happiness and unhappiness, confidence, fear, expectation, disappointment and so forth.
• Any being with an inner life cannot be a mere object: it is a subject itself, capable even of treating other beings as mere objects, as the cat treats the mouse.
• At the human level, there is a subject that says ‘I’ – a person: another marked change from passivity to activity, from object to subject. To treat a person as if he or she were a mere object is a perversity, not to say a crime.
• No matter how such a person may be weighed down and enslaved by circumstances, there is always the possibility of self-assertion and rising above circumstances. There is no definable limit to his possibilities, even though there are practical [w1] limitations which he has to recognize and respect.
• A large weight of passivity remains even in the most sovereign and autonomous human being; while he is undoubtedly a subject, he remains in many respects an object – dependent, contingent, pushed around by circumstances.
• Aware of this, mankind has always used its imagination/intuition to complete the process, to extrapolate the observed curve to its completion. There was thus conceived a Being, wholly active, wholly sovereign and autonomous; a Person above all merely human persons, in no way an object, above all circumstances and contingencies, entirely in control of everything: a personal God, the ‘Unmoved Mover’.
• The four Levels of Being are thus seen as pointing to the invisible existence of a Level (or Levels) of Being above the human.
• At the level of inanimate matter, there is a very close linkage between cause and effect. At the level of plant, the causal chain is more complex; physical causes will have physical effects as at the lower level but act also as stimulus, as a sun’s rays cause the plant to turn towards the sun.
• An animal can be pushed around like a stone; it can be stimulated like a plant, but there are also drives, attractions or compulsions that can be called motives. A dog is motivated by forces originating in its inner space. Recognizing its master it jumps for joy or recognizing its enemy, it runs in fear.
• While at the animal level the motivating cause has to be physically present to be effective, at the level of man there is no such need and it can be the basis of what might be called ‘naked insight’. A person might move because he anticipated in his mind certain future developments.
• While the power of foreknowledge and anticipating future possibilities are possessed to some degree by all human beings, they vary greatly and with most of us are very weak.
• It is possible to imagine a supra-human Level of Being where they would exist in perfection – a divine attribute, associated with perfect freedom of movement and perfect freedom from passivity.
• The progression from physical cause to stimulus to motive and to will would then be completed by a perfection of will capable of overriding all the causative forces that operate at the four Levels of Being known to us.

 

PART II

 

• The progression from passivity to activity is similar and closely related to the progression from necessity to freedom. It is easy to see that at the mineral level there is nothing but necessity.
• Inanimate matter is what it is and cannot be other; there is no choice, no possibility of ‘developing’ or in any way changing its nature.
• We know little if anything about the ‘inner space’ of plants, more of that of animals and a good deal about the ‘inner space’ of the human being; the space of the person, of creativity, of freedom.
• Inner space is created by the powers of life, consciousness and self-awareness; but we have direct and personal experience only of our own ‘inner space’ and the freedom it affords us. Most of us, most of the time, behave and act mechanically, like a machine.
• Human power of self-awareness is asleep, and the human being, like an animal, acts – more or less intelligently – solely in response to outside influences.
• Only when a man makes use of his power of self-awareness does he attain to the level of a person, to the level of freedom. At the moment he is living, not being lived.
• To ask whether the human being has freedom is like asking whether a man is a millionaire. He is not, but can become a millionaire. He can make it his aim to become rich; similarly, he can make it his aim to become free.
• In his inner space he can develop a center of strength so that the power of his freedom exceeds that of necessity.
• It is possible to imagine a perfect being who exercises his power of self-awareness to the fullest degree, unmoved by any necessity. This would be a Divine Being, an almighty and sovereign power, a perfect Unity.

 

PART III