First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life

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Герберт Уэллс. First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life

INTRODUCTION

BOOK THE FIRST. – METAPHYSICS

1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS

1.2. THE RESUMPTION OF METAPHYSICAL ENQUIRY

1.3. THE WORLD OF FACT

1.4. SCEPTICISM OF THE INSTRUMENT

1.5. THE CLASSIFICATORY ASSUMPTION

1.6. EMPTY TERMS

1.7. NEGATIVE TERMS

1.8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE KINETIC

1.9. PLANES AND DIALECTS OF THOUGHT

1.10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS

1.11. BELIEFS

1.12. SUMMARY

BOOK THE SECOND – OF BELIEFS

2.1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FAITH

2.2. ON USING THE NAME OF GOD

2.3. FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION

2.4. A PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF MEN

2.5. THE PROBLEM OF MOTIVES THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE

2.6. A REVIEW OF MOTIVES

2.7. THE SYNTHETIC MOTIVE

2.8. THE BEING OF MANKIND

2.9. INDIVIDUALITY AN INTERLUDE

2.10. THE MYSTIC ELEMENT

2.11. THE SYNTHESIS

2.12. OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY

2.13. A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY

2.14. OF OTHER RELIGIONS

2.15

BOOK THE THIRD – OF GENERAL CONDUCT

3.1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS FROM BELIEF

3.2. WHAT IS GOOD?

3.3. SOCIALISM

3.4. A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM

3.5. HATE AND LOVE

3.6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCIAL DUTY

3.7. WRONG WAYS OF LIVING

3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES

3.9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE AND MOTHER

3.10. ASSOCIATIONS

3.11. OF AN ORGANIZED BROTHERHOOD

3.12. CONCERNING NEW STARTS AND NEW RELIGIONS

3.13. THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH

3.14. OF SECESSION

3.15. A DILEMMA

3.16. A COMMENT

3.17. WAR

3.18. WAR AND COMPETITION

3.19. MODERN WAR

3.20. OF ABSTINENCES AND DISCIPLINES

3.21. ON FORGETTING, AND THE NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION AND WORSHIP

3.22. DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY

3.23. ON DEBTS OF HONOUR

3.24. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE

3.25. OF LOVE AND JUSTICE

3.26. THE WEAKNESS OF IMMATURITY

3.27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW ETIQUETTE

3.28. SEX

3.29. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

3.30. CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE THING THAT IS

3.31. CONDUCT TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS

BOOK THE FOURTH – SOME PERSONAL THINGS

4.1. PERSONAL LOVE AND LIFE

4.2. THE NATURE OF LOVE

4.3. THE WILL TO LOVE

4.4. LOVE AND DEATH

4.5. THE CONSOLATION OF FAILURE

4.6. THE LAST CONFESSION

Отрывок из книги

As a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this book arose, I found it necessary to consider and state certain truths about the nature of knowledge, about the meaning of truth and the value of words, that is to say I found I had to begin by being metaphysical. In writing out these notes now I think it is well that I should state just how important I think this metaphysical prelude is.

There is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless, as an idle system of enquiries remote from any human interest. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of the learned, from their appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of explicitness is impossible. But it needs erudition and accumulated and alien literature to make metaphysics obscure, and some of the most fruitful and able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by a number of unhampered men in small Greek cities, who knew no language but their own and had scarcely a technical term. The true metaphysician is after all only a person who says, “Now let us take a thought for a moment before we fall into a discussion of the broad questions of life, lest we rush hastily into impossible and needless conflict. What is the exact value of these thoughts we are thinking and these words we are using?” He wants to take thought about thought. Those other ardent spirits on the contrary, want to plunge into action or controversy or belief without taking thought; they feel that there is not time to examine thought. “While you think,” they say, “the house is burning.” They are the kin of those who rush and struggle and make panics in theatre fires.

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Let me try and express how in my mind this matter of negative terms has shaped itself. I think of something which I may perhaps best describe as being off the stage or out of court, or as the Void without Implications, or as Nothingness, or as Outer Darkness. This is a sort of hypothetical Beyond to the visible world of human thought, and thither I think all negative terms reach at last, and merge and become nothing. Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the more elusive shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink, known and knowable, and still in the not-pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the NOT classes meet in that Outer Darkness. That same Outer Darkness and nothingness is infinite space and infinite time and any being of infinite qualities; and all that region I rule out of court in my philosophy altogether. I will neither affirm nor deny if I can help it about any NOT things. I will not deal with not things at all, except by accident and inadvertence. If I use the word “infinite” I use it as one often uses “countless,” “the countless hosts of the enemy” – or “immeasurable” – “immeasurable cliffs” – that is to say as the limit of measurement, as a convenient equivalent to as many times this cloth yard as you can, and as many again, and so on and so on until you and your numerical system are beaten to a standstill.

Now a great number of apparently positive terms are, or have become, practically negative terms and are under the same ban with me. A considerable number of terms that have played a great part in the world of thought, seem to me to be invalidated by this same defect, to have no content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable content. For example, that word Omniscient, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses me as being a word with a delusive air of being solid and full, when it is really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that the thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and relationships, that knowledge is comprehension, and so that only finite things can know or be known. When you talk of a being of infinite extension and infinite duration, omniscient and omnipotent and perfect, you seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever.

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