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This is Part II of the piece by Ketner below … Read the Post below first … Enjoy!
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In this context I will ask you to consider two remarks by Peirce. The first gives us a useful clue; it is from Peirce’s heretofore lost Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, in the Harvard University Press edition dedicated to Walker Percy, Doctor Humanitatis (pages 121-122).
Here we are in this workaday world, little creatures, mere cells in a social organism … and we must look to see what little and definite task circumstances have set before our little strength to do. The performance of that task will require us to draw upon all our powers, reason included. And in the doing of it we should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul which is most superficial and fallible, — I mean our reason, — but upon that department that is deep and sure, — which is instinct. Instinct is capable of development and growth, — though by a movement which is slow … ; and this development takes place upon lines which are altogether parallel to those of reasoning. And just as reasoning springs from experience, so the development of [instinct] arises from the soul’s Inward and Outward Experiences . Not only is it of the same nature as the development of cognition; but it chiefly takes place through the instrumentality of cognition. The soul’s deeper parts can only be reached through its surface.
Within the hard outer intellectual shell of the soul are many of the items Walker noted: the world view of the old modern age, allegiance to experts, devotion to being a good consumer, Cartesian mind-body dualism, immersion in materialism and reliance upon dyadic modes of thought, the Freudian theory of soul mechanics, self-deceptions, hypocrisies, Peirce’s notion that “I not capable of a mistake in my logic” which might in other words be called our congenital logical hubris, and of course good old-fashioned general lack of self-knowledge — all this detritus and more in varying combinations and mixtures often provides materiel for the hard outer shell of the soul as one sits down for the first time to read one’s first Percy novel. As in all phases of my outline, a great deal more detail can be added. But we must save that task for another day. For now, on with the outline.
The second turn is what I call “building the reader’s mental diagram.” I discussed that and the rest of the transformation process in my letter to Walker of 17 September 1987 (which I quote from A Thief of Peirce pages 15-16). I am pleased to note that Walker replied in his next letter (20 October 1987, A Thief of Peirce, page 17): “Yes, you are quite right in your ‘triadic’ analysis of the work of the novelist.”
Recently I have been reading some from that book of conversations with Walker Percy…. In one of those you reported on the extraordinary phenomenon of people out of the blue writing you in the most personal ways. I can surely say that after reading your novels, I have felt the same urge…. I suspect this is a record of a genuine, almost scientific (broad sense) phenomenon…. A novel can be a tremendous tool of analysis, both in the sense Freud meant it, and in the sense I mean it (explaining less well knowns with better knowns). And how does a novel do that (and yours are particularly strong at this)? The novelist constructs a triadic world, a relational world, which literally unfolds in the mind of a reader as a mental diagram, a picture. The novelist sets up certain relationships as the background, assumed, taken for granted parts of the fictional world.
Just how does the novelist set up this fictional world? This question will be answered by considerations about the craft of writing, and I must pass over them for now.
The next turn is what a Cajun or an Okie might call “setting the hook.” I continue my account from A Thief of Peirce.
Then parallels between the fictional world and the personal world now inhabited by the reader are drawn forth or are encouraged for creation.
In other words, at this stage in reading the novel, through their joint efforts, the reader and the novelist have succeeded in creating a fictional world which the reader is in some sense aware of as paralleling relations in the reader’s own internal world or actual self-image.
Now comes the fourth turn, what I call the “Ya-Haa.” The novelist, with a good strong bite and a set hook now yanks hard on the line. Again, back to my account in A Thief of Peirce:
Next, the known relations of the fictional world point to some unknown relation in the actual world. The new fictional relation now points to a possible parallel relation in the reader’s personal world.
Now that the reader is surfing the relational internet in the condition of the process last described, the reader is in an interesting state. Peirce has described it well in one of his most fascinating, but most overlooked, paragraphs (Collected Papers of Peirce, volume 6, paragraph 493).
Where would such an idea, say as that of God, come from, if not from direct experience? Would you make it a result of some kind of reasoning, good or bad? Why, reasoning can supply the mind with nothing in the world except an estimate of the value of a statistical ratio…. And scepticism, in the sense of doubt of the validity of elementary ideas — which is really a proposal to turn an idea out of court and permit no inquiry into its applicability — is doubly condemned by the fundamental principle of scientific method — condemned first as obstructing inquiry, and condemned second because it is treating some other than a statistical ratio as a thing to be argued about. No: as to God, open your eyes — and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ — and you see him.
This state, which I shall call the condition of open heart, is a very interesting one. First of all, you will notice that widespread ordinary experience quite readily recognizes the reality of such a state or condition, because all kinds of persons speak about and understand such phrases as “open your heart,” or “I have lost heart about the matter,” or “Don’t be so heartless.” This is a condition in which the ego has fallen away or is reduced to a state of scientific disinterestedness, and hypotheses, observations, perceptions, ideas, inspirations, interpretations, and guesses are admitted and sorted out in an unselfish — which is to say scientific — manner. This is the condition Buber speaks about in his classic Ich und Du. He calls it the I-Thou condition, Walker called it in Lost in the Cosmos the Edenic state (or in The Message in the Bottle he associated it with the Cardenas syndrome: you know, the guy who saw the Grand Canyon for the first time). I have referred to it as the condition of relational purity. This is the same or a similar or a related state as that described in the works or portrayed in the actions of St. Theresa of Jesus, Father Louis also known as Thomas Merton, St. John of the Cross, Buddha, St. Aelred of Riveaulx, Simone Weil, my saintly aunts, your saintly cousin Vinnie, Walker’s Uncle Louie, and so on and so forth — it is an exceedingly long list.