The Malady of Anguish
These days it is the fashion in certain circles to speak of 'metaphysical anxiety', and even of 'metaphysical anguish'. These patently absurd expressions give further proof of the mental disorder of our time; but, as always in such a case, there may be some interest in trying to find out precisely what lies behind these errors and what exactly such an abuse of language implies. It is clear enough that those who speak in this way do not have the slightest notion of what metaphysics really is. But one may still wonder why they wish to transpose these terms anxiety and anguish into whatever notion they have of this domain-of which they are ignorantrather than any others that would be neither more nor less out of place. No doubt, the first or most immediate reason for this lies in the fact that these words represent certain sentiments particularly characteristic of the present age; and the predominance they have acquired today is moreover quite comprehensible, and could even be considered legitimate in a certain sense if it were limited to the order of contingencies, for it is manifestly only too well justified by the present state of disequilibrium and instability of all things, a state which continues to worsen and is certainly not calculated to give a feeling of security to those who live in such a troubled world. If there is something morbid in these sentiments, it is that the state through which they are occasioned and maintained is itself abnormal and disordered; but all this, which amounts to no more than a simple explanation of fact, does not sufficiently take into account the intrusion of these same sentiments into the intellectual order, or at least into what lays claim to its place among our contemporaries;
this intrusion shows that the evil runs much deeper, and that there must be something in it related to the whole of the mental deviation of the modern world.
In this connection we may note first of all that the perpetual restlessness of the moderns is nothing other than one form of the need for agitation that we have often denounced, a need that in the mental order takes the form of research for its own sake, that is, research which, rather than leading to knowledge as it normally should, is pursued indefinitely and leads nowhere, and which moreover is undertaken without any intention of attaining truth, something in which so many of our contemporaries do not even believe. We admit that a certain anxiety may have its legitimate place at the starting-point of any inquiry as a motive inciting that very inquiry, for it goes without saying that if man were satisfied with his state of ignorance, he would remain in it indefinitely and never seek to escape it; but even so, it would be better to give such mental anxiety another name: in reality it is nothing other than the 'wonder' that according to Aristotle is the beginning of knowledge, and which of course has nothing in common with the purely practical needs to which the 'empiricists' and 'pragmatists' attribute the origin of all human knowledge. But in any case, whether one calls it anxiety or wonder it is something that could have no raison d'être nor subsist in any way once the inquiry has attained its goal, that is, once the knowledge in question has been attained-whatever order of knowledge is involved moreover; and its complete and definitive disappearance is all the more necessary when it is a question of knowledge par excellence, that is, knowledge of the metaphysical domain. One can thus see in the idea of an anxiety that has no end, and hence does not serve to draw man out of his ignorance, the mark of a sort of 'agnosticism', which may be more or less unconscious as the case may be, but which is no less real for that. Whether one likes it or not, to speak of metaphysical 'anxiety' is basically equivalent either to denying metaphysical knowledge itself, or at the very least to declaring one's powerlessness to obtain it, which in practical terms amounts to no great difference. And when this 'agnosticism' is truly unconscious it is usually accompanied by an illusion that consists of mistaking for metaphysics something
that is not only no such thing but that is not even to any degree a valid knowledge, even of a relative order. By this we mean the 'pseudo-metaphysics' of modern philosophers, which in effect is incapable of dispelling the slightest anxiety by the very fact that it is not a true knowledge, and which on the contrary cannot but increase the intellectual disorder and confusion of ideas in those who take it seriously, thereby rendering their ignorance all the more incurable. From this, as from every other point of view, false knowledge is certainly worse than simple unsophisticated ignorance.
As we have said, some people do not confine themselves to speaking of 'anxiety', but even go so far as to speak of 'anguish', which is more serious still, and expresses an attitude still more clearly anti-metaphysical, if that is possible; the two sentiments moreover are more or less connected in that both are rooted in ignorance. Anguish indeed is only an extreme and, so to speak, 'chronic' form of fear; now man is naturally inclined to fear what he does not know or understand, and this fear becomes an obstacle preventing him from conquering his ignorance, for it leads him to turn away from the object in whose presence he feels fear and to which he attributes its cause, whereas in reality that cause may perhaps reside only in himself; moreover, this negative reaction is only too often followed by a veritable hatred with respect to the unknown, especially if the person in question labors more or less confusedly under the impression that this unknown is something that exceeds his present possibilities of comprehension. If however the ignorance can be dispelled, the fear will immediately vanish by that very fact, as in the well-known example of the rope mistaken for a serpent; fear, and hence anguish, which is only one of its particular forms, is therefore incompatible with knowledge, and if it advances to such a point that it is truly invincible, knowledge will have been rendered impossible, even in the absence of any other hindrance inherent in the nature of the individual. In this sense one can thus speak, not of a 'metaphysical anguish', but on the contrary of an 'anti-metaphysical anguish' playing in a way the role of a veritable 'guardian of the threshold' - to use to a Hermetic expressionand forbidding man all access to the domain of metaphysical knowledge.
It is still necessary to explain more completely how fear results from ignorance, especially since we have recently come across a quite astonishing error on this subject: we have seen the origin of fear attributed to a feeling of isolation, and this in an exposition based on the Vedantic doctrine, whereas this latter expressly teaches, on the contrary, that fear is due to the feeling of duality; and indeed, if a man were truly alone, of what could he be afraid? It will perhaps be said that he may be afraid of something to be found within himself, but even this implies that in his present condition there are within him elements that escape his own understanding and are consequently a non-unified multiplicity; moreover, whether he is isolated or not changes nothing and in no way enters into such a case. On the other hand, one cannot validly invoke, in favor of this explanation by isolation, the instinctive fear of the dark that is felt by most people, especially children; in reality this fear is due to the idea that darkness may conceal things that one cannot see and that are therefore not known and for that very reason frightening; if, however, the darkness were considered as empty of all unknown presences, the fear would be without object and therefore would not arise. The truth is that the being experiencing fear seeks to isolate itself, but precisely in order to escape the fear; it adopts a negative attitude and 'withdraws', as if to avoid any possible contact with what it fears, whence undoubtedly arise the sensation of cold and other physiological symptoms that usually accompany fear. But this sort of unthinking defense is in any case ineffectual, for it is quite evident that, whatever a being may do, it cannot really isolate itself from the circumstances in which it is placed by the very conditions of its contingent existence, and that, so long as it considers itself surrounded by an 'external world', it is impossible that it find complete refuge from the latter. Fear can only be caused by the existence of other beings, which, insofar as they are other, constitute this 'external world', or other elements that, although incorporated in the being itself, are no less foreign and 'external' to his present consciousness; but the 'other' as such exists only by virtue of ignorance, since all consciousness essentially implies an identification. One can therefore say that the more a being knows, the less the 'other' or 'external' exists for it, and that in the same measure the possibility
of fear, an altogether negative possibility moreover, is likewise abolished for him, and, finally, that the state of absolute 'solitude' (kaivalya), which is beyond contingency, is a state of pure impassibility. Incidentally, let us note in this regard that the 'ataraxy' of the Stoics represents only a deformed conception of such a state, for it claims to apply to a being that in reality is still subject to contingencies, which is contradictory. To try to treat exterior things as indifferent-to the extent one can in the individual condition-may constitute a kind of preparatory exercise with a view to 'deliverance', but nothing more, since for the being that is truly 'delivered' there are no 'exterior' things; in short, such an exercise could be regarded as equivalent to what, in initiatic 'trials', expresses in one form or another the need to conquer fear at the outset in order to attain knowledge, which will in turn render that fear impossible because there will then no longer be anything by which the person could be affected; and it is obvious that one must take care not to confuse the preliminaries of initiation with its final result.
Another observation, admittedly secondary but nonetheless not without interest, is that the sensation of cold and the exterior symptoms to which we alluded just now are also produced even without the one who experiences them being consciously afraid properly speaking, in cases where psychic influences of the most inferior order manifest themselves, as for example in spiritualist seances and in the phenomena of 'haunting'. Here again it is a case of the same subconscious and almost 'organic' defense in the presence of something hostile and at the same time unknown, at least to the ordinary man, who effectively knows only what is susceptible of being grasped by the senses, that is, only things of the corporeal domain. The 'panic terrors' which occur without any apparent cause are also due to the presence of various influences that do not belong to the perceptible order; moreover, they are collective, which again contradicts the explanation of fear through isolation; and in this case it is not necessarily a question of hostile influences or of the inferior order, for it may even happen that a spiritual influence-and not merely a psychic one-provokes a terror of this kind among the 'profane', who perceive it vaguely without knowing anything of its
nature. An examination of these facts, which in short are not abnormal, despite common opinion, only further confirms that fear is indeed really caused by ignorance, and this is why we thought it well to note them in passing.
Returning to the essential point, we can now say that those who speak of 'metaphysical anguish' in the first place show thereby their total ignorance of metaphysics; furthermore, their very attitude renders this ignorance invincible, all the more so as anguish is not a simple momentary feeling of fear, but a fear become in a way permanent, installed in the very 'psychism' of the being, and that is why one can consider it a true 'malady': so long as it cannot be overcome it properly constitutes-as do all other serious defects of a psychic order-a 'disqualification' with respect to metaphysical knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge is the sole definitive remedy against anguish, as well as against fear in all its forms, and against simple anxiety, for these feelings are only the consequences or products of ignorance, and consequently, as soon as knowledge has been attained, it destroys them entirely at their very root and renders them henceforth impossible, whereas without it, even if they are momentarily put aside, they can always reappear under the pressure of circumstances. If it is a question of knowledge par excellence, this effect will necessarily have repercussions in all the various inferior domains, and thus such feelings will also disappear with regard to the most contingent things; indeed, how could they affect one who, seeing all things in their principle, knows that no matter what the appearances may be, they are ultimately only elements of the total order? What is true here is likewise true of all the evils from which the modern world suffers: the true remedy can come only from above, that is, from a restoration of pure intellectuality; as long as one seeks to remedy them from below, that is, resting content to oppose contingencies with other contingencies, all one's efforts will be vain and ineffectual-but who will prove able to understand this while there is still time?