CHAPTER XXII The Far-Eastern Symbol of the Yin-Yang; Metaphysical Equivalence of Birth and Death
To return to the determination of our figure, there are ultimately only two things that call for particular consideration, namely the vertical axis on the one hand, and the horizontal plane of coordinates on the other. We know that a horizontal plane represents one state of the being, each modality of which corresponds to a spiral turn that we have merged into a circumference ; however, the ends of the turn do not actually lie in the plane of the curve, but in two immediately adjacent planes, for this curve, as conceived in the vertical cylindrical system, is an element of a helix, whose pitch is infinitesimal. "On that account, although we at present live, act, and reason about contingencies, we can and even must regard the graph of individual evolution [1] as a (plane) surface. Indeed, it possesses all the attributes and qualities of one, and only differs from a surface when regarded in the Absolute [2]. Thus, on our plane (or degree of existence), the ' vital circulus' is an immediate truth, and the circle is indeed the representation of the human individual cycle "3.
The yin-yang, which in the traditional Far-Eastern symbolism depicts the " circle of individual destiny ", is in actual fact a circle, for the above reasons. "It is a circle representative
of an individual or specific [1] evolution, and only in two dimensions does it participate in the universal cyclic cylinder. Having no thickness, it has no opaqueness, and is represented as diaphanous and transparent, in other words the graphs of the evolutions prior and posterior to its moment [2] are seen and imprinted on the sight through it "3. But, of course, "it must never be forgotten that if, taken by itself, the yin-yang can be regarded as a circle, in the succession of individual modifications [4] it is an element of a helix : any individual modification is essentially a three-dimensional vortex [5]; there is only one human stage, and the course once completed is never covered again." '6 The two ends of each turn of a helix of infinitesimal pitch, as was said before, are two immediately adjacent
points on a generatrix of the cylinder, which is parallel to the vertical axis (and moreover situate in one of the planes of coordinates). These two points do not really belong to the individuality, or, more generally, to the state of being represented by the horizontal plane under consideration. "Entry into the yin-yang and emergence from the yin-yang are not within the individual's power to command, for they are two points which, while belonging to the yin-yang, belong also to the spiral inscribed on the lateral (vertical) surface of the cylinder, and which are subject to the attraction of the 'Will of Heaven '. And indeed, man is not free as to either his birth or his death. As regards his birth, he is free neither to accept nor to refuse nor to choose the moment. As regards his death, he is not free to escape it; and neither can he be free, in all analogical justice, as regards the moment of his death. . . . In any case, he is not free from any of the conditions of the two acts; birth irresistibly launches him upon the round of an existence that he has neither asked for nor chosen ; death withdraws him from that round and irresistibly launches him upon another, prescribed and foreknown by the 'Will of Heaven ', without his being able to modify it in any respect [1]. Thus, man on earth is a slave as regards his birth and death, that is, in respect of the two chief acts of his individual life, the only ones which finally summarize his special evolution in regard to the Infinite "2. It should be clearly appreciated that "the phenomena 'birth ' and 'death ', regarded in themselves and apart from the cycles which lie between them, are perfectly equal "3; it can even be said that this is really only one and the same phenomenon envisaged on two opposite sides, from the standpoint of one and the other of the two consecutive cycles between which it is interposed. This indeed emerges at once
in our geometrical representation, because the end of any one cycle always and necessarily coincides with the beginning of another, and because we use the words " birth " and " death ", in their altogether general acceptation, merely to denote the passage from cycle to cycle, and whatever may be the scope of such cycles, which may just as well be those of worlds as of individuals. These two phenomena "accordingly accompany and complete each other : human birth is the immediate result of a death (to another state) ; human death is the immediate cause of a birth (likewise into another state). Neither of these circumstances can ever occur without the other. And, as time does not exist here, it can be affirmed that, between the intrinsic value of the phenomenon birth and the intrinsic value of the phenomenon death, there is metaphysical identity. As for their relative value, and by reason of the immediacy of the results, death at the end of a given cycle is higher than birth into the same cycle, by the whole value of the attraction of the 'Will of Heaven' upon that cycle, that is, mathematically, the pitch of the evolutive screw." 1