Paul Valéry : On Human Consciousness

Paul Valéry

Selected Writings

FRAGMENTS FROM

“INTRODUCTION TO THE METHOD OF LEONARDO DA VINCI”

"(...) The human characteristic is consciousness; the characteristic of consciousness is a process of perpetual exhaustion, of detachment without rest or exclusion from everything that comes before it, whatever that thing may be — an inexhaustible activity, independent of the quality as of the quantity of the things which appear and by means of which the man of intellect must at last bring himself deliberately to an unqualified refusal to be anything whatsoever.

All phenomena being thus regarded with a sort of equal repulsion and as rejected successively by an identical gesture, appear to be, in a certain sense, equivalent to each other. Feelings and thoughts are included in the uniform condemnation extended to all that can be perceived. It must be quite understood that nothing is exempted from the rigor of this exhaustion, that our attention should suffice to put our most intimate feelings on the same plane as exterior objects and events; from the moment that they become observable they go to join the rest of observed things.

Color, grief, memories; surprises and things expected; the tree outside, the rustling of its leaves, its yearly change, its shadow as well as its substance, its accidents of shape and position, the far-off thoughts that it brings back to my wandering attention — all these things are equal... All things are replaceable by all things — may not this be the definition of things ?

It is impossible that the activity of the mind should not in the end force it to this ultimate, elementary consideration. Its multiplied movements, its intimate struggles, its perturbations, its analytic returns on itself — do these leave anything unchanged? Is there anything that resists the lure of the senses, the dissipation of ideas, the fading of memories, the slow variation of the organism, the incessant and multiform activities of the universe? There is only this consciousness, and this consciousness only at its most abstract.

Our personality itself, which, stupidly, we take to be our most intimate and deepest possession, our sovereign good, is only a thing, and mutable and accidental in comparison with this other most naked ego; since we can think about it, calculate its interests, even lose sight of them a little, it is therefore no more than a secondary psychological divinity that lives in our looking-glass and answers to our name. It belongs to the order of Penates. It is subject to pain, greedy for incense like false gods; and, like them, it is food for worms. It expands when praised. It does not resist the power of wine, the charm of words, the sorcery of music. It admires itself, and through self-admiration becomes docile and easily led. It is lost in the masquerade and yields itself strangely to the anamorphosis of sleep.

And further, it is painfully obliged to recognize that it has equals, to admit that it is inferior to some — a bitter and inexplicable experience for it, this. Besides, everything convinces it that it is a mere phenomenon; that it must figure with all the accidental facts of the world amongst statistics and tables; that it had its beginning in a seminal chance, a microscopic incident; that it has run thousands of millions of risks; that it has been shaped by a number of happenings and that, however much it may be admirable, free, acknowledged, brilliant, it is, in sum, the effect of an incalculable disorder.

Each person being a sport of nature, a jeu de l'amour et du hasard, the most beautiful purpose and even the most learned thought of this recreated creature inevitably recall his origin. His activities are always relative, his masterpieces are fortuitous. He thinks mortally, individually, by fits and starts; and he finds the best of his ideas in casual and secret circumstances which he refrains from making public. Besides, he is not sure of being positively some one, he disguises and denies, more easily than he affirms, himself. Drawing from his own inconsistency some strength and much vanity, he puts his most cherished moments into fictions. He lives by romance, sees himself in a thousand roles. . . . His hero is never himself... .

And finally he passes nine-tenths of his time in what has yet to happen, in that which no longer is, in what cannot possibly be; to such an extent that our true present has nine chances out of ten of never being. But all the time each private life possesses, deep down as a treasure, the fundamental permanence of consciousness which depends on nothing.

And as the ear catches and loses and catches again, and loses again through all the varying movement of a symphony some grave and persistent motif which ceases to be heard from moment to moment, but which never ceases to be there — so the pure ego, the unique and continuous element in each being in the world, rediscovering itself and then losing itself again, inhabits our intelligence eternally; this deep nore of existence itself dominates the whole complication of circumstance and change in existence from the moment that it is heard.

Is it not the chief and secret achievement of the greatest mind to isolate this substantial permanence from the strife of everyday truths ? Is it not essential that in spite of everything he shall arrive at self-definition by means of this pure relationship, changeless amongst the most diverse objects, which will give him an almost inconceivable universality, give him, in a sense, the power of a corresponding universe? It is not his cherished self that he elevates to so high a degree, since by thinking about it he has renounced it, and has substituted for it in the place of subject this ego which is unqualified, which has no name, no history, which is no more sensitive, no less real than the center of gravity of a planetary system or ring, but which is a result of the whole—whatever that whole may be . . .

A moment since, and the obvious purpose of this wonderful intellectual life was still to astonish itself. Its preoccupation was to produce offspring that it could admire; it limited itself to what is most beautiful, most sweet, most bright, most substantial; and it was untroubled — save for its resemblance to other existing organisms, the strangest problem that one can propound to oneself; which is put to us by the existence of those who resemble us, and which consists simply in the possible existence of other intelligences, in the plurality of the singular, in the contradictory coexistence of lives independent amongst themselves tot capita, tot tempora — a problem comparable to the physical problems of relativity but infinitely more difficult.

But now, carried away by his anxiety to be unique and guided by his ardor for omnipotence, this same being has passed beyond all creations, all works, beyond even his greatest designs at the same time that he has put away from him all tenderness for himself and all preference for his own desires. He immolates, in one instant, his individuality. He feels himself pure consciousness; and two of that cannot exist. He is the I, the pronoun of universality, the name of that which has no relation to appearance.

Oh, to what a point has pride been transformed ! How it has arrived at a position that it did not even know it was seeking ! How temperate the reward of its triumphs ! A life so firmly directed, and which has treated as obstacles to be avoided or to be mastered all the objects it could propose to itself, must, after all, have attained an unassailable end, not an end to its duration, but an end within itself. Its pride has brought it as far as this. And here its pride is consumed. Pride, which conducted it, leaves it, astonished, naked, infinitely simple at the pole of its treasures."

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