User:Kul/the method
Dear S.
I heard through the grapevine that you are troubled these days with two haunting phantoms embodied in the symbols Kritḗrion and Méthodos. I know, my friend, that this situation might appear to you as hopeless. These two are coupled with an almost complete ineluctability and always strike simultaneously when scenting in their noses the tiniest odour of doubts or inconstancy passing through theirs victim’s reasonable mind. Please do not despair. The more time I spent here, in the inscrutable valley of the Kamchatka River, accompanied by the seductive closeness of Kronotsky volcano, the more trust I have that “the unknown” might be concurred by irresponsible spirits ululating in the recesses of every human soul. I have no doubt, therefore, that it will be possible to overcome all obstacles you have recently encountered, the gravity of which I do not fail to recognise.
As you know I have been send here in early autumn to conduct an extensive research on Siberian Silver Tigers (Panthera tigris argentum.) The reasons and outcomes of my expedition stays mysterious to me since the existence of the tigris argentum has never been scientifically documented, despite occasional unsubstantiated reports of sightings of spectral pearl creatures in the regions where wild Siberian tigers live. Local Koryak hunters, who occasionally fish nearby my camp, swear on the wings of Big Kutkh that many times they’ve seen luminous shadows aptly moving through the stone birch forest. While listening to their stories I could almost see the tigris argentum among silver birches; I could feel how its paws lightly glide through the bushes to finally tear apart a sable between willow shrubs. However, my pragmatic mind tells me that both, my fellow Koryaks and I were easily deceived in our perceptions. All we know and recall the familiar image of the wild Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) frequently resting on the metamorphic rocks in this region. By means of our solitary and hungry imagination we just made it silver.
I’ve decided to trouble you with my story because I am almost sure that the problems you are actually facing among Dutch intelligentsia are similar to mine. Your search for the method and effort to apply the means of judgment upon the ambiguous field of arts are, in deed, like my quest of the Panthera tigris argentum. I would spare you my comments on figment of human imagination and place the final greetings at this point of my letter if only …not more than a few days ago I have come across the group of wandering Tatars caring their hunting trophies. Among salted meat and antlers, I have noticed the unusual ashy-white fur on the back of their wagon. At first glance I took it for a common fur of a mountain sheep, yet, as soon I stroke it with my fingers, the sheep hair revealed peculiar opalescent tones. Is that possible? I tried to ask Tatars about the origin of their prey. None of them have spoke a word regardless of my attempts to make a conversation in Russian, Chukhi and Itelmen language. But I am telling you my friend: where ambiguities of various natures can be born, there is always a group of adolescent wolves soon ready to swallow them.
Dear friend, I need to stop writing now because my tent is leaking and the dusk is falling fast. It looks like the nigh is going to be restless for me. Buzzing sound of Russian mosquitos has just announced the visit of massive rains. Let me get back to you at dawn, after I’ll kill and eat something for breakfast…
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Dear S, it seems that the impetuous forces of nature supposedly gathered together against us. My camp, the one that I’ve been solicitously building since early winter, has been washed away by unbridled flood and carried along for many kilometres straight into the darkest meanders of the Kamchatka River. I woke up at dawn surrounded by the remains of my camp and the shoal of dead sturgeons. One more time my research base has been raze to the ground, exactly at the moment when diffident glimmers of hope shinned through the cracks of my doubts. One more time I have found myself unsure if this mission aims toward something, by any means, tangible and important. Dear S, please, let me apologize on behalf of cruel elements for this unexpectedly rupture of our pondering. In deed, doomed is the place where I have been deployed and doomed is my task to prove what’s yet unproven if provable at all. In the moments like that I often recall the words of my mother, the handsome and wise woman never really bothered with providing her children with the silly comfort of carelessness typical for our coevals. My child, every time you feel sad or inadequate read Spinoza- she used to say- this great man taught your Cartesian Mother how to believe in God. He also taught her to exercise daily and be kind to other people. "Remember, my child, it is good for you intellect.”
My dear S, I am not sure if the Panthera tigris argentum exists.I am not sure if there is any method to find it. All I know is that the true Method is the way that the Panthera tigris argentum itself, or the objective essences of things, or the ideas (all those signify the same) should be sought in the proper order. Again, the Method is not the reasoning itself by which we understand the causes of things, much less the understanding of the causes of things; it is understanding what a Panthera tigris argentum’ idea is by distinguishing it from the rest of the perceptions; by investigating its nature, so that from that we may come to know our power of understanding and so restrain the mind that it understands, according to that standard, everything that is to be understood; and finally by teaching and constructing certain rules as aids, so that the mind does not weary itself in useless things. From this it may be inferred that Method is nothing but a reflexive knowledge, or an idea of an idea; and because there is no idea of an idea, unless there is first an idea, there will be no Method unless there is first an idea. So that Method will be good which shows how the mind is to be directed according the standard of a given Panthera tigris argentum’ idea.
If all that, including God, exists for Spinoza, ergo it must exist for us.