Darwin, Berkeley and Nietzsche were traversing through
the primordial soup when a Booming Voice echoed
throughout the world,
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" the Booming Voice joyously announced,
for He was a joyous and happy Booming Voice, "so you
have quite a conundrum before you now!"
Berkeley, as was his manner, nudged ahead of Nietzsche
and announced,
"I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I
myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking,
active principle that perceives, knows, wills and
operates about ideas. I know that I, one and the same
self, perceive both colors and sounds: that a color
cannot perceive a sound, nor a sound a color: that I
am therefore one individual principle, distinct from
color and sound; and, for the same reason, from all
other sensible things and inert ideas. But, I am not
in like manner conscious either of the existence or
essence of Matter. On the contrary, I know that
nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence
of matter implies an inconsistency. Further, I know
what I mean when I affirm that there is a spiritual
substance or support of ideas, that is, that a spirit
knows and perceives ideas. But, I do not know what is
meant when it is said that an unperceiving substance
hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the
archetypes of ideas. There is therefore upon the whole
no parity of case between Spirit and Matter."
Not to be outdone, Nietzsche elbowed his way past
Darwin and Berkeley to his preordained spot,
"With the highest respect, I accept the name of
Heraclitus. When the rest of the philosophic folk
rejected the testimony of the senses because they
showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their
testimony because they showed things as if they had
permanence and unity. Heraclitus too did the senses an
injustice. They lie neither in the way the Eleatics
believed, nor as he believed--they do not lie at all.
What we make of their testimony, that alone
introduces lies; for example, the lie of unity, the
lie of thinghood, of substance, of permanence.
"Reason" is the cause of our falsification of the
testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show
becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie.
But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his
assertion that being is an empty fiction. The
"apparent" world is the only one: the "true" world is
merely added by a lie."
Darwin strode forward in a gentlemanly manner, cleared
his throat and began,
"As man can produce and certainly has produced a great
result by his methodical and unconscious means of
selection, what may not nature effect? Man can act
only on external and visible characters: nature cares
nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may
be useful to any being. She can act on every internal
organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on
the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his
own good; Nature only for that of the being which she
tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by
her; and the being is placed under well-suited
conditions of life. Man keeps the natives of many
climates in the same country; he seldom exercises each
selected character in some peculiar and fitting
manner; he feeds a long and a short beaked pigeon on
the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or
long-legged quadruped in any peculiar manner; he
exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same
climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to
struggle for the females. He does not rigidly destroy
all inferior animals, but protects during each varying
season, as far as lies in his power, all his
productions. He often begins his selection by some
half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification
prominent enough to catch his eye, or to be plainly
useful to him. Under nature, the slightest difference
of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so
be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts
of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor
will his products be, compared with those accumulated
by nature during whole geological periods. Can we
wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far
'truer' in character than man's productions; that they
should be infinitely better adapted to the most
complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear
the stamp of far higher workmanship?"
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" the Booming Voice joyously continued,
"if it were not for your Minds, I would almost doubt
my own existence!"
Sources:
"Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous" --George Berkeley
"Twilight of the Idols"--Friedrich Nietzsche
"The Origin of Species"--Charles Darwin
from "The Nature of Poetics Collapsed Outside My Window"
© 2006 Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches Strophe-Verlagswesen