In this connection Father Sogol had described to us some experi-
ments he had done a few years before with the idea of measuring the
power of human thought. I shall repeat only the parts I could grasp.
At the time I wondered how literally one should take it all, and
forever preoccupied with my favorite field of study, I admired
Sogol as an inventor of 'abstract symbols' (in other words, an
abstract thing symbolizing a concrete thing, the reverse of the
normal order). But since then I have found that these notions of
abstract and concrete have no great significance, as I should have
learned reading Xenophon of Elis or even Shakespeare: a thing
either is or is not, and that's the end of it. Well, Sogol had tried to
'measure thought'; not the way psychotechnicians and testing
experts go at it, limiting themselves to comparing the way one
individual performs a certain activity (often, moreover, entirely
alien to thought) to the average performance of other individuals of
the same age. He was intent on measuring the power of thought as
an absolute value.

'This power,' Sogol said, 'is arithmetical. In reality every thought
represents a capacity to grasp the divisions of a whole. Now,
numbers are nothing else than a division of unity, which
is to say, the divisions of any whole whatever. In myself and in others I
began to observe how many numbers a man really can conceive, that
is to say, can carry in his mind without breaking them down or
writing them out; how many successive consquences of a principle
he can grasp at once, instantaneously; how many inclusions of
species within genus; how many relations of cause to effect, of
means to end. And I never found the number to be greater than
four. And moreover, this figure four required an exceptional mental
exertion which I obtained very rarely. The thought of an idiot stops
at one, and the ordinary thought of most people goes to two,
sometimes to three, very rarely to four. If you like, I'll summarize
one or two of these experiments for you. Follow me carefully.'

To understand what follows, one must perform the proposed
experiments in good faith. It requires considerable attention,
patience, and serenity of mind.

He went on as follows:

'Represent to yourself simultaneously the following facts: 1. I get
dressed to go out; 2. I go out to catch a train; 3. I catch the train to go
to work; 4. I go to work to earn a living. Now try to add a fifth step,
and I am sure that at least one of the first three will vanish from your
mind.'

We performed the experiment; he was right, and even a little too
generous.

'Take another type of sequence: 1. the spaniel is a dog; 2. dogs are
mammals; 3. mammals are vertebrates; 4. vertebrates are animals
. . . I'll carry it further: Animals are living creatures - but there,
I've already forgotten the spaniel. If I recall the spaniel, I forget
vertebrates . . . In any logical sequence of division or progression,
you will run into the same phenomenon. That's why we're constantly
mistaking accident for substance, effect for cause, means for
end, our ship for a permanent habitation, our bodies or our minds
for ourselves, and ourselves for something eternal.'

-- Rene Daumal
Mount Analogue:
A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non_Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing
ISBN 0-87773-381-3
Editions now out of print


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