"This is what fascinates Shaw: this enormous force that ignores our human preferences, our logic and intellect. It fascinates him because to be suddenly gripped by it is to see that human beings are not the accidental products of a mechanical universe — that they are not 'alone'. As social animals, we live in a narrow but apparently logical world with a well-defined identity and position. But man is the satellite of a double-star; there is also an inner-world that seems to have a completely different set of laws from the rational universe. And in fact, if we judge this 'rational universe' by its own laws, we see that it is not self-complete and self-explanatory; space must end somewhere, time must have a stop; but the alternative propositions sound equally 'logical': space is infinite; time has neither beginning nor end. The answer to these paradoxes must be that the outer universe is not self-complete; it is only half a universe. The inner world is the other half. But at present we know very little about this inner world. It is only within the present century that its existence has been clearly recognized by psychology."
React to this quote
More by Colin Wilson
See allResonant Thoughts
"I'm able to paint so nice and thick with those big splodges that stay upright because I mix my own paint. I use the formula that the seventeenth-century painters used and I've added one or two things …"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"I’ve never heard the term “numerical synesthesia,” but now that I have, yes, this is how she often sees. Th…"
— Nnedi Okorafor"An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final d…"
— T. E. Lawrence"Unrighteous fortune seldom spares the highest worth; no one with safety can long front so frequent perils. …"
— Seneca the Younger"Cannabis: The reason it's not in the Constitution is because letting states and individuals decide is in th…"
— Ilana Mercer"In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic an…"
— Douglas Adams"Our view of life must account for how we know life; biological theories must allow for their own discovery …"
— Michael Polanyi
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Stephen King on philosophy
- Robert A. Heinlein on philosophy
- Ernest Hemingway on philosophy
- Mark Twain on philosophy
- George Bernard Shaw on philosophy
- Anton Chekhov on philosophy
- Virginia Woolf on Philosophy
- Ursula K. Le Guin on philosophy
- Stephen King on life
- Stephen King on time
- knowledge & Beauty
- knowledge & Change
