Such is the relation, as I imagine it, of the soul to the body. A
relation which we can imagine as existing momentarily in the case
of the captain is the normal one in the case of the soul with its
craft. As the captain is capable of a kind of movement, an amplitude
of motion, which does not enter into his thoughts with regard to the
directing the ship over the plane surface of the ocean, so the soul is
capable of a kind of movement, has an amplitude of motion, which is
not used in its task of directing the body in the three-dimensional
region in which the body’s activity lies. If for any reason it became
necessary for the captain to consider three-dimensional motions with
regard to his ship, it would not be difficult for him to gain the
materials for thinking about such motions; all he has to do is to
call his own intimate experience into play. As far as the navigation
of the ship, however, is concerned, he is not obliged to call on
such experience. The ship as a whole simply moves on a surface. The
problem of three-dimensional movement does not ordinarily concern its
steering. And thus with regard to ourselves all those movements and
activities which characterise our bodily organs are three-dimensional;
we never need to consider the ampler movements. But we do more than
use the movements of our body to effect our aims by direct means; we
have now come to the pass when we act indirectly on nature, when we
call processes into play which lie beyond the reach of any explanation
we can give by the kind of thought which has been sufficient for the
steering of our craft as a whole. When we come to the problem of what
goes on in the minute, and apply ourselves to the mechanism of the
minute, we find our habitual conceptions inadequate.
The captain in us must wake up to his own intimate nature, realise
those functions of movement which are his own, and in virtue of his
knowledge of them apprehend how to deal with the problems he has come
to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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