In the Letters to My Amputated Leg Filip attempted to prove coherently and without emotion that since the body and soul are in essence one and the same, since they are two attributes of an infinite, all-encompassing God, there must be between them some sort of proportionality designed by the Creator. Totam naturam unum esse individuum. This is in essence what interested him the most: in what way do such distinct substances as the body and the soul connect in the human body and act upon one another? In what way can the body, occupying space, establish causal contact with a soul that occupies no space? How and from whence does pain arise?
He wrote for example:
What is it that awakens me, when I feel pain and suffering, since my leg has been separated from me and is floating now in alcohol? There is nothing pinching it, no reason for its suffering, no such pain that can be logically justified and yet it exists. Now I look at it and simultaneously feel in it, in the toes, unbearably hot, as though I were submerging it in hot water, and this experience is so real, so obvious, that if I were to shut my eyes, I would see in my own imagination the bucket of water overly heated and my own foot submerged from toes to ankle. I touch my bodily existing limb in the guise of a lump of preserved flesh – and I don’t feel it. I feel, meanwhile, something that does not exist, it is in a physical sense an empty place, there is nothing there that might give any sensation whatsoever. The thing that hurts does not exist. A phantom. Phantom pain.
The combination of these words initially appeared strange to him, but he soon began to use the phrase readily. He also took detailed notes on the progressive dissection of the leg. He took it more and more apart; after a while he was left with no choice but to proceed with the aid of a microscope.
‘The body is something absolutely mysterious,’ he wrote.
The fact that we so precisely describe it does not at all mean that we know it. It is like an argument from Spinoza, that lens grinder who polishes glass precisely in order that we are able to examine every thing more closely, who creates an incredibly difficult language in order to express his thought because it is said: seeing is knowing.
I want to know, and not give in to logic. What do I care about a proof from the outside, framed as a geometric argument? It provides merely a semblance of logical consequence and of an order pleasing to the mind. There’s A, and after A comes B, first definitions, then axioms and numbered theorems, some supplementary conclusions – and you might have the impression that such command is reminiscent of a wonderfully sketched etching in an atlas, where with letters particular sections are marked, where everything seems so clear and transparent. But we still don’t know how it all works.
Yet he believed in the power of reason. And that it was in its nature to consider things as necessary, not accidental. Otherwise, of course, reason would negate itself. He argued over and over that we had to trust our reason, because it was given us by God, and God is after all perfect, so how could he furnish us with something that would deceive us? God is not a deceiver! If we use the powers of our intellect in the right way, we will ultimately attain truth, learn everything about God and about ourselves, we who are a piece of him, like everything else.
He insisted that the highest sort of reason is intuitive, not logical. Learning intuitively, we will immediately notice the deterministic necessity of the existence of all things. Everything that is necessary cannot be otherwise. When we really realize this, we will experience great relief and purification. We will no longer be unsettled by the loss of our belongings, by the passage of time, by ageing or death. In this way we will gain control over our affects and attain some peace of mind.
We must simply remember the primitive desire to judge what is good and what is bad, just as civilized man must remember primitive drives – revenge, greed, possessiveness. God, which is to say nature, is neither good nor bad; it’s an ill-used intellect that stains our emotions. Filip believed that all our knowledge of nature is in reality knowledge of God. This is what frees us from the sorrow, the despair, the envy and anxiety that are our hell.
It’s true that Filip addressed the leg as though talking to a living, independent person, I will not deny that. Separated from him, it took on some sort of demonic autonomy, simultaneously maintaining with him a painful relationship. I also confess that these are the most unsettling portions of his letters. But at the same time I have no doubt that this is just a metaphor, a kind of mental shortcut. He was thinking that what once formed a whole but was then broken down into parts is still powerfully connected, in an invisible way that is difficult to investigate. For the nature of this relationship is not clear, and it would no doubt elude the microscope.
It is, however, obvious, of course, that we can only trust physiology and theology. These are the two pillars of knowledge. What lies between them does not count at all.
Reading his notes, it must thus be remembered that Filip Verheyen was a man who suffered ceaselessly and without knowing the reason for his pain. Let us keep that in mind when we read his words:
Why am I in pain? Is it because – as that grinder says, and perhaps only in this does he not err – in essence the body and soul are part of something larger and something shared, states of the same substance, like water that can be both liquid and solid? How can what does not exist cause me pain? Why do I feel this lack, sense this absence? Are we perhaps condemned to wholeness, and every fragmentation, every quartering, will only be a pretence, will happen on the surface, underneath which, however, the plan remains intact, unalterable? Does even the smallest fragment still belong to the whole? If the world, like a great glass orb, falls and shatters into a million pieces – doesn’t something great, powerful and infinite remain a whole in this?
Is my pain God?
I’ve spent my life travelling, into my own body, into my own amputated limb. I’ve prepared the most accurate maps. I have dismantled the thing under investigation per the best methodology, breaking it down into prime factors. I’ve counted the muscles, tendons, nerves and blood vessels. I’ve used my own eyes for this, but relied, too, on the cleverer vision of the microscope. I believe I have not missed even the smallest part.
Today I can ask myself this question: what have I been looking for?
TRAVEL TALES
Am I doing the right thing by telling stories? Wouldn’t it be better to fasten the mind with a clip, tighten the reins and express myself not by means of stories and histories, but with the simplicity of a lecture, where in sentence after sentence a single thought gets clarified, and then others are tacked onto it in the succeeding paragraphs? I could use quotes and footnotes, I could in the order of points or chapters reap the consequences of demonstrating step by step what it is I mean; I would verify an aforementioned hypothesis and ultimately be able to carry off my arguments like sheets after a wedding night, in view of the public. I would be the mistress of my own text, I could take an honest per-word payment for it.