All of the above-mentioned limitations become evident if we consider the dramatic question utrum mundus sit aeternus, whether the world is eternal. This is a question to which Llull already knows the answer, which is negative, otherwise we would fall into the same error as Averroes. Seeing that the term eternity is, so to speak, “explicated” in the question, this allows us to place it under the letter D in the first column of the Tabula Generalis (see Figure 10.1). However, the D, as we saw in the second figure, refers to the contrariety between sensitive and sensitive, intellectual and sensitive, and intellectual and intellectual. If we observe the second figure, we see that the D is joined by the same triangle to B and C. Moreover, the question begins with utrum, and, on the basis of the Tabula Generalis, we know that the interrogative utrum refers to B. We have therefore found the column in which to look for the arguments: it is the one in which B, C, and D all appear.
At this point all that is needed to interpret the letters is a good rhetorical ability, and, working on the BCDT chamber, Llull draws the conclusion that, if the world were eternal, since we already know that Goodness is eternal, it should produce an Eternal Goodness, and therefore evil would not exist. But, Llull observes, “evil does exist in the world, as we know from experience. Therefore we conclude that the world is not eternal.”
Hence, after having constructed a device (quasi-electronic, we might be tempted to say) like the Ars, which is supposed to be capable of resolving any question all by itself, Llull calls into question its output on the basis of a datum of experience (external to the Ars). The Ars is designed to convert Averroistic infidels on the basis of a healthy reason, shared by every human being (of whom it is the model); but it is clear that part of this healthy reason is the conviction that if the world were eternal it could not be good.
Llull’s Ars seduced posterity who saw it as a mechanism for exploring the vast number of possible connections between one being and another, between beings and principles, beings and questions, vices and virtues. A combinatory system without controls, however, was capable of producing the principles of any theology whatsoever, whereas Llull intends the Ars to be used to convert infidels to Christianity. The principles of faith and a well-ordered cosmology (independently of the rules of the Ars) must temper the incontinence of the combinatorial system.
We must first bear in mind that Llull’s logic comes across as a logic of first, not second, intentions, that is, a logic of our immediate apprehension of things and not of our concepts of things. Llull repeats in various of his works that, if metaphysics considers things outside the mind while logic considers their mental being, the Ars considers them from both points of view. In this sense, the Ars produces surer conclusions than those of logic: “Logicus facit conclusiones cum duabus praemissis, generalis autem artista huius artis cum mixtione principiorum et regularum.… Et ideo potest addiscere artista de hac arte uno mense, quam logicus de logica un anno” (“The logician arrives at a conclusion on the basis of two premises, whereas the artist of this general art does so by combining principles and rules.… And for this reason the artist can learn as much of this art in a month as a logician can learn of logic in a year”) (Ars magna, Decima pars, ch. 101). And with this self-confident final assertion Llull reminds us that his is not the formal method that many have attributed to him. The combinatory system must reflect the very movement of reality, and works with a concept of truth that is not supplied by the Ars according to the forms of logical reasoning, but instead by the way things are in reality, both as they are attested by experience and as they are revealed by faith.
Llull believes in the extramental existence of universals, not only in the reality of genera and species, but also in the reality of accidental forms. On the one hand, this allows his combinatory system to manipulate, not only genera and species, but also virtues, vices, and all differentiae (cf. Johnston 1987: 20, 54, 59, etc.). Nevertheless, these accidents cannot rotate freely because they are determined by an ironclad hierarchy of beings: “Llull’s Ars comes across as solidly linked to the knowledge of the objects that make up the world. Unlike so-called formal logic it deals with things and not just with words, it is interested in the structure of the world and not just in the structure of discourse. An exemplaristic metaphysics and a universal symbolism are at the root of a technique that presumes to speak both of logic and of metaphysics together and at the same time, and to enunciate the rules that form the basis of discourse and the rules according to which reality itself is structured” (Rossi 1960: 68).
10.2. Differences Between Llullism and Kabbalism
We can now grasp what the substantial differences were between the Llullian combinatory system and that of the Kabbalists.
True, in the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation), the materials, the stones, and the thirty-two paths or ways of wisdom with which Yahweh created the world are the ten Sephirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
He hath formed, weighed, transmuted, composed, and created with these twenty-two letters every living being, and every soul yet uncreated. From two letters, or forms He composed two dwellings; from three, six; from four, twenty-four; from five, one hundred and twenty; from six, seven hundred and twenty; from seven, five thousand and forty; and from thence their numbers increase in a manner beyond counting; and are incomprehensible. (I, 1)11
The Sefer Yetzirah was assuredly speaking of factorial calculus, and suggested the idea of a finite alphabet capable of producing a vertiginous number of permutations. It is difficult, when considering Llull’s fourth figure, to escape the comparison with Kabbalistic practices—at least from the visual point of view, given that the combinatory system of the Sefer Yetzirah letters was associated with their inscription on a wheel, something underscored by a number of authors who are nonetheless extremely cautious about speaking of Kabbalism in Llull’s case (see, for example, Millás Vallicrosa 1958 and Zambelli 1965, to say nothing of the works of Frances Yates). Llull’s fourth figure, however, does not generate permutations (i.e., anagrams), but combinations.
But this is not the only difference. The text of the Torah is approached by the Kabbalist as a symbolic apparatus that speaks of mystic and metaphysical realities and must therefore be read distinguishing its four senses (literal, allegorical-philosophical, hermeneutical, and mystical). This is reminiscent of the theory of the four senses of Scripture in Christian exegesis, but at this point the analogy gives way to a radical difference.