MARJORIE GRENE
279
Empiricism becomes idealist despite itself. Hume is Berkeley without
God. In that case, perhaps, as many philosophers now like to argue,
phenomenalism is but phenomenology in everyday (that is , of course ,
English) dress , while phenomenology is phenomenalism in the cere–
monial robes of continental
ex cathedra
utterance. But if one is
caught in the trap of looking for passive bits of experience-pains,
inner happenings , momentary knowings how or that-one has to try
to
get out and act. That is the right kind of therapy for that kind of
cramp . And if, on the other hand, one is fascinated by the serpent
idealism, by the Transcendental Ego, one has , as therapy, to look
elsewhere: to seek one's antidote , not in escape, which is impossible,
but in a kind of stretching here and there , a snake-charmer's dance ,
as it were-a recognition of one's trancelike state through making of
it a kind of game with language, in language ; a game, or a battle , of
inner with outer, implicit with explicit, expression with gesture, life
with death .
Yet opposite though these prescriptions feel when we read of
them or try
to
practice them, they have , finally, one more character
in common. They are both Wonderland philosophies . They both
exhort us to work terribly hard,
to
run terribly fast, in order to stay
where we are . Maybe that's the only new beginning we can manage .
The ice
is
slippery , after all.
