Fictional Knowledge

Truth, once defined, no longer is. For truth entails supremacy over concepts of time and space, which we, in our limited capacity to comprehend the infinite, cannot comfortably reside in, as limitations are incompatible with infinitude. So when we rest upon a notion of proclaimed validity - complete with codified meaning and distinguished definition, we are not resting on the indeterminate truth itself, but on what is known. And what is the known but rationalized imagination, founded on belief and constrained by judgment? It seems we need the definitude of many particulars in order to perceive the generals, which, once defined, can be implemented as universals, which themselves in turn, are compared against the constant stream of emerging particulars outside of our absolute conceptions. The definitions, it must be remembered, are not a means to an end themselves, but rather a platform from which new nuances of truth may be discovered. Fiction then, both borrowing from the stability of the known, and yet extending not into things as they are, but may be, is far closer to truth than what we believe.

Samuel Johnson proclaims that the "mind can only repose in the stability of truth" (469), and yet we find delight in our understanding of fiction (478)[1]. Here it is implicit that stability necessitates comfortable notions within, and delight - an agitation, if you will, of this stability - arises not from the adherence to the familiar, but from the unexpected recognition of it being there at all. If there is recognizable stability upon which the mind rests, where can it be found? When investigating the continuing merit of Shakespeare through the ages, Johnson suggests that stability (that which is familiar and understood) is grounded on a "general and predominate truth"(474), which is expounded when he says, "what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood"(468). It appears that the known (both in "truth" and fiction) is redundancy exemplified through time, chaperoned by a set standard of understanding. So what, then, is understanding? Oxford states that it is "an individual's perception or judgment of a situation" (AskOxford)[2]. So, if judgment is the proper eye through which the truth can be discerned, what then constitutes "proper" judgment?

Johnson implies that ideas, principles, and experience culminate into what may be called a proper judgment when he argues the opposition:

The entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account (463).

So where does one attain these ideal precepts? Man must find them in the righteous path of virtue and "common sense," each in their nature a product of their environment. These ideals are learned through the observation of their consequence; what is shown best is best learned, and what this ought to be (under the discretion of good judgment) is this: "virtue not angelical, nor above probability . . . but the highest and purest that humanity can reach"(465), because "virtue is the highest proof of understanding"(466), and thus it is the highest form of Judgment.

But still we must seek the foundation from which this esteemed virtue arises. Alexander Pope, a predecessor of Johnson, says that we must "First follow NATURE, and your Judgement frame/By her just Standard, which is still the same"(442). But is nature really so constant? Looking to Dryden, one discovers that "As for a perfect character of virtue, it never was in Nature, and therefore there can be no imitation of it"(384). This suggests that nature herself is forever changing, and so virtue is not extracted from imitation of it alone, but from a significance assigned to the consequences of the natural world, as perceived through the volatility of the passions. For man, buried in his body, sees everything through what is "felt and imagined" (Vico 409). And because, for Johnson, "Nature and Passion...are always the same"(466), then it follows that the passions, like nature, follow no limits, and thus cannot be clearly understood, known, or judged.

Still, the observance of virtue persists in our conception of reality. If it cannot be judged by the rigidity of belief, then perhaps it can be examined from the ingenuity of the Wit. For where judgment, in its chamber of partiality, lacks the ability to see the whole, Wit, as John Addison asserts, lies most "in the assemblage of ideas" that gives "delight and surprise to the reader" (419). And if the true test of good art is one that extends through time with an aim to "copy nature and instruct life"(Johnson 480), and if these representations are best transmitted when the "delight . . . proceeds from our consciousness of fiction"(Johnson 478), which in its greatness encompasses "general and collective ability of man" (468), then it seems that half of this task, perhaps, is accomplished through Wit.

Johnson, however, suggests that, "It is justly considered to be one of the greatest excellencies of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature, which are most proper for imitation; greater care is still required in representing life"(464). And if it is true that the artist imitating life expresses those things which are "freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own mind" (Sydney 330), perhaps his expressions are too broad, and cannot be understood by the common folk, the "fried-peas-and-nuts public" (Horace 130). That is, if this general and delightful appearance is too large in its various borrowings to narrow the confines of virtue, and perhaps even spurs the establishment of a "false" ideal, then it is true, as Pope alleges, that "So by false learning is good Sense defac'd"(441). For in its grandeur, wit encompasses not only the largeness of nature, but the author's sometimes-spurious illusions, and both are made meaningful by the sensation of the artistry. For a writer armed with the skill of wit, "for the sake of following nature, so mingle good and bad,"and, "whose endowments threw a brightness on their crimes," becomes himself one of the "great corruptors of the world"(Johnson 464-5). Or, as Pope notices: "A vile Conceit in pompous Words exprest/ Is like a Clown in regal purple drest"(448). Wit and judgment are interdependent, as judgment is too narrow for wit's encompassing sphere, but wit too wild for the sensibility of judgment. After all, "a little Learning is a dang'rous Thing"(Pope 446).

So there must be something greater than wit, something truer than judgment, that reveals virtue, common sense, and ultimately, truth. For, "Wit and Judgment often are at strife" (Pope 443), and as judgment is too small, so too, is the seemingly contextualized witticism: "So vast is Art, so narrow human Wit" (442). That which exceeds them is wisdom: If judgment is understanding, and understanding is knowledge, and if wit be so large it can be compared to the limitless capacity of the natural, the passions, then the fusion of them both is the "divine inspiration" (Plato 38-41) by which "something higher than human"(Longinus 153) can be transposed. Wisdom is, "A knowledge both of Books and Humankind"(Pope 455), it, "goeth beyond the fine-witted philosopher"(Sydney 334), and gives, "the experience of many ages"(334).

Wisdom, it seems, is the knowledge of the present appearance of stability and inherent mutability of the unknown. It is, one may say, "credible impossibility"(Vico 412), "in which all things are directed to the highest end of mistress knowledge ... which stands ... in the knowledge of the man's self" (Sydney 333).

Yet we have found that knowledge in of itself requires boundaries to know it, and boundaries are antithetical to constantly evolving truth. So, one may say that the "highest end" is not achieved through mistress knowledge, but rather, Mother Learning, which, ironically, is only produced from not knowing, which in turn stirs the passions. As Giambattista Vico expresses, when investigating the origin of original thought: "Natural curiosity, which is the daughter of ignorance and the mother of knowledge... gives birth to wonder"(410). Once something is known, it cannot be wondered about; it is only by stepping outside of the comfortable familiarity of belief that one can observe this axiom, for "just as the bodily eye sees all objects outside itself but needs a mirror to see itself"[so too does man...] (Vico 405). But surely to see outside oneself in such a manner is something divine, and who has the capacity to "understand what is hidden from men... or what is hidden in them - their consciousness"(Vico 405)? The answer: only a poet.

An image-maker, a representer, an imitator, a mirror - is the only means by which man can find the harmonious juxtaposition of judgment and wit. For in wisdom both are necessary, as "both, not having both, do both deny" (Sydney 334). It is the artist's "learned discretion" that can illuminate the confounding antitheses abound in life, and unite such seeming dualities in such a way that the audience both sees himself, and sees something more. For the poet "doth grow in effect another nature"(Sydney 330), but what could this "other nature" possibly be?

This "new nature" is a mixture of the true and the untrue, of the known and the "credibly impossible," of judgment in universals and wit in particular nuances. For this to be considered a "true" representation, it need not be a physical reality of measurable time and space, but rather, a depiction of humanity so general in its passions, decisions, and habitudes that we ourselves relate this remarkable similarity in all our brethren. That is, because "time is most obsequious to the imagination"(Johnson 478), and because imitations "bring realities to the mind"(478), the factual reasoning need not apply to this mimeses. This is what we call fiction.

And if it is true that the highest end of poetry is to clear and improve "whate'er it shines upon"(Pope 448), to "surprise the reader with all those seeming resemblances or contradictions,"(Dryden 382) to "instruct delightfully"(383), then this "other nature," this wisdom of the poet, is improving the process of learning - the highest end of wisdom. For the "learned reflect on what before they knew"(Pope 457), he makes each day "a Critick on the last"(Pope 454), yet still maintains a sameness that resonates through the observations of time.

The poet amasses such a wealth of recurring particularities extending through the experiences of many men, that we tend to call this the general, and the general becomes venerated through repetition of esteem, or judgment, as the poet "traces the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom"(Johnson 467), and by displaying the remarkable unity of human experience by observing "the power of the passions in all their combinations" (467). So while he teaches by example, and if he is good, teaches "what may and should be"(Sydney 332), he shows that "the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity"(Johnson 468).

But we have seen that "genius" is not really recognized as such unless we are to step out of it, and one is not really stirred to examine these qualities within, without the inculcation of delight. For learning is a process of movement, quite unlike knowledge, which is still and stable; that which is unfamiliar stirs the mind:

Such wide and undetermined prospects are as pleasing to the fancy, as the speculations of infinitude are to the understanding. But if there be a beauty or uncommonness joined with this grandeur, as in a troubled ocean, a heaven adorned with stars and meteors, or a spacious landscape cut out into rivers, woods, rocks, and meadows, the pleasure still grows upon us, as it arises from more than a singular principle (Addison 424).

That is, the delight arises not out of the "stability of truth," but from the very opposite of it. Consider Hume's assertion, built upon the platform of Johnson's, as well as his predecessors, ideologies: "A very violent effort is requisite to change our judgments of manners... which the mind from long custom has been familiarized"(Hume 498).

It is in the polarities that we find unity, as the poet "Taste, Judgment, Learning, join"(Pope 453). For taste (or wit) and judgment are the platforms of knowledge, and learning is the dive; if the first two be the guide, then learning is the light (Sydney 334). So when Johnson says that the mind can only repose on the stability of truth, he is saying that we find rest in the known, in the codified and defined, in the long observed and much-esteemed principles heretofore established. But it must be remembered that the "greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay"(Sydney 334). Yet also, "it is not just that new rules should destroy the authority of the old" (Dryden 384), for things "change in their superstructures, but not in the foundation of the design" (Dryden 384). Knowledge is the entryway through which wisdom can be acquired, but only when it is threatened. For the shocking awe of one who sees himself in such a familiar likeness cannot help but be stirred by that authors "Divine consideration of what may and should be" (Sydney 332), for a divine poet, like the truth itself, is "superior to time and place"(Johnson 467). Fiction at once reaffirms and destabilizes this "stability of truth," as in its vast displays, shows that "admiration and commiseration teacheth the uncertainty of the world" (Sydney 344).

If learning is the highest end of human endeavors, if it is the " enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit"(Sydney 333), then it requires both the stability of truth and the varietal delight of fiction. And although it is not really truth in which we find repose, but an observance of long-held belief, and because belief is too narrow to encompass the boundlessness of "true" truth, it is required that belief, which is internal, be viewed from afar, so that all the blemishes and beauties of existence are unmasked. When this happens - when belief is questioned, wonder is stimulated, and learning ensues. And learning is the building on the foundation of belief, and the reaching into the infinitude of inspiration. What we seek is something known, and what we find is that there is always something more. The mind cannot be forever stable, nor forever agitated, but must rest from time to time on the platform of perceived truths, and, taking with it this knowledge, found through fiction, explore the abyss of unknown possibilities. We are always changing, but the cycle always remains the same, just as truth itself.

Works Cited

1) Leitch, Vincent. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2001. (All following references are from this text except as noted).

2) Oxford Dictionary Online. 25 November 2006. http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/

[1] All citations are from Leitch, unless otherwise noted. See Works Cited.

[2] See Works Cited