The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos

by Walker Percy

  The response of a hearer of a piece of news is to take action appropriate to his predicament. The news is not delivered to be confirmed—for then it would not be a piece of news but a piece of knowledge. There would be no pressing need to deliver it for it is not relevant to the predicament of the islander and it can, theoretically, be arrived at by the islander himself on his own island. The piece of news is delivered to be heeded and acted upon. There is a criterion of acceptance of a piece of news but this acceptance procedure is strictly ancillary to the action to be taken. In science, however, the technical invention which may follow the discovery is optional.*

  If a congress of scientists, philosophers, and artists is convening in an Aspen auditorium in order to take account of the recent “sentences” of their colleagues (hypotheses, theories, formulae, logics, geometries, poems, symphonies, etc.), and if during the meeting a fire should break out, and if then a man should mount the podium and utter the sentence “Come! I know the way out!”—the conferees will be able to distinguish at once the difference between this sentence and all the other sentences which have been uttered from the podium. Different as a bar of music is from a differential equation, it will be seen at once that the two share a generic likeness when compared with a piece of news. A radical shift of posture by both teller and hearer has taken place. The conferees will attach a high importance to the sentence even though it conveys no universal truth and even though it may not be verified on hearing. A different criterion of acceptance becomes appropriate. It is not an inferior or makeshift criterion—as when a castaway makes do with a raft but would rather have a steamship. It is the criterion appropriate to news as a category of communication. If a criterion of verification could be used, then the communication would cease to be news relevant to my predicament; it would become instead a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.†

  The conferees at Aspen apply an appropriate criterion. They are not gullible—for bad advice at this juncture could get them killed. If the newsbearer had announced, not that he knew the way out, but that world peace had been achieved, they would hardly heed him. If he commanded them to flap their arms and fly out through the skylight, they would hardly heed him. If he spoke like a fool with all manner of ranting and raving, they would hardly heed him. If they knew him to be a liar, they would hardly heed him. But if he spoke with authority, in perfect sobriety, and with every outward sign of good faith and regard for them, saying that he knew the way out and they had only to follow him, they would heed him. They would heed him with all dispatch. They would, unless there were an Archimedes present, give his news priority over the most momentous and exciting advance in science. They would heed him at any cost, even though as scientists they must preserve a low regard for sentences bearing news of a contingent event.

  The Mistaking of a Piece of Knowledge for a Piece of News from across the Seas

  What if it should happen that a scientist should assign a high order of significance to a piece of knowledge and a low order of significance to a piece of news? He could make a serious mistake. Having assigned all news sentences to a low order of significance, he could make the mistake of attending only to scientific sentences in the belief that since they are so important in the sphere of knowledge, they might also do duty as pieces of news. Thus, if it should happen that he experiences a predicament of homelessness or of anxiety without cause, he may seek for its cause and cure within the sphere of scientific and artistic knowledge or from the satisfaction of his island needs. He may resort to analysis or drugs or group therapy or creative writing or reading creative writing, all of which may assuage this or that symptom of his loneliness or anxiety. Or he may seek a wife or new friends or more meaningful relationships. But what if it should be the case that his symptoms of homelessness or anxiety do not have their roots in this or that lack of knowledge or this or that malfunction which he may suffer as an islander but rather in the very fact that he is a castaway and that as such he stands not in the way of one who requires a piece of island knowledge or a technique of island treatment or this or that island need satisfaction but stands rather in the way of one who is waiting for a piece of news from across the seas? Then he has deceived himself and, even if his symptoms are better, is worse off then he was.

  The Difference between Island News and News from across the Seas

  My purpose here is not apologetic. We are not here concerned with the truth of the Christian gospel or with the career in time of that unique Thing, the Jewish-People-Jesus-Christ-Catholic-Church. An apologetic would deal with the evidences of God’s entry into history through His covenant with the Jews, through His own incarnation, and through His institution of the Catholic Church as the means of man’s salvation. It would also deal with philosophical approaches to God’s existence and nature. My purpose is rather the investigation of news as a category of communication.

  In the light of the distinction we have made, however, it is possible to shed light on some perennial confusions which arise whenever Christianity is misunderstood as a teaching sub specie aeternitatis. As Kierkegaard put it, the object of the student is not the teacher but the teaching, while the object of the Christian is not the teaching but the teacher.* I say perennial because the misunderstanding by the Athenians of Saint Paul and the offense they took is not essentially different from the misunderstanding of modern eclectics like Whitehead, Huxley, and Toynbee, and the offense they take. Not being an apostle and, as Kierkegaard again would say, having no authority to preach, I should hope not to give further offense and to propose only a small clarifying distinction—not a piece of news in the bottle but only a minor “scientific” sentence—which should offend neither believer nor unbeliever. Whitehead, for one, should not take offense. He pronounced that generality is the salt of religion just as it is the salt of science. And if one should propose therefore that Christianity is not a teaching but a teacher, not a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis but a piece of news, not a member in good standing of the World’s Great Religions but a unique Person-Event-Thing in time—then the eclectic should not mind, because to say this is hardly to advance the case of Christianity in his eyes; it is rather to admit the worst that he has suspected all along. I do not mean that a mistaking of the Judeo-Christian Thing for a piece of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis leads always to hostility and rejection. Indeed it is more common nowadays to accept Christianity on such grounds—as being confirmed by Buddhism in this respect or by psychiatry in some other respect—or as in the case of the Look magazine article which announced that one might now believe in miracles because the Law of Probability allowed that once in a great while a body might fly straight up instead of falling down.

  We might then be content here to agree to disagree about what salt is and whether or not in becoming general it loses its savor. Nevertheless the peculiar character of the Christian claim, its staking everything on a people, a person, an event, a thing existing here and now in time—and on the news of this Thing—and its relative indifference to esoteric philosophical truths such as might be arrived at by Vedantists, Buddhists, idealists, existentialists, or by any islanders anywhere or at any time—might serve here to quicken our interest in news as a category of communication.

  But to return to the castaway and the message in the bottle. The castaway has, we have seen, classified the messages differently from the scientist and logician. Their classifications would divide the sentences accordingly as they were analytic or synthetic, necessary or contingent, repeatable or historic, etc. But the castaway’s classification divides them accordingly as some express a knowledge which can be arrived at anywhere and at any time, given the talent, time, and inclination of the student—and as others tell pieces of news which cannot be so arrived at by any effort of observation or reflection however strenuous and yet which are of immense importance to the hearer. Has the castaway’s classification exhausted the significant communications which the bottles contain? If this is the case, then we seem to be saying th
at the news which the islander finds significant is nothing more than signs of various need-satisfactions which the organism must take account of to flourish. These needs and their satisfactions are readily acknowledged by the objective-minded man. Indeed, the main concern of the biological, medical, and psychological sciences is the discovery of these various needs and the satisfying of them. If a man is thirsty, then he had better pay attention to news of water. If a culture is to survive, it had better heed the news of the approach of the British or a war party from a neighboring island. Also, if a man is to live a rich, full, “rewarding” life, he should have his quota of myths and archetypes.

  Are we saying in short that the predicament which the islander finds himself in and the means he takes to get out of it are those very needs and drives and those very satisfactions and goals which the objective-minded man recognizes and seeks to provide for every island everywhere? It is not quite so simple. For we have forgotten who it is we are talking about. As we noted earlier, the significance of news depends not only on the news but on the hearer, who he is and what his predicament is.

  Our subject is not only an organism and a culture member; he is also a castaway. That is to say, he is not in the world as a swallow is in the world, as an organism which is what it is, never more or less. Our islander may choose his mode of being. Thus, he may choose to exist as a scientist, outside and over against the world as its knower, or he may choose to exist as a culture member, that is, an organism whose biological and psychological needs are more or less satisfied by his culture. But however he chooses to exist, he is in the last analysis a castaway, a stranger who is in the world but who is not at home in the world.

  A castaway, everyone would agree, would do well to pay attention to knowledge and news, knowledge of the nature of the world and news of events that are relevant to his life on the island. Such news, the news relevant to his survival as an organism, his life as a father and husband, as a member of a culture, as an economic man, and so on—we can well call island news. Such news is relevant to the everyday life of any islander on any island at any time.

  Yet even so all is not well with him. Something is wrong. For with all the knowledge he achieves, all his art and philosophy, all the island news he pays attention to, something is missing. What is it? He does not know. He might say that he was homesick except that the island is his home and he has spent his life making himself at home there. He knows only that his sickness cannot be cured by island knowledge or by island news.

  But how does he know he is sick, let alone homesick? He may not know. He may live and die as an islander at home on his island. But if he does know, he knows for the simple reason that in his heart of hearts he can never forget who he is: that he is a stranger, a castaway, who despite a lifetime of striving to be at home on the island is as homeless now as he was the first day he found himself cast up on the beach.

  But then do you mean that his homesickness is one final need to be satisfied, that the island news has taken care of 95 per cent of his needs and that there remains one last little need to be taken care of—these occasional twinges of nostalgia? Or, as the church advertisements would say, one must have a “church home” besides one’s regular home? No, it is much worse than that. I mean that in his heart of hearts there is not a moment of his life when the castaway does not know that life on the island, being “at home” on the island, is something of a charade. At that very moment when he should feel most at home on the island, when needs are satisfied, knowledge arrived at, family raised, business attended to, at that very moment when by every criterion of island at-homeness he should feel most at home, he feels most homeless. Not one moment of his life passes but that he is aware, however faintly, of his own predicament: that he is a castaway.

  Nor would it avail to say to him simply that he is homesick and that all he needs is to know who he is and where he came from. He would only shake his head and turn away. For he knows nothing of any native land except the island and such talk anyhow reminds him of Sunday school. But if we say to him only that something is very wrong and that after fifty years on the island he is still a stranger and a castaway, he must listen, for he knows this better than anyone else.

  Then what should he do? It is not for me to say here that he do this or that or should believe such and such. But one thing is certain. He should be what he is and not pretend to be somebody else. He should be a castaway and not pretend to be at home on the island. To be a castaway is to be in a grave predicament and this is not a happy state of affairs. But it is very much happier than being a castaway and pretending one is not. This is despair. The worst of all despairs is to imagine one is at home when one is really homeless.

  But what is it to be a castaway? To be a castaway is to search for news from across the seas. Does this mean that one throws over science, throws over art, pays no attention to island news, forgets to eat and sleep and love—does nothing in fact but comb the beach in search of the bottle with the news from across the seas? No, but it means that one searches nevertheless and that one lives in hope that such a message will come, and that one knows that the message will not be a piece of knowledge or a piece of island news but news from across the seas.

  It is news, however, this news from across the seas, and it is as a piece of news that it must be evaluated. Faith is the organ of the historical, said Kierkegaard. Faith of a sort is the organ for dealing with island news, and faith of a sort is the organ for dealing with news from across the seas.

  But what does it mean to say that faith is the organ of the historical? For Kierkegaard it means two things. For an ordinary historical truth—what we here call “island news”—faith is the organ of the historical because the organ of the historical must have a structure analogous to the historical. The nature of the historical is becoming. The nature of belief is a “negated uncertainty which corresponds to the uncertainty of becoming.” By historical Kierkegaard means the existing thing or event, not only that which existed in the past, but that which exists here and now before our very eyes. One sees that star rightly enough, but one must also confirm by another act that the star has come into existence. Faith is the organ which confirms that an existing thing has come into existence.* The Christian faith, however—the news from across the seas—is an embrace of the Absolute Paradox as such, a setting aside of reason, a credo quia absurdum est. It is well known that Kierkegaard, unlike Saint Thomas, denies a cognitive content to faith—faith is not a form of knowledge. His extreme position is at least in part attributable to his anxiety to rescue Christianity from the embrace of the Hegelians.

  Yet we must ask whether Kierkegaard’s antinomy of faith versus reason is any more appropriate to the situation of the castaway than the logician’s classification of synthetic and analytic. For the castaway, or anyone who finds himself in a predicament in the world, there are two kinds of knowledge, knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and news bearing on his own predicament. The classification of the castaway would correspond roughly to the two knowledges of Saint Thomas: (1) scientific knowledge, in which assent is achieved by reason, (2) knowledge of faith, in which scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously. The fact is that Kierkegaard, despite his passionate dialectic, laid himself open to his enemies. For his categories of faith, inwardness, subjectivity, and Absolute Paradox seem to the objective-minded man to confirm the worst of what he had thought all along of the Christian news.

  To Kierkegaard the Absolute Paradox was that one’s eternal happiness should depend on a piece of news from across the seas. He still remained Hegelian enough (“scientist” enough in our terminology) to accept the scientific scale of significance which ranks general knowledge sub specie aeternitatis very high and contingent historical knowledge very low. Yet the curious fact is that the philosophical movement of which he has been called the founder has developed an anthropology, a view of man, which is very much more receptive to such news than Kierkegaard ever allowed one could be—even though this movem
ent has in most cases disavowed the Christian setting Kierkegaard gave it. The Jasperian notion of shipwrecked man, Heidegger’s notion of man’s existence as a Geworfenheit, the state of being a castaway, allows the possibility of such news as a significant category of communication, as indeed the most significant.

  To put it briefly: When Kierkegaard declares that the deliverance of the castaway by a piece of news from across the seas rather than by philosophical knowledge is the Absolute Paradox, one wonders simply how the castaway could be delivered any other way. It is this news and this news alone that he has been waiting for. Christianity cannot appear otherwise than as the Absolute Paradox once one has awarded total competence to knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, once one has disallowed the cognitive content of news as a category of communication.

  The stumbling block to the scientist-philosopher-artist on the island is that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But scandalized or not, he might at least realize that it could not be otherwise. For no knowledge which can be gained on the island, on any island anywhere at any time, can be relevant to his predicament as a castaway. The castaway is he who waits for news from across the seas. It is interesting to see what criteria of acceptance Kierkegaard does allow to faith. Clearly he removes faith from the sphere of knowledge and science in any sense of these words. Is it not then simply a matter of God’s gift, a miraculous favor which allows one to embrace the Absolute Paradox and believe the impossible? No, there is more to be said. Kierkegaard recognizes that a category of communication is involved. Faith comes from God, but it also comes by hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a newsbearer. But why should we believe the newsbearer, the apostle? Must the apostle first prove his case to the scientist in the seminar room? No, because this would mean that God and the apostle must wait in the porter’s lodge while the learned upstairs settle the matter.