[Disclaimer: In Dhamma drinking is recognised as breaking the moral precept which leads to pain.]
After all, two will remain,
God and the wine.
I decided to write a prayer book for the atheists. In the distress of our time, I felt sympathy for the sufferers and wanted to help them in this way.
I am aware of the difficulty of my task. I know that I cannot even utter the word “God.” I must speak of him by using all sorts of other names such as kiss or intoxication or cooked ham. I chose wine as the most important name. Hence the title of the book, The Philosophy of Wine, and hence its motto: after all, two will remain, God and the wine.
Circumstances lead me to resort to trickery. Atheists, it is well known, are lamentably haughty people. They only need to glance at God’s name and they will immediately throw the book down. When one touches their obsession, they get into a fury. I think that if I speak of food, drink, tobacco, and love, if I use enigmatic names, then they can be duped. For, besides being conceited, they are, to the same extent, stupid. For example, they altogether ignore this kind of prayer. They think that one can pray only in a church or by murmuring priestly words.
Atheists are our poor in spirit. They are the most needy children of our time. They are poor in spirit but the difference is that they have hardly any hope for the kingdom of heaven. In the past, many were angry with them and fought against them. I consider this method completely unacceptable. To fight? Should a healthy person fight with the lame and the blind? Since they are crippled, they must be approached with good will. Not only should persuasion be avoided but they should not even notice what is happening to them. They should be regarded as retarded children, even as mentally weak, although they hold their mental faculties in high esteem and think that atheism is a sort of perfect knowledge. Why were they fought against in the past? Above all, it seems to me, because atheism, understood as mental deficiency and distorted mood, would get nothing out of life without some kind of compensation. What is this compensation? It is excessive activity. Thus, atheism necessarily led to violence and, since it led to it, atheists had to secure supremacy over the world. Indeed, they secured it. Actually, those who fought against them were envious of them. In my opinion, that was a mistake. When the atheists saw themselves being envied, they became presumptuous.
I have changed tactics. It was not particularly diffi cult. I only needed to reinstate the truth. The truth is that there is nothing to envy in them. What can I envy in the cripple even if he is so po-werful? What can I envy in those who are lame, deaf, idiotic, and half-witted? If I was envious of them, this would mean that I admit that they are right; I would create the impression that I desire what they possess.
I have changed my tactics in the following manner. Instead of fighting against them and making efforts to convert them, I feel sorry for them. And this is not merely a trick. I do not want to take anything away from them. I would like to offer something else whose absence would render them quite weak, poor, and – why to deny it? – ridiculous.
Incidentally, there were other reasons behind those numerous disputes. Indeed, most people thought that atheists were irreligious. Of course, this is out of the question. There are no irreligious people. Atheists are not irreligious, but, in agreement with their pitiful mental deficiency and distorted mood, believe in a comical religion. In fact, they do not only believe in it. They are all bigots. So I say that all of them are, since I have never met an atheist who is not more bigoted than that bad smelling old lady who, on Sundays, in front of the church, sells cheap booklets published on the subject of the miracle-making urine of Saint Homunculus. Of course, the patron-saint of atheistic religion is not Saint Homunculus, but Einstein, and the miracle-making power is not urine, but antiseptics. The name of atheistic bigotry is materialism. This religion contains three dogmas: there is no soul, a human is an animal, death is annihilation. All three can be summed up by simply saying that atheists are terribly afraid of God. Böhme tells us that they live in God’s wrath. They know only the angry God: therefore, they hide themselves and tell lies. They think that by saying that God does not exist, they will cease to be afraid. Instead, of course, they are even more afraid.
Of course, the atheist is a presumptuous man, he does not even want to be different; he has no inclination for humility or love; in other words, he is so feeble that he cannot even display such an inclination. He prefers to remain in his fear, which he denies. He trembles and hides himself and tells lies and becomes increasingly haughty. From such a disconsolate hotchpotch, in which denial, fear, lying, hiding, haughtiness, and bigotry are boiling together, emerges the religious surrogate of materialism.
From this it clearly follows that atheists not only cannot, but also must not, be persuaded by force. They are wayward people, full of worries and self-delusions, and one must handle them with considerable care.
Fortunately, the soul is not like the body. If someone is born maimed, deaf, or, during his life becomes crippled, no human power can change that. The realm of the soul is different. Everyone is born with a wholesome soul and no one can ever lose this health. Everyone can become cured of the deficiencies of the soul. This does not even need a miracle.
A prayer book for the atheists? Namely one that does not even allow them to notice that it teaches them to pray. It is a great thing. Therefore, as Nietzsche says, one must speak only in this manner: cynically and innocently. One must speak wickedly and cunningly, almost with malicious cleverness and, at the same time, with pure heart, serenity, and simplicity, like a songbird.
I must seize this occasion to address a few words to the pietists, that shady sect of atheists. Pietism is nothing else but atheism in disguise. The ordinary materialist is a pitiful soul; his mental faculties are weak, sometimes his heart is completely stupid, and hence, as I have already said several times, one must consider him a cripple who obsessively holds on to his deficiency and considers his clumsiness a significant achievement.
Actually, the pietist is just as godless as the materialist; but, beyond that, he also has a bad consciousness that prompts him to adopt the externals of true religion. The pietist would demand that one live on bran and water; he would like to see the most beautiful women wearing badly cut dresses, he would forbid laughter, and cover the sun with a black veil. The pietist is an abstainer. I know quite well that even my motto roused his indignation; he asked gloomily and angrily, “Come on, what is this blasphemy?” He was scandalized because I dared to say that God is also in cooked ham. Well, he should calm down. He will hear something even more daring. I promise that I will have special consideration for him and miss no occasion to scandalize him to the most serious extent. One should spare the atheist because he is stupid and ignorant and narrow and simple-minded. The pietist cannot expect any indulgence. He should know that I will be watching him from the corner of my eye and the more that he puts on a solemn face, the more I will laugh at him. The more he will express his indignation, the more I will enjoy myself and I will not even tell him why.
THREE
This book must necessarily be divided into three parts. Necessarily because every good book is divided into three parts – three being a perfect way of dividing – but also because the number of wine is also three and this must find its expression in the division. The first part is devoted to the metaphysics of wine. It is not only my goal, but also my ambition, in this part, to lay down the foundation of all future philosophy of wine. Just as Kant sets forth the pivotal thoughts of all subsequent philosophies, which we may accept or counter but never evade and consider as unsaid. In the same manner, I wish, in this part, to expound the universally valid and timeless ideas of the metaphysics of wine.
By using the word “metaphysics,” I know that I step beyond the permissible boundary. However, the word remains hidden. It is nowhere in the title. It is a constraint that I cannot avoid since atheists are even mistrustful of philosophy, although this is the highest term that they are still able to accept. Metaphysics offends their bigotry to such an extent that, for example, they would never have dared to open a book that I had titled The Metaphysics of Wine.
The first part considers wine as a supernatural reality. The second one speaks of wine as nature. As to its character, this part is descriptive. It discusses the properties and types of grapes, the types of wines, the relationship between soil and wine, water and wine; it not only takes special account of our wines but it also pays attention to the most prominent wines from abroad.
The third part deals with the art of wine ceremony. This part inquires about when we should drink and when we should not drink. How should we drink? Where should we drink? From what? Alone? With someone? With a man or a woman? It speaks of the relationship between wine and work, wine and walk, wine and bath, wine and sleep, wine and love. It contains some rules indicating what kind of wine is appropriate for certain occasions, how much is needed, with what kind of food, where to drink it and in what sort of combination.
This part does not pretend at all to be exhaustive. It merely wishes to point out the boundless richness of drinking possibilities and calls upon everyone, even now, to keep adding to the teachings of wine ceremony with ever new chapters.
Such a triple division is in complete harmony with the three main ages of the world history of wine. The meaning corresponding to the metaphysical part is the antediluvian age, during which humanity did not yet know wine, only dreamt about it. After the Flood, Noah planted the first vine and, with this act, a new era began in world history. The third era begins with the transformation of water into wine, and presently we live in this era. World history comes to an end when wine flows from springs and wells, when wine falls from the clouds, when lakes and seas become wine.
The Metaphysics of Wine
WORLD OF THE MOUTH
In our mother’s womb, we are attached to the world through our navel. After our birth, through our mouth. Among our sensory organs, the eyes are the abstract ones; they never establish direct contact with the object they see and they are unable to merge with it. The ear lets things somewhat closer. The hand grasps them. The nose even inhales the vapour of things. The mouth takes in what it desires. I can only come to know what the object is if I taste it. The mouth is the source of immediate experiences. A child knows this.
When he wants to familiarize himself with something, he puts it into his mouths. Later we forget this. Yet I can only come to know who this man is if I have spoken to him with words coming from my mouth; I only learned to know a woman if I have kissed her; I have only made something my own if I have eaten it. The world of the mouth is much more immediate, consequently more religious, than the world of the eyes, the world of the ear or even the world of the hand, because it is closer to reality. Hence, as Novalis tells us, there is a profound kinship between eating and learning. Hence the mother of all of us is the earth, which feeds us through our mouth, and we merge with what it offers to us.
The mouth carries out three activities: it speaks, kisses, and eats. Unfortunately, at this time I have to remain silent about speech and, though reluctantly, about kiss as well. I would merely say that through my mouth I am directly merged with the world and, in such a togetherness, three of my activities are possible: either I give, or I take, or I both give and take. While speaking, I give; while eating, I take, while kissing, I both give and take. The word moves in an outward, the food in an inward direction, the kiss both outward and inward directions, and that makes a circle. Of course, one activity does not exclude the other two but it could even be said to support them, since when the soil nourishes me, it also speaks to me, teaches me, and even kisses me; when I kiss a beautiful woman, I also find nourishment in her as she does in me, and we both feed each other, teach each other, and talk to each other; most of the time we say something whose depth is beyond words.
There are three sorts of nourishment: eating, drinking, and breathing. Those who are well-versed in the great science of tradition know that food has a close relationship with the body; they also know that the meaning corresponding to drink is the soul’s world; as for breathing, it is a spiritual nourishment. To render the spirituality of their being more intense, women apply perfumes and men smoke.(....)
ONE GLASS OF WINE: THE DEATH JUMP OF ATHEISM
All thinking must begin with sensation, says Baader. I understood the logic of his advice and hence began the metaphysics of wine with the most sensuous sense, the mouth. For whatever the eyes and the nose can experience in wine is insignificant in comparison to the knowledge of the mouth. The mouth knows that wine is a hieratic mask, and it knows whose hieratic mask it is.
At this point, by reason of, and in relation to, the foregoing, one must naturally take a stand for immediate life and against abstract life. Abstract life lives only through its eyes, at most through its ears. It does not live through its mouth. Therefore, the eyes and ears are exoteric organs. Nevertheless, the abstract person distrusts even his eyes and ears. He likes to use expressions such as “sensory illusion”, creating the impression that the senses deceive either because of their pitiful impotence or out of intentional calculation. And so, the abstract person invents a gruesome chimera, a colourless, odourless, formless, tasteless, and soundless nothing, destined to substitute the sensory world. Out of this, mostly in recent times, he has created science, morality, law, and the state. Of course, whatever he does, nothing comes of it.
Abstract life is a conceptually designed life, built not upon immediate sensory experiences but upon so-called ideas. In the modern age, we know two sorts of such abstract persons: one is a scientifist, the other is a puritan. It is obvious that both are a variety of atheism.
The characteristic feature of scientifism is that it ignores love but knows sexual instinct; it does not work, but produces; it does not take nourishment, but consumes; it does not sleep, but restores its biological energies; it does not eat meat, potatoes, plums, pears, apples, bread with butter and honey, but calorie, vitamin, carbo-hydrate and protein; it does not drink wine, but alcohol; it weighs itself weekly; if it has a headache, it takes eight sorts of powder; if the grape must causes diarrhoea, it runs to the doctor; it debates the increase of life span; it holds the problems of hygiene unsolvable because, although it can wash the tooth-brush with soap and the soap with water, it cannot, however, wash water with anything.
The scientifist is harmless, awkward, and more comical figure of atheism. The puritan is an aggressive person. For his attack, the strength comes, in no small measure, from the belief that he has found the only right way to live. Someone can be a puritan even if he is a materialist, even if he is an idealist, even if he is a Buddhist, or a Talmudist, because puritanism is not a Weltanshauung, but a temperament. It requires two things: a dismal narrow-mindedness, which blindly adheres to certain definite ideas, and a mad and sly readiness to fight for these very same ideas.
The true strength of puritanism springs from the fact that the puritan is a desperate atheist. He would send to the stake all the woman more beautiful than the average; he would throw all the fatty and sugary food to the pigs; he would condemn the laughing person to life imprisonment; he hates nothing more than wine, in other words and in truth, nothing scares him more than wine. The puritan himself is an abstract person. The heartless one. It is always the heart, rather than reason, that causes the atheists’ trouble. The puritan is the idiot with a hardened heart. World history owes to the puritans its bloodiest battles and most dreadful revolutions. The reason for all this is that the poor person has found an idea instead of God, and he knows it. He knows that he is desperate. He sees his failure, yet he still carries on. If only once he could take part in a dinner at pig killing time, could have enough fillet of pork, fresh and blood sausages, could eat green peppers pickled in vinegar, onion, doughnuts with apricot jam, and he could drink two bottles of Szekszárdi, then he would be saved. But there is no power that could move him to do this.
The knowledge that life has meaning only if it is sacrificed is innate in everyone. Life is successful when I sacrifice it. For a sober and serious person, this task is fulfilled by itself when he places his life at God’s disposal. The atheist, however, is afraid. He is afraid without reason since he must also sacrifice it. He does sacrifice it, but not in a natural manner, for God’s sake, like Abel, but for the sake of some worthless stupidity. For his own sake? If only that were the case! For Pleasure? Power? Richness? Though foolish, still, it somehow can be understood. But the puritan sacrifices himself for an idea. Humanity, he says. Or Freedom! Or Morality! Perhaps: Future! Progress! But what is the meaning of freedom and humanism and future? They are God-surrogates. And what hides behind this self-mortifying madness that is horrible in its proportion? It is that he is a desperate person. He knows his failure, yet he carries on. He knows that he is an unfortunate fool, yet he perseveres. He is severe, he is irritated, he is pugnacious, he is dark, he is vile, he is violent because he is desperate. He fails, yet he carries on. And yet he still carries on. He knows what he is doing, but he does not want to help himself, and, therefore, he becomes more desperate. More desperate and more abstract and more irritated and more wretched and more sly and suspicious and gloomy. And yet again he carries on. The unhappy one.
The scientifist is not worthy of much concern. He is innocent with all his whims and superstitions. One must handle the puritan with great care. For my part, I think that there is only medicine that suits him. Wine. In exactly the same manner as it suits the pietist. For the puritan is the pietist who has already become a terrorist; the pietist is the puritan who whines. The pietist rolls his eyes and is pious. In secret, he collects obscene pictures; when no one sees him, he drinks, mostly brandy, for he considers this as a greater sin, and hence falls into this greater pit. The pietist lives in such a way that, due to the shame, the walls of his room are always burning in red flames. The walls of the puritan’s room are deadly yellow because, even when he is alone, he does not dare to disclose himself. He does it only inwardly. Oh, the poor soul, what kind of mercy can save you if not the wine?
ESCHATOLOGICAL EXCURSUS
People tend to believe that the cause of all troubles is sin. To them sin means that someone lies, steals, cheats, robs, kills, and fornicates. Their ignorance goes so far that they issue immensely grandiloquent laws, in which they even evoke the threat of the gallows. Although these laws are many thousand of years old, until now they have failed to yield any result.
I now hereby lodge a protest against this general belief. Following some careful considerations, I declare that the cause of trouble is not sin. The cause of trouble is deeper-rooted. The cause of trouble is bad behaviour. The sin is merely the consequence of bad behaviour. Hence, following Apostle Paul, I consider the domain of law and morality as abolished and wish to tie the origin of all human activity to the foundation, the religion. But I do this not in an arbitrary fashion and not because I discovered this idea. No. As our contem-porary said, this was the privilege of the creating eschatolologists in their moments of establishing a religion. And I do this because, according to my experience, law and morality abolished sin, at the most, only in appearance; in truth, however, they could never remedy one single trouble. The root of sin, and hence the source of evil, is much, much deeper, beyond the reach of morality and law. Stigmatized by the criminal code, sins are merely the final consequences of bad religious behaviour. I have already said, and hereby I stress it again, everybody must have a religion and a person without religion does not exist. If someone does not believe in the good religion, he will believe in the bad one. Among all the bad religions, atheism is the worst.
But the essential point is this. Bad religion is not the consequence of bad behaviour. No. Bad religion is bad behaviour itself. This bad behaviour is the breeding place of all evils and the source of all sins. It is chiefly the source of moral defects such as vanity, jealousy, greediness, impertinence, boasting, tastelessness. But it is also the source and breeding place of the sins condemned by the criminal code: theft, fraud, murder. The so-called sins are merely the last consequences of bad religion. But the so-called moral faults are also mere consequences. They are the consequences of what? Those of bad behaviour. Those of bad religion. What, then, should we do? Should we enact rigorous laws? Not at all. They pertain only to the symptoms, not to the causes. Should we teach people to acquire moral self-discipline? Practice asceticism? Start self-mortification? No, a hundred times no. These are also mere consequences. The behaviour must be changed. Bad religion must be transformed into good religion. No law books, no jurists, no judges, no kings, no priests, no moralists and no satirists and no heroes of virtue and no preachers and no missionaries teach that, but only the creating eschatologists do it in their moments of founding a religion.
No one should wonder at the important role evil plays in human life. Actually, evil is the only challenge we have to face. At the beginning of beginnings, man committed the first sin. We already know what this sin is. It is not something that clashes with the law book. It would be impossible to condemn it even if we follow the strictest moral teaching. Why? Because the first sin, the deepest sin, the worst evil is bad religion, bad behaviour. At this moment, man was seized with a cramp. The Bible calls it original sin. We have all been carrying this cramp in us ever since, which has settled into the foundation of our being, into our religious behaviour. For this shock can be inherited. Our own bad behaviour irritates us and we frantically search for a relief. The Flood could not wash it out of us. But, together with the rainbow, the drink of relief has appeared. I can comprehend wine only as one of the highest act of grace. Wine brings relief. We have wine. We are able to fi nd relief from the damned shock. Wine brings back our original life, paradise, and shows us the place where we will arrive at the time of the final feast of the world. Only in ecstasy are we able to bear this bridge that spans the first and last day. This ecstasy is wine. (...)
EPILOGUE TO METAPHYSICS (APOLOGY)
With this I have ended all what I wanted to say about the metaphysics of wine. According to the wisdom of tradition, I sketched the closest corresponding meanings of wine and, with the help of the distinction between abstract and immediate life, I explained the sphere of sensory experience pertaining to the mouth. I set forth my theory of the hieratic masks and defined the place of wine in the world. For future centuries it can no longer be modified. He who writes only about wine is bound to return to these observations. With my theory of the divinity of wine and geniuses of wine, I have built a bridge to nature. But before I start to discuss the natural history of wine, I wish to say something to those for whom I have written this book.
I know that every atheist was shocked after the first sentences of the book because of the pert tone I dared to use with him. As he progressed in his reading, his shock became even greater, and, at some places, he almost had to strongly protest against such a disparaging tone. At last he had to calm himself down with the thought that the author of the book was not supercilious but merely displaying an air of superciliousness. But suspicions immediately awakened in him and the question kept haunting him: the author calls him poor in spirit, but by what right? Where does he take the courage to feel pity for him, to call him stupid, idiotic, crippled, even imbecile? What an impertinence on his part to use this didactic tone! How dare he to give advice and talk down to him as if he was a schoolchild? What annoyed him, above all, was that he expected an unctuous sermon and, in its stead, he got almost the opposite. Well now, if things are truly as the atheist asserts, then I make amends to the angry reader and declare that I had no intention to offend him. May I be allowed to explain my intentions and to sum up my defence against the raised charges with two points?
First: I did not wish at all to use a supercilious tone because religion forbids it. The supercilious is superior only in appearance. Religion does not allow such a conduct. I think that the superciliousness perceived by the atheist was not superciliousness, but, in all certainty, a genuine superiority. This, however, I was not willing to hide. Here we deal with real superiority; it is not only mine over him, but that of all persons of good religion over those of bad religion.
With this I made a very important observation. It should have been made long ago and I wondered why others, perhaps more initiated than I am, did not make it. According to this observation, the person of good religion, necessarily and under all circumstances, enjoys a superiority over the person of bad religion. He is above him in intelligence, feeling, heart, earnestness and, this is my discovery, he is above him in the immediate enjoyment of life. Therefore, there is no need for the person of good religion to be supercilious. In any event, thanks to his position, he possesses a huge superiority. At last, it had to be said that Christianity is not a fabricated, but a genuine, superiority. It had to be said, and what existed in every respect since eternity – and what will always exist – had to be expressed.
After all, I do not really understand, apart from the already mentioned case – the case of violently seized world power – where the often emphasized superiority of the atheists is. In parenthesis: I would not bet any money on the persistence of this power. How could the delusion claiming that the atheist is above the religious person in intelligence, enjoyment of life, thinking, practical sense, presence of mind, and humanity have spread? Perhaps the claim never did refer to a superiority, but merely to a shameless caddishness through which he intimidated the more modest religious person. Of course, the glory lasted only until this moment, only until someone appeared who did not become scared. Now that this has been exposed, in all probability, the situation will very quickly change.
The second point of my defence is as follows: did I ridicule the atheist? Did I make him appear stupid? Did I call him crippled? I did not have to ridicule him because he is ridicule. I did not even have to make him appear stupid. The matter was such that the postponement of its announcement in public was no longer possible. Confident in his violent shamelessness, selfish villainy, great wealth, and big mouth, the atheist has so far created the belief that he is the absolute master of the world, the most intelligent person, he is triumphant and strong and skilful and invincible. Now, however, it came to light that nothing of this is true. On the contrary.
I realize that, for atheists, the recognition of this fact is painful. But I cannot do anything about it. The only thing in my power is to further reveal to him his hopeless situation and show him the right way. This is what I have undertaken and it is with this disposition that I begin the second part of the book.
From: Béla Hamvas
The Philosophy of Wine
Translated from the Hungarian by Gábor Csepregi
