Powys (1872-1963)

 Inner Solitude 

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) was a British thinker, lecturer, novelist, literary critic, and poet. He was born to a family with several poets and writers, and studied at the University of Cambridge. In his mid-twenties he moved to the United States, and became known as an exceptionally charismatic speaker. He communicated with important intellectual figures and wrote philosophical essays, as well as novels. His first successful book which made him famous was Wolf Solent, a uniquely intense and poetic novel. In 1934, in his sixties, he returned to England, and then moved Wales, continuing to write until his death.
Powys’ philosophical essays are not academic, but quite personal and idiosyncratic. The following text is adapted from his book A PHILOSOPHY OFSOLITUDE (1933). Note that for him, solitude is an inner state, not necessarily a physical separation from others.  

From Chapter 2:

“The Self Isolated” Every human being is alone in the core of the mind. When we are born we cry, and that cry is the cry of loneliness. Thus it is with children. Thus it is with the growing youth. And the older we grow, the lonelier we grow. The smartest advice which one soul can give to another is to accept this law of nature. Yes, we must accept it, and not only accept it – but also find our unique happiness in it!

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Our lonely ego is always enclosed by our own body, and very often by the intrusive and aggressive bodies around us. The life of our soul is cruelly dependent upon our bodily health, upon our burdened and exhausted sense perceptions. But the fact that every conscious self possesses a central core, a unifying force, an integral identity, the fact that it never loses the feeling of such an identity, implies a constant renewal of our inborn solitude. It implies our inherent isolation from the security of our sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, and the overpowering pressure of other personalities. Because this central power is not only the mind, the psyche, the self, the ego – it is also the driving force, the energy, the will, the magnetic nucleus of our personality.[…]

The self is so involved with the body that its main activity seems to be unifying and focusing our sense perceptions. And yet, there come moments when this central power within us seems to withdraw into some mysterious and remote levels of its own being, and we feel as if we approach the verge of strange and startling possibilities.

This is only a feeling, but it represents an unquestionable fact: the fact that we possess a centralizing, unifying self or ego, which is the driving-force of everything we think, or do, or feel, or say. And whatever may be happening to our body, this self or ego, the conscious “I am I” within us, is absolutely alone. It is alone from the first moment of its awareness of life to its last moment on the threshold of what may be its final extinction.

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The isolation of the self gives us the habit of contemplating at every moment the wide realms of our world. It enables us to feel the wind of outer space blow across the surface of our earth as we ride with it through the eternal ether. It gives a dignity, a beauty, a high and tragic significance to every phenomenon of mortal life. Everywhere it destroys dullness. Everywhere it kills the routine. Everywhere it touches with a natural, poetic tenderness the ultimate conditions of our existence on this earth.

People can acquire rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, lively laughter, while they pursue pleasure in their groups and in their crowds; but it is only in solitude that they can come to know the happiness that is like the delight which children get from nothing at all.

There are many modern thinkers who emphasize the individual’s dependence upon society. But in fact, only the cultivation of interior solitude, when we are among crowded lives, makes society tolerable.

Those who live in internal solitude cannot be recognized when they go here and there among others. You cannot recognize them in street-cars, in trains, on pavements, in subways, in shops, in offices, in factories, in theaters, in warehouses. But their will-power lives stubbornly in their souls. Their ironic detachment cannot be violated.

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Only when the soul is alone can the magic of the universe flow through it. The soul needs silence to hear the whispers of the long centuries, to feel the mystery of the cosmic evolution. It can attain this silence in the wildest commotion of the most crowded city. Material noises and shouts cannot interfere with it. What destroys this silence are the popular thoughts of the crowd, the vulgar thoughts that are no-thoughts.

Life is full of mysterious presences traveling here and there, presences that are god-like. But these presences can only be caught in their airy journeys by minds that have learned the secret of being alone. To converse with the gods you must become as the gods. And this means that you must cultivate loneliness.
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