***

Whatever it is in the center of the World,
It gave me the exterior world as an example of Reality,
And when I say “This is real,” even about a feeling,
I can’t help seeing it in some exterior space,
I see it with some vision outside me and alien to me.

Being real means not being inside myself.
I have no notion of reality inside my person.
I know that the world exists but I don’t know if I exist.
I’m more certain of the existence of my white house
Than of the existence of the owner of my white house.
I believe more in my body than in my soul,
Because my body is present in the middle of reality,
Able to be seen by others,
To touch others,
To sit and stand,
But my soul can only be defined in terms of the outside.
It exists for me — in the moments when I believe it actually does exist —
Borrowed from the exterior reality of the World.

If the soul is more real
Than the exterior world, as you say, philosopher,
Why was the exterior world given to me as the model of reality?

If it’s more certain I sense
Than the thing I sense exists —
Why do I sense
And why does the thing rise up independently of me
Without needing me to exist,
And I’m always joined to me-myself, always personal and intransmissible?
Why do I move with others
In a world where we meet each other and where we’re in the same place
If this world is somehow wrong and it’s me that’s right?
If the world is wrong, then it’s everybody’s error.
And each one of us is only the error of each one of us.
Thing for thing, the World is more certain.

But why do I question myself, if not because I’m sick?

On certain days, the exterior days of my life,
My days of perfect natural lucidity,
I feel without feeling I feel,
I see without knowing I see,
And the Universe is never as real as those times,
The Universe is never (not near or far from me
But) so sublimely not-mine.

When I say “It’s evident,” do I somehow mean “It’s only me who sees it?”
When I say “It’s the truth,” do I somehow mean “It’s my opinion?”
When I say “There it is,” do I somehow mean “There it isn’t?”
And if this is so in life, why should it be different in philosophy?
We live before philosophizing; we exist before we know we do.
The first fact deserves at least precedence and worship.
Yes, rather than interior, we’re exterior,
So we’re essentially exterior.

You say, sick philosopher, philosopher to the end, that this is materialism.
But how can this be materialism, if materialism is a philosophy,
If a philosophy would be, at least if it were mine, a philosophy of mine,
And this isn’t even mine, and I’m not even I?

(10/24/1917)


Alberto Caeiro