Not only does having thoughts cause men to feel that there is more to them than there is, thoughts also make it seem like there is more to life than there is, which may be the easier of the two to initially see.
It is quite tricky to get thoughts to realize that they contribute a factually overblown impression of a person to a person. Since their activity is constructively unrestrained, they have no conception of literal limitations, and thus are struck non-plussed by statements concerning their contribution to men’s overall sensation of themselves. How do you tell a mirage that it is overdoing the illusion bit? How can you convey to an intangible the concept of: How-much-is-too-much? That without physical substance is not constrained to acknowledge the limitations of that which does? Thought’s view of man is not the same as his body:s. One is not right and the other wrong; they are simply different, inasmuch as thought has responsibilities distinct from anatomy, one of them being to create in him the impression that there is more to him than physically there be.
This role of thought extends outside individual men, and affects entirely their intangible world of culture, and makes it seem that there is more to it than there is. Thought is not only the creator of this second reality, but also its unrecognized unflagging huckster. It not only produces the parade’s balloon figures, but overfills them as well. This is easy to say but hard to see.
It is not that thought is engaged in a nefarious activity of exaggerating the importance of particular parts of man’s cultural reality, nor is it involved in overblowing the overall significance of this intangible realm to man’s harm. The way in which it achieves its end in this matter defies ready observation, in that it is an integral component of this whole world from its inception. Man’s cultural reality comes overblown. It is born exaggerated; its natural state is hyperbolic, and as always: when a situation is understood, no matter how apparently askew, it presents no problem to the few.
If you but coldly look upon any of the things that occupy part of men’s lives, which they cannot touch, (and you are truly one of the few), you will somehow begin to see/feel/sense/realize beyond any description, the plain fact that men treat such matters as though there is more to them than there clearly is; that even though they have no substantive existence to begin with, they are afforded even greater recognition than many things which do. This is no attack on man’s cultural world, nor denial of any particular aspect’s significance; merely a calm limning of the territory.
J.