David Hume’s Philosophy of Human Nature
As we need to represent the links between the ideas in Charles Baudelaire’s poem "Correspondences", we have adapted the principle of the philosopher Hume, who himself dared to imitate Newton in stating that the longer the distance between ideas, the less they can be associated. Instead of seeing this principle at work in our mind when we think of nature or experience, as Hume did, we apply it to the ideas expressed in the poem. In addition, we assume that a logical link between two ideas has the same result as a short distance in the text, as if these ideas were expressed close to each other. Because of the logical link «There», «Nature is a temple…There man passes…» is considered to evidence a minimal distance between «Nature» and «man», although they are far from each other in the text. In a non demonstrative text the meanings of words are almost like masses in outer space; in other words, the further apart they are, the more memory forgets to connect them, therefore the less they attract each other (let us not mention the square of their distance: that is too precise). The more demonstrative a text is, the more frequent are reminders related to meaning (such as "point number 1" or "what was discussed earlier") which cancel the effect of the distance between the meanings of words. However our study does not apply to such a situation, but only to fictional texts, for which the rule is often very simple: the closer the meanings are, the more they attract each other. In addition, since an author’s provoking expressions (paradoxes, coupling of words with opposite meanings) are more striking than usual meanings, words are more readily attracted to one another when they form paradoxes. Such a situation fits very well with our study -it is said that a parrot is more inclined to repeat a word proffered emotionally because it sticks better in the "memory", and to some degree we are like parrots.
By compelling ourselves to read literature about literature, we set up a method to measure how plausible is the (assumed) original meaning of a fictional text that has been subjected to a lot of critical research for at least a century. "Meaning and Distance 1" uses as an example the possible interpretations of Baudelaire’s poem, analysing the reciprocal attraction between the meanings of words included in paradoxes, as well as the way in which paradoxes themselves ("Nature-temple", "living pillars", "corrupt incense", "responses between colours, perfumes and sounds") mutually reinforce their rooting in mind or memory. "Meaning and Distance 2" generalizes the conclusions of the first part to non paradoxical problems. Two new kinds of links are also considered. First those making neutral statements or expressions closely similar to them, like items in a lawyer’s inventory. For instance, «long echoes which mingle in the distance» is close to a series of statements: "there are echoes"; "some of them are long"; "some form far from the listener"; "some mingle together". The links of the second kind are those helping to understand the paradoxes examined in the first part. Thus the paradox "corrupt incense" is made accessible by the links "incense-senses" and "sensuality-corruption". Here again the study shows that the meanings of words are more attracted to each other in situations where they appear close, either in time when listening to the poem, or in space and time when reading it. This attraction is however weaker -often negligible- than for the meanings of words included in paradoxes, therefore the measuring formula is longer. The verisimilitude of what the author meant is measured by 1/x = 1/qepfzgj instead of 1/x = 1/tsmw. Thus there are three additional reality filters, in other words the 1 in the numerator may be divided (especially by 2) three more times, when using caution in attributing an interpretation to the author of the text. "Meaning and distance 3" studies the influence of apparently secondary words, when located close to those in a paradox.