THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

py in the woods there. After a bleak fortnight or so, a kind
of truce was arranged between them. In July, however, hostilities
broke out again with renewed vigour:
«Tomorrow, Fernande, I will be waiting for the post for something
important.* «What is it?» Silence, distractions, chatter of other things.
I came back to it in order to enable her to take part in the great pleasure
I expect to have... «You see, I experienced certain feelings...
about the Congo... I had written up my ideas for a newspaper, but
Papa decided that I should have them printed in the form of an actual
brochure. He wanted me to sign it, too. This will have many implications
since the work is addressed to Leopold II». Great silence. The
conversation flags; there is nothing; not a word.
Gradually he managed to bring her round to expressing some
interest in his pamphlet, but he sensed how hollow it was.
The rest of the month was intolerable for she let fall not a
single comforting, understanding word. Eventually, with the
aid of his step-mother, Fernande's aunt, the tensions were
broken and smoothed away and lovers were reconciled. 7
From all of this Otlet became aware of something important
about himself. It taught him to feel that he had «a
great capacity for love, a great need for loving». He was, he
decided, someone characterised by «a powerful resolution
towards sacrifice*, who would respond deeply «to the least
indication of affection*. The quarrel, however, left him with
a deep sense of insecurity, a fear that his heart might become
a «tomb, closed to all of this*.
Otlet's father was at this time a financial magnate who
had interests in both Africa and South America. He had
equipped an expedition to the Congo in 1886 under the leadership
of Auguste Linden, a prominent naturalist and explorer
(and, through his second wife, member of the family) not
long returned from New Guinea. «Papa is the first Belgian
organising a personal expedition*, Otlet wrote. The expedition
was not very successful and the museum of Africana
that Otlet and the family had looked forward to forming from
the collections made by Linden, did not materialise. It was
to have complemented a number of other collections, notably
of paintings, formed by Otlel's prosperous father. Edouard
Otlet had built railways and tramways in most of the countries
of Western Europe. He formed a Societe de Gaz de Rio de
Janeiro in 1886 in which he had an interest of several million
Belgian francs.. In September of 1888, Otlet reported that in
that financial year alone his father had made 3 million francs
from this company — «it is without precedent*. 8
In the midst, then, of nineteenth century industrial and
colonial expansion (his father's world of high finance), living
in a bastion of Catholic thought (Louvain), besieged by the
liberalism and scepticism of Brussels' intellectuals (Picard,
Heger and their confreres), it is little wonder that Otlet's