THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

not been able to express clearly enough his real preferences
in ideas. But Geddes must understand, he said, that he was
«... an indignant man, pressed by necessity in the form of the
League of Nations and the Belgian government*. He could
not do more than take to his pen. At the Palais Mondial «the
daily administration absorbs me; the uncertainty of the morrow
•of the work deflects me from all other preoccupations now. And
I become hard and angry, unjust perhaps. But you are wrong
about my fundamental wish. To call me by the qualitative,
'Pope', when I have always been for the Ecumenical
Council...!* It seemed to him that, in the end, he had done
himself just what he had reproached others for doing to him —
not listening. «It is bad; it is irritating; it is ridiculous. I
should have given over my incessant preoccupation with the
care of the ground floor and mounted with you to the higher
stories, to the habitation of purer ideas.» He was startled by
Geddes' revelation that there was a plan Bourgeois, and was
glad to learn that the Committee was educable. (Some scepticism,,
however, could be forgiven him when one recalls that the
Sub-Committee on Bibliography had visited Brussels, and that
Otlet had had some early correspondence with Bourgeois and
later with the Committee itself.) He concluded that «the
deception will have been great! It [the committee] should constitute
a real federative force; it is that which will become the
Vatican, or at least a 'Congregation Pontificale'». 42
It is interesting to see reflected in a satire appearing in a
literary review at about this time, aspects of Otlet's personality
and attitudes that Geddes had criticised. There is no doubt
that Geddes was accurate in his assessment of the unfortunate
impression that Otlet was creating. The satire was a report
of a visit to Otlet and the Palais Mondial. Otlet's interlocutor,
who at no time mentioned Otlet's name during the
course of his visit, referring to him simply as «my host», adverted
to the use in earlier times of the rooms in the Palais
Mondial for what was called the Spring Exhibition of Painting.
He elicited the comment from his host:
266
Before-the War, Before-the-War—that was a preparatory period.
Led by a supreme and mysterious will, man erected the temple for
ends which he could not understand. Deceiving himself, he had sacrificed
them, turn and turn about, to trade, entertainment and art, as
you call what are to me these crude impressions of the mind. He was
groping for the true destination of his work. I came. I drove out the
merchants. And henceforth misfortune be on any of those of them who
return. When they suggested at the beginning of the year that they
should return in force to install their ungodly fair here, I hurled
anathemas at the whole tribe, and have vowed to deliver them
over to the execrations of the people. My Papal edict: the creations of
the mind are being threatened, the righteous indignation of the people
has been roused».