PHILOSOPHY

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft

    Some of the main themes in Lovecraft's writings stem from his own personal philosophy. Along with his early studies in science and classical philosophy, he also read heavily the works of Nietzsche, Kant, Planck, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, Schopenhauer, Hugh Elliot and Sigmund Freud. He adopted the philosophy of mechanistic materialism - the universe is a mechanism that runs without any external aid (no god) and that all existence is material, there is no immaterial "soul," no life after death, no "spiritual" substances. With the theories of modern astrophysics and that of Einstein's theory of relativity provides significant evidence for his theories.
      "The truth is that the discovery of matter's identity with energy and of its consequent lack of vital intrinsic difference from empty space-is an absolute coup de grace to the primitive and irresponsible myth of "spirit". For matter, it appears, really is exactly what "spirit" was always supposed to be. Thus it is proved that wandering energy always has a detectable form-that if it doesn't take the form of waves or electron-streams, it becomes matter itself; and that the absence of matter or any other detectable energy-form indicates not the presence of spirit, but the absence of anything whatever." (Selected Letters, II, 266~67)
     Lovecraft expressed his ideas in what he deemed cosmicism- the idea that, given the vastness of the universe both in space and in time, the human race is of complete inconsequence in the universe-at-large, although it may well be of some importance on the earthly scale. It is not surprising that humans do not play an important role in many of his works.
     "I could not write about "ordinary people" because I am not in the least interested in them. Without interest there can be no art. Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos-to the unknown-which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot acquire the primitive myopia, which magnifies the earth and ignores the background". (“The Defense Remains Open!” (1921), in Defense of Dagon (west Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1985), p.21)
    As in his most popular work "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) and other tales of the "Cthulhu Mythos" the concept of other dimensions of time and space inhabited by huge alien monsters, that rule the universe and seek to cause the destruction of the human race. It is the belief that the "gods" or beings of Lovecraft's fiction are to be intended as merely symbols for the mysteries of the cosmos and these beings and the various occult tomes (such as The Necronomicon) are simply plot devices in order to further support his theory of cosmicism.

     "Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. To me there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form-and the local human passions and conditions and stan­dards-are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attri­butes of a negligible and temporary race called man­kind, have any existence at all." (Letter to Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales, 1927, Selected Letters II, pg. 150)

    Lovecraft was trying to relate that we can only see the smallest fraction of the mysteries of the cosmos from our perspective. He understood that our own sensory limitations prevent us from ever fully understanding the depths of our universe. He believed that his fiction must adhere to the most recent knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics and dismissed the traditional subjects of horror such as vampires, ghosts or werewolves.

    "The actual cosmos of patterned energy including what we know as matter, is of a contour and nature absolutely impossible of realization by the human brain; and more we learn of it the more we perceive this circumstance." - Letter to Frank Belknap Long, 2/20/1929, Arkham House Transcripts, (Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters by H. P. Lovecraft, Edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, September 2000, pg. 214)

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