The World is Rated X

Let's think this through: man is an animal, but then again, the meta-animal, or animal + (x). Alternatively, we could say that the animal is human - (x). Now, what is (x)? 

In our age of stupidity there is no (x). Rather, Darwinian orthodoxy maintains that there is an absolute continuity between animal and man, but even Darwin had his doubts:

with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

Good news/bad news for Chuck: the good news is that the convictions of man's mind are of indeed of value and trustworthy (at least in potential). The bad news is that this trustworthiness invalidates his theory, which can in no way account for the new properties -- (x) -- intrinsic to human nature. 

It's still a good theory as far as it goes, but it doesn't go to (x), which requires an altogether different theory or principle to account for it. This principle is expressed by the Aphorist with his usual astringency:

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician's rule book.

This being the case, Darwin is a magician, albeit one who has horrid doubts about the existence of magic. 

But he's really like an other stage magician who knows his magic isn't real, rather, a sleight of hand enabled by distracting the audience. In order for Darwinian magic to succeed, the magician must essentially trick the audience from looking at (x). 

Conversely, to debunk the trick, we merely have to show that (x) was there all along: that the card was up his sleeve or the rabbit already in the hat.  

So, what is (x)? Whatever else it is, it includes the innate ability to know essences: by knowing essences man gains access to both universals and the universe. After all, no one has or will ever perceive the universe; rather, it is the ultimate -- or penultimate -- abstraction, i.e., the interiorly ordered totality of the Cosmos.  

An animal's perception is incapable of reaching the universal essence of things, and precisely for this reason is the animal bound and limited to a small and specific sector of reality (Pieper). 

But our mysterious (not magical!)

ability to recognize the intrinsic nature of things provides a perspective from which the all-including totality of the world as a whole becomes accessible and discernible (Pieper). 

In the words of Thomas, "Because the spiritual soul can grasp universal essences, it possesses a potential unto infinity." 

This being the case, then (x) must be an immaterial soul ordered to immaterial essences, which is to say, the truth of being, which in turn extends to infinity. And we're back to Schuon's unavoidable conclusion:

One of the keys to understanding our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing

In the same book (Echoes of Perennial Wisdom) he utters many similar pithy wisecracks, for example, 

The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute.

Man is made for what he is able to conceive; the very ideas of absoluteness and transcendence prove both his spiritual nature and the supra-terrestrial character of his destiny. 

So, another aspect of (x) is consciousness of the transcendent Absolute. Which I say is the very ground of the ability to think. This consciousness is either explicit or implicit (i.e., subconscious), but truly truly, in its absence we can't say a damn thing about reality, nor can we know of the Cosmos. 

We just have to accept the reality of (x), irrespective of how pleasant the implications, for example, that "All things are true" and that "they are known and knowable to the human mind."

this is a statement not only about the essential structure of all things but about their "intrinsic openness..., which causes all things to be and to be translucent, making them real and therefore knowable (Pieper).

Surprisingly, the Cosmos is open at both ends -- in the things that constitute reality, and the intellect's ability to know them. This is a supremely strange situation, but there it is: "the human mind, by its very nature, is ordered toward the totality of all that exists."

If not, to hell with it, for we are indeed enclosed in animality and worse, i.e., in the tenebrous bowels of tenure. To be "subhuman" is not to be a mere animal, rather, something far worse: it is to sink beneath humanness into a kind of unnatural and totally avoidable darkness. Nevertheless, here we are.

I want to say that (x) is also a kind of light that gives access to the light that lights up the Cosmos from the inside-out. In other words, it radiates from the interior of things to our interior. Pieper agrees:

the mind's inborn ability to "reach the whole" is actuated already in each single instance of cognition; for the light that makes any individual object intelligible is the same light that permeates the universe. 

 CONCLUSION:

Never will man be able to comprehend fully -- that is, know totally and perfectly -- the inner nature of things.

This is to say, we can know a great deal about anything and everything, but we can never know everything about a single thing, because we are not angels, much less God: in the words of Thomas,

Our cognitive power is so imperfect that not even the nature of one single gnat was ever entirely understood by any philosopher [or scientist].

But this does not imply that our knowledge is nothing. Rather, it's a pretty big deal, for "any cognitive effort will indeed always be a positive advance" -- ironically, a progressive evolution -- "but only like a step on a longer journey."

Man, therefore, is by nature someone who always, and ever anew, can reach for higher perfection, someone endowed with limitless potentials.... Yet those potentials, the moment they become real, already point to to new horizons that point beyond (Pieper).   

With apologies to Marvin Gaye:

Nor are we "lonely lovers," philosophically speaking -- because otherness and relationality are built in -- but that's a different song.