Alexander Pope is commonly regarded in learned circles as one of the two most quoted Englishmen of all times, the other being William Shakespeare, of course. In one of his poems, he began with this immortal line, "The proper study of mankind is man."

Indeed, knowing what and who we are have always fascinated great thinkers and philosophers. The motto "Know thyself!" displayed prominently in the Temple of Delphi in ancient Greece 25 centuries ago has resounded through the millennia through the teaching of Socrates and Plato.

Even today, when people proudly declare a new age of exploding knowledge, the question of human nature and personal identity still remains unresolved. All great systems of thought in all sciences and arts make some kind of assumption about human nature and personal identity, but all those assumptions seem incomplete, like a blind person's perceptions of the elephant.

In more recent times, the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623 1662) has this to say about humankind:

"Man is but a reed, weakest in nature, but a reed that thinks."

"For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all, and infinitely far from understanding either."

"The end of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impregnable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn, and the infinite into which he is engulfed."

"It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me, and swallows me like a speck; through thought I grasp it."

Those are harrowing words indeed!

Most problematic word

Immediately, one is struck by how Pascal was steeped up to his nose in the mainstream of western thought, with its dim and distant origin in the Greco-Judaic traditions. As he admitted to himself, such concepts as nothingness, infinity, space, thought, and even understanding elude definition. We do not know where these ideas come from, and what they mean really, though we use them liberally as if we do.

Language becomes quite inadequate when we try to deal with these ideas. The most problematic word is probably the all important pronoun "I".

"I" may "designate" this particular individual bearing the label Sim Kwang Yang sitting here at this time and place pounding the computer key-board for an imagined audience. It does not point to another person bearing the same name. (I check the Internet, and there are indeed other persons sharing this label.)

It would immediately follow that "I" am more than my name, and that is quite an earth-shaking discovery, if you think about it. My name on my identity card should tell others very little about me, and so the term "identity card" is really a misnomer.

Then again, the pronoun "I" may be used in the form of the collective "I", indicating all the unique "I"s of the world, including all those in the past, and all those that have yet to come in the future, until "infinity". This "I" could be used to mean "you", "they" "we", and "us"!

Perhaps, for this once, I am writing without an audience. I am my own audience, and I am thinking and writing about "I" with this label "Sim Kwang Yang" pounding the computer keyboard etc etc etc.

I am the subject doing the thinking and writing, and at the same time, I am also the object being thought and written about. "I" also means "me".

Ego, Superego and the Id

But I am a unique unity. This schizophrenic bifurcation of a unity into the multiplicity of "I" and "me" goes to show the tremendous violence of language, as Heraclitus observed in ancient Greece. Thinking and thought could well be my original sin! (Buddhists and religious mystics would love that!)

Freud did further damage by dividing the "I" into three entities, the Ego, the Superego, and the Id. His theory of psychoanalysis is just another theory that cannot be proven wrong. It is interesting, but probably not the last word on the "I" and the psyche of human beings.

I digress. I must return to the dizzying heights of Pascal's audacious speculative leap.

Consider this. I, and you for that matter, was born. From nothing, I began my being, in a manner beyond mere animal birth. Then, I, like you, shall die, and pass from being into nothingness, or infinity if you believe in the Christian religion like Pascal did. Yet, as long as we live, we know not what preceded us, and what goes on after our passing. We know nothing of the nothingness before our birth, and the nothingness or infinity after our death.

Let us allow Pascal his indulgence and think with him of time as a mathematical straight line stretching to infinity at both ends. Alternatively, think of time in scientific terms. This qualification is needed because there are other ways of thinking about Time, with a capital "T".

Anyway, before I came into being, time stretched back a few billion years into the beginning big bang, or big whisper, at the birth of the universe. After I die, time will stretch on for a few more billion years, until increasing entropy probably leads to the end of the universe.

In the midst of this unimaginably vast expanse, there is this tiny unnoticeable insignificant little speck called "I" existing for a few decades, hardly a flash in the life of the universe. The idea humbles me.

When you think about it, this "I" of my self-consciousness is really quite a miracle. It could have been otherwise, that I do exist. This little self-conscious mammal, "weakest in nature', does dare to dream and think about eternity, infinity, and speculate about God, the universe, and the complete scheme of things. Is it a kind of hubris?

Then the questions pop out of nowhere, since a very young age. Why am I here? Is there a purpose to my being here? What is the meaning of life? How shall I live? What shall I do with this limited life? Above all, who am I?

These questions usually come in the unexpected moments of solitude, away from the crowd. Then, like billions before me, I allow myself to become J Alfred Prufrock in T S Eliot's celebrated poem, turning instead to questions about how I should part my hair, and whether I should wear my trousers rolled.

Where would I be after my death?

I, like all of you tiny specks out there, have lived in self-delusion at various times, and probably still do. I take inordinate care with insignificant things, unimportant meaningless things, as if they are matters of infinite importance.

For instance, I, again like all of you, take inordinate care of my body and my appearance. I bath and clean my body a few times a day, and derive endless pleasures in matters of the senses. Sometimes, nothing else matters. It just seems like a good way of passing time, at the time.

But ageing brings fresh perspectives. I suddenly realise that after I die, this precious body of mine will be nothing but food for the worms! So I have left instruction for my body to be burnt after my death. That seems appropriate, from dust to dust and all that.

Where would I be after my death?

This is the million dollar question of course. To answer that question, I need to know what and who "I" is, or am. Am I not my body, and therefore should cease to exist, after my body dies?

Pascal, like his contemporary countryman Rene Descartes (1596-1650), had to struggle with this problem about mind and body. Descartes was the chap who said cogito ergo sum , or "I think, therefore I am". By that criterion, most people on earth are walking corpses.

Never mind. It does not matter. This "I" business is really confusing. I cannot tell where my mind begins, and where my body ends.

There are those self-proclaimed philosophers who say that there is no such a thing as a "mind" or a "soul". Thinking is just a whole bunch of chemical-electrical interactions between nerve ends. Descartes at least had a ghost in his machine, but modern materialist would banish the ghost altogether.

All this reasoning is very vexing, and I am tempted to head for the nearest bak kut teh stall for distraction and therapy. There, the women "will come and go, talking of Michelangelo."

Then, the question will return, "Who am I?"

To be continued next week