THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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the plus ultra, provided Bacon with a metaphor, they even formed the frontispiece of his book ‘Novum Organum’ as the pillars which were sailed beyond. Likewise,
discovering is itself actively utopian, it not only lifts its object out of our ignorance but where necessary also out of the twilight of its own unmediatedness and
unexposure. The specifically geographical discoverer is contemplative only in so far as he gives up action at the final point, as soon as he thinks he has found it. In the
accomplishment of geographical utopias, action is replaced by a phenomenon which has previously been lacking in all the others, namely — arrival. When Columbus
thought he had set foot in India, on the very side where it seemed to him to he closest to the earthly paradise, the utopian­active intention veered round accordingly, it
seemed on the threshold of fulfilment. This does not prevent the most powerful image of distant lands hovering in the mind at the beginning of the journey as well as
during it, an image which reached into activity more forcefully than any other. Wherever a journey to the earthly paradise provided the most expectantly stimulating
illusion and idea, with Marco Polo and especially with Columbus, discovery is a centrally utopian venture. That is also why the ages of discovery, from Alexander to
Columbus, made such a homogeneous contribution to the social utopias; it goes far beyond the fable of investiture. All in all then: the business of human hopes
possesses its own horizon in the horizon of the great voyages of discovery; the earth has indeed become fairly familiar, but the Eldorado which Jason and Columbus
had in mind is yet to be found.
Fairytales again, the Golden Fleece and the Grail
It is not surprising that here too the fiery owl is much on the wing. Lunatics talk of a land at the other end of the world and wish themselves fabulously into it. Very old
images like this often circulate in the same delusion, they then always seem as if they came from foreign parts. The surroundings of the lunatic are then not only moved
by superstition but carried away over a long distance. Flowing water is crazily moved by a hand which did not grow here, there is the northern storm­hopper, the dog
of the south with its motionless head. But a really healthy old Bavarian folk superstition makes even the echo unfamiliar and magical: it was regarded as a special, and as
it were particularly clever type of rock which catches the sound and imitates it. This rock and related things are now at work far down in the ravines, strikingly
reminiscent of the marvels of the old