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this is a quote from Winston Churchill:

I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me —the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus—or even the Lord Mayor’s Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go.

What is the meaning of "the Byss and the Abyss" in this context?

Also, can you tell that I am reading the first sentences right?

one time I had a feeling about Mathematics. I thought I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me.

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According to the OED, byss is an obsolete word meaning the opposite of “abyss”. “A” is sometimes a prefix denoting negation. So I’m guessing Churchill means “infinite heights and infinite depths”. He’s being poetical, and comparing this to infinity and negative infinity.

It’s not a word you will ever see in normal speech or writing. It’s one of two words in that quote that I, as a well read native English speaker, have never, ever encountered.

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  • I searched a little and in the book " Performance: Media and technology edited by Philip Auslander" found this: " Abyss is from the Greek that means without bottom or depth and byss means a finite depth and Abyss means infinite depth." I think this makes sense better.
    – Daruis soli
    Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 18:18
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    This is what the OED says in full "In the philosophy of Boehme: The opposite of abyss or void; plenum, substance, ground of attributes." So a "lesser depth doesn't really make sense, but I guess neither does "infinite height". To an extent, I was basing my interpretation on how Churchill was using it.
    – user33415
    Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 18:21
  • Can I just ask another question? how do you read this part: that I saw it all—Depth beyond depth was revealed to me —the Byss and the Abyss. Is it like: that I saw it all the byss and the Abyss, Depth beyond depth was revealed to me? or are they three separate but continuing parts?
    – Daruis soli
    Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 21:43
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    He’s using the word “depth” in the sense of “profound”, so something like “profundity beyond profundity”. In other words, each thing he learned revealed more things to learn. At least that’s my takeaway. It is, however, a complex and poetic passage, so I could well be wrong as to the original intent.
    – user33415
    Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 21:57
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    "The Byss and the Abyss" should be read as expanding on "Depth beyond depth was revealed to me". You could read it as "...I saw it all: Depth beyond depth was revealed to me and the Byss and the Abyss". Both are things he "saw".
    – user33415
    Commented Jun 22, 2019 at 23:25
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Churchill is playing with words. "Abyss" is ultimately from a- (without) + bythos = bottom, the depth of the sea. But it had already formed into a word by the time of the ancient Greeks.

So it means "The depth (of mathematics), and that which is without depth". In a poetic and dramatic way.

The whole paragraph is an example of bathos, in which the author comically shifts from the high register "byss and abyss", to the low "it was after dinner" (implying "I was drunk").

"Byss" is not a word in standard English, and a Learner should not use it.

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It is a reference to a quote by Jacob Böhme.

From [GNOSTIC PHILOSOPHY] by [TOBIAS CHURTON]

At the age of twenty-five, Böhme seems to have undergone his first spiritual experience, feeling himself to have been penetrated by “the Light of God.” He later wrote of how “in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together in a university. . . . I saw and knew the Being of Beings, the Byss and the Abyss, the eternal generation of the Trinity, the origin and descent of the world, and of all creatures through divine wisdom.”

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Being and non-being.

The abyss is common in mystical and spiritual experiences. Churchill is here obviously being intentionally irreverent for humorous effect.

In essence, the abyss is the terrifying lack of ground and security, the void, the emptiness or lack of being which confronts consciousness when it is in the process of radical change. That is, non-being in the form we engage directly, rather than as a concept.

The byss is a word presumably meaning the opposite of abyss, the positive side of what abyss negates. That is, the content of everyday consciousness, the solid, comforting world of objects and entities we rely on as the commonplace being.

All these things are held at arms length by philosophy, but the real passage through them is the driving force behind such explorations. Only by actual experience do they become alive and active.

What we take for granted as having real being, here we're calling it the byss, alternates and interpenetrates beyond our normal capacity to comprehend or control with the abyss.

Everything is two-sided in reality, a truth that cuts across all traditions. The known and unknown, dependent and spontaneous arising, being and non-being, relative and absolute, byss and abyss.

This phrase also appears in William James's masterpiece The Variety of Religious Experience where Jacob Boehme is quoted as saying:

In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an university. For I saw and knew the being of all things, the Byss and the Abyss, and the eternal generation of the holy Trinity, the descent and original of the world and of all creatures through the divine wisdom.

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    Can you expand a little, this looks like a non-answer.
    – James K
    Commented Feb 14, 2023 at 21:03
  • Sure, there you go.
    – mtyson
    Commented Feb 15, 2023 at 22:17

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