The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
The full life of the Spirit must be more rich and various in its
expression than any life that we have yet known, and find place for
every worthy and delightful activity. It does not in the least mean a
bloodless goodness; a refusal of fun and everlasting fuss about uplift.
But it does mean looking at and judging each problem in a particular
light, and acting on that judgment without fear. Were this principle
established, and society poised on this centre, reforms would follow its
application almost automatically; specific evils would retreat. New
knowledge of beauty would reveal the ugliness of many satisfactions
which we now offer to ourselves, and new love the defective character of
many of our social relations. Certain things would therefore leave off
happening, would go; because the direction of desire had changed. I do
not wish to particularize, for this only means blurring the issue by
putting forward one's own pet reforms. But I cannot help pointing out
that we shall never get spiritual values out of a society harried and
tormented by economic pressure, or men and women whose whole attention
is given up to the daily task of keeping alive. This is not a political
statement: it is a plain fact that we must face. Though the courageous
lives of the poor, their patient endurance of insecurity may reveal a
nobility that shames us, it still remains true that these lives do not
represent the most favourable conditions of the soul. It is not poverty
that matters; but strain and the presence of anxiety and fear, the
impossibility of detachment. Therefore this oppression at least would
have to be lightened, before the social conscience could be at ease.
Moreover as society advances along this way, every--even the most
subtle--kind of cruelty and exploitation of self-advantage obtained to
the detriment of other individuals, must tend to be eliminated; because
here the drag-back of the past will be more and more completely
conquered, its instincts fully sublimated, and no one will care to do
those things any more. Bringing new feelings and more real concepts to
our contact with our environment, we shall, in accordance with the law
of apperception, see this environment in a different way; and so obtain
from it a fresh series of experiences. The scale of pain and pleasure
will be altered. We shall feel a searching responsibility about the way
in which our money is made, and about any disadvantages to others which
our amusements or comforts may involve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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