The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
Men who seek to reconcile the Darwinian idea with Christianity will
remark that tychastic evolution, like the agapastic, depends upon a
reproductive creation, the forms preserved being those that use the
spontaneity conferred upon them in such wise as to be drawn into harmony
with their original, quite after the Christian scheme. Very good! This
only shows that just as love cannot have a contrary, but must embrace
what is most opposed to it, as a degenerate case of it, so tychasm is
a kind of agapasm. Only, in the tychastic evolution progress is solely
owing to the distribution of the napkin-hidden talent of the rejected
servant among those not rejected, just as ruined gamesters leave their
money on the table to make those not yet ruined so much the richer.
It makes the felicity of the lambs just the damnation of the goats,
transposed to the other side of the equation. In genuine agapasm, on the
other hand, advance takes place by virtue of a positive sympathy among
the created springing from continuity of mind. This is the idea which
tychasticism knows not how to manage.
The anancasticist might here interpose, claiming that the mode of
evolution for which he contends agrees with agapasm at the point at which
tychasm departs from it. For it makes development go through certain
phases, having its inevitable ebbs and flows, yet tending on the whole to
a foreordained perfection. Bare existence by this its destiny betrays an
intrinsic affinity for the good. Herein, it must be admitted, anancasm
shows itself to be in a broad acception a species of agapasm. Some forms
of it might easily be mistaken for the genuine agapasm. The Hegelian
philosophy is such an anancasticism. With its revelatory religion, with
its synechism (however imperfectly set forth), with its “reflection,”
the whole idea of the theory is superb, almost sublime. Yet, after all,
living freedom is practically omitted from its method. The whole movement
is that of a vast engine, impelled by a _vis a tergo_, with a blind and
mysterious fate of arriving at a lofty goal. I mean that such an engine
it _would_ be, if it really worked; but in point of fact, it is a Keely
motor. Grant that it really acts as it professes to act, and there is
nothing to do but accept the philosophy. But never was there seen such an
example of a long chain of reasoning,—shall I say with a flaw in every
link?—no, with every link a handful of sand, squeezed into shape in a
dream. Or say, it is a pasteboard model of a philosophy that in reality
does not exist. If we use the one precious thing it contains, the idea
of it, introducing the tychism which the arbitrariness of its every step
suggests, and make that the support of a vital freedom which is the
breath of the spirit of love, we may be able to produce that genuine
agapasticism, at which Hegel was aiming.
A THIRD ASPECT. DISCRIMINATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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