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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78
Thoughts on Ultimate Problems — A Synoptic Statement of Two Theodicies
Thoughts on Ultimate Problems
A Synoptic Statement of Two Theodicies
Mr. Weeks' Theodicy.
First Statement
The sole driving force of the cosmic process is the cosmic craving to product joy.
This preceded all phenomena; underlies all phenomena.
1 Sequence, as subjectively experienced by a human ego, is a relation that is qualitatively aui generis, its nearest analogue being the relation of "nextness," also qualitatively sui generis, between contiguous elements of a visual "field."
existence. The "connection" is, fundamentally, a logical one. It is the connection between premiss and conclusion. But if by "driving force" is meant the totality of original premisses—then "joy" is a part of the driving force, and "craving" (in the abstract) is another part of it. The "craving to produce joy" is already something composite, however slight its complexity. Still, being so small and immediate a remove from absolute simplicity, it must (on the theory that chronology is divine logic) have existed almost from the beginning, and it has doubtless pervaded the whole inorganic world (to say nothing of the world of life), though perhaps not as exclusively as Mr. Weeks' theodicy requires.At first it was blind; by reaching forth for satisfaction it became more and more intelligent; even as in the animal from the lowest type to the highest, the reaching forth for satisfaction produces intelligence. For the law of psychology is first cravings then effort then intelligence.
The cosmic craving is necessarily benevolent, because only through the benevolent will could it satisfy itself: God cannot enjoy except in the enjoyment of sentient being.
tion in a world of low intelligence but with myriads of subordinate egos embosomed within the Universal Ego) the craving to produce joy may be in the living world below man. We do not know that it is as neatly universal in the inorganic world : and we do know that it is not nearly as universal in the human world, where high intelligence gives the (dialectically suggested) diabolical an extensive opportunity for exercise without early automatic elimination, An Ivan the Terrible, for example, is possible in the human but would be impossible in the sub-human world.Pain is the non-success of the cosmic craving to create joy, and is the result of a primitive mis-action of that craving while it was still unintelligent.
of joy as secured by automatic selection, and creation might rightly on the whole be pronounced to be "very good," But soon after the genesis of a mammal that, by language and consequent sociality, was entitled to be called "human" this was no longer the case. Although the evidence available goes to show that at first the new talking animal was truly "social" (many surviving primitive folk being, as Spencer has pointed out, more so than any "civilised" race), the increase of intelligence among the individuals composing the new species soon suggested opportunities for the strong to exploit1 the weak to an extent that was impossible among sub-human animals (where a violent death is usually the worst2 fate in store for the weak at the hands of the strong, and starvation at the hands of nature), while—unfashionable as it is in this age to maintain it—the "inversive" half of the cosmic intelligence possessed in the human brain an instrument enabling it to initiate even darker tragedies which, from the nature of the case, are necessarily without a parallel in the sub-human world.1 An exploitation which finds its apotheosis in the "Herren-moral" ("masters' ethic,") as opposed to "Sklaven-moral"—"slaves' ethic"—the Judaeo-Christian conspiracy" of the weak against the strong) of Nietsche's philosophy of avowed diabolism.
2 It must be remembered also that a given lot can hardly be as painful, in extreme cases, to a sub-human animal as the (outwardly) identical lot would he to a human being, because the former is probably almost entirely spared the miseries of prevision.
Final Statement
The Real "Primum Movens"
The present drift in the physics of the minute is to-ward stating the atom as an arrangement of particles of electricity—so to speak—thug resolving back the whole phenomena of the universe into a single physical force.
1 This is not to say that God was not also spiritually succouring the dying and the mourners—a mockery on the orthodox theory of the divine sovereignty, but not on the panlogistic theory of a necessary evolution. "It must needs be that offences come."—Matt. xviii. 7.
having any existence distinct from "electro charge." This "electric charge" is, how ever, apparently not a single physical entity but an alternative between two opposite some things, called respectively "positive" and "negative" electricity, though the evidence seems to show that these adjectives might more appropriately have been transposed (so much is this the case that those physicists who still hope to rehabilitate the old Franklin theory of a single electrical "fluid" would unhesitatingly affirm that a redundancy of the single fluid constituted a so-called "negative" charge, and vice versa). In any case, the relation between the two opposite electricities is not an equilateral or interchangeable relation (lite that be tween north and south, or between "clock-wise "and" counterclockwise" rotation), but a unilateral or non-reversible relation like that1 between past and future, between
1 Mr. Charles S. Peirce has objected that the equations of motion show the relation of Fast and Future to be equilateral for all part of the universe for which the conservation of energy holds. But surely, in spite of the equations of motion, the increase of Entropy is of itself sufficient to show that the processes even of inorganic nature (to say nothing of Life) are non-reversible. The reversal of a cinema to graph gives a visual and grotesque emphasis to this unilateral character of the world-process; and it has been argued by certain French natural philosophers that the irreversibility of the cosmic process demon strates that it cannot be a purely mechanical process in the Newtonias-sense. Some processes are cyclical, or nearly so, in the sense that a starting-point is nearly returned to; but this is a very different thing from going through the cycle in reverse order. Mr. Peirce admits the unilateral character of Time as exemplified in mental history, inasmuch as memory only works backward, and will only works forward. Hence possibly, i.e., if memory and will are in this respect sufficiently typical of mental operations in general, and if, as I here contend, all history is purely mental, cadit quaestio.
up and down, or between positively and negatively curved space. Its resemblance to the relation between the last named is so close, that I venture the surmise (which harmonises with a hint thrown out long ago by the late Professor Clifford) that the same principle of parcimony which threatens to banish matter and aether in favour of electricity, will yet banish matter, æther, and electricity, in favour of space, the varied and changing geometries of which will be found adequate to account for all the phenomena of the material world. I further venture, also in harmony with a hint of Clifford's, to surmise that these geometries of physical space wilt be found not to be truly "continuous," but to be merely the varied and changing "tactical" arrangements of a discrete manifold consisting of a finite number of indivisible units (true "atoms" in the etymological sense). "Parcimony" will thus be further satisfied, for the notion of extension (at present considered ultimate) will by this simplification be subsumed under the truly ultimate notion of relative position. The above simplification would reduce all physical facts to facts of nextness or contiguity between indivisible units. They would be analogous to the facts of nextness or contiguity subsisting between the minutest of our simultaneously experienced visual sensations. It is well known that there are minima visibilia; and the visual sensations corresponding to these,
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constitute a discrete manifold having a [unclear: finite] number of elements. Moreover it is one belonging to the category of those manifold which, in my "Theory of Discrete Mani folds," I have called "nets," i.e. manifolds in which the return to a starting point is always possible without the retracing of steps. This property also characterises the physical cosmos. The duplication of that property in our "visual field," and in that alone of our simultaneous sense-experiences is what makes vision the only one of our senses that is adapted to give rough immediate information as to the structure of the cosmos without the necessity of patient I take it this single physical farce is the phenomenal side of a single mental force, and that in this last we have the cause and source of the entire cosmic process.
1 It is in this sense that God may be said to be "immanent" in the physical cosmos, just as (on the theory of psychophysical parallelism) a human ego may be said to be immanent in the physiological processes of the brain—or, more strictly, in a portion of those processes.
word, we here call "vision," may be qualitatively very different1 from the colour sensations experienced, in vision, by a human
1 Indeed, if the psychophysical parallelism of human psychosis and human neurosis is as close as it is nowadays the fashion to assume, is necessarily follows that the divine "vision" of the cosmos must include all the qualitatively different sensations and emotions known to us—besides, doubtless, many others. But all must be mathematically arranged in a "net," instead of only the visual sensations as with us.
As regards the psychophysical parallelism which is affirmed in this essay of the universe at large, it has been well compared (by Henri Taine in "L'Intelligence"—1869—the earliest anticipation, so far as I know, of the "mind-stuff" doctrine associated with the name of Professor Clifford—I myself worked out the theory in 1870) to the parallelism between an original text and an interlinear translation. The original text is the history of the world-mind; and the inter-linear translation is the physical history of the world. In the earlier chapters, as Taine says, the "original text" is blurred and, for us, almost blank. The mentality of the inorganic world is too simple (and too alien to us) for us to grasp, and it is in the latest chapter, the chapter of humanity, that the original text is easiest for us to read, With the "interlinear translation" the case is exactly the reverse, The earliest chapters are the easiest to read, and the later ones become more and more undecipherable, owing partly to increasing complexity and partly to increasing difficulties of observation. We understand the physics of inorganic nature better than we do the physics of a lowly organism, and we understand the latter more nearly than we do the physics of the human brain.
But while this metaphor of Henri Taine is very apposite, the most apposite metaphor from a mathematical point of view would be one that likened the spiritual world to a painting, and the physical world, as mapped out by the scientist, to an outline drawing of [at least] part of the same subject (of that part of the "painting"—if it is only "part"—which constitutes what we have called the divine "vision"). In the "outline drawing," the qualitative (the rich spiritual "colour" of the real world) has disappeared; only the quantitative is left. Atoms, electrons, and ether, spaces of various curvatures and tropisms or twist, "facts of nextness' subsisting among indivisible units, energies (whether potential or kinetic)—all these are affairs of pure quantity, without a vestige of inner qualitative essence in their composition. Moreover, the spiritual impoverishment in passing from the hardly known divine Reality to the well mapped out scientific simulacrum is much greater than in passing from the Sistine Madonna at Dresden to a good photograph of that supreme painting. In the world, the spiritual value is almost entirely dependent on what we have called the "colour," while in art perhaps the larger half of that value inheres in the quantitative relations or "outline."
or animal ego; but in respect of the mathematical arrangement of its parts, the divivision is mirrored (though only roughly [unclear: a] inadequately) in the human vision. [unclear: A] it is in this sense that Berkeley was [unclear: n] quite right in denying to the so-[unclear: call] "primary" qualities of matter an [unclear: existe] outside our minds, though of course he [unclear: will] quite right to deny the existence of [unclear: the] or any other "qualities" outside all [unclear: mini] The mental experiences of the Universal [unclear: Eg] at any one moment of Time, form a [unclear: matg]; matically connected whole, in which [unclear: o] simultaneous mental experiences are [unclear: e] cessively small parts whereof our [unclear: visua] experiences most nearly mirror the [unclear: whole]—not perhaps in respect of quality, [unclear: but] certainly in respect of arrangement). [unclear: The] mathematical connections of God's [unclear: simul] taneous mental experiences (or, at all events, of that portion of which the physical cosmos is the phenomenal side) are what constitute Space. But the mental experiences of God through all Time, form a logically connected whole, and it is the logical connections of His mental experiences which are constitutive of Time. It is these logical connections, therefore, that constitute the "cosmic process": and, when we speak of the "cause and source" of the "entire cosmic process" we may mean either (a) this divine logic, which connects the successive moments of existence, or (b) the multiplicity of original premisses—all the simple undecom-
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posable "qualities" plus all the simple undecomposable "relations" between them—from which the Universal Reason starts. Only in sense (a) can it be said that a "single mental force" 13 the "cause and source of the entire cosmic process."What meaning can the term' mental force have? I can see but one possible meaning for this term; it is that which is expressed in various phases by the words 'craving,' desire,' purpose," 'will.'
I take it then that the single homogeneous reality which existed from all eternity, before process began, was, to use the lowest term, craving. The immediate question is—craving for what?
1 And, as a consequence, asymmetric in their relations to one another.
2 This is not too strong a statement. For without assuming the trustworthiness of memory, we cannot lay claim to knowledge of the past; without the axiom of causation, the future is a blank : and—paradoxically—the present moment is so elusive that it cannot be seized in refection until it is just past, i.e. until it is at the mercy of memory.
exist as the mental experiences of that Self But there is irreducible qualitative diversity among these parts, nor could the perfectly homogeneous ever by any conceivable dislectical or credible physical process have given rise to the heterogeneous. The total number of irreducible "kinds" or [unclear: unde] composable "qualities," though finite, [unclear: ha] from the beginning been at least as large [unclear: a] it is now : for, while original "kinds" may conceivably be eliminated by dialectical negation, no fundamentally new "kind" can possibly be introduced by a process which essentially consists in quantitative involution and rearrangement. No fundamentally new "kind"1 or "quality" : but among the quantitative changes which the Time-process permits, blending is not as impossible one, and it is capable of giving rise to "kinds" which might be mistaken
1 These fundamental "kinds," or simple undecomposable frag-merits of mental experience, are the true "atoms" of the world. If these were substituted in the "De Rerum Natura" for the Epicurean simulacra—hard atoms traversing the void with no qualities save unchanging size and shape (mere blank forms of existence!)—the Lucretian philosophy would lose nothing in grandeur and would lose nearly all its absurdity. The number of kinds of atoms would still be finite: "mechanical" or "genetic" behaviour would still be at the basis of world history, and anything "telic" that looked more than one step ahead would still be regarded as, not the source, but a product of evolution. All we should have to insist on would be (a) a beginning in time to the process; (b) the finite, but increasing, number of individuals of each "kind"; and (c) the power of some complexes to resist disintegration, so that—in spite of much that was cyclical, and much that was purely catabolic like the increase of entropy—the cosmic process might on the whole be both linear and progressive. Already the so-called "immortality" of unicellular organisms shows that death is not as necessary a phenomenon as evolutionists at first supposed.
by an ego of limited experience for fundamental or irreducible ones. The so-called "secondary" colour sensations show that the process has been actual: and an ego which experienced "purple" but had never experienced "red" or "blue," would probably regard purple as a primary sensation. Yet, as introspection assures us that its quality stands between the qualities of "red" and "blue," it follows that it is quantitatively related to "red" and "blue": for "betweenness" is one of the most fundamental of all the quantitative relations, as a perusal of Professor Hilbert's "Foundations of Geometry" will make evident. Hence it can be dialectically generated from the premisses "red" and "blue." And let it not be said that "blue" can be dialectically generated in the same way from "purple" and "green." Introspection does not see purple and green in blue, though it sees blue and red in purple Moreover "reality" not only is, and always has been, heterogeneous; but it has not "existed from eternity." If the chronological process is, in its nature, a logical one, it must root back in first premisses; and that means an absolute beginning of all mental history, or—on the phenomenal side—an absolute beginning to the cosmos.The three great terms of the cosmic series are:- first, mineral; second, vegetable; third, animal. And it is reasonable to suppose that the mental movement—the craving which is the cause of this series—is in the line of the series itself; that it is a craving toward that which characterises the Latest term of the series.
totality. It is "caused," in one sense, by all the undecomposable feelings or "kinds" which happen to exist; and, in another sense, by the Universal Reason or Logic which unfolds the implications or possibilities of multiplication or other quantitative relationships that can exist among these "kinds." But the test proposed by Mr. Weeks would be a valid one for determining not the nature of an imagined single cause, but the nature of the strongest or most central among the plurality of causes that have been at work, and the application of this test, as indicated in my paper on "Atheism, Theism, and Pantheism," establishes joy [unclear: a] the strongest and most central of the perfectly simple causes, and the joy-giving impulse as the strongest and most central [unclear: of] those causes which are second in order [unclear: of] simplicity.What then characterises the latest term of the series, i.e. sentient life? We can picture the universe of sentient life as a continuous stream made up of an immense number of separate threads of sensation : each little thread has its beginning winds in among the others, and ends. But the current is continuous; something the way that a rope while continuous itself, is composed of short, individual threads. Now lot us imagine that we could take a cross section of this entire current, As we looked at the cross section we should see an immense number of little disks, these representing the individual threads of Sensation—of lives. Let us suppose that red is the colour which represents joy, and black: the colour which represents extreme pain. Then we should find an incalculable preponderance of red and rosy disks, with comparatively speaking a very few of black or grey disks scattered among them. I take it therefore that the net result of the cosmic process to the present moment is an immense volume of agreeable sensation, mixed, however, with threads of pain.
strict "one to one correspondence" with the individual animal organisms our senses cognise in the phenomenal world. Evidently there is at least a high degree of correspondence between the intellectual grade of the mental experiences of a given "self" and the degree of complexity and co-ordination of "structure" that manifests the said "self" in the phenomenal world. But the bare possibility of such a thing as thought-transference carries with it the possibility of soul-transference and shows that we need proof before confidently affirming that a "self" is dependent on any one particular individual "structure." So far as there is evidence, it points in the opposite direction—at any rate in respect of some human beings. For the same reason, although each of the "threads" must undoubtedly have had a beginning, that beginning may have been long anterior to the beginning of the particular organic structure with which we associate it. We must not suppose that the total number of individual "selves" that have existed in the noumenal world is necessarily identical with the total number of individual organisms that have existed in the animal kingdom. Such a numerical identification may err both by excess and by defect—excess in certain directions, and defect in others. The same selves may appear over and over again in successive generations of organisms; and, on the other hand, many selves may animate a given
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organism besides the one which comes to the front as director of the molar external relations of that organism—as the [unclear: organism'] secretary of state for foreign affairs, so to speak. As a counter effect, again, to this it is possible—especially in the case of the highest and most gregarious animals, viz., human beings—that the same "self" may have a foothold in, i.e. be a partial [unclear: noumenal] counterpart of, more than one [unclear: simultaneously] existing organism. If a "self" survives the physical death of its primary organism, something of this kind (which amounts to little more than telepathy) is probable, because it is an unlikely supposition that "soul-transference" should be limited to the moment of death, though the statistics of phantasms of the dying show even this extreme supposition to be less arbitrary than would at first sight seem to be the case.I conclude, therefore, that the primal pre-cosmic craving is the craving to produce agreeable sensation, to create joy, a craving immensely successful though not as yet wholly successful.
eternal, of this most central craving. The whole stream of Hebrew prophecy (through which—perhaps on account of some organic peculiarity in the Semitic race—the Highest "Extra-liminal" has most easily been able to communicate itself to the intra-liminal), from the earliest dawn of the righteousness-religion to the incarnation of the Supreme Himself and His apocalyptic utterances at the close of the Jewish national existence, has as its main current the prognostication of an endless state of perfect joy. Apart from revelation, a hope of this ultimate triumph of good may be based on the fact that, probably for some logical reason at present uncomprehended by us, no self is ever apparently capable of "craving" pain for itself as a sole1 ultimate end, while the corresponding power to crave joy for self alone is only too evident. As a result of this a perfect organisation of the powers of evil becomes impossible, whereas a corresponding organisation of the powers of good involves no logical impossibility. On the contrary, if the Hebrew revelation can be trusted, the nucleus of an organisation of the powers of good (the "kingdom of heaven")—perfect as far as it goes—already exists in the "extra-liminal" activities of the human race, and has for eighteen hundred years been going forth "conquering and to
1 Even the deliberately pursued "luxury" of self torture includes an element of pleasure to self.
conquer." Now the struggle for the [unclear: empine] of the world is essentially a rivalry in excellence of organisation. And although the powers of evil are susceptible of an amazingly high degree of organisation, perfection in that regard is precluded by the fact that, from the nature of the case, an element of discord must remain.1
1 How strikingly this principle of what might he called Rational Eschatology is illustrated in the recent Russo-Japanese campaign ! The fundamental selfishness of Russian bureaucracy, amazing and world-overawing as the ability of that bureaucracy had hitherto been presumed to be, is reflected in the jealousies and quarrels of Generals at the front; while the extraordinary unselfishness and devotion of the Japanese character leads to an almost perfect organisation (doubt-less inspired and helped by the absolutely perfect organisation "behind the veil") and to consequent victory. As Matthew Arnold would have said, the God of Israel is "verifying Himself in history."
recalcitrant (be it cruelty, be it mere selfishness, or be it asceticism), whether emotions or the selves harbouring them, whether the sinners or the sins, with "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power."
Truth ("The Veil of the Temple," page 426 that—
"I shall become the painless pain,
The soundless sound, as deaf and dumb,
The whole creation strives in vain
To sing the song that will not come.Till, maimed and wingless, burnt and blind,
I am made one with God and feel
The tumult of the mindless mind
Torn on its own eternal wheel."
Still, in spite of these uncertainties inherent in the blur of sub-human psychology, the circumstances of the sub-human living world (with its countless multitude of selves subjected to an eternal automatic competition but with as yet no1 intelligence emerging adequate to the deliberate exploitation of the weak) would seem to afford a fair guarantee for the marked preponderance of joy. And this is the impression produced also by a direct observation of the facts.
1 Ante are perhaps the only sub-human animals with intelligence adequate to the enslavement of others, and we do not know that even they treat their slaves cruelly.
sufficient for the deliberate choice between alternatives clearly contemplated, sin entered into the world, and—with sin—a degree and amount of misery altogether unparalleled in the earlier course of evolution. Hence the Hebrew story says truly that the fruit of the tree of knowledge was fraught with disaster—disaster to the weak, who are preyed on by the strong (in an altogether more tragic way than is possible at a lower psychic level), and disaster to the strong, who prey on each other. And the orthodox view of human history is justified in so far as it postulates an ethical Fall, from which a process of spiritual Redemption is needed. The ethical course has not been continuously upward, but—aside from the saving influence of the Redeemer—largely downward and precisely as a result of the almost continuously upward movement of human intelligence and civilisation. If the orthodox view, in all its crudity, stands in need, as it does, of qualification, that qualification cannot be supplied by the shallow evolutionary optimism, born of Caucasian conceit and insolence but by no means endorsed by the chief prophets1 of evolution,
1 Herbert Spencer, for example, says most truly that the moral goodness of some primitive tribes is "like a dream" This goodness, however, is to be looked for in out of the way places and islands, where tribes—weak both numerically and in stamina—have been geographically protected from fierce competition. The savages who have multiplied exceedingly and been successful in the struggle for existence over wide continental areas are tainted with the same ruthlessness (often in an exaggerated form) that is apt to characterise—with some noble exceptions—the empires of "civilisation."
which rejects the story of the Fall because its own superciliousness ignores the [unclear: ethica] beauty of primitive communism. It [unclear: mus] be supplied by the Marxist or "economic" interpretation of history. This latter, with-out denying the substantial1 truth of the orthodox chart of ethical history, [unclear: chain] down the succession of ethical and [unclear: hedoric] moments to the iron bar of economic [unclear: pio] gress. The Garden of Eden remains as the terminus a quo, and the New Jerusalem as the terminus ad quem, and Christ remains as "the Way" from one to the other : but the spiritual is seen to be chained to the rigid economic needs of man instead of floating free as the orthodox have supposed.2 At the same time, the materialistic fatalism of Marxian economics can be carried too far, and often is unduly accentuated by Marxian thinkers, who sometimes almost speak as if human volition were both impotent and unnecessary. Had the inherent altruism of the earliest men been sufficient, the temptation to oppress the weak would have been resisted in spite of an intellectual and industrial development that rendered such oppression physically possible : and unless both the altruism and
1 Compare, for example, such a work as "The Origin of the Family, of Private Property, and of the State," by the Marxist writer Engels, with the portrayal of the human drama in the Westminster Confession.
2 Less through honest ignorance of history than through aristocratic and (later) bourgeois prepossessions—thus illustrating once more, in the very dishonesty of their errors, the compelling power of economic influences.
the wisdom of the downtrodden are adequate in the crises that are to come, no amount of industrial consolidation will change economic oligarchy into the socialist millennium. Nor would the proletariat ever have had a chance of establishing the latter, had not the partial righteousness struggling upward under the earlier bourgeois régime endowed them with political rights that may be used, and are already1 to some extent being used, as levers for economic betterment. Thus, in spite of the substantial2 soundness of "revolutionary class-conscious" Marxism, it still remains true, as ever, that Altruism, i.e. Saivation from Sin (to use the phraseology of John H. Noyes), is the sine quâ non of universal happiness. Confucius spoke with approximate though not with entire truth when he said: "If at any time harmony reigns over humanity as it ought to reign, evil will no longer have any power over mankind. Physical evils are only the consequence of moral evil, of the hatred and injustice which always separate human beings." Physical evils are not indeed exclusively due to moral evil, but the entire abolition of moral evil is the necessary and sufficient condition for the ultimate removal of physical evil. There is no measure that may be required for the removal of any physical evil, which the
1 Notably in New Zealand and in Switzerland.
2 This must not be held, for example, to imply an endorsement of the erroneous Marxian theory of Value.
human race will not be willing and eventual able (if not so already) to undertake, only the volition of all its members is [unclear: abs] lately righteous. But the volition of [unclear: a] its members is not likely to become [unclear: righteou] until economic conditions have been [unclear: im] proved. This is no vicious circle: for [unclear: t] certain measure of altruistic volition already exists in the human race and is probably now increasing, and the (prospective) quantum thus available may turn out adequate, in conjunction with the mechanical improvements in production, to socialise the economic condition of humanity and so permit the universal spread of moral goodness.The special triumph of God (i.e. of the cosmic craving towards joy) is in the bringing forth through the cosmic process of brings who, like Himself, are consciously and intelligently devoted to making others joyous—perhaps even conscious co-work-era with Him in making the cosmic process clearer and clearer of the evil element.
God will certainly keep such beings alive with Himself for ever, if that achievement be possible under the conditions which the preceding part of the cosmic process has set up.
to say that this was the chief difficulty in the way of believing Christianity), it may be because God was not till then in a position to announce the possibility of the achievement and to issue His conditional guarantee,1 even though He was then able to make the latter at least partially retrospective (see the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews on the glorious destiny in store for pre-Christian servants of God).I suppose that at the very beginning of the cosmic process an element was introduced, without foresight of all its effects, which is the primal cause of all the pains and evil that have existed and must yet exist.
1 Which, in its essential nature, is somewhat analogous to the guarantee He is represented to have given as to the non-recurrence of a Deluge : because, if high-grade intelligence invariably has as its counterpart (in the phenomenal world) a complex organic structure, it follows that immortality or endless, as distinguished from mere posthumous, personal existence, must depend on the possibility of averting, or else escaping the consequences of, cosmic catastrophes.
in some way been eliminated (at all even in our part of the universe), even as [unclear: w] may hope that pain will some day be [unclear: elim] nated from all parts of the universe. [unclear: The] can be," nothing (qualitatively) new [unclear: und] the sun," as all fundamental "kinds" [unclear: mu] have existed in the first or second [unclear: insta] of Time : but some old "kinds" may [unclear: di] appear. Thus there is no ontological [unclear: in] possibility in the realisation of the [unclear: glorio] prophecy, "There shall be no more death neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall [unclear: the] be any more pain : for the former [unclear: thing] are passed away" (Rev. xxi. 4).