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Show UmU Jack and If Is Hepber 11 H Nephew Dick, it will be recalled, emphasized em-phasized the word progress as a contradistinction con-tradistinction to Catholic effort, materially mater-ially and spiritually. Uncle Jack asked him to define what he meant by prog- I ress. Dick's replies open the conversation conversa-tion this week. "I mean by progress development and growth of humanity." "That is, by progress, you mean progress, very likely; but what, once more, is progress?" "It is the growth, or augmentation oi man's being." "You grow darker and darker, my dar Dick. Pray explain yourself." "It is not easy to do so, because the doctrine of progress which I hold is very profound,, and is at the bottom of the profoundest philosophy of the age. To understand it, we must comprehend the philosophy of the absolute." "Very well, then. Let us hear, then, what that very profound philosophy is. Perhaps, if it is not absolutely unintelligible, unin-telligible, I may get some notion of it, and if it is, I may suspect that you hardly understand it yourself." "What I mean by progress is, that there is a continual growth or Increase "aiuie. iou, Deiore you became a papist, were accustomed to say, that being is in doing, and that to be, we must do." "It were more correct, I should think, to say, that in order to do, we must be, for what is not cannot act." "Do not interrupt me. In order to be, we must do, as you once said, and as your old friends, the transcendent-alists transcendent-alists still say. Being, in some sense, must, no doubt, precede doing; but being, be-ing, considered in itself, as anterior to doing, js not actual but potential infinite in-finite notenf inlltv tVio Infinite the Buddhists, the absolutely indistinguishable indistin-guishable from the non-being das Nichtsein. it Is possible, not real, and becomes real only in coming out of itself into existence das Wesen; and it becomes plenum, full, or the plenitude of real being, only in the pleroma of existence. The doctrine, you see, is very profound. Plato had some conception of it; Buddha understood under-stood it very well, and' his followers, misapprehending it, have made it the j basis of their doctrine of the metempsi- j chosis, or transmigration of souls; sev- 1 eral of the Gnostic sects, so profoundly philosophic, and combining as they do all the wisdom of ancient and recent times, and masters alike of the deepest science of the east and of the west, appear ap-pear to have been familiar with it, and to have symbolized it in their By-thos, By-thos, married to Sige, from whom issue Horos, Nous, and Aletheia; but the poor and illiterate Christians of the times, like Irenaeus of Lyons, regarded it as a vague speculation or as a dangerous dan-gerous heresy, and separated its adherents ad-herents from the communion of the church, and cursed them . as heretics. "Pure being, ens purissimum, das reine Sein, being In itself regarded as distinct from and anterior to existence exist-ence (existentia from ex-stare), das Wesen, being only void, or possible, becomes be-comes full or real only in passing to existence, or as realized and manifested manifest-ed exteriorally in existence, Conse- quently, the growth of existence is a growth of being, in the sense of its realization, or in realization of the ideal, a progress in rilling ud the void. in renderinsr it plenum, and producing the pleroma, or universal fulness. Progress then, as we philosophers of the movement understand it, consists in the continuous continu-ous realization of being. It is progress prog-ress because it involves a procession from the possible to the ideal, and from the ideal to the real, and because it tends to the production of the pleroma. It is illimitable, because the being to be realized is infinite, and the infinite has no limits." "I see nothing very profound in this, save its absurdity. It smells strongly of tobacco smoke and lager beer. There is, no doubt, a glimmering of sense in the expression being is in doing, that to be is to do, for what is not inactu is not at all, and hence all theologians say of God he is actus purissimus. Also, Al-so, when taken in the order of the return of the existences to God, without with-out absorption, as their final cause, or ultimate end, it may express an important im-portant and wholesome practical truth; but, applied, as you apply it. to the procession of existences from God, and understood to mean that nothing is real only in that it produces sometning, or is a maker, it is false and absurd. It then implies that God is real as distinguished dis-tinguished from possible being only in so far as he creates, or is manifested in existences; or, as Pierre Leroux, the ablest philosopher you have on your side, expresses it, God is living God only in his creations or manifestations, and therefore, without those manifestations manifest-ations which we call the universe, he could not be real, but would be simply possible God that is, no God at all. God, according to him, is the infinite possibility, or, which with him means the same thing, the infinite virtuality of the universe, and is actual or living God only in existence, and only in so far as his virtuality is realized or actualized ac-tualized in them. To you this may seem ' profound, and the proof of the marvelous comprehension of your philosophers; phi-losophers; to me it is only a striking proof of the pains they take to make I themselves fools. "Just observe, my .dear Dick, that ' your philosophy places first bythos, I abyss, void, the possible as distinguished distin-guished from the real. Very good. The possible is simply in potentia ad actum, but it is not actus and therefore by your own rule, not being at all. and therefore a sheer nullity, since between not being at all and nullity there is no medium. Hence you have this not very easy problem to solve. How from nothing to get something? Or, how from the infinite abyss of nothing to get existence? Ex nihilo nihil fit. How does your potential which Is null, contrive to pass from its potentiality to actuality, from das reine Sein indistinguishable in-distinguishable from das Nichtsein, to das Wesen, or existence? Here is a trifling difficulty which I pray you to clear up. To my old fogy understanding, understand-ing, the real, not cho possible, is primary, pri-mary, for without the real to reduce the possible to act, it can never become be-come actual, unless you suppose nothing noth-ing can make itself something." (To be Continued.) |