The problem of change and permanence is so important, and is so vitally connected with the debates of modern philosophy, that a few more reflections may be offered upon it. Plato, like Spinoza, was deeply impressed by the timeless immutability of mathematical truth, which therefore became for him the type of the unchangeable eternal Ideas. The Soul which is in communion with the unchangeable must have itself an unchangeable element. So Kant postulated an extratemporal 'noumenal' self as a background for our knowledge of the temporal, and T. H. Green argued that knowledge of succession in time can only arise for a mind which is not itself involved in the time-series.1 It is because the Soul is in its deeper self outside the timeseries that it regards the fleeting shows of phenomenal life as either vain or tragic, and identifies itself willingly with those parts of experience which can defy the wreckful siege of battering days.' But I believe that what the Soul values in these objects of experience is not their extreme longevity, but their quality of everlastingness. Hegel bids us banish from our minds the prejudice in favour of duration, as if it had any advantage as compared with transience,'' a counsel which perhaps goes too far, since ability to go on at the highest level is surely a mark of superiority; but it brings out the main point, that there may be more of the eternal in fifty years of Europe than in a cycle of Cathay, in a life of thirty years greatly lived than in a selfish or vacuous existence prolonged to extreme old age. 'A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be." In this paragraph I am indebted to G. F. Barbour in Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1907. Philosophy of History (Engl. Tr.), p. 231. • Ben Jonson. Belief in the persistence of effort through unending æons does not console us for the perishing of the finest flowers which that effort produces; nor does it justify the ambition to produce new values, which will be equally transient. Faith can be satisfied with nothing short of Plotinus' confidence that 'nothing that truly is can ever perish'; and this belief compels us to assert the existence of an eternal, unchangeable background, of which an unending temporal series would be at best only a symbol. Even the most definitely historical and ethical religions, such as Judaism, are rooted in faith in an Eternal Being, who is God from everlasting, and world without end, before the mountains were brought forth or ever the earth and the world were made.' Bradley has shown very clearly that progress and evolution can only be movements within a unitary whole. There is of course progress in the world, and there is also retrogression; but we cannot think that the Whole moves either on or backwards. The improvement or decay of the universe seems nonsense, unmeaning or blasphemous.' 2 The difficulty is to prevent the two aspects of reality, Change and Permanence, from falling apart again after we think that we have reconciled them. Plato himself, in the Parmenides, anticipates one of the criticisms which have been most often made against his philosophy. If God has this perfect authority, and perfect knowledge, his authority cannot rule us, nor his knowledge know us, nor any human thing.' This is an objection of Parmenides, the Eleatic, to the doctrine of Ideas as expounded by the young Socrates. If the Ideas are objective existences independent of phenomena, the two systems must be cut off from each other. Plotinus, as we have seen, 1 So Paul Sabatier says; 'Ce qui a vraiment vécu, une fois revivra.' • Appearance and Reality, p. 499. Parmenides, 134. The best answer to the question,' If like can only be known by like, how can God know his creatures?' is perhaps that given in 6. 7. 10. Noûs can perceive the lower things because they are δυνάμει spiritual, though not ενεργεία. holds that the world of the Ideas is by no means one of stationary immobility, though there are, strictly, no inner changes in spirits. In the world of Soul the Ideas are polarised, not only into a multiplicity of forms, but into a series of successive states within unitary processes. It is, in fact, only by understanding this soul-world, the world of the One and Many, that we can rise to understand the world of the One-Many, the world of Spirit. In making this ascent, we by no means exchange the kinetic for the static view of reality; but we are strengthened in our conviction that the whole meaning of movement and change is to be sought in the direction taken by the movement, and in the values which the movement, taken as a whole, succeeds in realising. These values are themselves above the antithesis of rest and motion; they belong to the eternal world. To us, who are exposed to the stress of conflict, they abide in a haven of peace and calm beyond our reach, and it is no small part of the longing which we have to enter into that haven, that in it each particular task is in turn finished and then kept safe for ever. For the Soul, it may be, there is no doffing of its armour, but only a temporary repose. But a life's battle, if won, is won for ever. Its unitary purpose, if achieved, has its home secure in the world of real being. Thus our attitude towards life should be that of Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra. 'Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term ; A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a god though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new; When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to endue.' The moods of the religious mind vary. Sometimes we say with Faber : 'O Lord, my heart is sick, Sick of this everlasting Change; Through its unresting race and varied range. And makes no echo in thy mute eternity.' Sometimes we agree with George Macdonald :— Till it join the hidden, the boundless sea But on the whole surely Keyserling is right when he says that if life had no temporal end it would not be 'ein ewiges Sein, but ein perpetuelles Werden.' And this would mean that we must live for ever in the consciousness of an unfulfilled purpose, doomed never to attain our heart's desire. 'The whole system of Eckhart' (says Delacroix) is a long and passionate effort to place life and movement in Being itself, and to spread the Supreme Being over the multiplicity of the acts the synthesis of which can alone constitute it. Hardly has he affirmed the absolute reality of Being, when he occupies himself in penetrating its depth and discerning its richness. His God is not an immobile God, but the living God; not abstract Being, but the Being of Being. The reality of God is his work, and his work is, before the birth of things, his own birth.' . . . 'So in developing created things in the world of becoming, Spirit makes them enter into eternity. In God progress and regress, coming and returning, are closely united; they are at bottom one and the same act, the act by which God penetrates himself and finds himself wholly in himself. Thus divine movement is at bottom repose. Becoming is eternal; that is to say, its change alters nothing in eternity. God is immobile in himself and so abides.'1 Ruysbroek thus unites and distinguishes Work and Rest in God. The Divine Persons who form one God are in the fecundity of their nature ever active; and in the simplicity of their essence they form the Godhead and eternal blessedness. Thus God according to the Persons is eternal Work; but according to His essence and perpetual stillness, He is eternal Rest. Now love and fruition lie between this activity and this rest. Love would work without ceasing, for its nature is eternal work with God. Fruition is ever at rest, for it dwells higher than the will and the longing for the well-beloved, in the well-beloved, in the divine nescience and simple love above the fecundity of nature.'2 If, before leaving this subject, we turn for a moment to the æsthetic aspects of Change and Permanence, we observe the curious fact that the beauty perceived by sight is mainly stationary, while that perceived by hearing requires change. The most exquisite note of a prima donna, if prolonged for two or three minutes, would compel us to stop our ears; but there is no satiety in gazing at a fine landscape or a noble picture, until the optic nerves become fatigued. The Greeks, though they did not undervalue music, were on the whole more impressed by the beauties of visible form; their greatest triumphs were in sculpture, an art in which they remain unapproachable. It may not be an accident that in this race of sculptors we find also our pioneers in the cult of 1 'Gotlich nature is ruowe.' Esse ipsum dat quietem et facit in seipso et solo ipso quiescere omnia quae citra ipsum sunt. Igitur deus in se quiescit et in se quiescere facit omnia." Ipsum esse est quies et quietans omnia et ipsum solum.' Delacroix, Le Mysticisme en Allemagne, pp. 192, 176. De Septem Gradibus Amoris, Chap. xiv. Underhill, Mysticism, p.521. |