The Puritans made the last great attack on the God
who is Me. When they beheaded Charles the First, the king by Divine
Right, they destroyed, symbolically, for ever, the supremacy of the Me
who am the image of God, the Me of the flesh, of the senses, Me, the
tiger burning bright, me the king, the Lord, the aristocrat, me who am
divine because I am the body of God.
After the Puritans, we have been gathering data for the God who is
not-me. When Pope said 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The
proper study of mankind is Man,' he was stating the proposition: A man
is right, he is consummated, when he is seeking to know Man, the great
abstract; and the method of knowledge is by the analysis, which is the
destruction, of the Self. The proposition up to that time was, a man is
the epitome of the universe. He has only to express himself, to fulfil
his desires, to satisfy his supreme senses.
Now the change has come to pass. The individual man is a limited being,
finite in himself. Yet he is capable of apprehending that which is not
himself. 'The proper study of mankind is Man.' This is another way of
saying, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71