art . . . The individual would lead an existence, as in the profound and beautiful saying of the Bible, like the life of the lilies of the field.”
39. See Saint Thomas on whether there was faith in angels and in man in their original states. ST II-II, 5, 1, ad. 1: “Their contemplation was higher than ours, and by means of it, they drew nearer to God than we do and so could in a clear way know more things about divine actions and mysteries than we can. For this reason, there was not in them a faith by which God is sought as being absent, in the way that He is sought by us. For He was more present to them by the light of wisdom than He is to us, even though He was not present to them as He is to the blessed through the light of glory.”
40. Cf. Unamuno, Our Lord Don Quixote.
41. Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life,” 68.
42. Matt 19:14 (VOICE).
43. Cf. Hesse, “Dostoevsky’s The Idiot,” 199: “Only one trait in Myshkin’s character, but that an important one, appears to me as Christlike. I allude to his timid, morbid purity. The secret fear of sex and of procreation is a trait which must be reckoned with in the message of Christ for it plays a distinct part in his world mission. Even the superficial portrait of Jesus by Renan does not entirely overlook this feature.”
44. We seek here the distinct non-mediated temporal presence, particular to the will, the region in beings where grace transforms desire into self-giving, evoking a co-naissance intimacy with Being, one which paradoxically prepares the intellect to guide the will. Cf. Nichols, Word Has Been Abroad, xv.
45. ST II-II, 17, 3, resp.
46. Cf. Critias, 109b–c: “In the days of old the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarrelling; for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention that which more properly belonged to others. They all of them by just apportionment obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;—thus did they guide all mortal creatures.”
47. Cf. Eckhart, “Sermon 34,” in Breakthrough, 478: “Three things caused Mary to sit at our Lord’s feet. The first was that God’s goodness had embraced her soul. The second was a great, unspeakable longing: she yearned without knowing what it was she yearned after, and she desired without knowing what she desired! The third was the sweet consolation and bliss she derived from the eternal words that came from Christ’s mouth. Three things also caused Martha to run about and serve her dear Christ. The first was a maturity of age and a depth of her being, which was thoroughly trained to the most external matters. For this reason, she believed that no one was so well suited for activity as herself. The second was a wise prudence that knew how to achieve external acts to the highest degree that love demands. The third was the high dignity of her dear guest. The masters of the spiritual life say that God is ready for every person’s spiritual and physical satisfaction to the utmost degree that the person desires. We can clearly distinguish with respect to God’s dear friends how God satisfies our spiritual nature while, on the other hand, he also provides satisfaction for our physical nature.”
48. Cf. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, 85.
49. Cf. Voegelin, “On Hegel: A Study of Sorcery,” in Published Essays, 1966–1985.
50. Strauss, On Tyranny, 22–132.
51. ST I, 2, 1, obj. 1.
52. Cf. Cornford, “Youth,” in Poems, 15.
53. Dostoyevsky, Idiot, 4.
54. Dostoyevsky, Idiot, 4.
55. Cf. See Jocasta’s foreshadowing remarks. Sophocles, “Oedipus the King,” in Three Theban Plays, §1070–72: “What should a man fear? It’s all chance, chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth can see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can.” See also Milton, Paradise Lost, 658–61: “The reason’d high of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, and found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.” Cf. Hegel, Natural Law, 105: “Tragedy consists in this, that ethical nature segregates its inorganic nature (in order not to become entangled in it), as a fate, and places it outside itself: and by acknowledging this fate in the struggle against it, ethical nature is reconciled with the Divine being as the unity of both. To continue this metaphor, Comedy, on the other hand, will generally come down on the side of absence of fate. Either it falls within absolute vitality, and thus presents only shadows of clashes (or mock battles with a fabricated fate and fictitious enemies) or else it falls within non-life and therefore presents only shadows of self-determination and absoluteness; the former is the old, or Divine, comedy, the latter the modern comedy.”
56. Aeschylus, “Agamemnon,” Oresteia, §67–71.
57. Young, Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, 149.
58. ST I, 2, 1, ad. 1.
59. Cf. Laws 644d; 803b–c: “I assert that what is serious should be treated seriously, and what is not serious should not, and that by nature god is worthy of a complete blessed seriousness, but that what is human, as we said earlier, has been devised as a certain plaything of god, and that this is really the best thing about it. Every man and woman should spend life in this way, playing the most beautiful games.” Cf. Rahner, Man at Play, 40: “Surely only a man whose foundation is in the reality of God can thus call life on earth a game and a shadow-play? For only such a man as this, only to a man who truly believes that this world has proceeded out of the fullness of God’s creative being, is it given to say ‘Nay’ along with his ‘Yea’, and to say it without demur or hesitation. In other words, only such a man can accept and lovingly embrace the world—which includes himself—as God’s handiwork, and, at the same time, toss it aside as a child would toss a toy of which it had wearied, in order then to soar upward into the ‘blessed seriousness’ which is God alone. Only thus does gay melancholy become possible and justified, the mood which must always govern the Christian, the true Homo Ludens, as he follows his middle road. Love for the world and rejection of the world—both of these must draw him and he must at one and the same moment be ready to fold that world in his embrace and to turn his back upon it.”
60.