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Updated: June 14, 2025
It is the grand intelligence and livingness of Universal Spirit continually pressing forward to manifestation of itself in a glorious humanity.
Thus our livingness consists simply in being ourselves, only more so; and in recognising this we get rid of a great burden of unnecessary straining and striving, and the place of the old sturm und drang will be taken, not by inertia, but by a joyous activity which knows that it always has the requisite power to manifest itself in forms of good and beauty. What matters it whither this leads us?
Of course it must be borne in mind that a machine can only claim any appreciable even aroma of livingness so long as it is in actual use. In "Erewhon" I did not think it necessary to insist on this, and did not, indeed, yet fully know what I was driving at.
Granted again that the case just put is an extreme one; still many a man and many a woman has so stamped him or herself on his work that, though we would gladly have the aid of such accessories as we doubtless presently shall have to the livingness of our great dead, we can see them very sufficiently through the master pieces they have left us. As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it.
This direction of thought might, of course, develop into the deepest philosophical speculation, but it is not necessary that we should be always either consciously projecting our forces to produce some external effect or working out the details of some metaphysical problem; but we may simply realize ourselves as part of the universal livingness and thus gain a quiet centralization, which, though maintained by a conscious act of the volition, is the very essence of rest.
And, since this is so, the primary affirmative factor can only be the Feeling and the Thought of the Universal Spirit.* Now, by the hypothesis of the case, the Universal Spirit must be the Pure Essence of Life, and therefore its feeling and thought can only be towards the continually increasing expression of the livingness which it is; and accordingly the specialization, of which we are in search, must be along the line of affording it a centre from which it may more perfectly realize this feeling and express this thought: in other words the way to specialize the generic principle of Spirit is by providing new mental conditions in consonance with its own original nature.
Let us then commence by enquiring what we really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness which we attribute to matter. At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does not go deep enough.
The advance may be almost imperceptible from one day to another, but it will be perceptible at longer intervals, and the one who is thus moving forward with the Spirit of God will on looking back at any time always find that he is getting more livingness out of life than he was a year previously.
Just as the lowest forms of life nevertheless present us with all the essential characteristics of livingness, and are as much alive in their own humble way as the most highly developed organisms, so the rudest intentional and effectual communication between two minds through the instrumentality of a concerted symbol is as much language as the most finished oratory of Mr. Gladstone.
Like everything else, it has to grow, but the good seed of liberating Truth once planted in the heart is sure to germinate, and the more we endeavour to foster its growth by seeking to grasp with our understanding the reason of these things and to realise our knowledge in practice, the more rapidly we shall find our lives increase in livingness a joy to ourselves, a brightness to our homes, and a blessing expanding to all around in ever-widening circles.
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