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It would, perhaps, be fairer to translate the first half of this sentence as follows: "We can never picture to ourselves the nonexistence of space." Kant says we cannot make of it a Vorstellung, a representation. This we may freely admit, for what does one try to do when one makes the effort to imagine the nonexistence of space?
Between the lowest positive existence and nothing, wherever we suppose positive existence to cease, is another chasm infinitely deep; where there is room again for endless orders of subordinate nature, continued for ever and for ever, and yet infinitely superiour to nonexistence. To these meditations humanity is unequal.
It has been conducive to the dispersion and weakening of human thought, whereas the realization of existence and continuity has upraised man to sublimity of ideals, established the foundations of human progress and stimulated the development of heavenly virtues; therefore, it behooves man to abandon thoughts of nonexistence and death, which are absolutely imaginary, and see himself ever-living, everlasting in the divine purpose of his creation.
Therefore, it is well proved that absolute nonexistence is impossible; it is only relative. The purpose is this: that the everlasting bestowal of God vouchsafed to man is never subject to corruption.
For this physical life is not immortal, and its existence is equivalent to nonexistence. So it is that Christ said to one of His disciples: “Let the dead bury their dead;” for “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Throughout these degrees of its traversing the kingdoms from one form of phenomenal being to another, it retains its atomic existence and is never annihilated nor relegated to nonexistence.
Therefore, on the one hand, we have existence; on the other, nonexistence, negation or absence of existence. Briefly, the journey of the soul is necessary. The pathway of life is the road which leads to divine knowledge and attainment. Without training and guidance the soul could never progress beyond the conditions of its lower nature, which is ignorant and defective.
Because they have affinity for each other, the power of life is able to manifest itself, and the organisms of the phenomenal world become possible. When this attraction or atomic affinity is destroyed, the power of life ceases to manifest; death and nonexistence result. It is so, likewise, in the spiritual world. That world is the Kingdom of complete attraction and affinity.
Furthermore, it is a philosophical principle that the existence of phenomena implies composition and that mortality, or nonexistence, is equivalent to decomposition. For example, certain elements have come together, and as a result of that composition man is here. Certain elements have entered into the structure of this flower.
It is like the season of winter when the terrestrial globe, deprived of the effect of the heat of the sun, becomes desolate and dreary. When the world of intelligence and thought has reached to this state, there remain only continual death and perpetual nonexistence. When the season of winter has had its effect, again the spiritual springtime returns, and a new cycle appears.
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