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PARTISAN REVIEW
for whose creation it is supposed to be the whole purpose of man
to struggle? Like Gerald Heard, Toynbee believes that evolution
is the mutation of Subman to Man followed by the mutation of
Man to Superman (Toynbee's words). His doctrines of Ordeal and
Withdrawal,* and the psychoanalytic itinerary of Huxley and
Heard lead them to the general conclusion that mind supersedes
matter in the process of the universe, and that the function of the
species is the struggle to reach a realm of being somewhere
"above" the region of response and influence for which nature
has
best fitted them.
The Chinese mystic, Lao-tzu, taught in the
Tao-te-Ching
that
ideas should be like babies, that they should not be allowed to go
out into the world to become tough or muscular like men. Ideas
should live in the Yin state, not the Yang. And this is what happens
in the thinking of Huxley and Heard; for their thinking never
finds
an external environment, or having found one, it draws back and
refuses to interact and mature--a psychological retraction in the
manner of the Buddhist
Maha Parinibbana,
the "Utter Passing
Away." With Heard and Huxley spirit is innocent of matter, mind
does not feel the senses; ideas are separated from context, organ·
isms from nature, change from condition, esthetic experience from
sensibility.
The secluded spirit may find peace or the fleeting vision of
Utopia in the ecumenical church of the mind, but looking out
from the gray shadows and intervening in the sunlit world, the
spirit pays the price of its isolation by losing all its elegance and
becoming pompous and crude. The mystic mutation of the spirit
is austere megalomania, but megalomania is not the way of nature;
if it were, as Lucretius asks, would not nature produce
Men of such mighty bulk, that they could wade
Through the deep places of the sea, or rend
Huge mountains with their hands, or in one life
Overpass many living generations?
Spirit does not need to be
pure
spirit; and indeed it is only
the
tincture of matter that keeps it from its narcissism, its cosmic
sleight-of-hand and its practical cruelty.
•Toynbee's mysticism, however, is Christian rather than Buddhist. For to
him
d.
mystic withdrawal has no value unless it is the first beat in the rhythm of "Schism·ud–
Palingenesia." His God·like Savior is transfigured, not annihilated.
