A CASE S'fUDY
243
Mr. Vivas, however, seems hysterical lest the cosmos or God not
always be on his side. It is not being wrong he fears so much as being
on the losing side. He tends
to
make every moral decision a crisis at the
heart of being, and every conflict ultimate. He is desperately pessimistic
about the nature of man and yet stupendously optimistic about the
cosmic hannony of which man's sinfulness is a necessary part. It is likely
that his error about men creates the need for his consolatory beliefs
about the universe.
That he
is
in error about men is patent from the way he writes
about them. Because they are not perfect, they are scoundrels. Because
they are finite and limited, they are abandoned sinners. Certain pas–
sages suggest that what men normally desire is sharply different from
what they should desire, which if taken as a characterization of human
desires may be true of the pathologically disoriented or criminal not of
normal human beings. The view that human beings are not inherently
evil and that whatever they are, they can become better is caricatured
into the view that human beings can become morally perfect-ange1s–
and dismissed as "weak, sentimental and shallow" Pelagianism.
Mr. Vivas' view of man embraces the philosophers no less than other
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