MODERN DOCUMENTS
NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
There are no fundamental differences in men. All men
haw
one and the same Creator, one and the same essential being; and
what
formally differences one man from another, what distinguishes hell from
heaven, is that they are differently related to the Divine-natural hu·
manity, or to the life of God in nature, which is a life of perfect freedom
or spontaneity. In that life self-love freely subordinates itself
to
ncighborly
love, or promotes its own ends by promoting the welfare of all mankind
But so long as this life is wholly unsuspected by men, so long
as
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man dreams of any other social destiny for the race than that which
it
has already realized, and which leaves one man out of all fellowship
or equality with another-self-love is completely unprovided for, except
in subtle and hypocritical forms, and is consequently driven to these
disorderly assertions of itself by way of actually keeping itself alive....
The liar, the thief, the adulterer, the murderer, no doubt utterly
per.
verts the divine life which is latent in every human form; he degrades
and defiles self-love, in lifting it out of that free subordination which
it will evince to brotherly love in the Divine-natural man: but he never·
theless does all this in the way of a mute, unconscious protest against
an overwhelming social tyranny, which would otherwise crush out
the
distinctive life of man under the machinery of government and caste.
Accordingly, I am profoundly convinced that if it had not been for these
men; if we had not had some persons of that audacious make
which
would qualify them to throw off their existing social subjection, and
10
ventilate, even by infernal airs, the underlying life and freedom
of
humanity-that life and freedom would have been utterly stifled, and
we
should now be a race of abject slaves, without hope towards God, without
love to our fellowman, contentedly kissing the feet of some infallible
Pope of Rome, contentedly doing the bidding of some unquestionable
Emperor of all the Russias. These men have been, unknown to them·
aDITOllS' NOTE:
We're publishing the following excerpt from
Christianity:
Tlu
Logic of Creation
(1857) as a contribution to the current discussion of morality
and literature.
