Cosmo-Religious Concepts God, Man and Evolution

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10.

Once the organic structure of the human species extends to the whole of mankind, there becomes manifest that which, in the period that precedes it, is directed to it and aims for it; it is termed ‘justice’, ‘righteousness’ and ‘life’. This is a field-structure that represents a manifestation of the Divine. It is literally super-human, which is not the case for the mere mass-achievement attained by pre organic organisations. An ‘image’ of G-d is not the morphological shape of man, but the living structure of his collective.

11.

The awareness of lines of behaviour that lead towards or run counter to the realisation of man’s next evolutionary phase(the ‘right’ i.e. life-developing structure of the human collective) gives rise to an orientation that is both factual and normative. That means, it is an insight into relations of fact and, at the same time, a scale of values. These values are, however, conditioned by the acceptance of the desirability of reaching the highest form of humanity; at present, man does not have that possibility, due to the prevailing anorganic collective. While the notion of the Divine does aptly characterise the supreme value of life, this value system, requiring a certain course of behaviour, has little regard for motives or the inner state of the soul as affecting the value of behaviour - unlike theology and ethics. This system concerns success and failure.

Although all of nature is not Divine, in the proper sense, the Divine manifests itself entirely in the ways of nature. The principle that governs an orientation towards realising a goal above the plane of man in his present state is therefore a principle that makes the mind responsible for the success of the upward trend, not for good intentions or bona fides. There is little exonerative value for good intention and error in nature.

Therefore: The morals and sense of responsibility of man’s strivings in the evolutionary direction are the morals and responsibility of succeeding, keeping to the direction. Failure and guilt are here synonymous. The notion of ‘guilt’, seemingly incongruous in dealings with nature, comes into play whenever the nature of man is concerned, whether individually or collectively. In human affairs, there is no guiltless failure; the guilt aspect arises from the failure to act on conscious bona fides.

12.

In the din and bustle of human history that characterise the, infinitely slow, self-formation of the evolutionary structure, the morality that is conscious of that movement recognises only one human trait as responsible: reason.

If the struggle of the many human traits involved in the process is described as the struggle between these traits, of e.g. good and noble emotions, base emotions, stupidity, lust for power, greed, love of peace, religious zeal, reason, insight into the nature of man, spiritual tendencies, material tendencies, etc, then responsibility attaches to only one group of men among the many characterised by these impulses: the group that makes universal knowledge its task. Consequently, it makes no sense to say that intellect or reason in human history succumb to the powers of material might, greed, wickedness, stupidity etc because ‘not succumbing’ belongs to the very definition of reason and knowledge; it is equally absurd to lay moral blame for whatever disastrous aberrations and endless delays in the evolutionary process on the opponents of reason and knowledge. In a conflict between mind and matter, it is certainly not matter that can be blamed. Nor is it emotion, in a conflict between emotion and reason. Guilt invariably lies with the devotees of the highest and most comprehensive form of knowledge.