aklinstopia

“Value did not depend on existence, nor right on might, nor ethics on religion. An atheistic nature red with tooth and claw could in no sense absolve man from his obligation to actualize ideals of beauty and goodness; nor could it deprive him of the consolation of knowing that those ideals were always and eternally there, be the world what it might.
I have made a desperate attempt to express in a few paragraphs the broader implications or applications of my theory of the character of mind and organic life. My philosophic speculations have brought me to the goal of a cosmological spiritualism, but a spiritualism that in a sense can be expressed in physical categories. And so with equal propriety it may be termed a spiritualistic or animalistic materialism. The hopes and fears of one’s heart exert such hidden and potent influences on one’s intellect that it is hard for anyone to be sure whether his conclusions in matters of life-and-death importance are intellectually honest. At times I feel a sort of shame and self-mistrust that I should have come out with a philosophy so optimistic. That the world is a spirit, and that we are; and that perhaps we share even the immortality of a Life that contains and sustains us is a creed almost too happy and too good to be true. And yet I do believe that if not true it is something very like the truth.” WPM