Page:Symbolical Methods of Study.djvu/18

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PREFACE.
ix

compensated activity is to be always the starting-point of a new partial-activity, which must be again unified with its new polar-opposite.

One-sided activity, if at all intense, is felt by us as " evil." As the pessimists say, any form of activity or life is necessarily " evil ; " any one form of activity must be so. Then comes the question — How shall we destroy " evilness " ? By the de- struction of that which is evil, so substituting for activity negation and death? Or by completing it with its polar-opposite "evil"? Is our fight with evilness to be carried on by the destruction of individual evils, or by finding the true counterpart of each and placing that counterpart in suitable juxtaposition with it ? Is the result of our efforts after goodness to be the diminution of life, or development to a higher life ; death, or a Nirvana of intenser activity ? This appears to be the great question of Religion, of Medicine, of Education, of Government, of Art.

It seems to me advisable that those who will have to fight their way through the difficulties which beset the application of the scientific solution in particular cases should early learn to understand the general solution, as theoretically expressed, and to see how the great Masters of the Art of Thinking applied it in detail.