Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 44
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... which, being the principle of evil, is passionate in nature. Thus the divinity forgets himself, busies himself with matter, and comes to desire it, so that he is thereby "split" or divided. The result of this is that the "creator of Being" becomes "the creator of Essence," and forms the world of matter. This philosophical statement is more intelligible if interpreted by the more modern conception of divine love. Love is self-forgetful; and the Supreme allows his attention to wander by the mere fact that he is the Good,27 and thinks of the second divinity with "longing."28 He is "fatherly."29 drawing up matter to himself through that same emotion. CHAPTER VI. The Second Divinity ORIGIN OF THE SECOND DIVINITY. As the First Divinity is being, the second divinity is essence, "the divinity that is becoming," the divine immanence, inasmuch as he imitates the First, being analogous to him.1 So he remains contemplative or intellectual.2 That is why he is the "offspring"8 of the grandfather.4 Through this thoughtful contemplation, it is that he derives all his coloring and goodness.5 Ueberweg6 insists that this deification of the second principle was Numenius' most remarkable deviation from Plato, albeit Numenius himself remained unconscious of it; indeed, he even attributed this his doctrine to Socrates.7 Though this second divinity remains intelligible,8 still he becomes double and creates (in the very same manner as the creator of being was the Idea of being), first the Idea of himself, the creator of becoming; and second, the "beautiful world"9 of the Ideas. This makes of him the principle of becoming, inasmuch as he deposits, or unfolds, his own Being in the...