Consider our dreams attentively. Is Good a superfluous word…for the pleasurable and its causes—at most a mere modification to express degree and comparative duration of pleasure. The meaning of good can be decided only by an appeal to universal usage, for the distinction between good and pleasurable, which is common to all languages of the civilized World, must be the consequent of a common consciousness of human as human. Though all evils may be assuaged; all evils cannot be done away. For evil is the chronic malady of the Universe; and checked in one place, breaks forth in another. In this World, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is topped at all frontiers. Things are good because they are desired, and things that are or ought to be desired because they are good. Good cannot be defined simply in terms of pleasure or happiness. The agent’s motive has nothing to do with the morality of his or her action, partly logical and partly psychological. I could do a morally right act by sheer chance. However, such complete lack of inward, conscious participation on my part could never be a sufficient criterion for my acting morally. Morality is confounded with law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

Moreover, it is no defense here to say that the principle was put forward as a criterion for judging the morality of the action and not that of the agent, because this last distinction is merely logical, not real and vital. Acts cannot be dissociated from an agent any more than ideas from a mind. In any society there are always two antithetical forces at work. Since, dialectically speaking, opposite powers are always of the same kind, and tend to union, a well-functioning society is the nonrevolutionary reconciliation of forces working for permanence with forces working for progression. These are respectively the aristocratic, and landed interest and the bourgeois, commercial interest of early Victorian England; a monarch also being required to maintain cohesion. Civilization takes to denote external, material social progress, while cultivation is more inward and personal: the harmonious development of these qualities and faculties that characterize our humanity. So that cultivation can take place, the formation of a state-endowed class, the clerisy or national church, which would effectively consist of professors of liberal arts officially established throughout the country. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

The national church would, however, be in no sense identical with the Church of England or with any purely religious organization. Its purpose would be to preserve the results of learning, to bind the present with the past, and to give every member of the community an understanding of their social rights and duties. The almost limitless possibilities for authoritarianism in such an arrangement are, again, obvious. Nevertheless, the idea of culture as something independent of material progress was first systematically introduced into English thinking, and was from then onward available in various forms, not merely to influence society but also to judge it. Many people have inevitably overlooked the darker side of romanticism. For once the romantic artist or philosopher ceases to believe in God, one tends either to find a new object of veneration in history or hero worship or, more recently, to relinquish one’s very inwardness and imagination in solipsistic nausea. It is a curious fortune that some have never lost their belief in God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

We should speculate on humanism, love, beauty, and mystical union. Creation is a merging of form and matter, and this form is not an emanationist overflow from God’s essence, but rather an entity created by God outside himself. In the realm of redemption, only a harmonized soul can govern the body, harmonization can come only from the Holy Spirit’s infusion of sanctifying grace. Love transforms the lover into the object loved. The physical World is as full of mysteries and obscurities as are the concepts of theology rather than to show that it does exist. Philosophers have demonstrated that an external World must be divisible and it cannot be infinitely divisible, it is capable of motion and it cannot be capable of motion. Faced with this situation, we have no alternative but to declare that the very concept of an external World is self-contradictory. No intelligible account can be given of the relation between an external World and God. Stress its dependence on God’s will; and its externality, and it takes on the attribute of God. There is one substance, God, which is being itself, all being, Universal being. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

The existence of everything else is dependent upon the existence of God not only causally but also in the sense that particular things have no substance of their own. However, although everything but God is ultimately dependent on him, everything except Christ is also relatively dependent on something else; qualities in-exist in objects, objects in the mind, and the mind in Christ, through whom God made the transition from universality to particularity. Christ’s dependence on God gives priority to all created things and even to time, Christ’s begetting being the first pulse of time. Imagination is active and has its own guiding principle, beauty. Beauty, however, must be defined in terms of imagination and the reverse is not true. Imagination in art is in conflict with expression in art, and their conflict shows that art alone cannot satisfy the human spirit. Art gives rise to religion, in which something imagined is affirmed as real. Like art, religion has its own guiding principle, holiness. The artistic consciousness does not affirm that what it imagines is real; but religion, even Christianity, which is considered its highest form, affirm something imagined—a Father in Heaven, the Real Presence in the sacrament, the resurrection of the dead—as real.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

These affirmations in God symbolize something true; but religion requires that they be affirmed in their symbolic forms: A philosopher would not be regarded as a Christian for subscribing to a statement which he declared to be a mere paraphrase of the Apostles’ Creed in philosophical terms. Christianity, by affirming the incarnation and atoning death of God, symbolizes the overcoming of the opposition between humans and God. This unity of humans with God symbolizes the human capacity to attain nonsymbolic, direct knowledge. Theoretical science is the first form of experience in which human beings try by reason to grasp truth. However, theoretical science, whether a priori as in mathematics or empirical as in natural science, is abstract. Natural science is the application of mathematics to the empirical World, conceived as subject to laws (materialism) and composed of an ultimate undifferentiated stuff (materialism). However, the World, as we experience it, is not merely mathematical, mechanical and material. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Theoretical science is therefore only supposition: its truths are hypothetical. It can say truly, “If there were an S, there would be P,” where S and P are events in a material World specified in mechanistic applicable to the World of experience. They are abstract; and to abstract is to falsify. These Earthly spirits are powerless and pithless. However, look, on the other hand, at the power which comes from above. Rain is of the size of a very small grain, yet when falls on the ground it provides water and makes the flowers bloom, grass grow, quenches the thirsty of the trees, and allows famers to grow food and provides us with water to drink and shower in. Or a drop which falls from a pitcher to the ground, and it stains the floor.  You see, then, that the smallest things coming from above have great power when they fall upon the Earth. Thus also is the Divine Spirit, which comes from above, powerful. Trust, then, that Spirit, but have nothing to do with the people who try to bring you down. Having the reality of God’s presence is not dependent on out being in a particular circumstance or place, but is only dependent on our determination to keep the Lord before us continually. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Our problems arise when we refuse to place our trust in the reality of God’s presence. If our everyday decisions are not according to His will, God will press through them, bringing restraint to our spirit. Then we must be quiet and wait for the direction of His presence. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror? Do you believe that your beauty is matchless and everyone is infatuated with you. However, I love your soul more than your appearance. You are water, blue waves with ripples in clear spring, flowing happily. You flow into my heart and become love, then my heart is delighted. Dear God, I miss you, every second, every minute, in every day. God, I dream of you all the time, every minute at every night. How many times I wish I was in Heaven to see your happy smile. How many times I imagine having a good time with you. The World smiles when you smile, my Lord. My heart is waiting and waiting. You are the flame of fire burning endlessly, brightening my life. I would like to fly into your heart, and stay with you forever. So long as I am with my Supreme leader, I am not afraid of anything. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8