Chapter 4, Section 1ad

And such was the Incarnate Life of Christ and such is the Life of God in eternity. So too the wisdom of Christ is, from a worldly point of view, foolishness. For worldly wisdom = self-seeking, but the Wisdom of Christ = self-abandonment. In fact Heavenly Wisdom = Love. Cf. 1 Cor. i. 25 ; iii. 18, 19 . 253 That which Is Not = Evil (vide infra in this chapter). Cf. Intr., p. 20. The Good is Non-Existent as being beyond existence; evil is non-existent as being contrary to it. Thus evil is by its very nature trying as it were to be Good. This also looks like a barren paradox and yet it may contain a spiritual truth. Evil is, in the words of Goethe, “the spirit that denies”: It is destructive, e. g. injustice, cruelty, immorality, etc., undermine or overwhelm civilization and so destroy it. But the Good supersedes civilization and so in a sense destroys it. Cf. the eschatological teaching of Christ. Civilization, art, morality, etc., are good so far as they go, but imperfect. Being halfway, as it were, between Good and evil, and being of necessity neither wholly the one nor wholly the other, they must disappear wherever the one or the other completely triumphs. Christ’s teaching on Marriage illustrates this. Marriage is sacred, and divorce is wrong, because it seeks to abolish Marriage. And yet Marriage is finally abolished in heaven. St. Paul’s antithesis of Law and Spirit is another example. The Law is good and yet is not the Good. Sin is contrary to the Law, but the Spirit is contrary to the Law in another sense and so supersedes it. So too with art. A modern vandal is indifferent to beauty because he is below it, a Mediæval Saint became sometimes indifferent to beauty by rising to a super-sensuous plane above it. Greek idolatry is a higher thing than Calvinism, but the Christianity of the New Testament is a higher thing than Greek idolatry. The Saints sometimes employ negatives in one sense and those who are not saints employ the same negatives in another; whence disaster. Much of Nietzsche’s language ( e. g. the phrase “Beyond Good and Evil”) might have been used by a Mediæval Christian Mystic; but Nietzsche did not generally mean what the Christian Mystic would have meant by it. Soo too with pain. All pain is in itself bad, being a negation of our personality. And yet a self-abnegation springing from Love which bravely bears pain is the highest kind of Good. “The devil . . . put it into the heart of Judas to betray” Christ, and yet the Passion was in accordance with “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” 254 εἰ οὕτε χρὴ φάναι. D. is alluding to the ancient belief in the Music of the Spheres. 255 Gen. i. 16 . 256 μέτρον. All things have their pre-existent limits in the Super-Essence. 257 αἰών—i.e. The Permanent Principle underlying its temporal process. This and the next phrase explain what is meant by the words “the Measure of the universe.” The Good sets bounds to the world (1) temporally, because Eternity is the Fount of Time, (2) spatially, because Transcendent Unity is the Fount of Number. All temporal things are permanent in God; and all diversities are one in Him. 258 All number has its roots in the Good. Elsewhere D. says that the Good being beyond Unity, is a Multiplicity as well as an Unity. Cf.