ALLOYED MAN! ALIGN WITH DIVINE LAW
All life is alloy: alloyed by spiritual and by material. None is purely one or the other that exists, man or not.
Water is hydrogen and oxygen and the spirit; fire is fuel, oxygen, heat, and a chemical reaction (the spirit).
Gold and silver are alloys as well.
Man is alloyed with woman, as well as women are as alloyed with men.
There is simply nothing that is unalloyed on or in earth that lives, including air. Hyperbolic are idioms such as unalloyed evil-plain purity.
Plotinus, the 3rd Century African philosopher, evoked these facts. He examines a question that black folks, our boys especially, seem to grapple with in this walk of grace :
"There remains the other phase of the question--the distribution of evil to the opposite classes of men: the good go bare while the wicked are rich: all that human need demands, the least deserving have in abundance ; it is they that rule; peoples and states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the divine power does not reach to earth?"
Some form of this assertion never fails but to issue as condemnation from athletes, from vigorous minds that accompany manliness. Their inquiries are fair. Those who would reach them to evangelize them had better know what to say and how!
Plotinus answers himself this way:
"We answer that the universe is one living organism...And even granting that those less noble members are not in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even reverent to censure the entire structure...
"But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order , now to the other; some men grow like to the divine; others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defense.
"A gang of lads morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?
"And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence: the gymnasium lies before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves.
"But the evildoers also have their punishment: first they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster of their human quality: and next there is laid up for them the due of their kind; living ill here , they will not get off by death; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural--worse to the bad, better to the good.
"This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves--and the duly armed win the day.
"Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men , not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling; healthy days are not for those who neglect their health: we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.
"Again: it is childish , while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go our living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life--then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil.
"Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just."
P. 143-145

Monday, December 4, 2017
MAN ALIGN!
ALLOYED MAN! ALIGN WITH DIVINE LAW
All life is alloy: alloyed by spiritual and by material. None is purely one or the other that exists, man or not.
Water is hydrogen and oxygen and the spirit; fire is fuel, oxygen, heat, and a chemical reaction (the spirit).
Gold and silver are alloys as well.
Man is alloyed with woman, as well as women are as alloyed with men.
There is simply nothing that is unalloyed on or in earth that lives, including air. Hyperbolic are idioms such as unalloyed evil-plain purity.
Plotinus, the 3rd Century African philosopher, evoked these facts. He examines a question that black folks, our boys especially, seem to grapple with in this walk of grace :
"There remains the other phase of the question--the distribution of evil to the opposite classes of men: the good go bare while the wicked are rich: all that human need demands, the least deserving have in abundance ; it is they that rule; peoples and states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the divine power does not reach to earth?"
Some form of this assertion never fails but to issue as condemnation from athletes, from vigorous minds that accompany manliness. Their inquiries are fair. Those who would reach them to evangelize them had better know what to say and how!
Plotinus answers himself this way:
"We answer that the universe is one living organism...And even granting that those less noble members are not in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even reverent to censure the entire structure...
"But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order , now to the other; some men grow like to the divine; others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them; the victims are no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defense.
"A gang of lads morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?
"And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence: the gymnasium lies before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves.
"But the evildoers also have their punishment: first they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster of their human quality: and next there is laid up for them the due of their kind; living ill here , they will not get off by death; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural--worse to the bad, better to the good.
"This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves--and the duly armed win the day.
"Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men , not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling; healthy days are not for those who neglect their health: we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.
"Again: it is childish , while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go our living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life--then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil.
"Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just."
P. 143-145

