200.03 Ultimate Quests for Potential (p.82)
a Cosmic
b Mortal
hard cover page 82
200.03a Cosmic
The cosmic thrust for potential is man-centered. Within this constraint, the cosmos seeks its own perfection. The quests for spirituality and perfection, and the attendant quests for freedom, harmony, and beauty find their source in the metaphysi- cal spark which actualized the cosmos. It was the origin of this quest of quests which bridged the gap from “nothingness” to “Somethingness.”
200.03b Mortal
Man always seeks to raise himself to a higher level.299 This quest is in effect an extension of a primal cosmic thrust. Judaism attempts to channel and consecrate this imperative. Quests for fame, fortune, power, and security, to whatever extent their extensions are employed to the ultimate ends of the universe, fulfill this overriding cosmic thrust.300
Mankind is probing, alert to potential advance. While a significant segment of humanity idealizes the past andlor the status quo, a dynamic segment is always tugging it forward, from the day on which a first voice rang out, crying to mankind slumbering on the raft of Earth, “We are moving! We are going forward!”301
Mankind sanctifies its explorers, especially its successful ones. For mankind is also an explorer expedition-with its own scouts way up in their cold, wet, and lonely crow’s nests. Sweeping the skyline end to end with their lucky eyepieces. Scanning for new land mass. Ah, there! peeking over the horizon! There it is!— or was it only a midshipman’s mirage?
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——————- NOTES ——————-
299 See Herder, Sammtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan, 33 vols. (Berlin, 1877- 1913), vol. 5, p. 98, as cited in Barnard, J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, p. 28. “The essence of life is never fruition, but continuous becoming.”
However, note that Herder also seemingly posits in the opposite direction in Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, bk. VIII, chap. IV, as cited ibid., p. 304. “Everything that exists strives towards self-preservation; from the grain of sand to the solar system it strives to remain what it is.”
300 Adherents of Ayn Rand take note!
301 Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, p. 11.
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