Meliorism: A Worldview for Our Time

Hello everyone --

A great deal of unsettling news has been reaching us through the news media over the last few weeks. From the American Midwest to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, scenes of chaos and despair haunt our TV screens on a nightly basis. Dealing with these global realities of life in the 21^st century isn’t an easy task, but it is a task that can be accomplished with the aid of historical perspective, mixed with a generous helping of hope and wisdom. This fortnight’s quotations, drawn from various sources, have provided comfort, inspiration, and a greater sense of perspective to me, and now I am sharing them with you.

 

“For a life worthy to be lived is one that is full of active aspiration, for something higher and better; and such a contemplation of the world we call meliorism.”

-- Paul Carus (1852-1919): Monism and Meliorism (1885)

“I’m not an optimist; there’s too much evil in the world and in me. Nor am I a pessimist; there is too much good in the world and in God. So I am just a meliorist, believing that He wills to make the world better, and trying to do my bit to help and wishing that it were more.”

-- Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)

 

The Ages of Humankind: A Myth for All Times & Climes

Excerpted from “A Golden Jubilee Interview with the Editor” by Maria Pauls Flannagan (ACES James Scholar Alumna & Bronze Tableteer, Class of 2014)

Reprinted from Cursus Honorum (Course of Honors), Volume XII, Number 1 (August 2012)

• Maria: What is your favorite mythological story of all time and why?
• Rob: The myth of the “Ages of Humankind” is my all-time favorite. This story appears in the Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Abrahamic religions. There are four main ages of human history, the story goes. The first is the Golden Age, where everything is very harmonious and peaceful; then comes the Silver Age, when the human condition is a bit less harmonious and peaceful, but still idyllic. Next is the Bronze Age, wherein people may sometimes be heroic, but conflict and injustice begin to rear their ugly heads. Last of all is the Iron Age, which is the age we live in, full of conflict, disasters, and hardships. In the Greek version of this story, Astraea, the goddess of justice, ruled the world during the Golden Age, but later – because of humankind’s inhumanity to humankind – she departed into the sky to become the constellation Virgo, the celestial Maiden who holds the Scales of Justice (Libra) in her hand. Once this current Iron Age is done, the myth goes on, we will go back to this perfect age, the Golden Age, and Astraea will come back, and everyone will be nice and in harmony. I like this myth best of all because it inspires us to strive for better conditions on Earth, in which human beings can flourish and build a better society based on justice, freedom, and peace for all peoples.

 

“Hope” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune -- without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

Some Poetical Wisdom from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

From “Ulysses”:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

From “Locksley Hall”:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

 

From “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After”:

Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue,

I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion killed,

Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert tilled,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,

Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

                    *                                        *                                        *

Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,

Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,

Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;

Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.

                    *                                        *                                        *

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine.

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.

Follow Light, and do the Right--for Man can half-control his doom--

Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.

Forward, let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the Past.

I that loathed, have come to love him. Love will conquer at the last.

 

Portrait of Dr. Henry Van Dyke – a renowned professor of English at Princeton University; a prominent American diplomat during World War I; and a beloved author of poetry and prose (including The Story of the Other Wise Man, from 1895). Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

 

Until next time,

Rob