" jin morality that being takes wholly, and in religion •it takes partly, the form of a lie. ' Let us consider the matter naively and mythically, so as to understand. Remember, that for Mr. James a mere resistless " bang " is no creative process at all, and that a real creation means nothing short of a real bringing to life of the essential nothingness, whicMis the eternal antithesis to God, — a work, therefore, upon that nothingness actually performed. Well, then, God must work upon the void; but how can the trackless void be wrought upon? It must first be vivified and quickened into some kind of substantiality of its own, and made exisA • tential and phenomenal instead of merely logical; and essential that it was, before any further fashioning of it can take place. God then must, in the first instance, make a being that has the void for its other parent, and involves nothingness in itself. ] To make a long story short, then, God's first pro- ^ duct is a Nature subject to self-consciousness or self- ^ hood, — that is, a Nature essentially good, as being divine, but the several members whereof appropriate the goodness, and egoistically and atheistically^
Citable passage
Introduction to The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James
William James. Introduction to The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James. 1885. The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, edited by William James (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1885), vii-119.
Citation
William James. Introduction to The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James. 1885. The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, edited by William James (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1885), vii-119. Premodern Concordance passage passage-8cc3c3c853af423e21d5.