By Schubert Ogden
l-Iaving Having so long thought of Whitehead's thinking of the good, or the beautiful, as the mean of harmony between the extremes of intolerable conflict, on the one hand, and intolerable monotony, on the other, I was struck by his saying, "Evil is the half-way house between perfection and triviality. It is the violence of strength against strength." This he says in a context in which he explains: The good of the soul, to which the indwelling Eros urges it, "resides in the realization of a strength of many feelings fortifying each other as they meet in the novel unity. Its evil lies in the dash clash of vivid feelings, denying to each other their proper expansion. Its triviality lies in the anæsthesia by which evil is avoided. In this way through sheer omission, fewer, fainter feel ngs feelings constitute the final Appearance" (AI: 355).
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