xn ACTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE 219 



and it is non-existence as a conception. For if anything 

 could really cease to be active, it would pro tanto cease to 

 be. 1 The only Weltanschauung therefore which could 

 appropriately take up the ideal of Rest would be one like 

 Mainlander s, which regards the world s history as the long 

 protracted agony of the Absolute s suicide. 



Compared with these, the advantages of the conception 

 of Ez/epyewt A.tcivr)&amp;lt;ria&amp;lt;i are manifest. 



It enables us to give a scientific interpretation of the 

 religious conception of Heaven and to differentiate it from 

 that of Nirvana ( = bliss conceived as rest ). It involves 

 a positive conception of Eternity and explains the transition 

 from Time to Eternity. 



We avoid, moreover, sundry difficulties. We may, e.g., 

 dismiss the apprehension that an equilibration of cosmic 

 energy must be regarded as the final destruction of cosmic 

 activity. We may thus avoid henceforth Spencer s strange 

 see-saw in regarding equilibration now as universal death, 

 now as perfect life, according as physical or biological 

 analogies come uppermost in his mind. 



The chapter on this subject in First Principles is most 

 instructive. It affords an admirable example of the con 

 fusion engendered by a lack of the conception of evepyeia 

 dfcivr/o-ias, and so it may be useful to trace Mr. Spencer s 

 utterances in detail. It will be seen that he keeps on 

 contradicting himself as to the character of equilibration 

 on alternate pages, and speaks with a double voice 

 throughout. 



(a) By the first voice it is conceived as death or 

 cessation of activity. Thus 173: &quot;there finally results 

 that complete equilibration we call death&quot; 176: &quot;the 

 final question of Evolution is ... incidental to the 

 universal process of equilibration ; and if equilibration 

 must end in complete rest ... if the solar system is 

 slowly dissipating its forces . . . are we not manifestly 

 progressing towards omnipresent death 1 &quot; He answers 

 that even though the &quot; proximate end of all the trans 

 formations we have traced is a state of quiescence&quot; an 



1 Cp. Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. xii. 6. 



