xii ACTIVITY AND SUBSTANCE 219 



follow Aristotle in conceiving it as essentially imperfect, as 

 evepyeLa dreXrfc. To do this renders it intelligible, for we 

 can then regard all the processes we actually observe as 

 pointing forward to an ideal of a perfectly and equably 

 self-sustaining activity, to attain which would relieve them 

 of their contradictions. 



The ideal of Rest, on the other hand, is wholly illusory : 

 there is no rest anywhere attainable for the virtuous any 

 more than for the wicked. It is non-existent as a fact, 

 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 Rvepyeia A.KiVT)&amp;lt;rta&amp;lt;s 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. t 

 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 

 aicivr)&amp;lt;ra&amp;lt;j t and so it may be useful to trace 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 



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



