THE
MORALITY OF GIVING
1. Just as being was characterized as hellish,
purgatorial, earthly, or heavenly, depending on the kind of being, so giving
can likewise be characterized in such terms; for it is the omega rather than
the alpha of the self or, more correctly, not-self, as that which emanates in
selfless fashion from a wilful, or will-based, precondition. Such selflessness is of course commensurate
with spirit, and therefore it could be said that spirit shares in common with
soul a tendency to be either hellish, purgatorial, earthly, or heavenly, if not
strictly in terms of love, pride, pleasure, and joy (at any rate where its
positive manifestations are concerned), then certainly in terms of brightness,
dimness, heaviness, and lightness.
2. Far from having a metaphysical per se, however,
giving has a chemical one, largely on account of its association with spirit,
spirit being most quantitative in water and least quantitative in vegetation,
while in between are the noumenal quantities of fiery
spirit and airy spirit, the former more (relative to most) quantitative, and
the latter less (relative to least) quantitative. Thus we may speak of moral giving as ranging
positively through the elements, from a first-rate manifestation in water to a
fourth-rate manifestation in vegetation via second- and third-rate
manifestations in fire and air respectively, as though from the spirituality of
dimness, necessarily feminine, to the spirituality of heaviness, its masculine
antithesis, via the spiritualities of brightness and of lightness,
corresponding to diabolic and divine alternatives.
3. As with being,
however, there is also a negative, or immoral, quadruplicity
of giving to be reckoned with, and such a quadruplicity
is no less inorganic, or inorganically-conditioned, than its positive
counterpart was organically-conditioned, being, by contrast, the product of
primal modes of will. But even negative
dimness, so to speak, is still, in its watery correlation, the per se manifestation
of giving, and hence of spirit, whose quantitative status is most as distinct
from more (relative to most), less (relative to least), or least
quantitative. Thus dimness remains the per
se manifestation of spirit even when it is negatively conditioned, and such
dimness is commensurate with a spiritual antipurgatory,
the sort of negative, or primal, purgatory that stands to the purgatorial per
se of spirit as antigiving to giving.
4. Thus no less than being has a soulfully
heavenly per
se, whether it be positive or negative, so giving has a spiritually purgatorial
per se, the sort of purgatory which owes less to essence than to
quantity, and which, certainly on the female side of the gender divide, is
manifestly objective, issuing in watery and/or fiery fashion from a chemical
and/or metachemical order of will. In this respect, it is a primary as opposed
to a secondary order of purgatory; for purgatory is primarily a condition of
the spirit.
5. Before I proceed to briefly describe taking
and doing, I should add that the primal modes of spirit are frankly less
describable in terms of negative dimness, brightness, lightness, or heaviness
... than in terms of coldness, hotness, thinness, and thickness, which could be
regarded as the spiritual counterparts to the negative soulful states of
humility, hatred, woe, and pain. For it
seems to me logically self-evident that the spiritual counterparts to the
positive soulful states of pride, love, joy, and pleasure are indeed dimness,
brightness, lightness, and heaviness.
Hence the primal giving of coldness, hotness, thinness, and thickness,
as distinct from the supreme giving of dimness, brightness, lightness, and
heaviness.
