THE MORALITY OF TAKING
1. Unlike giving but like being, taking is of
the self, albeit of the self conceived egocentrically, and is therefore closely
associated with mind, which stands to soul as form to content(ment). Taking, as we
have seen, is a qualitative condition, and the taking of morality, moral
taking, is most qualitatively aligned with vegetation, the qualitative element par
excellence, and least qualitatively aligned, by contrast, with water, its
quantitative antithesis. The elements of
air and fire, on the other hand, provide us with second- and third-rate
manifestations of taking, and hence of egocentric mind, relative to positions
intermediate between the qualitative extremes.
2. Thus one can take morally in positive
relation to either vegetation, in what is called knowledge; to air, in what is
called truth; to fire, in what is called beauty; or to water, in what is called
strength, as from first- to fourth-rate orders of taking. If giving has a chemical per se
in keeping with its quantitative nature, then the per se manifestation
of taking, by contrast, is physical, with the egocentric knowledge of
vegetation. Receding from which is the
egocentric truth of airiness, the egocentric beauty of fieriness, and the
egocentric strength of wateriness, corresponding to metaphysical, metachemical, and chemical 'bovaryizations'
of taking.
3. All such rates of moral taking naturally
presuppose an organic precondition, such that logically adheres to supremacy,
and further correspond, in their different elements, to masculine, divine,
diabolic, and feminine standings. For taking
is the alpha as opposed to the omega of the self, and is therefore less of the
earth, Heaven, Hell, or purgatory ... than of man, God, the Devil, and
woman. Knowledge leads to pleasure no
less than truth to joy, or beauty to love, or strength to pride. Before there can be a soul, or emotional
response, there must firstly be a mind, an egocentric starting-point - form
duly leading (though not directly) to contentment.
4. The same of course applies to negative
taking, the immoral taking of that which, by and large, is inorganically
conditioned by primal factors to take in relation to negative vegetation, air,
fire, and water, wherein one is conscious not of knowledge but of ignorance,
not of truth but of falsity (illusion), not of beauty but of ugliness, and not
of strength but of weakness. It is in
such immoral taking that the antiman, the Antigod, the Antidevil, and the antiwoman are revealed, as negative modes of physics,
metaphysics, metachemistry, and chemistry stake their
respective claims to first-, second-, third-, and fourth-rate orders of antitaking, the antimind
inorganically paramount. Thus does
ignorance egocentrically become the vegetative precondition of pain, falsity
the airy precondition of woe, ugliness the fiery precondition of hatred, and
weakness the watery precondition of humility.
