The Spirit of War

THE SOUL OF LIFE AND THE SPIRIT OF WAR (REVISED) A DETAILED SYNOPSIS BY R. SCHLEYER, M.A. How did we get here, really? Who wrote this nightmare? Is there no way home? This writing outlines, in detailed synopsis, rational answers of a modernized platonic idealism to these questions, buttressed by the most important discoveries of modern physics and world neuroscience. Despite appearances, its ultimate concerns are not religious but strictly rational. The same can be said of the chief idealist cited herein. For us, irreligion is antithetical to all true (absolute) idealism and especially to speculative philosophy. Contents: Part I. Life in Infinite Process II. The Cosmic Disruptor III. Right and Left in Self-Expression IV. One Psyche in Trifurcation A Novel and Testable Neurophysical Hypothesis V. The Third Creation in Denouement VI. The Spirit of War Epilogue Page 1 4 7 11 13 13 16 18 PART I: LIFE IN INFINITE PROCESS According to absolute idealism, our origin, situation, and fate can best be defined by reference to a wholly immaterial, and yet much-storied, Lost World; its history is obscure and partly or wholly missing. Fortunately, we have it in reliable outline (but compare Plato’s ‘Myth of Atlantis’) from the pen of the inspired Moses, once we “tear the veil from his eyes.” A far-famed idealist (named below) laboriously undertook to do exactly this in 1624. Two pious London lawyers, expert in German, perhaps thinking it was primarily an inspired work of complex Scriptural exegesis, clothed the whole in superb English dress (1656). The present essay is the first telling, at least in English, of idealism’s deepest analysis of ‘The First Book of Moses’ as an allegory for true anthropology, supported by modern physics and neuroscience. First, readers are asked, at least provisionally, to take as demonstrable by inferential deduction an astounding scenario--that the whole of an infinite, living, inward actuality, 100,000 times smaller than at present but fully adequate to itself, was at some point instantaneously bifurcated as with the snap of a switch into positive and negative, leading to a prompt expansion into the present finite reality. Amazingly, the approximated time frame can fairly easily be determined by examining the basement of the Holocene for a certain generalized, subtle transition from symmetry in fossilized animal life to asymmetry, marking the transition from pseudo- to real history (see abstract of ‘The Idea’). The fossils of Trifurcated Man are there also; their sudden appearance geologically cannot be explained by materialist science and is an indisputable fact. The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 2 It seems the original inhabitants of the Lost World were “warned” in their own terms (pace Moses) but what actually happened to them is impossible to say, since they, along with what would have been the implicated evidence of their history in Infinite Process, were destroyed by the Divine Action reported by Moses. This episode, then, can be comprehended as a “retraction by negation” within the overall structure of the Third Creation, which entailed the deposition of pseudo-historical traces along with the deployment of the created beings themselves. The first approximation of this theory was published by the brilliant Aurelius Augustine (ca. 404 A.D.), and is now modified (as will be proposed below) by a necessary interpretation of key facts that have interpolated themselves since Augustine wrote more than sixteen centuries ago. Readers may be surprised to learn that Augustine’s original creation theory was independently re-discovered and published in detail, with elegant and refined illustrations, by the British idealist naturalist and artist Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. (‘Omphalos’ or ‘Creation Illustrated,’ 1857), on the basis of an anonymous tract published earlier in London, the writer of which Gosse was unable to discover, although he made a public appeal for him to come forward and identify himself, thereby also to take proper credit. Now we can guess why that appeal was unsuccessful. The anonymous tract undoubtedly cribbed from Augustine without attribution. According to our understanding of Augustine, the farmers, herders, and bushmen of prehistory constituting the three Divisions of Man made their sudden appearance on Earth--along with their whole way of life--without the slightest comprehension of what had just happened except for their vivid memories of ancestors (pace Moses). Because of these memories, their pseudo-history must, therefore, record traces of the ancestors as well as the artifacts, leading to the complicated concept of Second-Order Fossils (more below). Foundational here is that the memories of these peoples were partly genuine and partly illusions of theirs. Hence also a certain duplicity of the pseudo-historical evidence (further discussed below). The fossil evidence for anatomically modern Trifurcated Man cannot be connected to the famous Cro-Magnon fossil, which is geologically earlier by nearly 50,000 years. In the context of the Third Creation, Cro-Magnon can be understood an important pseudo-historical (and therefore symmetrical) trace of the Divine Idea of Man before the Fall of Adam, a trace which was not divinely retracted. In what emerged from the Third Creation, no evidence survives of the destruction Adam’s progeny as famously described by Moses. As discussed above, Trifurcated Man extends back, but only back (pace R. Klein; see below), to the basement of the Holocene, while his actual appearance in time (with the entirety of the Third Creation per se) is more likely to be somewhat before the Bronze Age, as theologians (and even rabbis) long surmised from scriptural study. In all this, there is no contradiction, only problems to be worked out gradually in understanding Creation as a complicated idea. Why not? The Creator is an Infinite Mind. We assert that absolute proof of Direct Creation is obtainable right now. Downward from Holocene will be found a thin, subtle, but definite Horizon of Symmetry/Asymmetry for all many thousands of species of fossilized animal traces, the more individualized the animal more obvious the trace and the transition. Our own research conducted in 2012 examined the the the the The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 3 best-available, detailed photographs of the largest published collection of hominid crania, (including H. neanderthalensis) and without exception found symmetrical, stylized lambdoidal sutures. Comparison cranial suture patterns photographed from actual modern crania of a.m. H. sapiens, stored in the anthropology department of a major American university, are entirely idiosyncratic and individualized, like fingerprints; in fact, the lambdoidal suture is understood as a signature of individuality in a.m. H. sapiens, which is why we performed these studies. A Horizon of Symmetry/Asymmetry has not been noticed heretofore because subtleties in fossilized edges (sutures) and comparative shapes are, obviously, difficult to detect due to postdepositional degeneration, which is itself a type of pseudo-history. Hence, on the basis of physical evidence, we confidently offer the following as a Falsifiable Hypothesis. The Horizon of Symmetry/Asymmetry will indicate the transition from perfect bilateral symmetry (in all animals for which this is typologic, such as Man, but also in many insects) to subtle bilateral asymmetry. The first generation of animals was created by Divine Fiat and was perfectly symmetric; thus also the pseudo-history going downward into the strata, which was created at the same time. The second and subsequent generations were all selfpropagated and perforce idiosyncratically asymmetric. This is a key concept in the present essay, since each individual animal propagating in space-time is subject to idiosyncratic counterresponses during embryogenesis to the intracellular directives of its psyche, beginning in the zygote. The cause is the cosmological power of the “spiritus mundi,” the Cosmic Disruptor. As discussed next in Part II and later in Parts V and VI, the “spiritus mundi” warps, distorts, makes indeterminate the entirety of material being, and specifically the expressed individuality of every thing at every level, in direct proportion to its degree of neuro-molecular organization, an influence that animal life cannot, of course, escape. Readers may, then, considering present circumstances, take it as descriptive that the present cosmos is a vast negativity, blown up by a factor of 100,000, and that our nocturnal nightmares and the worst unpleasantries of daily collective life can now be understood as typical consequences of what happened long ago. Loosely speaking, the mini-world of prehistory (the previous positivity within Infinite Process), where much occurred once upon a time, still awaits, according to rational surmise, the return of a certain fortunate minority from their pilgrimage of sorrow. So much for the wonderful Moses, properly cogitated with the help of Aurelius Augustine. Concerned readers may ask, is all of this really necessary? Why can’t we just ignore the complexities of the evidence and let the materialists do their worst against God and Life? May not the quaint rhetorician Aurelius Augustine safely be ignored? Indeed, skeptical materialism indignantly inflates itself in response as usual and simply asserts the opposite--that nothing complex, aside from protons, was specifically created. It therefore denies the ancillary claim of idealism--perfectly reasonable in itself--that appearances can be deceiving. The very mention of the term “pseudo-history” drives them insane. Still, part of the potential material evidence for the Third Creation has already been suggested. Skeptics are reminded in the meantime that if any part of the so-called evidence to the contrary is proven false, the materialist schema so long asserted will collapse. Besides, the suggested mechanism of The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 4 the Third Creation is the only self-consistent explanation for the fact (cf. R. Klein, ‘Human Career, 3rd ed., 2009) that there is a clear discontinuity at the basement of the Holocene, below which Trifurcated Man (discussed in Parts II and III) is not in evidence. Looking upward into the Mesolithic-Neolithic is also a dizzying enterprise, offering another kind of Discontinuity (see below). There is simply no materialist means to connect Trifurcated Man at the basement of the Holocene with Cro-Magnon near the ceiling of the Paleolithic. Huge problems arise, since by the same token all the other fossils below the Holocene, which are by guileless materialists assumed to be prosaic evidence of real process, are with equal facility regarded as illusory images of actual (“wirklich”), but essentially ideal, Infinite Process. As mentioned above, this process was first conceived in detail by the brilliant Aurelius Augustine in a three-stage exposition called ‘Literal Interpretation of Genesis’ (in which the author declared that ‘Genesis’ must not be interpreted literally). And as mentioned, another even more problematic entity emerges--SecondOrder Fossils (i.e., “fossils within fossils”)--which were discovered in Europe in the late 19th century. Exhibit A is by guileless materialists called “Paleolithic Art” which--aside from the notorious and persistent problem of certain fakery within the evidence, and lacking new explanations on a higher basis--will remain the most absurd scientific conundrum ever presented to the collective mind of Mankind. This is because, if any problem in science so evidently is not what it appears to be, it is “Prehistoric Art.” We know this because we have looked intensely at it ad nauseam. Seen from the ceiling of the Paleolithic, aside from the geologically instantaneous appearance of Trifurcated Man (or really his regressed pseudo-history, as briefly discussed above), the Mesolithic-Neolithic Discontinuity is, in artless materialist hands, a vast, nightmarish, boggy landscape--fragmentary evidences of Devil Worship, bestiality, the transport and erection of preposterous monoliths, and the piling up of eerie domes and mounds. It is also fair to mention the oft-ignored fact that--according to close examination--paleolithic stone tools, made in the hundreds of thousands, supposedly going back thousands of centuries, were never used. The questions that suddenly arise from what amounts to a geologically instantaneous appearance by Divine Fiat of Trifurcated Man in earthly reality during this period are so numerous and twisted as to defy synoptic summary. Thus, we think the overarching explanation must be Infinite Process, entailing Pseudo-Historical Creative Dispositions and Provisional Determinations in Eternal Nature--which is the immaterial, infinite place of pregnant possibilities conceived by the far-famed idealist already mentioned above and to be formally introduced to readers in Part II. PART II: THE COSMIC DISRUPTOR We must leave unresolved for now the claims and counterclaims about Creation outlined synoptically above, although they are resolvable, and proceed to the main theme of this essay--to define the cosmological interrelation of the “anima mundi” and the “spiritus mundi,” mysterious entities suspected and/or specifically characterized by the Greek idealists in and after their philosophical apogee but, as discussed more fully below, truly understood as correlated and self- The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 5 related only in the 17th century. This came with the writings of Jacob Boehme (d. 1624) (“JB”), a great idealist, and reputedly the first philosopher to write in German. He utilized the Latin terms indicated, however. Although unsettled in ancient and medieval idealism, the mentioned correlation can now be understood as pertaining to the most important of infinite microphysical and finite cosmological realities, respectively, and by this means erecting twin pillars of endogenous and exogenous cosmological motion, at the micro- and macroscales, for an all-embracing, modern, idealist Theory of Totality (see abstract of ‘The Idea’). Microphysics refers to the mathematically infinite protonic interior as validated in the late 20th century; cosmology per se refers to the macroscopically visible universe (the locus of the “spiritus mundi”) in space and time, which is that world of “the negative” mentioned above; “thinned out” it constitutes the White (“ZeroPoint”) Vacuum of Space. The pillar of a third, truly all-governing, cosmological/biological, hebdomadic, transcendental reality in addition--articulated by JB--will be discussed in Part VI. Plato’s soul of the world (“anima mundi”) (also called by the Greeks “Autozoön” or self-moving “Animal Itself”), in the present essay is defined as an all-embracing system rooted in the infinite at the microphysical fundament, and through projection to the electron fields intracellularly, and then through enzymatic and other processes acting at the pseudo-atomic/molecular levels, is at every instant immaterially maintaining vegetative existence in plants and animals. The Latin “anima mundi” is thoroughly platonic; its living activity, contemporaneous with Creation, was discussed at length in ancient and latter-platonist idealism, especially by Plotinus (f. 225) and Proclus (d. 485) based on Plato’s amazing ‘Timaeus.’ However, its true relation to Providential Power was for centuries quite ill-defined. A certain elaborate extension is necessary to account for the activity of the animal psyche, acting specifically in neurons, and furthermore extending to large-scale anatomy through the electrophysical (EEG) oscillatory regime of the brain; we must reserve a full description of this important matter for another day (but see ‘Music and the Great Chain of Being’ for a sketch). A full presentation is foreseeable (‘A Theory of Dreaming’). Thinking deeply about the cosmos and intuiting its actual structure through contemplation, JB speculated the previously vague platonist notion of the “spiritus mundi” (the immaterial “Spirit of the World”) and evidently intuited its distinct presence as a Cosmic Disruptor, as a central power and actuality of the animated finite per se--thus perceiving it as an Autonomous Being, impetuously bearing along the world of Good and Evil (mostly evil) and clearly introducing an unsuspected systematic chaos into the platonic orderliness of what we now know to be extraprotonic living motion and the uncertainties of object relations in space and time. It was a finite life that will eventually die and therefore had a definite beginning, contemporaneous with Creation (and thus explicitly part of the Third Creation, the only one that ended up inflated and blown into space and time; the previous two Creations, deploying Lucifer and Adam within Infinite Process, are best understood as actualities-through-logical-implication of the last). Attentive readers will perceive that these careful distinctions are not over-laborious, and are absolutely necessary to explain the entirety of existing facts (above and below the basement of The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 6 the Holocene), in the face of materialism’s abject failures and its self-destruction (by field theory). As mentioned previously, material forms (the whole of past ontology) along with their pseudo-historical components and traces of actual (“wirklich”), though only ideal, occupation (the “Lost World” mentioned in Part I) were created as convoluted implications of one Divine Fiat. Everything actually happened (and happens now, according to JB) in “Eternal Nature,” the all-potentiating microphysical reality lying within the protons at the fundament of present reality. Thus, for those concerned about it, Scripture properly cogitated is true by actuality. The “spiritus mundi” obtained its overwhelming cosmological powers by its sudden constitution upon the leftward projection of electron from its original protonic home at the moment of the Third Creation. This systematically distorted image of the platonic world of Eternal Life (according to the Greek idealists “eternal” means simply the now) was born as the prototypical structure of the present age, including the changes of the Third Creation, and was instantaneously blown up and thrust into finite space-time. But it is only the left hand. Here we begin to comprehend the deepest psychological implications of the famous but oft-forgotten Fall of Parity (1957), one of the most significant of Mankind’s physical discoveries (see ‘Cosmology of the Idea in Brief’ and ‘Music and the Great Chain of Being’). See also Part III. We can now understand the inchoate autonomous Spirit of the World (with emphasis on the word “world”), with its leftward projection, to have warped the entirety of physical, biological, sensual, and historical being toward an obsessive, oppressive predominance of the negative, in direct proportion to the degree of neuro-molecular organization above the microphysical; in reality, only the microphysical per se (the subatomic) is demonstrably infinite. The constitution of the Sinister at the emergence of space-time is the fundamental reason why the World as experienced is traditionally described as “a Vale of Tears,” and why, with the ever-greater instantiation of collective depravity, “the Antichrist” is inevitable. As further mentioned below, a discerning minority of actors, with more or less constancy, notwithstanding sinister impulses to the contrary within and without, asserts the opposite of evil through receipt of what is called “grace,” and thereby, consciously or unconsciously, lays its effective will before the feet of the Triune God. These alone accomplish truly worthy things despite the Culture of Death (see Part VI). It is appropriate at this point to mention that Hegel’s “Weltgeist” (“World Spirit”), of which discerning readers may have heard, seems entirely different and, according to our reading, has no cosmological component. Hegel’s World Spirit refers primarily to a gradual progress of conceptual understanding among nations but also to a “cunning of Reason” that Hegel could discern within the historical record of this or that national embodiment. The will of Providence thus was asserted by a consummate genius (Hegel) to be manifestly predominant (“Reason Rules the World”) despite the puerile motives of most or all of the participants, as readers will learn from Hegel’s important ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of World History’ (1855 in English; a complete English translation by R. Alvarado of the expanded and presumably more authentic German edition from the early 20th century appeared in 2011). The posthumously published lectures by Hegel were edited by suspect hands but nevertheless appear reliably to discuss the The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 7 three primary Divisions of Man and do indeed mercilessly characterize them. Their existence is portrayed there as more or less given. However, see Hegel’s detailed ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature,’ which further speculate the obscure (but nondarwinian) physiological determinations of Natural Man (see also Part VI of this essay). In ‘Mysterium Magnum’ (2 vols., 1624, Ch. 31), the inspired JB likewise probed, essentially from the viewpoint of the Philosophy of History, the fundamental trifurcation of Mankind. (Writing two centuries later, Hegel--who claimed to know JB well--takes no notice of this point whatsoever on our reading.) JB freshly examined the deepest meaning of the Story of Man portrayed in ‘Genesis’ by considering it (1) partly as a record of Infinite Process (see Part I) and (2) partly allegorically, as stating a scientifically true anthropology (see Part IV). Mankind’s capacity for evil was understood and well-described by Moses; it actually occurred within an Infinite Process intuited by Moses as finite. This is the chief “veil covering his eyes,” according to our understanding of JB’s insight. The World was “destroyed by Deluge” in the Infinite Process (recall Part I). It merited destruction (God Himself “repented” Man’s original creation) and this necessitated a Third Creation. This was indeed promptly done, accomplishing a peculiar finite trifurcation of Mankind’s original unitary embodiment in the Infinite Process. The divine purpose of the Third Creation, which wise readers can clearly surmise from the story of Noah, was to weaken Mankind’s intolerable capacity for evil by rendering its psychic wholeness as embodied, and thus its actual potential for unification in evil, completely impossible. The consequences of the debilitation of Mankind through Divine Action were immediately manifest in finite reality and continue today; this will be further shown below and in Part VI. PART III: RIGHT AND LEFT IN SELF-EXPRESSION As mentioned above, the freshly created peoples could not perceive the Trifurcation of Man as an abnormal departure from anything previous. The majority simply continued their usual depravities and crimes, with rare exception, the record of which is manifest to all. It is wellknown that the subsequent speculation of actual history has misled many to inaccurately speak of “superiority” or “inferiority” when, as will be shown presently, there are three, mutually distinctive, fundamentally repellant, mutually exclusive, and characteristically defective types (see Part IV). At the behavioral basis of each type is an electrographically measurable (but not yet measured) arrangement of embodied neurocognitive powers (typical EEG brain activation at the microsecond level) that forecloses all possibility of embodied wholeness for the individual psyche as it immaterially presents itself to its Brain Machine (this key phrase is here credited to the illustrious neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, M.D., who died in 1976). It is notable that the greatest neurophysical discovery so far in the 21st century--the Default Mode Network (“DMN”)--makes possible a clear understanding at last of the peculiar neurologic asymmetry, suggested above, that obtains within Trifurcated Man. Activity of the DMN represents the “idling” mode of the Brain Machine (often manifest as either day-dreaming or mind-wandering), through which, and by current consensus only through which, thoughts of past, present, and future self-assertion and self-comprehension are sustained, as opposed to the The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 8 comparatively reflectionless intentionality of actions and tasks pursued through other functionalities of the Brain Machine, during which the DMN demonstrably reduces its activity; the contemplative self-consciousness typically manifested in the Brain Machine through the DMN (revealed when the subject reports later on the nature of his thoughts) is then temporarily repressed. DMN activity forms a measurably large proportion of the brain’s typical metabolic regime. Important for us is the determination that the DMN is the repository and receptacle of thoughts of past or planned action. The DMN is now understood (for the moment neglecting left-right cortical laterality) as an anteroposterior anatomic system negatively related (in activity) to most other cortical brain systems. Its chief components are (1) the anterior cingulate cortex or “ACC” and related medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is responsible for integration of selfconsciousness per se--and (2) two posterior divisions, namely, the left and right posterior cingulate cortices (PCCs), with important connections laterally to medial temporal structures for cognitively literal associations, and with subcortical systems integrating corresponding emotional colorations obtained through memories of previous experience. The DMN’s posterior systems are now understood generally to reinterpret self-related events emotionally (on the left) and to localize self-distinguishing representations of the embodied self (on the right). Importantly, despite the unitary nature of the psyche as activator of brain process within the Brain Machine, the laterality of the ACC and the PCC (and related cortices and subcortices) permits three distinctive forms of self-reference within Trifurcated Man to be manifest through the DMN in each of three embodied (anatomical) forms of the Brain Machine (see Part IV). The final understanding synoptically of Mankind’s neurophysical trifurcation, which peculiarly defines, and at the same time limits, the psyche’s power to control its Brain Machine, involves (1) left-right laterality of ACC and prefrontal cortices; and (2) graded potentials for relative anteroposterior activation of systems for self-control (the “executive”), yielding profoundly variable shapes of self-understanding obtained within the DMN in its periods of self-observation. Here JB’s understanding of the Trifurcation of Man as psychically embodied is critical. Trifurcated Man is seen to specifically and separately manifest the three great Cosmological Principles underlying the whole of Creation. These are microphysical and cosmological. Clear perception of the neuropsychological meaning of the insights of Moses on the Trifurcation of Man emerges (explained more fully in Part IV) by combining it with JB’s understanding of the free psyche, which “swims” or “floats,” as it were, amidst the three sorts of embodiments, which in turn are characteristic of the three fundamental Cosmological Principles. “For after the Deluge the spirit [of God] divideth the three brethren into three families, and would that each family should remain apart by itself,” according to JB’s exegesis of ‘Genesis.’ We interpret this to mean not a recommendation but, rather, a description of irreconcilable conditions which obtained at the origin and which naturally and typically continue in Trifurcated Man owing to unreconstructed predilections within neurophysically modulated behaviors of each type. The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 9 A. Men of the First Principle, which for systematic reasons (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’) must indubitably be considered as oriented to the Primal Left, predominantly manifest that Principle’s characteristic “anger” or “dark fire,” in JB’s phrasing; they are “a type of the fire world . . . a type or image of the [Wrathful] Father.” We learn below that this is the result of anteriorly rightlateralized functional predominance of the self-reflective modes obtainable within the Brain Machine (this is further elaborated in Part IV). B. Men of the Second Principle, which for systematic reasons (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’) can indubitably be characterized as oriented to the Primal Right, predominately manifest that Principle’s characteristic allure for those seeking inner “light;” or “contemplation of the spiritual wonders,” in JB’s phrase; or cognitive practice of thought per se in this form of Trifurcated Man; or, more specifically, of left-lateralized DMN modes of long-term planning for speech performance. (Speech function is known to be typically lateralized leftward in the Brain Machine in the whole of Mankind.) C. Men of the Third Principle (“the Principle of the World”) reach after both Primal Left and Primal Right but, because they are cosmologically “more in” the World than their trifurcation cohorts, they do this predominately through the cosmological reflection within them of the First and Second Principles (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’). As such, existentially--exactly as in their trifurcation cohorts--they suffer a bias toward the Primal Left (“Anger”), which is the essential vulnerability of all material being after the Fall of Parity, especially in highly organized matter, through constant persecution by the inchoate autonomous activity of the “spiritus mundi” (as explained more fully in Parts V and VI and briefly discussed in Part I). Specific to Men of the Third Principle, psychic embodiment typically manifests (in task-less DMN modes of the Brain Machine) plans for action within sensuous reality, with prospects for self-directed action in the world specially adjusted, brought closer, and focused by (1) emotionally reinterpreting self-related events at will (within the left-lateral posterior portion of the DMN) and (2) sensuously localizing and distinguishing for self (for the psyche), again at will, sensuous bodily experience (within the right-lateral posterior portion of the DMN). By hypothesis, these “materialist” activities are especially intensified neurophysiologically in Men of the Third Principle because they are “more in” the World than their trifurcation cohorts. The actual meaning of this remains to be determined through future investigation. Also by hypothesis (and as explicitly indicated by JB in ‘Mysterium Magnum,’ Ch. 31), each form of Trifurcated Man can and does use and experience, with different degrees of emphasis, all natural functional possibilities of the human Brain Machine; however, the hypothesis here is that each predominately manifests its own peculiar electrophysiologic gestalt in the task-less DMN mode--one right-lateralized at the ACC, one left-lateralized at the ACC, and one shifted posteriorly and specially activated, left and right, turn-by-turn, through the lateralized halves of the PCC. The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 10 Left-right brain laterality in Man (and generally in higher animals) is at last more fully understandable by combining (1) the idealist insights of JB on psychic embodiment and (2) modern understanding of anatomical and functional brain laterality (P. MacNeilage et al., ‘Origins of the Left and Right Brain,’ 2009). The embodied animal psyche, by hypothesis an immaterial field-coherence at microphysical depth (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’), has no other power than to assimilate itself to its free choice of the possibilities incorporated in its macrophysical Brain Machine (it is designed for this, in fact). This is the only means the animal psyche has to express its “will.” Thus, the left hemisphere (the Primal Right) is organized toward a passive (meaning “passionate,” in platonic terms) understanding, an “out-breathing desire” in JB’s phrase, which in Man includes speech; the right hemisphere (the Primal Left) grasps the same facts through a rapid response system based on fear (including attack and avoidance), notably specializing in detecting and responding to unexpected stimuli, which includes, in Man and other animals, immediate, rapid intuition of the totality of present percepts (the “Gestalt”). Thus, speaking very generally and with less-than-full exposition of a very complex subject, the animal psyche (through the oscillatory EEG regime of the Brain Machine) selects the right hemisphere for attack and repulsion/escape (thus responding to the environment stereotypically and reactively) and selects the left hemisphere in self-motivation for approach and exploration. Evidence for distinct lateralization in the animal brain suggests, along with other neurological peculiarities, that the animal psyche (as theorized by the latter platonists) is immaterially spherical and instantaneously omnidirectional in its capacity to reach and activate the brain anatomy through the neurons it controls en masse. Of course, the Brain Machine cannot respond instantaneously because synaptic and axonal processes have strict biochemical limitations. However, the brain and the organism would respond inadequately if not for the animal psyche’s prompt global presence and reach. By hypothesis, the animal psyche, posted between Finite and Infinite at the microphysical fundament (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’), activates the awake brain through the microtubule structure of its neural embodiment within and through the Negative Unity at protonic depth. It is thereby able to assimilate itself to the functional powers of its lateralized Brain Machine, millisecond-by-millisecond, according to the specific electrophysiological oscillatory regimes found in many different animal types. In dreaming the brain is activated by the “spiritus mundi.” According to JB’s understanding of psychic life, for every expressional, investigative, or responsive power of the Brain Machine there is at depth a vast hebdomadic system of intuitional resources (subject-object correlations) of much greater importance, description of which is beyond the scope of this synopsis. However, conscious awareness-of-self and environment in each type of animal, to the perceptual limits of its Brain Machine, and specifically the Fundamental Original Vocalization Powers of Man, and all other animals to the extent they vocalize, are unique traits of the deep hebdomadic fundament. The American materialist and atheist Noam Chomsky became notorious for a pseudo-analogous theory that was hypothesized much too shallowly and mechanically. The basis for the hypothesized Transformational The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 11 Generative (TG) function of universal language production actually lies orders of magnitude deeper than Chomsky imagined. The same applies to merely imagined, or “inner speech.” The anteroposterior incline of the Brain Machine in Man, by contrast, allows progressively more-integrated associations and, thereby, increasingly reliable appreciation of internal and external events, plans, and reflections as the processing moves anteriorly. Notice that the DMN permits self-conscious integration of association and interpretation except during task performance, when DMN activity is reduced, an arrangement for action that permits a huge variety of previously learned algorithmic brain processes to be implemented rapidly, often more or less automatically, with little or no active reflection, depending on circumstances. Hence the oft-noted negative correlation between the self-reflection embodied in DMN activity and brain activity involved in task performance; the latter can, of course, be executed by the psyche with full attention (through the Brain Machine) if desired, especially in trying circumstances. PART IV: ONE PSYCHE IN TRIFURCATION Approaching more closely now, but still only to a first approximation, the neurocognitive peculiarities characterizing the three main forms of Trifurcated Man may be summarized as follows: A. Men of the First Principle “springeth forth out of the [fiery] center of nature,” in JB’s phrase; they integrate their self-consciousness around a certain stiffness in self-understanding (corresponding to right-frontally localized activation of ACC in non-task conditions within the DMN) and formalized modes of self-repression, eventuating in large-scale cultural and political stasis (as specifically noted by Hegel in ‘Lectures on the Philosophy of World History’). With the exception of reconstructed specimens (who are subject to strict repression when judged to be “departing from the ancestral ways”), they are characterized intraculturally by an aggressive Pride. In conformity to its right-brain laterality, the “new” in general is greeted by this form of Trifurcated Man with fear and loathing. Thoroughgoing corroborative evidence for the type may be found in Benjamin Smith Lyman’s profound, highly concrete study of Men of the First Principle in their nearly pure form (see J. Spec. Phil., Vol. 19, No. 2 [April 1885], pp. 133-172). In further corroboration, we particularly note that, unlike their trifurcation cohorts, Men of the First Principle render highest honor to the Left Hand (a type of “Yang”), quite apart from the right-handedness typical of the whole of socially developed Man including themselves. Additionally, as is well-known, their writing is largely hieroglyphic (others say “ideographic,” “logographic,” or “pictographic”) and therewith conforms to the usual right-sided lateralization of pictorial interpretation in Man. A notable direct physiologic correlation is the recessed nose region and flattened features of the notoriously inscrutable male face in Men of the First Principle, a recession interpretable as a psychophysiological indicator of self-repression (compared to their trifurcation cohorts, as explained immediately below). We can apply to them the negative of Max Picard’s published The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 12 observations (referenced below) concerning the probing assertiveness of paradigmatic Men of the Second Principle. According to JB’s theoretical understanding (as we interpret it), and in correlation with the neurocognitive, neurophysiological, and neuropsychological hypotheses here proposed, and also excepting reconstructed specimens (as discussed above), Men of the First Principle are in neurophysiologically important respects the negative of Men of the Second Principle. But both might also be characterized equally as Masters of the Prerolandic Cortex, which refers to the principal anteroposterior anatomic demarcation of the cerebral cortex. B. Men of the Second Principle express the effects of left-frontal localization of ACC activation (in the task-less condition) in addition to the left-hemispheric dominance for mundane affairs universally typical of Man. In corroboration, we note that, culturally, they are known to revere endlessly diverse concepts of the (self-)righteous Right Hand (in part reflecting, naturally, the nearly universal localization in Man of speech function in the left hemisphere). They focus their self-conscious comprehension (within the task-less mode of the DMN) around plans for expression (and therefore “fast talk” in unreconstructed specimens). They manifest an “outbreathing desire,” in JB’s memorable phrase, and thus, in the end, convolution of purpose, which in unreconstructed specimens typically degenerates (“Greed”). It is notable from a platonic perspective that they tend toward self-aggrandizing sophistry when undisciplined or when given to religious fanaticism (as explained in the ‘Sophist’ by Plato, who unwittingly became the first great commentator on unreconstructed Men of the Second Principle). As already suggested above, expert examination finds notable correlation also in the prominent projection of the nose region typical of Men of the Second Principle, a psychophysiological indicator persistently pointed out by the late Swiss physician and expert on facial conformation Max Picard (‘The Human Face,’ 1930; in German, 1929). All of Picard’s work was oriented on understanding the human face as a specific psychological (but not physiognomic) indicator and in deep relation to existentially various forms of degenerate social being (cf. ‘Plan of Face Derived and Explained’ (a comparatively naive formulation) and ‘Prospectus of the Society for Faces’). Fully conformable to our interpretation of Picard’s insights as equally applicable to Men of the First and Second Principles, a major review of brain lateralization in Man shows that “the left hemisphere has an inherent tendency to control interpersonal approach behavior and the taking of initiative in cooperation, while the right is adapted to regulate withdrawal, avoidance, or retreat from initiative, and dependence” (C. Trevarthen, ‘Hemispheric Specialization,’ 2011). Compare also the general discussion of lateralization in Trifurcated Man in Part III above. C. Men of the Third Principle, according to the present hypothesis, express a comparatively intense bilateral activation of the PCC within the DMN in task-less mode (which continues left and right, by neocortical connectivity, to posterior cortical association areas, thereby activating, in addition, visually and aurally colored powers of self-understanding and a redoubling of subcortical emotionality (as explained above), all of which, in unreconstructed specimens, producing a remarkable “gross amassment or compaction into a flesh,” according to JB’s succinct characterization of this form of Trifurcated Man. The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 13 In the cortically diffused sense mentioned just above, Men of the Third Principle might also be called Masters of the Postrolandic Cortex. Except when reconstructed, they predominately pursue DMN-based planning for self-expression (task-less mode) in endless varieties of sensuous exploratory fantasy; in short, participation willy-nilly in the worldly Vanity; or, in other words, again, in unreconstructed specimens, rather full conformity with the well-known and longlamented Vanity of the World (in exact accordance with the Third Principle). Neurophysical confirmation through facial conformation is suggested by the typically large accentuation of mouth and lips in Men of the Third Principle, which undoubtedly has an expanded reflection in this form’s posterior neurosensory mapping (Primary Motor Cortex). A Novel and Testable Neurophysical Hypothesis It is a falsifiable prediction of the present totalizing hypothesis that the fully typical and mature male representatives of each form of Trifurcated Man will grossly manifest a unique brain activation pattern (as characterized above) during noninvasive study; specifically, evidence of lateralization of elevated DMN process, as measured electrographically within and between millisecond-level epochs using appropriate hdEEG and/or MEG techniques at the cortical surface (in the task-less condition), properly correlated--and this is the most difficult aspect-with the DMN at depth, including careful dissociation of left and right ACC (with their associated mPFC regions), and also including simultaneous dissociation of left and right PCC activation (also in the task-less condition). Magnetic Source Imaging (MSI) might be helpful. The reason for selecting males for electrographic and/or MSI study in each form of Trifurcated Man is that studies show that males at maturity “finally attain a more marked differentiation of the hemispheres” (C. Trevarthen, ‘Hemispheric Specialization,’ 2011). PART V: THE THIRD CREATION IN DENOUEMENT As a result of the Third Creation, then (recalling Part I), the three most important types of moral reprehensibility embodied in the Unitary Man of the Lost World (namely, greed, pride, and vanity) were suddenly separated and separately imprisoned, for forensic reasons, in Trifurcated Man. Anecdotally noted, morally interpretable, and characteristic behaviors (except among reconstructed specimens) actually emerged in these types of Man, now understandable as capable of correlation with hidden cognitive and electrophysical biases, representing, if validated, utter departure from the unitary psychic possibilities long assumed by great idealist psychiatrists (e.g., E. Kahn, ‘Psychopathic Personalities,’ 1931). As mentioned, each of the three great forms of Trifurcated Man assuredly embodies all three Cosmological Principles (unlike other animal forms, which embody only the First and Third Principles, as we understand JB’s diffuse remarks on the subject, and obtain the necessary connection to the Second Principle, their source of conscious awareness, only by cosmological reflection within Third Principle) (see ‘A Theory of Dreaming’). In consequence of the foregoing facts, there are notorious, predominant differences to be inferred historically within Trifurcated The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 14 Man’s contemplative modes of thought--now interpretable (see Part IV) as an orderly, triune pattern of neurocognitive dissociation from the unitary psychic integration postulated for the embodied psyche by the idealists of 20th century medical science. The result of the Third Creation, from an absolute perspective, was nonetheless a remediation of the intolerably evil condition of the unitary Man of the Lost World, as understood from the Story of Man conveyed by the inspired Moses. Importantly, the united powers of Greed, Pride, and Vanity (as concentrated in and displayed by the nefarious Cain, for example) really did “disappear,” according to our reasonable interpretation of Klein’s influential study of the fossil record (discussed in Part I). Unitary Man is reasonably inferred to have existed only in Infinite Process. We have it as a declared fact in Scripture, at any rate, which can now be reinterpreted as a testable scientific hypothesis. The most important part of that hypothesis is the assertion that the Lost World can no longer manifest itself, for this was indeed the declared goal of the Third Creation (as discussed in Part III), now supported inferentially by the indisputable fact that the embodiments of Trifurcated Man have undergone relatively little change since their sudden appearance and are essentially as they were at the moment of emergence, with their pseudohistorical precursor materialization, within the Holocene (recalling Part I). Independent philosophical analysis thus corroborates the profound cosmogony found in ‘Genesis.’ The Divine Action apparent through examination of the fossil record (as discussed in Part I) is reasonably interpreted as re-creation for a purpose. Closer examination of the actual embodiment of the psyche in Trifurcated Man now permits an important inferential hypothesis concerning its neurophysiological basis, which can be independently tested, and perhaps validated, through modern neuroscience. Now, at last, Mankind can indisputably, deeply, and truly comprehend itself through the Mirror of Science without illusions. In addition, the recondite meaning of the Story of Noah may at last be understood through a reasonable reading of ‘Mysterium Magnum’ (1624), the inspired and final masterwork of the Meister of Goerlitz. Close consideration of the resulting neuropsychology at individual and collective levels suggests that persecutory dream life (normally hidden from us by waking activity), and the grim “worldly contrariety” portrayed in Homer’s ‘Iliad’ (see our platonic ‘Homer on Existence’), are fundamentally illustrative of the resulting journey of Trifurcated Mankind. The existential nightmares of Man’s existence are relieved only by a countervailing inner light, accessible to the human (but not animal) psyche from within (further discussed in Part VI), constituting the “reconstruction” repeatedly mentioned in Part IV. It seems incredible that, without the “deperfection” of Mankind wrought by the Divine Action described above, the moral condition of Man at any given point up to the present day would have been even worse than it was. Sleep terror (a dreamless condition in the NREM sleep phase, heretofore unexplained, but normally seen in many children and subsequently outgrown) is fundamentally a much deeper indication of Mankind’s perilous condition, pointing to, and warning of, the indescribably horrific existential danger awaiting psychic orientation upon evil. Hence, as with the run of typical dreams and nightmares, sleep terror does not appear to manifest the trifurcation of The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 15 psychic embodiment, but it does point directly to the First Principle (this will be demonstrated in the forthcoming extended essay, ‘A Theory of Dreaming’). Our summary declaration from 2014 (see ‘Cosmology of the Idea in Brief’), characterizing JB’s “spiritus mundi” in its generality, therefore remains valid: The world is composed entirely of highly active, immaterial fields in self-relation that form, by their activity, derived from the Infinite Process, a living image of the Eternal Life within the “anima mundi,’ but when projected to the macroscale as “spiritus mundi” it becomes pathologically distorted there and even Sinister in its destructive powers. The former was accurately depicted by Plato in the ‘Parmenides’ and ‘Timaeus’ and discussed at length by Proclus in his elegant commentaries thereto; the latter was ill-defined for centuries until the flourishing of the Meister of Goerlitz in the 17th century. The pathology of the ‘spiritus mundi’ is by no means limited to its generation of typical nocturnal nightmares. For there arose by its appearance at the moment of the Third Creation (the emergence of the World from Infinite Process) an expansive, autonomous, extra-psychic, “encosmic demiurgus,” fully capable of initiating irrational pseudo-cognitive disturbances on its own account on both small and large scales, and thus disposing of vast powers appropriate to its life. It is completely responsible for the origin of dreaming (but, again, not sleep terror) and most nightmares, but not prophesy, poetic inspiration, or philosophical intuition (see the forthcoming extended essay, ‘A Theory of Dreaming’). These latter emanate from the Second Principle. The “spiritus mundi” thus autonomously pursues, by the will of its Creator, the adaptions of an inhuman “sorcerer” (as described by the latter platonists), according to both constructive and destructive ends, which may upon inspection be taken as “accidents” or stochastic occurrences, or may even adopt the form of an incalculable Principle of Indeterminacy (cf. the discussion in Part I). Every created spirit was given a will of its own and was brought into being not merely to exist but to live, according to, and to the limits of, its constituent powers. In the case of the World as a whole (the “spiritus mundi”) these are positively demonic and terrifying to the uninitiated (cf. psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden’s impressive, direct description from his 1913 paper on “lucid dreaming”). Thus, the “spiritus mundi”--the autonomous unconscious of the living, finite Totality and of each of its highly organized, organic parts--wills (by inchoate autonomous assimilation) everything for itself despite itself, and cannot but oppose itself to everything within itself, seemingly--but not actually--in opposition to the will of its Creator, who demands of His children (but not of His animals, as it were), self-abnegation and resignation. In essence, the “spiritus mundi” is the essential character of the experiential World demanded by Adam and Eve when they chose from the prohibited Tree of Good and Evil. Mankind will forever owe a debt of gratitude to the inspired Moses for declaring this deep insight. Providential maintenance of living motion and the general sustenance of life is a Divine Gift, said Proclus, and as such was thought to proceed (at least by the platonists) through the “anima mundi.” True dreams and persecutory nightmares came somehow from God or the Devil, The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 16 according to ancient opinion. The inspiration of poets, prophets, and philosophers was also divine, they thought, but the exact mechanism was unsuspected. And likewise the supposed efficacy of prayer and supplication, as traditionally understood. Also much-disputed and endlessly debated among the pagans was the Origin of Worldly Evil. Ascription of any form or mode of evil to God (in contrast to the free predilections of his creatures) is, of course, inadmissible. PART VI: THE SPIRIT OF WAR Jacob Boehme’s achievements go far beyond definitively explaining the activity of Providence in sustaining life. He showed the source of Divine Illumination (the Second Principle) and the soulful means of access to it (‘Of Christ’s Testaments,’ 1623) as well as the wrathful locus of Hell (the First Principle). We hesitate to mention that JB cautiously defined the deposition of Lucifer Himself and his iniquitous legions as an entrapment by Divine Fiat within internalized Platonic Elements (Fire, Air, Water, and Earth). Importantly, as is now abundantly clear to readers, JB characterized the basic predatory predilections of the World as twisting agonizingly in the embrace of the “spiritus mundi” (the Third Principle). Because the “spiritus mundi” is the cosmologically integrated cause of individual dreaming per se, it may also be able to explain the comparatively rare phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance in dreams, and perhaps also may be able to explain the documented phenomena of hallucinatory visions and “waking dreams” in otherwise normal individuals. JB himself is accounted to have experienced such a vision as a boy while trekking in the hills near Goerlitz; we doubt this was “divine” illumination. Truly great, also, is JB’s concept of “the Tincture,” an explanation that manages to correlate the invisible hebdomad of the subatomic (the “anima mundi”) and the unapparent infinite hebdomad of the cosmos (notably, therefore, in opposition to the vast, worldly, but comparatively primitive distortions of the finite “spiritus mundi”). The definition of “the Tincture,” an almost unbelievably deep and subtle notion arising late in JB’s soulful authorial life, has to be (as we think) the greatest possible cosmological insight of Mankind, comparable to (and perhaps amenable to pythagoric correlation with) the achievement of Proclus in his relentlessly pythagoric commentaries (including ‘Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus’). Maybe this is what Hegel was referring to in his famous dictum, “Reason Rules the World.” “The Tincture”--as we understand JB--is contained in, and works through, the all-encompassing infinite Negative Unity that underlies and mediates the “two vacuums” of material reality mentioned in Part II (see ‘Cosmology of the Idea in Brief’). Indeed (and much greater), beyond the great benefit to the World of modulating its Living Process (its “vegetative being”), it is Salvation writ large, penetrating all spiritual and material being, and communicating its nurturing powers to the Guileless per se, wherever it is psychically embodied, on behalf of the Second Principle (which is indeed the open path to Lord Jesus for the human psyche). We interpret JB here as indicating the true mode of activity of the Holy Spirit. As mentioned, an accurate description the human psyche’s power to lay down its finite will and live in God, to be nurtured by the Holy Spirit, can be found in JB’s ‘Of Christ’s Testaments” (1623), especially the section The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 17 on Baptism. This may be the greatest voluntary power of reconstructed Man when facing the trials of his tortuous pilgrimage through the darkness and depravity of the Vale of Tears. Unfortunately for the universe as a whole and for all collectives (nations, etc.) within it, and the hopes of a certain Subtle Teuton in Berlin notwithstanding, self-abnegation is something only individual humans can do (as discussed above), and constitutes their infinite difference from the natural-sensual world’s exuberant, ineluctable quest (through the “spiritus mundi”) for dominance over every other thing not itself. Thus, finally, grimly, we are led to perceive the horrifying specter of the Spirit of War. History in fact shows the rude behavior of all nations over the centuries (forcefully characterized by Hegel as a “slaughter bench”). Here, then, perhaps, concerning the most generalized, murderous motivation of the nations, we think JB and Hegel may be understood to agree. It is the “spiritus mundi,” acting through unreconstructed Trifurcated Man, that goads the nations to War. But by promulgating his famous dictum, “Reason Rules the World,” perhaps Hegel was merely beneficently presupposing, at most, one nation tranquilized as much as possible by the Real Presence of Lord Jesus in the hearts of the populace; the pragmatic spirit of Doctor of the Church Martin Luther cultivating the Protestant Ethic culturally; and a Royal Ministry which could assure, on behalf of the sometimes wise Kings of Prussia, some level of “reconstruction” (as defined above) through effective programs of primary, secondary, and higher education. Hegel surely must have known of the aggressive nature of the “spiritus mundi” from his theological studies at Evangelisches Stift Tübingen, a Lutheran institution where JB’s works featured prominently, despite Lutheran Orthodoxy’s rejection of him, but it appears he covertly set this aside for reasons one can only speculate about. What have we discovered? Perhaps the truest definition yet of the rudely animated cosmos, with its self-deceived, historically checkered, vain, greedy, prideful, and pathetic Trifurcated Man, who by deft Divine Action was carefully and cleverly reduced, in his power to embody Evil, through a kind of Absolute Prophylaxis, if such words may be permitted. Moses, where are you? Is it not true? Hegel justly mocked Mankind on God’s behalf by pronouncing the Great Apes to be a deliberate satire on the Human Race. Now we see (through the genius of Jacob Boehme) that the result of Divine Action long ago was, rather, hugely more serious, a kind of no-nonsense cut-down, the Diminution Through Redesign of a malevolent tramp. Divinity clearly delivered a powerful, transforming slap to original design of the Face of Man, which we can surmise from the psuedohistorical fossil cranium of Cro-Magnon, whose facial region was most definitely unitary and not indicative of Man in Trifurcation (cf. ‘Plan of Face Derived and Explained’). In fact, gross distortion of the human face arising from endogenous psychophysical conflict in Trifurcated Man is fully evident in mature male specimens of each type (as reviewed in Part IV). Importantly, animal embodiments begin systematic biophysical malformation as early as the zygote stage, when the psyche begins to construct its body, owing to the cosmological influence of the The Soul of Life and the Spirit of War (Revised) 18 “spiritus mundi” on and through individuality per se (as discussed in Part I). The true origin and deep meaning of the aesthetically problematic and distorted Visage of Man as presently embodied are now fully understood for the first time, thanks to the Meister of Goerlitz. Trifurcated Man--acting as Masters of Pride, Greed, and Vanity--arguably has destroyed more than it has created and has further defaced and degraded the initially problematic World of Good and Evil, secretly worshiped and desired by it, following, even in finite trifurcation, the wellworn path of the depraved, psychopathic Cain, and which was first prepared and laid down by the murderer’s vicious, ungrateful, and guileless parents. Again, for this sobering insight into embodied Mankind’s true character we have to thank, first, the inspired Moses, and secondly the inimitable philosophical genius of Jacob Boehme, whose idealism “tore the veil” from the eyes of religious genius and thereby accomplished the greatest victory for cosmological (plus anthropological) truth since the death of Proclus fifteen centuries ago. Epilogue The bibliographic fate of JB forms a kind of sad appendix and illustration. Selected Works of Jacob Boehme in German appeared in 1730 and 1846. There has never been a Complete Works of Jacob Boehme in any language, to our knowledge. Reportedly, the MS. of at least one of JB’s masterworks (‘The Last Judgement’) was recklessly (though unwittingly) burned, along with an entire city (“Greater Glogau”) during horrific religious war amongst the clever Masters of Greed in JB’s native land and across Europe. We carefully note for the reader’s edification JB’s fundamental position: All war is anti-Christian. We leave for another time similar unvarnished tales characterizing the Masters of Pride and Vanity, respectively, whose homelands are farther afield and more or less distasteful to us in any case. We wish them well, of course. Our studies have assuredly brought them fully and fairly into summary view but it is appropriate now, as they say, to “draw a curtain of charity” and bring our otherwise vigorous synopsis to a close. Attentive readers will now appreciate that the Masters of Greed, Pride, and Vanity, separately considered, in usual practice (save the reconstructed few) are pathetically heedless and, in a sense, partially headless. Their original (criminal) condition as holistically embodied was even worse, according to the Divine Assessment reported by the Bringer of the Decalogue. As we have noted repeatedly elsewhere, the sober pedagogue Hegel accurately perceived their relentlessly despicable mass trajectory, declaring with well-composed, studied sangfroid: The majority will always be wicked. R. Schleyer, M.A. [email protected] April 2018