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The determination of truth unfolds naturally with discovery. This process can be blocked. The determination of what is truth naturally unfolds with the action of the mind, probing infinity. If this process, however, is allowed to end with what sensual exploration presents, a vast realm of fundamental principles is being shut out of one's existence as irrelevant, and their power for enriching human life will not be experienced. Empiricism, therefore, becomes a political tool for sabotaging the advance of society. In its effect, it is more powerful than war. In fact it is required for instigating war.
Empiricism versus Infinity.
This consideration has a great deal to do with justice, because it determines one's perception of what is truth. Actually the subtitle is somewhat misleading. Empiricism doesn't effect reality, but it does effect what humanity allows itself to accept as reality, and experience as reality. It creates a boundary for perception.
Empiricist perception is like a closed door. It takes what is physically experienced and defines this as truth. This puts humanity into a slammer, bound to poverty, just as the animal world is bound to the limits of the physical environment. But reality isn't like that. Humanity has found it possible, by means of its intellect, to step beyond this limit and enrich the physical platform with created resources by which humanity presently lives.
This boundary is also created in the social domain. The empiricist perception of sex, for instance, defines sexual sensuality as the ultimate in human experience, so that an enriched human experience is pursued through intensified sexual experiences. The empirical limit doesn't allow one to reach for something greater. Infinite perception, on the other hand, while it is not closed to the sensual experiences, is open to the world beyond, through discoveries, such as the quality of honor, respect, commitment, love, and so forth. While these higher experiences cannot be understood in terms of sensual experience, their manifest does none-the-less enrich a person's life, such as through a bond of marriage and the creation of a family (or in the larger sphere, the creation of a nation-state).
This example may be highly simplistic, but it illustrates the fundamental aspects involved. It presents empiricism as dividing line. The 'sensual' universe unfolds below it in a negative development progression that leads towards disintegration and termination. The scientific, mental, and spiritual universe, in contrast, unfolds above it in a positive development progression that enriches civilization and enlarges the human experience. The negative development domain includes feudalist looting, speculation, genocide, environmental mysticism, depopulation, which together cause the collapse of civilization and human existence to very low levels of population and quality of life. The positive development domain includes scientific discoveries, technologies, industrialization, creativity in art, music, literature, and physical resources. It includes beauty, love, honor, truth, and develops towards an ever fuller life.
By the two opposing domain the distinction between justice and injustice is defined. Injustice involves a negation, or disregard, of reality, which is the natural outcome of empiricism. Everything that is found within the empiricist sphere is therefore fundamentally unjust. And, indeed, so it is, because everything within this sphere leads to degradation, disintegration, and termination. Justice becomes established when the empirical limit becomes rejected and superseded by the human thought advancing towards embracing infinity.
This recognition of these two opposing domains can be traced back in time for a considerable distance, but it is most prominently represented in the outline of Mary Baker Eddy structure for scientific development that first appeared in the early 1890s. It is reflected in the fundamental characteristics of it. As noted in Volume 1a, this structure, in its most fundamental form, is representable by a four by four matrix that can be seen in terms of four horizontal rows of adjacent elements, or four vertical columns of adjacent elements.
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