Chapter 121
The world as a whole; its creation, order, plurality of worlds and end.
171 passages · 61 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
To ask about the world as a whole is to ask about the setting of every other question. It means asking what the totality of things is, whether it was made, whether it has an order, whether it is one or many, and whether it will end. Marcus Aurelius states the stakes plainly: a man who does not know what the world is, and why it exists, cannot know where he is or who he is1. The idea is great for these books because nearly every tradition they contain has had to take some position on it, whether as theology, natural philosophy, poetry or counsel for living. Even the word is divided. Browne observes that man lives in two worlds, visible and invisible, which are one to sense and two to reason2. Kant separates a world of sense, which varies with its observers, from an intelligible world that remains the same3,4. At the far end of the period, the astronomer Newcomb treats the universe as a single bounded whole rather than a chaos5. That assumption, that the world is one thing, is precisely what the older authors debated.
The oldest and most insistent answer in these volumes is that the world is one living whole. Marcus Aurelius urges us to regard the universe as one living being, with one substance and one soul, in which all things move together as cooperating causes6. He calls it the perfect living being, which generates, holds together and embraces all things7. Every event serves the whole, so discontent cuts a part off from the continuity of the whole8. The discontented man becomes an abscess on the universe9. Man is a part whose good is the good of the whole10,11. Epictetus likewise holds that the parts must yield to the whole12. George Long, interpreting the Stoic emperor, summarizes the doctrine as God united with the material world in one animated being13. Virgil’s Anchises speaks of heaven, earth, waters and stars as fed by one animating spirit14. The Bhagavad-Gita goes further. The Lord is first, last and centre of all that is15, and Arjuna beholds the whole universe, living and dead, gathered in one in the divine body16. Christian writers keep the unity while refusing the identification with God. Augustine pictures creation as one finite mass of bodies and spirits, created good17, and as an ordered whole that is better taken together than in any part18. Later, Pope’s “worlds on worlds” compose one universe of interdependent systems19. Channing sees in the linked universe an image of the One Infinite Spirit, where nothing stands alone20. Emerson finds the world the product of one will and mind21.
A related image makes the whole a society. For Epictetus the world is the mightiest community, one shared by gods and men22. It is a great City with a Lord who orders it23,24, one in substance, in which some perish so that others may succeed25. The world’s need determines each person’s birth and departure26. Life is like a fair or a festival procession, where the few contemplate what the world is and who administers it27,28. Wherever he travels, Epictetus finds the same sun, moon and gods29. Marcus Aurelius agrees that the world is “in a manner a state”30,31. The image survives Christianization in altered form. Penn makes the world a stately palace with mankind as family and God as master32,33, and Malory’s Round Table signifies the world, Christian and heathen, drawn into fellowship34.
Behind these images lies a question the Stoics did not evade: is the world order or chaos? Marcus Aurelius poses it as a disjunction. The universe is either confusion and dispersion, or unity, order and providence35. Whether it is atoms or a system, he is still a part of the whole and content with his assignment36. He presses further, arguing that order within oneself could not coexist with disorder in the All37. Elsewhere he affirms outright that the universe conforms to intelligence38, is governed by a universal reason39, and has not erred for want of power or skill40. Long notes that the very name Cosmus means Order41. The Gita assigns the contrary view to the godless, who say the world has no law, no Lord and no purpose42. Browne finds a subtler order in which the world’s contrary antipathies preserve its common harmony43.
The moderns reframe the question from living whole to designed mechanism. Dante had already held that the order of all things is the form by which the universe resembles God44. Drummond imagines the world as a book in which its author’s art could be read45. Pascal takes space, number and motion to comprehend the universe, recalling that God made all by weight, number and measure46. Pope traces the world’s harmony to the union and consent of things47. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar breaks decisively with the Stoic picture. The universe, he argues, is inanimate matter moving under constant laws, not a self-moving animal, and must therefore receive its motion from outside48. Its parts fit one another like a watch, even though its purpose escapes us49. He finds one design there whether matter is eternal or created50. Helmholtz speaks a still more austere language, in which the universe has a fixed store of force that only changes form and place51. What was once soul has become law and energy.
The doctrine of creation enters with Scripture. In Job, God recounts laying the earth’s foundations and setting bounds for the sea52, yet all this order is the mere outskirts of his ways53. The Psalms praise heavens made by God’s word, which “stood fast” at his command54. They praise an earth founded immovably and waters bounded, all made in wisdom55,56,57,58. Paul at Athens proclaims the God who made the world and all things in it59. The Koran sets night for rest and heaven as a building60, and the singer in Beowulf tells how the Almighty set sun and moon and adorned the earth with life61. Augustine hears earth, sea and sky confess that they are made and not divine, against Anaximenes’ identification of air with God62. Milton is the fullest narrator. Adam asks how, when, whereof and why heaven and earth were made63, and Raphael answers with the six days64,65,66,67. Uriel recalls the formless mass ordered into the seat of Man68, and the early poems hang the well-balanced world on hinges69,70. Smart catalogues spheres, beasts and gems71. Dryden makes creation spring from harmony72, and Emerson turns it into an egg of stone set throbbing by God’s word73.
Whether God made the world from nothing or from chaos divides even the faithful. Raleigh holds that the world’s matter was itself created from nothing74. Dante has form, matter and their union issue in one act, like three darts from a bow75, and he distinguishes what God creates directly from what arises through secondary created powers76. Milton, by contrast, has the Son circumscribe the universe with golden compasses out of the formless matter of Chaos77. In Milton’s poem Chaos still holds dark materials for more worlds78 and reigned before this world existed79. A modern hymn likewise sings creation from darkness at God’s word80. Descartes, wary of disputes with the learned, proposes describing an imagined world made from chaotic matter obeying God’s laws81. He adds that the nature of things is better conceived as coming into being gradually than as made finished at once82. Darwin later sets separate creation against the graduated linkage of beings83. Others confess that creation is hard to conceive. Browne thinks it is as easy for God to make the world as to make one creature84. Rousseau believes God formed the universe in perfect order but cannot conceive how something comes from nothing85. Long allows creation a real sense only as the first in the order of phenomena86.
Berkeley gives the doctrine its most original turn. Hylas objects that Moses describes the creation of solid corporeal things87. Philonous replies that he affirms the creation of sun, stars, plants and animals as real things88,89. Creation, on his account, is their becoming perceptible to created minds in the scriptural order90,91, perhaps first to spirits other than man92. He distinguishes a creation of ectypes in time from an archetypal existence eternal in God’s mind93. Berkeley then turns the charge back on his opponents: it is materialism, he argues, that makes creation from nothing seem absurd94.
The rival thesis that the world is eternal is fought most directly by Raleigh. He argues against Epicurean and Aristotelian views95, against a world made by chance or necessity96, and against the maxim that nothing comes from nothing97. He answers the apparent incorruptibility of the heavens98 and contends that if the world were eternal, all things would be99. Browne doubts Aristotle’s eternal world100 and holds that its oneness is a matter of faith, which Aristotle failed to prove and Moses settled101. Hume closes the question from another side, judging that speculation on the origin of worlds from and to eternity exceeds human faculties102. Long notes that Marcus Aurelius simply assumes a beginning of things as now known41.
The world also has a geography beyond what we see. Plato’s Socrates teaches that we dwell in a hollow and mistake air for heaven103. Above us, he says, lies a true earth of brighter colours and longer-lived inhabitants104. Below run passages, rivers of water and fire, and the great chasm of Tartarus105,106, fed by four great rivers107. Dante’s Virgil explains the round of Hell and its rivers108, and Dante traces Hell’s formation and Purgatory’s mountain to Lucifer’s fall109. Beyond this world lie possible others. Milton’s Satan views the whole world at once among innumerable stars110. Raphael allows that each star may be a habitable world111, since vast room in nature would otherwise lie desolate112. Browne recalls Anaxagoras’ many worlds113, and Pascal sees a world with its own firmament in every atom114. The Buddhist writings speak naturally of ten thousand worlds that quake and bloom at the Buddha’s conception and enlightenment115,116,117. Donne leaves new worlds to explorers, since lovers possess a world in each other118.
On the world’s end, Christian and Eastern texts diverge. Raleigh’s world began and will persist renewed as a new heaven and earth119. Browne thinks the world nears its end without decay, and ends by mutation rather than annihilation, which belongs to God alone120. Even its burning, he holds, is no annihilation121. Milton foresees a new heaven and earth springing from the ashes122, as does Pascal123, who also holds that the world subsists only to train the elect and will be destroyed124. Dryden’s trumpet unties the sky72, while Byron imagines an end with no renewal, in which Darkness becomes the universe125,126. The Gita knows no single end. The Lord makes and unmakes the universe, which hangs on him like pearls on a string127, and worlds are emitted and withdrawn at each dawn and night of Brahma128,129. Marcus Aurelius has parts taken back into reason by fire or periodic renewal130, the world kept ever new by transformation131. A Buddhist text treats the world’s arising and ceasing as a contemplation that frees from belief in being or non-being132.
Finally, these authors disagree about what the world is worth. The Thousand and One Nights warns that the world is a flatterer and cheat, like a mirage133,134. Dante sees the earth from the heavens as petty135, and Montaigne makes the universe a book against which one’s kingdom is a point136. Descartes chooses to be a spectator in the world’s theatre137. Browne calls the world a hospital, not an inn138. Pascal holds that it exists for Christ, for mercy and judgment139,140, and is to be renounced141. Woolman would mortify the worldly part in man142, and Goethe’s monkeys sing of a brittle, hollow globe143. Dryden’s Antony, in another key, dismisses the world as a gewgaw beside Cleopatra144. Against all this, Carlyle insists that the world is no prison-house but holds eternal sky and harvests145. Andersen’s tales gently mock those who mistake their own yard for the world146,147. Several questions remain open across these books: whether the world is a living whole or a machine, made or eternal, single or many, to be scorned or embraced. Hume’s warning that such questions may exceed our faculties102 stands beside Marcus Aurelius’s conviction that we cannot know ourselves without answering them1.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Astronomy and Cosmology 1b · God 5a · Religion 6b
See also: Matter 5c · Theology 3e
See also: Religion 14d
See also: God, Eternity, Astronomy and Cosmology, Element, Nature, Angel