Author: David Saville MuzzeyPublisher:
ISBN: 9781330455982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 116
Book Description
Excerpt from The Spiritual Franciscans When an idea finds acceptance in the world, it clothes itself in forms available for it and adapted to it. Socialization means institutionalization. For if an idea is to have growth, it must adopt propagandism; and propagandism implies the equipment of missionaries, the establishment of posts and stations, the instruction of neophytes, the control of agents, the commission of tribunals - in a single word, organization. To a majority of converts to any religious ideal this course of development seems normal and desirable, the index of the triumph of the ideal among men. But a minority have always deplored such adaptation and institutionalization as a weak compromise with the world, or even as a treasonable surrender of the pure ideal to those very powers of evil for whose destruction it was conceived. Moreover, the zealous minority, bound into a closer solidarity by the very fact of their minority, their puritanism heightened by persecution, have quite commonly developed the pathological traits consequent upon the conviction of persecuted innocence and impotent fidelity. They have appealed from the world to heaven, from time to eternity, from man to God. Their language has ceased to be a medium of human commerce, and has become an instrument of supernatural oracles. Their refuge has been in retreat, absorption, mysticism, prophecy, ecstasy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
