ends vs. means

• insight enables discrimination between ends and means

16:7.4As a re­sult of ex­pe­ri­ence an an­i­mal be­comes able to ex­am­ine the dif­fer­ent ways of at­tain­ing a goal and to se­lect an ap­proach based on ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence. But a per­son­al­ity can also ex­am­ine the goal it­self and pass judg­ment on its worth-while­ness, its value. In­tel­li­gence alone can dis­crim­i­nate as to the best means of at­tain­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate ends, but a moral be­ing pos­sesses an in­sight which en­ables him to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween ends as well as be­tween means. And a moral be­ing in choos­ing virtue is nonethe­less in­tel­li­gent. He knows what he is do­ing, why he is do­ing it, where he is go­ing, and how he will get there.

16:7.5When man fails to dis­crim­i­nate the ends of his mor­tal striv­ing, he finds him­self func­tion­ing on the an­i­mal level of ex­is­tence. He has failed to avail him­self of the su­pe­rior ad­van­tages of that ma­te­rial acu­men, moral dis­crim­i­na­tion, and spir­i­tual in­sight which are an in­te­gral part of his cos­mic-mind en­dow­ment as a per­sonal be­ing.

16:7.6Virtue is righ­teous­ness—con­for­mity with the cos­mos. To name virtues is not to de­fine them, but to live them is to know them. Virtue is not mere knowl­edge nor yet wis­dom but rather the re­al­ity of pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the at­tain­ment of as­cend­ing lev­els of cos­mic achieve­ment. In the day-by-day life of mor­tal man, virtue is re­al­ized by the con­sis­tent choos­ing of good rather than evil, and such choos­ing abil­ity is ev­i­dence of the pos­ses­sion of a moral na­ture.

16:7.7Man’s choos­ing be­tween good and evil is in­flu­enced, not only by the keen­ness of his moral na­ture, but also by such in­flu­ences as ig­no­rance, im­ma­tu­rity, and delu­sion. A sense of pro­por­tion is also con­cerned in the ex­er­cise of virtue be­cause evil may be per­pe­trated when the lesser is cho­sen in the place of the greater as a re­sult of dis­tor­tion or de­cep­tion. The art of rel­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion or com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment en­ters into the prac­tice of the virtues of the moral realm.

16:7.8Man’s moral na­ture would be im­po­tent with­out the art of mea­sure­ment, the dis­crim­i­na­tion em­bod­ied in his abil­ity to scru­ti­nize mean­ings. Like­wise would moral choos­ing be fu­tile with­out that cos­mic in­sight which yields the con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual val­ues. From the stand­point of in­tel­li­gence, man as­cends to the level of a moral be­ing be­cause he is en­dowed with per­son­al­ity.

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

16:7.10Moral acts are those hu­man per­for­mances which are char­ac­ter­ized by the high­est in­tel­li­gence, di­rected by se­lec­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion in the choice of su­pe­rior ends as well as in the se­lec­tion of moral means to at­tain these ends. Such con­duct is vir­tu­ous. Su­preme virtue, then, is whole­heart­edly to choose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• work is less important than way it is done

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

• everything nonspiritual in human experience, excepting personality, is a means
• true relationships are ends in themselves

112:2.8All mor­tal con­cepts of re­al­ity are based on the as­sump­tion of the ac­tu­al­ity of hu­man per­son­al­ity; all con­cepts of super­hu­man re­al­i­ties are based on the ex­pe­ri­ence of the hu­man per­son­al­ity with and in the cos­mic re­al­i­ties of cer­tain as­so­ci­ated spir­i­tual en­ti­ties and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties. Ev­ery­thing non­spir­i­tual in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­cept­ing per­son­al­ity, is a means to an end. Ev­ery true re­la­tion­ship of mor­tal man with other per­sons—hu­man or di­vine—is an end in it­self. And such fel­low­ship with the per­son­al­ity of De­ity is the eter­nal goal of uni­verse as­cen­sion.

• everything nonspiritual in human experience, excepting personality, is a means

112:5.22The Thought Ad­juster will re­call and re­hearse for you only those mem­o­ries and ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of, and es­sen­tial to, your uni­verse ca­reer. If the Ad­juster has been a part­ner in the evo­lu­tion of aught in the hu­man mind, then will these worth-while ex­pe­ri­ences sur­vive in the eter­nal con­scious­ness of the Ad­juster. But much of your past life and its mem­o­ries, hav­ing nei­ther spir­i­tual mean­ing nor mor­ontia value, will per­ish with the ma­te­rial brain; much of ma­te­rial ex­pe­ri­ence will pass away as one­time scaf­fold­ing which, hav­ing bridged you over to the mor­ontia level, no longer serves a pur­pose in the uni­verse. But per­son­al­ity and the re­la­tion­ships be­tween per­son­al­i­ties are never scaf­fold­ing; mor­tal mem­ory of per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ships has cos­mic value and will per­sist. On the man­sion worlds you will know and be known, and more, you will re­mem­ber, and be re­mem­bered by, your one­time as­so­ciates in the short but in­trigu­ing life on Uran­tia.

• Jesus would not serve evil that worship of God might presumably derive therefrom

136:9.3You can hardly imag­ine what would have hap­pened on Uran­tia had this God-man, now in po­ten­tial pos­ses­sion of all power in heaven and on earth, once de­cided to un­furl the ban­ner of sov­er­eignty, to mar­shal his won­der-work­ing bat­tal­ions in mil­i­tant ar­ray! But he would not com­pro­mise. He would not serve evil that the wor­ship of God might pre­sum­ably be de­rived there­from. He would abide by the Fa­ther’s will. He would pro­claim to an on­look­ing uni­verse, “You shall wor­ship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

• Jesus never resorted to ignoble tactics

149:4.5It was not so much what Je­sus taught about the bal­anced char­ac­ter that im­pressed his as­so­ciates as the fact that his own life was such an elo­quent ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of his teach­ing. He lived in the midst of stress and storm, but he never wa­vered. His en­e­mies con­tin­u­ally laid snares for him, but they never en­trapped him. The wise and learned en­deav­ored to trip him, but he did not stum­ble. They sought to em­broil him in de­bate, but his an­swers were al­ways en­light­en­ing, dig­ni­fied, and fi­nal. When he was in­ter­rupted in his dis­courses with mul­ti­tudi­nous ques­tions, his an­swers were al­ways sig­nif­i­cant and con­clu­sive. Never did he re­sort to ig­no­ble tac­tics in meet­ing the con­tin­u­ous pres­sure of his en­e­mies, who did not hes­i­tate to em­ploy ev­ery sort of false, un­fair, and un­righ­teous mode of at­tack upon him.

• insight enables discrimination between ends and means

160:4.11Abil­ity is that which you in­herit, while skill is what you ac­quire. Life is not real to one who can­not do some one thing well, ex­pertly. Skill is one of the real sources of the sat­is­fac­tion of liv­ing. Abil­ity im­plies the gift of fore­sight, farsee­ing vi­sion. Be not de­ceived by the tempt­ing re­wards of dis­hon­est achieve­ment; be will­ing to toil for the later re­turns in­her­ent in hon­est en­deavor. The wise man is able to dis­tin­guish be­tween means and ends; oth­er­wise, some­times over­plan­ning for the fu­ture de­feats its own high pur­pose. As a plea­sure seeker you should aim al­ways to be a pro­ducer as well as a con­sumer.

• Jesus never resorted to ignoble tactics

173:2.7In em­ploy­ing this method of deal­ing with his ad­ver­saries, Je­sus did not mean to dodge the ques­tion. At first it may seem that he was guilty of a mas­terly eva­sion, but it was not so. Je­sus was never dis­posed to take un­fair ad­van­tage of even his en­e­mies. In this ap­par­ent eva­sion he re­ally sup­plied all his hear­ers with the an­swer to the Phar­isees’ ques­tion as to the au­thor­ity be­hind his mis­sion. They had as­serted that he per­formed by au­thor­ity of the prince of dev­ils. Je­sus had re­peat­edly as­serted that all his teach­ing and works were by the power and au­thor­ity of his Fa­ther in heaven. This the Jew­ish lead­ers re­fused to ac­cept and were seek­ing to cor­ner him into ad­mit­ting that he was an ir­reg­u­lar teacher since he had never been sanc­tioned by the San­hedrin. In an­swer­ing them as he did, while not claim­ing au­thor­ity from John, he so sat­is­fied the peo­ple with the in­fer­ence that the ef­fort of his en­e­mies to en­snare him was ef­fec­tively turned upon them­selves and was much to their dis­credit in the eyes of all pres­ent.