“Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling.”
–Thomas Hardy, in The Woodlanders
The initial capitals of Hardy’s “Unfulfilled Intention” suggest that it is God’s intention that is unfulfilled, but Nicolas of Cusa says that only creatures have, seemingly, unfulfilled intentions, because “each loves by preference that perfection which God has given it and strives to develop and preserve it intact.” This purpose is only seemingly unfulfilled due to wasted talents, errors, injuries, and deaths, because
“Only in a finite fashion is the infinite form received. Every creature is, as it were, ‘God-created’ or ‘finite-infinity’, with the result that no creature’s existence could be better than it is. It is as if the Creator had said ‘Let it be produced’, and, because God, who is eternity itself, could not be brought into being, that was made which could most resemble God. The inference from this is that every creature, as such, is perfect, though by comparison with others it may seem imperfect.” [Here follows the favorite passage I quoted at the front of Dreams and Resurrection.]
–Nicolas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, The Second Book, Chapter II
Thus, Hardy’s “depraved crowds of a city slum” seem imperfect, exemplifying an unfulfilled intention, compared to one’s family and friends who are more prosperous and cultured, but they bear no less a resemblance to God, and each of them, as such, is perfect. The deformed leaf, with its crippled curve and interrupted taper, seems imperfect, and an example of an unfulfilled intention, compared to more well-formed leaves; and we can imagine the deformed leaf wishing to be a well-formed one; but if Nicolas is right, it, like every other creature, “rests content in its own perfection, which God has freely bestowed upon it.” Nicolas says that every creature “loves by preference that perfection which God has given it and strives to develop and preserve it intact.” Then, when, for whatever reason, a stalk grows less vigorously than others, it would be wrong if it were jealous and compared itself to a stalk on a nearby tree that is lichen-free, because its perfection consists in its striving to grow in its own circumstances. And similarly with the promising sapling strangled by the ivy.
And similarly with us in our finitude, our frustrations, sicknesses, and mortality. These constitute the perfection that God has given us, even though they may seem to be imperfections in comparison to someone else’s circumstances. We are right to love the perfection God has given each of us, and right to strive to develop and preserve it intact. I can compare myself with someone else who seems more perfect in some way than me. But I shouldn’t be jealous, because I could exchange my perfections, which seem by comparison to be imperfections, for those of someone who seems more perfect, only if I could cease to be me and become somehow that other person, and he me. But in that case, nothing would really be any different. We are each of us, in some way we can’t understand, images of the unique infinite form. That is what I take, so far, from my reading of Nicolas of Cusa’s Of Learned Ignorance.
PS
See “Kurt Gödel’s Argument for an Afterlife” to see how he used the idea of unfulfilled intention in this world as a premise of his reasoning to the conclusion that there is another world where the intention is fulfilled.
https://myiapc.com/kurt-godels-argument-for-an-afterlife/