Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 29
Avatars of the Third Other
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Religious expressions of the "absolute Other" stage in American
consciousness are so pervasive that they are often found in unlikely
places~in the writings of a skeptic like Thontas Paine, for instance,
who, while reviling Christian custom, nonetheless pays tribute to the
sovereign creator:
The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles
of science in the structure of the universe, has invited
man to study and to imitation. It is as if He had said
to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I
have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I
have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach
him science and the arts." (qtd. in Baym et al. 606).
Paine's contemporary, Phillis Wheatley, an important black
writer, would have been shocked by Paine’s anticlerical sentiments,
but she shared Paine's sense of an absolute Other governing the
cosmos:
O'er beings infinite His love extends.
His wisdom rules them, and His power defends.
When tasks diverse tire from human frame.
The spirits faint, and dim the vital flame.
Then too that ever active bounty shines.
Which not infinity of space confines.
(qtd. in Baym et al 674).
Finally, in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, bom half a century
before Wheatley, the complementary consciousness of Other-in
nature and Other-in-God, respectively, come together:
God's excellency. His wisdom. His purity and love,
seemed to app>ear in everything: in the sun, moon and
stars; in the clouds, and blue skies, in the grass,
flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which
used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and
view the moon for a long time, and so in the daytime
spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky to