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Will DurantWill Durant
On the Meaning of Life Paperback – 15 March 2005
by Will Durant (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 254
In the Fall of 1930 Will Durant found himself outside his home in Lake Hill, New York, raking leaves. He was approached by a well-dressed man who told him in a quiet tone that he was going to kill himself unless the philosopher could give him a valid reason not to. Not having the time to wax philosophic on the matter, Durant did his best to furnish the man with reasons to continue his existence. Haunted by the encounter with the despondent stranger, Durant contacted 100 luminaries in the arts, politics, religion and sciences, challenging them to respond not only to the fundamental question of life's meaning (in the abstract) but also to relate how they each (in the particular) found meaning, purpose and fulfillment in their own lives. Durant turned their answers and his own into a book entitled "On The Meaning Of Life", which was released to the general public in 1932.
Unpromoted, the litte treasure found its way into few hands, and almost no copies of the book exist today. Now available for a new generation through Promethean Press, "On The Meaning Of Life" is a powerful book on a very powerful topic. In this book Will Durant has fashioned an unprecedented "dream team" of luminaries that is both profound and diverse: poets, philosophers, saints, inmates, athletes, Nobel Prize winners, college professors, psychologists, entertainers, musicians, authors and leaders. Within their varied insights, despite their uniqueness as individuals and the very different lives they led, the reader will note a consistent thread running through their viewpoints, revealing a commonality among human beings who not only seek meaning in life, but who actually achieve it.
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From other countries
Amogh B
Good Book
Reviewed in India on 5 September 2018Must read to understand the mystery and simplicity of life
Bruce Watson
A forgotten gem
Reviewed in the United States on 22 April 2021Though somewhat dated, with answers from people we no longer know, Will Durant’s probing questions about life’s meaning still resonate today. Worth reading for its gems, both surprising wisdom where it is not expected — a tennis player, a convict, a movie producer — and from the wisest of the wise in his time.
DC
Interesting
Reviewed in Brazil on 1 September 2019A very interesting book. Although it's not a very fluid read.
The author writes in the 1930s. He sent letters to great personalities of the time, asking what the meaning of life was in their view. The book presents the responses of dozens of people. The reading gets a little dragging, because it's a lot of letters, but then it starts to get interesting and curious as you realize that none of them have the slightest idea of what the meaning of life is.
The author presents his vision at the end, which is interesting and in line with Viktor Frankl's ideas (in search of meaning) despite Frankl writing only 15 years after this book.
The author then states that he wrote the letters because he received many letters from people who were thinking about committing suicide and he wanted to provide better answers to these people.
Despite the author's atheism, it is a very interesting work, which leads us to reflect.
The author writes in the 1930s. He sent letters to great personalities of the time, asking what the meaning of life was in their view. The book presents the responses of dozens of people. The reading gets a little dragging, because it's a lot of letters, but then it starts to get interesting and curious as you realize that none of them have the slightest idea of what the meaning of life is.
The author presents his vision at the end, which is interesting and in line with Viktor Frankl's ideas (in search of meaning) despite Frankl writing only 15 years after this book.
The author then states that he wrote the letters because he received many letters from people who were thinking about committing suicide and he wanted to provide better answers to these people.
Despite the author's atheism, it is a very interesting work, which leads us to reflect.
SciFyFan
Thoughtful letters and considerations on the meaning and worth of life.
Reviewed in Canada on 24 December 2021I have read a lot of Will Durant's work (all of his 11 volume Story of Civilization), and this small book ranks among his very best.
Darren Scholes
Insightful and thought provoking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 January 2021Very good book explaining the views of some of the most brilliant people in humanity on their interpretation of the true meaning of life
Pedro Junqueira
Must read
Reviewed in the United States on 5 December 2015This book is a must read. I like the author open mind and humility to ask to great and famous people of his time on the meaning of life.
There no pretentiousness to answer the question that for me has no answer or no provable and irrefutable answer, however the book offers enough perspectives of multiple answer of the question to allow one to reach its own "conclusion". For me it gave me a sense of relief to some extent and granted me a higher sense of purpose to continue living a happier and more purposeful life.
I highly recommend for those that have an open mind.
There no pretentiousness to answer the question that for me has no answer or no provable and irrefutable answer, however the book offers enough perspectives of multiple answer of the question to allow one to reach its own "conclusion". For me it gave me a sense of relief to some extent and granted me a higher sense of purpose to continue living a happier and more purposeful life.
I highly recommend for those that have an open mind.
7 people found this helpful
Valentin Peretroukhin
Fantastic collection of letters
Reviewed in Canada on 5 July 2019Immensely enjoyed the diverse collection of responses to Will Durant’s provocative letter condemning modernity (which, in its own right, is a dazzling missive - as expected from Durant). To his great credit, there is almost no particular point that has aged poorly (save for the bumbling commentary on the lack of female responses) and the discussion is as relevant in 2019 as I’m sure it felt when he composed the letter in 1930.
One person found this helpful
The Rebecca Review
Letters and Ideas about What Makes Life Meaningful – Two Basic Opinions!
Reviewed in the United States on 8 July 2021Over 30,000 people commit suicide every year in the United States alone. Many people have suffered psychologically until they can take no more and others just find no reason to live any longer in a troubled world. What makes a person want to keep living? Is it simply a will to live or have most people found meaning in their existence despite the suffering and trials of life?
This book is the result of a letter sent out to 100 or so individuals, asking them to explain life's meaning and how they found meaning on a personal level. Why does hope and faith disappear for some leaving them skeptical, while others embrace belief in God and find comfort?
Will Durant seems to have been a little disillusioned himself when writing this book. The way he views humanity through a mostly negative lens is very telling. As he asks – Can men bear to live without God?
Don't believe everything you read in this book, especially the letter by H.L. Mencken. God is far from preposterous once you get to know him and Christianity is filled with beautiful realities of sacrificing for love. John Erskine seemed more logical and says that spiritual life is as natural as our physical life.
The letters I enjoyed most in this book were the ones by Ernest M. Hopkins who mentions that Jesus came to earth to give life more abundantly and John Haynes Holmes who explains in his letter that we are co creators with God. Ernest Dimnet's letter is beyond thoughtful and really speaks the truth as he takes the author to task!
Some of the women's letters show a deep understanding of what life is really about and they mention love and beauty as guiding principles in their lives.
The crowning moment in this book is when Will Durant states that we should stop complaining about each other in the world and begin to root out the evil in our own hearts. This is great advice because humans are really on a journey to spiritual perfection – in Christianity it is called sanctification. But how can we follow this advice without a belief in God and God's help?
Will Durant however thinks it is ridiculous that God should be anything like a man, but if he had read the Bible properly and carefully he would have seen that man was created in the image of God and not the other way around! But he did believe in God and truly saw the reality of the human condition. However he failed to emphasize all the good people have done, all the charitable organization and hospitals and churches teaching people how to love God and their neighbors. So overall, this book is pessimistic and does not present much of the good in the world. For that you will have to read another book!
So what does this book say is the meaning of life? Really there are two opinions. One shuns religion, the other embraces it. My own opinion is that life is about learning to love God and our fellow humans. The goal is to feel unconditional love as God does. Most who come back from the dead agree with this totally. Jesus told us these things in ancient days and they are still true. Jesus said the truth will set you free. A relationship with Jesus is what brings true happiness. This book discusses that very briefly but it is well worth researching further.
A book to read along with this one is DONE by Cary Schmidt. It will give you peace and the hope of heaven.
Also, this book was written in the 30s and today there is a lot of solutions for those who are depressed and suicidal as there are medications which can really help brain chemistry. There are also Christian psychologists who can really assist a person through talk therapy and biblical wisdom.
I would say this book is interesting in order to see two opinions on what makes life meaningful or not. I read it to gain an understanding of what real people think in the real world. I hope the author made his way back to his faith in the end. I hope the people who wrote the skeptical letters also found Jesus in the end. Because that is all that will matter in eternity.
~The Rebecca Review
This book is the result of a letter sent out to 100 or so individuals, asking them to explain life's meaning and how they found meaning on a personal level. Why does hope and faith disappear for some leaving them skeptical, while others embrace belief in God and find comfort?
Will Durant seems to have been a little disillusioned himself when writing this book. The way he views humanity through a mostly negative lens is very telling. As he asks – Can men bear to live without God?
Don't believe everything you read in this book, especially the letter by H.L. Mencken. God is far from preposterous once you get to know him and Christianity is filled with beautiful realities of sacrificing for love. John Erskine seemed more logical and says that spiritual life is as natural as our physical life.
The letters I enjoyed most in this book were the ones by Ernest M. Hopkins who mentions that Jesus came to earth to give life more abundantly and John Haynes Holmes who explains in his letter that we are co creators with God. Ernest Dimnet's letter is beyond thoughtful and really speaks the truth as he takes the author to task!
Some of the women's letters show a deep understanding of what life is really about and they mention love and beauty as guiding principles in their lives.
The crowning moment in this book is when Will Durant states that we should stop complaining about each other in the world and begin to root out the evil in our own hearts. This is great advice because humans are really on a journey to spiritual perfection – in Christianity it is called sanctification. But how can we follow this advice without a belief in God and God's help?
Will Durant however thinks it is ridiculous that God should be anything like a man, but if he had read the Bible properly and carefully he would have seen that man was created in the image of God and not the other way around! But he did believe in God and truly saw the reality of the human condition. However he failed to emphasize all the good people have done, all the charitable organization and hospitals and churches teaching people how to love God and their neighbors. So overall, this book is pessimistic and does not present much of the good in the world. For that you will have to read another book!
So what does this book say is the meaning of life? Really there are two opinions. One shuns religion, the other embraces it. My own opinion is that life is about learning to love God and our fellow humans. The goal is to feel unconditional love as God does. Most who come back from the dead agree with this totally. Jesus told us these things in ancient days and they are still true. Jesus said the truth will set you free. A relationship with Jesus is what brings true happiness. This book discusses that very briefly but it is well worth researching further.
A book to read along with this one is DONE by Cary Schmidt. It will give you peace and the hope of heaven.
Also, this book was written in the 30s and today there is a lot of solutions for those who are depressed and suicidal as there are medications which can really help brain chemistry. There are also Christian psychologists who can really assist a person through talk therapy and biblical wisdom.
I would say this book is interesting in order to see two opinions on what makes life meaningful or not. I read it to gain an understanding of what real people think in the real world. I hope the author made his way back to his faith in the end. I hope the people who wrote the skeptical letters also found Jesus in the end. Because that is all that will matter in eternity.
~The Rebecca Review
3 people found this helpful
From other countries
Rudy Krueger
Though it may be the best of all reflections I have read on life... and I think it is, there are many and that could be the best of all discoveries in them. The more chaotic and absurd our experiences the harder we seem.to try to rediscover good sense. The Trump era causes us to seek evidence that we remain essentially worthwhile.
Reviewed in Canada on 17 May 2018If only we could cause a groundswell of youthful interest in this and other legacies we would recover peace and purpose.
hx
not what I expected
Reviewed in the United States on 6 September 2013This is a good book, with very interesting insights provided by very different people about their views on the meaning of life. Some of the ideas presented are wise ones, however the author's own idea what somewhat dissapointing. Still, I would recommend it to anyone interested in this subject.
4 people found this helpful
William McKee
on the Meaning of Life
Reviewed in the United States on 14 January 2022Will Durant wrote this book about 90 years ago. It is timely now, as it was then. While there is no clear answer to the eternal question, Durant gives the reader much to ponder in both a philosophical and practical way. Nice reading in those moments of solitude in the cold early hours of winter.
2 people found this helpful
Louis Quetel
Profound, interesting, existential and smart!
Reviewed in the United States on 23 December 2013This book is powerful! It is an examination of why we face up to life when absolute despair prompts us to suicide.
It questions what is ultimately meaningful about human existence. This is a sober work without cliches and stock answers.
Will Durant was one of the great writes of the last century. This work is an essay by him and comments by some of the worlds great thinkers, artists and politicians on his question: what makes life meaningful when death, illness, and the loss of faith crush all hope?
This is an elegant work that is provocative and deeply moving.
If you like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Melville you will groove on this book!
It questions what is ultimately meaningful about human existence. This is a sober work without cliches and stock answers.
Will Durant was one of the great writes of the last century. This work is an essay by him and comments by some of the worlds great thinkers, artists and politicians on his question: what makes life meaningful when death, illness, and the loss of faith crush all hope?
This is an elegant work that is provocative and deeply moving.
If you like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Melville you will groove on this book!
7 people found this helpful
Nick
Fascinating questions answered eloquently
Reviewed in the United States on 7 February 2019The author might have said, “Let’s do everything we can to help humanity understand itself, by reading, interpreting and explaining history, philosophy, religion and their enemies. And when we’re done we’ll ask some “smart” folks what they find makes their lives meaningful and print their answers. Reading them will instruct and enlighten people. Then at the end I’ll put down what gives my life meaning, in the most beautiful prose I can compose. What do you think of that idea, Ariel?”
One person found this helpful
Ben Franklin
Sadly disappointing
Reviewed in the United States on 13 February 2024A book titled "On the meaning of Life" by a noted philosopher and author should deliver on its promise. I've read the entire History of Civilization thusly not unfamiliar with Mr Durant. We are told he wrote to 100 reasonably well known folks (or is it 101 with the convict serving life?). Responses from about a quater of that number are included. We are left to ponder what happened with the others, with the exception of a terse note that several then currently in public office declined. Some of the respondents are reasonably well-known even 90 years later. Many are not. There are several thoughtful lengthy and brief responses. Far too few. I think. As to the missing 70 plus percent, who were they? There aren't any former office holders nor any current or former military people. Surely coming after WWI some could have made meaningful contributions. There's one clergyman in addition to Ghandi. Not sure where to place him. Did others decline or did none make it to Durant's mailing list? There's not enough heft here to justify even a thin volume.
Connor Kirkwood
The wisdom of man is foolishness to God.
Reviewed in the United States on 28 August 2017A most articulate defense of the God is dead movement, not as rich as Ecclesiastes but extremely enlightening if not entertaining. A CAT-scan on the humanist mind and a roadmap of his blind spots, the only hope which is offered is to make yourself so busy in futile work and "itching" that you blunt the conclusions of Camus and Sartre which haunt the intellectual. To live in Durant's world is to empty one's self of the truth which has demonstrated in every field that life is meaningless.
2 people found this helpful
Jesse Wormington
Many perspectives, all walks of life considered
Reviewed in the United States on 2 July 2018This book is a collection of responses to a question the author sent out to all the influential people of his age. Ghandi even responded in this book. The author asks what they think the meaning of life is and where, in their darkest moment, does their treasure lie. Really beautiful. I'd say it gives a correct analysis to the "meaning of life." Worth the read!
2 people found this helpful
==
Reason and Meaning
Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life
Will Durant on the Meaning of Life (A Second Look)
March 28, 2015Durant - Will
In his book On the Meaning of Life
(1932) Will Durant argued that we cannot answer the question of the meaning of life in any absolute sense, for our minds are too small to comprehend things in their entirety. Still he believed we can say a few things about terrestrial meaning. Here are excerpts from a great thinker and wonderful prose stylist:
The meaning of life, then, must lie within itself … it must be sought in life’s own instinctive cravings and natural fulfillments. Why, for example, should we ask for an ulterior meaning to vitality and health? … If you are sick beyond cure I will grant you viaticum, and let you die … But if you are well—if you can stand on your legs and digest your food—forget your whining, and shout your gratitude to the sun.
The simplest meaning of life then is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use … Even if life had no meaning except for its moments of beauty … that would be enough; this plodding thru the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the snow under sun, or watching the twilight turn into night, is reason a-plenty for loving life.[i]
We should be thankful for our loved ones:
Do not be so ungrateful about love … to the attachment of friends and mates who have gone hand in hand through much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and have been soldered into unity by being burned together in the flame of life. I know such mates or comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.[ii]
Love relates the individual to something more than itself, to a whole which gives it purpose.
I note that those who are cooperating parts of a whole do not despond; the despised “yokel” playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game of life and degenerate through the separation … If we think of ourselves as part of a living … group, we shall find life a little fuller … For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger and more enduring than one’s self.
If … a thing has significance only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then, though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in the particular that its meaning lies in its relation to something larger than itself … ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the meaning of life?” and he will answer you very simply: “Feeding our family.”[iii]
Durant too finds meaning in love, connection, and activity. “The secret of significance and content is to have a task which consumes all one’s energies, and makes human life a little richer than before.”[iv] Durant found the most happiness in his family and his work, in his home and his books. Although no one can be fully happy amidst poverty and suffering, one can be content and grateful finding the meaning in front of them. “Where, in the last resort, does my treasure lie?—in everything.”[v]
_______________________
[i] Durant, On the meaning of life, 124-25.
[ii] Durant, On the meaning of life, 125-26.
[iii] Durant, On the meaning of life, 126-28.
[iv] Durant, On the meaning of life, 129.
[v] Durant, On the meaning of life, 130.
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=====
Full text of "On The Meaning Of Life"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TAOZ
CHAPTER I. AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
I. The Problem ! . . . . 3
II. Religion 7
III. Science 8
IV. History 14
V. Utopia 1*7
VI. The Suicide of the Intellect 20
VII. Finis
CHAPTER II. SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON
THE MEANING OF LIFE
I. Men of Letters . . .
I* Theodore Dreiser
2. H. L. Mencken . . ,
3. Sinclair Lewis . . .
4. John Erskine. . . .
5. Charles A. Beard
6. John Cowper Powys
7. Edwin Arlington Robinson 47
8. Andre Maurois 50
II. From Hollywood to the Ganges ... 58
1. Will Rogers 58
2. Dr. Charles H. Mayo 62
3. Ossip Gabrilowitsch 63
4. Vilhjalmur Stefansson 66
5. Havelock Ellis 68
6. Carl Laemmle 70
7. Ernest M. Hopkins 73
8. Adolph S. Ochs 76
9. Jawaharlal Nehru 78
10. M. K. Gandhi 83
11. John Haynes Holmes 85
12. Ernest Dimnet 88
III. Three Women 94
1. Mary E. Woolley 94
2. Gina Lombroso ^
3. Helen Wills Moody 08
IV. Sceptics and Lazybones 105
1. Bertrand Russell 106
2. Count Hermann Keyserling 106
3. G. B. S 107
CHAPTER in. LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
I. The Popularity of Suicide . . . . . m
II. Concessions to Suicide ii2
III. Mid-Victorian 123
IV. A Personal Confession 128
V. Invitation 133
APPENDIX. A LETTER ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
From Life-Term Convict 79206, Sing Sing
Prison, New York. « ^37
CHAPTER I AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
I. The Problem
I have sent the following letter, with variations, to
certain famous contemporaries here and abroad for,
whose intelligence I have high regard.
Dear
• f
New York,
July IS, /9jr.
Will you interrupt your work for a moment and
^ play the game of philosophy with me?
I am attempting to face a question which our
generation, perhaps more than any, seems always
. ready to ask and never able to answer — ^What is
the meaning or worth of human life? Heretofore
this question has been dealt with chiefly by theorists,
from Ikhnaton and Lao-tse to Bergson and Speng-
ler. The result has been a kind of intellectual
suicide: thought, by its very development, seems to
have destroyed the value and significance of life.
. [3]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
The growth and spread of knowledge, for which
so many idealists and reformers prayed, has re-
sulted in a disillusionment which has almost broken
the spirit of our race.
Astronomers have told us that human affairs con-
stitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star;
geologists have told us that civilization is but a
precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists
have told us that all life is war, a struggle for exist-
ence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances,
and species; historians have told us that “progress”
is a delusion, whose glory ends in inevitable decay;
psychologists have told us that the will and the
self are the helpless instruments of heredity and
environment, and that the once incorruptible soul
is but a transient incandescence of the brain.(The
Industrial Revolution has destroyed the home, and
• the discovery of contraceptives is destroying the
family, the old morality, and perhaps (through the
sterility of the intelligent) the race. Love is analyzed j 1
* into a physical congestion, and marriage becomes ||
a temporary physiological convenience slightly (
superior to promiscuity. Democracy has degenerated
into such corruption as only Milo’s Rome knew; and’ ^ .
our youthful dreams of a socialist Utopia disappear '
[4]
' ' AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
as we see, day after day, the inexhaustible acquisitive-
ness of men. Every invention strengthens the strong
and weakens the weak; every new mechanism -dis-
places men, and multiplies the horrors of war. God, .
who was once the consolation of our brief life, and
our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has ap-
parently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no
microscope discovers him. Life has become, in that
total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pul-
lulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary
eczema that may soon b? cured; nothing is certain ,
in it except defeat and death — ^a sleep from which,
it seems, there is no awakening.
Wc-are driven to xonclude that the greatest mis-
take in human history was the discovery of “truth.”
It has not made us free, except from delusions that
comforted us and restraints that preserved us. Itj
has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful,;
and did not deserve to be so passionately chased.*
As we look on it now, we wonder why we hurried
so to find it. For.|||||||ias taken from us every reason*
for existence except the moment’s pleasure and
tomorrow’s trivial hope.
This is the pass to which sci^^and philosophy
have brought us. XjjdioJiasie-pBd philosophy for
[5]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
many years, now turn back to life itself, and ask
you, as one who has lived as well as thought, to help
me understand. Perhaps the verdict of those who
have lived is different from that of those who have
merely thought. Spare me a moment to tell me
what meaning life has for you, what keeps you
going, what help — ^if any — religion gives you, what
are the sources of your inspiration and your energy,
what is the goal or motive-force of your toil, where
you find your consolations and your happiness,
where, in the last resort, your treasure, lies. Write
briefly if you must; write at length and at leisure ^
if you possibly can; for every word from you will
be precious to me. c- i
^ Sincerely yours.
Will Durant^
V. ^
I would not have this letter taken as expressing very
accurately my own conclusions on the meaning of our
existence; I cannot find it in my nature to be so de-
spondent. But I wished to confront at the outset the
bitterest possibilities, to load the dice against my own
desires, and to put the problem in such a way as to
guard against the superficial optimism with which
men are wont to turn aside the profounder issues of
life.
[ 6 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
And since no one deserves to believe unless he has |
served an apprenticeship of doubt, I propose to state u
at some length the case against the worth and signifi- \\
cance of human affairs. Later we shall consider the
replies which have come to this letter from various
nations and continents; and in the sequel I propose
to answer the question for myself with whatever sin-
cerity a half-century of life has left me in the face of
the greatest of all temptations to lie.
II. Religion
The natural condition of humanity, and even of
philosophers, is hope. Great religions arise and flourish
out of the need men feel to believe in their worth and
destiny; and great civilizations have normally rested
upon these inspiriting religions. Where such a faith,
after supporting men for centuries, begins to weaken,
life narrows down from a spiritual drama to a bio-
logical episode; it sacrifices the dignity conferred by
a destiny endless in time, and shrinks to a strange
interlude between a ridiculous birth and an annihilat-
ing death. Reduced to a microscopic triviality by the
perspective of science, the informed individual loses
belief in himself and his race, and enterprises of great
[ 7 ]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
pith and moment, which once aroused his effort and
admiration, awaken in him only scepticism and scorn.
Faith and hope disappear; doubt and despair are the
order of the day.
This is the essential diagnosis of our time. It is not
merely the War of 1914 that has plunged us into pes-
simism, much less the economic depression of these
recent years; we have to do here with something far
deeper than a temporary diminution of our wealth,
or even the death of 26,000,000 men ; it is not our homes
and our treasuries that are empty, it is our “hearts.”.
It seems impossible any longer to believe in the per-|
j
manent greatness of man, or to give life a meaning that |
cannot be annulled by death. We move into an age of .
spiritual exhaustion and despondency like that whicji/
hungered for the birth of Christ.
III. Science
When the eighteenth century laid the foundations of
the nineteenth, it staked everything upon one idea —
the replacement of theology with science. Given science,
and there would soon be wealth, which would make
men happy; given science, and there would soon be
truth, which would make men free. Universal educa-
[ 8 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
tion would spread the findings of science, liberate
men from superstition, and make them fit for de-
mocracy; a century of such universal schooling,
Bentham predicted, would solve all major problems,
and bring Utopia. “There is no limit to the progress
of mankind,” said Condorcet, “except the duration o^ ^
the globe upon which it is placed.” “The young are j
fortunate,” said Voltaire, “for they will see great i
things.”
They did. They saw the Revolution and the Terror,
Waterloo and ’48, Balaklava and Gettysburg, Sedan
and Mukden, Armageddon and Lenin. They saw the
growth and triumph of the sciences: of biology with
Darwin, of physics with Faraday, of chemistry with
Dalton, of astronomy with Laplace, of medicine with
Pasteur, of mathematics with Einstein. All the hopes of
the Enlightenment were realized : science was free, and
was remaking the world. But while the technicians
were using science to transform the earth, philosophers
were using it to transform the universe. Slowly, as one
science after another reported its findings, a picture was
unfolded of universal struggle and death; and decade
by decade the optimism of the nineteenth century
yielded to the pessimism of today.
[9]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
The astronomers reported that the earth, which had
been the footstool of God and the home of the atoning
Christ, was a minor planet circling about a minor
sun; that it had had its birth in a violent disruption,
and would end in collision and conflagration, leaving
not a shadow of man’s work to tell his tale. The geolo-
gists reported that life was tolerated transiently upon
the earth at the pleasure of ice and heat, at the mercy
of falling lava and failing rain; that oceans and moun-
tains were engaged in a perpetual warfare of encroach-
ment and corrosion, and alternating victory ; that great
continents had been destroyed by earthquakes and
would be again. The paleontologists reported that a
million species of animals had lived on the earth for
a paltry eon or two and had disappeared without leav-
ing anything more than a few bones and imprints in^
the rocks. The biologists reported that- all life lives
at the expense of other life, that big things eat little
things and are eaten in turn; that strong organismsi
use and abuse weak organisms in a hundred thousana
ways forever; that the ability to kill is the ultimate
test of survival; that reproduction is suicide, and that
love is the prelude to replacement and death.
Here, as example and symbol of all life, is my dog
[ 10 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
Wolf, who owes her existence to the olfactory at-
tractiveness of her police-dog mother to her collie
sire. She eats greedily and drinks abstemiously (she
is a teetotaler, and despite the pressure of current
fashions refuses all alcoholic beverages); she chases
whatever we throw, takes the coziest seats in the house,
receives our affection as a matter of course, falls into
a rut, and lures to our porch half a hundred lovers. All
night long our neighbor’s Airedale waits at our door,
and moans like a Troubadour. What but bad poetry is
the difference between this and love ?
Later Lady Wolf, after much commotion, suffering,
and mute inquiries as to the sense and meaning of it
all, litters the house with pups. She suckles them
patiently, protects them growlingly against all danger,
and nearly dies of their simultaneous voracity. At times
she laps up milk from a bowl while her babies tug at
hc^r£asts,-and then the apparently aimless circularity
and repetitiousness of life leaps to the eye. One by
one the pups are given away; Wolf looks for them for
a day, and then forgets them. The final pup exploits
and maltreats her, stealing her food and snapping at
her legs; she permits it all graciously, like any Madonna
with her babe. When this last survivor goes in his
[II]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
turn, Wolf gives no sign of bereavement; she falls
back into her maiden routine, and lives happily until
the love-fever agitates her— and the village— again.
Then she mates, breeds, and the cycle of life comes
full turn once more.
Is not this also the essence of human life ? Take away
the frills, and what greater significance than Wolf’s
has our own merry-go-round of births and deaths?
( Hidden away in the small type of our daily press, under
the captions of “Births,” “Marriages” and “Deaths,” is
the essential history of mankind; everything else is
ornament. Looked at in this canine perspective the
sublime tale of Heloise and Abelard, or the lyric of
Wimpole Street, are but incidents in Nature’s fanatical
resolution to carry on. All this hunting of a man after
a maid, all this anatomical display, this revealing con-
cealment, these luring perfumes, these graceful move-
ments, this stealthy scrutiny, this gynecological wit,
these romances and dramas and films, all this money-
making, tailoring, clothes-brushing, preening, dancing,
singing, tail-spreading, prattling, itching — all are part
of the ritual of reproduction. The ceremony becomes
more complex, but the end is as before: unto them
a little child is born.
[ 12 ]
an a nthology of doubt
Once the child had an immortal soul; now it has
glands. To the physicist it is only a bundle of molecules,
or atoms, or electrons, or protons ; to the physiologist
it is an unstable conjunction of muscles, bones and
nerves; to the physician it is a red mass of illnesses
and pains; to the psychologist it is a helpless mouth-
piece of heredity and environment, a rabble of condi-
tioned reflexes marshaled by hunger and love. Almost
every idea this strange organism will have will be a
delusion, almost every perception will be a prejudice.
It will rear fine theories of free will and immortal life,
and “from hour to hour” it will “rot and rot”; it
will construct great systems of philosophy, in which
the drop of water will explain the sea. The thought will
seldom occur to this “forked radish” called man that
it is just one species among a billion, a passing experi-
ment of Nature, who, as Turgeniev said, entertains no
■ preferences as between men and fleas. Only science
gives us at last the gift which Robert Burns unwisely
begged of the gods—to see ourselves as others see us,
even as other species see us. In the end we perceive that
to the dog we are but irrational praters, making much
noise with the tongue; and that to the mosquito we
are merely meals. Some of us reach the last stage of
[13]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
objectivity, and surrender our final prejudice, the judg-
ment of beauty; we admit that something may be said
for the Zulu’s idolatry of adipose nates, and that a
Martian might conceivably admire, next to the beauty
of collies and mares, the loveliness of woman. Slowly
we cease to be the center and summit of the universe ;
we and our species, in the scientific eye, are trivial
fragments, flying off at a tangent towards destruction.
IV. History
The nineteenth century was the age of history as
well as of science; the hunger for facts turned with a
concerted fury upon the past, dismembered and dis-
sected it, and discovered the rise and fall of nations.
The resultant picture is a panorama of development
and decay; history, as Bacon said, is the planks of a
•shipwreck, and nothing seems certain in it except de-
cadence, degeneration, and death.
A thousand varieties of man — Piltdown, Neander-
thal, Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian,
Cro-magnon, Rhodesian, Pekin man — lived for thou-
sands of years, fought, thought, invented, painted,
carved, made children, and left no more to posterity
than a few flints and scratches, forgotten for millenia
[14]
an anthology of doubt
and found only by the picks and spades of our in-
quisitive day. A thousand civilizations have disappeared
under the ocean or the earth, leaving, like Atlantis,
merely a legend behind; Turkestan, Mohenjo-Daru,
Ur of the Chaldees, Samarkand of Tamerlane, Angkor
of the Khmers, Yucatan of the Mayas, and the Incas’
Peru—these are the mausole a of cultures almost com-
pletely lost. They are among the few which we have
imearthed; calculate, then, the number of dead civiliza-
tions of which history preserves no vestige at all. And
of the pitiful minority that have clung to some place
in human memory — like Babylon and Egypt, Persia
and Crete, Greece and Rome— consider their grandeur
and decadence, and see how-unc ertain a thing history
is, how its greatest names are writ in water, and how
even Shakespeare may become to his countrymen,
within a century of his death, a half-forgotten barbarian
gi^v en to melodr^ati^ fustian and bad puns.
All things, said Aristotle, have been discovered and
forgotten many times over. Pro gre ss, he assures us, is
ajclusion; human affairs are like the sea, which on its,
surface is disturbed into a thousand motions, and!
seems to be headed somewhere, while at its bottom it
is comparatively changeless and still. What we call
[15]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
progress IS, perhaps, mere superficial change, a succes-
sion of fashions in dress, transportation, government,
psychology, religion; Christian Science, behaviorism,
democracy, automobiles, and pants are not progress,
they are change; they are new ways of doing old
things, new errors in the vain attempt to understand
eternal mysteries. Underneath these varying phe-
nomena the essence remains the same; the man who
uses the steam shovel and the electric drill, the tractor
and the tank, the adding-machine and the machine-
gun, the airplane and the bomb, is the same sort of
man as those who used wooden ploughs, flint knives,
log wheels, bows and arrows, knot writing, and
poisoned spear-heads; the tool difllers, the end is the
same; the scale is vaster, the purposes as crude and
selfish, as stupid and contradictory, as murderous and
suicidal, as in prehistoric or ancient days; everything}
has j)rogresj ed^xcept man. ”
All history, then, all the proud record of human
accumulations and discoveries, seems at times to be a
futile circle, a weary tragedy in which Sisyphus man
repeatedly pushes invention and labor up the high hill
of civilization and culture, only to have the precarious
structure again and again topple back into barbarism
[i6]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOVBT
— into coolies, ryots, fellaheen, moujiks and serfs —
through the exhaustion of the soil, or the migrations of
trade, or the vandalism of invaders, or the educated
sterility of the race. So much remains of Condorcet’s
“indefinite perfectibility of mankind.” Indefinite in-
deed.
V. Utopia
All the dogma that in the last one hundred years
gave to earthly life something of the significance which
the hope of heaven brought to medieval man, seems
to have lost countenance in this sceptical century.
“Progress,” “universal education,” “popular sover-
eignty” — who is now so poor in doubt as to do them
reverence? Our schools are like our inventions — they
offer us new ideas, new means of doing old things;
they elevate us from petty larceny to bank wreckages
and Teapot Domes. They stake all on intellect, only
to find that character wins in the end. We taught
people how to read, and they enrich the “tabloids” and
the talkies”; we invented the radio, and they pour
out, a hundred times more abundantly than before, the
music of savages and the prejudices of mobs. We gave
them, through technology and engineering, unprec-
edented wealth — miraculous automobiles, luxurious
[ 17 ]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
travel, and spacious homes; only m^find that^pjeace
departs as jiches come, that automobiles over-ride mo-
rality and connive at crime, that quarrels grow bitterer
as the spoils increase, and that the l arg est h ouses a re
the bloodiest _ battlegrounds of the ancient war be- x
tween woman and man.^e discovered birth-contro^^
and now it sterilizes the intelligent, multiplies the
ignorant, debases love with promiscuity, frustrates the
educator, empowers the demagogue, and deteriorates
the raceJ We enfranchised all men, and find them sup-
porting^ and preserving, in nearly every city, a nefarious
“machine” that blocks the road between ability and
office; we enfranchised all women, and discovered that
nothing is changed except clerical expense. We
dreamed of socialism, and find our own souls too
greedy to make it possible; in our hearts we too are
capitalists, and have no serious objection to becoming
rich. We dreamed of emancipation through organized
labor, and find great unions working hand in hand
with corrupt machines and murderous gangs; these are
the instruments with which we poor intellectuals
planned to build Utopia. We turned at last to Russia,
and find it conquering poverty at the cost of that free-
dom of body and mind, of work and thought, which
[i8]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
has been the soul of liberalism and radicalism from
Godwin to Darrow, from Emerson to Kropotkin, from
Rabelais to Anatole France.
And over all the drama hovers, like a many-armed
Shiva, the merry god of war. The grandeur of Egypt
is the child of brutal conquest and despotisin ; the glory
of Greece is rooted in the mire of slavery ; the majesty
of Rome is in its triremes and its legions ; the civiliza-
tion of Europe rises and falls with its guns. History, like
Napoleon’s God, is on the side of big Bertha ; it laughs
at artists and philosophers, destroys their work in a
moment of patriotism, and gives its honors, its statues
and its pages to Mars. Egypt builds and Persia destroys
it; Persia builds and Greece destroys it; Greece builds
and Rome destroys it; Islam builds and Spain destroys
it; Spain builds and England destroys it; Europe builds
and Europe destroys it. Men kill one another at first
with sticks and stones, then with arrows and lances,
then with phalanxes and cohorts, then with cannon
and musketry, then with dreadnoughts and sub-
marines, then with tanks and planes; the scale and
' grandeur of construction and progress are equaled by
the scale and terror of destruction and war. One by one
the nations rear their heads in pride, and one by one
[19]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
war decapitates them. “Look on my works, ye mighty,
and despair,” reads the proud inscription on the ruined
and desolate statue of Ozymandias, builder of buildings
and “King of Kings”; but the traveler reports, simply,
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
VI. The Suicide of the Intellect
In the face of this impartial destructiveness of his-
tory, this neutrality of nature between good and evil,
life and death, the soul of man, in the past, has strength-
ened itself with faith in a juster world to come. There
all these wrongs would be righted, and the poor man
in heaven would have the pleasure of letting a drop of
water fall upon the rich man’s tongue in hell. There
was something ferocious in the old faiths; the gentle
gospels of Buddha and Christ were blackened by time
into holy orgies of revenge; every paradise had its
inferno, to which good people fervently consigned
those who had succeeded too well in life, or had
adopted the wrong myth. In those “happy days” men
agreed that life was evil : Gautama called the extinction
[20]
of individual consciousness the greatest good, and the
Church described life as a vale of tears. Men could
afford to be pessimists about the earth, because they
were optimists about the sky; behind those clouds they
saw the isles of the blest, the abode of everlasting bliss.
As I write a song comes up from the street below. A
black-garbed lass, accompanied by a tremulous brass
band, is singing The Roc1{ of Ages. Silently I join in
the refrain; and all the idealized memories of my
pious youth surge up within me. I slip down and pass
among the impromptu congregation that has gathered
about the singers. The uniformed men in the official
band do not impress me; without exception they are
hard-looking, practical fellows; long since, I fear,
religion has becoine a business with them. T he uni-
form^ women, whose shrill voices carry the burden
of the song, are pale and thin, empty in body and soul ;
everything spiritual dies when it is sold, or made a
motley to the view.
But in the crowd itself the faces are not hard. These
men seem for the most part destitute — jobless and
penniless; the exploitation and poverty that are a part
of life have fallen heavily upon them; they are one
[21]
or THE MEANING OF LIFE
moment in the eternal wastage of selection. Yet they
are not bitter; they listen patiently to the harangue of
the preacher calling them violently to the gentle Christ.
Despite his invectives and denunciations some of them
seem comforted; for a while they catch a glimpse of
another world than their daily round of unemploy-
ment and fruitless search, of b urni ng hung er and
weary feet. In a dark doorway an old woman listens
hopefully, sheds a tear, and mumbles a prayer. But
for the most part the men smile incredulously; their
poverty does not seem to them to declare the glory
of God. When the song is renewed not one of them
joins in it; one by one they walk quietly away. Even
into these simple souls the scepticism of our time
has entered. How shall I, fortunate and comfortable,
ever fathom the despair of these men, shorn not only of
the goods of life but of a consoling faith as well ?
For today science, which, because of its marvelous
creations, they have learned to trust as once they trusted
the priest, has told them that the sky which of old
promised them happiness, is mere blue nothing, cold
and empty space, and that those clouds among which
the angels frolicked are only the steaming perspiration
of the earth. Science does not offer consolation, it
[22]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
offers death. Everything, from the unwinding universe
of the astronomers to the college girl irradiating life
with beauty and laughter, must pass away: this hand-
some youth, erect and vigorous, fresh from athletic
victories, will be laid low tomorrow by some modest,
ingratiating germ; this noble pianist, who has dignified
his time with perfection, and has taught a million souls
to forget themselves in beauty, is already in the clutch
of death, and will, within a decade, be rotting in the
tomb.
The greatest question of our time is not com-
; paunism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not
'ieven the East vs. the West; it is whether men can
bear to live without God.
1 Religion was profounder than philosophy, and re-
fused to root human happiness in the earth; it based
man’s hopes where knowledge could never reach them
—beyond the grave. Perhaps Asia was profounder than
Europe, and medievalism profounder than moder nity
for they kept at arm’s length this science that seems .
to kill whatever it touches, reducing soul to brain, life
to matter, personality to chemistry, and will to fate,.
Perhaps some confident and stoic race, still strong in
religious enthusiasm, will engulf and absorb these
[23]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
disillusioned peoples of the West, so scientifically in
love with death.
This, then, is the final triumph of thought— that
it disintegrates all societies, and at last destroys the
thinker himself. Perhaps the invention of thought was
one of the cardinal errors of mankind. For first,
thought undermined morality by shearing it of its
supernatural sanctions and sanctity, and revealing it
as a social utility designed to save policemen; and a
morality without God is as weak as a traffic law when
the policeman is on foot. Second, thought undermined
society by separating sex from parentage, removing
the penalty from promiscuity, and liberating the in-
dividual from the race; now only the ignorant transmit
their kind. Finally it undermined the thinker by re-
vealing to him, in astronomy and geology, biology and
history, a panorama in which he saw himself as an
insignificant fragment in space and a flickering mo-
ment in time; it took from him his belief in his own
will and future, left his fate nude of nobility and
grandeur, and weakened him into despondency and .
surrender.
And here, in the macabre finale, philosophy joins
hands with science in the work of destruction. That
[24]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
total perspective which it preached so proudly and so
eagerly pursued is apparently the most dangerous
though the rarest— foe of resolution and joy; for what
meaning or dignity can the individual have in a world
so vast, among species without number, and in time
without end? He that increaseth ' knowledge in-[
creaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much vanity.'
VII. Finis
This is the challenge which confronts our age, and
dwarfs all other problems of philosophy and religion,
economics and statesmanship; beside it the apparent
ruin of our economic system becomes a transitory
trifle unworthy of serious concern. If the reader has
been disturbed by these pages, it is good ; let him now
find in his own mental resources some basis for
his faith; let him honestly formulate his own reply
to this philosophy of despair. For those of us who wish
to live consciously, to know the worst and praise the
best, must meet all these doubts if we are to maintain
any longer our pretense to the life of reason.
[25]
X
X
n
u
SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
X
X
n
u
CHAPTER II
SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
I
MEN OF LETTERS
The letter printed at the beginning of this book was
sent, in the summer of 1931, to a hundred or more
of the brighter luminaries in contemporary life and
thought. In each case the letter was accompanied by
a request for permission to publish the reply. A con-
siderable number of the addressed begged to be ex-
cused from answering, lest they incriminate themselves ;
public ofl&cials in particular were reluctant to speak
frankly on so delicate a question, since their tenure of
office depended (in some slight measure) on the good-
will of the uninformed. I can readily forgive them; I
confess that my letter involved too intimate a scrutiny
of private opinions for public lives; and I know the
heavy price which must be paid in amiable hypocrisy
[29]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
for the privilege of holding office in a democratic
state.
Under the circumstances I was surprised by the
abundance and candor of the replies. Our greatest
novelist, Theodore Dreiser, immersed in the battles of
the unemployed, wrote briefly, under date of June
23rd, 1931:
“Your letter of June 15th seems to me the best
answer that can be made to your question: ‘What
is the meaning or worth of human life?’ If I had
the time to undertake such a task as you suggest,
my answer would really be some such diatribe as
this letter of yours.”
From our leading critic, H. L. Mencken, the man
who above all others has influenced contemporary
American literature and thought, came this frank
reply:
“You ask me, in brief, what satisfaction I get out
of life, and why I go on working. I go on working
for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
There is in every living creature an obscure but
powerful impulse to active functioning. Life de-
mands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of
[30]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful
and dangerous to the healthy organism in fact,
it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really
idle.
“The precise form of an individual’s activity is
determined, of course, by the equipment with
which he came into the world. In other words, it
is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a
hen does, because I was born without any equip-
ment for it. For the same reason 1 do not get myself
elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach
metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill.
What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand.
It happens that I was born with an intense and
insatiable interest in ideas, and thus like to play
with them. It happens also that I was born with
rather more than the average facility for putting
them into words. In consequence, I am a writer and
editor, which is to say, a dealer in them and con-
coctor of them,
“There is very little conscious volition in all this.
What I do was ordained by the inscrutable fates,
not chosen by me. In my boyhood, yielding to a
powerful but still subordinate interest in exact facts,
I wanted to be a chemist, and at the same time my
[31]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
poor father tried to make me a business man. At
other times, like any other relatively poor man, I
have longed to make a lot of money by some easy
swindle. But I became a writer all the same, and
shall remain one until the end of the chapter,
just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even
though what appears to be her self-interest urges
her to give gin. •
“I am far luckief than most men, for I have
been able since boyhood to make a good living
doing precisely what I have wanted to do— what
I would have done for nothing, and very gladly,
if there had been no reward for it. Not many men,
I believe, are so fortunate. Millions of them have
to make their livings at tasks which really do not
interest them. As for me, I have had an extraor-
dinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have
had the usual share of woes. For in the midst
of those woes I still enjoyed the immense satisfac-
tion which goes with free activity. I have done, in
the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible
effects upon other people have interested me very
little. I have not written and published to please
other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow
gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy
[32]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have
been sound ones, but I really don t care. The world
may take them or leave them. I have had my fun
hatching them.
“Next to agreeable work as a means of attaining
happiness I put what Huxley called the domestic
affections— the day to day intercourse with family
and friends. My home hasjtecpn bitter sorrow, but
it has never seen any seridus disputes, and it has
never seen poverty. I was completely happy with
my mother and sister, and I am completely happy
with my wife. Most of the men I commonly as-
sociate with are friends of very old standing. I have
known some of them for more than thirty years.
I seldom see anyone, intimately, whom I have
known for less than ten years. These friends delight
me. I turn to them when work is done with un-
failing eagerness. We have the same general tastes,
and see the world much alike. Most of them are
interested in music, as I am. It has given me more
pleasure in this life than any other external thing. I
love it more every year.
“As for religion, I am quite devoid of it. Never
in my adult life have I experienced anything that
could be plausibly called a religious impulse. My
[33] D
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
father and grandfather were agnostics before me,
and though I was sent to Sunday-school as a boy
and exposed to the Christian theology I was never
taught to believe it. My father thought that I should
learn what it was, but it apparently never occurred '
to him that I would accept it. He was a good psy-
chologist. What I got in Sunday-school — beside a
wide acquaintance with Christian hymnology — was
simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith
was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian
God preposterous. Since that time I have read a
great deal in theology — perhaps much more than
the average clergyman — but I have never discovered
any reason to change my mind.
“The act of worship, as carried on by Christians,
seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling.
It involves grovelling before a Being who, if He
really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of
respected. I see little evidence in this world of the
so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems
to me that, on the strength of His daily acts. He
must be set down a most stupid, cruel and villainous
fellow. I can say this with a clear conscience, for
He has treated me very well— in fact, with vast
politeness. But I can’t help thinking of his barbaric
[34]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
torture of most of the rest of humanity. I simply
can t imagine revering the God of war and politics,
theology and cancer.
“I do not believe in immortality, and have no
desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile
egos of inferior men. In its Christian form it is
little more than a device for getting revenge upon
those who are having a better time on this earth.
What the meaning of human life may be I don’t
know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All
I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very
amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed,
can be amusing. Moreover, they tend to foster the
human qualities that I admire most — courage and
its analogues. The noblest man, I think, is that one
who fights God, and triumphs over Him. I have
had little of this to do. When I die I shall be con-
tent to vanish into nothingness. No show, however
good, could conceivably be good forever.”
This is a delightful piece, which I print here with
the uneasy conscience of a man stealing a gem ; I trust
Mr. Mencken will do me the honor some day of ap-
propriating something of mine, if he can find in me
anything so honest and modest as this auto-analysis of
[35]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Mencken in terms of cows and hens. The man here
revealed is a being more diverse and sensitive than the
editor of the American Mercury; he is not afraid to
“love” music and his home, and braves all the con-
ventions of our literary world by getting along with
his wife — though he was clever enough to marry at an
age when monogamy is bearable. Perhaps because he
fears and distrusts this secret sensitivity and tenderness
in his nature he clings to a hard, “tough-minded”
philosophy of mechanism and determinism and will
confess no sympathy with the eternal hunger of man-
kind for supernatural consolations. It is doubtful if
we shall find in all our batch of answers a reply so
straightforward as this.
Mr. Mencken is commonly rated and berated as a
pessimist; but it is evidently possible for a man to be
a pessimist about the world and yet a tolerably cheer-
ful fellow in his life. So with our most famous novelist,
Sinclair Lewis: he has no very ingratiating opinion of
us poor hypocrites, and might be judged from his
books to be a man full of irony and gall ; but his simple
letter indicates how unnecessary it is to conclude from
mechanism and atheism to sorrow and despair:
[36]
SO ME CONTEMPORARIES
“It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any
need of religion to make life seem worth living, or
to give consolation in sorrow, except in the case
of people who have been reared to religion so that
should they lose it in their adult years, they would
miss it, their whole thinking having been condi-
tioned by it. I know several young people who have
been reared entirely without thought of churches,
of formal theology, or any other aspect of religion,
who have learned ethics not as a divine command-
ment but as a matter of social convenience. They
seem to me quite as happy, quite as filled with
purpose and with eagerness about life as any one
trained to pass all his troubles on to the Lord, or the
Lord’s local agent, the pastor.
“Their satisfaction comes from functioning
healthily, from physical and mental exercise,
whether it be playing tennis or tackling an as-
tronomical problem.
“Nor do I believe that most of them will even in
old age feel any need of religious consolation, be-
cause I know also a few old people who have been
thus reared all their lives and who are perfectly
serene just to be living. A seventy-four-year-old
agnostic like Clarence Darrow is not less but more
[37]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
cheerful and excited about life’s adventure — ^yes,
and ‘spiritual minded’ — than an aged bishop whose
bright hopes of Heaven are often overbalanced by
his fears of Hell.
“If I go to a play I do not enjoy it less because
I do not believe that it is divinely created and
divinely conducted, that it will last forever instead
of stopping at eleven, that many details of it will
remain in my memory after a few months, or that
it will have any particular moral effect upon me.
And I enjoy life as I enjoy that play.
“If you wish to quote any of this, you may.
Sincerely yours,
Sinclair Lewis”
All three of these replies take mechanism or ma-
terialism for granted ; this is the secret base upon which
the most characteristic achievements of contemporary
literature arc built. The philosophy of one age is the
literature of the next; the novels and dramas of today
— the work of Mann and Schnitzler, Gorki and Wells,
Dreiser and Lewis, Toller and O’Neill — are echoes of
Darwin and Spencer, Nietzsche and Karl Marx. Shaw
has moved up to Bergson, and O’Neill has added
Freud to Schopenhauer to become the American
[38]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Sophocles. Literature has not yet discovered that the
science of 1932 seriously questions the philosophy of
1859.
I speak inaccurately; not all our leading writers
come under the banner of a mechanist creed. John
Krskine has some doubts which he expresses with
characteristic urbanity and tolerance:
“June 29, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“It seems to be that the human race has been
given to two bad mistakes in its thinking. One is
to forget that our spiritual life is just as natural
as our physical. Whether or not the philosophers
care to admit that we have a soul, it seems obvious
that we are equipped with something or other
which generates dreams and ideals, and which sets
up values. My own disposition is to accept in its
entirety this human nature which we are born to,
without splitting too many hairs as to whether that
nature is dual or single. It is natural to me, and I
assume for others as well, to imagine ultimate ends
and to worship those ends as our God. It does not
disturb me that man’s conception of God varies
greatly at different times and in different places.
[39]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Apparently that variation is a condition of our
nature in this world.
“To think of life in these terms is, I suppose, to
define religion as an art, as something which man
will surely put forth out of himself whether it
emerges as Mohammedanism, or Catholicism or as
the present Communism of Russia. If some of us
are offended by the description of religion as an art,
it is probably because they do not attach the im-
portance which I do to art. I should like to use the
word to cover all the ideal-making and ideal-ex-
pressing functions of our nature. . . .
“If it is a mistake not to recognize that our
spiritual life is as natural as our physical, it is
another and probably a more common error to
confuse our spiritual ideals with the actual facts
of existence. If we were willing to follow our ideals
as ideals — as ends which we hope to achieve — we
could then perhaps be gentle with our fellow man
who has other purposes. But an intense faith, if one
can judge from history, often makes us stupidly
literal. . . .
“To say that life is an art would imply to some
people that the description of human nature here
given makes too little of the moral sense. I believe
that the sanctions of morality are implicit in the
human instinct to make of life a work of art.
Though we sometimes speak of a primrose path,
we all know that a bad life is just as difficult, just
as full of obstacles and hardships, as a good one. We
are told that the way is strait which leads to salva-
tion j we are also told that the way of the transgres-
sor is hard. The only choice is in the kind of life one
would care to spend one’s efforts on. I believe the
divine element in man is whatever it is which
makes us wish to lead a life worth remembering,
harmless to others, helpful to them, and increasing
our own store of wisdom and peace.
Faithfully yours,
John Erskine”
And Charles Beard, one of the soundest minds of
our generation, writes with the uncertainty of a modest
man dealing with infinites.
“New Milford, Conn.
June 25, 1931.
My dear Will Durant, . ^
The question you propound is important, the
most important that could be asked, and therefore
difficult to answer, if not impossible. Still, it must
[41]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
be faced, and now that my shadows fall aslant to the
East I am asking it with increasing anxiety. Long ^
ago the poet Milton, I think it was, said that truth
comes to us first in hideous mien, meaning that
it disturbs our old delusions and assurances. Yet
in time we become familiar with it and assimilate
it to life as it must be lived.
“So we go on working even when some of our
cherished ideals seem crushed to earth never to
rise again. Why? We do not know. We can only
guess. One answer is that we are driven by the
biological force within us, by the necessity of earn-
ing a living, and discharging the obligations which
we have gathered on the way. But that is not
enough. Thousands go on working after they have
secured an abundance of the good things men prize.
Others keep on working, as did William Lloyd
Garrison, amid the gathering gloom of apparent
defeat.
“When we analyze ourselves we find conflicting
motives. We have moments of shivering selfishness,
when we think only of our personal gain. And
we have moments of exaltation when we feel the
thrill of the prodigious and hear the call to high
action. That seems to be true of all men and women,
[42]
SOME
CONTEMPORARIES
high and low, and the outcome in each case is a
matter of proportion.
“For myself I may say that as I look over the
grand drama of history, I find (or seem to find)
amid the apparent chaos and tragedy, evidence of
law and plan and immense achievement of the
human spirit in spite of disasters. I am convinced
that the world is not a mere bog in which men and
women trample themselves in the mire and die.
Something magnificent is taking place here amid
the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme chal-
lenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest
and best in our curious heritage prevail. If there
was no grand design in the beginning of the uni-
verse, fragments of one are evident and mankind
can complete the picture. A knowledge of the good
life is our certain philosophic heritage, atid tech-
nology has ^ven us a power over nature which
enables us to provide the conditions of the good life
for all the earth’s multitudes. That seems to me to
be the most engaging possibility of the drama, and
faith in its potentialities keeps me working at it
even in the worst hours of disillusionment. The
good life~an end in itself to be loved and enjoyed;
and intelligent labor directed to the task of making
[43]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
the good life prevail. There is the little philosophy,
the circle of thought, within which I keep my little
mill turning.
“This is the appearance of things as I see them,
and even profound philosophers can merely say
what they find here.
Sincerely yours,
Charles A. Beard”
The clearest expression of the idealism that lurks in
the literary soul behind the modern mask came from
John Cowper Powys, who is, I should say, the pro-
foundest and subtlest and noblest genius whom I have
met.
“Hillsdale, N. Y.,
July I, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“The collapse of organized supernaturalism and
the absence, from the organized polities of the
world, of any essential social liberty or culture,
throws the individual back upon himself. For him-
self and in himself he can re-discover the secrets
of faith, of hope, of happiness.
“The most magical powers, values, sensations of
these secrets of life are still to be found in Nature;
[44]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
and can be enjoyed by the weak quite as much as
by the strong. The fresh-water-springs of a mystical
personal life are entirely beyond the power of the
passing fashions of thought to destroy; and they
can exist under any system of political and eco-
nomic organization or disorganization. Nature is
friendly to the weak as well as to the strong; and
truth does not lie in rational generalizations of laws
and methods, but in an instinctive growth, implying
a hardly-won and hardly-kept organic process of
delicate adjustments between the individual con-
sciousness and Nature.
“Personal experience of the mystery of Nature
and the mystery of Life brings back faith in the
freedom of the will, faith in the powers of the
soul, faith in the mystical interpretations of exist-
ence. No rational fashions of the passing hour have
the least importance when it is a question of the
individual consciousness adapting itself to Nature,
finding its own work, its own beauty, its own truth,
its own righteousness, its own happiness, and treat-
ing everything else with ironic diffidence and in-
dulgence.
In opposition to the scientific attitude to Nature
the individual self must resort to the personal at-
[45]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
titude and practice what Spengler, interpreting
Goethe, calls the physiognomic vision, a vision,
namely, that carries a fresh and child-like admira-
tion of natural phenomena, as well as a wary and
peasant-like suspicion of all generalizations and
explanations.
“To restore to one’s individual life a certain secret
liberty of thought and feeling, that shall be at once
reverential and sceptical; to free the fresh-water-
springs of one’s happiness from dependence upon
outward conditions while one twists outward con-
ditions as craftily as possible to the demands of the
flesh and the spirit; to compromise in un-essentials
while one clings to essentials with the fluid ob-
stinacy of water seeking its level; to retain an open
mind with regard to the 'magical, while one ex-
ploits in their place and under their limitations,
the rational interpretations of Nature and Life; to
free oneself from the morbidities of sympathy as
well as from the cruelties of selfishness; to treat the
whole spectacle ultimately as a dream within a
dream, from which it still remains possible that
death may awaken us ; to have no convictions except
the conviction that all cruelty is evil and that all
lives are holy and sacred; thus it seems to me one
[46]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
may reduce the astronomical universe to its due
place of secondary importance compared with the
concentration upon the mystery of consciousness
wherein lies that ‘earnestness that alone makes life
eternity. John Cowper Powys”
The poet— and Powys is a poet by the compulsion
of his blood — cannot be expected to accept the harsh
decrees of a materialistic philosophy; he is normally
tender-minded; and even when he flaunts his atheism,
like a college athlete’s letter, to the world, he is apt
to go on singing hymns even to the gods whom he
denies, as Swinburne did, or Shelley, or Keats. For
poetry dies at the touch of the mechanical, and
flourishes on the theme of life and growth; it is
pledged almost from the start to a spiritual interpreta-
tion of the world. Hear the vigorous rejection of
mechanism by our greatest American poet:
“Dear Dr. Durant:
“Peterborough, N. H.
Sept. i8, 1931.
I have delayed my acknowledgement of your
letter only for the lack of anything especially pro-
found or valuable to say in reply to it. I told a
[47]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
philosopher once that all the other philosophers
would have to go out of business if one of them
should happen to discover the truth ; and now you
say, or imply, in your letter that the truth has been
discovered, and that we are only the worse off, if
possible, for the discovery. This is naturally a cause
of some chagrin and humiliation for me, for I had
heard nothing about it. It is true that we have
acquired a great deal of material knowledge in
recent years, but so far as knowledge of the truth
itself is concerned, I cannot see that we are any
nearer to it now than our less imaginative ancestors
were when they cracked each others’ skulls with
stone hatchets, or that we know any more than they
knew of what happened to the soul that escaped
in the process. It is easy, and just now rather
fashionable, to say that there is no soul, but we do
not know whether there is a soul or not. If a man
is a materialist, or a mechanist, or whatever he
likes to call himself, I can see for him no escape
from belief in a futility so prolonged and compli-
cated and diabolical and preposterous as to be
worse than absurd; and as I do not know that such
a tragic absurdity is not a fact, I can only know
my native inability to believe that it is one. There
is nothing in the thought of annihilation that
[48]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
frightens me ; for it would be, at the worst, nothing
more terrible than going to sleep at the end of a
long day, whether a pleasant or a painful one, or
both. But if life is only what it appears to be, no
amount of improvement or enlightenment will ever
compensate or atone for what it has inflicted and
endured in ages past, or for what it is inflicting and
enduring today. . . There is apparently not much
that anyone can do about it except to follow his
own light — which may or may not be the light of
an ignis jatuus in a swamp. The cocksurencss of
the modern “mechanist” means nothing to me ; and
I doubt if it means any more to him when he
pauses really to think. His position is not entirely
unlike that of an intrepid explorer standing on a
promontory in a fog, looking through the newest
thing in the way of glasses for an ocean that he
cannot see, and shouting to his mechanistic friends
behind him that he has found the end of the world.
“These remarks, which to some readers might
seem a little severe, are more the result of observa-
tion and reflection than of personal discomfort or
dissatisfaction. As lives go, my own life would be
called, and properly, a rather fortunate one.
Yours very truly,
Edwin Arlington Robinson”
[ 49 ] R
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
But all these replies are from Americans. I pass at
once to a reply from France, a contribution of the
first order, and unstintedly generous. The author of
Ariel, Byron, and Disraeli wrote as follows, but in
impeccable French: ' / ^
“Neuilly-sur-Seine,
August 21, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“Pardon me for replying so tardily to your letter.
The excuses are two: first, that I have been away
from Paris, and your inquiry therefore took a long
time reaching me ; second, that I found the problem
so interesting that I have written an entire essay in
answer. I am sending it to you, and naturally I
authorize you to publish a part of this should it
seem desirable to you. I shall publish it myself,
doubtless, in some future volume of essays.
Very sincerely,
Andre Maurois”
The essay which M. Maurois composed for our little
symposium is a gem worthy of Voltaire or Anatole
France. He describes a successful rocket-flight of a
group of Englishmen and Englishwomen to the moon.
Arrived there they fail to construct, as they had
[50]
. SOME CONTEMPORARIES
planned, a rocket to return to, or communicate with,
the earth, and they are compelled to make the moon
their permanent home. Ten years pass. Meanwhile all
these English ladies and gentlemen continued to con-
duct themselves as if they were in England. The gover-
nor, Sir Charles Solomon, and Lady Solomon dressed
every evening for dinner. On the King’s birthday Sir
Charles gave a toast to His Majesty; and all the lunar
colonists murmured ‘The King.’ It was a moving
spectacle.”
Two hundred years pass, and still no word of in-
tercourse with the earth. The seventh generation finds
it difiBcult to believe any longer in that distant King,
always invisible and always silent, of whom their
credulous elders have transmitted to them a vague
tradition. A group of impious students arise who
flatly deny the existence of this “King of Great Britain
and Ireland, Emperor of the Indies, and Protector of
the Moon,” in whose name all laws are promulgated
and in whom all morals have had their solemn sanc-
tion. To which the Conservatives reply irritably: “Take
care; if you empty the Earth of our King, and of the
legendary Englishmen who have bequeathed us our
traditions, you will make lunary life very difQcult. For
[51]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
what then will be for you the meaning of this life?
What will be the sources of your energy? By what
secret treasure will you live?”
In the end the radicals prevail. “It is a period of
melancholy and romantic despair of the young men of
the moon. Experiments in sexual liberty produce a
great disorder of mind and soul. Boredom follows
liberty, and revolt follows boredom. People are dis-
content, men are troubled, and literature is excellent.”
A great philosopher appears who, in lyric prose, chides
the disillusionment of his time.
“Why,” he asks, “search for the meaning of life
outside of life itself? The King of whom our
legends speak — does he exist? I do not know, and
it does not matter. I know that the mountains of the
moon are beautiful when the crescent of the earth
illuminates them. If the King remains, as, always
since my birth, invisible and silent, I shall doubt
his reality; but I shall not doubt life, or the beauty
of the moment, or the happiness of action. Sophists
teach you today that life is only a brief moment in
the trajectory of a star; they tell you that nothing
is certain except defeat and death. As for me, I
tell you that nothing exists except victory and life.
[52]
SOME CONTEMPOR/tRIES
What shall we know of our death ? Either the soul
is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes
with the flesh and we shall not know that we are
dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal, and do not
believe that your life is changed merely because
it seems proved that the Earth is empty. You do
not live in the Earth, you live in yourself.”
“Yes,” Maurois tells himself, “this story would be
a possible answer to the American inquirer.” But, not
quite satisfied with it, he casts about for another world
for his thought. He sees two lines of ants crawling over
a path in the park: one going from the ant-heap, the
other returning to it; both engaged in some “public
utility.” And he imagines a philosophic ant, “with
agitated antennae,” stopping one of the columns with
sage discourse.
“My sisters, you have believed, and I have be-
lieved with you, that the world of ants was the only
important world; that the Great Ant watched
•
over* it, and that devotion to the ant-heap was a
sentiment so lofty and noble as to justify all our
toil and our suffering. Certainly it is hard to trans-
port, with never a moment of rest, across these im-
[53]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
mense and perilous deserts, these bits of straw and
these dead insects. It is heroic to brave the water,
the landslides, birds that devour us, and these
enormous forked masses which loom up in the sky
in their rhythmic advance and crush hundreds of
ants. This heroism, I used to believe, is easy when
one devotes one’s self to the greater glory of the
ant-heap.
“But alas, my sisters, I have studied and reflected ;
and behold what I have learned. Our ant-heap,
which we thought the center of the universe and
the object of particular attention from the Great
Ant, resembles a thousand ant-heaps, each of which
is inhabited by thousands of ants, each of which
thinks that his city is the navel of the world. You
are astonished.^ But this is nothing yet. Though
the ants form a race so vast that one could never
number them, they are, nevertheless, only one race
among thousands of races, one form among the
infinitely many forms of life. You protest, dear
ants ? But there is more. Not only is the ant merely
one form among forms; it is — though it costs
my pride much to say it — one of the feeblest and
most contemptible of forms. These forked monsters
who crush us in the sand think it a humiliation to
[54]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
say to themselves: ‘We, in the sight of God, arc no
more than the ants.’ You threaten me? You are
indignant? Ah, dear ants, you may well
pardon these monsters, for they too are deceived by
their pride even in the moment of their humility;
this earth of which they think themselves masters
is but a drop of mud, and the duration of their race
is but an instant in eternity.
“This, my sisters, is what I have learned in observ-
ing men, the movements of the sand, and the
courses of the stars. Having seen that all is vanity,
I say to you: Why work? Why transport these bits
of sand, these corpses of butterflies? Why traverse
these dangerous deserts in long and toiling proces-
sions ? What will be the fruit of your labor on this
earth? You will raise another generation of ants
which in its turn will labor, suffer, and be crushed
by the large feet of men. And these ants in turn
will bring up other ants, even to that time — infi-
nitely far and infinitely near — ^when the Earth will
be only a dead world. Therefore I say to you : Stop ;
cease from this useless slavery; be no longer dupes.
Know that there is no Great Ant above us, that
progress is an illusion, that your desire to toil is but
the result of heredity, that nothing is certain on the
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Earth except the defeat and death of the ants—
a sleep from which there is no awakening.”
But a young ant politely pushes the Sage Ant aside.
“This is all very well, sister,” he says, “but we must
build our tunnel.” And Maurois again concludes:
“This story too would be a possible reply to the
American philosopher. Science, he says, teaches that
the life of our societies is only a pullulation of
human insects on the Earth, a planetary moss or
mould. But does not the insect itself wish to live?
— does not even the mould persevere in its being?
And is it true that science destroys the faith of
man in himself? What has science done, if not
to give man powerful formulae for the transforma-
tion of his world ? Man was a mould before science
as well as after it; science has done nothing except
to make this human mould master of the earth.
“The American philosopher will reply: ‘What has
been changed is this — that before science came this
human moss did not know itself as moss, these
insects did not know that they were only insects.
They believed in the high dignity of man. Devils,
angels and gods, always hovering over them, dic-
tated their actions. Hope of a future life made them
[56]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
forget the sorrows of earthly existence. Rites and
laws, supported by a supernatural authority, saved
men from anguish and doubt. But what gods lend
to law today the force of their name? Osiris re-
placed the god of the tribe, Jupiter replaced Osiris,
Jehovah replaced Jupiter. But can the name of Ein-
stein or Eddington serve to impose limits upon
human desire?’
“A light wind made the shadows of the roller-
blinds tremble on the white walls. It is true, I
thought, that man cannot live without rules. But an
instinct preserves him from such a calamity; as
soon as one web of law and morals is torn from
him, instinct weaves another to protect him. Some-
times it makes such a web out of the command-
ments of God; sometimes out of the counsels of
science, sometimes out of the decrees of an earthly*
king. What difference does it make ? Suppress if we
will, like our Englishmen in the moon, the reality
of the symbol; do the laws become less wise than
before ? Shall we not end by accepting these laws as
necessary, though changing, conventions ? Shall we
not confess, at last, that every proposition which
goes beyond human experience is uncertain? We
know only that we do not know. Is this so terrible
[57]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
a confession? Is it a new idea, and did Socrates
never utter it?
Twilight came. Already the inn-keeper, in sus-
penders, brought out his chair to the side-walk.
Lights appeared in the windows of the townsfolk,
shining ujX)n full tables. What is my secret treas-
ure ? I asked myself. This horror of a doctrine ? This
love of action ? — Behind the roofs, suddenly grown
dark, a milky clearness ran across the sky. The
moon rose.”
Let us pause here for a while; it would not do to
spoil this fine bit of philosophical imagination with any
lesser note.
u
FROM HOLLYWOOD TO THE GANGES
“Beverly Hills,
California.
“Dear Bill Durant.
“Am I too late, if I thought of something, course
I havent thought of anything along the Philosophy
line yet, but you can never tell what queer things a
man might think of during this depression, they say
Hunger produces the best thats in a man, so if this
[58]
keeps up, something awful good ought to come out
of some of us, I had a little junk in a weekly article,
that I already sold once and should give you most of
the check for you furnished the idea, If there was
anything in there any good to you take it, for a Sun-
day Syndicated Article is known to never be read,
and if so its by somebody that cant remember 24
hours,
“There was one or two lines in there that might a
been cuckoo enough to have been called ‘Phi-
losophy.’
When you come out this way, I want to see you
and have a chat with you, have you visit me, you
would be quite a Curio around these Movie lots.
They got a great slant on life.
Well good luck to you, there seems to be no way
to keep people from writing books.
Yours,
Wn.L Rogers”
I have been stealing so much first<lass material
torn st-rate men who answered my query as to the
meaning of life, and the possible destruction of human
^ y with what sly alchemy the Phi
[59]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
losopher of Beverly Hills turns my lead into gold. But
being the better thief of the two I propose to snatch
from Will’s article (with acknowledgments to the New
Yor^ American) a bit or two of his genial thought.
“I guess I just get the usual amount of mail of
anyone that writes junk for the papers, mostly
people that sho’ don’t agree with anything you said
in the papers, and showing you where you ought to
be calling Hogs somewhere.
“But this week I got some interesting letters.
One I sure was surprised to get was from Will
Durant, a man that has studied philosophy like
Mr. Coolidge has politics, and both have reached
the height in their chosen professions . . .
“He wanted me to write him and give him my
version of ‘What your Philosophy of life is?’ . . .
“I think what he is trying to get at in plain words
(leaving all the Philosophy out) is just how much
better off after all is an highly educated man than a
dumb one ? So that’s how I figure is the way I got
in that list. He knew that I was just as happy and
contented as if I knew something, and he wanted to
get the ‘Dumb’ angle, as well as the highbrow.
“That education is sorter like a growing town.
They get all excited when they start to get an in-
[6o]
SOME CONTEMPOR/iRIES
crease, and they set a civic slogan of ‘Fifty Thou-
sand by the End of Next Year.’ Well, that’s the Guy
that sets a College education his Goal. Then when
they get the fifty thousand they want to go on to
make it a hundred.
“And the Educated Guy ? he is the same. He finds
when he gets his post graduate course that all the
other Professors have got one, too, and lots of ’em
a half dozen. He begins to wonder if he hasent
spent all this time wondering if he knows anything
or not. He wishes he had took up some other line.
He talks with an old, broad-minded man of the
world of experience, and he feels lost. So I guess he
gets to wondering what education really is, after all.
For there is nothing so stupid as an educated man,
if you get off the thing that he was educated in. . . .
“The whole thing is a ‘Racket,’ so get a few
laughs, do the best you can, take nothing serious,
for nothing is certainly depending on this genera-
tion. Each one lives in spite of the previous one and
not because of it. And don’t start ‘seeking knowl-
edge,’ for the more you seek the nearer the ‘Booby
Hatch’ you get.
And don’t have an ideal to work for. That’s like
riding towards a Mirage of a lake. When you get
[6i]
ON THE MEAN ING OF LIFE
there it ain’t there. Believe in something for another
World, but don’t be too set on what it is, and then
you won’t start out that life with a disappointment.
Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are
ahead.”
We need Will Rogers’ good cheer here, for the next
reply to our letter is from Dr. Charles H. Mayo of
Rochester, Minnesota, the most famous of American
surgeons, who says very briefly:
“Rochester, Minn.
July II, 1931.
“My dear Mr. Durant: —
“I think you have summed up in an entrancing
way the life of man on earth up to the present
time. . . .
“I am so busy with my work — and there seems
always to be more rather than less — that I do not
find time to write. However, I shall be delighted to
read what you write on the subject and shall look
for some advice as to how we can be raised above
human insects.
“With all good wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Charles H. Mayo”
[62]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
And a pessimism quite as profound marks the beau-
tifully-written response of Ossip Gabrilowitsch, gra-
cious aristocrat of the piano, who has so often lifted me
out of my little self into that mystic ocean of reality
which only music reveals.
“Orchestra Hall
Detroit, Michigan
August 21, 1931.
“My dear Mr. Durant :
“On my return from a trip abroad I had the pleas-
ant surprise of finding your letter awaiting me. I
sincerely wish I could send the reply you desire,
inspired by hopeful, constructive convictions. In all
honesty, however, I cannot do this.
As I study the march of the human race through
the centuries and try to understand its present
status, I am unable to discern any plan leading to a
higher fruition here or elsewhere. Cruelty, injustice,
lawlessness seem to characterize the nature and ac-
tions of man today as much (though possibly in a
different form) as they did thousands of years ago.
A glance at the unprecedented chaos-political,
social and economic— which prevails in the world at
present, teaches us this lesson. It is but the inevitable
result of our incurable inability or unwillingness to
[63]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
learn by experience; our lack of generosity, our lack
of moral courage — all things as characteristic of the
human race today as centuries ago.
“Yet love and beauty do exist and humanity is not
without ideals, even if the latter are sacrificed every
day, nay every hour, in the foolish quest after mate-
rial things. One of the questions in your letter to me
was: “Tell us where you find your consolation and
your happiness, where in the last resort your treas-
ure lies.” My personal happiness I find in two things
— art and my family. But will future generations
still be in possesion of these treasures.^ That is the
question! The beauty of art (as I understand
beauty) is being systematically destroyed before our
eyes, and cheap sensationalism substituted. Those
who would be the prophets of a new art preach to
us that beauty is no longer necessarily art’s prime
object. As for the future of the family, your letter
expresses serious apprehension, and I fully share it.
The dawn of an industrial revolution has arisen in
the East, and if it should sweep the world it may
destroy the home, as it has annihilated so many
things which heretofore we thought indestructible.
“This, my dear Mr. Durant, is not a satisfactory
reply to your query. Such thoughts, I know, cannot
[64]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
be of any aid to you or your readers, and I shall
understand it if you make no public use of this
letter. In fact I would much prefer not to have you
publish it. It could only lead to misunderstanding. *
People generally are unable to comprehend anyone’s
pessimistic philosophy without suspecting him of a
personal quarrel with Fate. Even a great thinker
like Schopenhauer did not escape the accusation.
How could I? Yet I personally have no complaint
to make, I have fared well at the hands of Destiny.
“I have always believed, (and I still do) that a
man’s philosophy of life should be founded not on
individual experience but on wide and unbiased
observation. We all have eyes to see and ears to
hear. The opportunity is given us of watching hun-
dreds of lives besides our own. Should anyone be so
narrow as to judge the world by what happens to
be his personal good fortune or ill-luck ? Because I
eat three meals a day, does it follow that there is no
starvation anywhere? Because some of us enjoy
good health, must we remain blind to the fact that
thousands of human beings daily endure the agony
of bodily suffering? . . .
Sincerely yours,
Ossip Gabrilowitsch”
[65]
V
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
This is a fresh breath of honesty from a soul as sensi-
tive as only a musician can be. A different sort of hon-
esty, bluff and rough like an Arctic wind, is in the reply
of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who knows life from pole
to pole.
“June i6, 1931.
“Dear Durant:
“You ask the expression of a series of personal
opinions.
“ ‘What help, if any, does religion give in life?’
Since the days when I studied religions and philos-
ophy at the Harvard Divinity School, I have given
thought to this, but perhaps observation is more im-
portant. I have found that religious persons consider
themselves better off than if they were irreligious
and that irreligious persons consider themselves bet-
ter off than if they were religious. I have formed no
conviction as to which, if either, is right. Personally
I never felt inclined to take either religion or alco-
hol in the hope of drowning sorrow.
“ ‘What keeps me going?’ I suppose it is food, or
perhaps rather fuel. For we are essentially heat
engines that run according to the quantity and qual-
ity of the fuel till some part of the machine gives
way.
[ 66 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
“‘What are the sources of my inspiration?’
Again, food, and the way the body handles it. For
instance, two years ago I lived a year in and around
New York on exclusively meat and water. During
that time I was noticeably more optimistic, looked
forward to next day and next year with more relish
than when on the ordinary mixed diet. Other
sources of inspiration are weather, sound sleep.
“But perhaps, being a philosopher, you want to
insist on spiritual inspirations. There are such. My
chief one is the feeling that if anything is worth
while it may be the increase and diffusion of knowl-
edge. So I keep working away at that when con-
venient.
“It is not clear that absorbing knowledge from
universities and Sunday supplements has taken away
from me any more than it has given in return. If no
one has found a meaning for life, neither has any-
4
one demonstrated that life has no meaning.
“What probably is meaningless is the question as
to whether life has a meaning.
ViLHJALMUR StEFANSSON”
Some answers were lazy, and referred me to the
writer’s books: Arthur Schnitzler, shortly before his
[67]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
death, sent on a whole Buck der Spriiche und Beden\€n
as his reply; Wells wearily pointed to all his books as
his attempt to meet the issue; Eugene O’Neill wrote
that he had tried to face the problem in his trilogy,
Mourning Becomes Electra; and Havelock Ellis wrote:
“London,
June i8, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“The questions you propounded are, of course,
the most important that can be asked. All those of
us who are really alive spend our lives in answering
them and in expressing those answers in our work,
whatever shape that work may take.
“If you ask me for the briefest and most leisurely
statement of my own answers, I would without
hesitation name ‘The Dance of Life,’ slowly written
during the most mature, years of my life. I would
add, as dealing with the same question — though in
a way both more intimately personal and more
fragmentary — the three Series of my ‘Impressions
and Comments,’ now collected in one volume under
the title of ‘Fountain of Life.’
Sincerely yours,
Havelock Ellis”
[ 68 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum
of Natural History, wrote that his life was too crowded
to permit of his discussing its meaning; but he added
that “lines of research which I am now carrying on
convince me that we must restore the word ‘creative
to the word ‘evolution,’ as distinguished from the old
world ‘created’”; and named these researches as the
central significance and spiritual basis of his life. Ad-
miral Byrd seems to have struggled heroically with the
question, and then given it up as worse than the South
Pole: a first response said: “I am interested in your let-
ter. . . . Undoubtedly the truth is bringing pessimism
and despair to many who think. I have given the very
problem you bring up a great deal of thought. ... It
isn’t impossible that unless some constructive thought
is given to the world despair will do great damage.”
But meanwhile the man who made short work of geo-
graphic mysteries which centuries had failed to solve
was caught in the lure of action and pleaded, in a later
letter, the inadequacy of time; it was as if life would
teach, by this very example, that action is healthier than
thought, Solvitur ambulandoi even philosophical ques-
tions can be answered only by doing things. All
[69]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
thought that does not lead to action, said Goethe, is a
disease.
Here is another man of action, Carl Laemmle, sub-
merged in the chaos and speed of a motion-picture
studio; a man who must deal in action in order to
make his pictures live; it would be interesting to know
how such a mind faces our problem. Carl Laemmle
faces it with the simplicity and candor of a modest
man:
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“July ist, 1931.
“I enjoyed your letter, . . . and I am glad to an-
swer your questions, but I am sorry to say I am
going to disappoint you because my answers, while,
truthful, will be utterly bromidic. At least that is
how I fear they will impress a mind like yours.
“If science and philosophy have brought us to the
dreadful pass you describe in your letter it doesn’t
speak very well for too much thought, does it? In
my experience, I have found that most of the people
I consider slightly off their base arc merely victims
of too much introspection.
“You ask me what keeps me going. My answer
is the answer which all smart alecks laugh at — it is
[70]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
work. I get a tremendous kick out of seeing my
ideas take form and bring concrete results. The fact
that countless' ideas do not work out does not take
away from the pleasure I derive from those that do.
I like the feel of power — you see I am being as frank
as I know how — and I like to make a money profit
on my work. But the thing that keeps me going is
the work itself and the sense of achievement, I can-
not play as much as some men do because my eyes
are not very good and my hearing is not of the best.
So my play consists of a small game of poker with
congenial friends, or perhaps a small bet on a horse
race.
“As for religion, I do not know how much help it
gives me. Very likely it helps me unconsciously and
it certainly must have had something to do with the
formation of my ideals. Probably, too, it has much
to do with my energy although I have no tangible
proof of it unless you consider one occasion when I
was given up for dead and something pulled me
through.
I My children, my one grandchild, my other rela-
tives and my friends are my consolations and my
happiness. You ask where in the last resort my treas-
ure lies. I think it lies in an almost frenzied desire
[71]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
to see my children and my children’s children well
cared for and happy.
“I wonder if you had your tongue in your cheek
when you said ‘we are driven to conclude that the
greatest mistake in human history was the discovery
of the truth.’ When was this discovery made ? I have
not seen any headlines about it in the daily papers.
I have supposed that each individual among us was
still hoping to make the discovery in his own way
and that this hope constituted a large part of his life,
whether he was aware of it or not. The truth which
different men think, they have discovered is prob-
ably not the truth at all, and that it why it has not
made us free. I still have my delusions, thank God,
and I feel sorry for the scientists and philosophers
who have thought themselves into a deep pit.
“One of the things I am most grateful for is the
fact that through a life of hard work, of one menac-
ing crisis after another, of one disappointment and
one triumph after another I still remain an optimist.
I do not know just what my main goal is— other
than what I have described — but I know I would
have no goal at all if I were not an optimist.
“I would rather remain a hard working business
man and be as happy as I am than become the
[72]
SOME CONTE MPORARIES
— ■ '
world’s greatest sage and accept all the sourness and
hopelessness which seem to go with too much ab-
stract thinking.
Sincerely yours,
Carl Laemmle”
This is how the problem works out in life; we are
too busy living to bother much about ultimate mean-
ings ; the obligation to get work done puts a cloture on
thought. The man with a family to feed has no time
for conscious philosophy ; if he had he might say that
the meaning of life was to feed one’s family; and it
would be hard to better that answer.
And now look at the problem through the eyes of
the President of Dartmouth College — a man of the
highest repute among those who know his field. Here
again we shall find a healthy distrust of thinlcing di-
vorced from life.
“June thirty, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
I have read your letter of June 16 with great care
and have with much seriousness considered the
questions which you ask. I don’t know that in the
haste of the post-Commencement season I can give
you any statement that will be helpful to you or that
[73]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
will be a sufficiently lucid expression to indicate
what I really feel. However, here is my attempt to
do what you have asked me to do.
“The worth of human life seems to me to be in
the opportunity it offers to be. I cannot imagine
anyone’s questioning the worthwhileness of life, for
instance, if an occasional day like this is available to
him. Great expanses of blue sky; lazily drifting
fleecy clouds; a perfect temperature; a wealth of
verdure in trees and shrubs and lawns; the glorious
colors of the gardens; and the sounds I heard at
daybreak of all sorts of singing birds: these are all
experiences beyond measure of value but all suffi-
cient, it seems to me, to give to any normal mind a
sentiment that it is a glorious privilege to be alive.
Neither scientific analysis nor a multitude of words
will describe the reason for the pleasure in the note
of a violin string or the song of the white-throated
sparrow, but these are not less real because they
cannot be analyzed, diagnosed, and explained. For
me, therefore, being, with its concomitants of abili-
ties to feel, to think, and to do, is an inestimable
boon that life offers and not simply a justification
for it to be endured. . . .
“The whole modern civilized world of thought
[74 J
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
has fallen subject to the fallacy that truth is an end
in itself rather than that it is simply a means to an
end. The approach to fullness of life is along the
way of truth, but the path is not the destination.
The enduring value of religion is in its challenge to
aspiration and hope in the mind of man. The bar-
renness of much called philosophy is in its tendency
to become dialectic, and to ascribe values to words
which at best are inaccurate representations of
thought without regard to the value of feelings.
Feelings are not necessarily untrue because they
cannot be expressed. Every great religious leader
has in one way or another declared in substance
what Jesus said: that he was come to give life, and
to give it more abundantly. The philosopher has
given no such assurance. He not infrequently has
committed himself to an intellectualism sterile of
any emotional urge and denying any sufficient goal
toward which life might press.
The incapacity of philosophy to reign and rule
seems to me to have been its obliviousness to human
experience. It has herein failed to check the validity
of Its intellectual processes. Plato in his familiar
passage on philosophers and kings long ago indi-
cated the insufficiency of either thinking or doing
[75]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
as a specialized activity when one was separated
from the other: ‘Until . . . those commoner na-
tures who pursue either to the exclusion of the
other, are compelled to stand aside, . . . then only
will this, our state, have possibility of life and be-
hold the light of day.’ . . .
Yours very sincerely,
Ernest M. Hopkins”
Evidently religion does not die; in the vast majority
of men it is still a living force for good and ill. I find a
sincere note of it in the reply of Adolph Ochs, pub-
lisher of that finest achievement in modern journalism,
the New York^ Times; by this letter I am better able to
understand the solid, quiet success of this man in mak-
ing his paper the most respected and the most influ-
ential in America without ever catering to the mob.
“October 22, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“Your letter is a gem. I wish you would permit
me to publish it.
“You ask me what meaning life has for me, what
help— if any— religion gives me, what keeps me
going, what are the sources of my inspiration and
[76]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
my energy, what is the goal or motive-force of my
toil, where I find my consolation and my happiness,
where in the last resort my treasure lies.
“To make myself clearly understood, if I were
able to do so, would take more time and thought
than I can give the matter now. Suffice it for me to
say that I inherited good health and sound moral
principles; I found pleasure in work that came to
my hand and in doing it conscientiously; I found
joy and satisfaction in being helpful to my parents
and others, and in thus making my life worth while
found happiness and consolation. My Jewish home
life and religion gave me a spiritual uplift and a
sense of responsibility to my subconscious better self
—which I think is the God within me, the Un-
knowable, the Inexplicable. This makes me believe
I am more than an animal, and that this life cannot
be the end of our spiritual nature.
Yours faithfully,
Adolph S, Ochs”
More and more it stands out that a man must com-
bine action with thought in order to lead a life that
shall have unity and significance. Surely a monument
like the Times is meaning enough for one life ! Or cross
[77]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
the seas to India, and look at the young rebel who
stands next only to Gandhi in leading the struggle of
India for liberty — Javvaharlal Nehru, who may be the
protagonist of India when Gandhi passes away.
“Anand Bhawan,
Allahabad,
India,
August 20, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“Your letter raises fascinating questions — fascinat-
ing and yet rather terrible. For your argument leads
to the inevitable conclusion that all life is futile and
all human endeavour worse than useless. You have
done me the honour of putting these questions to
me, but I feel my utter incompetence to answer
them. Even if I had the time and leisure, which un-
happily I have not at present, I would find it diffi-
cult enough to deal with the problems you have
raised.
“Indians are supposed to find pleasure in meta-
physics but I have deliberately kept aloof from
them, as I found long ago that they only confused
me and brought me no solace or guidance for future
action. Religion in its limited sense did not appeal
[78] '
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
to me. I dabbled a little in the various sciences, as a
dilettante might, and found some pleasure in them
and my horizon seemed to widen. But still I drifted
and doubted and was somewhat cynical. Vague
ideals possessed me, socialistic and nationalistic, and
gradually they seemed to combine and I grew to
desire the freedom of India passionately, and the
freedom of India signified to me not national free-
dom only but the relief of the millions of her men
and women from suffering and exploitation. And
India became a symbol of the suffering of all the
exploited in the world and I sought to make of my
intense nationalism an internationalism which in-
cluded in its fold all the nations and peoples that
were being exploited.
I was troubled by these feelings and felt my
helplessness. These seemed to be no obvious way of
realising my heart’s desire. Then came Mr. Gandhi
and pointed a way which seemed to promise results,
or at any rate which was a way worth trying and
afforded an outlet for my pent up feeling. I
plunged in, and I discovered that I had at last found
what I had long sought. It was in action that I
ound this action on behalf of a great cause which
I held dear. Ever since then I have used all my
[79]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
strength in battling for this cause and the recom-
pense I have had has strengthened me, for the re-
ward has been a fuller life with a new meaning and
a purpose to it.
“This is hardly an answer to your "question. But
not being a philosopher, but just a man who feels at
home in action, I cannot give you a very logical or
scientific answer. I have believed in science and
logic and reason, and I believe in them still, but at
times they seem to lack something and life seems to
be governed by other and stronger forces — ^instinct
or an irresistible drive towards something — which
for the moment does not appear to fit in with
science or logic as we know them. History with its
record of failure, the persistence of evil in spite of
all the great men and great deeds of the past, the
present breakdown of civilization and its old time
ideals, and the dangers that lurk in the future, make
me despair sometimes. But in spite of all this I have
a feeling that the future is full of hope for humanity
and for my country and the fight for freedom that
we are waging in India is bringing us nearer the
realization of this hope. Do not ask me to justify
this feeling that I have for I can give you no suffi-
cient reasons. I can only tell you that I have found
[8o]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
mental equilibrium and strength and inspiration in
the thought that I am doing my bit for a mighty
cause and that my labour cannot be in vain. I work
for results of course. I want to go rapidly towards
my objective. But fundamentally even the results of
action do not worry me so much. Action itself, so
long as I 3m convinced that it is right action, gives
me satisfaction.
“In my general outlook on life I am a socialist
and it is a socialist order that I should like to see
established in India and the world. What will
happen when the world becomes perfect I do not
know and I do not very much care. The problem
docs not arise today. There is quite enough to be
done now and that is enough for me. Whether the
world will ever become perfect, or even much better
than it is today, I shall not venture to answer. But
because I hope and believe that something can be
done to better it, I continue to act.
I am afraid I have avoided your principal ques-
tion—what is the meaning or worth of human life ?
I cannot answer it except by telling you how I have
looked upon life and what motives have driven me
to action.
Sincerely yours,
Jawaharlal Nehru”
[81]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
It is a noble spirit that speaks here; the moral ideal-
ism of mankind burns more brightly in India than any-
where else on our earth today. To have a great purpose
to work for, a purpose larger than ourselves, is one of
the secrets of making life significant; for then the
meaning and worth of the individual overflow his per-
sonal borders, and survive his death. Hear the same
fine aspiration in this letter from another Hindu, the
winner of the 1930 Nobel prize for physics:
“Calcutta,
15th October, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“I have never believed that life is worth living
simply for the moment’s pleasure or tomorrow’s
trivial hope. The mind of man is too feeble an in-
strument fully to penetrate into the great mystery
of this world where we find ourselves; but I have
always thought that life would be worth living in
order to try and understand a little more of it than
we do at present. The intellectual and scientific im-
pulse has indeed been the main spring of my life
and activities. Religious rituals and dogmas possess
no significance for me; but the teachings of Buddha
or Christ, if not taken too literally, have a value
[82]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
which I recognize and which I believe time cannot
diminish. The desire to labour, to achieve and to
help others to do likewise, these are the motive
powers which have kept me going. I find self-con-
trol and not self-indulgence to be the real source of
happiness. In the last resort, to win a victory over
oneself is a greater thing than conquering the whole
world.
“With kind regards, I am.
Yours sincerely,
C. V. Raman”
And now I come to the man who more than any
other on earth today personifies the power of religion,
both to mould the individual and to move the mass.
Shortly before leaving for the Round Table Conference
in London, Mohandas Gandhi sent the following reply
to my query. The omission of personal passages man-
gles the letter.
“Sabarmati,
“Dear Friend, 22, 1931.
“Your letter of 5th June . . .
“Now for your questions.
(i) Life for me is real as I believe it to be a
spark of the Divine.
[83]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
“(2) Religion not in the conventional but in the
broadest sense helps me to have a glimpse of the
Divine essence. This glimpse is impossible without
full development of the moral sense. Hence religion
and morality are, for me, synonymous terms.
“(3) Striving for full realization keeps me going.
“(4) This strife is the source of whatever inspira-
tion and energy I possess.
“(5) The goal is already stated.
“(6) My consolation and my happiness are to be
found in service of all that lives, because the Divine
essence is the sum total of all life.
“(7) My treasure lies in battling against darkness
and all forces of evil.
“You have asked me to write at leisure and at
length if I can. Unfortunately I have no leisure and
therefore writing at length is an impossibility.
Yours sincerely,
M. K. Gandhi”
This is not quite satisfactory, though we should be
grateful to get so much of an answer to our question
from a man with a sub-continent on his head, and
laboring for the liberation of 320,000,000 men. The reli-
gion that Gandhi here professes seems so different from
[84]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
the more anthropomorphic faith of the hymns which
he sings at Sabarmati before the rising of the sun ; and
there is no word here about that future life which in
Hinduism as in Christianity so obsesses the minds of
men. Surely the orthodox Brahmins and devout Jains
who look to him as their leader and saint would be a
little disturbed to see how modernistic and modest is
Gandhi’s theology.
The same moderate demands on credulity mark the
reply of the man who first discovered Gandhi for
America — John Haynes Holmes, pastor of that mag-
nificent institution, the Community Church of New
York. Mr. Holmes writes:
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“What keeps me going.? — Something within me
that burns like a consuming flame when I see false-
hood, hypocrisy, injustice, and evil-doing; some-
thing without me that pulls like the attraction of
love when I catch a glimpse of what this world
might be, and may yet be if we try hard enough.
“There was a time when I expected to ac-
complish something before I died — to see this world
changed somewhat because of what I said or did.
I cherish this individual expectation as little now
[85]'
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
as I do the cosmic expectation that this planet will
endure beyond a few more million years. No, my
eyes will close some day upon the same world upon
which they first opened, just as in due time the
world itself will end as it began. But meanwhile the
universal creative Life has been moving on like a
river to some far end unseen, undreamed of, and
my life, not a bit of debris but a constituent drop
in the great flood, has been bending its impulse
to the onward sweep of mystic destiny.
“I think it is the sense of my creative capacity,
matching however microscopically the creative
capacity at the heart of the universe, that gives
me strength to live — and great good cheer in the
business, too! I try to think when I have felt most
happy because most alive. Surely, in the experience
of love; surely, also, in hours of crisis, when I
have cast all on some great hazard; again, in some
swift moment when a ‘concourse of sweet sounds’
in symphony or opera has caught my soul and
taught me to relive the emotion of the composer
in his original conception; again, when I have
myself conceived, in a sudden instant, some vision
of the spirit and seen it clothe itself in words upon
my startled lips; still again, when I have thrown
[ 86 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
myself into some cause of justice and the right,
and fought to victory or defeat; most of all, per-
haps, Nvhen I have prayed, or tried to pray, and
heard faintly within myself some answer. These
are all experiences of creation — of action that brings
order out of chaos and beauty out of order, and
thus, within its compass, ‘makes all things new.’
It is in such instants that I have felt life in its raw
state, so to speak, and therewith, I believe, seen
God.
“It is this that keeps me going — the knowledge,
vouchsafed in passing moments when we are lifted
beyond and above ourselves, that we are an es-
sential part of a creative process — that we ourselves,
with God, are creators, and thus makers of some
great cosmic future. What if I cannot see that future,
or even imagine it! Such ignorance, frankly con-
fessed, fades like darkness before light in the actual
sense-experience of having lived to ‘vaster issues.’
John Haynes Holmes”
But to me, still strangely drawn to the faith of my
youth loving its beauty while doubting its truth, and
wondering whether beauty is not truer than truth —
the most appealing expression of the religious attitude
[87]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
came from the urbane author of The Art of Thinking,
the Abbe Dimnet. His letter is long, but perhaps it
will interest the reader as much as it interested me.
“Paris
29 June, 1931.
“Dear Dr. Durant,
“Your letter reminds me of a poem of Ch. M.
Guerin which you may know. It begins with these
two lines:
*Quoique mort a la foi qui massurait de Dieu
Je regrette toujours la volupte de croire!
(Though dead to the faith that assured me of God,
I mourn to the end the delights of belief.)
The French poet does not psychoanalyze himself as
you do but, in the deeper strata of his consciousness,
he seems to see the channels which will some day
take him back to the fountain-head of his early
belief. Dead to faith you too still crave the com-
fort of believing and the pathos which Guerins
rhythm imparts to his stanzas you achieve by the
urgent questions quickly succeeding one another
towards the end of your letter.
“Science has been a harsh step-mother to you.
[ 88 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Astronomy, geology and biology told you their
tale and there was no faith, no hope and no love
in it. You built yourself a philosophy on their
data and the philosophy might comment on itself in
Remy de Gourmont’s words: ‘The horrible thing
about looking for truth is that one finds it. After
a few years of bitter satisfaction or purely intel-
lectual delight as possessing those data, you have
experienced the usual reaction: what is the good of
knowing all these disheartening facts ? Better never
to have learned anything than know that the uni-
vene is a battle-field of cruel forces. Better, a
thousand times better, spend one’s short life ig-
noring all this than be depressed or tortured by
knowledge. Our ancestors were happier than we arc.
The less one knows the happier one is. Primitive
man asked no questions to which his imagination
or his sense of harmony with the environing world
could not give an immediate answer. He did not
exhaust himself by analysis, he just lived and the
experience of each minute was enough for him .
A blessed condition which intellectual enjoyment,
even of a supreme nature, can never hope to rival.
Feeling this you apply to people whom you suppose
to have been nearer to life than yourself and you
[89]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
ask them ‘what has kept them going, what their
source of inspiration has been, what is the goal of
their toil, where, in the last resort, their treasure
lies.’
“Your confession invites another and there is no
reason why it should be withheld.
“I belong to a generation which took even more
pride than your own in being scientific and ruled
by facts. It certainly has been my privilege to spend
the best part of my life in a Parisian sect of learn-
ing the atmosphere of which had nothing in com-
mon with what the world generally connotes with
the name of Paris. In the shade of our ancient elms
and whitewashed walls, we lived the life of a
hundred years ago: we were, or tried to be, Parisian
in culture, but our effort was constantly refreshed
by contact with provincial honesty and provincial
simplicity. Many a time a matter of fact conversa-
tion with the parents of some student would con-
jure up the turrets and gables of a manor-house
in Perigord or the library of a Grenoble magistrate.
The virtues of old France were in the background
and, as you say, the necessities of life pressed us
on all sides. A blessing, no doubt; one for which I
can never be grateful enough.
[90]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
“But our minds were stocked very much as your
own is. We were Sorbonne nurtured. Our teachers
had been friends of Taine or disciples of Comte.
We all dabbled in science and toyed with phi-
losophy. I mean the philosophy of the observatory
and laboratory, not that of the Schools with which
w^ never became acquainted till after we had
been introduced to the philosophers. Philosophy
was unsatisfactory, of course. What can it do in the
presence of mysteries except deepen our sense of
mystery } Creation, the beginnings of life, the dawn
of consciousness, the appearance of vision, mind
and reflection remained inexplicable by philosophy
as well as by science. Philosophy’s conjectures were
inadequate, but how inadequate science’s facts also
were! And how conflicting science’s hypotheses! ^
How unexpectedly influenced by pragmatism, too!
How could we help noticing that, after the war
of 1870, Taine and Renan suddenly turned con-
servatives, teaching restraint, prudence and sobriety
instead of their former radicalism? Do we not see
the same phenomenon in America ? Cheerful boyish
unbelief di;ports itself in the weeklies, but the
philosophical examination of conscience of the great
searchers leads to quite a different state of mind.
[91]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
‘^Pragmatism or no, there are two ways of look-
ing at the so-called facts of science. Mine has
been hopeful. There was a time when neither man
nor any visible promise of man existed on our globe.
Towards the end of the Tertiary age, the miracle
happened : billions of forms of life had crowded or
displaced one another without any one taking any
definite ascendancy, without any epoch-making
change. But, at last, man appeared, consciousness
manifested itself in a thousand ways, science was
created, developed itself and finally took hold of
the world in a way I never can sufficiently admire.
Only the germs of this development existed a
hundred thousand years ago, none of it could have
been anticipated a million years ago. To me the idea
is full of possibilities. Astronomy may tell a dis-
heartening tale nou/. But why should we infer that
it will be so to the hundredth generation after us?
Why should we not hope that with wider com-
prehension, greater security will also come? You
notice how violently we crave immortality in com-
parison with the ancient Hebrews. Why should this
notion have taken such momentum if there were
no foundation for the hope?
am afraid you have been a scientist stricuorts
[ 9 ^]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
obscrvantiuc , a Fundamentalist in science. Hence
your pessimism. You should have been on your
guard against incomplete data, against tentative
systems. You should never have called science truth
as you seem to do in your letter. Your scientific
certainties bred pessimism; more mistrust would
have saved some hope and there is no hope without
an admixture of faith.
“You ask what life has done for me. It has given
me a few chances to break way from my natural
selfishness and for this I am deeply grateful. But
it has also given me greater intellectual stability.
I jibed the first time I saw G)mte quoting with
approval the Imitation of Christ saying that ‘we
cannot hope to understand unless we first believe.’
Newman’s teaching was similar. But how clear the
experience of life makes it now that it is so. Today
my faith and my reason are mutually compelling
and that means peace. Shall I tell you? It seems
impossible to me that you should not gradually
come to the same calm — if not to the same conclu-
sions. Your letter expresses dissatisfaction too vio-
lent to last.
Ernest Dimnet”
[93]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
III
THREE WOMEN
So much for the men. But what does woman think of
this strange planet of ours, and her life thereon? I
should judge that she has wisely refused to think about
it at all. Few of the letters that I have received from
women have, it seems to me, faced the problems
stated. I suspect that woman feels these matters deeply,
when she is not absorbed in the task of continuing
the race; but she cannot yet find words, or superficial
intellectual form, for these secret depths. Would that
our enemies, i.e., our wives and sweethearts, would
write a book — about themselves, and honestly! — what
a revelation such a document would be to men!
The first feminine answer is from Mary E. Woolley,
who has made Mt. Holyoke College one of the finest
of our schools for girls.
“October 22, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“Life grows in meaning as I go on. It has not
only more significance but, also, more happiness,
fewer moods of depression than when I was a girl.
At the basis of this increasing significance is religion.
[94]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
I think that if it were not for that I could not ‘go
on for I am more conscious of the suffering of
the world, more troubled by it. I cannot quite under-
stand how a human being can face life without a
belief in a Supreme Power, a Personality with
whom communion can be a real thing. My creed
is a simple one, with little theology embodied in
it, Jesus Christ is to me the supreme revelation of
Love and so of God, and His life an inspiration
showing how a human life may be lived in kind if
not in degree.
I find motive force of toil’ also in other lives,
some that I have known personally, others only his-
torically. The fact that there have been human lives
of power and beauty is a stimulus to living. My
own mother and father have been a part of that
stimulus, showing in an inconspicuous way what
love can accomplish in a human life.
“Another ‘modve force of toil’ I find in the chance
to have a part in bringing out the possibilities of
other lives. I do not see how one can work for
years with young people, as I have done, and be a
pessimist! I have seen too many lives develop into
something fine and strong.
“As for ‘consolations and happiness’ I think that
[95]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
they come all along the way. I am writing on an
October morning, in the height of the autumn
glory, when just to be alive is inspiration, and
when the gray days come and moments of depres-
sion, the realization that ‘God’s in His heaven,’
even though far from feeling that^‘airs right with
the world,’ gives consolation and happiness. So I
come back to religion as that which keeps me
going!
Mary E. Woolley.”
. •
From Italy came an apparently simple, and yet
probably fundamental reply. It is from Gina Lom-
broso, daughter of a great psychologist, wife of a
great historian (Gulielmo Ferrero), and authoress and
thinker in her own right.
“Villa Ulivello,
Strada in Chianti,
(Florence), Italy.
“Dear sir,
“Many thanks for your letter.
“The problem you ask me about is the problem
which has worried me as every other human being.
“The sincere answer I succeeded in giving to
myself is that the real reason of being is love.
[96]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
{Love which ties us one to the other, while living,
which ties us to those who have left us, to our
posterity. ]
“I perfectly remember that when I was a girl
I thought my life was tied indissolubly to that of
my father, I thought I was born only to help him, I
thought I had to disappear with him.
“After his death I remained tied in the same way
to my husband, to my children. I think that the
primordial reason of living is love. Love for the
family is the best known and the easiest.
“When I had some experience in life the reason
of my life has been to synthesize this experience
so that as many people as possible could make a use
of it.
In both cases it is the love which tics one to
the other which is the reason of life. Love for the
family first (I am a woman!). Love for all those
which have some resemblances with us and will pass
by the same experiences.
“With my best regards,
Gina Lombroso”
But by far the most interesting reply from a woman
^-as that of Helen Wills Moody. Her very existence is
m Itself good reason for living; she has done more
[97]
H
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
than a thousand impresarios of anatomy and millinery
to glorify the American girl”; and the American girl
at her best — or the European girl at her best — is a
sufficient achievement of protoplasm to warrant some
faith and pride in life. She writes almost as well as
she plays.
“June loth, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“A twenty-five-year-old must be cautious about
what he (or she) says upon such tremendous sub-
jects as you have named in your letter. One of the
signs of youth is the feeling that one has all the
philosophy of life neatly pigeon-holed. If this is
true, it must be, then, that I am quite old, as I
am really not quite certain about anything.
“The only thing that I know I really want, is
some means of exercising the restlessness which
seems to be continually in my heart. Tennis, paint-
ing — almost anything will do. As a child I didn’t
know what it was, but now I think that I recognize
it. It is the reason why I have played tennis so fast
and furiously for so many years. It is the reason
why I studied diligently when at school and even
cried when I did not happen to get a ‘100’ in
spelling. It is why I tried so hard to win a Phi Beta
[98]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Kappa key for scholarship in college, which I did,
but would have wept, I know, if I had not.
“I hope to Heaven this restlessness, this constant
hope of arriving at some degree of perfection is not
a peculiar form of conceit.
“To me, it is Religion. It is a ‘motive force of
toil’ (of such ‘toil’ as I have done!). By working
steadily on the thing that I like, I can remove from
my mind momentary spells of sadness or irrita-
tion or anger, and afterwards feel happy and almost
peaceful.
“I hope that this constant restlessness, this wish
to be in action and on the way towards attaining
some degree of perfection is interwoven with the
love of the beautiful. It may even be that they are
very closely related. It is difficult for me to find
words. I know that in contemplating the beauty of
perfection in an arS^ I seem to be transported to
another sphere (rjftre words, but I cannot find
the right ones). Music, sculpture and, to the greatest
degree, painting. (In speaking of perfection in art
I do not mean, of course, smoothness or ‘slickness*
in finish, which is the old-fashioned ‘perfect.’) In
coming upon color combinations in art and in
nature (never nature ‘in’ art), if I may use a
[99]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
commonplace description, I find that I am unable
to swallow, such emotion seems to close in upon
me, and that I have a correspondingly violent
mental reaction (!!). Perfection and beauty fasci-
nate me in any field, but most of all in art, and there
in the abstract sense.
“Each one thinks himself unique in his feelings,
no doubt, and here I am trying to read into the
restlessness of my heart a special significance, when
the same thing is to be found, perhaps, in the heart
of every other young person of my age living in
our restless country.
“I do know that I do not wish to conform to
rules of Religion that are laid out like so many
squares bounded by fences — that you must go here,
that you cannot go there. I loathe the Form of
Religion. And I know that I would hate life if I
were deprived of the right of trying, hunting, work-
ing for some objective within which there lies the
beauty of perfection.
“In my hall there stands an antique Greek head
of a woman in cream-colored marble. She was left
me as part of a legacy about a year ago. She is really
from Ancient Greece, and, except for several small
scars, has escaoed the centuries with nose, brows,
[lOO]
SOME
CONTEMPORARIES
and chin intact. The head is in profile against a
cream-colored wall. It stands on a dark marble
pedestal. At different times of day the light changes
on the face. Sometimes it is faint, so faint upon her
forehead, cheek and nose, that her sensitive head
scarcely stands away from the cream wall behind.
At other times, the light is bright, and the clear-cut
profile with its strong yet delicate chin, and thought-
ful brows stand out clearly, dominatingly. The curl-
ing tendrils of her hair are followed back along
her head by the light, almost to where they meet to
form the knot. Her neck is strong and rounded and
firm. I like to close my eyes and run my fingers over
the contours of her face, and thrill each time in dis-
covering modeling that my eye had not detected.
It is almost as if you could not know the message
of her face until you closed your eyes, and actually
felt it through your finger tips. She came from a
collector’s gallery, but with her, to me, came no his-
tory. I know that she is beautiful and that she is
nearly perfect.
“When I look at the head I have moments of
great pleasure, and it makes me feel all the more
keenly my restlessness, my desire for activity which
has as its goal some sort of beauty and perfection.
[lOl]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
“For me, life is interesting, entertaining, happy,
if only I can have some activity for the restlessness
that is in my heart. I want that activity to be care-
less, never finished, and I would like to have it at
almost all times dominating my thoughts. I would
like to have ‘a one-track mind’ (not closed, of
course, to information, because I would like to know
about everything), but I would like to be able to
enclose myself on my engine on my one track and
close my door like a clam closes his, and rush away
towards the horizon and the infinite, or whatever
its name is.
“You ask ‘where in the last resort your treasure
lies?’ and I would answer if I knew, if I were only
absolutely certain, and dared, ‘within myself!’ But
it is ridiculous for one of twenty-five to say that he
thinks he is certain.
“Perhaps I could give you a more coherent de-
scription of what I think of life had I been able to
absorb the year and a half of philosophy that I had
at college. Although I took many notes, and made
elaborate outlines with headings, sub-headings, and
so on, I somehow missed the point.
“A young author who had just won the Guggen-
heim Prize for his first novel, who was full of
[102]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
enthusiasm about life in general, told me a story
last spring in Paris which made me decide that I
would have another try at Philosophy. The story
was about a Philosopher named Santayana. Upon
hearing the name, I remembered having read
several books by him at college. (I had vaguely
believed him to be some philosopher of the Far
East— with that name. But it seems not. In fact
he seems to have been a human being who was once
at Harvard ! )
“This is the story. It was Spring. The warm sun-
shine and soft breezes were trying to lure students
away from their classes. Santayana was seated at
his desk reading to his students. His listeners were
sitting, or reclining, in various attitudes of in-
attention. Santayana’s voice trailed off, his eyes
traveled over his students, and fixed themselves on
a tree which grew outside the window. Its leaves
were small and tender, and of the green green of
new leaves. Santayana closed the book. A short
silence elapsed. He rose, and said:
‘“Gentlemen, it is Spring!’
I He took his hat and never returned.
I hope this story is true. I hope he went away,
ot on his one track, and has been going along
[103]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
happily ever since. He is (I imagine) in his restless-
ness seeking something, something which will ex-
plain beauty and perfection. He derives his joy (I
imagine) from the ceaseless activity which goes
with the quest.
“No doubt (at least, I imagine) the sculptor who
formed my Greek head out of marble had in his
heart this restlessness, this desire to search for per-
fection and beauty. He derived pleasure from his
work. It may have been that his greatest happiness
came to him on the days when he was chiseling out
of marble the contours of this lovely face. That
was hundreds of years ago. Today I am thrilled, as
I go down my hallway, in seeing this Greek head,
and understanding (I think) its message. The
message of the restless heart.
“I want to be restless, I want always to be in
action, and to be trying for some kind of beauty and
perfection. Even if I may be lacking in Talent, I
shall have the pleasure of action— and there is always
Hope— at least in a young, restless heart.
“The other people that you have written to, will
have clearly expressed answers to give you. I wish
that I had. I wish I could see George Bernard
Shaw’s. He once told me that tennis should be
[104]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
played in a meadow, with grass a foot high, and
with no balls. At least, what I have told you is what
I truly believe ! !
“You must keep in mind several things when
you judge my letter — one, that I am the youngest
on your list, and two, that I am the only one who
got on your list through brawn and not brain!
Most sincerely,
Helen Wills Moody.
P.S. I have concluded that restlessness is a disease.
I didn’t say much about tennis because it comes
under the heading ‘activity because of restlessness,’
P.S. If I have enough paint, a large studio, good
light (there are always thousands of things to
paint) then I am so happy in the activity of paint-
ing that I do not care about what astronomers pre-
dict, biologists declare, or what Love is said to be or
what has happened to ReligioUi I am sure that I am
hatefully selfish.
H. W. M.”
IV
SCEPTICS AND LAZYBONES
The last group is composed of sceptics. Perhaps we
should end with them if only to remind ourselves that
[105]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
in the last resort our question is unanswerable. And
first from the Bad Boy of England, scandalizer of all
continents, and prospective terror of the House of
Lords.
“Dear Mr. Durant, * 93 i-
“I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so
busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning
whatever. . . .
“I do not see that we can judge what would be
the result of the discovery of truth, since none has
hitherto been discovered.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell.”
Second, and most honest of all, from a man who
does not care to add to another writer’s royalties.
“On tour in Switzerland
“Dear Mr. Durant, 8, ,931.
“It is absolutely impossible to answer such ques-
tions as you ask in any serious way in the frame of a
letter. Besides, when stating my ideas, I prefer using
my own setting to providing material for the book
of another author.
Count Hermann Keyserling.”
[106]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
And last and shortest, and perhaps wisest, a postal
bearing the gigantic head and Tolstoian face of G. B.
S., and these pithy words in meticulous, impeccable
hand:
“4 Whitehall Court, S. W. i
i8th June, 1931.
“How the devil do I know ?
“Has the question itself any meaning ?
G. Bernard Shaw.”
So that is the end of our rope. How shall we answer
this villainous and murderous postal? Is it possible to
catch the meaning of life without getting outside of it
to judge it, or without seeing it as part of a larger
whole? — and which of us can do that? This is a
merry termination of our quest, a disturbing illustra-
tion of the old definition of metaphysics as “a search in
a dark hole for a rat that is not there.”
Shall we give up the quest? Not at all. Now let us
face the matter for ourselves.
* * * * *
[107]
X
X
n
u
<
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
X
X
n
u
CHAPTER III
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE*
THE POPULARITY OF SUICIDE
Dear Unknown, —
I have received the announcement of your prospec-
tive suicide, and am impressed by the premises you
offer for your violent conclusion. That even the sim-
plest man should kill himself is a sufficient indictment
of life to stir the attention of a student of human af-
fairs and the daily procession of suicides is one
of the bitterest facts that must be included in an honest
philosophy .f Otherwise, the death of any one of us
•I received, in 1930, several letters, from separate persons, declaring
incir intention of committing suicide. I have brought together here the
substance of my corr«pondcnce with them, and have added, in passing,
»mc comments on the questions stated in the first chapter of this book,
k gentlemen who so disturbed me with their
f*' but I should attribute this not to the
arguments (which, as frail intellectual things, must be
hclple« before emouon or despair) but to the reality of pain. Perhaps
s^iai ujstinct, but only a terror of solitude.
...V. Tk 284.142 suicides in America in the last twenty-live
years. TTk suradc rate m New York City doubled in the last dLde,
[ill]
ON THE MEANING OF UFE
is a chronological item of no great import in the eye of
Nature ; “men must endure their going hence even as
their coming hither.” What interests me in you is the
apparent logic of your despair, the completeness vi^ith
which you survey all life and knowledge, and find
them, like Ecclesiastes, discouraging and vain. I ask
you to reason with me for a while, even though I know
the story of the policeman, who after many appeals,
persuaded the would-be suicide to stop and talk the
matter over; in the end, as you will recall, they both
jumped off the bridge. It is possible that in discussing
with you the value of life I shall be convinced, instead,
of the attractiveness of death. I take my chance.
II
CONCESSIONS TO SUICIDE
Let me confess at once that I cannot answer, in any
absolute or metaphysical sense, your question as to
the meaning of life. I suspect that there is some ulti-
mate significance to everything, though I know that
our little minds will never fathom it. For the mean-
ing of anything must lie in its relation to some whole
rising from 750 in 1920 to 1,^71 in 1930. — New York Times, November
25. > 931 -
[112]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
of which it is a part; and how could any fragment or
moment of life, like you or me, pretend to rise cut of
its individual cell and survey or understand the entirety
of things? We play with words like world and life,
eternity and infinite, beginning and end, but in our
hearts we know that these are only the badges of our
ignorance; we shall never understand what they ought
to mean. Philosophy, after deposing God, has put man
in His place, and endowed man with universal con-
cepts and cosmic perspectives which could properly
belong only to a supreme and supernatural intelligence.
Perhaps if we face frankly our mental limitations
we shall take even our pessimism more modestly. We
shall look upon that gloomy picture of the world
which contemporary science paints as one fleeting form
in the kaleidoscope of human opinion; we shall re-
member that there is nothing certain or permanent
about that picture, and that the future will probably
smile at it as today we smile at Aquinas and Anselm,
Scotus and Abelard. Let us not take the astronomers too
seriously; they do not know whence our planet came
nor whither it is bound, when it began or when it
will cease to be; in truth they are as great guessers as
the philosophers. As for the. geologists, their exuberant
[113]
1
ON THE MEANIN G OF LIFE
cartography of the earth before history is only a charm-
ing play of fancy; they cannot be sure of their extinct
continents and seas; and perhaps the fossil strata have
tumbled themselves about just to deceive these puzzled
readers of the rocks. They do not know how old man
is, or whether the “ice age” really existed, or whether
it put an end to civilization. The physicists do not know
what matter is, nor the biologists what life is, nor the
psychologists what consciousness is; their brave dog-
mas are passing emphases on parts or aspects mistaken
for wholes. You must not shoot your brains out on the
basis of these airy hypotheses; if you do you will join
the long list of those holy martyrs who died for
absurdities. We must learn to be sceptical even of our
scientists.
It seems a little ridiculous to found your despair
upon the mechanical philosophy which Spencer has
left us as a relic of his mid-Victorian simplicity. While
critics and novelists are taking mechanism for granted,
the sciences which fought so bravely for it are calling
it in doubt, and withdraw in confusion before the com-
plexity and wilfulness of the atom and the cell. It is
hardly likely that we have personal immortal souls;
but it is even less likely that we are machines mechani-
[114]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
cally mourning our mechanism. Such a philosophy is
no reason for suicide; it is reason for a gale of laughter
hearty enough to sweep all the dogmas from the in-
fallible vacillating laboratories of the world.
What we can be certain of in science is not its
metaphysical assumptions but its physical achieve-
ments; the steamship, the airplane, and public sanita-
tion are a little more real than this effervescence of
test-tubes into philosophy. Take a night flight over
New York, and feel the reckless courage and power of
these niachines called men; accept without apology
the thrill of peril and speed; rejoice over the realities
of science, and smile at its transcendental theories.
There is no knowable limit to what this trousered ape
will do with his multiplying discoveries; doubtless he
will some day throw his engines around the stars, and
deport his criminals to Betelgeuse. If you insist upon
dying, undertake tasks of some danger and use in
adding to these discoveries; risk yourself in medical or
mechanical experiment, and give some significance
to your life and death. But whatever you do, don’t die
of philosophy.
If you pass from science to industry and politics as
an invitation to suicide you may find a surer footing
[115]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
from which to catapult yourself into eternity. I grant
you that our economic and political life is in chaos,
and that if we can invent no better system for organiz-
ing the work and government of the world we may as
well surrender the earth to another species, or another
race. It is true that all government irks us, and that
men have been as misruled and discontent under
monarchies and aristocracies as under our present de-
mocracy of bribes and spoils; and perhaps in our
anger at the breakdown of our acquisitive economy in
the twentieth century we forget ungratefully its tur-
bulent creativeness in the nineteenth — no other system
had ever produced such wealth or spread such com-
forts before. But I would not want to cover up with
vain optimism these leaking cesspools of our public
life; it is better to exaggerate them than to minimize
them, provided that we do not let our imperfect per-
spective sadden and embitter us into a futile despair.
Remember that the same greed which has concen-
trated our wealth so narrowly, and so diminished its
purchasing power, lies in our souls too; that the only
difference in motive between the rich man and our-
selves is seldom a difference in scruples, but is usually
a difference in opportunity and skill. In the end we
[ii6]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
are all guilty together. Let us stop complaining about
others, and begin to root the evil out of our own hearts.
The roots of our greed, however, stand so strong
and deep in biology and history that we must not
expect to eradicate them in a generation, or a century.
Our ancestors gorged themselves when they found
food, because they could not know how soon they
would find food again ; pigs of all species gorge them-
selves similarly today; and it was in this primitive
uncertainty that human greed was born. Our vices
were once virtues, necessary in the struggle for exis-
tence; they are the tribute which we pay to our
origins; we must accept these vestigial relics with a
certain equanimity, like our vermiform appendices and
our supernumerary glands. Until life is quite secure,
and no man need worry about food for himself and
those dependent upon him, men will continue to
acquire greedily, and to hoard against evil days. Per-
haps we shall control this impulse by governmental
assurance and regimentation of work and wages for
all; or perhaps greed will continue to decrease, as fear
has decreased, through the multiplication of wealth
and the growth of provision and order. Meanwhile it
is natural that people should be acquisitive, that they
[ny]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
should judge men according to their success in winning
security, and that nations should rise or fall according
to their economic power; in the end, it must be con-
fessed, bread is more important than books, and art
is a luxury made possible by wealth. If we see these
things in their historical place we shall not tear out
our hair, or blow out our brains, because only a majority
of our people have food and clothing, shelter and auto-
mobiles, schools and libraries, and an equal right with
the rich man to imbibe advertisements and saxophones
from the air, and murder and adultery from the screen.
We shall realize that ev,en in our depression things are
better than they were in our youth, and we shall resolve
to make them better still for our children.
Is it true that progress is a delusion? Yes, if you mean
uninterrupted, general, or everlasting progress. Prog-
ress as we know it in history is subject to many set-
backs, never moves evenly all along the line (our prog-
ress in science and industry is not accompanied now by
progress in philosophy and art), and at some distant
date, presumably, all its works will be destroyed. But
to doubt its reality because of its end would be like call-
ing the sun a delusion because it will set. Even that di-
stant end to progress is a presumption, conceded here
[ii8]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
out of argumentative generosity ; we are not sure of it ;
and meanwhile there is much evidence for believing
that the material, physical and mental status of the
average man on the earth today, bad as that status is, is
higher than it ever was before. Students despair of their
own age because they compare the average man of
their acquaintance with the exceptional men of the
past; let them study a little further, and they will find
that not all the Athenians were geniuses, and that not
all of these geniuses were saints; they will discover,
behind Plato and Aristides, a corrupt democracy, a sup-
pressed womanhood, a superstitious people, and a
brutal mob.
States come and go, and civilizations are in great
measure lost; but so much of these “dead” cultures
remain that if we were to devote a whole lifetime to
the task of absorbing even the Greek fraction of our
mental heritage we could not possibly encompass it all.
Euripides and Aristotle are not dead; Confucius and
Lucretius are our contemporaries; even Hammurabi
and Ptah-hotep speak to us intelligibly across four
thousand years. And our means of preserving, trans-
mitting and disseminating this mounting cultural in-
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ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
hcritance of knowledge, morals and arts are more
abundant today than in any age of the past.
The most depressing sight in our civilization is not
poverty — for even the poverty of a Louisiana darky can
have a certain dignity and content— but the apparent
deterioration in the moral fibre of the race. It is hard
to judge of these things, partly because one’s experience
is so brief, partly because we judge the morals of today
with the standards of yesterday. We forget that these
standards were made for an agricultural life, and can
have no absolute validity in an industrial and urban
age. It is ridiculous to expect the morals of a rural com-
munity from men delaying marriage till thirty, and
living amid the million contacts, opportunities and
stimuli of the city. Other times, other morals. The
more I see of men and women the less critical I am of
them; they are not half so bad as their newspapers and
moving pictures make them out to be; it is because they
are prosaically decent that they demand, for the vicari-
ous fulfilment of ancient impulses to polygamy and the
chase, that their press and their films shall reek with
promiscuity and crime.
Nevertheless a subtle degeneration, not so much in
morals as in character, seems to have begun in our
[I20]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
people. Through the wisdom of our legislators, only
the intelligent may contracept, while the stupid are
commanded to reproduce their kind. In result, the edu-
cated minority (rich or poor) brings up less than its
share of the next generation, the uneducated majority
brings up more; in each generation we create by educa-
tion a brain for our society and then, by the dysgenic
effect of our legislation, we cut it off again. The educa-
tor is frustrated, and superstition, that infdme which
Voltaire thought he had crushed, flourishes as before,
leaving progress to be created and maintained by a pre-
carious and sterile fragment of the race. In this unregu-
lated reproductivity of the mob lies the secret of our
political corruption, and the raw material of our
municipal “machines”; democracy goes to pieces be-
cause “there is always a majority of fools.”
Perhaps in this way the old Yankee type, full of inde-
pendence and grit, is being breeded out, and a new
type, less vigorous in thought and courage, is taking its
place. Our cowardice in this depression has no prece-
dent in our history; never did we whine so, or so unani-
mously bring all our troubles to one man’s door. Our
tradition of individual freedom has left the film direc-
tor and the theatrical producer free to enrich them-
[I2l]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
selves by parading pornography, recklessly accelerating
youthful sex development; and the impulses so preco-
ciously aroused find such mechanical facilities and op-
portunities for their expression that our city popula-
tions tend to lose themselves at the bottom in crime
and at the top in sex. The end product at the top is a
blase and cynical epicurean who would take to his
heels at the first call of hardship or danger. Nations do
not grow great on such men. We smile at the Puritan
today, but it may be just the virtues of the Puritan that
will be needed — or are needed now — when crisis
comes: the same stern self-discipline, the same stoic
capacity to suffer and persevere, which made nearly all
the strong characters in modern history from Luther
to Lenin.
This jolly riot of sex, so pleasant to the individual
and so hazardous to the race, is bound up, no doubt,
with the decay of supernatural belief; and we are en-
gaged at the moment in a gigantic experiment with the
possibility of maintaining social order and racial vital-
ity through a moral code resting solely on the earth,
and shorn of those supports which once suspended it
from the skies. That experiment failed in Athens, and
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
it failed in Renaissance Italy. Apparently it is danger-
ous to the race to emancipate the individual; destroy
his delusions, and the villain ceases to breed. This proc-
ess has already undermined the Anglo-Saxon leader-
ship of America in literature, morals, and municipal
politics; as it goes on, the same process will probably
weaken all the peoples of Western Europe and North
America. In the interim we shall, in all likelihood, have
a cultural outburst like that of Florence and Rome in
the days of the Medici and the Borgias. In the end we
shall be an extinct volcano, and Asia will mount again
the throne of the world, until it, too, becomes very
intelligent and dies.
Ill
MID-VICTORIAN
You will see that I am granting you a great deal —
that life has no meaning outside of its own terrestrial
self, that the individual has no immortality, and that
every civilization, as surely as every flower, decays.
These conclusions seem to me now so natural that they
do not disturb me any more ; I perceive that within the
limits set by them I have still much room to find sig-
nificance for my life and race, and even a moderate
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
content. This Byronic pose of our youth, which wished
to die because Santa Claus was dead, wears away as the
realities of life catch us in their grip and sweep us into
action; we find less and less time for mourning idle
dreams ; and we observe that our children do not pine
as we did for myths which they have never believed.
The meaning of life, then, must lie within itself; it
must be independent of individual death, even of na-
tional decay ; it must be sought in life’s own instinctive
cravings and natural fulfilments. Why, for example,
should we ask for an ulterior meaning to vitality and
health ? — ^they would be goods in their own right, even
if they were not also means to racial ends. If you are
sick beyond cure I will grant you viaticum, and let you
die; let me not to the ending of botched lives put an
impediment. But if you are well — if you can stand on
your legs and digest your food — forget your whining,
and shout your gratitude to the sun.
The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy — the ex-
hilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being;
sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear
and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is be-
cause it has more body and less soul, and understands
that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
further meaning to its arms and legs than their abound-
ing use. Perhaps if we used our arms and legs we
would be happy too; and golf, which God invented for
George Babbit, is justified by every mile that is walked
and every ball that is lost. Even if life had no meaning
except for its moments of beauty (and we are not sure
that it has more), that would be enough ; this plodding
through the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the
snow under the sun, or watching the twilight turn into
night, is reason a-plenty for loving life. Let death come;
meanwhile I have seen the purple hills of South Da-
kota, and one point of a star taking its place quietly in
the evening sky. Nature will destroy me, but she has a
right to; she made me, and burned my senses with a
thousand delights; she gave me all that she will take
away. How shall I ever thank her sufficiently for these
five senses of mine — these fingers and lips, these eyes
and ears, this restless tongue and this gigantic nose
Do not be so ungrateful about love. To ignore its
psychological developments is as unrealistic as to forget
its physiological bases. Yes, at bottom it is a matter of
hydraulic pressure and chemical irritation; but at the
top it becomes, occasionally, a ballade of devotion and
chivalry ^no longer mutual itching, but mutual consid-
[125]
ON THE MEANING OF UFE
eration. I have not in mind here merely romantic love
— that idealization of the object which comes with frus-
trated desire, and is now disappearing because desire is
not so frustrated as before I refer to the attachment of
mates or friends who have gone hand in hand through
much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and
have been soldered into unity by being burned to-
gether in the flame of life. I know that such mates or
comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s
nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the
unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in
you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting
to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.
I suspect that most pessimists are bachelors; married
men have no time for gloom. By a pessimist I do not
mean one who has a realistic awareness of the evils and
hardships of human life; I mean one who, unable to
face those hardships with equanimity, concludes from
his own weakness that all life is a worthless snare.
Perhaps a good deal of this pessimism comes from
thinking of ourselves as individuals, as complete and
separate entities. I note that those who are cooperating
parts of a whole do not despond ; the despised “yokel’
playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game
of life and degenerate through the separation. “Be a
whole or join a whole,” said Goethe. If we think of our-
selves as part of a living (no merely theoretical) group,
we shall find life a little fuller, perhaps even more
significant. For to give life a meaning one must have a
purpose larger than one’s self, and more enduring than
one’s life.
If, as we said at the outset, a thing has significance
only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then,
though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal
meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in
particular that its meaning lies in its relation to some-
thing larger than itself.. Hence the greater fulness of
the married and parental, as compared with the celi-
bate and sterile, life; a man feels significant in propor-
tion as he contributes, physically or mentally, to the
entity of which he acknowledges himself a part. We
who are too superior to belong to groups, who are too
wise to marry or too clever to have children, find life
empty and vain, and wonder has it any meaning. But
ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the
meaning of life and he will answer you very simply :
Feeding your family.” The attraction of the sexes,
[127]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
which, when taken in isolation from its biological func-
tion, seems a delusion and a vain pursuit, becomes a
road to fulfilment and a modest significance when sur-
rendered to heartily in the continuity of life.
Here on the train from Morgantown to Pittsburgh is
a woman all smiles, playing with her child. O you un-
happy intellectuals of the cities ! — do you think you are
profounder than that woman ? And you sophist scien-
tist, vainly seeking to understand the part in terms of
the part, can you not see that this woman is a greater
philosopher than you, because she has forgotten her-
self as a part, and has found a place in the whole?
IV
A PERSONAL CONFESSION
This, then, I should say, is the road to significance
and content: join a whole, and work for it with all
your body and mind. The meaning of life hes in the
chance it gives us to produce, or to contribute to, some-
thing greater than ourselves. It need not be a family;
that, so to speak, is the direct and broadest road, which
Nature in her blind wisdom has provided for even the
simplest soul ; it may be any group that can call out all
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LET TERS TO A SUICIDE
the latent nobility of the individual, and give him a
cause to work for that shall not be shattered by his
death. It may be some revolutionary association to
which a man or a woman gives devotion unstintingly ;
or it may be a great state to whose preservation and
exaltation some Pericles or Akbar devotes his genius
and his life. It may occasionally be some work of
beauty that absorbs the soul in its making, and becomes
a boon to many generations. But in every case it must,
if it will give a life meaning, lift the individual out of
himself, and make him a cooperating part of a vaster
scheme. The secret of significance and content is to
have a task which consumes all one’s energies, and
makes human life a little richer than before.
As for myself— for I wish to answer directly the
questions which I have asked of so many others-Hhe
meaning of life lies perhaps too narrowly in my family
and my work; I wish I coidd boast of consecration to a
larger cause. The sources of my energy are egotism and
a selfish altruism— the greed for applause, and a mad
devotion to those dependent upon me. The goal and
motive force of my work.^ — to see happiness around
me, and to win, at last, the approval of my betters. The
haunts of happiness? — my home and my books, my
[129] K
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
ink and my pen. I would not call myself happy — no
man can be quite happy in the midst of the poverty
and suffering that still survive about him today; but I
am content, and inexpressibly grateful. Where, in the
last resort, does my treasure lie ? — in everything. A man
should have many irons in the fire; he should not let
his happiness be bound up entirely with his children,
or his fame, or his prosperity, or even his health; but
he should be able to find nourishment for his content
in any one of these, even if all the rest are taken away.
My last resort, I think, would be Nature herself; shorn •
of all other gifts and goods, I should find, I hope, sufiE-
cient courage for existence in any mood of field and
sky, or, shorn of sight, in some concourse of sweet
sounds, or some poet’s memory of a day that smiled.
All in all, experience is a marvelously rich panorama,
from which any sense should be able to draw suste-
nance for living.
The hardest question of all to answer is— what help
does religion give me.? As I write the query down I
look out of the moving window and see, in the valley
below, a little hamlet gathered about a church. I can
imagine what incredible theological nonsense is
preached under that white spire, what bigotry and scc-
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
tariamsm are* nourished there, and with what terror
and hatred these simple toilers of the soil will defend
the faith that so solicitously protects them from our
passing truth. But my heart goes out to them ; I think
I like them better than the village atheist who knows so
well how to say the right thing at the wrong time. To
be in haste to destroy the faith of such people is surely
the mark of a shallow and ungenerous mind.
Nevertheless, I cannot believe, in the face of biology,
in the eternity of the individual self; nor, in the face of
history, can I believe in a personal anthropomorphic
God. But unlike the tougher minds of my time I miss
these encouragements, and cannot quite forget the
poetry with which they surrounded my youth. There is
something ridiculous in the idea of a Supreme Being
that should be at all like a man, even like Leonardo
or Goethe; but I should be grateful to anyone who
could persuade me of this delectable absurdity. There
is something selfish in the desire for personal immor-
tality, and a heaven crowded to suffocation with inter-
minable egos would be an insufferable place ; but I sus-
pect that I too shall be sorry to go, and should be glad
to know, when I am gone, what fate befalls my chil-
dren and my friends, and the causes I tried to serve.
[131]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
So that, though the dogmas of the old faith have
gone from me and offer me no support today, they
have left in me an aroma of their memory, as (to use
an old figxire) a certain fragrance may linger in a room
from which flowers have been recently removed. So
much of the old remains that I cannot accept the crude
mechanism which contents so many of my generation,
and am pleased to find symbolic profundities in the
ancient creed. Possibly in the end faith, ever clamoring
to be heard, will break down my doubts, and I shall go
the way of Huysmans and Chesterton. My readers
should beware of what I write when I am old.
What immortality means to me now is that we arc
all parts of a whole, cells in the body of life; that the
death of the part is the life of the whole; and that
though as individuals we pass away, yet the whole is
made forever different by what we have done and been.
What God means to me is the First Cause, or source
of all life and energy, in which we live and move and
have our being; and the Final Cause, or goal and em-
bodiment of our striving and aspiration, that distant
perfection which is not but may be. Perhaps that great-
est Whole, to which in all generations the greatest souls
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
have devoted themselves, will, in tomorrow’s religion,
be called God.
V
INVITATION
But here I have lost myself so much in myself that I
have forgotten you, my unknown soldier of despair,
who are about to commit suicide. You will see that
what you need is not philosophy, but a wife and a child,
and hard work. Voltaire once remarked that he might
occasionally have killed himself, had he not had so
much work on his hands. I notice again that it is only
leisurely people who despair. If you can find no work
in this chaotic industrial system of ours, go out to the
first farmer and ask him to let you be his hired hand
for your food and a bed until better things come. If he
is afflicted with that incredible disease called overpro-
duction, agree that you will produce only as much as
you can consume. Perhaps when we are all permitted
to consume as much as we produce we shall have no
“overproduction” any more.
In the end I know how vain and snobbish all advice
is, and how hard it is for one human being to under-
stand another. Come and spend an hour with me, and
[133]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
I will show you a path through the woods which will
better dissuade you from surrender than all the argu-
ments of my books. Come and tell me what a childish
optimist I am: lay about you freely, and damn this
middling world as you will; I shall agree with every-
thing but your conclusion. Then we shall eat the bread
of peace together, and let the prattle of the children
restore our youth.
APPENDIX
X
X
n
u
APPENDIX
being a communication from convict 79206,
SING SING PRISON
After the foregoing manuscript had been pre-
pared it occurred to the publishers to send a copy
of the initial letter to a man recently sentenced to
life imprisonment as a fourth offender j what mean-
ing did life seem to have from the viewpoint of
one so unjustly condemned to apparently so empty
a future ? The reply was so well thought out, and
so well expressed, that it commanded a place in this
symposium. It is incredible that we should be un-
able to find any better use for such intelligence than
to lock it up forever.
An eminent author and philosopher seeks an answer
to that age-old question: What is the meaning or worth
of human life?
An equally eminent publisher asked me how I man-
age to bear it in my present position.
To the philosopher, I, a man serving a life term bc-
[137]
APPENDIX
hind prison walls, answer that the meaning life has for
me depends upon, and is only limited by, my ability to
recognize its great truths and to learn and profit by the
lessons they teach me. In short, life is worth just what I
am willing to strive to make it worth.
To the publisher, I say that life, even from within
prison walls, can be as intensely interesting, as vitally
worth-while as it is to any man on the outside. It all
depends upon the faith one has in the soundness of
his philosophy.
I My philosophy of life is a homely one, compounded
' of many simple beliefs of which truth is the guiding
j star. Upon my ability to see life in its true aspect, I
depend for that mental equilibrium without which I
find myself drifting in a welter of conjecture and con-
tradictory speculation.
‘We are driven to conclude,* argues the philosopher,
‘that the greatest mistake in human history was the
discovery of truth. It has not made us happy, for it is
not beautiful. It has not made us free, except from de-
lusions that comforted us and restraints that preserved
us. It has taken from us every reason for existence
except the moment’s pleasure and tomorrow’s trivial
hope.’
APPENDIX
If our happiness and our reason for existence de-
pended upon our inherent tendency to seek comfort
in delusions, false tradition and superstition, then I
could agree. We should be unhappy when truth de-
prived us of their questionable consolation, but they
do not.
Truth is not beautiful, neither is it ugly. Why should
it be either? Truth is truth, just as figures are figures.
When a man wishes to learn the exact condition of
his business affairs, he employs figures and, if these
figures reveal a sad state of his affairs, he doesn’t con-
demn them and say that they are unlovely and accuse
them of having disillusioned him . Why then condemn
truth, when it only serves him in this enterprise of life
as figures serve him in his commercial enterprises?
That idol-worshipping strain in our natures has
visioned a figure of Truth draped in royal raiment and,
when truth in its humble form, sans drapery, appears
to us, we cry, ‘Disillusionment.*
Custom and tradition have caused us to confuse truth
with our beliefs. Custom, tradition and our mode of
living have led us to believe we cannot be happy, save
under certain physical conditions possessed of certain
material comforts.
[139]
APPENDIX
This is not truth, it is belief. Truth tells us that hap-
piness is a state of mental contentment.
Contentment can be found on a desert island, in a
little town, or the tenements of a large city. It can be
found in the palaces of the rich or the hovels of the
poor.
Confinement in prison doesn’t cause unhappiness, else
all those who are free would be happy. Poverty doesn’t
cause it, else the rich all would be happy. Those who
live and die in one small town are often as happy, or
happier than many who spend their entire lives in
travel. I once knew an aged negro who could not tell
the meaning of one letter from that of another, yet he
was happier than the college professor for whom he
worked. Hindus are happy, so are the Chinese, the
Africans, the Spaniards, and the Turks. The North, the
South, the East and the West all contain happy persons.
There are celebrities who are happy, and thei:e are
many happy people living obscure lives.
Happiness is neither racial, nor financial, nor social,
neither is it geographical.
What then can it be, and from what deep well does
it spring
[140]
APPENDIX
Reason tells us that it is a form of mental content-
ment and— if this be true — ^its logical abode must be
within the mind. The mind, so we are told, is capable
of rising above matter. Can we be wrong then in
assuming that mental contentment may be achieved
under any condition, even in prison ?
There are some who would have us believe that
thought, discovery and invention have revealed life as
a rather hopeless venture, and mankind a helpless
pawn doomed to go down to defeat and oblivion, and
from this gloomy prospect man turns and exclaims,
*What’s the use?’
Natural history teaches us that in the great scheme
of evolution, which is the only true and not compara-
tive progress, certain forms of life, unable to adjust
themselves to evolutionary changes, have been entirely
blotted out. These were devoid of that constructive
instinct we call invention. Life is in a constant state of
change, and the development of thought and invention
enables us to adjust ourselves to these changes. In fact
our very fitness, our only hope of survival, depends
upon the fertihty of our inventiveness.
The prehistoric fish, when it developed legs with
which to climb from its then native habitat or element,
[141]
APPENDIX
was as much of an inventor as were the Wright
brothers.
T. S. Eliot draws us a very convincing picture of a
chaotic world in ‘The Waste Land,’ but I dare to ques-
tion the premise upon which he paints his picture.
Science, discovery, thought and deduction all tell me
that the world is a living symbol of orderliness, that
evolution is blind only according to man’s standards of
blindness, that chaos exists only in the minds of men.
Reason will not permit me to see life in any other
aspect. To me, life is like a river, moving ever forward.
There are eddies and cross-currents, but the main
stream sweeps onward.
Life cannot retrogress, neither can man. He is an
integral part of the universe in which he lives, that
universe which is ever moving forward to some ap-
pointed destiny.
That life was accidental is a theory I am willing to
accept, but it doesn’t follow that it need be meaning-
less. Any man who has thought deeply enough to ar-
rive at the conclusion that life is without meaning must
surely be an intelligent man. Intelligent persons do not
do meaningless things, yet these exponents of this doc-
trine continue to live. I am forced to conclude from
[142]
APPENDIX
this that they do not feel entirely in sympathy with
their doctrine. Each time I pick up a newspaper and
read of some man committing suicide, I say, ‘There
was a man who truly believed that life was without
meaning.’
Those who decry the machine age as heralding the
decadence of the race, do not stop to consider that
manual labor is not a natural but an acquired habit
of man. It was a crude means by which primitive
man sought to adjust himself, sought to survive, a
method for Accomplishing those tasks and overcoming
those obstacles which life presents. The machine is
simply a quicker, more efficient means to the same end:
Man’s struggle to keep abreast, to survive. Just as man
has changed his mode of living, so must he change his
thoughts, his habits, and perhaps even his form.
Back in the dim aeons of time man has made several
physical changes, why not in the far-distant future
toward which we are traveling.'^
Up from the deeps of the sea to the shallows came
life, up from the shallows to the land.
* This evening I stood in the prison yard amid other
prisoners, with eyes lifted aloft, gazing at that great,
beautiful sight, the airship Los Angeles as it sailed
[143]
APPENDIX
majestically over our heads. Into my mind came the
thought that, just as that prehistoric creature struggled
up out of the sea to the land, so is man struggling up
from the land into the air. Who dare deny that, some
day, up, ever up he will struggle thru the great reaches
of interstellar space to wrest from it the knowledge
which will enable him to lift his life to a plane as high
above this, our present one, as it is above that of pre-
historic man.^
I do not know to what great end Destiny leads us,
nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall
have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on.
How I play that part is all that concerns me.
In the knowledge that I am an inahenable part of
this great, wonderful, upward movement called life,
and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical afflic-
tion, nor depr^sion, nor prison, can take away from
me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and
my treasure.
Owen C. Middleton.
[144]
Reason and Meaning
Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life
Will Durant on the Meaning of Life (A Second Look)
March 28, 2015Durant - Will
In his book On the Meaning of Life
(1932) Will Durant argued that we cannot answer the question of the meaning of life in any absolute sense, for our minds are too small to comprehend things in their entirety. Still he believed we can say a few things about terrestrial meaning. Here are excerpts from a great thinker and wonderful prose stylist:The meaning of life, then, must lie within itself … it must be sought in life’s own instinctive cravings and natural fulfillments. Why, for example, should we ask for an ulterior meaning to vitality and health? … If you are sick beyond cure I will grant you viaticum, and let you die … But if you are well—if you can stand on your legs and digest your food—forget your whining, and shout your gratitude to the sun.
The simplest meaning of life then is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use … Even if life had no meaning except for its moments of beauty … that would be enough; this plodding thru the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the snow under sun, or watching the twilight turn into night, is reason a-plenty for loving life.[i]
We should be thankful for our loved ones:
Do not be so ungrateful about love … to the attachment of friends and mates who have gone hand in hand through much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and have been soldered into unity by being burned together in the flame of life. I know such mates or comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.[ii]
Love relates the individual to something more than itself, to a whole which gives it purpose.
I note that those who are cooperating parts of a whole do not despond; the despised “yokel” playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game of life and degenerate through the separation … If we think of ourselves as part of a living … group, we shall find life a little fuller … For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger and more enduring than one’s self.
If … a thing has significance only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then, though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in the particular that its meaning lies in its relation to something larger than itself … ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the meaning of life?” and he will answer you very simply: “Feeding our family.”[iii]
Durant too finds meaning in love, connection, and activity. “The secret of significance and content is to have a task which consumes all one’s energies, and makes human life a little richer than before.”[iv] Durant found the most happiness in his family and his work, in his home and his books. Although no one can be fully happy amidst poverty and suffering, one can be content and grateful finding the meaning in front of them. “Where, in the last resort, does my treasure lie?—in everything.”[v]
_______________________
[i] Durant, On the meaning of life, 124-25.
[ii] Durant, On the meaning of life, 125-26.
[iii] Durant, On the meaning of life, 126-28.
[iv] Durant, On the meaning of life, 129.
[v] Durant, On the meaning of life, 130.
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Full text of "On The Meaning Of Life"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TAOZ
CHAPTER I. AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
I. The Problem ! . . . . 3
II. Religion 7
III. Science 8
IV. History 14
V. Utopia 1*7
VI. The Suicide of the Intellect 20
VII. Finis
CHAPTER II. SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON
THE MEANING OF LIFE
I. Men of Letters . . .
I* Theodore Dreiser
2. H. L. Mencken . . ,
3. Sinclair Lewis . . .
4. John Erskine. . . .
5. Charles A. Beard
6. John Cowper Powys
7. Edwin Arlington Robinson 47
8. Andre Maurois 50
II. From Hollywood to the Ganges ... 58
1. Will Rogers 58
2. Dr. Charles H. Mayo 62
3. Ossip Gabrilowitsch 63
4. Vilhjalmur Stefansson 66
5. Havelock Ellis 68
6. Carl Laemmle 70
7. Ernest M. Hopkins 73
8. Adolph S. Ochs 76
9. Jawaharlal Nehru 78
10. M. K. Gandhi 83
11. John Haynes Holmes 85
12. Ernest Dimnet 88
III. Three Women 94
1. Mary E. Woolley 94
2. Gina Lombroso ^
3. Helen Wills Moody 08
IV. Sceptics and Lazybones 105
1. Bertrand Russell 106
2. Count Hermann Keyserling 106
3. G. B. S 107
CHAPTER in. LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
I. The Popularity of Suicide . . . . . m
II. Concessions to Suicide ii2
III. Mid-Victorian 123
IV. A Personal Confession 128
V. Invitation 133
APPENDIX. A LETTER ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
From Life-Term Convict 79206, Sing Sing
Prison, New York. « ^37
CHAPTER I AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
I. The Problem
I have sent the following letter, with variations, to
certain famous contemporaries here and abroad for,
whose intelligence I have high regard.
Dear
• f
New York,
July IS, /9jr.
Will you interrupt your work for a moment and
^ play the game of philosophy with me?
I am attempting to face a question which our
generation, perhaps more than any, seems always
. ready to ask and never able to answer — ^What is
the meaning or worth of human life? Heretofore
this question has been dealt with chiefly by theorists,
from Ikhnaton and Lao-tse to Bergson and Speng-
ler. The result has been a kind of intellectual
suicide: thought, by its very development, seems to
have destroyed the value and significance of life.
. [3]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
The growth and spread of knowledge, for which
so many idealists and reformers prayed, has re-
sulted in a disillusionment which has almost broken
the spirit of our race.
Astronomers have told us that human affairs con-
stitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star;
geologists have told us that civilization is but a
precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists
have told us that all life is war, a struggle for exist-
ence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances,
and species; historians have told us that “progress”
is a delusion, whose glory ends in inevitable decay;
psychologists have told us that the will and the
self are the helpless instruments of heredity and
environment, and that the once incorruptible soul
is but a transient incandescence of the brain.(The
Industrial Revolution has destroyed the home, and
• the discovery of contraceptives is destroying the
family, the old morality, and perhaps (through the
sterility of the intelligent) the race. Love is analyzed j 1
* into a physical congestion, and marriage becomes ||
a temporary physiological convenience slightly (
superior to promiscuity. Democracy has degenerated
into such corruption as only Milo’s Rome knew; and’ ^ .
our youthful dreams of a socialist Utopia disappear '
[4]
' ' AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
as we see, day after day, the inexhaustible acquisitive-
ness of men. Every invention strengthens the strong
and weakens the weak; every new mechanism -dis-
places men, and multiplies the horrors of war. God, .
who was once the consolation of our brief life, and
our refuge in bereavement and suffering, has ap-
parently vanished from the scene; no telescope, no
microscope discovers him. Life has become, in that
total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pul-
lulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary
eczema that may soon b? cured; nothing is certain ,
in it except defeat and death — ^a sleep from which,
it seems, there is no awakening.
Wc-are driven to xonclude that the greatest mis-
take in human history was the discovery of “truth.”
It has not made us free, except from delusions that
comforted us and restraints that preserved us. Itj
has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful,;
and did not deserve to be so passionately chased.*
As we look on it now, we wonder why we hurried
so to find it. For.|||||||ias taken from us every reason*
for existence except the moment’s pleasure and
tomorrow’s trivial hope.
This is the pass to which sci^^and philosophy
have brought us. XjjdioJiasie-pBd philosophy for
[5]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
many years, now turn back to life itself, and ask
you, as one who has lived as well as thought, to help
me understand. Perhaps the verdict of those who
have lived is different from that of those who have
merely thought. Spare me a moment to tell me
what meaning life has for you, what keeps you
going, what help — ^if any — religion gives you, what
are the sources of your inspiration and your energy,
what is the goal or motive-force of your toil, where
you find your consolations and your happiness,
where, in the last resort, your treasure, lies. Write
briefly if you must; write at length and at leisure ^
if you possibly can; for every word from you will
be precious to me. c- i
^ Sincerely yours.
Will Durant^
V. ^
I would not have this letter taken as expressing very
accurately my own conclusions on the meaning of our
existence; I cannot find it in my nature to be so de-
spondent. But I wished to confront at the outset the
bitterest possibilities, to load the dice against my own
desires, and to put the problem in such a way as to
guard against the superficial optimism with which
men are wont to turn aside the profounder issues of
life.
[ 6 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
And since no one deserves to believe unless he has |
served an apprenticeship of doubt, I propose to state u
at some length the case against the worth and signifi- \\
cance of human affairs. Later we shall consider the
replies which have come to this letter from various
nations and continents; and in the sequel I propose
to answer the question for myself with whatever sin-
cerity a half-century of life has left me in the face of
the greatest of all temptations to lie.
II. Religion
The natural condition of humanity, and even of
philosophers, is hope. Great religions arise and flourish
out of the need men feel to believe in their worth and
destiny; and great civilizations have normally rested
upon these inspiriting religions. Where such a faith,
after supporting men for centuries, begins to weaken,
life narrows down from a spiritual drama to a bio-
logical episode; it sacrifices the dignity conferred by
a destiny endless in time, and shrinks to a strange
interlude between a ridiculous birth and an annihilat-
ing death. Reduced to a microscopic triviality by the
perspective of science, the informed individual loses
belief in himself and his race, and enterprises of great
[ 7 ]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
pith and moment, which once aroused his effort and
admiration, awaken in him only scepticism and scorn.
Faith and hope disappear; doubt and despair are the
order of the day.
This is the essential diagnosis of our time. It is not
merely the War of 1914 that has plunged us into pes-
simism, much less the economic depression of these
recent years; we have to do here with something far
deeper than a temporary diminution of our wealth,
or even the death of 26,000,000 men ; it is not our homes
and our treasuries that are empty, it is our “hearts.”.
It seems impossible any longer to believe in the per-|
j
manent greatness of man, or to give life a meaning that |
cannot be annulled by death. We move into an age of .
spiritual exhaustion and despondency like that whicji/
hungered for the birth of Christ.
III. Science
When the eighteenth century laid the foundations of
the nineteenth, it staked everything upon one idea —
the replacement of theology with science. Given science,
and there would soon be wealth, which would make
men happy; given science, and there would soon be
truth, which would make men free. Universal educa-
[ 8 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
tion would spread the findings of science, liberate
men from superstition, and make them fit for de-
mocracy; a century of such universal schooling,
Bentham predicted, would solve all major problems,
and bring Utopia. “There is no limit to the progress
of mankind,” said Condorcet, “except the duration o^ ^
the globe upon which it is placed.” “The young are j
fortunate,” said Voltaire, “for they will see great i
things.”
They did. They saw the Revolution and the Terror,
Waterloo and ’48, Balaklava and Gettysburg, Sedan
and Mukden, Armageddon and Lenin. They saw the
growth and triumph of the sciences: of biology with
Darwin, of physics with Faraday, of chemistry with
Dalton, of astronomy with Laplace, of medicine with
Pasteur, of mathematics with Einstein. All the hopes of
the Enlightenment were realized : science was free, and
was remaking the world. But while the technicians
were using science to transform the earth, philosophers
were using it to transform the universe. Slowly, as one
science after another reported its findings, a picture was
unfolded of universal struggle and death; and decade
by decade the optimism of the nineteenth century
yielded to the pessimism of today.
[9]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
The astronomers reported that the earth, which had
been the footstool of God and the home of the atoning
Christ, was a minor planet circling about a minor
sun; that it had had its birth in a violent disruption,
and would end in collision and conflagration, leaving
not a shadow of man’s work to tell his tale. The geolo-
gists reported that life was tolerated transiently upon
the earth at the pleasure of ice and heat, at the mercy
of falling lava and failing rain; that oceans and moun-
tains were engaged in a perpetual warfare of encroach-
ment and corrosion, and alternating victory ; that great
continents had been destroyed by earthquakes and
would be again. The paleontologists reported that a
million species of animals had lived on the earth for
a paltry eon or two and had disappeared without leav-
ing anything more than a few bones and imprints in^
the rocks. The biologists reported that- all life lives
at the expense of other life, that big things eat little
things and are eaten in turn; that strong organismsi
use and abuse weak organisms in a hundred thousana
ways forever; that the ability to kill is the ultimate
test of survival; that reproduction is suicide, and that
love is the prelude to replacement and death.
Here, as example and symbol of all life, is my dog
[ 10 ]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
Wolf, who owes her existence to the olfactory at-
tractiveness of her police-dog mother to her collie
sire. She eats greedily and drinks abstemiously (she
is a teetotaler, and despite the pressure of current
fashions refuses all alcoholic beverages); she chases
whatever we throw, takes the coziest seats in the house,
receives our affection as a matter of course, falls into
a rut, and lures to our porch half a hundred lovers. All
night long our neighbor’s Airedale waits at our door,
and moans like a Troubadour. What but bad poetry is
the difference between this and love ?
Later Lady Wolf, after much commotion, suffering,
and mute inquiries as to the sense and meaning of it
all, litters the house with pups. She suckles them
patiently, protects them growlingly against all danger,
and nearly dies of their simultaneous voracity. At times
she laps up milk from a bowl while her babies tug at
hc^r£asts,-and then the apparently aimless circularity
and repetitiousness of life leaps to the eye. One by
one the pups are given away; Wolf looks for them for
a day, and then forgets them. The final pup exploits
and maltreats her, stealing her food and snapping at
her legs; she permits it all graciously, like any Madonna
with her babe. When this last survivor goes in his
[II]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
turn, Wolf gives no sign of bereavement; she falls
back into her maiden routine, and lives happily until
the love-fever agitates her— and the village— again.
Then she mates, breeds, and the cycle of life comes
full turn once more.
Is not this also the essence of human life ? Take away
the frills, and what greater significance than Wolf’s
has our own merry-go-round of births and deaths?
( Hidden away in the small type of our daily press, under
the captions of “Births,” “Marriages” and “Deaths,” is
the essential history of mankind; everything else is
ornament. Looked at in this canine perspective the
sublime tale of Heloise and Abelard, or the lyric of
Wimpole Street, are but incidents in Nature’s fanatical
resolution to carry on. All this hunting of a man after
a maid, all this anatomical display, this revealing con-
cealment, these luring perfumes, these graceful move-
ments, this stealthy scrutiny, this gynecological wit,
these romances and dramas and films, all this money-
making, tailoring, clothes-brushing, preening, dancing,
singing, tail-spreading, prattling, itching — all are part
of the ritual of reproduction. The ceremony becomes
more complex, but the end is as before: unto them
a little child is born.
[ 12 ]
an a nthology of doubt
Once the child had an immortal soul; now it has
glands. To the physicist it is only a bundle of molecules,
or atoms, or electrons, or protons ; to the physiologist
it is an unstable conjunction of muscles, bones and
nerves; to the physician it is a red mass of illnesses
and pains; to the psychologist it is a helpless mouth-
piece of heredity and environment, a rabble of condi-
tioned reflexes marshaled by hunger and love. Almost
every idea this strange organism will have will be a
delusion, almost every perception will be a prejudice.
It will rear fine theories of free will and immortal life,
and “from hour to hour” it will “rot and rot”; it
will construct great systems of philosophy, in which
the drop of water will explain the sea. The thought will
seldom occur to this “forked radish” called man that
it is just one species among a billion, a passing experi-
ment of Nature, who, as Turgeniev said, entertains no
■ preferences as between men and fleas. Only science
gives us at last the gift which Robert Burns unwisely
begged of the gods—to see ourselves as others see us,
even as other species see us. In the end we perceive that
to the dog we are but irrational praters, making much
noise with the tongue; and that to the mosquito we
are merely meals. Some of us reach the last stage of
[13]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
objectivity, and surrender our final prejudice, the judg-
ment of beauty; we admit that something may be said
for the Zulu’s idolatry of adipose nates, and that a
Martian might conceivably admire, next to the beauty
of collies and mares, the loveliness of woman. Slowly
we cease to be the center and summit of the universe ;
we and our species, in the scientific eye, are trivial
fragments, flying off at a tangent towards destruction.
IV. History
The nineteenth century was the age of history as
well as of science; the hunger for facts turned with a
concerted fury upon the past, dismembered and dis-
sected it, and discovered the rise and fall of nations.
The resultant picture is a panorama of development
and decay; history, as Bacon said, is the planks of a
•shipwreck, and nothing seems certain in it except de-
cadence, degeneration, and death.
A thousand varieties of man — Piltdown, Neander-
thal, Chellean, Acheulean, Mousterian, Aurignacian,
Cro-magnon, Rhodesian, Pekin man — lived for thou-
sands of years, fought, thought, invented, painted,
carved, made children, and left no more to posterity
than a few flints and scratches, forgotten for millenia
[14]
an anthology of doubt
and found only by the picks and spades of our in-
quisitive day. A thousand civilizations have disappeared
under the ocean or the earth, leaving, like Atlantis,
merely a legend behind; Turkestan, Mohenjo-Daru,
Ur of the Chaldees, Samarkand of Tamerlane, Angkor
of the Khmers, Yucatan of the Mayas, and the Incas’
Peru—these are the mausole a of cultures almost com-
pletely lost. They are among the few which we have
imearthed; calculate, then, the number of dead civiliza-
tions of which history preserves no vestige at all. And
of the pitiful minority that have clung to some place
in human memory — like Babylon and Egypt, Persia
and Crete, Greece and Rome— consider their grandeur
and decadence, and see how-unc ertain a thing history
is, how its greatest names are writ in water, and how
even Shakespeare may become to his countrymen,
within a century of his death, a half-forgotten barbarian
gi^v en to melodr^ati^ fustian and bad puns.
All things, said Aristotle, have been discovered and
forgotten many times over. Pro gre ss, he assures us, is
ajclusion; human affairs are like the sea, which on its,
surface is disturbed into a thousand motions, and!
seems to be headed somewhere, while at its bottom it
is comparatively changeless and still. What we call
[15]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
progress IS, perhaps, mere superficial change, a succes-
sion of fashions in dress, transportation, government,
psychology, religion; Christian Science, behaviorism,
democracy, automobiles, and pants are not progress,
they are change; they are new ways of doing old
things, new errors in the vain attempt to understand
eternal mysteries. Underneath these varying phe-
nomena the essence remains the same; the man who
uses the steam shovel and the electric drill, the tractor
and the tank, the adding-machine and the machine-
gun, the airplane and the bomb, is the same sort of
man as those who used wooden ploughs, flint knives,
log wheels, bows and arrows, knot writing, and
poisoned spear-heads; the tool difllers, the end is the
same; the scale is vaster, the purposes as crude and
selfish, as stupid and contradictory, as murderous and
suicidal, as in prehistoric or ancient days; everything}
has j)rogresj ed^xcept man. ”
All history, then, all the proud record of human
accumulations and discoveries, seems at times to be a
futile circle, a weary tragedy in which Sisyphus man
repeatedly pushes invention and labor up the high hill
of civilization and culture, only to have the precarious
structure again and again topple back into barbarism
[i6]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOVBT
— into coolies, ryots, fellaheen, moujiks and serfs —
through the exhaustion of the soil, or the migrations of
trade, or the vandalism of invaders, or the educated
sterility of the race. So much remains of Condorcet’s
“indefinite perfectibility of mankind.” Indefinite in-
deed.
V. Utopia
All the dogma that in the last one hundred years
gave to earthly life something of the significance which
the hope of heaven brought to medieval man, seems
to have lost countenance in this sceptical century.
“Progress,” “universal education,” “popular sover-
eignty” — who is now so poor in doubt as to do them
reverence? Our schools are like our inventions — they
offer us new ideas, new means of doing old things;
they elevate us from petty larceny to bank wreckages
and Teapot Domes. They stake all on intellect, only
to find that character wins in the end. We taught
people how to read, and they enrich the “tabloids” and
the talkies”; we invented the radio, and they pour
out, a hundred times more abundantly than before, the
music of savages and the prejudices of mobs. We gave
them, through technology and engineering, unprec-
edented wealth — miraculous automobiles, luxurious
[ 17 ]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
travel, and spacious homes; only m^find that^pjeace
departs as jiches come, that automobiles over-ride mo-
rality and connive at crime, that quarrels grow bitterer
as the spoils increase, and that the l arg est h ouses a re
the bloodiest _ battlegrounds of the ancient war be- x
tween woman and man.^e discovered birth-contro^^
and now it sterilizes the intelligent, multiplies the
ignorant, debases love with promiscuity, frustrates the
educator, empowers the demagogue, and deteriorates
the raceJ We enfranchised all men, and find them sup-
porting^ and preserving, in nearly every city, a nefarious
“machine” that blocks the road between ability and
office; we enfranchised all women, and discovered that
nothing is changed except clerical expense. We
dreamed of socialism, and find our own souls too
greedy to make it possible; in our hearts we too are
capitalists, and have no serious objection to becoming
rich. We dreamed of emancipation through organized
labor, and find great unions working hand in hand
with corrupt machines and murderous gangs; these are
the instruments with which we poor intellectuals
planned to build Utopia. We turned at last to Russia,
and find it conquering poverty at the cost of that free-
dom of body and mind, of work and thought, which
[i8]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
has been the soul of liberalism and radicalism from
Godwin to Darrow, from Emerson to Kropotkin, from
Rabelais to Anatole France.
And over all the drama hovers, like a many-armed
Shiva, the merry god of war. The grandeur of Egypt
is the child of brutal conquest and despotisin ; the glory
of Greece is rooted in the mire of slavery ; the majesty
of Rome is in its triremes and its legions ; the civiliza-
tion of Europe rises and falls with its guns. History, like
Napoleon’s God, is on the side of big Bertha ; it laughs
at artists and philosophers, destroys their work in a
moment of patriotism, and gives its honors, its statues
and its pages to Mars. Egypt builds and Persia destroys
it; Persia builds and Greece destroys it; Greece builds
and Rome destroys it; Islam builds and Spain destroys
it; Spain builds and England destroys it; Europe builds
and Europe destroys it. Men kill one another at first
with sticks and stones, then with arrows and lances,
then with phalanxes and cohorts, then with cannon
and musketry, then with dreadnoughts and sub-
marines, then with tanks and planes; the scale and
' grandeur of construction and progress are equaled by
the scale and terror of destruction and war. One by one
the nations rear their heads in pride, and one by one
[19]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
war decapitates them. “Look on my works, ye mighty,
and despair,” reads the proud inscription on the ruined
and desolate statue of Ozymandias, builder of buildings
and “King of Kings”; but the traveler reports, simply,
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
VI. The Suicide of the Intellect
In the face of this impartial destructiveness of his-
tory, this neutrality of nature between good and evil,
life and death, the soul of man, in the past, has strength-
ened itself with faith in a juster world to come. There
all these wrongs would be righted, and the poor man
in heaven would have the pleasure of letting a drop of
water fall upon the rich man’s tongue in hell. There
was something ferocious in the old faiths; the gentle
gospels of Buddha and Christ were blackened by time
into holy orgies of revenge; every paradise had its
inferno, to which good people fervently consigned
those who had succeeded too well in life, or had
adopted the wrong myth. In those “happy days” men
agreed that life was evil : Gautama called the extinction
[20]
of individual consciousness the greatest good, and the
Church described life as a vale of tears. Men could
afford to be pessimists about the earth, because they
were optimists about the sky; behind those clouds they
saw the isles of the blest, the abode of everlasting bliss.
As I write a song comes up from the street below. A
black-garbed lass, accompanied by a tremulous brass
band, is singing The Roc1{ of Ages. Silently I join in
the refrain; and all the idealized memories of my
pious youth surge up within me. I slip down and pass
among the impromptu congregation that has gathered
about the singers. The uniformed men in the official
band do not impress me; without exception they are
hard-looking, practical fellows; long since, I fear,
religion has becoine a business with them. T he uni-
form^ women, whose shrill voices carry the burden
of the song, are pale and thin, empty in body and soul ;
everything spiritual dies when it is sold, or made a
motley to the view.
But in the crowd itself the faces are not hard. These
men seem for the most part destitute — jobless and
penniless; the exploitation and poverty that are a part
of life have fallen heavily upon them; they are one
[21]
or THE MEANING OF LIFE
moment in the eternal wastage of selection. Yet they
are not bitter; they listen patiently to the harangue of
the preacher calling them violently to the gentle Christ.
Despite his invectives and denunciations some of them
seem comforted; for a while they catch a glimpse of
another world than their daily round of unemploy-
ment and fruitless search, of b urni ng hung er and
weary feet. In a dark doorway an old woman listens
hopefully, sheds a tear, and mumbles a prayer. But
for the most part the men smile incredulously; their
poverty does not seem to them to declare the glory
of God. When the song is renewed not one of them
joins in it; one by one they walk quietly away. Even
into these simple souls the scepticism of our time
has entered. How shall I, fortunate and comfortable,
ever fathom the despair of these men, shorn not only of
the goods of life but of a consoling faith as well ?
For today science, which, because of its marvelous
creations, they have learned to trust as once they trusted
the priest, has told them that the sky which of old
promised them happiness, is mere blue nothing, cold
and empty space, and that those clouds among which
the angels frolicked are only the steaming perspiration
of the earth. Science does not offer consolation, it
[22]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
offers death. Everything, from the unwinding universe
of the astronomers to the college girl irradiating life
with beauty and laughter, must pass away: this hand-
some youth, erect and vigorous, fresh from athletic
victories, will be laid low tomorrow by some modest,
ingratiating germ; this noble pianist, who has dignified
his time with perfection, and has taught a million souls
to forget themselves in beauty, is already in the clutch
of death, and will, within a decade, be rotting in the
tomb.
The greatest question of our time is not com-
; paunism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not
'ieven the East vs. the West; it is whether men can
bear to live without God.
1 Religion was profounder than philosophy, and re-
fused to root human happiness in the earth; it based
man’s hopes where knowledge could never reach them
—beyond the grave. Perhaps Asia was profounder than
Europe, and medievalism profounder than moder nity
for they kept at arm’s length this science that seems .
to kill whatever it touches, reducing soul to brain, life
to matter, personality to chemistry, and will to fate,.
Perhaps some confident and stoic race, still strong in
religious enthusiasm, will engulf and absorb these
[23]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
disillusioned peoples of the West, so scientifically in
love with death.
This, then, is the final triumph of thought— that
it disintegrates all societies, and at last destroys the
thinker himself. Perhaps the invention of thought was
one of the cardinal errors of mankind. For first,
thought undermined morality by shearing it of its
supernatural sanctions and sanctity, and revealing it
as a social utility designed to save policemen; and a
morality without God is as weak as a traffic law when
the policeman is on foot. Second, thought undermined
society by separating sex from parentage, removing
the penalty from promiscuity, and liberating the in-
dividual from the race; now only the ignorant transmit
their kind. Finally it undermined the thinker by re-
vealing to him, in astronomy and geology, biology and
history, a panorama in which he saw himself as an
insignificant fragment in space and a flickering mo-
ment in time; it took from him his belief in his own
will and future, left his fate nude of nobility and
grandeur, and weakened him into despondency and .
surrender.
And here, in the macabre finale, philosophy joins
hands with science in the work of destruction. That
[24]
AN ANTHOLOGY OF DOUBT
total perspective which it preached so proudly and so
eagerly pursued is apparently the most dangerous
though the rarest— foe of resolution and joy; for what
meaning or dignity can the individual have in a world
so vast, among species without number, and in time
without end? He that increaseth ' knowledge in-[
creaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much vanity.'
VII. Finis
This is the challenge which confronts our age, and
dwarfs all other problems of philosophy and religion,
economics and statesmanship; beside it the apparent
ruin of our economic system becomes a transitory
trifle unworthy of serious concern. If the reader has
been disturbed by these pages, it is good ; let him now
find in his own mental resources some basis for
his faith; let him honestly formulate his own reply
to this philosophy of despair. For those of us who wish
to live consciously, to know the worst and praise the
best, must meet all these doubts if we are to maintain
any longer our pretense to the life of reason.
[25]
X
X
n
u
SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
X
X
n
u
CHAPTER II
SOME CONTEMPORARIES ON THE MEANING
OF LIFE
I
MEN OF LETTERS
The letter printed at the beginning of this book was
sent, in the summer of 1931, to a hundred or more
of the brighter luminaries in contemporary life and
thought. In each case the letter was accompanied by
a request for permission to publish the reply. A con-
siderable number of the addressed begged to be ex-
cused from answering, lest they incriminate themselves ;
public ofl&cials in particular were reluctant to speak
frankly on so delicate a question, since their tenure of
office depended (in some slight measure) on the good-
will of the uninformed. I can readily forgive them; I
confess that my letter involved too intimate a scrutiny
of private opinions for public lives; and I know the
heavy price which must be paid in amiable hypocrisy
[29]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
for the privilege of holding office in a democratic
state.
Under the circumstances I was surprised by the
abundance and candor of the replies. Our greatest
novelist, Theodore Dreiser, immersed in the battles of
the unemployed, wrote briefly, under date of June
23rd, 1931:
“Your letter of June 15th seems to me the best
answer that can be made to your question: ‘What
is the meaning or worth of human life?’ If I had
the time to undertake such a task as you suggest,
my answer would really be some such diatribe as
this letter of yours.”
From our leading critic, H. L. Mencken, the man
who above all others has influenced contemporary
American literature and thought, came this frank
reply:
“You ask me, in brief, what satisfaction I get out
of life, and why I go on working. I go on working
for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
There is in every living creature an obscure but
powerful impulse to active functioning. Life de-
mands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of
[30]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful
and dangerous to the healthy organism in fact,
it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really
idle.
“The precise form of an individual’s activity is
determined, of course, by the equipment with
which he came into the world. In other words, it
is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a
hen does, because I was born without any equip-
ment for it. For the same reason 1 do not get myself
elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach
metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill.
What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand.
It happens that I was born with an intense and
insatiable interest in ideas, and thus like to play
with them. It happens also that I was born with
rather more than the average facility for putting
them into words. In consequence, I am a writer and
editor, which is to say, a dealer in them and con-
coctor of them,
“There is very little conscious volition in all this.
What I do was ordained by the inscrutable fates,
not chosen by me. In my boyhood, yielding to a
powerful but still subordinate interest in exact facts,
I wanted to be a chemist, and at the same time my
[31]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
poor father tried to make me a business man. At
other times, like any other relatively poor man, I
have longed to make a lot of money by some easy
swindle. But I became a writer all the same, and
shall remain one until the end of the chapter,
just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even
though what appears to be her self-interest urges
her to give gin. •
“I am far luckief than most men, for I have
been able since boyhood to make a good living
doing precisely what I have wanted to do— what
I would have done for nothing, and very gladly,
if there had been no reward for it. Not many men,
I believe, are so fortunate. Millions of them have
to make their livings at tasks which really do not
interest them. As for me, I have had an extraor-
dinarily pleasant life, despite the fact that I have
had the usual share of woes. For in the midst
of those woes I still enjoyed the immense satisfac-
tion which goes with free activity. I have done, in
the main, exactly what I wanted to do. Its possible
effects upon other people have interested me very
little. I have not written and published to please
other people, but to satisfy myself, just as a cow
gives milk, not to profit the dairyman, but to satisfy
[32]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
herself. I like to think that most of my ideas have
been sound ones, but I really don t care. The world
may take them or leave them. I have had my fun
hatching them.
“Next to agreeable work as a means of attaining
happiness I put what Huxley called the domestic
affections— the day to day intercourse with family
and friends. My home hasjtecpn bitter sorrow, but
it has never seen any seridus disputes, and it has
never seen poverty. I was completely happy with
my mother and sister, and I am completely happy
with my wife. Most of the men I commonly as-
sociate with are friends of very old standing. I have
known some of them for more than thirty years.
I seldom see anyone, intimately, whom I have
known for less than ten years. These friends delight
me. I turn to them when work is done with un-
failing eagerness. We have the same general tastes,
and see the world much alike. Most of them are
interested in music, as I am. It has given me more
pleasure in this life than any other external thing. I
love it more every year.
“As for religion, I am quite devoid of it. Never
in my adult life have I experienced anything that
could be plausibly called a religious impulse. My
[33] D
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
father and grandfather were agnostics before me,
and though I was sent to Sunday-school as a boy
and exposed to the Christian theology I was never
taught to believe it. My father thought that I should
learn what it was, but it apparently never occurred '
to him that I would accept it. He was a good psy-
chologist. What I got in Sunday-school — beside a
wide acquaintance with Christian hymnology — was
simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith
was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian
God preposterous. Since that time I have read a
great deal in theology — perhaps much more than
the average clergyman — but I have never discovered
any reason to change my mind.
“The act of worship, as carried on by Christians,
seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling.
It involves grovelling before a Being who, if He
really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of
respected. I see little evidence in this world of the
so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems
to me that, on the strength of His daily acts. He
must be set down a most stupid, cruel and villainous
fellow. I can say this with a clear conscience, for
He has treated me very well— in fact, with vast
politeness. But I can’t help thinking of his barbaric
[34]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
torture of most of the rest of humanity. I simply
can t imagine revering the God of war and politics,
theology and cancer.
“I do not believe in immortality, and have no
desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile
egos of inferior men. In its Christian form it is
little more than a device for getting revenge upon
those who are having a better time on this earth.
What the meaning of human life may be I don’t
know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All
I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very
amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed,
can be amusing. Moreover, they tend to foster the
human qualities that I admire most — courage and
its analogues. The noblest man, I think, is that one
who fights God, and triumphs over Him. I have
had little of this to do. When I die I shall be con-
tent to vanish into nothingness. No show, however
good, could conceivably be good forever.”
This is a delightful piece, which I print here with
the uneasy conscience of a man stealing a gem ; I trust
Mr. Mencken will do me the honor some day of ap-
propriating something of mine, if he can find in me
anything so honest and modest as this auto-analysis of
[35]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Mencken in terms of cows and hens. The man here
revealed is a being more diverse and sensitive than the
editor of the American Mercury; he is not afraid to
“love” music and his home, and braves all the con-
ventions of our literary world by getting along with
his wife — though he was clever enough to marry at an
age when monogamy is bearable. Perhaps because he
fears and distrusts this secret sensitivity and tenderness
in his nature he clings to a hard, “tough-minded”
philosophy of mechanism and determinism and will
confess no sympathy with the eternal hunger of man-
kind for supernatural consolations. It is doubtful if
we shall find in all our batch of answers a reply so
straightforward as this.
Mr. Mencken is commonly rated and berated as a
pessimist; but it is evidently possible for a man to be
a pessimist about the world and yet a tolerably cheer-
ful fellow in his life. So with our most famous novelist,
Sinclair Lewis: he has no very ingratiating opinion of
us poor hypocrites, and might be judged from his
books to be a man full of irony and gall ; but his simple
letter indicates how unnecessary it is to conclude from
mechanism and atheism to sorrow and despair:
[36]
SO ME CONTEMPORARIES
“It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any
need of religion to make life seem worth living, or
to give consolation in sorrow, except in the case
of people who have been reared to religion so that
should they lose it in their adult years, they would
miss it, their whole thinking having been condi-
tioned by it. I know several young people who have
been reared entirely without thought of churches,
of formal theology, or any other aspect of religion,
who have learned ethics not as a divine command-
ment but as a matter of social convenience. They
seem to me quite as happy, quite as filled with
purpose and with eagerness about life as any one
trained to pass all his troubles on to the Lord, or the
Lord’s local agent, the pastor.
“Their satisfaction comes from functioning
healthily, from physical and mental exercise,
whether it be playing tennis or tackling an as-
tronomical problem.
“Nor do I believe that most of them will even in
old age feel any need of religious consolation, be-
cause I know also a few old people who have been
thus reared all their lives and who are perfectly
serene just to be living. A seventy-four-year-old
agnostic like Clarence Darrow is not less but more
[37]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
cheerful and excited about life’s adventure — ^yes,
and ‘spiritual minded’ — than an aged bishop whose
bright hopes of Heaven are often overbalanced by
his fears of Hell.
“If I go to a play I do not enjoy it less because
I do not believe that it is divinely created and
divinely conducted, that it will last forever instead
of stopping at eleven, that many details of it will
remain in my memory after a few months, or that
it will have any particular moral effect upon me.
And I enjoy life as I enjoy that play.
“If you wish to quote any of this, you may.
Sincerely yours,
Sinclair Lewis”
All three of these replies take mechanism or ma-
terialism for granted ; this is the secret base upon which
the most characteristic achievements of contemporary
literature arc built. The philosophy of one age is the
literature of the next; the novels and dramas of today
— the work of Mann and Schnitzler, Gorki and Wells,
Dreiser and Lewis, Toller and O’Neill — are echoes of
Darwin and Spencer, Nietzsche and Karl Marx. Shaw
has moved up to Bergson, and O’Neill has added
Freud to Schopenhauer to become the American
[38]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Sophocles. Literature has not yet discovered that the
science of 1932 seriously questions the philosophy of
1859.
I speak inaccurately; not all our leading writers
come under the banner of a mechanist creed. John
Krskine has some doubts which he expresses with
characteristic urbanity and tolerance:
“June 29, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“It seems to be that the human race has been
given to two bad mistakes in its thinking. One is
to forget that our spiritual life is just as natural
as our physical. Whether or not the philosophers
care to admit that we have a soul, it seems obvious
that we are equipped with something or other
which generates dreams and ideals, and which sets
up values. My own disposition is to accept in its
entirety this human nature which we are born to,
without splitting too many hairs as to whether that
nature is dual or single. It is natural to me, and I
assume for others as well, to imagine ultimate ends
and to worship those ends as our God. It does not
disturb me that man’s conception of God varies
greatly at different times and in different places.
[39]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Apparently that variation is a condition of our
nature in this world.
“To think of life in these terms is, I suppose, to
define religion as an art, as something which man
will surely put forth out of himself whether it
emerges as Mohammedanism, or Catholicism or as
the present Communism of Russia. If some of us
are offended by the description of religion as an art,
it is probably because they do not attach the im-
portance which I do to art. I should like to use the
word to cover all the ideal-making and ideal-ex-
pressing functions of our nature. . . .
“If it is a mistake not to recognize that our
spiritual life is as natural as our physical, it is
another and probably a more common error to
confuse our spiritual ideals with the actual facts
of existence. If we were willing to follow our ideals
as ideals — as ends which we hope to achieve — we
could then perhaps be gentle with our fellow man
who has other purposes. But an intense faith, if one
can judge from history, often makes us stupidly
literal. . . .
“To say that life is an art would imply to some
people that the description of human nature here
given makes too little of the moral sense. I believe
that the sanctions of morality are implicit in the
human instinct to make of life a work of art.
Though we sometimes speak of a primrose path,
we all know that a bad life is just as difficult, just
as full of obstacles and hardships, as a good one. We
are told that the way is strait which leads to salva-
tion j we are also told that the way of the transgres-
sor is hard. The only choice is in the kind of life one
would care to spend one’s efforts on. I believe the
divine element in man is whatever it is which
makes us wish to lead a life worth remembering,
harmless to others, helpful to them, and increasing
our own store of wisdom and peace.
Faithfully yours,
John Erskine”
And Charles Beard, one of the soundest minds of
our generation, writes with the uncertainty of a modest
man dealing with infinites.
“New Milford, Conn.
June 25, 1931.
My dear Will Durant, . ^
The question you propound is important, the
most important that could be asked, and therefore
difficult to answer, if not impossible. Still, it must
[41]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
be faced, and now that my shadows fall aslant to the
East I am asking it with increasing anxiety. Long ^
ago the poet Milton, I think it was, said that truth
comes to us first in hideous mien, meaning that
it disturbs our old delusions and assurances. Yet
in time we become familiar with it and assimilate
it to life as it must be lived.
“So we go on working even when some of our
cherished ideals seem crushed to earth never to
rise again. Why? We do not know. We can only
guess. One answer is that we are driven by the
biological force within us, by the necessity of earn-
ing a living, and discharging the obligations which
we have gathered on the way. But that is not
enough. Thousands go on working after they have
secured an abundance of the good things men prize.
Others keep on working, as did William Lloyd
Garrison, amid the gathering gloom of apparent
defeat.
“When we analyze ourselves we find conflicting
motives. We have moments of shivering selfishness,
when we think only of our personal gain. And
we have moments of exaltation when we feel the
thrill of the prodigious and hear the call to high
action. That seems to be true of all men and women,
[42]
SOME
CONTEMPORARIES
high and low, and the outcome in each case is a
matter of proportion.
“For myself I may say that as I look over the
grand drama of history, I find (or seem to find)
amid the apparent chaos and tragedy, evidence of
law and plan and immense achievement of the
human spirit in spite of disasters. I am convinced
that the world is not a mere bog in which men and
women trample themselves in the mire and die.
Something magnificent is taking place here amid
the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme chal-
lenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest
and best in our curious heritage prevail. If there
was no grand design in the beginning of the uni-
verse, fragments of one are evident and mankind
can complete the picture. A knowledge of the good
life is our certain philosophic heritage, atid tech-
nology has ^ven us a power over nature which
enables us to provide the conditions of the good life
for all the earth’s multitudes. That seems to me to
be the most engaging possibility of the drama, and
faith in its potentialities keeps me working at it
even in the worst hours of disillusionment. The
good life~an end in itself to be loved and enjoyed;
and intelligent labor directed to the task of making
[43]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
the good life prevail. There is the little philosophy,
the circle of thought, within which I keep my little
mill turning.
“This is the appearance of things as I see them,
and even profound philosophers can merely say
what they find here.
Sincerely yours,
Charles A. Beard”
The clearest expression of the idealism that lurks in
the literary soul behind the modern mask came from
John Cowper Powys, who is, I should say, the pro-
foundest and subtlest and noblest genius whom I have
met.
“Hillsdale, N. Y.,
July I, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“The collapse of organized supernaturalism and
the absence, from the organized polities of the
world, of any essential social liberty or culture,
throws the individual back upon himself. For him-
self and in himself he can re-discover the secrets
of faith, of hope, of happiness.
“The most magical powers, values, sensations of
these secrets of life are still to be found in Nature;
[44]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
and can be enjoyed by the weak quite as much as
by the strong. The fresh-water-springs of a mystical
personal life are entirely beyond the power of the
passing fashions of thought to destroy; and they
can exist under any system of political and eco-
nomic organization or disorganization. Nature is
friendly to the weak as well as to the strong; and
truth does not lie in rational generalizations of laws
and methods, but in an instinctive growth, implying
a hardly-won and hardly-kept organic process of
delicate adjustments between the individual con-
sciousness and Nature.
“Personal experience of the mystery of Nature
and the mystery of Life brings back faith in the
freedom of the will, faith in the powers of the
soul, faith in the mystical interpretations of exist-
ence. No rational fashions of the passing hour have
the least importance when it is a question of the
individual consciousness adapting itself to Nature,
finding its own work, its own beauty, its own truth,
its own righteousness, its own happiness, and treat-
ing everything else with ironic diffidence and in-
dulgence.
In opposition to the scientific attitude to Nature
the individual self must resort to the personal at-
[45]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
titude and practice what Spengler, interpreting
Goethe, calls the physiognomic vision, a vision,
namely, that carries a fresh and child-like admira-
tion of natural phenomena, as well as a wary and
peasant-like suspicion of all generalizations and
explanations.
“To restore to one’s individual life a certain secret
liberty of thought and feeling, that shall be at once
reverential and sceptical; to free the fresh-water-
springs of one’s happiness from dependence upon
outward conditions while one twists outward con-
ditions as craftily as possible to the demands of the
flesh and the spirit; to compromise in un-essentials
while one clings to essentials with the fluid ob-
stinacy of water seeking its level; to retain an open
mind with regard to the 'magical, while one ex-
ploits in their place and under their limitations,
the rational interpretations of Nature and Life; to
free oneself from the morbidities of sympathy as
well as from the cruelties of selfishness; to treat the
whole spectacle ultimately as a dream within a
dream, from which it still remains possible that
death may awaken us ; to have no convictions except
the conviction that all cruelty is evil and that all
lives are holy and sacred; thus it seems to me one
[46]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
may reduce the astronomical universe to its due
place of secondary importance compared with the
concentration upon the mystery of consciousness
wherein lies that ‘earnestness that alone makes life
eternity. John Cowper Powys”
The poet— and Powys is a poet by the compulsion
of his blood — cannot be expected to accept the harsh
decrees of a materialistic philosophy; he is normally
tender-minded; and even when he flaunts his atheism,
like a college athlete’s letter, to the world, he is apt
to go on singing hymns even to the gods whom he
denies, as Swinburne did, or Shelley, or Keats. For
poetry dies at the touch of the mechanical, and
flourishes on the theme of life and growth; it is
pledged almost from the start to a spiritual interpreta-
tion of the world. Hear the vigorous rejection of
mechanism by our greatest American poet:
“Dear Dr. Durant:
“Peterborough, N. H.
Sept. i8, 1931.
I have delayed my acknowledgement of your
letter only for the lack of anything especially pro-
found or valuable to say in reply to it. I told a
[47]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
philosopher once that all the other philosophers
would have to go out of business if one of them
should happen to discover the truth ; and now you
say, or imply, in your letter that the truth has been
discovered, and that we are only the worse off, if
possible, for the discovery. This is naturally a cause
of some chagrin and humiliation for me, for I had
heard nothing about it. It is true that we have
acquired a great deal of material knowledge in
recent years, but so far as knowledge of the truth
itself is concerned, I cannot see that we are any
nearer to it now than our less imaginative ancestors
were when they cracked each others’ skulls with
stone hatchets, or that we know any more than they
knew of what happened to the soul that escaped
in the process. It is easy, and just now rather
fashionable, to say that there is no soul, but we do
not know whether there is a soul or not. If a man
is a materialist, or a mechanist, or whatever he
likes to call himself, I can see for him no escape
from belief in a futility so prolonged and compli-
cated and diabolical and preposterous as to be
worse than absurd; and as I do not know that such
a tragic absurdity is not a fact, I can only know
my native inability to believe that it is one. There
is nothing in the thought of annihilation that
[48]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
frightens me ; for it would be, at the worst, nothing
more terrible than going to sleep at the end of a
long day, whether a pleasant or a painful one, or
both. But if life is only what it appears to be, no
amount of improvement or enlightenment will ever
compensate or atone for what it has inflicted and
endured in ages past, or for what it is inflicting and
enduring today. . . There is apparently not much
that anyone can do about it except to follow his
own light — which may or may not be the light of
an ignis jatuus in a swamp. The cocksurencss of
the modern “mechanist” means nothing to me ; and
I doubt if it means any more to him when he
pauses really to think. His position is not entirely
unlike that of an intrepid explorer standing on a
promontory in a fog, looking through the newest
thing in the way of glasses for an ocean that he
cannot see, and shouting to his mechanistic friends
behind him that he has found the end of the world.
“These remarks, which to some readers might
seem a little severe, are more the result of observa-
tion and reflection than of personal discomfort or
dissatisfaction. As lives go, my own life would be
called, and properly, a rather fortunate one.
Yours very truly,
Edwin Arlington Robinson”
[ 49 ] R
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
But all these replies are from Americans. I pass at
once to a reply from France, a contribution of the
first order, and unstintedly generous. The author of
Ariel, Byron, and Disraeli wrote as follows, but in
impeccable French: ' / ^
“Neuilly-sur-Seine,
August 21, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant, —
“Pardon me for replying so tardily to your letter.
The excuses are two: first, that I have been away
from Paris, and your inquiry therefore took a long
time reaching me ; second, that I found the problem
so interesting that I have written an entire essay in
answer. I am sending it to you, and naturally I
authorize you to publish a part of this should it
seem desirable to you. I shall publish it myself,
doubtless, in some future volume of essays.
Very sincerely,
Andre Maurois”
The essay which M. Maurois composed for our little
symposium is a gem worthy of Voltaire or Anatole
France. He describes a successful rocket-flight of a
group of Englishmen and Englishwomen to the moon.
Arrived there they fail to construct, as they had
[50]
. SOME CONTEMPORARIES
planned, a rocket to return to, or communicate with,
the earth, and they are compelled to make the moon
their permanent home. Ten years pass. Meanwhile all
these English ladies and gentlemen continued to con-
duct themselves as if they were in England. The gover-
nor, Sir Charles Solomon, and Lady Solomon dressed
every evening for dinner. On the King’s birthday Sir
Charles gave a toast to His Majesty; and all the lunar
colonists murmured ‘The King.’ It was a moving
spectacle.”
Two hundred years pass, and still no word of in-
tercourse with the earth. The seventh generation finds
it difiBcult to believe any longer in that distant King,
always invisible and always silent, of whom their
credulous elders have transmitted to them a vague
tradition. A group of impious students arise who
flatly deny the existence of this “King of Great Britain
and Ireland, Emperor of the Indies, and Protector of
the Moon,” in whose name all laws are promulgated
and in whom all morals have had their solemn sanc-
tion. To which the Conservatives reply irritably: “Take
care; if you empty the Earth of our King, and of the
legendary Englishmen who have bequeathed us our
traditions, you will make lunary life very difQcult. For
[51]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
what then will be for you the meaning of this life?
What will be the sources of your energy? By what
secret treasure will you live?”
In the end the radicals prevail. “It is a period of
melancholy and romantic despair of the young men of
the moon. Experiments in sexual liberty produce a
great disorder of mind and soul. Boredom follows
liberty, and revolt follows boredom. People are dis-
content, men are troubled, and literature is excellent.”
A great philosopher appears who, in lyric prose, chides
the disillusionment of his time.
“Why,” he asks, “search for the meaning of life
outside of life itself? The King of whom our
legends speak — does he exist? I do not know, and
it does not matter. I know that the mountains of the
moon are beautiful when the crescent of the earth
illuminates them. If the King remains, as, always
since my birth, invisible and silent, I shall doubt
his reality; but I shall not doubt life, or the beauty
of the moment, or the happiness of action. Sophists
teach you today that life is only a brief moment in
the trajectory of a star; they tell you that nothing
is certain except defeat and death. As for me, I
tell you that nothing exists except victory and life.
[52]
SOME CONTEMPOR/tRIES
What shall we know of our death ? Either the soul
is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes
with the flesh and we shall not know that we are
dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal, and do not
believe that your life is changed merely because
it seems proved that the Earth is empty. You do
not live in the Earth, you live in yourself.”
“Yes,” Maurois tells himself, “this story would be
a possible answer to the American inquirer.” But, not
quite satisfied with it, he casts about for another world
for his thought. He sees two lines of ants crawling over
a path in the park: one going from the ant-heap, the
other returning to it; both engaged in some “public
utility.” And he imagines a philosophic ant, “with
agitated antennae,” stopping one of the columns with
sage discourse.
“My sisters, you have believed, and I have be-
lieved with you, that the world of ants was the only
important world; that the Great Ant watched
•
over* it, and that devotion to the ant-heap was a
sentiment so lofty and noble as to justify all our
toil and our suffering. Certainly it is hard to trans-
port, with never a moment of rest, across these im-
[53]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
mense and perilous deserts, these bits of straw and
these dead insects. It is heroic to brave the water,
the landslides, birds that devour us, and these
enormous forked masses which loom up in the sky
in their rhythmic advance and crush hundreds of
ants. This heroism, I used to believe, is easy when
one devotes one’s self to the greater glory of the
ant-heap.
“But alas, my sisters, I have studied and reflected ;
and behold what I have learned. Our ant-heap,
which we thought the center of the universe and
the object of particular attention from the Great
Ant, resembles a thousand ant-heaps, each of which
is inhabited by thousands of ants, each of which
thinks that his city is the navel of the world. You
are astonished.^ But this is nothing yet. Though
the ants form a race so vast that one could never
number them, they are, nevertheless, only one race
among thousands of races, one form among the
infinitely many forms of life. You protest, dear
ants ? But there is more. Not only is the ant merely
one form among forms; it is — though it costs
my pride much to say it — one of the feeblest and
most contemptible of forms. These forked monsters
who crush us in the sand think it a humiliation to
[54]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
say to themselves: ‘We, in the sight of God, arc no
more than the ants.’ You threaten me? You are
indignant? Ah, dear ants, you may well
pardon these monsters, for they too are deceived by
their pride even in the moment of their humility;
this earth of which they think themselves masters
is but a drop of mud, and the duration of their race
is but an instant in eternity.
“This, my sisters, is what I have learned in observ-
ing men, the movements of the sand, and the
courses of the stars. Having seen that all is vanity,
I say to you: Why work? Why transport these bits
of sand, these corpses of butterflies? Why traverse
these dangerous deserts in long and toiling proces-
sions ? What will be the fruit of your labor on this
earth? You will raise another generation of ants
which in its turn will labor, suffer, and be crushed
by the large feet of men. And these ants in turn
will bring up other ants, even to that time — infi-
nitely far and infinitely near — ^when the Earth will
be only a dead world. Therefore I say to you : Stop ;
cease from this useless slavery; be no longer dupes.
Know that there is no Great Ant above us, that
progress is an illusion, that your desire to toil is but
the result of heredity, that nothing is certain on the
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
Earth except the defeat and death of the ants—
a sleep from which there is no awakening.”
But a young ant politely pushes the Sage Ant aside.
“This is all very well, sister,” he says, “but we must
build our tunnel.” And Maurois again concludes:
“This story too would be a possible reply to the
American philosopher. Science, he says, teaches that
the life of our societies is only a pullulation of
human insects on the Earth, a planetary moss or
mould. But does not the insect itself wish to live?
— does not even the mould persevere in its being?
And is it true that science destroys the faith of
man in himself? What has science done, if not
to give man powerful formulae for the transforma-
tion of his world ? Man was a mould before science
as well as after it; science has done nothing except
to make this human mould master of the earth.
“The American philosopher will reply: ‘What has
been changed is this — that before science came this
human moss did not know itself as moss, these
insects did not know that they were only insects.
They believed in the high dignity of man. Devils,
angels and gods, always hovering over them, dic-
tated their actions. Hope of a future life made them
[56]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
forget the sorrows of earthly existence. Rites and
laws, supported by a supernatural authority, saved
men from anguish and doubt. But what gods lend
to law today the force of their name? Osiris re-
placed the god of the tribe, Jupiter replaced Osiris,
Jehovah replaced Jupiter. But can the name of Ein-
stein or Eddington serve to impose limits upon
human desire?’
“A light wind made the shadows of the roller-
blinds tremble on the white walls. It is true, I
thought, that man cannot live without rules. But an
instinct preserves him from such a calamity; as
soon as one web of law and morals is torn from
him, instinct weaves another to protect him. Some-
times it makes such a web out of the command-
ments of God; sometimes out of the counsels of
science, sometimes out of the decrees of an earthly*
king. What difference does it make ? Suppress if we
will, like our Englishmen in the moon, the reality
of the symbol; do the laws become less wise than
before ? Shall we not end by accepting these laws as
necessary, though changing, conventions ? Shall we
not confess, at last, that every proposition which
goes beyond human experience is uncertain? We
know only that we do not know. Is this so terrible
[57]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
a confession? Is it a new idea, and did Socrates
never utter it?
Twilight came. Already the inn-keeper, in sus-
penders, brought out his chair to the side-walk.
Lights appeared in the windows of the townsfolk,
shining ujX)n full tables. What is my secret treas-
ure ? I asked myself. This horror of a doctrine ? This
love of action ? — Behind the roofs, suddenly grown
dark, a milky clearness ran across the sky. The
moon rose.”
Let us pause here for a while; it would not do to
spoil this fine bit of philosophical imagination with any
lesser note.
u
FROM HOLLYWOOD TO THE GANGES
“Beverly Hills,
California.
“Dear Bill Durant.
“Am I too late, if I thought of something, course
I havent thought of anything along the Philosophy
line yet, but you can never tell what queer things a
man might think of during this depression, they say
Hunger produces the best thats in a man, so if this
[58]
keeps up, something awful good ought to come out
of some of us, I had a little junk in a weekly article,
that I already sold once and should give you most of
the check for you furnished the idea, If there was
anything in there any good to you take it, for a Sun-
day Syndicated Article is known to never be read,
and if so its by somebody that cant remember 24
hours,
“There was one or two lines in there that might a
been cuckoo enough to have been called ‘Phi-
losophy.’
When you come out this way, I want to see you
and have a chat with you, have you visit me, you
would be quite a Curio around these Movie lots.
They got a great slant on life.
Well good luck to you, there seems to be no way
to keep people from writing books.
Yours,
Wn.L Rogers”
I have been stealing so much first<lass material
torn st-rate men who answered my query as to the
meaning of life, and the possible destruction of human
^ y with what sly alchemy the Phi
[59]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
losopher of Beverly Hills turns my lead into gold. But
being the better thief of the two I propose to snatch
from Will’s article (with acknowledgments to the New
Yor^ American) a bit or two of his genial thought.
“I guess I just get the usual amount of mail of
anyone that writes junk for the papers, mostly
people that sho’ don’t agree with anything you said
in the papers, and showing you where you ought to
be calling Hogs somewhere.
“But this week I got some interesting letters.
One I sure was surprised to get was from Will
Durant, a man that has studied philosophy like
Mr. Coolidge has politics, and both have reached
the height in their chosen professions . . .
“He wanted me to write him and give him my
version of ‘What your Philosophy of life is?’ . . .
“I think what he is trying to get at in plain words
(leaving all the Philosophy out) is just how much
better off after all is an highly educated man than a
dumb one ? So that’s how I figure is the way I got
in that list. He knew that I was just as happy and
contented as if I knew something, and he wanted to
get the ‘Dumb’ angle, as well as the highbrow.
“That education is sorter like a growing town.
They get all excited when they start to get an in-
[6o]
SOME CONTEMPOR/iRIES
crease, and they set a civic slogan of ‘Fifty Thou-
sand by the End of Next Year.’ Well, that’s the Guy
that sets a College education his Goal. Then when
they get the fifty thousand they want to go on to
make it a hundred.
“And the Educated Guy ? he is the same. He finds
when he gets his post graduate course that all the
other Professors have got one, too, and lots of ’em
a half dozen. He begins to wonder if he hasent
spent all this time wondering if he knows anything
or not. He wishes he had took up some other line.
He talks with an old, broad-minded man of the
world of experience, and he feels lost. So I guess he
gets to wondering what education really is, after all.
For there is nothing so stupid as an educated man,
if you get off the thing that he was educated in. . . .
“The whole thing is a ‘Racket,’ so get a few
laughs, do the best you can, take nothing serious,
for nothing is certainly depending on this genera-
tion. Each one lives in spite of the previous one and
not because of it. And don’t start ‘seeking knowl-
edge,’ for the more you seek the nearer the ‘Booby
Hatch’ you get.
And don’t have an ideal to work for. That’s like
riding towards a Mirage of a lake. When you get
[6i]
ON THE MEAN ING OF LIFE
there it ain’t there. Believe in something for another
World, but don’t be too set on what it is, and then
you won’t start out that life with a disappointment.
Live your life so that whenever you lose, you are
ahead.”
We need Will Rogers’ good cheer here, for the next
reply to our letter is from Dr. Charles H. Mayo of
Rochester, Minnesota, the most famous of American
surgeons, who says very briefly:
“Rochester, Minn.
July II, 1931.
“My dear Mr. Durant: —
“I think you have summed up in an entrancing
way the life of man on earth up to the present
time. . . .
“I am so busy with my work — and there seems
always to be more rather than less — that I do not
find time to write. However, I shall be delighted to
read what you write on the subject and shall look
for some advice as to how we can be raised above
human insects.
“With all good wishes.
Sincerely yours,
Charles H. Mayo”
[62]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
And a pessimism quite as profound marks the beau-
tifully-written response of Ossip Gabrilowitsch, gra-
cious aristocrat of the piano, who has so often lifted me
out of my little self into that mystic ocean of reality
which only music reveals.
“Orchestra Hall
Detroit, Michigan
August 21, 1931.
“My dear Mr. Durant :
“On my return from a trip abroad I had the pleas-
ant surprise of finding your letter awaiting me. I
sincerely wish I could send the reply you desire,
inspired by hopeful, constructive convictions. In all
honesty, however, I cannot do this.
As I study the march of the human race through
the centuries and try to understand its present
status, I am unable to discern any plan leading to a
higher fruition here or elsewhere. Cruelty, injustice,
lawlessness seem to characterize the nature and ac-
tions of man today as much (though possibly in a
different form) as they did thousands of years ago.
A glance at the unprecedented chaos-political,
social and economic— which prevails in the world at
present, teaches us this lesson. It is but the inevitable
result of our incurable inability or unwillingness to
[63]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
learn by experience; our lack of generosity, our lack
of moral courage — all things as characteristic of the
human race today as centuries ago.
“Yet love and beauty do exist and humanity is not
without ideals, even if the latter are sacrificed every
day, nay every hour, in the foolish quest after mate-
rial things. One of the questions in your letter to me
was: “Tell us where you find your consolation and
your happiness, where in the last resort your treas-
ure lies.” My personal happiness I find in two things
— art and my family. But will future generations
still be in possesion of these treasures.^ That is the
question! The beauty of art (as I understand
beauty) is being systematically destroyed before our
eyes, and cheap sensationalism substituted. Those
who would be the prophets of a new art preach to
us that beauty is no longer necessarily art’s prime
object. As for the future of the family, your letter
expresses serious apprehension, and I fully share it.
The dawn of an industrial revolution has arisen in
the East, and if it should sweep the world it may
destroy the home, as it has annihilated so many
things which heretofore we thought indestructible.
“This, my dear Mr. Durant, is not a satisfactory
reply to your query. Such thoughts, I know, cannot
[64]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
be of any aid to you or your readers, and I shall
understand it if you make no public use of this
letter. In fact I would much prefer not to have you
publish it. It could only lead to misunderstanding. *
People generally are unable to comprehend anyone’s
pessimistic philosophy without suspecting him of a
personal quarrel with Fate. Even a great thinker
like Schopenhauer did not escape the accusation.
How could I? Yet I personally have no complaint
to make, I have fared well at the hands of Destiny.
“I have always believed, (and I still do) that a
man’s philosophy of life should be founded not on
individual experience but on wide and unbiased
observation. We all have eyes to see and ears to
hear. The opportunity is given us of watching hun-
dreds of lives besides our own. Should anyone be so
narrow as to judge the world by what happens to
be his personal good fortune or ill-luck ? Because I
eat three meals a day, does it follow that there is no
starvation anywhere? Because some of us enjoy
good health, must we remain blind to the fact that
thousands of human beings daily endure the agony
of bodily suffering? . . .
Sincerely yours,
Ossip Gabrilowitsch”
[65]
V
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
This is a fresh breath of honesty from a soul as sensi-
tive as only a musician can be. A different sort of hon-
esty, bluff and rough like an Arctic wind, is in the reply
of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who knows life from pole
to pole.
“June i6, 1931.
“Dear Durant:
“You ask the expression of a series of personal
opinions.
“ ‘What help, if any, does religion give in life?’
Since the days when I studied religions and philos-
ophy at the Harvard Divinity School, I have given
thought to this, but perhaps observation is more im-
portant. I have found that religious persons consider
themselves better off than if they were irreligious
and that irreligious persons consider themselves bet-
ter off than if they were religious. I have formed no
conviction as to which, if either, is right. Personally
I never felt inclined to take either religion or alco-
hol in the hope of drowning sorrow.
“ ‘What keeps me going?’ I suppose it is food, or
perhaps rather fuel. For we are essentially heat
engines that run according to the quantity and qual-
ity of the fuel till some part of the machine gives
way.
[ 66 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
“‘What are the sources of my inspiration?’
Again, food, and the way the body handles it. For
instance, two years ago I lived a year in and around
New York on exclusively meat and water. During
that time I was noticeably more optimistic, looked
forward to next day and next year with more relish
than when on the ordinary mixed diet. Other
sources of inspiration are weather, sound sleep.
“But perhaps, being a philosopher, you want to
insist on spiritual inspirations. There are such. My
chief one is the feeling that if anything is worth
while it may be the increase and diffusion of knowl-
edge. So I keep working away at that when con-
venient.
“It is not clear that absorbing knowledge from
universities and Sunday supplements has taken away
from me any more than it has given in return. If no
one has found a meaning for life, neither has any-
4
one demonstrated that life has no meaning.
“What probably is meaningless is the question as
to whether life has a meaning.
ViLHJALMUR StEFANSSON”
Some answers were lazy, and referred me to the
writer’s books: Arthur Schnitzler, shortly before his
[67]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
death, sent on a whole Buck der Spriiche und Beden\€n
as his reply; Wells wearily pointed to all his books as
his attempt to meet the issue; Eugene O’Neill wrote
that he had tried to face the problem in his trilogy,
Mourning Becomes Electra; and Havelock Ellis wrote:
“London,
June i8, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“The questions you propounded are, of course,
the most important that can be asked. All those of
us who are really alive spend our lives in answering
them and in expressing those answers in our work,
whatever shape that work may take.
“If you ask me for the briefest and most leisurely
statement of my own answers, I would without
hesitation name ‘The Dance of Life,’ slowly written
during the most mature, years of my life. I would
add, as dealing with the same question — though in
a way both more intimately personal and more
fragmentary — the three Series of my ‘Impressions
and Comments,’ now collected in one volume under
the title of ‘Fountain of Life.’
Sincerely yours,
Havelock Ellis”
[ 68 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American Museum
of Natural History, wrote that his life was too crowded
to permit of his discussing its meaning; but he added
that “lines of research which I am now carrying on
convince me that we must restore the word ‘creative
to the word ‘evolution,’ as distinguished from the old
world ‘created’”; and named these researches as the
central significance and spiritual basis of his life. Ad-
miral Byrd seems to have struggled heroically with the
question, and then given it up as worse than the South
Pole: a first response said: “I am interested in your let-
ter. . . . Undoubtedly the truth is bringing pessimism
and despair to many who think. I have given the very
problem you bring up a great deal of thought. ... It
isn’t impossible that unless some constructive thought
is given to the world despair will do great damage.”
But meanwhile the man who made short work of geo-
graphic mysteries which centuries had failed to solve
was caught in the lure of action and pleaded, in a later
letter, the inadequacy of time; it was as if life would
teach, by this very example, that action is healthier than
thought, Solvitur ambulandoi even philosophical ques-
tions can be answered only by doing things. All
[69]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
thought that does not lead to action, said Goethe, is a
disease.
Here is another man of action, Carl Laemmle, sub-
merged in the chaos and speed of a motion-picture
studio; a man who must deal in action in order to
make his pictures live; it would be interesting to know
how such a mind faces our problem. Carl Laemmle
faces it with the simplicity and candor of a modest
man:
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“July ist, 1931.
“I enjoyed your letter, . . . and I am glad to an-
swer your questions, but I am sorry to say I am
going to disappoint you because my answers, while,
truthful, will be utterly bromidic. At least that is
how I fear they will impress a mind like yours.
“If science and philosophy have brought us to the
dreadful pass you describe in your letter it doesn’t
speak very well for too much thought, does it? In
my experience, I have found that most of the people
I consider slightly off their base arc merely victims
of too much introspection.
“You ask me what keeps me going. My answer
is the answer which all smart alecks laugh at — it is
[70]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
work. I get a tremendous kick out of seeing my
ideas take form and bring concrete results. The fact
that countless' ideas do not work out does not take
away from the pleasure I derive from those that do.
I like the feel of power — you see I am being as frank
as I know how — and I like to make a money profit
on my work. But the thing that keeps me going is
the work itself and the sense of achievement, I can-
not play as much as some men do because my eyes
are not very good and my hearing is not of the best.
So my play consists of a small game of poker with
congenial friends, or perhaps a small bet on a horse
race.
“As for religion, I do not know how much help it
gives me. Very likely it helps me unconsciously and
it certainly must have had something to do with the
formation of my ideals. Probably, too, it has much
to do with my energy although I have no tangible
proof of it unless you consider one occasion when I
was given up for dead and something pulled me
through.
I My children, my one grandchild, my other rela-
tives and my friends are my consolations and my
happiness. You ask where in the last resort my treas-
ure lies. I think it lies in an almost frenzied desire
[71]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
to see my children and my children’s children well
cared for and happy.
“I wonder if you had your tongue in your cheek
when you said ‘we are driven to conclude that the
greatest mistake in human history was the discovery
of the truth.’ When was this discovery made ? I have
not seen any headlines about it in the daily papers.
I have supposed that each individual among us was
still hoping to make the discovery in his own way
and that this hope constituted a large part of his life,
whether he was aware of it or not. The truth which
different men think, they have discovered is prob-
ably not the truth at all, and that it why it has not
made us free. I still have my delusions, thank God,
and I feel sorry for the scientists and philosophers
who have thought themselves into a deep pit.
“One of the things I am most grateful for is the
fact that through a life of hard work, of one menac-
ing crisis after another, of one disappointment and
one triumph after another I still remain an optimist.
I do not know just what my main goal is— other
than what I have described — but I know I would
have no goal at all if I were not an optimist.
“I would rather remain a hard working business
man and be as happy as I am than become the
[72]
SOME CONTE MPORARIES
— ■ '
world’s greatest sage and accept all the sourness and
hopelessness which seem to go with too much ab-
stract thinking.
Sincerely yours,
Carl Laemmle”
This is how the problem works out in life; we are
too busy living to bother much about ultimate mean-
ings ; the obligation to get work done puts a cloture on
thought. The man with a family to feed has no time
for conscious philosophy ; if he had he might say that
the meaning of life was to feed one’s family; and it
would be hard to better that answer.
And now look at the problem through the eyes of
the President of Dartmouth College — a man of the
highest repute among those who know his field. Here
again we shall find a healthy distrust of thinlcing di-
vorced from life.
“June thirty, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
I have read your letter of June 16 with great care
and have with much seriousness considered the
questions which you ask. I don’t know that in the
haste of the post-Commencement season I can give
you any statement that will be helpful to you or that
[73]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
will be a sufficiently lucid expression to indicate
what I really feel. However, here is my attempt to
do what you have asked me to do.
“The worth of human life seems to me to be in
the opportunity it offers to be. I cannot imagine
anyone’s questioning the worthwhileness of life, for
instance, if an occasional day like this is available to
him. Great expanses of blue sky; lazily drifting
fleecy clouds; a perfect temperature; a wealth of
verdure in trees and shrubs and lawns; the glorious
colors of the gardens; and the sounds I heard at
daybreak of all sorts of singing birds: these are all
experiences beyond measure of value but all suffi-
cient, it seems to me, to give to any normal mind a
sentiment that it is a glorious privilege to be alive.
Neither scientific analysis nor a multitude of words
will describe the reason for the pleasure in the note
of a violin string or the song of the white-throated
sparrow, but these are not less real because they
cannot be analyzed, diagnosed, and explained. For
me, therefore, being, with its concomitants of abili-
ties to feel, to think, and to do, is an inestimable
boon that life offers and not simply a justification
for it to be endured. . . .
“The whole modern civilized world of thought
[74 J
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
has fallen subject to the fallacy that truth is an end
in itself rather than that it is simply a means to an
end. The approach to fullness of life is along the
way of truth, but the path is not the destination.
The enduring value of religion is in its challenge to
aspiration and hope in the mind of man. The bar-
renness of much called philosophy is in its tendency
to become dialectic, and to ascribe values to words
which at best are inaccurate representations of
thought without regard to the value of feelings.
Feelings are not necessarily untrue because they
cannot be expressed. Every great religious leader
has in one way or another declared in substance
what Jesus said: that he was come to give life, and
to give it more abundantly. The philosopher has
given no such assurance. He not infrequently has
committed himself to an intellectualism sterile of
any emotional urge and denying any sufficient goal
toward which life might press.
The incapacity of philosophy to reign and rule
seems to me to have been its obliviousness to human
experience. It has herein failed to check the validity
of Its intellectual processes. Plato in his familiar
passage on philosophers and kings long ago indi-
cated the insufficiency of either thinking or doing
[75]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
as a specialized activity when one was separated
from the other: ‘Until . . . those commoner na-
tures who pursue either to the exclusion of the
other, are compelled to stand aside, . . . then only
will this, our state, have possibility of life and be-
hold the light of day.’ . . .
Yours very sincerely,
Ernest M. Hopkins”
Evidently religion does not die; in the vast majority
of men it is still a living force for good and ill. I find a
sincere note of it in the reply of Adolph Ochs, pub-
lisher of that finest achievement in modern journalism,
the New York^ Times; by this letter I am better able to
understand the solid, quiet success of this man in mak-
ing his paper the most respected and the most influ-
ential in America without ever catering to the mob.
“October 22, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“Your letter is a gem. I wish you would permit
me to publish it.
“You ask me what meaning life has for me, what
help— if any— religion gives me, what keeps me
going, what are the sources of my inspiration and
[76]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
my energy, what is the goal or motive-force of my
toil, where I find my consolation and my happiness,
where in the last resort my treasure lies.
“To make myself clearly understood, if I were
able to do so, would take more time and thought
than I can give the matter now. Suffice it for me to
say that I inherited good health and sound moral
principles; I found pleasure in work that came to
my hand and in doing it conscientiously; I found
joy and satisfaction in being helpful to my parents
and others, and in thus making my life worth while
found happiness and consolation. My Jewish home
life and religion gave me a spiritual uplift and a
sense of responsibility to my subconscious better self
—which I think is the God within me, the Un-
knowable, the Inexplicable. This makes me believe
I am more than an animal, and that this life cannot
be the end of our spiritual nature.
Yours faithfully,
Adolph S, Ochs”
More and more it stands out that a man must com-
bine action with thought in order to lead a life that
shall have unity and significance. Surely a monument
like the Times is meaning enough for one life ! Or cross
[77]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
the seas to India, and look at the young rebel who
stands next only to Gandhi in leading the struggle of
India for liberty — Javvaharlal Nehru, who may be the
protagonist of India when Gandhi passes away.
“Anand Bhawan,
Allahabad,
India,
August 20, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“Your letter raises fascinating questions — fascinat-
ing and yet rather terrible. For your argument leads
to the inevitable conclusion that all life is futile and
all human endeavour worse than useless. You have
done me the honour of putting these questions to
me, but I feel my utter incompetence to answer
them. Even if I had the time and leisure, which un-
happily I have not at present, I would find it diffi-
cult enough to deal with the problems you have
raised.
“Indians are supposed to find pleasure in meta-
physics but I have deliberately kept aloof from
them, as I found long ago that they only confused
me and brought me no solace or guidance for future
action. Religion in its limited sense did not appeal
[78] '
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
to me. I dabbled a little in the various sciences, as a
dilettante might, and found some pleasure in them
and my horizon seemed to widen. But still I drifted
and doubted and was somewhat cynical. Vague
ideals possessed me, socialistic and nationalistic, and
gradually they seemed to combine and I grew to
desire the freedom of India passionately, and the
freedom of India signified to me not national free-
dom only but the relief of the millions of her men
and women from suffering and exploitation. And
India became a symbol of the suffering of all the
exploited in the world and I sought to make of my
intense nationalism an internationalism which in-
cluded in its fold all the nations and peoples that
were being exploited.
I was troubled by these feelings and felt my
helplessness. These seemed to be no obvious way of
realising my heart’s desire. Then came Mr. Gandhi
and pointed a way which seemed to promise results,
or at any rate which was a way worth trying and
afforded an outlet for my pent up feeling. I
plunged in, and I discovered that I had at last found
what I had long sought. It was in action that I
ound this action on behalf of a great cause which
I held dear. Ever since then I have used all my
[79]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
strength in battling for this cause and the recom-
pense I have had has strengthened me, for the re-
ward has been a fuller life with a new meaning and
a purpose to it.
“This is hardly an answer to your "question. But
not being a philosopher, but just a man who feels at
home in action, I cannot give you a very logical or
scientific answer. I have believed in science and
logic and reason, and I believe in them still, but at
times they seem to lack something and life seems to
be governed by other and stronger forces — ^instinct
or an irresistible drive towards something — which
for the moment does not appear to fit in with
science or logic as we know them. History with its
record of failure, the persistence of evil in spite of
all the great men and great deeds of the past, the
present breakdown of civilization and its old time
ideals, and the dangers that lurk in the future, make
me despair sometimes. But in spite of all this I have
a feeling that the future is full of hope for humanity
and for my country and the fight for freedom that
we are waging in India is bringing us nearer the
realization of this hope. Do not ask me to justify
this feeling that I have for I can give you no suffi-
cient reasons. I can only tell you that I have found
[8o]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
mental equilibrium and strength and inspiration in
the thought that I am doing my bit for a mighty
cause and that my labour cannot be in vain. I work
for results of course. I want to go rapidly towards
my objective. But fundamentally even the results of
action do not worry me so much. Action itself, so
long as I 3m convinced that it is right action, gives
me satisfaction.
“In my general outlook on life I am a socialist
and it is a socialist order that I should like to see
established in India and the world. What will
happen when the world becomes perfect I do not
know and I do not very much care. The problem
docs not arise today. There is quite enough to be
done now and that is enough for me. Whether the
world will ever become perfect, or even much better
than it is today, I shall not venture to answer. But
because I hope and believe that something can be
done to better it, I continue to act.
I am afraid I have avoided your principal ques-
tion—what is the meaning or worth of human life ?
I cannot answer it except by telling you how I have
looked upon life and what motives have driven me
to action.
Sincerely yours,
Jawaharlal Nehru”
[81]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
It is a noble spirit that speaks here; the moral ideal-
ism of mankind burns more brightly in India than any-
where else on our earth today. To have a great purpose
to work for, a purpose larger than ourselves, is one of
the secrets of making life significant; for then the
meaning and worth of the individual overflow his per-
sonal borders, and survive his death. Hear the same
fine aspiration in this letter from another Hindu, the
winner of the 1930 Nobel prize for physics:
“Calcutta,
15th October, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“I have never believed that life is worth living
simply for the moment’s pleasure or tomorrow’s
trivial hope. The mind of man is too feeble an in-
strument fully to penetrate into the great mystery
of this world where we find ourselves; but I have
always thought that life would be worth living in
order to try and understand a little more of it than
we do at present. The intellectual and scientific im-
pulse has indeed been the main spring of my life
and activities. Religious rituals and dogmas possess
no significance for me; but the teachings of Buddha
or Christ, if not taken too literally, have a value
[82]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
which I recognize and which I believe time cannot
diminish. The desire to labour, to achieve and to
help others to do likewise, these are the motive
powers which have kept me going. I find self-con-
trol and not self-indulgence to be the real source of
happiness. In the last resort, to win a victory over
oneself is a greater thing than conquering the whole
world.
“With kind regards, I am.
Yours sincerely,
C. V. Raman”
And now I come to the man who more than any
other on earth today personifies the power of religion,
both to mould the individual and to move the mass.
Shortly before leaving for the Round Table Conference
in London, Mohandas Gandhi sent the following reply
to my query. The omission of personal passages man-
gles the letter.
“Sabarmati,
“Dear Friend, 22, 1931.
“Your letter of 5th June . . .
“Now for your questions.
(i) Life for me is real as I believe it to be a
spark of the Divine.
[83]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
“(2) Religion not in the conventional but in the
broadest sense helps me to have a glimpse of the
Divine essence. This glimpse is impossible without
full development of the moral sense. Hence religion
and morality are, for me, synonymous terms.
“(3) Striving for full realization keeps me going.
“(4) This strife is the source of whatever inspira-
tion and energy I possess.
“(5) The goal is already stated.
“(6) My consolation and my happiness are to be
found in service of all that lives, because the Divine
essence is the sum total of all life.
“(7) My treasure lies in battling against darkness
and all forces of evil.
“You have asked me to write at leisure and at
length if I can. Unfortunately I have no leisure and
therefore writing at length is an impossibility.
Yours sincerely,
M. K. Gandhi”
This is not quite satisfactory, though we should be
grateful to get so much of an answer to our question
from a man with a sub-continent on his head, and
laboring for the liberation of 320,000,000 men. The reli-
gion that Gandhi here professes seems so different from
[84]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
the more anthropomorphic faith of the hymns which
he sings at Sabarmati before the rising of the sun ; and
there is no word here about that future life which in
Hinduism as in Christianity so obsesses the minds of
men. Surely the orthodox Brahmins and devout Jains
who look to him as their leader and saint would be a
little disturbed to see how modernistic and modest is
Gandhi’s theology.
The same moderate demands on credulity mark the
reply of the man who first discovered Gandhi for
America — John Haynes Holmes, pastor of that mag-
nificent institution, the Community Church of New
York. Mr. Holmes writes:
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“What keeps me going.? — Something within me
that burns like a consuming flame when I see false-
hood, hypocrisy, injustice, and evil-doing; some-
thing without me that pulls like the attraction of
love when I catch a glimpse of what this world
might be, and may yet be if we try hard enough.
“There was a time when I expected to ac-
complish something before I died — to see this world
changed somewhat because of what I said or did.
I cherish this individual expectation as little now
[85]'
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
as I do the cosmic expectation that this planet will
endure beyond a few more million years. No, my
eyes will close some day upon the same world upon
which they first opened, just as in due time the
world itself will end as it began. But meanwhile the
universal creative Life has been moving on like a
river to some far end unseen, undreamed of, and
my life, not a bit of debris but a constituent drop
in the great flood, has been bending its impulse
to the onward sweep of mystic destiny.
“I think it is the sense of my creative capacity,
matching however microscopically the creative
capacity at the heart of the universe, that gives
me strength to live — and great good cheer in the
business, too! I try to think when I have felt most
happy because most alive. Surely, in the experience
of love; surely, also, in hours of crisis, when I
have cast all on some great hazard; again, in some
swift moment when a ‘concourse of sweet sounds’
in symphony or opera has caught my soul and
taught me to relive the emotion of the composer
in his original conception; again, when I have
myself conceived, in a sudden instant, some vision
of the spirit and seen it clothe itself in words upon
my startled lips; still again, when I have thrown
[ 86 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
myself into some cause of justice and the right,
and fought to victory or defeat; most of all, per-
haps, Nvhen I have prayed, or tried to pray, and
heard faintly within myself some answer. These
are all experiences of creation — of action that brings
order out of chaos and beauty out of order, and
thus, within its compass, ‘makes all things new.’
It is in such instants that I have felt life in its raw
state, so to speak, and therewith, I believe, seen
God.
“It is this that keeps me going — the knowledge,
vouchsafed in passing moments when we are lifted
beyond and above ourselves, that we are an es-
sential part of a creative process — that we ourselves,
with God, are creators, and thus makers of some
great cosmic future. What if I cannot see that future,
or even imagine it! Such ignorance, frankly con-
fessed, fades like darkness before light in the actual
sense-experience of having lived to ‘vaster issues.’
John Haynes Holmes”
But to me, still strangely drawn to the faith of my
youth loving its beauty while doubting its truth, and
wondering whether beauty is not truer than truth —
the most appealing expression of the religious attitude
[87]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
came from the urbane author of The Art of Thinking,
the Abbe Dimnet. His letter is long, but perhaps it
will interest the reader as much as it interested me.
“Paris
29 June, 1931.
“Dear Dr. Durant,
“Your letter reminds me of a poem of Ch. M.
Guerin which you may know. It begins with these
two lines:
*Quoique mort a la foi qui massurait de Dieu
Je regrette toujours la volupte de croire!
(Though dead to the faith that assured me of God,
I mourn to the end the delights of belief.)
The French poet does not psychoanalyze himself as
you do but, in the deeper strata of his consciousness,
he seems to see the channels which will some day
take him back to the fountain-head of his early
belief. Dead to faith you too still crave the com-
fort of believing and the pathos which Guerins
rhythm imparts to his stanzas you achieve by the
urgent questions quickly succeeding one another
towards the end of your letter.
“Science has been a harsh step-mother to you.
[ 88 ]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Astronomy, geology and biology told you their
tale and there was no faith, no hope and no love
in it. You built yourself a philosophy on their
data and the philosophy might comment on itself in
Remy de Gourmont’s words: ‘The horrible thing
about looking for truth is that one finds it. After
a few years of bitter satisfaction or purely intel-
lectual delight as possessing those data, you have
experienced the usual reaction: what is the good of
knowing all these disheartening facts ? Better never
to have learned anything than know that the uni-
vene is a battle-field of cruel forces. Better, a
thousand times better, spend one’s short life ig-
noring all this than be depressed or tortured by
knowledge. Our ancestors were happier than we arc.
The less one knows the happier one is. Primitive
man asked no questions to which his imagination
or his sense of harmony with the environing world
could not give an immediate answer. He did not
exhaust himself by analysis, he just lived and the
experience of each minute was enough for him .
A blessed condition which intellectual enjoyment,
even of a supreme nature, can never hope to rival.
Feeling this you apply to people whom you suppose
to have been nearer to life than yourself and you
[89]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
ask them ‘what has kept them going, what their
source of inspiration has been, what is the goal of
their toil, where, in the last resort, their treasure
lies.’
“Your confession invites another and there is no
reason why it should be withheld.
“I belong to a generation which took even more
pride than your own in being scientific and ruled
by facts. It certainly has been my privilege to spend
the best part of my life in a Parisian sect of learn-
ing the atmosphere of which had nothing in com-
mon with what the world generally connotes with
the name of Paris. In the shade of our ancient elms
and whitewashed walls, we lived the life of a
hundred years ago: we were, or tried to be, Parisian
in culture, but our effort was constantly refreshed
by contact with provincial honesty and provincial
simplicity. Many a time a matter of fact conversa-
tion with the parents of some student would con-
jure up the turrets and gables of a manor-house
in Perigord or the library of a Grenoble magistrate.
The virtues of old France were in the background
and, as you say, the necessities of life pressed us
on all sides. A blessing, no doubt; one for which I
can never be grateful enough.
[90]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
“But our minds were stocked very much as your
own is. We were Sorbonne nurtured. Our teachers
had been friends of Taine or disciples of Comte.
We all dabbled in science and toyed with phi-
losophy. I mean the philosophy of the observatory
and laboratory, not that of the Schools with which
w^ never became acquainted till after we had
been introduced to the philosophers. Philosophy
was unsatisfactory, of course. What can it do in the
presence of mysteries except deepen our sense of
mystery } Creation, the beginnings of life, the dawn
of consciousness, the appearance of vision, mind
and reflection remained inexplicable by philosophy
as well as by science. Philosophy’s conjectures were
inadequate, but how inadequate science’s facts also
were! And how conflicting science’s hypotheses! ^
How unexpectedly influenced by pragmatism, too!
How could we help noticing that, after the war
of 1870, Taine and Renan suddenly turned con-
servatives, teaching restraint, prudence and sobriety
instead of their former radicalism? Do we not see
the same phenomenon in America ? Cheerful boyish
unbelief di;ports itself in the weeklies, but the
philosophical examination of conscience of the great
searchers leads to quite a different state of mind.
[91]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
‘^Pragmatism or no, there are two ways of look-
ing at the so-called facts of science. Mine has
been hopeful. There was a time when neither man
nor any visible promise of man existed on our globe.
Towards the end of the Tertiary age, the miracle
happened : billions of forms of life had crowded or
displaced one another without any one taking any
definite ascendancy, without any epoch-making
change. But, at last, man appeared, consciousness
manifested itself in a thousand ways, science was
created, developed itself and finally took hold of
the world in a way I never can sufficiently admire.
Only the germs of this development existed a
hundred thousand years ago, none of it could have
been anticipated a million years ago. To me the idea
is full of possibilities. Astronomy may tell a dis-
heartening tale nou/. But why should we infer that
it will be so to the hundredth generation after us?
Why should we not hope that with wider com-
prehension, greater security will also come? You
notice how violently we crave immortality in com-
parison with the ancient Hebrews. Why should this
notion have taken such momentum if there were
no foundation for the hope?
am afraid you have been a scientist stricuorts
[ 9 ^]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
obscrvantiuc , a Fundamentalist in science. Hence
your pessimism. You should have been on your
guard against incomplete data, against tentative
systems. You should never have called science truth
as you seem to do in your letter. Your scientific
certainties bred pessimism; more mistrust would
have saved some hope and there is no hope without
an admixture of faith.
“You ask what life has done for me. It has given
me a few chances to break way from my natural
selfishness and for this I am deeply grateful. But
it has also given me greater intellectual stability.
I jibed the first time I saw G)mte quoting with
approval the Imitation of Christ saying that ‘we
cannot hope to understand unless we first believe.’
Newman’s teaching was similar. But how clear the
experience of life makes it now that it is so. Today
my faith and my reason are mutually compelling
and that means peace. Shall I tell you? It seems
impossible to me that you should not gradually
come to the same calm — if not to the same conclu-
sions. Your letter expresses dissatisfaction too vio-
lent to last.
Ernest Dimnet”
[93]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
III
THREE WOMEN
So much for the men. But what does woman think of
this strange planet of ours, and her life thereon? I
should judge that she has wisely refused to think about
it at all. Few of the letters that I have received from
women have, it seems to me, faced the problems
stated. I suspect that woman feels these matters deeply,
when she is not absorbed in the task of continuing
the race; but she cannot yet find words, or superficial
intellectual form, for these secret depths. Would that
our enemies, i.e., our wives and sweethearts, would
write a book — about themselves, and honestly! — what
a revelation such a document would be to men!
The first feminine answer is from Mary E. Woolley,
who has made Mt. Holyoke College one of the finest
of our schools for girls.
“October 22, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant:
“Life grows in meaning as I go on. It has not
only more significance but, also, more happiness,
fewer moods of depression than when I was a girl.
At the basis of this increasing significance is religion.
[94]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
I think that if it were not for that I could not ‘go
on for I am more conscious of the suffering of
the world, more troubled by it. I cannot quite under-
stand how a human being can face life without a
belief in a Supreme Power, a Personality with
whom communion can be a real thing. My creed
is a simple one, with little theology embodied in
it, Jesus Christ is to me the supreme revelation of
Love and so of God, and His life an inspiration
showing how a human life may be lived in kind if
not in degree.
I find motive force of toil’ also in other lives,
some that I have known personally, others only his-
torically. The fact that there have been human lives
of power and beauty is a stimulus to living. My
own mother and father have been a part of that
stimulus, showing in an inconspicuous way what
love can accomplish in a human life.
“Another ‘modve force of toil’ I find in the chance
to have a part in bringing out the possibilities of
other lives. I do not see how one can work for
years with young people, as I have done, and be a
pessimist! I have seen too many lives develop into
something fine and strong.
“As for ‘consolations and happiness’ I think that
[95]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
they come all along the way. I am writing on an
October morning, in the height of the autumn
glory, when just to be alive is inspiration, and
when the gray days come and moments of depres-
sion, the realization that ‘God’s in His heaven,’
even though far from feeling that^‘airs right with
the world,’ gives consolation and happiness. So I
come back to religion as that which keeps me
going!
Mary E. Woolley.”
. •
From Italy came an apparently simple, and yet
probably fundamental reply. It is from Gina Lom-
broso, daughter of a great psychologist, wife of a
great historian (Gulielmo Ferrero), and authoress and
thinker in her own right.
“Villa Ulivello,
Strada in Chianti,
(Florence), Italy.
“Dear sir,
“Many thanks for your letter.
“The problem you ask me about is the problem
which has worried me as every other human being.
“The sincere answer I succeeded in giving to
myself is that the real reason of being is love.
[96]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
{Love which ties us one to the other, while living,
which ties us to those who have left us, to our
posterity. ]
“I perfectly remember that when I was a girl
I thought my life was tied indissolubly to that of
my father, I thought I was born only to help him, I
thought I had to disappear with him.
“After his death I remained tied in the same way
to my husband, to my children. I think that the
primordial reason of living is love. Love for the
family is the best known and the easiest.
“When I had some experience in life the reason
of my life has been to synthesize this experience
so that as many people as possible could make a use
of it.
In both cases it is the love which tics one to
the other which is the reason of life. Love for the
family first (I am a woman!). Love for all those
which have some resemblances with us and will pass
by the same experiences.
“With my best regards,
Gina Lombroso”
But by far the most interesting reply from a woman
^-as that of Helen Wills Moody. Her very existence is
m Itself good reason for living; she has done more
[97]
H
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
than a thousand impresarios of anatomy and millinery
to glorify the American girl”; and the American girl
at her best — or the European girl at her best — is a
sufficient achievement of protoplasm to warrant some
faith and pride in life. She writes almost as well as
she plays.
“June loth, 1931.
“Dear Mr. Durant,
“A twenty-five-year-old must be cautious about
what he (or she) says upon such tremendous sub-
jects as you have named in your letter. One of the
signs of youth is the feeling that one has all the
philosophy of life neatly pigeon-holed. If this is
true, it must be, then, that I am quite old, as I
am really not quite certain about anything.
“The only thing that I know I really want, is
some means of exercising the restlessness which
seems to be continually in my heart. Tennis, paint-
ing — almost anything will do. As a child I didn’t
know what it was, but now I think that I recognize
it. It is the reason why I have played tennis so fast
and furiously for so many years. It is the reason
why I studied diligently when at school and even
cried when I did not happen to get a ‘100’ in
spelling. It is why I tried so hard to win a Phi Beta
[98]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
Kappa key for scholarship in college, which I did,
but would have wept, I know, if I had not.
“I hope to Heaven this restlessness, this constant
hope of arriving at some degree of perfection is not
a peculiar form of conceit.
“To me, it is Religion. It is a ‘motive force of
toil’ (of such ‘toil’ as I have done!). By working
steadily on the thing that I like, I can remove from
my mind momentary spells of sadness or irrita-
tion or anger, and afterwards feel happy and almost
peaceful.
“I hope that this constant restlessness, this wish
to be in action and on the way towards attaining
some degree of perfection is interwoven with the
love of the beautiful. It may even be that they are
very closely related. It is difficult for me to find
words. I know that in contemplating the beauty of
perfection in an arS^ I seem to be transported to
another sphere (rjftre words, but I cannot find
the right ones). Music, sculpture and, to the greatest
degree, painting. (In speaking of perfection in art
I do not mean, of course, smoothness or ‘slickness*
in finish, which is the old-fashioned ‘perfect.’) In
coming upon color combinations in art and in
nature (never nature ‘in’ art), if I may use a
[99]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
commonplace description, I find that I am unable
to swallow, such emotion seems to close in upon
me, and that I have a correspondingly violent
mental reaction (!!). Perfection and beauty fasci-
nate me in any field, but most of all in art, and there
in the abstract sense.
“Each one thinks himself unique in his feelings,
no doubt, and here I am trying to read into the
restlessness of my heart a special significance, when
the same thing is to be found, perhaps, in the heart
of every other young person of my age living in
our restless country.
“I do know that I do not wish to conform to
rules of Religion that are laid out like so many
squares bounded by fences — that you must go here,
that you cannot go there. I loathe the Form of
Religion. And I know that I would hate life if I
were deprived of the right of trying, hunting, work-
ing for some objective within which there lies the
beauty of perfection.
“In my hall there stands an antique Greek head
of a woman in cream-colored marble. She was left
me as part of a legacy about a year ago. She is really
from Ancient Greece, and, except for several small
scars, has escaoed the centuries with nose, brows,
[lOO]
SOME
CONTEMPORARIES
and chin intact. The head is in profile against a
cream-colored wall. It stands on a dark marble
pedestal. At different times of day the light changes
on the face. Sometimes it is faint, so faint upon her
forehead, cheek and nose, that her sensitive head
scarcely stands away from the cream wall behind.
At other times, the light is bright, and the clear-cut
profile with its strong yet delicate chin, and thought-
ful brows stand out clearly, dominatingly. The curl-
ing tendrils of her hair are followed back along
her head by the light, almost to where they meet to
form the knot. Her neck is strong and rounded and
firm. I like to close my eyes and run my fingers over
the contours of her face, and thrill each time in dis-
covering modeling that my eye had not detected.
It is almost as if you could not know the message
of her face until you closed your eyes, and actually
felt it through your finger tips. She came from a
collector’s gallery, but with her, to me, came no his-
tory. I know that she is beautiful and that she is
nearly perfect.
“When I look at the head I have moments of
great pleasure, and it makes me feel all the more
keenly my restlessness, my desire for activity which
has as its goal some sort of beauty and perfection.
[lOl]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
“For me, life is interesting, entertaining, happy,
if only I can have some activity for the restlessness
that is in my heart. I want that activity to be care-
less, never finished, and I would like to have it at
almost all times dominating my thoughts. I would
like to have ‘a one-track mind’ (not closed, of
course, to information, because I would like to know
about everything), but I would like to be able to
enclose myself on my engine on my one track and
close my door like a clam closes his, and rush away
towards the horizon and the infinite, or whatever
its name is.
“You ask ‘where in the last resort your treasure
lies?’ and I would answer if I knew, if I were only
absolutely certain, and dared, ‘within myself!’ But
it is ridiculous for one of twenty-five to say that he
thinks he is certain.
“Perhaps I could give you a more coherent de-
scription of what I think of life had I been able to
absorb the year and a half of philosophy that I had
at college. Although I took many notes, and made
elaborate outlines with headings, sub-headings, and
so on, I somehow missed the point.
“A young author who had just won the Guggen-
heim Prize for his first novel, who was full of
[102]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
enthusiasm about life in general, told me a story
last spring in Paris which made me decide that I
would have another try at Philosophy. The story
was about a Philosopher named Santayana. Upon
hearing the name, I remembered having read
several books by him at college. (I had vaguely
believed him to be some philosopher of the Far
East— with that name. But it seems not. In fact
he seems to have been a human being who was once
at Harvard ! )
“This is the story. It was Spring. The warm sun-
shine and soft breezes were trying to lure students
away from their classes. Santayana was seated at
his desk reading to his students. His listeners were
sitting, or reclining, in various attitudes of in-
attention. Santayana’s voice trailed off, his eyes
traveled over his students, and fixed themselves on
a tree which grew outside the window. Its leaves
were small and tender, and of the green green of
new leaves. Santayana closed the book. A short
silence elapsed. He rose, and said:
‘“Gentlemen, it is Spring!’
I He took his hat and never returned.
I hope this story is true. I hope he went away,
ot on his one track, and has been going along
[103]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
happily ever since. He is (I imagine) in his restless-
ness seeking something, something which will ex-
plain beauty and perfection. He derives his joy (I
imagine) from the ceaseless activity which goes
with the quest.
“No doubt (at least, I imagine) the sculptor who
formed my Greek head out of marble had in his
heart this restlessness, this desire to search for per-
fection and beauty. He derived pleasure from his
work. It may have been that his greatest happiness
came to him on the days when he was chiseling out
of marble the contours of this lovely face. That
was hundreds of years ago. Today I am thrilled, as
I go down my hallway, in seeing this Greek head,
and understanding (I think) its message. The
message of the restless heart.
“I want to be restless, I want always to be in
action, and to be trying for some kind of beauty and
perfection. Even if I may be lacking in Talent, I
shall have the pleasure of action— and there is always
Hope— at least in a young, restless heart.
“The other people that you have written to, will
have clearly expressed answers to give you. I wish
that I had. I wish I could see George Bernard
Shaw’s. He once told me that tennis should be
[104]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
played in a meadow, with grass a foot high, and
with no balls. At least, what I have told you is what
I truly believe ! !
“You must keep in mind several things when
you judge my letter — one, that I am the youngest
on your list, and two, that I am the only one who
got on your list through brawn and not brain!
Most sincerely,
Helen Wills Moody.
P.S. I have concluded that restlessness is a disease.
I didn’t say much about tennis because it comes
under the heading ‘activity because of restlessness,’
P.S. If I have enough paint, a large studio, good
light (there are always thousands of things to
paint) then I am so happy in the activity of paint-
ing that I do not care about what astronomers pre-
dict, biologists declare, or what Love is said to be or
what has happened to ReligioUi I am sure that I am
hatefully selfish.
H. W. M.”
IV
SCEPTICS AND LAZYBONES
The last group is composed of sceptics. Perhaps we
should end with them if only to remind ourselves that
[105]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
in the last resort our question is unanswerable. And
first from the Bad Boy of England, scandalizer of all
continents, and prospective terror of the House of
Lords.
“Dear Mr. Durant, * 93 i-
“I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so
busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning
whatever. . . .
“I do not see that we can judge what would be
the result of the discovery of truth, since none has
hitherto been discovered.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell.”
Second, and most honest of all, from a man who
does not care to add to another writer’s royalties.
“On tour in Switzerland
“Dear Mr. Durant, 8, ,931.
“It is absolutely impossible to answer such ques-
tions as you ask in any serious way in the frame of a
letter. Besides, when stating my ideas, I prefer using
my own setting to providing material for the book
of another author.
Count Hermann Keyserling.”
[106]
SOME CONTEMPORARIES
And last and shortest, and perhaps wisest, a postal
bearing the gigantic head and Tolstoian face of G. B.
S., and these pithy words in meticulous, impeccable
hand:
“4 Whitehall Court, S. W. i
i8th June, 1931.
“How the devil do I know ?
“Has the question itself any meaning ?
G. Bernard Shaw.”
So that is the end of our rope. How shall we answer
this villainous and murderous postal? Is it possible to
catch the meaning of life without getting outside of it
to judge it, or without seeing it as part of a larger
whole? — and which of us can do that? This is a
merry termination of our quest, a disturbing illustra-
tion of the old definition of metaphysics as “a search in
a dark hole for a rat that is not there.”
Shall we give up the quest? Not at all. Now let us
face the matter for ourselves.
* * * * *
[107]
X
X
n
u
<
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
X
X
n
u
CHAPTER III
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE*
THE POPULARITY OF SUICIDE
Dear Unknown, —
I have received the announcement of your prospec-
tive suicide, and am impressed by the premises you
offer for your violent conclusion. That even the sim-
plest man should kill himself is a sufficient indictment
of life to stir the attention of a student of human af-
fairs and the daily procession of suicides is one
of the bitterest facts that must be included in an honest
philosophy .f Otherwise, the death of any one of us
•I received, in 1930, several letters, from separate persons, declaring
incir intention of committing suicide. I have brought together here the
substance of my corr«pondcnce with them, and have added, in passing,
»mc comments on the questions stated in the first chapter of this book,
k gentlemen who so disturbed me with their
f*' but I should attribute this not to the
arguments (which, as frail intellectual things, must be
hclple« before emouon or despair) but to the reality of pain. Perhaps
s^iai ujstinct, but only a terror of solitude.
...V. Tk 284.142 suicides in America in the last twenty-live
years. TTk suradc rate m New York City doubled in the last dLde,
[ill]
ON THE MEANING OF UFE
is a chronological item of no great import in the eye of
Nature ; “men must endure their going hence even as
their coming hither.” What interests me in you is the
apparent logic of your despair, the completeness vi^ith
which you survey all life and knowledge, and find
them, like Ecclesiastes, discouraging and vain. I ask
you to reason with me for a while, even though I know
the story of the policeman, who after many appeals,
persuaded the would-be suicide to stop and talk the
matter over; in the end, as you will recall, they both
jumped off the bridge. It is possible that in discussing
with you the value of life I shall be convinced, instead,
of the attractiveness of death. I take my chance.
II
CONCESSIONS TO SUICIDE
Let me confess at once that I cannot answer, in any
absolute or metaphysical sense, your question as to
the meaning of life. I suspect that there is some ulti-
mate significance to everything, though I know that
our little minds will never fathom it. For the mean-
ing of anything must lie in its relation to some whole
rising from 750 in 1920 to 1,^71 in 1930. — New York Times, November
25. > 931 -
[112]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
of which it is a part; and how could any fragment or
moment of life, like you or me, pretend to rise cut of
its individual cell and survey or understand the entirety
of things? We play with words like world and life,
eternity and infinite, beginning and end, but in our
hearts we know that these are only the badges of our
ignorance; we shall never understand what they ought
to mean. Philosophy, after deposing God, has put man
in His place, and endowed man with universal con-
cepts and cosmic perspectives which could properly
belong only to a supreme and supernatural intelligence.
Perhaps if we face frankly our mental limitations
we shall take even our pessimism more modestly. We
shall look upon that gloomy picture of the world
which contemporary science paints as one fleeting form
in the kaleidoscope of human opinion; we shall re-
member that there is nothing certain or permanent
about that picture, and that the future will probably
smile at it as today we smile at Aquinas and Anselm,
Scotus and Abelard. Let us not take the astronomers too
seriously; they do not know whence our planet came
nor whither it is bound, when it began or when it
will cease to be; in truth they are as great guessers as
the philosophers. As for the. geologists, their exuberant
[113]
1
ON THE MEANIN G OF LIFE
cartography of the earth before history is only a charm-
ing play of fancy; they cannot be sure of their extinct
continents and seas; and perhaps the fossil strata have
tumbled themselves about just to deceive these puzzled
readers of the rocks. They do not know how old man
is, or whether the “ice age” really existed, or whether
it put an end to civilization. The physicists do not know
what matter is, nor the biologists what life is, nor the
psychologists what consciousness is; their brave dog-
mas are passing emphases on parts or aspects mistaken
for wholes. You must not shoot your brains out on the
basis of these airy hypotheses; if you do you will join
the long list of those holy martyrs who died for
absurdities. We must learn to be sceptical even of our
scientists.
It seems a little ridiculous to found your despair
upon the mechanical philosophy which Spencer has
left us as a relic of his mid-Victorian simplicity. While
critics and novelists are taking mechanism for granted,
the sciences which fought so bravely for it are calling
it in doubt, and withdraw in confusion before the com-
plexity and wilfulness of the atom and the cell. It is
hardly likely that we have personal immortal souls;
but it is even less likely that we are machines mechani-
[114]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
cally mourning our mechanism. Such a philosophy is
no reason for suicide; it is reason for a gale of laughter
hearty enough to sweep all the dogmas from the in-
fallible vacillating laboratories of the world.
What we can be certain of in science is not its
metaphysical assumptions but its physical achieve-
ments; the steamship, the airplane, and public sanita-
tion are a little more real than this effervescence of
test-tubes into philosophy. Take a night flight over
New York, and feel the reckless courage and power of
these niachines called men; accept without apology
the thrill of peril and speed; rejoice over the realities
of science, and smile at its transcendental theories.
There is no knowable limit to what this trousered ape
will do with his multiplying discoveries; doubtless he
will some day throw his engines around the stars, and
deport his criminals to Betelgeuse. If you insist upon
dying, undertake tasks of some danger and use in
adding to these discoveries; risk yourself in medical or
mechanical experiment, and give some significance
to your life and death. But whatever you do, don’t die
of philosophy.
If you pass from science to industry and politics as
an invitation to suicide you may find a surer footing
[115]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
from which to catapult yourself into eternity. I grant
you that our economic and political life is in chaos,
and that if we can invent no better system for organiz-
ing the work and government of the world we may as
well surrender the earth to another species, or another
race. It is true that all government irks us, and that
men have been as misruled and discontent under
monarchies and aristocracies as under our present de-
mocracy of bribes and spoils; and perhaps in our
anger at the breakdown of our acquisitive economy in
the twentieth century we forget ungratefully its tur-
bulent creativeness in the nineteenth — no other system
had ever produced such wealth or spread such com-
forts before. But I would not want to cover up with
vain optimism these leaking cesspools of our public
life; it is better to exaggerate them than to minimize
them, provided that we do not let our imperfect per-
spective sadden and embitter us into a futile despair.
Remember that the same greed which has concen-
trated our wealth so narrowly, and so diminished its
purchasing power, lies in our souls too; that the only
difference in motive between the rich man and our-
selves is seldom a difference in scruples, but is usually
a difference in opportunity and skill. In the end we
[ii6]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
are all guilty together. Let us stop complaining about
others, and begin to root the evil out of our own hearts.
The roots of our greed, however, stand so strong
and deep in biology and history that we must not
expect to eradicate them in a generation, or a century.
Our ancestors gorged themselves when they found
food, because they could not know how soon they
would find food again ; pigs of all species gorge them-
selves similarly today; and it was in this primitive
uncertainty that human greed was born. Our vices
were once virtues, necessary in the struggle for exis-
tence; they are the tribute which we pay to our
origins; we must accept these vestigial relics with a
certain equanimity, like our vermiform appendices and
our supernumerary glands. Until life is quite secure,
and no man need worry about food for himself and
those dependent upon him, men will continue to
acquire greedily, and to hoard against evil days. Per-
haps we shall control this impulse by governmental
assurance and regimentation of work and wages for
all; or perhaps greed will continue to decrease, as fear
has decreased, through the multiplication of wealth
and the growth of provision and order. Meanwhile it
is natural that people should be acquisitive, that they
[ny]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
should judge men according to their success in winning
security, and that nations should rise or fall according
to their economic power; in the end, it must be con-
fessed, bread is more important than books, and art
is a luxury made possible by wealth. If we see these
things in their historical place we shall not tear out
our hair, or blow out our brains, because only a majority
of our people have food and clothing, shelter and auto-
mobiles, schools and libraries, and an equal right with
the rich man to imbibe advertisements and saxophones
from the air, and murder and adultery from the screen.
We shall realize that ev,en in our depression things are
better than they were in our youth, and we shall resolve
to make them better still for our children.
Is it true that progress is a delusion? Yes, if you mean
uninterrupted, general, or everlasting progress. Prog-
ress as we know it in history is subject to many set-
backs, never moves evenly all along the line (our prog-
ress in science and industry is not accompanied now by
progress in philosophy and art), and at some distant
date, presumably, all its works will be destroyed. But
to doubt its reality because of its end would be like call-
ing the sun a delusion because it will set. Even that di-
stant end to progress is a presumption, conceded here
[ii8]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
out of argumentative generosity ; we are not sure of it ;
and meanwhile there is much evidence for believing
that the material, physical and mental status of the
average man on the earth today, bad as that status is, is
higher than it ever was before. Students despair of their
own age because they compare the average man of
their acquaintance with the exceptional men of the
past; let them study a little further, and they will find
that not all the Athenians were geniuses, and that not
all of these geniuses were saints; they will discover,
behind Plato and Aristides, a corrupt democracy, a sup-
pressed womanhood, a superstitious people, and a
brutal mob.
States come and go, and civilizations are in great
measure lost; but so much of these “dead” cultures
remain that if we were to devote a whole lifetime to
the task of absorbing even the Greek fraction of our
mental heritage we could not possibly encompass it all.
Euripides and Aristotle are not dead; Confucius and
Lucretius are our contemporaries; even Hammurabi
and Ptah-hotep speak to us intelligibly across four
thousand years. And our means of preserving, trans-
mitting and disseminating this mounting cultural in-
[119]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
hcritance of knowledge, morals and arts are more
abundant today than in any age of the past.
The most depressing sight in our civilization is not
poverty — for even the poverty of a Louisiana darky can
have a certain dignity and content— but the apparent
deterioration in the moral fibre of the race. It is hard
to judge of these things, partly because one’s experience
is so brief, partly because we judge the morals of today
with the standards of yesterday. We forget that these
standards were made for an agricultural life, and can
have no absolute validity in an industrial and urban
age. It is ridiculous to expect the morals of a rural com-
munity from men delaying marriage till thirty, and
living amid the million contacts, opportunities and
stimuli of the city. Other times, other morals. The
more I see of men and women the less critical I am of
them; they are not half so bad as their newspapers and
moving pictures make them out to be; it is because they
are prosaically decent that they demand, for the vicari-
ous fulfilment of ancient impulses to polygamy and the
chase, that their press and their films shall reek with
promiscuity and crime.
Nevertheless a subtle degeneration, not so much in
morals as in character, seems to have begun in our
[I20]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
people. Through the wisdom of our legislators, only
the intelligent may contracept, while the stupid are
commanded to reproduce their kind. In result, the edu-
cated minority (rich or poor) brings up less than its
share of the next generation, the uneducated majority
brings up more; in each generation we create by educa-
tion a brain for our society and then, by the dysgenic
effect of our legislation, we cut it off again. The educa-
tor is frustrated, and superstition, that infdme which
Voltaire thought he had crushed, flourishes as before,
leaving progress to be created and maintained by a pre-
carious and sterile fragment of the race. In this unregu-
lated reproductivity of the mob lies the secret of our
political corruption, and the raw material of our
municipal “machines”; democracy goes to pieces be-
cause “there is always a majority of fools.”
Perhaps in this way the old Yankee type, full of inde-
pendence and grit, is being breeded out, and a new
type, less vigorous in thought and courage, is taking its
place. Our cowardice in this depression has no prece-
dent in our history; never did we whine so, or so unani-
mously bring all our troubles to one man’s door. Our
tradition of individual freedom has left the film direc-
tor and the theatrical producer free to enrich them-
[I2l]
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
selves by parading pornography, recklessly accelerating
youthful sex development; and the impulses so preco-
ciously aroused find such mechanical facilities and op-
portunities for their expression that our city popula-
tions tend to lose themselves at the bottom in crime
and at the top in sex. The end product at the top is a
blase and cynical epicurean who would take to his
heels at the first call of hardship or danger. Nations do
not grow great on such men. We smile at the Puritan
today, but it may be just the virtues of the Puritan that
will be needed — or are needed now — when crisis
comes: the same stern self-discipline, the same stoic
capacity to suffer and persevere, which made nearly all
the strong characters in modern history from Luther
to Lenin.
This jolly riot of sex, so pleasant to the individual
and so hazardous to the race, is bound up, no doubt,
with the decay of supernatural belief; and we are en-
gaged at the moment in a gigantic experiment with the
possibility of maintaining social order and racial vital-
ity through a moral code resting solely on the earth,
and shorn of those supports which once suspended it
from the skies. That experiment failed in Athens, and
[122]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
it failed in Renaissance Italy. Apparently it is danger-
ous to the race to emancipate the individual; destroy
his delusions, and the villain ceases to breed. This proc-
ess has already undermined the Anglo-Saxon leader-
ship of America in literature, morals, and municipal
politics; as it goes on, the same process will probably
weaken all the peoples of Western Europe and North
America. In the interim we shall, in all likelihood, have
a cultural outburst like that of Florence and Rome in
the days of the Medici and the Borgias. In the end we
shall be an extinct volcano, and Asia will mount again
the throne of the world, until it, too, becomes very
intelligent and dies.
Ill
MID-VICTORIAN
You will see that I am granting you a great deal —
that life has no meaning outside of its own terrestrial
self, that the individual has no immortality, and that
every civilization, as surely as every flower, decays.
These conclusions seem to me now so natural that they
do not disturb me any more ; I perceive that within the
limits set by them I have still much room to find sig-
nificance for my life and race, and even a moderate
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
content. This Byronic pose of our youth, which wished
to die because Santa Claus was dead, wears away as the
realities of life catch us in their grip and sweep us into
action; we find less and less time for mourning idle
dreams ; and we observe that our children do not pine
as we did for myths which they have never believed.
The meaning of life, then, must lie within itself; it
must be independent of individual death, even of na-
tional decay ; it must be sought in life’s own instinctive
cravings and natural fulfilments. Why, for example,
should we ask for an ulterior meaning to vitality and
health ? — ^they would be goods in their own right, even
if they were not also means to racial ends. If you are
sick beyond cure I will grant you viaticum, and let you
die; let me not to the ending of botched lives put an
impediment. But if you are well — if you can stand on
your legs and digest your food — forget your whining,
and shout your gratitude to the sun.
The simplest meaning of life, then, is joy — the ex-
hilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being;
sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear
and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is be-
cause it has more body and less soul, and understands
that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no
[124]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
further meaning to its arms and legs than their abound-
ing use. Perhaps if we used our arms and legs we
would be happy too; and golf, which God invented for
George Babbit, is justified by every mile that is walked
and every ball that is lost. Even if life had no meaning
except for its moments of beauty (and we are not sure
that it has more), that would be enough ; this plodding
through the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the
snow under the sun, or watching the twilight turn into
night, is reason a-plenty for loving life. Let death come;
meanwhile I have seen the purple hills of South Da-
kota, and one point of a star taking its place quietly in
the evening sky. Nature will destroy me, but she has a
right to; she made me, and burned my senses with a
thousand delights; she gave me all that she will take
away. How shall I ever thank her sufficiently for these
five senses of mine — these fingers and lips, these eyes
and ears, this restless tongue and this gigantic nose
Do not be so ungrateful about love. To ignore its
psychological developments is as unrealistic as to forget
its physiological bases. Yes, at bottom it is a matter of
hydraulic pressure and chemical irritation; but at the
top it becomes, occasionally, a ballade of devotion and
chivalry ^no longer mutual itching, but mutual consid-
[125]
ON THE MEANING OF UFE
eration. I have not in mind here merely romantic love
— that idealization of the object which comes with frus-
trated desire, and is now disappearing because desire is
not so frustrated as before I refer to the attachment of
mates or friends who have gone hand in hand through
much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and
have been soldered into unity by being burned to-
gether in the flame of life. I know that such mates or
comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s
nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the
unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in
you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting
to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.
I suspect that most pessimists are bachelors; married
men have no time for gloom. By a pessimist I do not
mean one who has a realistic awareness of the evils and
hardships of human life; I mean one who, unable to
face those hardships with equanimity, concludes from
his own weakness that all life is a worthless snare.
Perhaps a good deal of this pessimism comes from
thinking of ourselves as individuals, as complete and
separate entities. I note that those who are cooperating
parts of a whole do not despond ; the despised “yokel’
playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than
[126]
LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game
of life and degenerate through the separation. “Be a
whole or join a whole,” said Goethe. If we think of our-
selves as part of a living (no merely theoretical) group,
we shall find life a little fuller, perhaps even more
significant. For to give life a meaning one must have a
purpose larger than one’s self, and more enduring than
one’s life.
If, as we said at the outset, a thing has significance
only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then,
though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal
meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in
particular that its meaning lies in its relation to some-
thing larger than itself.. Hence the greater fulness of
the married and parental, as compared with the celi-
bate and sterile, life; a man feels significant in propor-
tion as he contributes, physically or mentally, to the
entity of which he acknowledges himself a part. We
who are too superior to belong to groups, who are too
wise to marry or too clever to have children, find life
empty and vain, and wonder has it any meaning. But
ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the
meaning of life and he will answer you very simply :
Feeding your family.” The attraction of the sexes,
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ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
which, when taken in isolation from its biological func-
tion, seems a delusion and a vain pursuit, becomes a
road to fulfilment and a modest significance when sur-
rendered to heartily in the continuity of life.
Here on the train from Morgantown to Pittsburgh is
a woman all smiles, playing with her child. O you un-
happy intellectuals of the cities ! — do you think you are
profounder than that woman ? And you sophist scien-
tist, vainly seeking to understand the part in terms of
the part, can you not see that this woman is a greater
philosopher than you, because she has forgotten her-
self as a part, and has found a place in the whole?
IV
A PERSONAL CONFESSION
This, then, I should say, is the road to significance
and content: join a whole, and work for it with all
your body and mind. The meaning of life hes in the
chance it gives us to produce, or to contribute to, some-
thing greater than ourselves. It need not be a family;
that, so to speak, is the direct and broadest road, which
Nature in her blind wisdom has provided for even the
simplest soul ; it may be any group that can call out all
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LET TERS TO A SUICIDE
the latent nobility of the individual, and give him a
cause to work for that shall not be shattered by his
death. It may be some revolutionary association to
which a man or a woman gives devotion unstintingly ;
or it may be a great state to whose preservation and
exaltation some Pericles or Akbar devotes his genius
and his life. It may occasionally be some work of
beauty that absorbs the soul in its making, and becomes
a boon to many generations. But in every case it must,
if it will give a life meaning, lift the individual out of
himself, and make him a cooperating part of a vaster
scheme. The secret of significance and content is to
have a task which consumes all one’s energies, and
makes human life a little richer than before.
As for myself— for I wish to answer directly the
questions which I have asked of so many others-Hhe
meaning of life lies perhaps too narrowly in my family
and my work; I wish I coidd boast of consecration to a
larger cause. The sources of my energy are egotism and
a selfish altruism— the greed for applause, and a mad
devotion to those dependent upon me. The goal and
motive force of my work.^ — to see happiness around
me, and to win, at last, the approval of my betters. The
haunts of happiness? — my home and my books, my
[129] K
ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
ink and my pen. I would not call myself happy — no
man can be quite happy in the midst of the poverty
and suffering that still survive about him today; but I
am content, and inexpressibly grateful. Where, in the
last resort, does my treasure lie ? — in everything. A man
should have many irons in the fire; he should not let
his happiness be bound up entirely with his children,
or his fame, or his prosperity, or even his health; but
he should be able to find nourishment for his content
in any one of these, even if all the rest are taken away.
My last resort, I think, would be Nature herself; shorn •
of all other gifts and goods, I should find, I hope, sufiE-
cient courage for existence in any mood of field and
sky, or, shorn of sight, in some concourse of sweet
sounds, or some poet’s memory of a day that smiled.
All in all, experience is a marvelously rich panorama,
from which any sense should be able to draw suste-
nance for living.
The hardest question of all to answer is— what help
does religion give me.? As I write the query down I
look out of the moving window and see, in the valley
below, a little hamlet gathered about a church. I can
imagine what incredible theological nonsense is
preached under that white spire, what bigotry and scc-
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
tariamsm are* nourished there, and with what terror
and hatred these simple toilers of the soil will defend
the faith that so solicitously protects them from our
passing truth. But my heart goes out to them ; I think
I like them better than the village atheist who knows so
well how to say the right thing at the wrong time. To
be in haste to destroy the faith of such people is surely
the mark of a shallow and ungenerous mind.
Nevertheless, I cannot believe, in the face of biology,
in the eternity of the individual self; nor, in the face of
history, can I believe in a personal anthropomorphic
God. But unlike the tougher minds of my time I miss
these encouragements, and cannot quite forget the
poetry with which they surrounded my youth. There is
something ridiculous in the idea of a Supreme Being
that should be at all like a man, even like Leonardo
or Goethe; but I should be grateful to anyone who
could persuade me of this delectable absurdity. There
is something selfish in the desire for personal immor-
tality, and a heaven crowded to suffocation with inter-
minable egos would be an insufferable place ; but I sus-
pect that I too shall be sorry to go, and should be glad
to know, when I am gone, what fate befalls my chil-
dren and my friends, and the causes I tried to serve.
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ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
So that, though the dogmas of the old faith have
gone from me and offer me no support today, they
have left in me an aroma of their memory, as (to use
an old figxire) a certain fragrance may linger in a room
from which flowers have been recently removed. So
much of the old remains that I cannot accept the crude
mechanism which contents so many of my generation,
and am pleased to find symbolic profundities in the
ancient creed. Possibly in the end faith, ever clamoring
to be heard, will break down my doubts, and I shall go
the way of Huysmans and Chesterton. My readers
should beware of what I write when I am old.
What immortality means to me now is that we arc
all parts of a whole, cells in the body of life; that the
death of the part is the life of the whole; and that
though as individuals we pass away, yet the whole is
made forever different by what we have done and been.
What God means to me is the First Cause, or source
of all life and energy, in which we live and move and
have our being; and the Final Cause, or goal and em-
bodiment of our striving and aspiration, that distant
perfection which is not but may be. Perhaps that great-
est Whole, to which in all generations the greatest souls
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LETTERS TO A SUICIDE
have devoted themselves, will, in tomorrow’s religion,
be called God.
V
INVITATION
But here I have lost myself so much in myself that I
have forgotten you, my unknown soldier of despair,
who are about to commit suicide. You will see that
what you need is not philosophy, but a wife and a child,
and hard work. Voltaire once remarked that he might
occasionally have killed himself, had he not had so
much work on his hands. I notice again that it is only
leisurely people who despair. If you can find no work
in this chaotic industrial system of ours, go out to the
first farmer and ask him to let you be his hired hand
for your food and a bed until better things come. If he
is afflicted with that incredible disease called overpro-
duction, agree that you will produce only as much as
you can consume. Perhaps when we are all permitted
to consume as much as we produce we shall have no
“overproduction” any more.
In the end I know how vain and snobbish all advice
is, and how hard it is for one human being to under-
stand another. Come and spend an hour with me, and
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ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
I will show you a path through the woods which will
better dissuade you from surrender than all the argu-
ments of my books. Come and tell me what a childish
optimist I am: lay about you freely, and damn this
middling world as you will; I shall agree with every-
thing but your conclusion. Then we shall eat the bread
of peace together, and let the prattle of the children
restore our youth.
APPENDIX
X
X
n
u
APPENDIX
being a communication from convict 79206,
SING SING PRISON
After the foregoing manuscript had been pre-
pared it occurred to the publishers to send a copy
of the initial letter to a man recently sentenced to
life imprisonment as a fourth offender j what mean-
ing did life seem to have from the viewpoint of
one so unjustly condemned to apparently so empty
a future ? The reply was so well thought out, and
so well expressed, that it commanded a place in this
symposium. It is incredible that we should be un-
able to find any better use for such intelligence than
to lock it up forever.
An eminent author and philosopher seeks an answer
to that age-old question: What is the meaning or worth
of human life?
An equally eminent publisher asked me how I man-
age to bear it in my present position.
To the philosopher, I, a man serving a life term bc-
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APPENDIX
hind prison walls, answer that the meaning life has for
me depends upon, and is only limited by, my ability to
recognize its great truths and to learn and profit by the
lessons they teach me. In short, life is worth just what I
am willing to strive to make it worth.
To the publisher, I say that life, even from within
prison walls, can be as intensely interesting, as vitally
worth-while as it is to any man on the outside. It all
depends upon the faith one has in the soundness of
his philosophy.
I My philosophy of life is a homely one, compounded
' of many simple beliefs of which truth is the guiding
j star. Upon my ability to see life in its true aspect, I
depend for that mental equilibrium without which I
find myself drifting in a welter of conjecture and con-
tradictory speculation.
‘We are driven to conclude,* argues the philosopher,
‘that the greatest mistake in human history was the
discovery of truth. It has not made us happy, for it is
not beautiful. It has not made us free, except from de-
lusions that comforted us and restraints that preserved
us. It has taken from us every reason for existence
except the moment’s pleasure and tomorrow’s trivial
hope.’
APPENDIX
If our happiness and our reason for existence de-
pended upon our inherent tendency to seek comfort
in delusions, false tradition and superstition, then I
could agree. We should be unhappy when truth de-
prived us of their questionable consolation, but they
do not.
Truth is not beautiful, neither is it ugly. Why should
it be either? Truth is truth, just as figures are figures.
When a man wishes to learn the exact condition of
his business affairs, he employs figures and, if these
figures reveal a sad state of his affairs, he doesn’t con-
demn them and say that they are unlovely and accuse
them of having disillusioned him . Why then condemn
truth, when it only serves him in this enterprise of life
as figures serve him in his commercial enterprises?
That idol-worshipping strain in our natures has
visioned a figure of Truth draped in royal raiment and,
when truth in its humble form, sans drapery, appears
to us, we cry, ‘Disillusionment.*
Custom and tradition have caused us to confuse truth
with our beliefs. Custom, tradition and our mode of
living have led us to believe we cannot be happy, save
under certain physical conditions possessed of certain
material comforts.
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APPENDIX
This is not truth, it is belief. Truth tells us that hap-
piness is a state of mental contentment.
Contentment can be found on a desert island, in a
little town, or the tenements of a large city. It can be
found in the palaces of the rich or the hovels of the
poor.
Confinement in prison doesn’t cause unhappiness, else
all those who are free would be happy. Poverty doesn’t
cause it, else the rich all would be happy. Those who
live and die in one small town are often as happy, or
happier than many who spend their entire lives in
travel. I once knew an aged negro who could not tell
the meaning of one letter from that of another, yet he
was happier than the college professor for whom he
worked. Hindus are happy, so are the Chinese, the
Africans, the Spaniards, and the Turks. The North, the
South, the East and the West all contain happy persons.
There are celebrities who are happy, and thei:e are
many happy people living obscure lives.
Happiness is neither racial, nor financial, nor social,
neither is it geographical.
What then can it be, and from what deep well does
it spring
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APPENDIX
Reason tells us that it is a form of mental content-
ment and— if this be true — ^its logical abode must be
within the mind. The mind, so we are told, is capable
of rising above matter. Can we be wrong then in
assuming that mental contentment may be achieved
under any condition, even in prison ?
There are some who would have us believe that
thought, discovery and invention have revealed life as
a rather hopeless venture, and mankind a helpless
pawn doomed to go down to defeat and oblivion, and
from this gloomy prospect man turns and exclaims,
*What’s the use?’
Natural history teaches us that in the great scheme
of evolution, which is the only true and not compara-
tive progress, certain forms of life, unable to adjust
themselves to evolutionary changes, have been entirely
blotted out. These were devoid of that constructive
instinct we call invention. Life is in a constant state of
change, and the development of thought and invention
enables us to adjust ourselves to these changes. In fact
our very fitness, our only hope of survival, depends
upon the fertihty of our inventiveness.
The prehistoric fish, when it developed legs with
which to climb from its then native habitat or element,
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APPENDIX
was as much of an inventor as were the Wright
brothers.
T. S. Eliot draws us a very convincing picture of a
chaotic world in ‘The Waste Land,’ but I dare to ques-
tion the premise upon which he paints his picture.
Science, discovery, thought and deduction all tell me
that the world is a living symbol of orderliness, that
evolution is blind only according to man’s standards of
blindness, that chaos exists only in the minds of men.
Reason will not permit me to see life in any other
aspect. To me, life is like a river, moving ever forward.
There are eddies and cross-currents, but the main
stream sweeps onward.
Life cannot retrogress, neither can man. He is an
integral part of the universe in which he lives, that
universe which is ever moving forward to some ap-
pointed destiny.
That life was accidental is a theory I am willing to
accept, but it doesn’t follow that it need be meaning-
less. Any man who has thought deeply enough to ar-
rive at the conclusion that life is without meaning must
surely be an intelligent man. Intelligent persons do not
do meaningless things, yet these exponents of this doc-
trine continue to live. I am forced to conclude from
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APPENDIX
this that they do not feel entirely in sympathy with
their doctrine. Each time I pick up a newspaper and
read of some man committing suicide, I say, ‘There
was a man who truly believed that life was without
meaning.’
Those who decry the machine age as heralding the
decadence of the race, do not stop to consider that
manual labor is not a natural but an acquired habit
of man. It was a crude means by which primitive
man sought to adjust himself, sought to survive, a
method for Accomplishing those tasks and overcoming
those obstacles which life presents. The machine is
simply a quicker, more efficient means to the same end:
Man’s struggle to keep abreast, to survive. Just as man
has changed his mode of living, so must he change his
thoughts, his habits, and perhaps even his form.
Back in the dim aeons of time man has made several
physical changes, why not in the far-distant future
toward which we are traveling.'^
Up from the deeps of the sea to the shallows came
life, up from the shallows to the land.
* This evening I stood in the prison yard amid other
prisoners, with eyes lifted aloft, gazing at that great,
beautiful sight, the airship Los Angeles as it sailed
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APPENDIX
majestically over our heads. Into my mind came the
thought that, just as that prehistoric creature struggled
up out of the sea to the land, so is man struggling up
from the land into the air. Who dare deny that, some
day, up, ever up he will struggle thru the great reaches
of interstellar space to wrest from it the knowledge
which will enable him to lift his life to a plane as high
above this, our present one, as it is above that of pre-
historic man.^
I do not know to what great end Destiny leads us,
nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall
have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on.
How I play that part is all that concerns me.
In the knowledge that I am an inahenable part of
this great, wonderful, upward movement called life,
and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical afflic-
tion, nor depr^sion, nor prison, can take away from
me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and
my treasure.
Owen C. Middleton.
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