Yet how hard it is to make the change effective! Long ages ago in the
primeval jungle, the dogs' ancestors used to turn around three times in
the thicket before they lay down, that they might make a comfortable
spot to nestle in, and now your highbred Pekingese will turn around
three times upon his silken cushion although there is no earthly reason
why he should. So difficult is it to breed beasts and men out of their
inveterate habits. So hard is it going to be to make men give up the
idea that force is a secure foundation for international relationships.
Yet somehow that change must be made. They are having trouble with the
housing problem in Tokyo and the reason is simple. Tokyo is built on
earthquake ground and it is insecure. You cannot put great houses on
unstable foundations. One story, two stories, three stories--that is
about as high as they dare go. But in New York City one sees the
skyscrapers reaching up their sixty stories into the air. The
explanation is not difficult: Manhattan Island is solid rock. If you
are going to build great structures you must have great foundations.
And civilization is a vast and complicated structure. We cannot build
it on physical force. That is too shaky. We must build it upon
spiritual foundations.
There are those who suppose that this can be done by progress through
the scientific control of life, and who treat religion as a negligible
element. Such folk forget that while a cat will lap her milk
contentedly from a saucer made of Wedgwood or china, porcelain or
earthenware, and will feel no curiosity about the nature of the
receptacle from which she drinks, human beings are not animals who thus
can take their food and ask no questions about the universe in which it
is served to them. We want to know about life's origin and meaning and
destiny. We cannot keep our questions at home. We cannot stop
thinking. If this universe is fundamentally physical, if the only
spark of spiritual life which it ever knew is the fitful flame of our
own unsteady souls, if it came from dust and to dust will return,
leaving behind no recollection of the human labour, sacrifice and
aspiration which for a little time it unconsciously enshrined, that
outlook makes an incalculable difference to our present lives. For
then our very minds themselves, which have developed here by accident
upon this wandering island in the skies, represent the only kind of
mind there is, and what we do not know never was thought about or cared
for or purposed by anyone, and we, alone in knowing, are ourselves
unknown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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