And David Barrow Spoke up and said: "No ism is enough. The question is, Is life worth living, good Or bad? If bad, I think that Elenor Murray had As good a life as any. Here we've sat These weeks and heard these stories--nothing new; And as to waste, our time is wasted here, If there were better things to do; and yet Perhaps there is no better. I've enjoyed This work, association. Well, you're told To judge not, and that means to judge not man; You are not told to judge not God. And so I judge Him. And again your Elenor Murrays, Your human being cannot will his way, But God's omnipotent, and where He fails He should be censured. Why does He allow A world like this, and suffer earthquakes, storms, The sinking of _Titanics_, cancers? Why Suffer these wars, this war?--Talk of the riffles That flowed from Elenor Murray--here's a wave Of tidal power, stirred by a greedy coot Who called himself an emperor! And look Our land, America, is ruined, slopped For good, or for our lives with filth and stench; So that to live here takes what strength you have, None left for living, as a man should live. And this America once free and fair Is now the hatefulest, commonest group of men, Women and children in the Occident. What's life here now? Why, boredom, nothing else.... Why pity Elenor Murray? Gottlieb Gerald Told of her home life; it was good enough, Average American, or better. Schools She had in plenty, what would she have done With courses to the end in music, art? She was not happy. Elenor had a brain, And brains and happiness are at enmity. And if the world goes on some thousand years, The race as much advanced beyond us now In feeling, thought, as we are now beyond Pinthecanthropus, say, why, all will see What I see now;--'twere better if the race Had never risen. All analogies Of nature show that death of man is death. He plants his seed and dies, the resurrection Is not the man, but is the child that grows From sperm he sows. The grain of wheat that sprouts Is not the stalk that bore it. Now suppose We get the secret in a thousand years, Can prove that death's the end, analogies Put by with amber, frogs' legs--tell me then What opiate will still the shrieks of men? But some of us know now, and I am one. There is no heaven for me; and as for those Who make a heaven to get out of this-- You gentlemen who call life good, the world The work of God's perfection; yet invent A heaven to rest in from this world of woe-- You do not wish to go there; and resort To cures and Christian Science to stay here! Which shows you are not sure. And thus we have Your Christian saying at heart that life is bad, And heaven is good, but not so good and sure That you will hurry to it. Why, I'll prove The Christian pessimist, as well as I. He says life is so bad it has no meaning, Unless there be a future; and I say