Is Life Worth Living?Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Philosophy
Is Life Worth Living?
Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Ethics; Life
Now for all these characteristics of the end of life, the theism that
modern thought is rejecting could offer a strictly logical basis. And
first, as to its importance. Here it may be said, certainly, that theism
cuts the knot, and does not untie it. But at all events it gets rid of
it; and in the following way. The theist confesses freely that the
importance of the moral end is a thing that the facts of life, as we now
know them, will never properly explain to us. It can at present be
divined and augured only; its value is one of promise rather than of
performance; and the possession itself is a thing that passes
understanding. It belongs to a region of mystery into which neither
logic nor experiment will ever suffice to carry us; and whose secrets
are beyond the reach of any intellectual aeronaut. But it is a part of
the theistic creed that such a region is; and that the things that pass
understanding are the most important things of life. Nothing would be
gained, however, by postulating merely a mystery--an unknowable. This
must be so far known by the theist, that he knows its connection with
himself. He must know, too, that if this connection is to have any
effect on him, it must be not merely temporary, but permanent and
indissoluble. Such a connection he finds in his two distinctive
doctrines--the existence of a personal God, which _gives_ him the
connection; and his own personal immortality, which _perpetuates_ it.
Thus the theist, upon his own theory, has an eye ever upon him. He is in
constant relationship with a conscious omnipotent Being, in whose
likeness he is in some sort formed, and to which he is in some sort kin.
To none of his actions is this Being indifferent; and with this Being
his relations for good or evil will never cease. Thus, though he may not
realise their true nature now, though he may not realise how infinitely
good the good is, or how infinitely evil the evil, there is a day in
store for him when his eyes will be opened, and what he now sees only
through a glass darkly, he will see face to face.
The objectivity of the moral end--or rather the objective standard of
the subjective end--is explained in the same way. The standard is God's
will, not man's immediate happiness. And yet to this will, as soon as,
by natural or supernatural means, we discern it, the Godlike part of
our nature at once responds: it at once acknowledges it as eternal and
divine, although we can give no logical reasons for such acknowledgment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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