There is no Morse-code. There never will be. Every new code supersedes
the current code. Nowadays, when we feel the throb, vaguely, we cry:
“More love, more peace, more charity, more freedom, more
self-sacrifice.” Which makes matters all the worse, because the new
throb interpreted mechanically according to the old code breeds madness
and insanity. It may be that there is an insufficient activity of the
thyroid glands, or the adrenalin cortex isn’t making its secretions, or
the pituitary or the pineal body is not working adequately. But this is
result, not cause, of our neurasthenia and complexes. The neurasthenia
comes from the inattention to the suggestion, or from a false
interpretation. The best souls in the world make some of the worst
interpretations--like President Wilson--and this is the bitterest
tragedy of righteousness. The heroic effort to carry out the old
righteousness becomes at last sheer wrongeousness. Men in the past have
chosen to be martyred for an unborn truth. But life itself inflicts
something worse than martyrdom on them if they will persist too long in
the old truth.
Alas, there is no Morse-code for interpreting the new life-prompting,
the new God-urge. And there never will be. It needs a new term of speech
invented each time. A whole new concept of the universe gradually born,
shedding the old concept.
Well now. There is the dark god knocking afresh at the door. The vast
mass hear nothing, but say: “We know all about the universe. Our job is
to make a real smart place of it.” So they make more aeroplanes and
old-age-pensions and are furious when Kaiser William interrupts them.
The more sensitive hear something, feel a new urge and are uneasy. They
cry: “We are not pure in heart. We are too selfish. Let us educate the
poor. Let us remove the slums. Let us save the children. Let us spend
all we have on the noble work of education.” So they spend a bit more
than before, but by no means all they have, with the result that now
everybody reads the newspapers and discusses world-politics and feels
himself most one-sidedly a bit of the great Godhead of the sacred
People.
And still the knocking goes on, on, on, till some soul that dares as
well as can, listens, and struggles to interpret. Every new word is
anathema--bound to be. Jargon, rant, mystical tosh, and so on. Evil, and
anti-civilisation. Naturally. For the machine of the human psyche, once
wound up to a certain ideal, doesn’t want to stop.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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