Living the Radiant Life: A Personal NarrativeJames, George Wharton
Religion
Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative
James, George Wharton
Conduct of life
I would have it clear, therefore, that individualism is not
"toleration." What is there in my exercise of a God-given right and duty
to be myself that should call for the assumption of my fellow being that
HE will "tolerate" these rights? Therefore, I do not want to be
"tolerant" to my fellows. I would radiate the individualism which goes
ahead and thinks and acts according to the dictates of personal
conscience. It is all very well to say that we should learn from the
combined wisdom of the ages. I am not so sure of much of it, after all!
I accept the astronomy of to-day, but by no means believe our
astronomers have said the last word, any more than I believe that the
great and humble Newton said the last word when he declared that man had
gained the summit in the art of telescope making. Just four years after
he made that foolish assertion John Dolland invented the achromatic
telescope which has revolutionized the astronomical science of the world
by adding infinitely to the astronomer's seeing power.
_Nothing_ in human life is yet complete. There is _no_ absolute truth
carried out to its ultimate. When numbers were first discovered our
forefathers thought they had gone as far as it was possible, in
discovering that two and two make four. Then geometry was discovered and
Euclid changed the arithmetic of the world, and the teachers said we had
gone as far as it was possible. Then algebra was discovered and the
world found out the teachers were wrong in limiting the science of
arithmetic. Yet foolish people would not learn from the folly of the
past. They wisely and sagely declared that _now, at last_, the ultimate
had been reached. But Newton comes along and with his "Calculus" opens
up new worlds in arithmetical science. NOW we have got it all, declares
the teacher of _fixed_ truth. Yet in the year of Our Lord, one thousand
nineteen hundred and six, there comes a Japanese, and in his _Handbook
of Chess_ demonstrates as great an advance in arithmetical science as
Newton did in his Calculus. We are yet children. We shall ever be
learning so long as we are human. The knowledge we have so far gained is
vast, apparently, when compared with the knowledge held in the Dark
Ages, but, as compared _with what there is yet stored away for us to
know_, I verily believe it is so insignificant, so slight, so small, so
puny, so infinitesimal, as to excite the pity and the contempt of any
superior beings who look down upon us and see us strutting in our
doctor's mortar-boards and gowns in our assumed wisdom.
God forbid that any arrogant pretension of mine should ever prevent one
truth from entering a human soul. I want to radiate my acceptance of all
there is, but my expectance for the large _more_ that is yet to come.
CHAPTER VI
CONFLICTING RADIANCIES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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