This satisfaction of man's needs is a great thing. It gives him freedom
in the material world. It confers on him the benefit of a greater range
of time and space. He can do things in a shorter time and occupies a
larger space with more thoroughness of advantage. Therefore he can
easily outstrip those who live in a world of a slower time and of space
less fully occupied.
This progress of power attains more and more rapidity of pace. And, for
the reason that it is a detached part of man, it soon outruns the
complete humanity. The moral man remains behind, because it has to deal
with the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is
impersonal and therefore abstract.
Thus, man with his mental and material power far outgrowing his moral
strength, is like an exaggerated giraffe whose head has suddenly shot up
miles away from the rest of him, making normal communication difficult
to establish. This greedy head, with its huge dental organization, has
been munching all the topmost foliage of the world, but the nourishment
is too late in reaching his digestive organs, and his heart is
suffering from want of blood. Of this present disharmony in man's nature
the West seems to have been blissfully unconscious. The enormity of its
material success has diverted all its attention toward
self-congratulation on its bulk. The optimism of its logic goes on
basing the calculations of its good fortune upon the indefinite
prolongation of its railway lines toward eternity. It is superficial
enough to think that all to-morrows are merely to-days, with the
repeated additions of twenty-four hours. It has no fear of the chasm,
which is opening wider every day, between man's ever-growing storehouses
and the emptiness of his hungry humanity. Logic does not know that,
under the lowest bed of endless strata of wealth and comforts,
earthquakes are being hatched to restore the balance of the moral world,
and one day the gaping gulf of spiritual vacuity will draw into its
bottom the store of things that have their eternal love for the dust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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