Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: Ten Lectures on Social SubjectsHousman, Laurence
Philosophy
Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: Ten Lectures on Social Subjects
Housman, Laurence
Social ethics; Social sciences
So at last, by association, the horn came to have such a beneficent
meaning that the mere sound of it sufficed to bring them back at
nightfall to their appointed place of rest. They might roam for miles
and miles during the day, but night and the sound of the horn brought
them all back safe to fold. And when that habit had become established,
they did not cease to return even though the swineherd no longer
supplied the food which had first given music its charm to those savage
breasts.
And, similarly, I doubt not, that, though all hope of material profit
or reward be withdrawn from man’s mind, that call of the horn which
he has heard of old will still bring his spirit to the resting-place
at the appointed time; nor will he wish either to shorten his days or
debase his pleasures because the horn has ceased to provide the meal
which it once taught him to expect.
Do not let anything I have said be taken as suggesting that the
spiritual forces of man’s nature may not be conserved, transmuted,
re-assimilated, or re-distributed, as surely and with as little waste
as are the material elements of life which pass through disintegration
and decay into new forms. The processes by which such changes are
wrought may be, and may ever remain, a mystery to human sense. There
may be yet in the making a new order or plane of evolution by which
the process will be quickened and perfected. Soul of man may be in
the making, though it may be very far removed from that aspect of
individualism with which the anthropomorphic tendencies of theology
have burdened it. But--whether life thus rises by unknown law to
further ends, or whether it passes out, like the life of leaves, into
the general decay with which autumn each year fertilises the bed of
mother earth--of one thing I would ask you to be confident--that the
bandying of words and theories, and the discussion, tending this way
or that, of man’s destiny after death, are not in any way likely to
alter or to undo those forward-driving forces and communal desires with
which, from an inheritance of so many millions of years, the life of
humanity has become endowed. The will to live will still lift up the
race and carry it forward to new ends, whether man thinks he sees in
death the end of his personal existence, or only a new and a better
beginning. And whether he claims or resigns that prospect of reward he
will never be able to rid himself of the sense which revives after all
failures and crimes, that man is his brother-man--or be able to refrain
at his best from laying down his life, without calculation of personal
benefit to himself, so that others may live.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account