First Week

PART I

THE LOVE OF TRUTH


CHAPTER I

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

1. " Man, born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled
with many miseries. Who cometh forth like a flower, and is
destroyed and fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in
the same state."

Man is encompassed on earth by an abundance of good
things, destined, in part, to supply his needs, and in part to
minister to his enjoyment ; through the medium of the
senses he is endowed with a capacity to recognise these
things as good, to estimate them rightly and to derive
pleasure from them.

But physical life carries with it in addition the liability
to many evils ; human existence finds itself burdened with
cares, and the continual labours necessary to the attainment
of success. Man's near horizon is bounded by the desire to
obtain and to enjoy.

These onerous labours have been rightly characterised as
a struggle for existence, wherein the individual continually
finds himself face to face with adverse circumstances, and
with the hostility of his fellow-men.

Within its proper limits, this struggle cannot be affirmed
to be of man's choosing ; it is a necessity imposed upon him,
finding its source in man's own nature, whilst, viewed in the
light of human achievements, it reveals itself as a factor of
primary importance. The triumphs to which it has spurred
mankind represent a gain to humanity at large, and it would
be folly to undervalue them. But, after all, they fall short
of satisfying the heart of a man ; the most they can do is
to bring him temporary oblivion of the self within, whilst
the current of exterior activities bears him onward. Woe,
indeed, to him who flings himself so recklessly into the fight
as to suffer it to absorb the entire energy of his mind and will!

Up to now the struggle for existence has shown itself
incapable of diminishing in any practical way the sum of
human misery. " Here the tinkling of the lute, there the
mourner's wail," so we read in an old Eastern book ;
" here a gathering of learned men, there a drunken brawl ; here
blooming youth, there the ravages of foul disease ; truly, I
know not whether life be nectar or poison." What men's eyes
lighted on then, ours light on today. Once the meaning
of life is restricted to the necessity of bearing our share in
the struggle for earthly existence, it becomes for us all, and
especially for the poor amongst us, a source of bitterness and
of grievous wrong.

No success in life, however brilliant, can bring the human
heart that abiding satisfaction for which it cherishes so
natural and invincible a longing ; hence the lament of the
preacher : " What hath a man more of all his labour that
he taketh under the sun ? " (Eccl. i. 3). Given the fullest
measure of success, what more can it bring a man than those
fleeting enjoyments of which Goethe spoke such bitter words :
"I seemed to myself," he says, "like a poisoned rat, which runs
hither and thither, devouring everything it comes across, yet
unable to deaden for a moment the gnawing agony within."
Here was a poet to whom surely earth had been lavish
enough with her gifts, and who was yet found affirming in
his old age that " his life had been like that of the tortured
Sisyphus, nor had he known one single month of real wellbeing
during the whole seventy-five years of his existence."

2. How should it have been otherwise ? The earthly
good at which men aim leaves the real man still face to face
with hunger ; even if it were able to satisfy him, how
passing a thing it is after all ! The current flows unceasingly
by ; I am barely conscious of the present before it has
become the past, and my eyes light on a thing only to behold
it vanish.

The glory of this world is a transitory glory. Where are
those rich and powerful and learned ones who made the earth
ring with their name and fame, but whose lives held nothing
that was truly great or good ? Others have stepped into
their places and they are forgotten. And their souls, where
are they now ? What did all that seeming brilliance avail
them ? " I was once supreme—what use is that to me now ?"
asked the dying Severus. He who has no thoughts beyond
this earth climbs the green slopes of the hill of life only to
perish at length on the bare, deserted summit.

No single human soul has ever yet reached happiness by
an insatiate and reckless pursuit of earthly good. Can I then
look to attain that which has so far been denied to all others ?

3. The struggle for existence is inevitable, but nothing
can justify thee in making thy whole life subservient to it.
" In man," so wrote a noted sceptic of our day, " nature aimed,
not merely at exalting, but at transcending herself. He
must be something more and something better than a mere
animal, and his innate capacity to be that something better
is the demonstration of this necessity. The life of the senses
finds adequate and exhaustive expression in the animal
kingdom, hence it is not for the sake of this life that man
exists, since no creature exists for the sake of that which is
past, but by virtue of those new conquests to which it is the
first to attain. This implies the obligation on man to control
the animal self by means of those higher faculties which
mark him off from the brute. The fierce struggle for
existence has endured long enough. In so far as he too is
nature's handiwork, man cannot wholly escape it, but his
higher faculties must come into play, and the struggle be
ennobled by the consciousness of fellowship and mutual
obligations. The wild storminess of nature must sink to
rest in her supreme creation, man ; in him we behold that
"placidum caput " which Virgil's Neptune lifted above the
waves to still them " (D. F. Strauss : Der alte und der neue
Glaube, 9th edition, p. 163).

Therefore — sursum corda ! When we own a treasure, do
we leave it to lie unheeded on the ground ? Is earth's dust
a fitting place for the heart of man ?

But how can I rise to higher things ? The answer is
simple—seek the life which is above life.
History testifies amply to the fact that, apart from the
principles which Christianity inculcates, there is no power
known to man which can mitigate the fierceness of the
struggle for existence, and enable him to direct it to ends
commensurate with his own high destiny.