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By Rev. A. Powell Davies D.D.
December 30, 1945
From time immemorial, it has been the custom of the human race to
commemorate the turning of the year. Measured by the longevity of a
star or the life-span of a planet, such an interval, of course, has
only trivial significance. But as a measure of the hurrying days and
nights of man's mortality upon the circling earth, each annual cycle
is a notable dimension. It invites reflection, a moment's pause in
which to make a reckoning. Year after year, in homes and churches,
in streets and marketplaces, in magazines and newspapers, in public
utterance and private conversation--in every way, in fact, that
opportunity provides--such annual reckonings have been made.
This year, however, events have so exceeded all previous lengths and
breadths of computation that the scale of reckoning itself has been
eclipsed. We are at the end not merely of an annual cycle but of an
epoch. We are uncertain, indeed, whether even the word "epoch" is
sufficient to the circumstances; it may have been surpassed. Nowhere
within the period known as history can we find a reference point
coordinate with our present situation. We have to go beyond historic
time to what we only know through myth and folklore: the pains and
perils of the dawn of human consciousness, the fabled threat of
universal flood and other prophesies of dissolution; or, as most of
the commentators seem to prefer, to the audacious moment when man
first began to subdue to his own uses the furious majesty of fire.
If we go back that far, we recognize that former men have had to
contemplate, as we do, the certainty of great and strenuous
transformations accompanied by alternatives of general ruin and
destruction. No matter what the chances of the latter were in actual
fact, to those who faced them they seemed extremely real. The gods
might well despair of man and suddenly decide to end him. This,
apparently, was often prophesied. To those who looked upon the
region in which they lived as all the human world there was,
suspecting nothing of other areas of human habitation, a volcanic
eruption, a widespread inundation, or any other natural catastrophe
would seem to threaten total demolition and, for man, extermination.
But for these comparisons we have to go back beyond history.
Those who entertained the possibility of a general catastrophe
during the historic period seem always to have predicted it as a
supernatural intervention--like the coming of Christ on the clouds
of heaven. In this case, the existing world was being ended only to
transform it by miraculous means into something much superior. It
was a calamity for the wicked, or for those who were thought to be
such; but for the elite or the elect, the ones, that is to say, who
made the forecast, a very blissful future was expected. No matter
how much they tried to impress other people with the idea of a
cataclysm, to themselves, certainly, the expectation of so much
happiness to follow must have made it seem a very limited
catastrophe.
But even when we have considered both history and the prehistoric,
there was never a time quite like this. We ourselves are not
contemplating events which might be brought about by gods or demons;
we are not thinking in restricted terms of earthquakes, floods or
natural calamities; we are not even reflecting upon the ultimate
exhaustion of the earth we live upon, as scientists have sometimes
done, or upon its destruction through some cosmic accident; we are
not thinking at all of something which might happen to us, but of
something which we ourselves might cause to happen. In the past, we
could ask what God would do, or natural events, and usually feel a
relaxing sense of partial unreality, of distance in time, of hopeful
obscurity and remoteness; but now we wonder how we ourselves can
cope with overwhelming problems, with dangers close at hand,
unparalleled in terrifying urgency, and there is no sense whatever
of remoteness. We know that the scientific event that has taken
place is irreversible: we have unlocked the secret of nature's own
immense and awful energy, and even if we would, we could not find a
way to lock it up again.
It comes inevitably, does this discovery, from the science and
technology which are now essential to the human world and without
which it would be impossible to support our populations. It is not
an isolated event, unrelated to what has gone before; it is the
culmination of a process sure to lead just where it has. Bound up
with this process is the whole fabric of modern life, the entire
method of modern knowledge. The same approach which has made us
masters of the soil and sea and air, which has given us increasing
command of the elements, which shows us how to cure disease and
banish famine--this same approach, the scientific approach, leads
inescapably to vast powers and ultimate discoveries. To end this
process we would need to destroy the civilized world. For discovery
cannot be made to stand still. Madame Curie and her husband had no
idea when they were working on radium that what they had found would
lead to further steps, first in theory, then in experiment, which
would contribute at last to the military use of atomic explosives.
Einstein had very little notion when he wrote down the equation
e=mc(exp2), that he had provided the basic principle which would
make possible atomic bombs within his own lifetime....This total
process cannot be dispersed or separated--without the sacrifice of
civilization itself.
Indeed, we must go even further. It is not a matter of this
civilization, but of any civilization. It is a matter of man's own
composition, his own intelligence, his growing intellect, his urge
to mastery--the things that make him man. We could go back to
Anaximander and Thales seeking the primal substance of the universe;
or Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and Democritus, struggling with early
mathematics and the first atomic theories. That would take us back
more than 2500 years, and, no doubt, we could go back a great deal
farther. It is one of the great culminations of this entire human
quest--the greatest of all down to know-- that has been reached in
our own time; indeed, to be specific, in the year now ending, the
year of the Christian era, 1945. It is clear, therefore, that what
has come to pass cannot be revoked, nor its consequences evaded. We
must go on to master our discoveries, even the greatest, or suffer
the ruinous penalties of failure.
Yet, as the most eventful year in history passes, we who have lived
through that year are filled with fears. What are we afraid of? We
can answer the question in a single word: ourselves. We are afraid
of ourselves. Not of natural forces, uncontrollable or hostile to
us. Not of gods and supernatural beings. Not of anything that lies
outside us; but of ourselves. We are not even, in the last analysis,
afraid of other men, other kinds of men. We know at last how very
much all other men are like us. We are not afraid of their acting as
we, ourselves, could never act. We are afraid that they may do just
exactly what we might do in provoking circumstances, or when we are
irresponsible, prejudiced, greedy, stupid, stubborn, or impelled by
our lower motives away from our best and towards our worst. It is
useless our saying that we would never use an atomic bomb; we
did--twice. To us it seemed justified--that is, to some of us--to
those who had that fearful question to decide. And so we fear that
it may seem justified to other people--some of them--who also may
have to decide. We have more confidence in our own restraint than in
other people's, just as we do when we are willing to travel 60 miles
an hour in an automobile--provided we happen to be holding the
wheel. But we want nothing more than 40 miles an hour if someone
else happens to be driving, and not even that, perhaps, if the
driver happens to be our own dear wife! ....Deep down, we know that
it is human nature itself, our own, of which we are distrustful.
Will it prove sufficient to the opportunities and dangers of this
new age?
We find it more difficult than we used to do to trust our leaders.
We feel that we no longer have any great men. In these recent months
I have come increasingly to believe that even if we did have
recognizably great leaders our situation would be much the same. In
fact, I am not sure but that our leaders in any other period would
seem a good deal greater than they do today. They are overshadowed
by events. Some kinds of greatness seem no longer very great, and
men today are not in awe of what the past called greatness. All men,
of whatever eminence, are shrunken in apparent stature by the
greatness of the times. I do not believe that Pericles would be any
better able to cope with the international problems of the moment
than those who are attempting it. I doubt whether Socrates would
have found it easy to meet the intellectual challenge. He could ask
extremely searching questions, but answering them is another matter.
Rather than agonize his way through an international conference,
Socrates might very well have preferred to go a little sooner to the
hemlock!....What I am suggesting by all this is not that we do not
need leaders, but that we know today that all men, leaders included,
are coping with destinies which all but overwhelm them.
We shall continue to cope with these destinies. I shall not be
surprised if we grow more hopeful. Just as individual men of lesser
quality--to all appearances, of lesser quality--rise to great
heights at times, when given momentous duties and responsibilities,
so may the people of this generation. It is not impossible, far from
it, that we shall transcend our mediocrity, our narrow vision, our
cowardly habits and indulgences, and meet each crisis as it comes,
if not triumphantly then earnestly and bravely. And if we do that we
may save the present while preparing for the happier future.
And it is about that future that I chiefly wish to speak this
morning. I do not believe for one moment that the perils and
frustrations of the present hour are accidental, that all its pains
and miseries have no significance, that such a time as this is
meaningless. I do not believe this earth with all its life revolves
to no good purpose, or that it is a thing of chance and spinning to
destruction. I know the arguments for such opinions. I have read and
listened to them all. I know the scientist's approach and find it
natural to share his caution and humility. I know how little we can
prove by logic, how impossible it is to demonstrate in words a
meaning hidden in obscurities which mostly lie beyond our
understanding. But I also know with every breath I breathe that
truth is greater than our comprehension. I know just as I know my
existence that there is purpose in this human life of ours, greater
purpose than any of us has ever found the means of making manifest.
There may be purpose beyond it, too. I would be willing to say after
Abraham Lincoln, "The Almighty has his own purposes." If you wish to
change the language, do so, but hesitate a long while before you
change the meaning. In the vastness of the universe there is room
for far more than man can center in his own affairs; there may be
that which now requires of us a place within the scheme of things
which no man has conjectured or supposed. We do not know: we
speculate. But when we try to understand the larger mystery of the
times we live in, it is natural to say, as Lincoln did: "The
Almighty has his own purposes."
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