Page 27 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes However, with our contemporaries we share the realization of the aloneness of Death, and this
recognition can bond us. Out of this shared dilemma can arise a new empathy for our fellow Man.
”... In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness
of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an over powering awe, a feeling of the vastness,
the depth, the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of
pain, the sufferer is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight,
we lose all eagerness of temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care
for the little trivial things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by
day; we see, surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship,
the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night
without, a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile
forces is concentrated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of
courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its
hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism
into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of
human existence. From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation,
wisdom and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins.”
Whereas the savage continues to view the inanimate world as animate, and therefore worships
false gods (in the manner of a slave), and whereas the savage continues to be driven by petty
strivings with transitory rewards of personal happiness, thereby squandering a finite life, and
whereas the savage refuses to accept the inevitable victory of an uncaring universe over his
petty struggles, and therefore invents pitiful palliative realities promising everlasting heavenly
happiness, the thoughtful man is free of all these false worshippings, false strivings, and false
hopes. This emancipating perspective opens the way to the free man’s worship.
”... The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of
Nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater
than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they
devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendor, is
greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in
Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the struggle
for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for
eternal things this is emancipation, and this is the free man’s worship.”
Thoughtful men, who have freed themselves from the savage’s slave worship mentality, are
bound together by an acknowledgement of their shared fate. Each of us faces the existential
dilemma, each confronts an uncaring physical universe and an evil animate one, each of us
endures this for a brief time, and each of us will die alone. To the extent that I understand my
individual fate, I also understand the fate of my fellow man. Our shared doom creates a
feeling of fellowship. Together we march through the treacherous fields of life, and one by one
we fall down to die. We are fellow sufferers, and it feels right to reach out with a helpful hand
to those who we shall later become. We may see their shortcomings, and know that we have
ours; and remembering their burden of sorrows, we forgive.
”... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free
man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of
love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured
by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry
long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent
orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their
happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their
sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never tiring affection, to

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