Enigma Variations

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 655, 25 January 1952, Page 4

Enigma Variations

talks on the basis of belief in a future life, details of which are given on page 15, will not expect to hear a final answer to one of the. oldest questions asked by man. Everybody knows that there can be no certainty, though individuals may believe or deny with equal confidence. Yet the question must be asked: indeed, it is thrust upon us from the moment we begin to discover ourselves as separate persons in a strange and wonderful world. Many will say that they have no opinion and that they are able to get themselves through life without having to decide where they stand. It may be true that we can live and work and even die in a state of suspended judgment; but beneath our neutrality we may be closer to conviction than we realise. Some thinkers declare that the world would be a better place if we could cease to trouble ourselves with an enigma which cannot be solved. But this attitude may need a faith in the continuance of the human species. As Archdeacon L. G. Whitehead reminds us in the second talk of the series, "To talk about the immortality of the race is to fly in the face’ of what science tells us is probably true of the future of ’mankind." We cannot be sure of ‘the future; but we know some‘thing of the past, and we know -from history that the vision of another life-crude and naive though it may often have been, and expressed inevitably in terms of human experience-has been in all ages a strong and sustaining influence. It is felt more powerfully at some times than at others. The scientific temper may not _ with it, mean that it smut goon: gt ite Ns in an "age reason uman reason has never been used to better purpose than in classical Athens; and Plato’s Phaedo is still one of the bP tid who listen to four

noblest arguments for personal immortality. Admittedly, Plato was a poet as well as a philosopher, and artists have always found it easier than most people to believe that beauty, goodness and truth are absolute values which open for us the horizons of a larger world. Moreover, they do not feel obliged to accept the view that nothing is real unless it can be seen or proved: their own visions, far brighter than the faint glow they are able to bring into words, colours and music, take them to margins of experience where description falters. Above all, they see around them so much wonder and miracle in earthly life that a future existence becomes a rational expectation. These things cannot be proved: they can only be declared, believed or rejected. It is, however, a little comforting to know that the supreme enigma will be forever outside the range of science. We are so much in love with technical skills nowadays that we are in danger of falling into the false humility which turns man into a manikin, tied fast to the earth and of no account in the cosmic scheme. It is wiser, perhaps, to remember man’s upward struggle, and to remember also that the nerve and brain which allowed the adventure to be possible were not of his own design and manufacture. There is no arrogance in the conviction that it is a-tincture of the divine which permits man to contain the universe in his mind and to look beyond it to a further destiny. In this way human personality transcends the physical and becomes valuable for its own sake -an attitude which, in spite of the incursions of darkness, keeps the light upon our faces. We may argue as we will about life and death; and our freedom to deny, as well as to affirm, is part of the dream. But without the dreamor the true vision-there . might have been no history.