To Mrs. Whitman:
"...I have found myself in much better condition than I was in last summer, and consequently better than for several years. It is pleasant to find that one s organism has such reparative capacities even after sixty years have been told out. But I feel as if the remainder couldn t be very long, at least for "creative" purposes, and I find myself eager to get ahead with work which un fortunately won t allow itself to be done in too much of a hurry. I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be epoch- machend at last, and a title of honor to my children! Childish idiot! -as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!" Letters, 1903
"...I have found myself in much better condition than I was in last summer, and consequently better than for several years. It is pleasant to find that one s organism has such reparative capacities even after sixty years have been told out. But I feel as if the remainder couldn t be very long, at least for "creative" purposes, and I find myself eager to get ahead with work which un fortunately won t allow itself to be done in too much of a hurry. I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be epoch- machend at last, and a title of honor to my children! Childish idiot! -as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were not eternally the really real!" Letters, 1903
To Henry Adams:
...Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to
interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state
might be the millennium in other words a state in which
a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its
exchanges so skillfully canalised that a maximum of happy
and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In
short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might
be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no
longer!" Letters, June 1910From A Pluralistic Mystic:
... “There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be given.–Farewell!” *
I as well wish to find certain answers before dying. For example: the purpose of human existence. I have no idea the answer.
ReplyDeleteWe're not going to settle the universe's hash, but we can set ourselves many purposes. THE purpose probably does not exist, as something anterior to our lives we must discover.
ReplyDeleteI think Einstein proposed a pretty good purpose:
“Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others —above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received and am still receiving.” Living Philosophies
And Virgina Woolf: "Life should be a purpose unto itself." Nothing external to our life supplies its purpose, on this view, and secularists are grateful for the opportunity for creative freedom this affords.
Delete