REVERENCE FOR LIFE

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

[The following words are excerpted from Chapter 26 of The Philosophy of Civilization]

I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live. As in my own will-to-live there is a longing for wider life and pleasure, with dread of annihilation and pain; so is it also in the will-to-live all around me, whether it can express itself before me or remains dumb. The will-to-live is everywhere present, even as in me. If I am a thinking being, I must regard life other than my own with equal reverence, for I shall know that it longs for fullness and development as deeply as I do myself. Therefore, I see that evil is what annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. And this holds true whether I regard it physically or spiritually. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life, the enabling of whatever life I can to attain its highest development. 

In me the will-to-live has come to know about other wills-to-live. There is in it a yearning to arrive at unity with itself, to become universal. I can do nothing but hold to the fact that the will-to-live in me manifests itself as will-to-live which desires to become one with other will-to-live. 

Ethics consist in my experiencing the compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same reverence as I do my own. A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. If I save an insect from a puddle, life has devoted itself to life, and the division of life against itself has ended. Whenever my life devotes itself in any way to life, my finite will-to-live experiences union with the infinite will in which all life is one. 

An absolute ethic calls for the creating of perfection in this life. It cannot be completely achieved; but that fact does not really matter. In this sense reverence for life is an absolute ethic. It makes only the maintenance and promotion of life rank as good. All destruction of and injury to life, under whatever circumstances, it condemns as evil. True, in practice we are forced to choose. At times we have to decide arbitrarily which forms of life, and even which particular individuals, we shall save, and which we shall destroy. But the principle of reverence for life is nonetheless universal and absolute. 

Such an ethic does not abolish for man all ethical conflicts but compels him to decide for himself in each case how far he can remain ethical and how far he must submit himself to the necessity for destruction of and injury to life. No one can decide for him at what point, on each occasion, lies the extreme limit of possibility for his persistence in the preservation and furtherance of life. He alone has to judge this issue, by letting himself be guided by a feeling of the highest possible responsibility towards other life. We must never let ourselves become blunted. We are living in truth, when we experience these conflicts more profoundly. 

Whenever I injure life of any sort, I must be quite clear whether it is necessary. Beyond the unavoidable, I must never go, not even with what seems insignificant. The farmer, who has mown down a thousand flowers in his meadow as fodder for his cows, must be careful on his way home not to strike off in wanton pastime the head of a single flower by the roadside, for he thereby commits a wrong against life without being under the pressure of necessity.

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In May, 1964, The Courier reprinted from the World Book Yearbook "Albert Schweitzer Speaks Out," a stirring report in which he writes movingly of his concern for life and its future on this earth. He wrote of the origin of "Reverence for Life" which is the basis for his most important book, The Philosophy of Civilization. The following excerpts are from this report.

(by Lawrence Gussman)

From childhood, I felt a compassion for animals. Even before I started school, I found it impossible to understand why, in my evening prayers, I should pray only for human beings. Consequently, after my mother had prayed with me and had given me a good-night kiss, I secretly recited another prayer, one I had composed myself. It went like this: "Dear God, protect and bless all living beings. Keep them from evil and let them sleep in peace."

The founding of societies to protect animals, which was actively promoted during my youth, made a great impression on me. People actually dared to announce publicly that compassion toward animals was a natural thing, a sign of true humanity and that one must not hide one's feelings about it. I believed that a light was beginning to shine in the darkness of ideas, and that it would glow with ever greater brilliance.

In the closing years of the century, I continuously pondered the question: does our civilization truly possess the ethical character and energy essential to its complete fulfillment? This led me further and further into studies of civilization and ethics as they appeared in philosophical writings from 1850 to 1900. The most important philosophical writings of the time, I discovered, looked upon civilization and ethics as things we had received, things left to us, to be taken for granted and accepted as such. I could not escape the impression that an ethical system regarded as final did not demand much of people or of society. It was, in fact, an ethic "at rest."

In looking back to the end of the century, I could never understand the optimism over the achievements of the times. Everywhere, many seemed to suppose that we had not merely advanced in knowledge, but that we had reached heights in spirituality and ethics we had never attained before and would never lose. But to me it seemed that we not only had failed to surpass the spiritual life of past generations, but that we were really only nibbling from their accomplishments, and that in many respects, our spiritual inheritance was dribbling out of our hands.

On numerous occasions, I was deeply distressed when inhumane ideas, publicly pronounced, met simple acceptance instead of rejection and censure. More and more, I turned my attention to the civilization and ethics of the last decade of the 19th century. As I did so, I decided to write a thorough and critical study on the spiritual state of the times in which I lived.

Despite the mounting pressures at the hospital, I still managed to find time to reflect on our civilization and our ethical values and why they were losing their force. But now I had to tackle a more basic question: could a lasting, more profound, and more vital ethical system be brought about? The sense of satisfaction that came with my recognition of the nature of the problem did not last long, however. Month after month went by without my advancing one step toward a solution. Everything I knew or had read on the subject of ethics served only to confound me even more.

In the summer of 1915, I took my wife, who was in poor health, to Port-Gentil on the Atlantic. I brought the meager drafts of my book along. In September, I received word that the wife of the Swiss missionary, Pelot, had fallen ill at their mission in N'Gômô, and that I was expected to make a medical call there.

The mission was 120 miles upstream on the Ogooué River. My only means of immediate transportation was a small, old steamboat, towing heavily laden scows. Besides myself, there were only a few Africans aboard. Since I had no time to gather provisions in the rush of departure, they kindly offered to share their food with me.

We advanced slowly on our trip upstream. It was the dry season, and we had to feel our way through huge sandbanks. I sat in one of the scows. Before boarding the steamer, I had resolved to devote the entire trip to the problem of how a culture could be brought into being that possessed a greater moral depth and energy than the one we lived in. I filled page on page with disconnected sentences, primarily to center my every thought on the problem. Weariness and a sense of despair paralyzed my thinking.

At sunset of the third day, near the village of Igendja, we moved along an island set in the middle of the wide river. On a sandbank to our left, four hippopotamuses and their young plodded along in our same direction. Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase, "Reverence for Life," struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us.

It also became clear to me that this elemental but complete system of values possessed an altogether different depth and an entirely different vitality than one that concerned itself only with human beings. Through reverence for life, we come into a spiritual relationship with the universe. The inner depth of feeling we experience through it gives us the will and the capacity to create a spiritual and ethical set of values that enable us to act on a higher plane, because we then feel ourselves truly at home in our world. Through reverence for life, we become, in effect, different persons. I found it difficult to believe that the way to a deeper and stronger ethic, for which I had searched in vain, had been revealed to me as in a dream. Now I was at last ready to write the planned work on the ethics of civilization.

I began to sketch in the volume on my philosophy of civilization. The plan was simple. First, I would give a general view of civilization and ethics as set forth in the writings of the world's great thinkers. Secondly, I would occupy myself with the essence and the significance of the ethics of reverence for life.

The fundamental fact of human awareness is this: "I am life that wants to live in the midst of other life that wants to live." A thinking man feels compelled to approach all life with the same reverence he has for his own. Thus, all life becomes part of this own experience. From such a point of view, "good" means to maintain life, to further life, to bring developing life to its highest value. "Evil" means to destroy life, to hurt life, to keep life from developing. This, then, is the rational, universal, and basic principle of ethics.

We must try to demonstrate the essential worth of life by doing all we can to alleviate suffering. Reverence for life, which grows out of a proper understanding of the will to live, contains life-affirmation. It acts to create values that serve the material, the spiritual, and ethical development of man.

Early in 1923, the text of my work, now called The Philosophy of Civilization, was ready for printing. But where to find a publisher? The prospects were unfavorable. In Germany, people were raving about Oswald Spengler's fascinating and brilliant work, The Decline of the West. For Spengler, Western culture was something that had bloomed in history and was now dying. This tragic point of view was in keeping with the spirit of the time - the disillusionment and cynicism that came after World War I. In reality, Spengler had not investigated the nature of culture, but was merely describing the historical fate of a culture. How could I, in this climate, expect people to consider my views on civilization and ethics? Thus, because I lacked courage, I did not undertake to make contact with a publisher.

At that time, Mme. Emmy Martin, the widow of an Alsatian pastor, was assisting me with my correspondence. She asked to be allowed to take the manuscript along during her visit to a friend in Munich. She hoped to find a publisher there, even though she did not know any personally. While on an errand, she stopped off at the publishing firm of C.H. Beck and asked to talk to the director. A Mr. Albers introduced himself as the director's representative. Mme. Martin explained her mission. Mr. Albers glanced through the first few pages of the manuscript and said: "We take this manuscript for publication unread. Albert Schweitzer is no stranger to us."

By chance, C.H. Beck was also the publisher of Spengler's book. This is how Spengler and I met. Instead of fighting with each other, Spengler and I became friends and often amiably discussed our conflicting conceptions of culture. The Philosophy of Civilization was published in 1923. A deep friendship developed between Mr. Albers and me. It ended when Hitler came into power, and Mr. Albers took his life rather than live under a dictator.

Today, many schools throughout the world are teaching reverence for life. Everything I hear and learn about the growing recognition of reverence for life strengthens my conviction that it is the fundamental truth mankind needs in order to reach the right spirit, and to be guided by it.

For today's generation, this is of a special significance. Compared to former generations, inhumanity has actually grown. Because we possess atomic weapons, the possibility and temptation to destroy life has increased immeasurably. Due to the tremendous advances in technology, the capacity to destroy life has become the fate of mankind. We can save ourselves from this fate only by abolition of atomic weapons.

We must not allow cruel national thinking to prevail. The abolition of atomic weapons will become possible only if world opinion demands it. And the spirit needed to achieve this can be created only by reverence for life. The course of history demands that not only individuals become ethical personalities, but that nations do so as well. 

Albert Schweitzer 1875- 1965

Humanitarian

Celebrated humanitarian, theologian and philosopher Albert Schweitzer turned to medicine at age 30, after a successful career in music. As a physician and Christian missionary, he dedicated himself to the hospital that he set up in French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) for the treatment of various ailments including leprosy and sleeping sickness.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace in 1952 for his service to humanity. Though he periodically returned to Europe for fundraising purposes, Schweitzer lived in Africa from 1913 until his death.

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