OCR Text |
Show World Famous Historian Asserts Doing Right Demands Fight Against One's Self Author of the epoch-making "A Study of History," and of England's Eng-land's greatest scholars, Professor Arnold Toynbee reveals his personal per-sonal creed. This is one of a series of statements prepared for broadcast by thinking, useful people in all walks of life. The program pro-gram is presented by Edward R. Murrow over KSUB at 6 p. m., Monday through Friday. By Professor Arnold Toynbee British Historian I believe there may be some things that some people may know for certain, but I also believe be-lieve that those knowable things are not what matters most to any human being. A good mathematician math-ematician may know the truth about numbers, and a good engineer en-gineer may know how to make' physical forces serve his purposes. pur-poses. But the engineer and the mathematician are human beings first so for them, as well as for me, what matters most is not one's knowledge and skill, but one's relations with other people. We do not all have to be engineers-- or mathematicians, but we do all have to deal with other people. And these relations of ours with each other, which are the really important things in life, are also the really difficult dif-ficult things, because it is here that the question of right and wrong comes in. I believe we have no certain knowledge of what is right and wrong; and, even if we had, I believe we should find it Just as hard as ever to do something that we knew for certain to be right in the teeth of our personal per-sonal interests and inclinations. Actually, we have to make the best judgment we can about what is right, and then we have to bet on it by trying to make ourselves act on it, without being sure about it. Since we can never be sure, we have to try to be charitable and open to persuasion that we may, after all, have been in the wrong, and at the same time we have to be resolute and energetic in what we do, in order to be effective. ef-fective. It is difficult enough to combine effectiveness with hu mility and charity in trying to do what is right, but it is still more difficult to try to do right at all, because this means fighting fight-ing oneself. Trying to do right does mean fighting oneself, because, by nature, na-ture, each of us feels and behaves be-haves as if he were the center and the purpose of the universe. But I do feel sure that I am not that, and that, in behaving as if I were, I am going wrong. So one has to fight oneself all the time; and this means that suffering is not only inevitable but is an indespensable part of a lifelong education, if only one can learn how to profit by it. I believe that everything worth winning does have its price in suffering, and I know, of course, where this belief of mine comes from. It comes from the accident of my having been born in a country where the local religion has been Christianity. Another belief that I owe to Christianity is a conviction that love is what gives life its mean-: mean-: ing and purpose, and that suffering suffer-ing is profitable when it is met in the course of following love's lead. But I can't honestly call myself a believing Christian in the traditional sense. To imagine-that imagine-that one's own church, civilization, civiliza-tion, nation or family is the chosen people is, I believe, as wrong as it would be for me-to me-to imagine that I myself am God. |