Such an expression as "worth living" has in fact no real meaning. To act
and to love are the twin functions of the human body and soul. To refuse
these functions is to make one's self incapable of them. It is in a
sense to die while the body is still alive. To refuse these functions is
to make misery out of existence, and a life of ennui is doubtless not
"worth living."
The philosophy of life is its working hypothesis of action. To hold that
all effort is futile, that all knowledge is illusion, and that no result
of the human will is worth the pain of calling it into action, is to cut
the nerve of effectiveness. In proportion as one really believes this,
he becomes a cumberer of the ground. It was said of Oscar McCulloch, an
earnest student of human life, that "in whatever part of God's universe
he finds himself, he will be a hopeful man, looking forward and not
backward, looking upward and not downward, always ready to lend a
helping hand, and not afraid to die."
Of like spirit was Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."
It is through men of this type that the work of civilization has been
accomplished, "men of present valor, stalwart, brave iconoclasts." They
were men who were content with the order of the universe as it is, and
seek only to place their own actions in harmony with this order. They
have no complaints to urge against "the goodness and severity of God,"
nor any futile wish "to remould it nearer to the heart's desire.
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