And looking so, across the centuries and the millennnia, toward the animal men of the past, one can see a faint light, like a patch of sunlight moving over the dark shadows of a forest floor. It shifts and widens, it winks out, it comes again, but it persists. It is the human spirit, the human soul, however transient, however faulty men claim it to be. In its coming man had no part. It merely came, that curious light, and man, the animal, sought to be something no animal had been before. Cruel he might be, vengeful he might be, but there had entered into his nature a curious wistful gentleness and courage. It seemed to have little to do with survival, for such men died over and over. They did not value life compared to what they saw in themselves - that strange inner light which has come from no man knows where, and which was not made by us. It has followed us all the way from the age of ice, from the dark borders of the ancient forest into which our footsteps vanish. It is in this that Kierkegaard glimpsed the eternal, the way of the heart, the way of love which is not of today, but is of the whole journey and may lead us at last to the end. Through this, he thought, the future may be conquered. Certainly it is true. For man may grow until he towers to the skies, but without this light he is nothing, and his place is nothing. Even as we try to deny the light, we know that it has made us, and what we are without remains meaningless. - Loren Eiseley
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 02:47:53 +0000
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