If I were to ask you what you valued most in life, and what you regarded as most important in life, what would you reply? Possibly, to a question phrased like that you wouldn’t be able to reply at all; but if I asked what you most wanted to find in life, you would, being honest, probably answer that you wanted happiness, simply to have the opportunity to be happy, and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to take that opportunity. This is not the reply which many people whom I have heard speaking to religious meetings regard as a good one. I am not myself sure that it is the best reply; but what I think is the best reply \I cannot explain to you in an address – it’s far too complicated. As simple replies go, I think that this is a very good one, provided that ou see the difference between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure is something that comes to us from outside, and we can be easily denied it, just as a typical Londoner is many [??????] are miserable in the depths of the country far from cinemas, pubs, theatres, traffic and fish and chip shops. Happiness is something that rises up inside us from our own depths, and the deeper and the more serious we are, the greater our possibilities of happiness.
But it sounds to be a selfish reply. In fact I don’t think that it is. To be happy assumes unselfishness, in a way that learned people call paradoxical. Could you be happy in a ward filled with babies dying of incurable diseases? You couldn’t, unless you found your happiness in devoting yourself to easing the suffering of the babies. You couldn’t just sit still and be happy. You might go out and find some pleasure that wd enable you for the moment to forget the babies – but that wdn’t be being happy. You might, if you were cruel enough, which I don’t think any of you are, take delight 2 in the suffering of the babies; but even then you wouldn’t be happy – not as you understand the word. I don’t think that cruel people are ever happy, in the sense that a child playing is happy, and a man digging his garden and admiring his flowers is happy. Thus, as we can’t be happy in the presence of others’ misery, unless we do something about that misery, our desire to be happy isn’t a selfish thing. Our personal desire for happiness is part of humanity’s desire for happiness; we desire it as people involved with others, an as a part of mankind. Our desire for happiness joins us with all the living, from butterlies to elephants, and as Ecclesiastes (about the most neglected book in the Bible) says: for to him that is joined with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. To answer that we wish to be happy, but are joined with all the living, involved with them and inseparable from them is really the basis of the complicated answer to the question, the answer I said that I cdn’t explain. I’ve tried to explain it – not very well; but those things that are easy to say are not worth saying, and the things that are worth saying are impossible to say. That is why true poets are more very important than scientists or philosophers, and far less common.
From his first appearance upon the earth man has wished to be happy, to sit by his open fireside, with his wife and children, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx gnawing his mutton bone, and having enough mutton bones for his wife and children, and able, when he’s gnawed all the meat off the bone, to lose himself in awe before the sunset, delight in the wings of a butterfly, xx thrill with the song of a blackbird, or in the dipping flight of the house-martin that nests by his door. You 3 would think it was easy. In thousands and thousands of years, since the first xxxxx Old Stone Age grandfather found a flint, he’s but rarely been able to do it. The universe itself conpires against him; it produces poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, cancer, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, trees falling, rocks moving, fire burning, water drowning, and the decree that anything that lives shall live by the death of something else. And man’s intelligence, his own abilities, also conspire against him. So that through the ages of recorded history his happiness has been thwarted, threatened, destroyed by some of his greatest brothers and some of his greatest achievements. Misery, as well as at times happiness, has resulted to man from Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Oliver Cromwell, Charles II, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, William Pitt, Herr Hitler, Mr MacMillan, Mr Kruschev, \Mr Eisenhower, Mahatma Gandhi, Kenneth Barnes, me, and, dear friends, you. Misery has also resulted form the British Government, the French Government, the Ghanaian Govt, the Govt of India the Roman Catholic Church, Buddhism, Mahomamedanism, and the Society of Friends. I cd give you examples for all these, and the reasons are simple, or rather the reason is simple. They all forgot, as we forget, thepecise position that as men they were in – joined with the living who were hoping for happiness, men alive on an uncomfortable though enthralling planet. The mistake made, ther is but one mistake made, to regard any thing, any institution, any ideology or philosophy, any duty, as being more important than being joined with the living who are hoping for happiness.
That is why I have chosen to speak like this tonight. Because we are increasingly living in a man-made world, and it matters how he makes it; and you are going to help 4 to make it, or leave others to make it for you. And I want you to bear in mind an attitude, a conviction, that I will explain first in a series of apparently disconnected stories and remarks.
Some weeks ago a father, a man with a rather honourable record in the army, driven out of his own control by the thought of the future sufferings of his baby daughter, who had been born an idiot, after some years of devoted care, killed her. He was solemnly accused of murder, tried, found guilty of manslaughter, and sentences to twelve months’ imprisonment. I do not wish to live in a society that does this kind of thing.
It reminds me of the possibly less important incident that occurred before the war, but cd still occur in 1960,: a man whose wife and children were starving because he was unemployed was sent to prison for six months for stealing food from dustbins. Similar incidents have occurred more recently.
I do not wish to live in or in any way to be associated with a society that when a man does something wrong because of his xx misery, replies solemnly increasing that misery with what is known as the majesty of the law. No human law or rule has any validity or majesty or justification, except in so far as it decreases suffering and increases happiness.
After the war, and at times before it and during it, we learned of the cruelties done in concentration camps in Germany. All mankind has been horrified by them, rightly. I shd like to know, and I am still waiting to know, whether similar things are now being done in Russia, in Algeria, and in various parts of China and Africa. I am waiting for Mr Krushchev, President de Gaulle, Mr Chou en lai, Mr Macmillan, 5 Dr Nkrumah, Dr Verwoerd to make it evident that they are not done, or to express their public penitence that they have been done, and promise that they will not be done ever again. I will respect them when they come clean, just as I will respect the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England (which I choose merely as examples) when they express their public penitence for all their acts of persecution and cruelty, and confess that they were wrong. And this is not merely raking up out of date grievances; they these institutions are still with us, and until they confess they were wrong, we cannot know that they really think that they ever were. For they regarded an institution as more important than the happiness of persons, and preserved an institution by causing the suffering of persons; and as far as I can see, that is evil. All institutions an all men need to come clean and start again as tho’ this were the year One.
Now I apologise if this seems obvious, and that you have heard it before. It isn’t obvious. It is difficult, revolutionary, and, if you think it out, singularly far-reaching. It means that anything that increases happiness, deep and real happiness, is good, anything that provides the opportunity for real and deep happiness is good. And anything that increases the suffering in the world, for whatever x reason, is evil. At the beginning I read the Magnificat, one of the most revolutionary documents in human history.x I hope that you wil all soon reread Jesus’s parable of the Last judgement in Matt 25. It is too long for me to read here. I will end with the account of what I regard as one of the most significant and revolutionary stories about Jesus – John 8 1-11. and one of the most romantic and attractive royal [authors?] of this century. It is in favour of the poor and the weak, and against bullies – all bullies, white, black, yellow, brown, Conservative or Labour bullies, who belong with the dead. 4 [revised ending] to make it, or leave others to make it for you. And I am one of xxx a xxxxxxxxxxx group of persons in one generation who because of a poetic impulse adopted whole-heartedly an attitude to life, which recently we forgot, since about 1940; but to which now I return. And I want you to bear in mind an attitude, a conviction, that I can explain briefly in a few apparently unconnected narratives and remarks. I just ask you to think about them.
Some weeks ago a father, a man with a rather honourable record in the army, driven out of his own control by the thought of the sufferings of his baby daughter, who had been born an idiot, murdered her, after some years of devoted care. He was accused of murder, solemnly tried, found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment.
I do not wish to live in a society that does this sort of thing. It reminds me of the possibly less important incident that occurred before the war, when a man whose wife and children were starving was sent to prison for six months for stealing food from dustbins. He still could be, in 1960; and in our name these things are done. I do not wish to live in a society that when a man does something wrong because of his misery, replies by solemnly increasing that misery with what is known as the majesty of the law.
All institutions and all men need to come clean and start again, as though this were the Year One. To start again on the understanding that anything that increases happiness, seep and real happiness is good, and anything that increases, for whatever reason, the suffering in the world is evil.
I am going to end with three stories, widely different, but united by a common theme, which is my theme: Potts page 56 Potts page 80 John 8 1-11.
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