Albert Schweitzer - The Light within Us

Key to References

D The Decay and Restoration of Civilization. London: Black, 1929.

E On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. New York: the Macmillan Company, 1956.

K Aus meiner Kindheit und Jugendzeit. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck.

M Memoirs of Childhood and Youth. New York: the Macmillan Company, 1955.

O Out of My Life and Thought. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1933.

S Selbstdarstellung. Hamburg: Verlag Richard Meiner.

V Verfall und Wiederaufbau unserer Kultur. Munich: C. H. Beck.

T HE BEGINNING OF ALL spiritual life is fearless belief in truth and its open confession.

V63

EVERYTHING deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained.

V7

BUT what matters is not what is witty but what is true. In this case the simple thing is the truth, the uncomfortable truth with which we have to work.

V23

I INTENTIONALLY avoid technical philosophical phraseology. My appeal is to thinking men and women whom I wish to provoke to elemental thought about the questions of existence which occur to the mind of every human being.

O199

ALWAYS accustomed in French to be careful about the rhythmical arrangement of the sentence, and to strive for simplicity of expression, these things have become equally a necessity to me in German. And now through my work on the French Bach it became clear to me what literary style corresponded to my nature

O63

THE DIFFERENCE between the two languages, as I feel it, I can best describe by saying that in French I seem to be strolling along the well-kept paths in a fine park, but in German to be wandering at will in a magnificent forest. Into literary German there flows continually new life from the dialects with which it has kept in touch. French has lost this ever fresh contact with the soil. It is rooted in its literature, becoming thereby, in the favorable, as in the unfavorable sense of the word, something finished, while German in the same sense remains something unfinished. The perfection of French consists in being able to express a thought in the clearest and most concise way; that of German in being able to present it in its manifold aspects. As the greatest linguistic creation in French I count Rousseaus Contrat Social. What is nearest perfection in German I see in Luthers translation of the Bible and Nietzsches Jenseits von Gut und Boese (Beyond Good and Evil).

O62-63

WHEN I look back upon my early days I am stirred by the thought of the number of people whom I have to thank for what they gave me or for what they were to me. At the same time I am haunted by an oppressive consciousness of the little gratitude I really showed them while I was young. How many of them have said farewell to life without my having made clear to them what it meant to me to receive from them so much kindness or so much care! Many a time have I, with a feeling of shame, said quietly to myself over a grave the words which my mouth ought to have spoken to the departed, while he was still in the flesh.

M65

IN THE same way we ought all to make an effort to act on our first thoughts and let our unspoken gratitude find expression. Then there will be more sunshine in the world, and more power to work for what is good. But as concerns ourselves we must all of us take care not to adopt as part of our theory of life all peoples bitter sayings about the ingratitude in the world. A great deal of water is flowing underground which never comes up as a spring. In that thought we may find comfort. But we ourselves must try to be the water which does find its way up; we must become a spring at which men can quench their thirst for gratitude.

M66

IN MY first years at Mlhausen I suffered much from a homesick longing for the church at Gnsbach; I missed my fathers sermons, and the services I had been familiar with all my life.

The sermons used to make a great impression on me, because I could see how much of what my father said in the pulpit was of a piece with his own life and experience. I came to see what an effort, I might say what a struggle, it meant for him to open his heart to the people every Sunday. I still remember sermons I heard from him while I was at the village school.

But what I loved best was the afternoon service, and of these I hardly ever missed a single one when I was in Gnsbach. In the deep and earnest devotion of those services the plain and homely style of my fathers preaching showed its real value, and the pain of thinking that the holy day was now drawing to its close gave these services a peculiar solemnity.

From the services in which I joined as a child I have taken with me into life a feeling for what is solemn, and a need for quiet and self-recollection, without which I cannot realize the meaning of my life. I cannot, therefore, support the opinion of those who would not let children take part in grown-up peoples services till they to some extent understand them. The important thing is not that they shall understand, but that they shall feel something of what is serious and solemn. The fact that the child sees his elders full of devotion, and has to feel something of their devotion himself, that is what gives the service its meaning for him.

M44-45

THERE was another incident of my earliest childhood which I remember as the first occasion on which I consciously, and on account of my own conduct, felt ashamed of myself. I was still in petticoats, and was sitting on a stool in the yard while my father was busy about the beehives. Suddenly a pretty little creature settled on my hand, and I watched it with delight as it crawled about. Then all at once I began to shriek. The pretty little creature was a bee, which had a good right to be angry when the pastor was robbing him of the honey-filled combs in his hive, and to sting the robbers little son in revenge! My cries brought the whole household round me, and everyone pitied me. The servant girl took me in her arms and tried to comfort me with kisses, while my mother reproached my father for beginning to work at the hives without first putting me in a place of safety. My misfortune having made me so interesting an object, I went on crying with much satisfaction, till I suddenly noticed that, although the tears were still pouring down, the pain had disappeared. My conscience told me to stop, but in order to be interesting a bit longer I went on with my lamentations, so getting a lot more comforting than I really needed. However, this made me feel such a little rogue that I was miserable over it all the rest of the day. How often in after life, when assailed by temptation, has this experience warned me against exaggeration, or making too much of, whatever has happened to me!