Response to the Ingersoll Lecture by a Theologian

Abstract

Birth and death are the most elemental symbols of the mystery we are to ourselves. Birth: the original moment of creativity through which new life comes into being with all the potentialities for joy and sorrow and meaning which we know to be most deeply human. Death: the dissolution and passing away, and even violent destruction, of all of this, disappearing forever from human consciousness. Events of such importance can never be left by men to lie undisturbed in their bare facticity: they will be elaborated and interpreted in myth and theory; they will be transformed in their character and their import for human life by deliberate techniques of control, as well as by the more unconscious impact of long established custom and practice. There are no obvious criteria for deciding what is significant and what is true, what is right and good, with regard to such events. The most we can do, perhaps, is formulate a negative criterion: above all, with events of such real and such symbolic import for human life, we want to avoid serious illusion or delusion.