The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 SIX IDEAS TO KEEP US HUMAN 723animals, on the other hand, simplymature, brought to full term byinnate drives. Human beings arenot thus programmed, and occasionallywe have to act against inclinationand instinct and inertiaif we would achieve our goals.This is simply illustrated insports, where the successful performerforces himself to traineven on those days when he'drather be doing something else.The bike club I ride with held acentury run over a six mile course.A couple of youngsters turned upin full regalia and rode off, onepacing the other, looking very professional.Quite a few miles laterI noticed that one of the youngmen had dropped out; so I askedthe other what happened."I train every day whether Iwant to or not," he replied, "hejust goes out when he feels likeit."There you have it on a smallscale, but the same principle appliesto life. "That wonderfulstructure, Man," wrote EdmundBurke, "whose prerogative it is tobe in a great degree a creature ofhis own working, and who, whenmade as he ought to be made, isdestined to hold no trivial place inthe creation."The persistent downgrading oflife, during recent centuries hasreduced man to a cosmic accidentinhabiting a fourth rate planet,lost in the immensities of spaceand time, in a materialistic universedevoid of values. This dubiousvision has not been vouchsafedto the birds and the beasts, butonly to human beings. Only manamong all the creatures of theplanet has been able to take alltime and all space within his purviewand draw conclusions of anysort. And it is a perverse kind ofsilliness for a creature gifted withthe ability to understand and explainto bemoan his littleness inthe face of the unimaginable vastnessof the cosmos. Whose mind isit that comprehends all this? Whatcreature controls an enlarging domain?Man confronting the universeas astronomer, physicist, geologist,engineer, is entitled tostand tall; would that he might doas well in other departments!BeautyIn the area of aesthetics, forexample, to illustrate the fourthvital idea. Here man confrontsbeauty in the very nature ofthings, and reproduces his visionin art. In a materialistic age itcomes to be believed that particlesof matter in motion are the onlyrealities; which means that beautyis unreal. "Beauty," we are told inthe familiar phrase, "is in the eyeof the beholder." How did it getthere? we want to know, unlessloveliness - as every great artist