Having My Way

12

WORSHIP, A SINGULAR THING

If we begin by overrating the being we love, we shall end by treating it with wholesale injustice.

—HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

During the early days of FEE several of us observed numerous devotees of the freedom philosophy who had but a single standard for gauging truth: would the man they worshiped—admittedly outstanding—agree or not. If their hero said yes, true; if no, false.

This tendency on the part of ever so many people to worship—genuflect before—another human being, regardless of relative genius, inspired the late Dr. F. A. Harper and me to prepare the following motto which for years has had a prominent place in our FEE workshop:

Seekers after Truth should not be bound by who sponsors any idea—Truth being its own witness.

In short, there is no place for idolatry in the freedom philosophy. Previous to learning my lesson the hard way, I received with pleasure anyone’s overrated appraisal of me. “I am your disciple,” or words to that effect. Then the rude awakening: every instance of overesteem sooner or later turned sour, that is, to rejection. Over the years, many have come and gone—“bosom buddies” to disparagers. Here is a two-sided lesson: never worship or overrate any human being past or present; hope that no other person will ever worship or overrate one’s self. No man can really worship many gods; worship is a singular thing!

By definition it is singular, for we can accord supreme homage to one object only. Therefore, the single thing that merits worship is Truth—the love and pursuit of it. Call Truth what you will: Infinite Consciousness, Infinite Intelligence, the Infinite Unknown, God. Thus, when one accords omniscience to human beings, he is looking upon them as “having infinite knowledge, knowing all things.” This, of course, is absurd. No person, regardless of how ingenious he may be relative to the rest of us, rises above the finite; he knows next to nothing of the Universal Laws; indeed, very little about any one of them. In a word, worship cannot logically be extended to any one or to any number of finite minds but only to the one Infinite Mind.

Support for the contention that no human being has ever known very much may be found in reading Treasury of Philosophy, a summary of the views and ideas of the world’s most famous philosophers—some four hundred of them.1 While their philosophical positions are not necessarily antagonistic, no two philosophers are anywhere near identical. All have probed the unknown and returned with what, at best, are but tiny findings. The only quality these philosophers have in common is variation—one picks up a flicker here, another detects a glimmer there. Not a one has come up with the Whole Truth, and none ever will!

Our own daily experience also supports this claim. No two of us see or hear alike. Indeed, no one of us sees or hears alike from one moment to another. Here, however, is the clincher: anyone who is growing in understanding discovers that the more he knows the more he knows he does not know; the more Truth he discerns, the more humble he becomes. The exploration of the Infinite by finite minds makes this inevitable. Socrates, perhaps the wisest of all, knew he knew nothing; the know-it-all, on the other hand, simply is unaware of how ignorant he is.

When one realizes how near to a know-nothing everyone is, it then becomes clear why overrating another is more than likely to lead, eventually, to “wholesale injustice.”

We must understand that our heroes are fallible, too. Otherwise, when one comes upon an articulate person whose beliefs more or less accord with his own, but who possesses the ability to phrase them brilliantly, the tendency is to put that person on a pedestal. “You have put to words what I have always believed.” The magnification of one’s own tiny light is the cause of this; hero worship is the temporary consequence.

Sooner or later, by reason of the congenital variations existing in the hero and the “worshiper,” the latter beholds flaws and errors in the former. Not only does the hero fall from grace; in the eyes of his beholder, he falls on his face! The god turns to dust because he was mistakenly presumed to be a god in the first place.

“You have put to words what I have always believed.” Thousands of individuals over the ages have done this for me. However, there are few of these philosophers with whom I completely agree. Great as they are—objects of my admiration and esteem—nonetheless, I have fault to find with Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Goethe, Bastiat, to name but a few. And the same goes for any number of my remarkable contemporaries. Yet, the thoughts and works of these notables I count among my blessings; they have given me countless enlightenments I could never have come upon by myself. Further, they do not fall into disrepute by reason of our differences. Why? I know that they also are fallible human beings, finite minds, even as you and I, probing the Infinite. The fact that I have not regarded any one of them as a god in the first place is the reason why I do not disparage them now. They are my benefactors!

Plato, for instance, instead of being the object of my contempt because he advanced the philosopher-king idea, has my admiration for the thousand and one enlightenments he passed on to mankind, among whom I am a beneficiary. If I do not overrate his strength, I need not disparage a weakness; I can level off at friendship.

By the same token, I hope that no person shall ever overrate me for, should he do so, friendship is doomed, mutual helpfulness at an end.

However, your overrating of others or their overrating of you is tied for second place when it comes to this worshiping error. In first place—by far—is the overrating of self. It is this that spawns the big I AM’s and the little Hitlers, the know-it-alls. Tiny specks in the Cosmic Plan posing as Infinite Intelligence! Self-worship to the point where they believe they can direct your life better than you can! Tragic, yes; but comical, nonetheless!

Finally, freedom is impossible in a society overburdened with overraters—either of others or of themselves. When many are know-it-alls, or are overrated as such, freedom of choice is out of the question.

Once the idea is grasped that all persons who have lived upon this earth have experienced no more than tiny glimpses of Truth and that no two perceptions are or ever have been identical, then a great Truth emerges: freedom! Let these ideas freely flow, one from another. Then each person becomes the beneficiary of them all, each graced by the overall luminosity, that is, each blessed with as much wisdom as exists. Viewed in this manner, freedom is the uninterrupted interchange of ideas and goods and services among individuals who worship neither themselves nor one another. Freedom flows in the absence of “big shots”; freedom springs from humility.

Worship, indeed, is a singular thing. Keep it singular and enjoy the blessings of freedom!

• 1See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Dr. Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.