Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-08-02
WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT
BY H. Addington Bruce

TAY WILLIAM THOMPSON, professor o
| philosophy in the University of Missouri
- has written book, "The Truths We Liv
By which l cordially recommend as an an
tidote to the religious skepticism and pessi
mistic sense of the futility of human exis
tence now expressing many.
Again and again we hear the questions
| asked, ''What is life for anyway? Why have
injustice? And when life is done-what
then? What's it all about?" Questions
these that reflect both the prevailing doubt
of our age and the influence Of the socalled
scientific thinking and scientific knowledge
! that have given rise to that doubt.
In former ages, to be sure, there was
doubling, too, but not SO generally. People
were more in the habit of taking for granted
Accepting the teachings of religion and tradl
! ton, they were content to struggle in the
belief that some time, somewhere, the!
| would reap a rich reward.
| Science, materialistic science, with its al
| legged demonstrations Of the finiteness of the
universe and the absolute dependence of sou
and mind bodily conditions, has changed
| all this Belief in God has waned with
| waxing belief in sciences dogmas. No
merely is the immortality of the soul disput
ed, the very existence of the soul is Ieemed
to have been placed among the incred
Utilities.
Even mans faith in his power to shape his
own destiny under the guidance of moral
conceptions has been shaken to the core
There IS no real freedom of choice and action,
it is affirmed All that we do, for good or
for i'll, is predetermined by the conjoint in
fluences of heredity and environment.
Scant wonder that Whats it all about?''
is asked and re-asked in accents of despair.
If one must put aside the ancient verities,
the old-time truths God, the immortality
of the SOUL and human freedom of choice,
life indeed Jecomes a riddle that cannot be
answered-still worse a riddle not worth the
answering.
What Professor Hudson seeks to do in his
new book is to revive faith in these truths
which men must hold to make life livable.
And he aims to do this, not by pious exhor-
tation, but by dispassionate analysis of the
self-same scientific finds1ngs commonly sup
posed to have put God, the soul, and freedom
of choice entirely out of account.
Furthermore, he reminds us of something
too frequently forgotten
Science could not Justify it's own eXis-
tence as serviceable and necessary to lifes
progress if there were no moral order to
interpret what progress means, no realm of
things that ought to be- which science serves.
Science could not be justified by it's use if
it were not useful to something that ought
to be achieved"
And:
without the moral order which science
serves so we'll, without an ideal of life as it
ought to be, which science helps to achieve,
there could be no such thing as the self-sacri-
ficing devotion and valor which the scientific
seeker for truth himself so often requires
through long and arduous years of research.
"Such unfaltering devotion can be ration
ally inspired only by the thought that science
leads somewhere and serves LIES uttermost
values, a gal that is not yet, but which
ought to be and shall be. Otherwise science
falls and it's assumptions with it,
But read 'The Truths We Live By for
yourself, particularly if you are among the
many fosged as to lifes meaning and pur-
II lo1,1 hoo1y CHI ho1o
multitudes back-to confidence and peace OF
mind and more enlightened effort
Copyright, 1921, by The Associated
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