Humanity
Níkos Kazantzákis
Excerpt from "The Saviors of God:Spiritual Exercises"
It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black.
Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.
Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask questions, we listen, we shout for help.
The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss.
The heart unites whatever the mind separates,pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.
Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time.They live, desire, and act in your loins and your heart.
You are not free.Myriad invisible hands hold your hands
Your first duty,in completing your service to your race, is to feel within you all your ancestors.Your second duty is to throw light on their onrush and to continue their work.Your third duty is to pass on to your son the great mandate to surpass you.
Gaze on the dark sea without staggering,confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear.…
But this is not enough; take a further step:battle to give meaning
to the confused struggles of man.
Gather together in your heart all terrors, recompose all details.
Salvation is a circle;close it!
It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors talking with your mouth. It is not you who desire, but innumerable generations of descendants longing with your heart.
Your dead do not lie in the ground. They have become ideas and passions, they determine your will and your actions.
In this lightning moment when you walk the earth,your first duty,by enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and invisible, of your own being.
and direct them.
You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay,a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush.Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain.
Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind.
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