Letter to the Editors from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard
Existence and purpose
George Pearson remains persistently puzzled about why man should glory in natural phenomena. This question is, for me, answered by the following quotation from Sir Walter Raleigh: “We are compounded of earth, and we inhabit it.”
The emotions that George Pearson describes as “spiritual” are entirely natural. There isn’t an atom of our being that is not a part of the natural universe. External factors such as natural or artistic beauty on the one hand or the degradation of the dole queue on the other will serve to trigger our reactions. But to ask why we react is meaningless, like asking why trees can’t walk.
Of existence the only meaningful statement we can make is that “existence is”. No reason, no purpose is implied in existence, only its reality. Likewise with our emotional reactions: they are as much a natural part of human life as the ability to breathe.
C. Skelton,
Woking
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