TODAY, more than ever before, our survival -- yours and mine and our children's -- depends on our adherence to ethical principles. Ethics alone will decide whether atomic energy will be an earthly blessing or the source of mankind's utter destruction.

Where does the desire for ethical action come from? What makes us want to be ethical? I believe there are two forces which move us. one is belief in a Last Judgement, when every one of us has to account for what we did with God's great gift of life on the earth. The other is belief untrained--"Where am I?"..."Where am I going?"...Who and where is the authority?" And the world is too busy to answer.

Yet the answer is there, the answer without which man becomes a scurrying animal without purpose or direction, fighting for the next morsel of food.

The answer is the in the majestic order of the universe and its obedience to unchanging law.

The answer is there -- in the certainty and regularity of the seasons, in the march of the sun, the moon, and the stars, in the regular coming of night and day, in the balance between man's consumption of life-giving oxygen and its production by the plant life of the earth, in the regularity of change from the barren silence of winter to the greening, growing life of spring, in the cry of a newborn child with its ever-new demonstration of the miracle of life.

This timeless, changeless order is an assurance of unchallenged authority, a sign of safe anchorage for the troubled spirit of man.

Increase in man's knowledge does not mean the discovery of new things, but only the extension of his understanding an ability to use that which already is, and has always been. Like the growth of a child from infant to adult, man is "discovering" worlds new to him -- but old to God.

When this is fully realized, man can stand straight and tall, assured in the face of apparent uncertainty, secure in his knowledge of the way home, at peace with himself because he is at peace with Almighty God.

[ To Gravity's Rainbow Page ]