[00:00.63]Shall We Choose Death?
[00:04.25]I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European,
[00:09.71] not as a member of a western democracy,
[00:12.56]but as a human being, a member of the species Man,
[00:17.48]whose continued existence is in doubt.
[00:20.76]The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs;
[00:24.81]Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa;
[00:29.29] and, overshadowing all minor conflicts.
[00:32.24]As geological time is reckoned,
[00:34.76]Man has so far existed only for a very short period one million years at the most.
[00:41.54]What he has achieved,
[00:42.65]especially during the last 6 000 years,
[00:45.50]is something utterly new in the history of the Cosmos,
[00:48.77]so far at least as we are acquainted with it.
[00:51.51] For countless ages the sun rose and set,
[00:55.23]the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night,
[00:59.71] but it was only with the coming of Man
[01:01.90]that these things were understood.
[01:04.20]In the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom,
[01:08.46]Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable.
[01:13.50]In art and literature and religion,
[01:16.23]some men have shown a sublimity of feeling
[01:19.07]which makes the species worth preserving.
[01:21.59]Is all this to end in trivial horror
[01:24.10]because so few are able to think of Man
[01:26.40]rather than of this or that group of men?
[01:29.35] Is our race so destitute of wisdom,
[01:32.09]so incapable of impartial love,
[01:34.50]so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation,
[01:38.65] that the last proof of its silly cleverness
[01:41.71]is to be the extermination of all life on our planet?
[01:46.96]For it will be not only men who will perish,
[01:50.02] but also the animals.
[01:51.88]I cannot believe that this is to be the end.
[01:54.40]I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that,
[01:58.33]if they will allow themselves to survive,
[02:01.29]there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future
[02:04.89]to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past.
[02:08.72]There lies before us, if we choose,
[02:12.01]continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom.
[02:16.60]Shall we, instead, choose death,
[02:19.55] because we cannot forget our quarrels?
[02:21.96]I appeal, as a human being to human beings:
[02:25.24]remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
[02:29.39]If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise;
[02:33.77]if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death. |