 Not
unlike many children, the young Albert Schweitzer questioned in a child's
clear and innocent way the mysterious paradox of life divided against itself.Not unlike many children, he questioned why his own will to live and to be free of pain should ever be in conflict with the same eager will cherished by a deer, a cow, a pig, a dog, a cat, a horse, a mouse, a bird, a fish -- perhaps, even an insect. But unlike many children, Albert Schweitzer, who was born in 1875, did not lay aside these questions with his playthings as he grew up and left his childhood home in an Alsatian village. That is why Albert Schweitzer was different. That is why, also, that one day the different may become the usual. Etched forever in his memory, the sights and sounds of suffering inflicted by man on animals -- creatures that had given so much nourishment to the body and soul of man. To the young Schweitzer, this was betrayal. |
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| Many Children Feel This Way |
As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the
great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful
joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when
outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care. I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick -- he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse -- haunted me for weeks. |
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| A Prayer |
It was quite incomprehensible to me -- this was before I began going to
school -- why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So
when my Mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add
silently a prayer that I had composed for all living creatures. It ran like
this:
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| Even with his intense love of animals and nature, the clergyman's son struggled -- not always successfully -- with the temptation to conform to the general practices and attitudes toward animals, found not only in his village of Gunsbach, but everywhere. The young Schweitzer found the capacity to resist once he considered the consequences of such actions. | |||
| Forgiveness | During the holidays I was allowed to act as a driver for our next door neighbor. His chestnut horse was old and broken in wind and it was not good for him to trot much, but in my pride of drivership I gave way again and again to the temptation of whipping him into a trot even though I knew and felt he was tired.... But how my joy disappeared when we got home and I noticed during the unharnessing how the poor animal's flanks were heaving. What good did it do for me to look into his tired eyes and silently ask him to forgive me? | ||
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| Worms and Fish | Twice, in the company of other boys, I went fishing with a rod. But then my horror at the mistreatment of the impaled worms -- and at the tearing of the mouths of the fishes when they were caught -- made it impossible for me to continue. Indeed, I even found the courage to dissuade others from fishing. | ||
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| One Sunday morning during Lent, a friend persuaded the eight-year old Albert to go out and kill birds with their home-made sling shots. | |||
| Birds and Bells |
This was a horrible proposal to me, but I dared not refuse
 for fear he would laugh at me. So we
came to a tree which was still bare, and on which the birds were singing out
gaily in the morning, without any fear of us. Then stooping over like an
Indian on the hunt, my companion placed a pebble in the leather of his sling
and stretched it. Obeying his peremptory glance I did the same, with
frightful twinges of conscience, vowing firmly that I would shoot when he
did. At that very moment the church bells began to sound, mingling with the
song of the birds in the sunshine. It was the warning bell that came a
half-hour before the main bell. For me it was a voice from heaven. I threw
the sling down, scaring the birds away, so that they were safe from my
companion's sling, and fled home. And ever afterwards when the bells of Holy
Week ring out amidst the leafless trees in the sunshine I remember with
moving gratitude how they rang into my heart at that time the commandment,
"Thou shalt not kill. " |
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Years later reflecting on
the incident, |
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| Freedom |
From that day on I have had the courage to free myself from all fear of men.
Whenever my deepest convictions were involved I paid less attention than
before to the opinions of others. I tried to escape from the dread of being
laughed at by my comrades. The great experience of my childhood and youth was the influence of the commandment that we should not kill or torture. All other experiences pale before it. |
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| A Conviction | Out of such heart-breaking experiences that often ashamed me there slowly arose in me the unshakable conviction that we had the right to bring pain and death to another being only in case of inescapable necessity, and that all of us must feel the horror that lies in thoughtless torturing and killing. This conviction has become increasingly dominant within me. I have become more and more certain that at the bottom of our hearts we all think so, and simply do not dare to admit it and practice it, because we are afraid that others will laugh at us for being sentimental, and because we have allowed our better feelings to be blunted. But I vowed that I would never let my feelings get blunted, and I would never again fear the reproach of sentimentalism. | ||
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When he was ten years old, Albert Schweitzer's parents decided to send him to a preparatory school at Mulhausen in Upper Alsace. There he would live with his aunt and uncle. This meant giving up his two-mile morning and evening walks to and from school at close by Munster. He credited these walks with awakening his love of nature. |
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| Torn From Nature |
I cried over my lot in secret for hours and hours. I felt as if I were being torn away from nature. To the enthusiasm roused in me by the beauties of nature as I learned to know them on my walks to and from Munster, I tried to give expression in poetry, but I never got further than the first two or three rhymes. Once or twice too, I tried to sketch the hill with the old castle on it which rose from the other side of the valley, but that, too, was a failure... Only in musical improvisation have I ever felt myself -- as I do still -- to have any creative ability. | ||
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| A dreamer during his early student days, Albert Schweitzer found in music, especially the organ -- at once tender and majestic -- a way to express his feelings about man and nature. A new horizon opened when he met missionaries from Africa, who related stories of unrelieved suffering from injury and disease. And yet another vista opened up. On entering the University of Strasbourg, he discovered science. But he remained vaguely dissatisfied, unable to accept the answers to his questions about the processes of nature. | |||
| The Mystery of Life |
It seemed to me laughable that the wind, the rain, the snow, the hail, the formation of the clouds, the spontaneous
combustion of hay, the trade winds, the Gulf Stream, thunder and lightning
should all have found their proper explanation. The formation of drops of
rain, of snowflakes, and of hailstones had always been a special puzzle to
me. It hurts me to think that we never acknowledge the absolutely mysterious
character of Nature, but always speak so confidently of explaining her,
whereas all that we have really done is to go into full and more complicated
descriptions which only make the mysterious more mysterious than ever. Even
at that age, it became clear to me that Force or "Life" remains in its own
essential nature forever inexplicable. |
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| As puzzling as were the riddles of the cosmos, Albert Schweitzer found even more perplexing his own right to health and the promise of a bright future when so many people were mired in ignorance, poverty, and suffering. | |||
| Our Share of Misery |
Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called upon to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world | ||
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| The path that he followed after leaving the university would have provided most other men and women with great fulfillment. But becoming an acclaimed organist, pastor of a church, principal of a theological seminary, and holder of two doctorates was not enough -- not even the authoring of three books, all by the time he was 30 years of age! Thirty was the critical year, for this was the year he was to carry out the secret and momentous decision that he had made when 21 years of age. | |||
| A New Path | While still a student, I resolved to devote my life until I was thirty to the office of preacher, to science and to music. If by the time I should have done what I hoped in science and music, I would take a path of immediate service to my fellow man. | ||
 He did not know exactly what road he
would take, but in 1905, as he reached age 30, he
realized the desperate need of the people in the African Congo for medical
help. Forthwith, he decided to study medicine so that he could help these
victims of disease and foreign exploitation, who, even then, were pressed
into forced labor -- perhaps slavery. (Schweitzer was unable to forget a
statue in an Alsatian town square of a strong, but dejected black African,
representative of a people sold in bondage.) He told his astounded
congregation at St. Nicholas Church of his decision to give up his European
theological career for another in distant Africa. |
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| Atonement | We must make atonement for the terrible crimes we read about in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night. | ||
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| A questing, creative, and somewhat nonconformist thinker, Albert Schweitzer hoped, too, that at a distant medical mission he would be free to work out his own theological and philosophical concepts -- he would make, therefore, "my life, my argument." | |||
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