Pushing the Cart

I have never seen such overworked horses and mules as here. On one occasion when I came upon two natives who were perched on a cart heavily laden with wood which had stuck in the newly mended street, and with loud shouts were belaboring their poor beast, I simply could not pass by, but compelled them to dismount and to push behind till the three of us got the cart on the move.

At the port of Libreville, Gabon, the Schweitzers transferred to an Ogowe River paddle wheeler river boat for the wondrous two-week trip through the jungle to their final destination.

Two Monkey Tails

River and forest ... ! Who can really describe the first impression they make? We seemed to be dreaming! Pictures of antediluvian scenery which elsewhere had seemed to be merely the creation of fancy, are now seen in real life. It is impossible to say where the river ends and the land begins, for a mighty network of roots, clothed with bright- flowering creepers, projects right into the water. Clumps of palms and palm trees, ordinary trees spreading out widely with green boughs and huge leaves, single trees of the pine family shooting up to a towering height in between them, wide fields of papyrus clumps as tall as a man, with big fan-like leaves, and amid all this luxuriant greenery the rotting stems of dead giants shooting up to heaven.... In every gap in the forest a water mirror meets the eye; at every bend in the river a new tributary shows itself . A heron flies heavily up and then settles on a dead tree trunk; white birds and blue birds skim over the water, and high in the air a pair of ospreys circle. Then -- yes, there can be no mistake about it! -- from the branch of a palm there hang and swing -- two monkey tails! Now the owners of the tails are visible. We are really in Africa!

On arrival at the inland station with its ramshackle buildings and overgrown grounds, he was almost overwhelmed by the primitive conditions and the hot and steamy climate. He converted an abandoned chicken house into a makeshift jungle hospital, but even so, most of the patients arriving from their jungle villages, often with their families, just waited in the open air. They suffered from sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, leprosy, ulcerated and swollen legs, strangulated hernias, malaria and a variety of tropical diseases. Some of his patients were victims of enraged animals they had tried to kill for their meat. Dr. Schweitzer often commented on the protein hunger that drove the natives even into killing hippopotamuses, gorillas, monkeys, and elephants. He had no patience with the old custom of creeping up behind elephants and crippling them by cutting the tendons of their hind legs. And he sorrowed especially over the terrible price hunters exacted from the monkeys for their meat.

Poor Little Baby Monkey

0ne can often bring down or wound three or four in succession and yet never secure their bodies. They get caught among the thick branches or fall into the undergrowth which covers an impenetrable swamp; and if one finds the body, one often finds also a poor little baby monkey, which clings, with lamentations, to its dying mother.

African wildlife appeared to be so plentiful that it was hard to believe that some species could be endangered. But Dr. Schweitzer noticed what was happening to one creature: the white heron.

The White Heron

Unfortunately, there are still hunters who pursue the white heron, whose feathers are the most sough after in Europe for hat ornaments. More and more these poor birds are withdrawing into remote and inaccessible stretches of water where they might hope to remain unmolested. They are hardly ever seen now on the river. The custom of clearing the jungle by fire to make way for cultivation caused him deep sorrow because of the animals trapped within.

Fire

At this time of the year, with the red reflections against the evening sky, I am seized by compassion for the poor beasts that perish in these fires. In ancient China the burning of forests was regarded as a crime, because it meant painful death to so many creatures.... Every day he witnessed the struggle between living and dying.

Constant Struggle

I myself am subject to the division of the will-to-live within myself. In a thousand ways my existence is in conflict with others. The necessity of taking life and harming life is imposed upon me. When I walk along a lonely path my foot brings pain and death to the tiny forms that populate it. To preserve my life, I must defend it against the life that injures it. I become the persecutor of the little mouse that lives in my house, a murderer of the insect that wants to build its nest there, a mass-murderer of the bacteria that endanger me. I get my food by the destruction of plants and animals. My happiness is built upon injury to my fellow creatures.

Frequently he was called upon to make a choice between "which should live and which should die?"

Choices

From the natives I buy a young fish eagle, which they have caught on a sandbank, in order to rescue it from their cruel hands. But now I must decide whether I shall let it starve, or whether I shall kill a certain number of small fish every day in order to keep it alive. I decide upon the latter course. But every day find it rather hard to sacrifice -- upon my own responsibility -- one life for another.

Surrounded by life in its most natural state brought Albert Schweitzer even closer to life's interrelationships and to the perpetual drama and dilemma of the will-to-live versus the will-to-live. It gave him a new perspective on life, involving him in the slower, timeless rhythms of the jungle, making him more conscious, as he read the newspapers, of "the feverishness and vanity of life" in Europe. That continent's leaders' preoccupation with power politics and material possessions seemed to have alienated them from their natural roots.

Man or Nature

It seems almost something abnormal that over a portion of the earth's surface nature should be nothing and man everything.

Albert Schweitzer in remote Gabon was not to escape from Europe's growing power struggle that ushered in the first World War. Almost immediately he and his wife were termed enemy aliens by the French. They were considered German because their once French Alsace was, at that time, German. At first he was forbidden to continue his hospital work, but soon his medical skills were needed, regardless of what was considered, at that moment, his nationality. During this troubled time, Dr. Schweitzer searched for the basic reasons driving men and nations to destruction.

Schweitzer as a civilian intern.

Tragedy

In modern European thought a tragedy is occurring in that the original bonds uniting the affirmative attitude toward the world with ethics are, by a slow but irresistible process, loosening and finally parting.

Questions

What is the nature of this degeneration in our civilization and why has it come about? ... The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed... Now come the facts to summon us to reflect. They tell us in terribly harsh language that a civilization which develops only on its material side, and not in the sphere of the spirit... heads for disaster.

He examined the philosophies of the Indians and Chinese, concluding that their compassionate views on animals and nature had made little impression on European thought. He wondered why this was so, as the palms rustled "an obbligato to the loud music of the crickets and the toads," pierced at intervals by high-pitched and terrifying cries from the jungle. At his feet, all was peace: a dwarf antelope and his faithful dog, Caramba.

Solitude

In this solitude I try to set in order thoughts which have been stirring in me since 1900, in the hope of giving some little help to the restoration of civilization. Oh solitude of the primeval forest, how can I ever thank you enough for what you have been to me?

Clearly, some essential principle was missing from modern western man's concept of the world around him -- a world he tried to claim and unmercifully exploit but could never really own. Could he, Albert Schweitzer, discover the lost key -- or even fashion a new key-to a more harmonious relationship between all living things?

The Iron Door

For months on end I lived in a continual state of mental turmoil. Without the least success I let my thinking become concentrated, even through my daily work at the hospital, on the real nature of the affirmative attitude and ethics, and the question of what they have in common. I was wandering about in a thicket in which no path was to be found. I was leaning with all my might against an iron door that would not yield.

The answer that was to unify his thoughts -- and may help to change the world -- came unexpectedly one September day in 1915 while on a slow-moving barge inching up the Ogowe River, on a mission of mercy, to treat a missionary's ill wife. It was to be found in a single phrase, but he did not yet know what that phrase was to be.

Struggling

Lost in thought I sat on the deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not found in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences, merely to keep myself concentrated on the problem.

Creative forces were at work. Though discouraged, he refused to abandon his writing and crumple up the pages that had borne no fruit.

On the Third Day

Late on the third day, at the very moment, when at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, "Reverence for Life." The iron door yielded; the path in the thicket had become visible.

From that moment, Albert Schweitzer was never the same again. The years of searching for a philosophy that could express in a few words his own all-embracing view of life at last had come to an end. A new challenge lay ahead: The world's acceptance of that philosophy.