Life! It’s all that I have, which I value and without which
— I don’t exist! However, it would appear that in our era, there is a tendency
to answer this propounded question with a negative response — ostensibly in the
name of science. There were and still are, learned individuals that are engaged
through the means of chemical reactions, to reproduce a "living cell"
as the beginning of all life. Laboratories, in studying the physiology of
living matter, are attempting to gain access to the "growing mechanism in
living matter." The scenario is to prove that at the core of our being lies a mechanism, and what we call life, is some apparition,
just a form of our perception. As an example, there is mention in the press of
a discovery of a new element in plants — chloroplast, or a more fundamental
enigma — photosynthesis (the plants’ absorption of the sun’s energy). This is
explained as an ordinary chemical reaction, where there is an absence of any
particular living force and which could be produced serially in a laboratory.
However, would it be possible to explain all the mechanics of the world through
this scientific approach?
One is loath to believe that such a tendency
characterizes sciences’ approach about nature on the whole. It cannot be that
the spirit of coarse materialism could capture the real nature in such a way as
to do without the understanding of "life" in the explanation of nature’s mysteries. It is left to wonder, how the
mechanization of practical life in our existence, impacts on people’s
mentality, instilling that life on earth is but a mechanism, akin to an
inanimate machine.
At first: "there is no God." Then:
"there is no soul." Finally: "no life!"
In a short story "Euthemia" written by
Veresaev during the Soviet era, a sick woman, sensing the slowly approaching
death, is in raptures about the Greek philosopher-materialist Democritus: it
was over 2000 years ago, he espoused that all things are made up of matter,
while senses and thoughts — just an alteration in the body… However, it appears
that being an aesthete by nature, she loves poetry, avid reader of Tiutchev — a
poet that suggests nature is not a lifeless face, it has a soul, it has
freedom, has love, it has language… Consequently, apart from desires, a discord
between materialistic understanding and natural inner feelings is uncovered in
the Soviet person: the latter emerges from the covering of the first, just like
a cobbler’s awl from a sack. You wouldn’t be able to hide an awl in a sack.
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