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Becoming Human by Hermann Hesse |
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We are not yet humans; we are still on our way to humanity. Every pupil of Lao-Tse, every disciple of Jesus, every follower of Francis of Assisi was further ahead, much further ahead, than the laws and reasonings of present-day civilization. Yet the sentence, “Thou shalt not kill” has been honored faithfully and obeyed by thousands of people for thousands of years. There has always been a minority of well-meaning people who had faith in the future, who obeyed laws which are not listed in any worldly code. As soldiers they showed compassion and respected their enemies, even during the last, horrible war, or refused steadfastly to kill and hate when ordered to do so, suffering imprisonment and torture for this.
To appreciate these people and what they did, to overcome the doubt that animals will be human one day, we must live in faith. We must consider thoughts to be just as valuable as bullets or coins. The so-called “practical” man is always wrong. The future, the idea, faith, is always right. And we who believe in the future will raise the ancient demand again and again, “Thou shalt not kill.” It is the basic demand of all progress, of all true humanity which is to come.
We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. It is possible to kill not only what is in the present, but also that which is in the future. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet. We kill with every step.
This is why, above all, every one of us has a personal task to do. This task is not to help on the whole of humankind a little; it is not the improvement of some institution, not the abolition of a particular kind of killing. All this is good and necessary, too. But the most important task for you and me, my fellow human being, is this: to take a step forward, in our own personal lives, from animal to human.