Following the Upward Path

by Dr. William L. Pierce

LAST MONTH we received the first part of the answer we have been seeking. It did not seem to tell us much, but in reality it contained the essence of everything else we will learn. Let us think about it for a moment before we go on.

What we are seeking to discover is man's purpose, both individually and collectively. Throughout a billion years of evolution the answer to our question has slowly taken shape and has been written by God on our souls, just as a different answer to an analogous question has been formed in the deepest part of the being of every living creature -- and the non-living as well. (That is, the answers are different in detail, but they are all the same in a more general sense.)

In the words of one of our sisters in spirit [Savitri Devi -- Ed.], the sum of all these answers is the total expression of "that mysterious and unfailing wisdom according to which Nature lives and creates: the impersonal wisdom of the primeval forest and the ocean depth and of the spheres in the dark fields of space."

To each creature and to each race of creatures the answer assigns a role and determines its relationship to the Whole. We can have only imperfect knowledge to the answers which apply to other creatures, to other races, for, although our science can tell us much, we cannot see into their souls.

What is the role of the Negro? It is evident that for the last few hundred thousand years, at least, the Negro’s message has, unlike ours, told him to stop and rest. Does it also tell him that, like so many other creatures in the past, his role is finished? Perhaps we will know later.

The Twin Errors of Liberalism and Egoism

by Dr. William L. Pierce

LAST MONTH we began looking at the question, "What is the purpose of man's existence?" We saw that there is, in the men and women of our race, an inborn, intuitive urge to order our lives in accord with some purpose beyond the satisfaction of our daily whims. This urge is stronger in some men than in others.

We also saw the importance which this urge, or its degree of fulfillment or non-fulfillment, has in determining the type of world in which we live. Human society tends to be orderly and truly progressive when men with a more highly developed sense of inner direction prevail, and society becomes chaotic, regressive, and decadent when men with a weaker sense of direction prevail, or when all tend to lose or ignore their inner directions.

But even in the best of times, when men with a strong sense of purpose have the upper hand, few -- if any -- have a true understanding of what that purpose should really be. They feel an inner direction, but they mistake where it is pointing. And so the great majority of even the best of men go in the wrong direction, following false purposes.

Men strive for the True Purpose, but their striving is in the form of an almost-blind groping for something seen only dimly and indistinctly, like a half-remembered dream. Their imperfect understanding leads them far more often into error than into truth.

The greatest cause of error -- the greatest hindrance to a proper response to our sense of inner direction -- has been a wrong outlook, a wrong general attitude toward life and the world, a wrong philosophical framework within which we interpret our inner promptings. Just as using a badly flawed lens to read a message distorts it and, more often than not, causes us to misread it, so forcing an interpretation of our sense of inner direction into the wrong philosophical framework distorts it and leads us into error.