Sense and Nonsense: The Point Of Human Existence

My brother-in-law in Medford, Oregon, ever alert to the cause of my continuing education, sent me a “Calvin and Hobbes,” a cartoon series I confess not to read much in spite of its explicit metaphysical and theological overtones. The scene begins in a schoolroom. The schoolmarm is standing before the blackboard instructing the class on its next move, “If there are no questions, we’ll move on to the next chapter.” From the side, not seeing any face, we see a voice—”I have a question.”

Next we observe Calvin at his desk, quite alert. The teacher replies, “Certainly, Calvin, what is it?” Calvin responds in good Aristotelian form, “What is the point of human existence?” The teacher comes down to his desk and explains to a dejected Calvin, “I meant any questions about the subject at hand.” We see a weak “Oh” from Calvin. Finally, he is alone at his desk, looking down dismally at the assigned chapter, chin on his hands, muttering to himself, “Frankly, I’d like to have the issue resolved before I expend any more energy on this.”

I am not sure if my brother-in-law sent me this cartoon in order to see if I had any answer to Calvin’s question. Actually, I rather like Saint Ignatius’s “point”: “Man was created to praise, reverence, and serve God and thereby to save his soul.” No schoolmarm is allowed to say that; few professors would want to.

I am inclined to think, however, that people who go around constantly asking about the “point of existence” can be rather overbearing, even boorish. I have a certain sympathy for the teacher who will not be distracted by students’ initial metaphysical wonderings designed mostly to distract her from the subject at hand.

The young Calvins of this world are not going to “get this issue resolved” before they get on with their lessons, if only because their lessons are also included in the point of their existence. This world is filled with many beautiful things, as Augustine told us, and it is not subversive to the point of our existence properly to notice them. Indeed, we probably need to notice quite a few of these beautiful things before we will even be capable of grasping the point of our existence.

Yet, Calvin is right. The “higher things” are seldom one of the “subjects at hand” in our universities. E.F. Schumacher, a young Calvin if there ever was one, recalling his education at Oxford as a young man, wrote something quite similar: “All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life.”

All of this brooding is an echo of Allan Bloom’s unsettling remark that the unhappiest people in our societies are those students in the 20 or 30 best universities who are brought up on, and themselves mostly accept, a diet of impossible relativism as the basis of their lives. Yes, whether or not any Catholic universities are included in his list, I think the situation in them is not in fact markedly different.

Actually, I began to think of these things because I was reading a 1766 passage in Boswell, a passage that seems to address itself to Calvin, Schumacher, and Bloom in a way. “Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me,” a pleased Boswell recollected,

“You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well.” “Alas, Sir, (said I,) I fear not. Do I know history? Do I know mathematicks? Do I know the law?” Johnson. “Why, Sir, though you may know no science so well as to be able to teach it, and no profession so well as to be able to follow it, your general mass of knowledge of books and men renders you very capable to make yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for any profession.”

If we reflect on this wonderful passage, we can see that it is the old idea of liberal arts that governs the thought of Johnson about young five-and-twenty Boswell.

At five-and-twenty, Boswell did not need to know history and mathematicks and law as if he were a professional. Indeed, it would be dangerous if he did. If he knew any one of these things as a professional, he would not know nearly so well all that which would enable him to learn them all, his “general mass of knowledge of books and men.”

Does this mean that at five-and-twenty the young Boswell knew the point of human existence, even if he was not proficient in history, mathematicks, and law?

Three years later, Boswell discussed the issue of predestination with Johnson. For Boswell this doctrine was an open and shut case of determinism. Johnson’s refusal to admit this intolerable attribute of the Divinity as irreconcilable with “the full system of moral government” was due, in Boswell’s mind, to Johnson’s early piety, not to any fault in Boswell’s analysis of this perplexing issue.

Boswell then decided further to test Johnson on the beliefs of the “Roman Catholicks” one by one. It comes as something of a shock today to recall the “reasonableness” of these too often neglected doctrines of the faith.

Boswell. “What do you think, Sir, of Purgatory… ?”

Johnson. “Why, Sir, it is a very harmless doctrine. They are of the opinion that the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as to deserve everlasting punishment, nor so good as to merit being admitted to the society of blessed spirits; and therefore that God is graciously pleased to allow of a middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suffering. You see, Sir, there is nothing unreasonable in that.”

Boswell. “But then, Sir, their Masses for the dead?”

Johnson. “Why, Sir, if once it is established that there are souls in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them, as for our brethren of mankind who are yet in this life.”

Boswell. “The idolatry of the Mass?”

Johnson. “Sir, there is no idolatry in the Mass. They believe God is there and they adore Him.”

Boswell. “The worship of saints?”

Johnson. “Sir, they do not worship saints; they invoke them; they only ask their prayers.”

Boswell. “Confession?”

Johnson. “Why, I don’t know but that it is a good thing. The Scripture says, ‘Confess your faults to one another,’ and the priests confess as well as the laity. Then it must be considered that their absolution is only upon repentance, and often upon penance also. You think your sins may be forgiven without penance, upon repentance alone.”

What is the point of this brief catechesis from Samuel Johnson on the beliefs of Roman Catholicks? What is the point of human existence? Are these doctrines also the things we most need to know about and are they of greatest importance in the conduct of our lives? Are our five-and-twenty-year-old immortal souls confused because, unlike Johnson, they cannot reason clearly about what is actually held?

In an essay originally published in 1930, Henri de Lubac wrote, to these points, “There is no better way… for giving an explanation of our Faith—as we have the duty to do—than to work with all our strength for its understanding.”

Linus and Snoopy are lying under a tree. The dog is looking at the small human who says, “It’s too much for me to take. I can’t stand it!” Linus rolls over on his stomach, hands on his chin, head of dog over his back, “It’s pretty disheartening to find out your own sister wishes you’d never been born.”

Linus then looks the dog directly in the face, to continue, ” ‘Never been born’… Good grief! Do you know what that means? Just stop to think about it….”

Finally, standing back under the tree, Linus concludes, “Why, the theological implications alone are staggering!”

What is the point of human existence? What if someone wishes we did not ever exist? What if we did not in fact exist? No purgatory, no everlasting punishment, no saints, no predestination, no Mass, no confession, no problems.

Will our general mass of knowledge of books and men save us from such conclusions? It should help, I think. “Man is made to praise, reverence, and to serve God, and thereby to save his soul.” Once we have this straight, the rest follows, at least if we can calmly understand how there is nothing unreasonable in existence, in the truths and practices handed down to us. Human existence does have a point. There are indeed theological implications just in being born.

Now that I have solved my brother-in-law’s problem, where does that leave me? Well, the next time I travel to Medford, I must check with my dear sister to make sure she wishes I was born, even though I arrived in these earthly parts some five years before she did. The implied teaching in Linus’s reflection about his sister and his being born is, I suspect, that if our sisters—who, like Linus’s sister Lucy, often know us so well—are glad that we were born, we can be pretty sure that life is a grace, and not the despair Linus knew it would be if Lucy were serious.

This is, after all, the great thing about our existence, the great thing that denies the determinism Boswell at five-and-twenty claimed to have found in God’s fore-knowledge about our coming to be. Not merely are we born on this earth, but we are given freedom to choose whether we think what happened (both to ourselves and to all others) in our being born was indeed good, whether it was or was not pointless. How we choose to think about the ultimate worth of our existence, in the end, has most to do with the point of our existence.

Author

  • Fr. James V. Schall

    The Rev. James V. Schall, SJ, (1928-2019) taught government at the University of San Francisco and Georgetown University until his retirement in 2012. Besides being a regular Crisis columnist since 1983, Fr. Schall wrote nearly 50 books and countless articles for magazines and newspapers.

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