Article October 10, 1914 Issue

Fear of Ill Obliterated

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK

Twenty-Three centuries of readers have had the opportunity to become familiar with the story of Damocles, whom history records as a sycophant in the court of Dionysius, known as tyrant of Syracuse. The story runs that the monarch caused a sword suspended by a single hair to hang threateningly over the head of Damocles throughout a lengthy banquet to which he had been invited. Both ancients and moderns have gathered many lessons from this incident. Indeed, every reader is likely to draw lessons from it to apply to himself, for men seem to be prone to people their landscapes with both large and little fears.

We find in the writings of the ancients which have been preserved, a great amount of moralizing upon the strange enigmas present then as now in human existence. Some of their moralizing was of a very high and noble character, and richly deserves and repays perusal. It remained, however, for the teachings of Jesus, which he proved through his works to be true, to throw the revealing light upon the mysteries which seem to environ human experience.

One of the obvious lessons which has frequently been drawn from the story of Damocles is, that in man's seemingly msot prosperous and most enjoyed moments there is always impending over him the menace of danger, misfortune, and death. The Egyptians sought to impress this lesson by placing a human skeleton conspicuously at each of their banquets, and a vast amount of literature, both ancient and modern, has been devoted to this and similar lines of thought. The Stoics could never have launched their famous school of philosophy except on the basis that human life is something to be suffered and endured, and that this planet is at best a human purgatory. The fierce and turbid maelstrom of modern life, with its materialistic and often maddening and viciously destructive searchings after selfish satisfactions and pleasures, is to be explained by the wide-spread belief that this human existence is all that man has, that he is only a superior animal, and that it is the part of wisdom to "eat and drink; for tomorrow we die."

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