`I Have to Do Something for Life'

In 1953, Edward R. Murrow contributed a foreword to This I Believe, a volume of testimonials edited by Edward P. Morgan. The book is based on a radio show of the same name hosted by Murrow from 1951 to 1955. NPR has revived the idea and name, and judging by the episodes I’ve heard the show is about as earnestly fatuous as you would expect. I came to the This I Believe volume through the back door, by way of Selected Prose of Louis MacNeice. Other contributors to the faithfest include A.J. Ayer, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck and Helen Keller – an unlikely mix – but the Irish poet’s contribution is worth pondering.

MacNeice takes the job seriously. He begins like an analytic philosopher, distinguishing questions of fact from questions of value, and choosing to address the latter. He rejects the strictly utilitarian approach and what he called the “de gustibus argument” (a sort of proto-postmodern assertion of the arbitrariness of all statements of belief), and then gets down to business:

“… I think that all human beings have a hankering for pattern and order; look at any child with a box of chalks. There are of course evil patterns or orders – which perhaps is the great problem of our time. What I do believe is that as a human being, it is my duty to make patterns and to contribute to order – good patterns and a good order. And when I say duty I mean duty; I think it is the turn of enjoyment, I believe that life is worth while and I believe that I have to do something for life.”

Without being smarmy about it, MacNeice is formulating an admirable credo. He implies that only by doing something for life does life become worthwhile -- a moral reciprocity: Only by giving it away, by serving as a conduit for our gifts, do we have any hope of keeping them. In “London Rain,” written in the uneasy summer of 1939, MacNeice says:

“Whether the living river
Began in bog or lake,
The world is what was given,
The world is what we make
And we only can discover
Life in the life we make.”





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