Man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing.
Over the clean stones by the sea/
I came jumping today/
Stone cool/
Jumping fit/
I meant to ask the sea about something/
that’s troubling me/
The sea listened/
and I forgot the question.
Each of us has the capacity, if only in some little way, to lift the level of humanity to higher heights, and thereby share in a greatness that outlasts the fall of empires. All history in the end bears witness to the fact that greatness—all greatness that lasts—is service.
The American commitment is not to affluence, nor to all the cushioned comforts of a well-fed nation, but to the liberation of the human spirit, the release of human potential, the enhancement of individual dignity. Those are the great themes of our life as a people. Everything else is a means to those ends.