The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [339]
7. But even grief abates, and those we grieve, if they could speak, would tell us that they do not wish us to grieve for ever,
8. But would wish us to remember the best of them, and to return our thoughts to life and the good. And life is the endeavour of the good.
9. We honour them most, and cherish the memory of them best, by obeying the injunction to live, and to seek the good that endures.
Chapter 3
1. It is this that gives value to remembering the best of our times, so that we know the face of the good always.
2. In youth, before ever we lost sight of it, we were fully alive, and inhabited our hours with inexpressible satisfaction,
3. So that its weariness was as lovely to us as its refreshment.
4. The earth was a glorious orchestra, and we were its audience, thrilling to the birdsong and the symphony of the breezes;
5. How we remember being astonished by the ecstasies unfolded to us in its music!
6. Sometimes we recapture the joy of savouring our being, not the material pleasure merely of eating and drinking,
7. Of seeing beautiful things or hearing pleasant sounds, of talking or resting;
8. But the different, delicate, larger happiness of being part of the great whole,
9. Of being oneself with one’s own life, one’s own impressions and thoughts.
10. It is a wonderful and grand thing to be oneself and part of all, and to have the dignity of the capacity for thought.
11. And so it is that when I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; and yes, when I walk alone in an orchard in the summer light,
12. If my thoughts have been elsewhere, they come back, and dwell on the good of that moment;
13. They come back to the orchard and the light, to the sweetness of the solitude, and to me.
14. To discover and inhabit such experiences is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of our occupations; without them we have not lived.
15. Truly, our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
Chapter 4
1. The good is two freedoms: freedom from certain hindrances and pains, freedom to choose and to act.
2. The first is freedom from ignorance, fear, loneliness, folly, and the inability to master one’s emotions;
3. The second is freedom to develop the best capacities and talents we have, and to use them for the best.
4. The good is what lies within reach of our talents for good, which means that there are as many goods as there are such talents.
5. There is not one single kind of good that suits and fits everyone; there are as many good lives as there are people to live them.
6. It is false that there is only one right way to live and one right way to be,
7. And that to find it we must obey those who claim to have the secret of a ‘one right way’ and a ‘one true good’.
8. If there are guides to the good, one must eventually leave them behind and seek the good of one’s choice, and which suits one’s own talents.
9. This is the ultimate responsibility: to choose, and to cultivate the talents for one’s choice.
10. But though there are many goods and many good kinds of life, the latter will share two notable characteristics:
11. The first is that those seeking them will honour affection, beauty, creativity, peace, patience, fortitude, courage;
12. Will honour self-mastery, wisdom, loyalty, justice, sympathy and kindness;
13. Will honour knowledge, truth, probity and honour itself.
14. And the greatest of what they honour will be affection: of a friend for a friend, a parent for a child, between lovers, between comrades;
15. For affection calls out to the other virtues and teaches them, and is the motive for the continuance of our kind.
16. The second is that lives in which these virtues are honoured will be regarded by those living them, and those touched by them, as good.
17. To seek the good life is an endeavour for a whole life.
18. One can improve, learn, encourage oneself, profit from failure; and still be seeking it on the last day.
Chapter 5
1. Truly, life is short: it must be used well.
2. The