The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [60]
Needless to say, Father O’Gould’s talk at that point had provoked more than a few laughs. But I kept wondering what he would think were I to show him the tape I had just watched. Are we the paragon of animals? Or just animals?
He shortly turned serious, and a hush fell over the standing-room-only audience — many of them students, I was pleased to note. Father O’Gould declared that unless we recognize and accept our position at what he called “the transcendent apex of the chain of being,” i.e., our superiority relative to other species, then we undercut what little moral authority we have left “in an age when the God of our fathers has retreated into myth and history … To say that we are no better than bacteria or turnips or rabbits is to give ourselves license, like them, to submit blindly to natural processes, to overrun the planet, to indulge in mass exterminations, indeed, to act any way we want to.”
The good priest went on to point out that the denial of any rank in creation was pushing the rationality of the laboratory to absurd lengths. “Is it not a philistine notion that truth is only to be found in a test tube or under a microscope? Simply because the position of mankind at the top of creation is not a verifiable hypothesis does not render it invalid. Because neither can you prove that Mendelssohn’s Octet in E is beautiful. Those who declare that all species are equal are assuming a stance that, in its apparent disinterested objectivity, is fraught with more pernicious hubris than to simply admit that we are, as human beings, on top, and with all that means in terms of responsibility.
“I do not mean superior in any aesthetic sense. At least as depicted by Freud — Lucien, that is, not Sigmund — we suffer in comparison with the beauty of the hyacinth macaw or to that of Panthera tigris altaica. We certainly are not morally superior, though there is the potential for that. But we are clearly superior in intellect and technology, and that translates into power. With that power comes an awesome responsibility.
“Indeed, it is this position at the top of creation that ought to provoke in each of us the moral anxiety to proceed with scrupulous care in our stewardship. Make no mistake about it. We are the wardens and we must attend our duties in a manner befitting superior beings. Otherwise, we will answer to history as surely as the despots and dictators that have gone before us.”
Father O’Gould concluded that real humility was nothing less than the acceptance of reality. “The incumbent responsibility that comes with our place in the universe is the gift of natural selection, the basis on which we must become our own necessary gods.”
It was, in all, a moving and provocative occasion. Father O’Gould’s inspiring talk, along with some help from the dinner wine, restored a good measure of my faith in humankind. But not entirely. Images of Corny’s cruel demise haunt my inner vision. I recoil, of course. I deplore what happened. Yet something atavistic in me assents to the sacrifice. There is nearly a kind of comfort in it, a comfort I resist. Is human sacrifice, in its myriad forms, an attempt, however grotesque, to give meaning to death?
21
The plot is thickening like one of those soups you throw things into without being quite sure how it’s going to turn out. I finally worked up the courage this morning to undertake a most delicate and sad task: I called Jocelyn Chard, Corny’s widow, and told her I needed to come by and see her.
“You’ve heard from Corny?” she asked, an excited hope in her voice.
“Yes, but I’d rather … come over.”
There was one of those silences. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, but I’d like to come see you anyway, Jocelyn.”
After another silence, she said, “Yes, of course.