The humanism of Albert Schweitzer.

There is no disputing the world's acclaim of Dr. Albert Schweitzer as one of the greatest humanitarians of the twentieth century.

Here was a man who in the 90 years of his productive life, had earned doctorates in the fields of philosophy, theology, music, and medicine, and was famous in each; who had almost single-handedly built and established a hospital for natives in the heart of equatorial Africa; who was awarded, in 1953, the Nobel Prize for Peace; who was recognized as an authority on the interpretation and playing of Johann Sebastian Bach's music; who wrote controversial books on the life of Jesus; and whose two, volume study, The Philosophy of Civilization, was honored as a monument to penetrating thought and lofty ideals.

Of him, Albert Einstein said: "There is in this sad world of ours, a great man whose work has become a symbol of light and hope to a despairing, fragmented society."

But the question remains: was Schweitzer a humanist with a capital H, as defined by organized humanism in America? Some authorities speaking for humanism have said "yes"; others say "no" - for, although humanitarianism is a significant part of the humanist world view, it is not the whole of it.

With some exceptions, most humanist organizations - whether defining humanism as a naturalistic philosophy or as a nontheistic religion - remain adamant in totally refuting the existence of all alleged supernatural phenomena. They view the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, as human inventions based upon human experience and then interpreted and judged by the combined influences of human emotions and reasoning. Ethics, therefore, are not absolute and immutable but situational and open to change.

If Schweitzer could be asked today if he considered himself a humanist with a capital H, he would (if assenting) undoubtedly identify himself as a "Christian humanist" - thereby setting off bells of alarm in both dogmatic Christians and militant humanists.

For Christians, the problem begins with Schweitzer's concept of Christianity as set forth in his book. The Quest for the Historical Jesus. In his day, this book proved so shocking to traditional orthodoxy that the Paris Mission Society, despite its desperate need of a doctor to serve its missionaries in the jungles of Africa, refused Schweitzer's offer of help on the grounds that he was not a Christian.

And from an orthodox Christian perspective, the Paris Mission Society was justified, for Schweitzer - as a biblical scholar intent upon separating the historical Jesus from the legend later built up by the early church - not only denied the Bible's authenticity but rejected its accounts of Jesus' miracles as well, including his alleged immaculate conception and resurrection.

Similarly, when militant humanists have been confronted with Schweitzer's lifetime devotion to the love ethic of Jesus as exemplified in the Sermon on the Mount, or with his abiding affection and "inner need" for the "solemn quietude" of the church, or with his delight in standing before a congregation to preach his own interpretation of biblical texts, they have found themselves unable to equate such practices with the tenets of nontheistic humanism.

Yet, if humanists truly understood Schweitzer's thinking, it is they who would be in the stronger position to claim and defend him as one of their own. Like Spinoza, often called the "God-intoxicated philosopher" but whose synonym for God was nature, Schweitzer's use of such words as spirit, mysticism, Christianity, religion, and God was unconventional, and so it must be understood from his frame of reference before a knowledgeable judgment can be made. On the other hand, unlike Spinoza - who upon being excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam was content to go his way alone, divorced from Judaism - Schweitzer chose to stay within Christendom and attempt to illuminate and reform it by writing and preaching his own convictions and living by them.

To gain any comprehensive insight into the driving inner forces that would compel Schweitzer, at the age of 30, to renounce the cultural benefits and the physical and financial comforts of a fame already achieved in two careers, in order to plunge himself into eight years of future toil in the preparation of a third uncertain career, one must know something about his childhood and boyhood environment, which together with his genetic endowments would serve to mold his moral character, enhance his natural talents, and build in him the physical and mental fortitude that enabled him to accomplish the goals he set.

Albert Schweitzer was born on January 14, 1875, in upper Alsace, in the town of Keysenberg on the border between Germany and France. He was the second child of a family of three sisters and one younger brother.

His father, Louis Schweitzer, a gentle, kindly man with a talent for improvising on the piano, was by profession a Protestant minister. When Albert was six months old, Louis moved his family to Gunsbach, where he became the pastor of the only Protestant church in that largely Catholic but friendly community.

Albert's mother, nee Adele Schillinger, was not only the wife of a cleric but the daughter of one. She is described as having a strong personality, a deep - almost romantic - love of nature, and a keen interest in worldly affairs. She was also prone to bouts of deep depression and sudden bursts of temper. All of these traits, Schweitzer later admitted, were passed on to him.

Albert's maternal grandfather, Pastor Schillinger, in addition to his clerical duties, was much involved with organ, building and playing. He also took pride in his ownership of a telescope, which he generously made available to any of the townspeople who wished to peer through it.

At age five, little Albert was given piano lessons by his father. At age eight, he was taking organ lessons from the church organist, and by age 10 he was substituting occasionally for the regular organist.

It was also at age eight that he began questioning the Bible. He wanted to know, for instance, what had happened to the gold and other presents brought to Jesus by the Magi? And why, after that, were Jesus and his parents still poor?

When he was 13 and ready for his confirmation, he again found himself "beset" with questions but "dared not ask them" because the pastor who had taught him made it quite clear that "reason must always be silenced in submission to faith." "I was convinced even then," he later wrote, "that the fundamental principles of Christianity have to be proven true by reasoning, and by no other method."

Yet, despite his doubting, he loved his father's Sunday services, the singing of the hymns, the resonant tones of the organ, and the serenity of the experience which, in his words, "filled my need for quiet and self-recollection, and without which I cannot realize the meaning of life."

At age 10, when he was ready for further schooling, he was sent to the town of Mulhausen to live with his aunt and uncle. At age 18, he entered the University of Strasbourg, his father's alma mater. There he studied theology, philosophy, Hebrew, history, and the sciences - physics, chemistry, and geology. His major delight was history; the second, science.

Upon graduating from the university, he took his government exams at the age of 22 and won a scholarship. This allowed him sufficient funds to go to Paris to study philosophy at the Sorbonne and to study organ under the famous teacher, Widor, who had been a pupil of Liszt.

The following year, Schweitzer went to Berlin to study. At age 24, he received his doctorate in philosophy and obtained the post of preacher at the St. Nicholas Church in Strasbourg. The following year, he received his doctorate in theology. (It is of interest to note that, on July 15, 1900, Schweitzer - upon being examined for this doctorate - was given these words of caution: "Because of the heresies you have already put into print, there is probably not another synod of the Lutheran church in the world who would ordain you. But we know your father and your teachers, and so we are willing to take a chance.") At age 26, he became the principal of the Theological College.

During these years of academic achievement, Schweitzer was also hard at work on his music. He gave recitals and concerts throughout the capitals of Europe and was lionized by an admiring public. Nor was he a social recluse. Although we are used to pictures of Schweitzer in his advanced years, with his unruly shock of graying hair and his muscular frame slightly stooped and filled out, his youthful pictures as an artist of budding distinction show him to be tall, slim, handsome of feature, serious in expression, and nattily attired. In one photo, he sports a walking stick, a bow tie, and a straw hat. In another, he is smoking a long,stemmed Turkish pipe. In both he appears relaxed, thoughtful, and selfassured.

We are informed that, in those days, he was very fond of dancing and was popular with the ladies, young and old. Yet, simmering beneath the surface of this successful and pleasurable life was a restlessness and yearning which would lead Schweitzer to a momentus decision - one that would drastically change the course of his life.

Shortly after he turned 21, Schweitzer made up his mind that he would allow himself nine more years to selfishly enjoy his present life-style. After that, he would pay what he considered his "debt to humanity" by some direct, lifelong personal service. What it would be, he didn't yet know, but he was confident that he would find the answer. Eight years later, he did.

Quite by chance, while thumbing through a magazine, he turned to a report of the Paris Mission Society, which told of the miserable plight of the natives of Africa's Upper Congo, of the ravages of pain and disease suffered by them because of the lack of medical doctors willing to serve under such primitive conditions.

Here, indeed, was a definite appeal, a definite need. The more Schweitzer reflected upon it, the more it took hold of him. Thinking back to the experience, he describes it with these words:

Out of the depth of my feeling of happiness there grew

up gradually within me an understanding ... that

whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself

called upon to help in diminishing the pain of others.

This thought worked in me darkly and confusedly.

Sometimes it left me, so that I breathed freely and

fancied once more I was to become completely the

lord of my own life. But the little cloud that had arisen

on the horizon at last filled the whole sky.

It was a decision that baffled and horrified his family, friends, colleagues, and former teachers. The dean of the medical school, upon hearing of it, shook his head in disbelief and advised Schweitzer to see a psychiatrist.

What was this compelling force that could so completely absorb Schweitzer's conscience and redirect his future? James Brabazon, in his biography of Schweitzer, offers this observation: "The German word for debt is the same as the word for guilt. But debts can be paid."

It seems evident that, for Schweitzer, this obligation to pay back to the world his own debt of happiness had become an obsession that could only be assuaged by deeds. In his book, Out of My Life and Thought, he writes: "The true understanding of Jesus ... the true relationship to him is to be taken possession by him." The dedication of his life to those who "bear the mark of pain" became Schweitzer's answer to Jesus' command, "Follow me."

One surmises that this seed was planted in childhood. The simplicity of Jesus' admonitions to love one's neighbor and turn the other cheek - and his willingness to lay down his life so that, according to prophecy, the perfection of the messianic kingdom here on Earth could begin - represented for Schweitzer the true meaning and obligation of Christianity.

No matter that the messianic belief in its entirety was delusional; it was Jesus' act of sacrifice that, for Schweitzer, was unassailable and which awakened in him a realization of the nobility and greatness of deeds over mere verbal declarations. As he recounted to Norman Cousins many years later at Lambarene':

My decision was not the result of having heard the

voice of God, or any such fantasy, but a completely

rational decision consistent with the pattern and projections

of my life. I decided I would make my life my

argument. I would advocate the things I believed in

terms of the life I led and what I did.

And thus it was that Schweitzer entered into seven years of prolonged mental strain and physical exhaustion. To earn the money he needed, he continued teaching his philosophy classes at the university, giving organ concerts whenever he could, and even preaching at St. Nicholas Church. And when at last, in 1911, he passed his final medical exam, the dean of the medical school told him, "If you hadn't the constitution of an ox, you wouldn't have made it."

But it had not been all toil and hardship. During those seven years, he had developed a close friendship with his former professor of history, a scholar of Jewish lineage whose atheistic philosophy in many ways matched Schweitzer's own ideas.

Then, too, the professor had a daughter. Her name was Helene Bresslau. A photograph of that period shows her to be slender of build, with lovely expressive eyes and a sensitive face. From all accounts, she obviously had no intention of allowing this serious young man to slip through her fingers. For when Schweitzer told her of his plans to go to Africa upon the completion of his internship, she immediately enrolled as a student of nursing.

And when she broached the idea of going to Africa with him as a nurse - adding that she was not sure it would be looked upon as respectable - Schweitzer replied, "We must go as husband and wife. It would be improper to arrange it any other way." They were married on June 18, 1912, on which occasion, we are told, they exchanged their first kiss.

Schweitzer's first offer of service to the Paris Mission Society was refused, on the grounds I have already mentioned. Undaunted by this, he immediately began raising money to get there on his own by arranging for a series of concerts and lectures. By the end of the year, he had raised sufficient funds to pay for his and Helene's passage, for medical supplies and equipment, and for their personal needs for the following year. But he still needed a base of operation. Once again, he approached the Paris Mission Society; this time, through sheer persistence, he persuaded the directors to allow him a portion of the society's missionary grounds at Lambarene. However, a condition was attached: they would grant him permission only if he agreed there would be no preaching. He would serve solely in the capacity of a doctor and would in no way be attached to the Mission Society itself.

In February 1913, Schweitzer and Heline left Paris en route to the French Gabun district of equatorial Africa. They arrived at their destination on the Ogowe' River on Easter Sunday.

The amazing story of the building of the hospital at Lambarene, of its trials, tribulations, and successes, of its beginnings in an abandoned chicken coup to its gradual emergence as a sprawling village of native, style structures, is told at length in Schweitzer's book, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, and in his autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought.

One year later, World War I was declared, Germany and France were now enemies, and the Schweitzers-being Germans, in French territory - found themselves prisoners of war under house arrest. The hospital was closed and the patients were sent home. Later, the hospital was reopened but under military surveillance.

It was during these catastrophic events that Schweitzer, in despair over the decay of civilization and humanity's total incapability of being swayed by reflective reasoning and ethics, began writing his two, volume work, The Philosophy of Civilization. From this, I have chosen a few excerpts.

Appalled by the state of the world, he writes:

The suicide of civilization is in progress. Rationalism 

has been dismissed .... Our own age,

having never taken the trouble to reflect, has arrived

at the opinion that civilization consists

primarily in scientific, technological, and artistic

achievements, and that it can reach its goals

without ethics, or with a minimum of them.

Ethics he defines as:

the maintaining of life at the highest point of

development - of my own life and other life by

devoting myself to it in help and love .... The beginning

of ethics is pity for all life that suffers. The

maturity of ethics is love expressed in action. And

this ethics, profound, universal, has the significance

of religion. It is religion.

Religion itself, according to Schweitzer, is

either free of dogma or is dogmatic. Dogmatic religion

has no relation with thinking, but emphasizes the difference

between thinking and believing. The religion

free from dogma is to some extent the heir of rationalistic 

religion.

In support of freethought rationalism, he writes:

If thought is to set out on its journey unhampered,

it must be prepared for anything, even for arrival at

intellectual agnosticism. But even if our will-to-action

is destined to wrestle indefinitely with an agnostic

view of the universe and life, still the painful disenchantment 

does at any rate mean that we are clear

as to what we are doing.

He also strongly denies the claims of metaphysics:

Individuals who believe that they have at their

disposal peculiar psychic experiences, and assert that

with their aid they can look behind the actual nature

of phenomena, come forward as producers of a world,

view. That the road to world, view leads through

metaphysics is a fatal error which has already enjoyed

too long a span of life in our Western thought.

Spirituality is defined by Schweitzer as

the yearning of the human mind to exceed its own

human frailties, to rise above pettiness, envy, jealousy,

to be courageous, noble, to be truly unselfish, to give

of oneself without seeking glory or applause.

Of truth, he writes:

Certain truths

originate in feelings,

others in the

mind. Those

truths we derive

from our emotions

are of a moral

kind-compassion,

kindness, forgiveness,

love of our

neighbor. Reason

on the other hand

teaches us the

truths that come

from reflection.

Of life's instinctive struggle to survive, he tells us:

The world is a ghastly drama of the will-to-live divided

against itself. One existence makes its way at the cost

of another. There is no yearning to arrive at unity

with itself, to become universal .... Nature is an

indifferent force creating and destroying impartially

according to its laws .... Her cruelty is absurd. The

most precious life is sacrificed to the benefit of the

most ignoble.

It is here that Schweitzer makes the distinction between the impersonal objectivism of nature's laws and the personal subjectivism of human ethics. There is no justification in nature's impersonal laws for the human mind's reflective thought "yearning to exceed its own frailties and become universal." These latter are the subjective human concepts of an ethics which are equated in Schweitzer's vocabulary with spirituality. He describes the process with these words:

What a remarkable circle. Rational thought which

thinks itself out arrives at something non-rational and

subjective, namely the ethical affirmation of the world

and life. The non-rational principle underlying an

activity first provided by rational thought, the objective

and the subjective, proceed from the other and

return into the other again.

It is this same process that best describes and explains Schweitzer's own life work. Certainly to others, his decision to renounce the fame and fortune he had already achieved and become a physician serving the natives of Africa was neither practical nor sensible. Yet, it was born of rational, reflective thought motivated by Schweitzer's subjective personal need to live his life in the service of suffering humanity.

In his writings, Schweitzer seldom uses the word God. Being challenged on this by one Oscar Krauss, Schweitzer replied in a letter dated January 2, 1924:

Because I express no more than I have experienced,

I never speak of "God" but only of the "universal will-to-live,"

which comes to consciousness in me in a two-fold

way: first as a creative will perceived as manifestations

in observable phenomena external to me, and

secondly, as ethical will experienced within me.

Schweitzer defined God as "simply the unfathomable principle of eternity and life." And again:

The essence of Being, the Absolute, the Spirit of

the Universe, and all similar expressions denote

nothing actual, but something conceived in abstraction

which for that reason is also absolutely unimaginable.

The only reality is the Being which

manifests itself in phenomena.

In 1917, the Schweitzers were sent to two different internment camps - first in the Pyrenees, then in Provence, France. In the summer of 1918, they were exchanged for other prisoners of war and allowed to return home to Germany.

Both were exhausted and ill. Schweitzer was 43 years old, penniless, and without a job. The hospital at Lambarene' was a broken dream of the past. Europe was in a shambles. Conditions were such that Schweitzer, physically in, in pain, and with a high fever, was forced to walk from Gunsbach to the next town en route to Strasbourg, where it was necessary for him to have an operation.

But all was not bleak. With the help of friends, Schweitzer was offered the position of assistant doctor at the Strasbourg Hospital, as well as the position of curate at St. Nicholas Church, with occupancy of its parsonage.

In 1919, he was asked by the city of Barcelona, Spain, to give a concert, at which he received a standing ovation. Later in the same year, he went to Sweden for a series of lectures and concerts. While there, his friend, an archbishop, assured him that Lambarene was not a lost hope, suggesting that Schweitzer could give lectures and concerts throughout Europe, raise money, pay off his debts, and still have sufficient funds to return to Lambarene.

That is exactly what he did. By February 1924, seven years after his departure from Lambarene as a prisoner of war, Schweitzer once again had accumulated the necessary funds, medical supplies, and equipment. This time, however, Helene did not accompany him. On January 14, 1920 - on Schweitzer's birthday - Helene had given birth to a baby daughter whom they named Rhea.

During the next 12 years, the work at Lambarene Hospital was vastly expanded. Moved from its original location - it was no longer on the missionary grounds - and with new doctors and nurses arriving from all parts of the globe, Schweitzer in 1937 was able to state to the newly founded Albert Schweitzer Fellowship of America: "I wish to explain that the nature of my work is not connected with any church, missionary society, or any other organization" - which meant that neither they nor any other institution could dictate terms, make demands, or impose restrictions.

Then for the second time, war entered the picture; World War II had begun. From 1940 on, Lambarene was cut off from France but had contact with England through Sweden. On January 14, 1945, Schweitzer turned 70 and spent part of his birthday in the operating room while much of the rest of the world celebrated the occasion with speeches and ovations. Four months later, on May 7, 1945, Lambarene received word that the war was over.

In 1949, Schweitzer visited America for the first time, raising funds and going to Aspen, Colorado, to give the Bicentennial Goethe Oration. "What attracts me to [Goethe]," he told his admiring audience, "is that he is a man of action at the same time he is a poet, a thinker, and in a certain domain a savant, and a man of research. What binds us together in the deepest depths of our being is his philosophy of nature.

It was in 1953 that Schweitzer received the Nobel Prize for Peace. In his acceptance speech, he made the following statement: "Humanism, in all its simplicity, is the only genuine spirituality."

In 1956, Helene Bresslau Schweitzer succumbed to a lengthy illness and died in a European hospital. Her ashes were taken to Lambarene. A simple white cross marks her grave. Considering her Jewish atheist background, this marking might seem odd - until one remembers Schweitzer's interpretation of that symbol.

By 1958, the hospital at Lambarene could boast of 20 buildings resting on steel foundations. Although there was still no electricity, it had one generator, donated by Prince Rainier of Monaco. This took care of the big fight over the tables in the operating room, which was now fully equipped and modern.

By this time, Schweitzer had long been a world figure. Among his friends were Einstein; Bertrand Russell; Martin Buber; Robert Oppenheimer; Pablo Casals, the famous cellist; Louis Meyer, the American sculptor who made a sculpture of Schweitzer's hands; and Adlai Stevenson, who, like Norman Cousins, had visited Schweitzer at Lambarene.

During these years, Schweitzer had worked with scientists like Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling to sway public opinion against nuclear testing. He had also made a series of appeals over the Oslo Broadcasting System for the renunciation of atomic weapons. And when the Test Ban Treaty was adopted in 1963, his congratulatory letter to President John R Kennedy was received with great appreciation and repeated on the air in a broadcast by the president.

Two years later, on September 4, 1965, Schweitzer died quietly at Lambarene at the age of 90. He was buried next to his wife. A white cross also marks his grave.

In his later years, Schweitzer had come to think of himself as a philosopher, scientist, and doctor, rather than as a minister and theologian. For him, the practice of religion meant the practice of ethics. Rational, scientific thinking was the mandatory "first step" but above and beyond that was the introspection, the looking inward, by which a deeper, spiritual awareness was achieved - in Albert Schweitzer's words, "the experience of universal love that sometimes contradicts logical common,sense conclusions."

Dr. Maxine Negri is a retired clinical psychologist. Active in the humanist movement since 1961, she has been a member of the editorial board of The Humanist since 1980 and is a former board member and vice-president of the American Humanist Association.