Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer

“and as I examine this will in myself I become aware of its presence in others.” For him the will to live thus becomes the will to love. But for Schweitzer the will to live does not lead to the will to power. In one sense this puts him in the class of Lebensphilosophen or thinkers like Nietzsche who find in the will to live the clue to what is most real and important. In his books on ethics he comes to the conclusion that “reverence for life” is the supreme moral rule. If I believe this, he added, I should go myself and not leave the job to others. Now that the white man has developed the science of medicine it is only decent that he should share it. When asked why he went to Africa when a brilliant career in Europe was open to him, he replied very simply that the black man had been exploited by the white long enough and that it was time to try to even the scales.

Furthermore, Schweitzer’s life as a medical missionary in equatorial Africa testifies to his supreme concern for the abstract ideal of justice and his unwillingness to let private ambitions stand in its way. To hear Schweitzer play is to forget Schweitzer the performer and even Bach the composer, as the eternal musical forms which Bach caught and set down on paper flow into the mind of the listener.

As a writer on Bach and editor of his organ works, he has emphasized the objectivity needed for the correct interpretation of Bach. When he was a popular teacher and theological professor in Strassbourg, he wrote books on New Testament criticism which reflected his complete responsiveness to the demands of scholarship and his unwillingness to allow personal feelings or hopes to interfere with his passion for the facts. Albert Schweitzer once remarked in conversation, “I think that the most important trait in a religious worker is complete devotion to the truth.” The remark summarized the characteristic quality of Schweitzer’s own life.

Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer