becoming more human by becoming more godlike 433tipathy to the role of structure and repetition in human life and invites
us to undertake a perpetual quest that has no goal or ground other than
its own pursuit. Th e campaign against mummifi cation would then be
tainted by what I earlier called the Sartrean heresy.
In fact, this view recognizes the indispensable character of the inter-
play between routine and innovation in every department of our expe-
rience. Th e aim is not to escape repetition; to do so would be to make
war on life. It is to change both the nature of repetition and its relation
to innovation: to make the machine within serve the spirit within.
Th e moral conception, correctly understood, is equidistant from the
Sartrean and the Hegelian heresies. It is not their synthesis; it de-
nounces both. It seeks to create a setting for human life less inimical to
the enhancement of life and to the exercise of our powers of tran-
scendence than the regimes of society and of thought that we fi nd all
around us.
Th ere is more cause for a second misinterpretation. Th e campaign
against mummifi cation has an unmistakable heroic aspect. It does not
simply promise an enhancement of life at the end; it also requires an
arousal of hope and eff ort at its outset. It calls for the cultivation of large
projects: the largest to which we can see ourselves as standing in an inti-
mate relation.
Does it not then express disdain for ordinary existence and common
humanity? Aft er all, weakness, failure, constraint, dependence, and
humiliation are among our most widespread experiences. Th e move
against mummifi cation then seems to be an exalting of power and of the
powerful, under the disguise of an exulting at life. As in Nietz sche’s phi-
losophy, the few will then fi nd, in their distinction from the many, rea-
sons to believe that they have in fact gained the keys to the enhancement
of life. In this conceit, however, they will delude themselves. Th eir lord-
ing over their fellows will be a weakness rather than a strength, subordi-
nating their empowerment to the anxious search for preeminence and
misrepresenting the relation of self- construction to solidarity.
Life is our shared trea sure. We all are more than we seem to be.
Th e power to outreach circumstance, in feeling, thought, action, and
connection, is universal in humanity; it is not confi ned to an elite of
visionaries and power seekers. Its worth cannot be mea sured by the
standards of worldly infl uence but only by each man’s relation to
himself.