From a sermon Dr. King preached at the Temple of Israel of
Hollywood:
Each
of us lives in two realms, the "within" and the "without."
The within of our lives is somehow found in the realm of ends, the
without in the realm of means. The within of our [lives], the bottom -- that
realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion for
which at best we live. The without of our lives is that realm of
instrumentalities, techniques, mechanisms by which we live. Now the great
temptation of life and the great tragedy of life is that so often we allow the
without of our lives to absorb the within of our lives. The great tragedy of
life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to outdistance the
ends for which we live.
And
how much of our modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the
poet Thoreau, "Improved means to an unimproved
end?" We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture; we have
allowed our technology to outdistance our theology and for this reason we find
ourselves caught up with many problems. Through our scientific genius we made
of the world a neighborhood, but we failed through moral commitment to make of
it a brotherhood, and so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.
And the great challenge is to move out of the mountain of practical materialism
and move on to another and higher mountain which recognizes somehow that we
must live by and toward the basic ends of life. We must move on to that
mountain which says in substance, "What doth it profit a man to gain the
whole world of means -- airplanes, televisions, electric lights -- and lose the
end: the soul?"
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