As is typical of oldsters, my thoughts turn more and more to the past. I have been quite lucky: my parents brought me up "right" and my biological background is conducive to congenial survival. Possibly I have been a bit over-thrifty and more suspicious than necessary, but generally when I have trusted with inadequate justification I have suffered the consequences. In my early 20's I read a book that had much influence on me: Walter Pitkin's, "Life Begins at Forty." Then I thought forty was a long way ahead. Now at twice that age plus ten, forty seems quite youthful. Where have these 65 years gone? Somewhere in his book Pitkin wrote, everything is of some importance: nothing is of absolute importance. I have lived with that aphorism. I enjoy watching ants in their endless search. I like to drop a shred of bread in front of them and observe them get it into their nest. How mightily they struggle. The project is of supreme importance to them. Who am I to say their effort is trivial? Neitzche, when pressed for an example of his ideal superman, finally came up with Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Goethe was a great poet and influenced the growth of Romanticism. But he was in some ways a first rate fool and lacked many desirable traits. Yes, he was a Mensch (an Authentic Personality) but he was also painfully menschlich. Human, all too human.

Much of life is a contradiction. We want to live forever, but realize what a bore it would be and what a god-awful mess we would be at 120. We want adventure but not at the expense of safety. We want to be with people, but find them annoying. So we learn to live with compromise. We hedge in varying degrees and find that there never is a perfect adjustment. We seek the pie in the sky, but we do not have the sense to recognize it for what it is--just a slice of theory. We want democracy to be perfect though we know the evolutionary process does not seek or produce perfection. It is sufficient if a process works. If for a brief period it works better than necessary it soon becomes lazy and does not adjust. General Motors, I.B.M., Sears, Apple are good current examples. Sometimes when they go down they learn to adjust and get a second wind. It would be pleasant to live long enough to find out what happens to these fallen giants. Why expect more from democracy? All it can do is a bit better than alternate systems. And when it isn't, then another system takes its place. It has happened many times in the history of humanity. Evolution does not result in perfection. It operates on the principle--if it works, don't fix it. If a species doesn't work it disappears. Of all the species that have existed, over 99 per cent have disappeared. The odds are even greater against a complicated and neurotic species like humankind. Neitzsche, despite his great insights, was naive. The very nature of man prevents an Ubermensch from happening.

Yes, all in all moderation seems to be the best goal. But not too much moderation for that in itself is immoderate. An immoderate moderation or moderate immoderation seems the best stance to seek. But how to attain it--that is the elusive goal that none of us attains with more than moderate success. There is coherence to these seeming incoherent statements, say I, but there is no conclusion. Maybe that is a conclusion.

--Herbert A. Tonne

Mr. Tonne, of Northvale, NJ, will be 90 years old/young in January, 1994. To mark that occasion, he was asked to submit some reflections on his philosophy of life. Originally published in News and Views the journal of Humanists of North Jersey in January 1994.