Dwight D. Murphey

Emergent MAN

A Religion and Ethic of Liberty

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 Remarks On the New York Skyline

Three years ago I went to school in New York City and lived  with a professor and his family in New Jersey. The classes were held in the evening in an old gray building down in lower Manhattan across the street from Trinity Church and right next door to the American Stock Exchange. In order to get to the school I had to ride for some time on the Lackawanna Railroad in New Jersey and then take a ferry across the Hudson River. As a part of this commuting I crossed the Hudson just about every night at around five o'clock. Since it was wintertime, dusk was settling over the city as I rode the ferry, and the lights of the city were coming on, so that while I could still see the water and the boats, the city was alive with the twinkling of its night lights.

New York is a beautiful and majestic thing. It is a monument to man and his greatness. I could not help but feel a surging pride and pleasure as I crossed over to it on the ferry. There is nothing more lovely even in Colorado on a day when a gentle breeze quakes the aspen in the high country while hundreds of little streams bring the ice cold water down out of the snow: New York City, standing out like a jewel in the dusk, equals all of this beauty of nature.

In spirit, this book and the whole philosophy of liberty and emergence it expresses is dedicated to New York City. Man should strain upward for his own sake, just as the buildings of New York City strain upward for man and his commerce.  

I interject this image of beauty and greatness as found in New York City at the very beginning of this book for a definite purpose. Much of this book will involve criticism of contemporary life and ideas. And while a sound criticism is by itself creative through the very act of purgation, adverse criticism tends to create a malevolent mood. I would not wish this to be the spirit of my book. Rather, the spirit throughout, even when I am pointing to emptiness and weaknesses, will be one of emergence, of love of life as lived with pride and accomplishment, of appreciation for man's past and present attainments.

The reader will soon discover that I think there is a great shallowness and sterility in our civilization and that we must treat our present way of life as merely a plateau from which to go much further in terms of the individual's personal cultivation of his own sensibilities, intellect and talent. But I would not want the thought to be inferred from this that I have overlooked the many energies now at work and the satisfactions they give. No, everything I say should be understood as being in addition to, and not in derogation of, this basic appreciation.

Denver recently had a gasoline price war. One of the oil companies sued the others for an injunction against selling below cost. A very sizeable array of legal talent became involved in the defense of this suit on behalf of the many oil companies that were made defendants. As a young lawyer I was impressed by the imposing mobilization of legal effort brought into the case. But on the side of the single oil company bringing the suit there were only a couple of attorneys. Several days before the hearing in the Denver District Court I went to the Equitable Building law library to look up the law on some point involved. While I was there I saw a gentleman, on whose shoulders virtually the entire burden of the case rested so far as the plaintiff was concerned, sitting quietly and thoughtfully behind a pile of about fifty or seventy-five law books, which he later placed on a small cart and took upstairs to his office. It struck me at that time that in this simple situation one could see the whole meaning of the legal profession in terms of its dignity and pride, and in a broader way the significance of the human spirit as it exists in just one man, alone with his mind and his talent, formidable against all opponents. Here indeed was strength and independence and intellect reduced to the figure of a frail looking man seated behind a pile of books and with a Phi Beta Kappa key dangling from his chain.

I do not overlook this. Certainly it is not this that I will disparage. By indirection it is what I will be praising as I criticize that which is inert in our lives. I will praise it directly when I speak of emergence and liberty.

This example of a lawyer could be carried over into many other areas. It could, for example, be carried over to the three men who entertain so well at Taylors Supper Club in Denver. Their expert comedy shows a talent that one must certainly admire in just the same way one admires the lawyer I have mentioned. So also must one feel the same delight at the music of the piano player at Henritze's Restaurant. He loves to play and his music shows this love. There is nothing sterile or inert in the tinkling rhythm he projects.

I have said that this book is dedicated to New York City, but it is in the same vein dedicated to these men, and such other men who live as well.

Their positive vitality is the mood of this book. Even my criticisms will derive from this mood and the philosophy that gives it form. They are not misanthropic criticisms. Rather do they favor humanity as best conceived.