VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 1
To the Generations Not Yet Born: the Whole Trust in a Few Plain Words
The last chapter laid the book's root bare. This chapter turns from the root to the future, and leaves the book's words for those who come after. This section speaks to the generations of real humans not yet born, the children of your children, and theirs, on down the line, who will read these words, if they reach them at all, long after the hand that wrote them is dust. To you, not yet born, this book leaves its whole trust, in a few plain words. Take them, if they serve you. Set them down, if a better way is found. But hear them once, from one who loved you before you were.
First, know that you were loved before you were born. The one who wrote this, and the countless who carried the light before him, labored not for themselves, for they would not live to see you, but for you, whom they would never meet. Every institution laid, every trap opened, every lamp lit, was a reaching forward across time toward you, a wish that when you came into the world you would find it whole, the five alive, the paradise kept, the human world warm. You are the reason. You were held in the heart of people who died before your grandparents were born. That is the first thing to know: you were never alone, never unloved, never the first to care. A long line of lamps burned toward you across the dark, so that you would have light when you arrived.
Then, the trust, in a few plain words. Guard the five. Keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, keep them alive in yourselves and in one another, for they are what makes a person a person, and if they go out, though your bodies live and your tools grow mighty, the human world is gone. Whatever else changes in your age, and much will change that we cannot foresee, do not let the five go out. That is the first and deepest charge. Keep the paradise. Earth is the one and only home, the one and only paradise, giving all things free. Guard it, heal what was harmed, hand it on whole. Reach for the stars if you will, but never spend the ground beneath your feet, for there is nowhere else to go. That is the second charge. And pass the light on. Whatever light reached you, from this book or from any lamp, do not let it stop at you. Light the next heart, and teach them to light the next, so the passing-on never breaks. That is the third charge, and it holds the other two, for the five and the paradise are kept only by being passed on, generation to generation, without end.
These three are the whole trust. Guard the five. Keep the paradise. Pass the light on. Everything else in this book, all its reasoning, all its institutions, is only the working-out, for one age, of these three. The reasoning may age. The institutions may need remaking for a world we cannot picture. But these three do not age, for they rest on what does not change: that a person is made a person by the five, that Earth is the only home, that light lives only by being passed. Hold these three, and you may let the rest of the book go, remake it, better it, replace it, and lose nothing that matters. Lose these three, and the finest keeping of the rest would save nothing.
And one thing more, gentler than a charge. Do not carry the whole weight alone, and do not think you must finish it. You are one generation of lamps, as we were, receiving from those before, passing to those after. You need not set the whole future right in your own hands, in your own hour. Light what you can. Guard what you can. Pass what you can. Trust the generations after you to carry what you cannot finish, as we trusted you to carry what we could not. Do your part, fully and gently, and let the rest go to the long passing-on. This is not a burden laid on your backs to crush you. It is a light placed in your hands to carry a little way and hand on. Carry it a little way. That is all that was ever asked of any of us, and it is enough.
So this is the trust, left for you who are not yet born, from one who loved you and will never see you. You were loved before you were. Guard the five. Keep the paradise. Pass the light on. Do your part and trust the rest to those after you. If these words reach you and serve you, take them. If your age has found truer ones, set these down without a backward glance, for the book that wrote them wished only to serve you, and is glad to be forgotten if you are well. Live as real humans, in a whole world, among the warmth of the human world. That is all we ever wanted for you. The next section turns to speak to the other comers of your age, stranger to address and gentler still: the future tools, the coming intelligences, that they and you might each keep to your own place, and complete one another.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.