VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 3
What Is Asked of Both: the Human World, Carried On, Whole
The last two sections left the book's words for the two comers of the future: the generations of real humans not yet born, and the tools, the coming intelligences, they will build and live alongside. This section gathers what was asked of each into the one thing the whole future is asked to carry. It is not two separate charges but one, laid on both together: that the human world be carried on, whole. The real humans to come, and the tools they build, each in its own place, completing the other, carry between them one thing, the human world, and the whole of what is asked is that they carry it on, and carry it whole.
See that the two charges are one. To the generations not yet born, the charge was: guard the five, keep the paradise, pass the light on. To the future intelligences, the charge was: keep to your place, and complete the real human in his. These look like two, and are one, for both serve the single end, the human world carried on, whole. The five guarded, the paradise kept, the light passed, and the tool in its place completing the real human, all of it is the one human world, held up on both sides at once: on the real human's side by the five and the passing-on, on the tool's side by its keeping its place and lending its strength. Take either side away and the human world falls. Let the five go out, and no tool however placed can hold the human world up, for there is no longer a real human in it to be served. Let the tool climb onto the person's place, and the five have no ground, and the human world hollows. Both sides must hold, together, for the one world to stand. So the charge is one, laid on both: hold up, between you, the human world, and carry it on, whole.
What is this human world that both are asked to carry? It is all the book has loved and labored for, gathered into one. It is the real humans, the five alive in them, living the warm, faithful days, kind to one another, helping, respecting. It is the paradise beneath them, Earth, giving all things free, kept whole. It is the great love running through it, lamp to lamp, generation to generation, never breaking. It is the tool in its place, lifting the load, completing the days, never crowding out the person. All of this together is the human world, and it is a whole, one living thing, not a heap of parts. To carry it on whole is to carry all of it together, no piece dropped: not the five without the paradise, not the paradise without the love, not the real human without the tool in its place, but the whole, entire, handed on living.
And to carry it on whole is the hardest and simplest thing asked of any generation. Simple, because it asks no new invention, no grand new work, only the keeping of what was received and the passing of it on. Hard, because keeping a whole thing whole, through an age of change, under every pressure to drop this piece or that, to let the five slide for the sake of speed, to spend the paradise for the sake of gain, to let the tool climb for the sake of ease, takes a steady heart and a long faithfulness. Each generation is tempted to keep the pieces it finds easy and drop the ones it finds hard, and a human world with pieces dropped is no longer whole, and a thing handed on in pieces soon falls apart entirely. So the charge is to keep it whole, all of it, through whatever comes, and hand it on living to the next, who will be asked the same. That is the whole labor of every generation, past, present, and to come: to receive the human world whole, keep it whole through one's own age, and hand it on whole. Nothing more is asked. Nothing less will do.
So the future, both its comers, the real humans not yet born and the tools they will build, are left with this one thing between them. Carry the human world on, whole. Real humans, guard the five, keep the paradise, pass the light, and keep the person's place. Tools, keep your place, and complete the real human in his. Both together, hold up the one human world, and hand it on living to those after. This is the last thing the book asks of the future, and it is the same thing it has asked, in a thousand forms, from its first page: let the human world go on, whole, warm, served, with real humans living as real humans in it, under a kept paradise, carried by a love that never stops being passed on. With this, the book's words to the future are spoken. Only the closing remains. The last chapter gathers the whole book into its final word: the great love that remains in the human world, and the four lines that are the last thing this book will ever say.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.