'Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben'

 'Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben'

1952, Dr. Albert Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He used the prize money to build a leper colony.

Schweitzer embraced a pro-life philosophy, explaining: "For months on end, I lived in a continual state of mental agitation.

Without the least success I concentrated -- even during my daily work at the hospital -- on the real nature of the affirmation of life and of ethics ...

I was wandering about in a thicket where no path was to be found. I was pushing against an iron door that would not yield. In that mental state, I had to take a long journey up the river. Lost in thought, I sat on deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal concept of the ethical that I had not discovered in any philosophy.

I covered sheet after sheet with disconnected sentences merely to concentrate on the problem.

Two days passed.

Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase:

'Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben' ('Reverence for Life').

The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible."