THE KING IN HIS COUNTING HOUSE ….
Shavuot, June, 1941
**Leviticus XXIII, 15.“AND ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall there be complete”.
We still remember with what deep devotion Jewish mystics used to fulfil this seemingly not very significant commandment of counting days and weeks. One day, another, and yet another day … One week, a second one, and still one more…. Quite so, one may say, but what is the point? Why this intense concentration, which in bygone days used to be applied to a very simple mathematical exercise? The mathematics are all right. Seven days certainly are a week, and fourteen of them do make a fortnight. But what of it?
This is a very good question indeed, especially if it is understood in its widest sense.
The mathematics are all right, but what of it?—this is just the question of our times. It is the ominous question-mark behind this so-called civilisation of ours, which is going to pieces before our own eyes. Only if we understand the whole import of this question are we able to realise the meaning of a mathematical process that counts days and weeks, preparing a world which is to be built on the Revelation on Sinai.
1
I venture to affirm that what men count and how they use their mathematical talent makes all the difference in the world.
Our modern civilisation is mathematical. It is based on counting. Its symbol is the number, the mathematical formula; its high priest the mathematician. Our science, our economics, our finance, this whole modern life of ours, would be impossible without efficient counting. If, on a certain day, we forgot our mathematics, our world would immediately come to a standstill. The factories would be idle, the public utility services would stop. No trains or trams, no buses or cars, could run. Men would have to return to the most primitive conditions of life.
Oh yes, we are very good at counting, and have grown mighty and powerful thanks to exact mathematical calculation. In our days, counting has achieved its greatest triumph. There is nothing in the Universe that cannot be caught in the net of a mathematical formula. This triumph of the number enabled modern civilisation to outstrip completely the achievements of previous generations. What did they know of speed, of production, of division of labour, of efficiency in the modern sense? So far, so good. We are better mathematicians. But are we happier for it than previous generations were? Are we better for it? Are we nearer the realisation of the great purposes of human life as expressed by the prophets and the thinkers among men? Our mathematics are all right, but what of it? Has there ever lived a more unhappy and discontented generation than the present one? Our predecessors did not talk in terms of speed or tempo, but neither had they the slightest inkling of such other mathematical blessings as the bomber and the tank. They knew nothing of mass-production, but neither had they any notion of the unemployment and the slums produced by a society governed by exact mathematics.
It is true, if we forgot our mathematics, we should have to return to a primitive life, but there would be plenty of compensation for the inconvenience. One of the chief consequences of such a failure of memory would be that this war would stop without delay. All the air forces in the world would be grounded, no bomb could ever be released on innocent children. Mechanised armies would disappear, submarines would be doomed. The world would look very different; it would not be any the worse for it.
Without the triumph of the mathematical formula the subjugation of a whole continent by the forces of darkness would have been unthinkable, Nazism or Fascism would never have been able to brood over the future of mankind like a shadow of destruction and death. The magic force that is in the number has, so far, been more destructive than creative. It has misled the hearts of men and nations. It has been the Satan of our civilisation, whispering to men and nations: Here I am, your obedient servant, the Number. Use me and you will grow, I shall make you big and mighty and strong.
Well, we have used it, but how and to what purpose?
2
In a modern Russian novel I found a story told of an old kingdom which was ruled by an old king. The old king was not very efficient. His people lived quietly under him. Life had no great excitements nor great tragedies. People did their monotonous work and were content. One day, however, the young prince decided that the old muddle must cease. He thrust his father from the throne and made himself King. He then informed his counsellors that the first great task to be undertaken was to organise the country on entirely new lines. First of all, they must take stock of the realm and of everything that was therein. Consequently, a whole army of officials were sent out to count everything. They counted the cottages and the palaces, the fields and the woods, the mountains and the dales, the lakes and the rivers. Every herb, every flower, and every tree received an official stamp with a number on it. When the work was done, they reported to the King. Look, they said, here is your whole realm, properly registered in these books. There is nothing under your rule for which you cannot find its proper number. The young king was not satisfied. “All this is very well,” said he, “but where are my stars, the stars of my skies? You did not count and stamp my stars”. They decided to build a tower high enough to reach to the sky. The King himself wished to ascend it to count his stars. For many a year they worked on the tower. Thousands of people from all the provinces of the realm were torn from their homes and families and put to slave labour. At last, the tower was ready. The King, clad in his most stately robes, all majesty and grandeur, started to ascend the tower. After years of climbing, he arrived at the top of the tower. He looked round, and as he looked he burst into bitter tears…. What had happened was this: All the years of his rule this very efficient king had been growing big and heavy. When he entered the tower, he was so heavy that the tower could not bear him. With every step that the great king made skywards, the tower sank under his weight. With every step up, the tower went a step deeper into the ground. When the King arrived at the top of his tower, he was just as far from his stars as ever in his life. His mathematics were exact, only he made one grave mistake. All through his life the King had forgotten one thing: himself. He counted everything, he weighed and measured everything, but this great mathematician and organiser forgot to weigh and to measure himself. For everything in his realm he had a number by which he could tell its value, there was no number for himself to tell him his own worth in the world.
In fact, this great mathematician with all his cleverness, had never tried to find out the mathematical formula by which he could have determined, say, the worth of his head, or the value of the motions of his heart, or the weight of the deeds of his hands. Foolishly enough, he had never thought of valuing this whole counting business of his which he had established in his realm.
The same seems to be the trouble with this counting civilisation of ours, as well as with the individual lives of most of us. Most of us work all our life to achieve something. And we usually think we have succeeded if we can express our achievements in numbers; in numbers of pounds and shillings, in numbers of “hands” which we keep at work, in the number of the shop-windows which we own. We think we are getting on in life if the numbers over which we have control are rising. Most of us are possessed by a consuming passion for counting. Most of us are toiling all day long, to be able to sit down in the evening to count and count and count. We are so busy counting and slaving in the thraldom of the number that only very seldom does it occur to us to ask the question: What is the sense of all this counting? It seldom occurs to us that while we are busy creating sums and new numbers days and weeks and years pass, days and weeks and years of our short lives which will never come back again. And when we arrive at the end of our life’s journey and look back and draw up the great balance sheet and once more check all the accounts and are able to convince ourselves that all our life long we were good mathematicians and succeeded in piling up numbers upon numbers, then—notwithstanding all our successes—most of us do not feel very happy. Usually, we feel empty and miserable and lonely, and deep down in our hearts we know that, in spite of all our mathematical ingenuity, there was a miscalculation somewhere in life.
3
The miscalculation is to be seen in the fact that this mathematical civilisation never heeded the biblical commandment of counting. Let us consider it now anew.
I suggest we read and translate it as follows. And ye shall count unto you…. And ye shall count days and weeks … that your days on earth may be complete.
Ye shall count, yes. There is no other way of organising life efficiently but by counting. We must not forget our mathematics. But “Ye shall count unto you”, i.e., all your countings should be related to “you”, to man; to the true needs of man and not to his ambitions, vanities and passions. Ye shall count, yes. But do not forget to count and to measure and to weigh yourself with open and critical eyes. Ye shall count, certainly. But do not forget to take stock of the greatest fortune a man possesses, do not forget to count the days of your life. Did you work all day to amass new sums? Do not sit down in the evening to count the sums and numbers you made; first go into a quiet corner and say: This was one whole day of my short life. Ponder on the day, how you spent it. Was there any sense in it? And how are you to use the fruits of your toiling so that your work may not be the wasting of your days but the fulness of a life lived to some reasonable end and a satisfactory purpose?
That is how ye should count … that the days of your life may be complete; not rich, nor mighty or powerful, but complete; that there may be completeness, harmony, and perfection in human life.
This is the way mankind should exercise and apply its mathematical genius. Without it, there is no hope for our world; without it, all our technical achievements will enslave and ultimately destroy us, their creators; without it this “great and exact” civilisation of ours will remain one tragic bluff, one big deception.
At the present moment, it is nothing more than a tragic bluff. The bluff of mathematical miracles, the bluff of the number, the bluff of counting, is revealing itself in a world in which nothing counts but successful destruction.
What a bluff those miraculous machines of production are if all over the world they must be used for producing the tools of destruction. What a bluff finance and economics are if all over the world nations are wasting millions and millions daily, throwing them into the jaws of death.
There is one great lesson which should be learnt in this exposure of the bluff, and this is: that counting in itself does not count, the Number in itself is of no importance; that the only thing which matters is to what purpose we count, and who the man is who does the counting.
It has never been as clear as it is in these days that all our balance-sheets were miscalculations. They could give us neither happiness nor safety; and to-day, they cannot protect us against the tragedy of the bluff which is being revealed.
More and more we are compelled to recognise that the only thing which really matters is man himself, the fundamental thing worth counting is the days of man.
Let us not forget this when the tragedy of the bluff is over. Let us then wipe out the bluff for ever. Let us then count only things that are worth while counting. Let us then use the great power that is in the number so as best to serve the welfare of all men and not only the interests, ambitions, and vanities of the privileged few. Let us then have more respect for the hours and days and years of human life all over the world. Let us then continually weigh and measure the true value of our endeavours. Let us then count the days of our life, search them and scrutinize them unsparingly. And let this be the aim of all efforts and exertions: not might, not wealth, but completeness, harmony, perfection and peace.