Just yesterday I was thinking, “I’ve just got to recover that fantastic quotation from the Joy Davidman Lewis biography I listened to on audio last year.” (The downside of audio books—and the reason I typically “read” only fiction and biography in audio format—is that I can’t take down quotations easily for future use.)
And then today Alan Jacobs comes through for me, quoting the very thing I was wanting to recover. It’s brilliant. Joy, later in life, describes the way she thought as a young, ardent materialist. I love the last line:
Men, I said, are only apes. Virtue is only custom. Life is only an electrochemical reaction. Love, art, and altruism are only sex. The universe is only matter. Matter is only energy. I forget what I said energy is only.
Everybody has an ultimate reference point, whether they’ve thought it out rigorously or not.
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