The Price of Altruism Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the individual. But in his own life George had failed to find the balance.
    This was bad enough, and yet it could always be chalked up to circumstance; coincidences, after all, were what defined the fundamentally incontrollable human experience. In truth a much more sinister realization was what had gotten to him, something that could not be a mere coincidence. It was a discovery infinitely more devastating. For no matter how much he wanted to forget himself, in the end he couldn’t. How could he discern if his selflessness was not just a masquerade, the self fooling the self only to please the self and nothing more? How could he know, apart from the ant, the monkey, and all the other creatures that abound in nature, whether his goodness, human goodness, was really genuine and pure? 18
    He had been blessed with an unusual intelligence. He had seen things that the greatest minds had failed to see before him. And yet all his rational powers stood useless before the conundrum: It was impossible to know. Trying to transcend science he had found that he couldn’t transcend biology: Despite the yearnings of his soul he was trapped in the prison of his brain. And, living in a squat with a broken window in the London winter, far away from his daughters, dejected, lonely, and weak, it may just have been a realization too difficult to bear. “Might go hay-wire but will never be humdrum,” his Harvard interviewers had presciently divined back in 1940 when he arrived as a young hopeful—and they were right. In utter despair and utter anguish, George had finally, insolvably, hit “Wittgenstein’s wall.”
     
     
    In 1996, Bill Hamilton wrote Kathleen Price a letter remembering his old friend. George’s life, he explained, was like a novel, “kept exciting and unexpected right up to the last page.” 19 Hamilton, who was to die at the height of his powers three years later from malaria-induced internal hemorrhaging following an ill-advised trip to the Congo to discover the origins of the virus responsible for AIDS, thought that George’s life had been a “completed work of art.” He may have been right. For, in a deep sense, what makes great works of art complete is that they remain forever incomplete. Explanations for events are at once myriad and mysterious; putting down a book, or walking away from a painting or a sculpture, or finishing listening to a piece of music, one always leaves with lingering thoughts that are neither questions nor answers. And so, whether George killed himself because of illness, unrequited love, confusion, or philosophical despair, his life and death continue to provide invaluable instruction. By crashing into “Wittgenstein’s wall,” George teaches us, like a great work of art, where the limits of our reason confront the depths of our soul.
    Nothing makes this clearer than a sheet of paper Hamilton found among the discarded effects in the squat. Written by Richard W. De Haan, “teacher of the Radio Bible Classic, worldwide ministry through radio, television, literature,” it was titled “Love is the Greatest!” and Hamilton paid little attention to it. But there was an important message there. “Men and women have always yearned for understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and deeds of loving-kindness from their fellowmen, but often they’ve been sadly disappointed,” it read.
    And today more than ever in a world torn by strife and dissension, the crying need is for a real demonstration of love. You see, love would pour the oil of quietness upon the troubled waters of human relationships, heal the ugly wounds of strife and contention, and bring together those separated by hatred, jealousy and selfishness. No wonder the apostle concludes the tremendous 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians by emphasizing that of all the gifts of the Spirit, including faith and hope, the greatest is love. 20
     
    George Price lies in an unmarked grave in the Saint Pancras Cemetery in North London, flanked by a