HANDING ON THE TORCH
Discussing “The Values of Life,” Dr Ernest Barker, political economist and philosopher, writes: —Like runners in a relay race, men hand on the torch of life. We are all runners, keeping some sort of a course and running, with such patience as we can command, the race that is set before us. As the steps begin to lag, and the torch of this mortal life is about to pass from our hands, we naturally ask ourselves, “ What is the race which I have been running; what is the course and faith I have kept; what is the purpose and meaning of this flame of life which I have carried? ” Plato, in a passage of the sixth book of the “ Laws,” uses the same metaphor in regard to marriage and the life of the family. “To beget and to rear children, to hand on life, like a torch, from one generation to another, and to maintain the service of God according to the law ’’—that is the phrase of Plato. It states, in simple terms, one obvious meaning and purpose of life.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 23688, 21 December 1938, Page 12
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185HANDING ON THE TORCH Otago Daily Times, Issue 23688, 21 December 1938, Page 12
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