Duty Or Beauty?

In an essay entitled, “Twenty Minutes of Reality,” the author describes a “new-life vision” he received as he lay in a hospital bed, convalescing from surgery. He writes,

I saw into reality, and there was the ecstasy which is always there, but which we are entitled to perceive only on rare and fleeting occasions. I had undergone a certain amount of physical pain, and had suffered for a short time the most acute mental depression which it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. I had discovered a terrible secret, and the secret was that there was no God; or if there was one, He was indifferent to all human suffering.

“There was a March wind blowing, but in every other respect it was an ordinary, commonplace day,” he writes. “Yet, here in this everyday setting, and entirely unexpectedly, my eyes were opened, and for the first time in all my life I caught a glimpse of the ecstatic beauty of reality.

“I saw no…