By DONALD DeMARCO
We now know, thanks to the science of physics, that stars do perish. A star can exist in relative stability for billions of years, but eventually runs out of hydrogen. After that, when it exhausts its supply of the helium it has concocted through fusion, it runs out of fuel and “dies.”
One can hardly fault the ancients for believing that stars were imperishable. To the ancient Egyptians, the imperishable stars suggested a link between this world of mortality and a world of eternality. They seemingly offered evidence of life after death.
Aristotle held that the stars were composed of a fifth element that was essentially different from air, earth, fire, and water. This fifth element, from which is derived the word “quintessence” (quinta + essentia), was, for the great philosopher, imperishable.
The ancients, however, were not entirely wrong. The human soul longs for eternity and has always been finding suggestions of it even in a world that is dying. Shakespeare referred to man as the “quintessence of dust.” This raised the question of whether the soul of man, that which is “quintessential,” is itself a sign of immortality.
G.K. Chesterton used the image of the stars to suggest man’s transcendent destiny:
“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?”
Our world of shadows intimates a higher world of light. Are we human beings paradoxical creatures, composed of starlight and earth dust? We should never think, however, that the dust component is dominant. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has reminded us, “Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul” (A Psalm of Life).
We are mortal beings who have occasional glimpses into our immortality. For children, time moves so slowly that an entire summer can seem like an eternity. This is why Phyllis McGinley can interpret the bell of the Good Humor Man as heralding a life without end. It is a sound that makes the “promise plain to every comer: Unending sweets, imperishable summer.”
Yet summer passes, and each successive summer passes more swiftly than its predecessor, leaving older people to look elsewhere to find symbols of the imperishable.
In his Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood, William Wordsworth laments the fact that “the radiance which was once so bright be now for ever taken from my sight” and seeks signs of meaning and immortality “In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.”
We may no longer view stars, as did the ancients, as imperishable. But we do look at them as something on which we should hitch our wagons. Stars now symbolize success.
When the great opera diva Geraldine Farrar once interrupted Arturo Toscanini during one of his famous outbursts, she insisted that he should not treat her so rudely since she is a star. The maestro’s tart reply brought her back to earth, “Only the sky has stars.” Toscanini was right, though we still cling to the notion that being a star grants us very special privileges.
“Die?,” asked the legendary movie star, John Barrymore. “I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.” Barrymore passed away on May 29, 1942. His star status had not immunized him against that very conventional occurrence. Stars indeed perish, both the ones situated in the heavens as well as those crowned by Hollywood.
On the first day of creation, according to Genesis, God said, “Let there be light.” And “God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” If stars appeared early in God’s creation, perhaps it was to symbolize His own imperishability. But “light” was merely a stage. And what a stage it is! The sun, which is but a medium-size star, comprises 99.9 percent of the solar system’s mass.
Nonetheless, it is man, not light, that is made in His image. We should not mistake the stage for the drama. Stars may remind us of our immortality, but it is what they awaken in us that is the source of everlasting life.
What man has in dignity far surpasses what stars have in magnitude. In the final analysis, it is quality, not quantity that counts. Stars cannot comprehend themselves. There is a second meaning to the word “light.” It refers to that power of illumination that resides in the mind of man by which, as Aristotle says, he “can know all things.”
The universe would not be complete without a being, such as man, who could comprehend and enjoy the majesty and beauty of the cosmos. The stars are “light,” but man is “enlightened.” Stars perish. Man prevails.
This is the great cosmic paradox that puzzles physicists who see the universe as hastening, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, to eventual cosmic death. It is the humble homo sapiens who outlasts the stars.
The two exceedingly different factors that fascinated the philosopher Immanuel Kant were the “starry skies above” and “the moral law within”. How could such disparate realities be in some way interconnected? Only the Creator could bring such seemingly antithetic factors into harmony with each other. Stars inspire us, and yet, in their own mysterious way, help us to understand that it is the Word of God and the soul of man that endure forever.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, CT, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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