Playboy Interview: Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer is a quadruple doctor — of music, theology, philosophy and medicine. He had authored several definitive religious texts and had been named principal of Strasbourg Theological College before he reached 30. He was also — and still is — recognized as the world's foremost authority on organ architecture, as an eminent Bach scholar, and as a celebrated interpreter of Bach's organ music. At the age of 38, in the full maturity of his multifaceted intellectual powers — culminating an eight-year period of spiritual stock-taking — Schweitzer elected to renounce the personal rewards and material blandishments of the Continent for a life of dedication to the sick in the jungles of French Equatorial Africa. Today, at a vigorous 88, he is acknowledged as one of the foremost philosophers of our age — and perhaps its most controversial medical figure.

A man of Schweitzer's stature might seem inhumanly Olympian if his towering intellectual and moral virtues did not shadow all-too-human shortcomings. He himself concedes that he is "arrogant" and "lacking in love"; he has been accused of ruling his tropical mission as a benevolent dictator; of countenancing the most unsanitary hospital conditions in Africa; of being more interested in the welfare of animals than that of human beings; and of clinging to a Kiplingesque tradition of big-brother colonialism. Few, however, will deny that he is one of the handful of great men our century has produced.

In the hope of probing the uncharted depths of this universal man, Playboy dispatched a special correspondent on a 1500-mile safari which ended with a journey by dug-out canoe up the swirling Ogooué River from the squalid timber village of Lambarene to the sandy beach in front of Schweitzer's jungle hospital. Beyond the beach stood the dark, smoky hospital buildings — surrounded by a dusky sea of goals, chickens, patients and their relatives, dotted with the bobbing white pith helmets which Schweitzer insists on as headgear for his medical staff.

Our three-day interview began at the hospital, where "le grand docteur" was supervising construction of a new residence building; it continued in the dining room where he and the staff shared dinner at a long refectory table, and where evenings he played his antique piano and read the Bible aloud in German by the light of a green-shaded paraffin-oil lamp. It resumed the following day at the nearby leper colony — built with his Nobel Peace Prize winnings — en route to which he insisted on walking ahead of the car to shoo chickens out of harm's way; and concluded in the hospital dispensary, where he sits for several hours each day attempting to diminish a mountainous backlog of unanswered correspondence from the outside world, while behind him a tattered little delegation of natives queued up for pills and potions. We first queried him about his half-century of isolation in his adopted homeland.

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Schweitzer, in the last few key years in African history you have been silent about African affairs with the exception of a statement on Katanga. Some persons have said your life in a small and isolated corner of Africa has prevented you from seeing the full course of African development. Do you feel that living here in the forest divorces you from outside events?

[A] Schweitzer: No, I am not at all cut off; but you will probably agree that it is sometimes better to maintain silence. I spoke out on the Congo because it is an important matter and I was horrified to see what was happening. The Congo has always been a mess, ever since the days of King Leopold. It is altogether too big, too artificial a creation of the Europeans of the 19th Century ever to survive as a single entity, a complete and living country. Even now, even with the assistance he is receiving, Adoula is not in control. Not by any means. The Congo is cracking and disintegrating and nothing anyone can do can hold it together indefinitely. Nor should it be held together. It is doomed by its own artificiality. It is strange, but these things do not seem to worry other people. The United States, for example, is compulsively pouring money into such a country. Why? After all, this is not just token aid, not just the sort of money sent to show dispassionate good will. It is vast sums of money and huge assemblies of equipment which are involved. I can only think that this is being done because the United States has this fixed idea, this obsession, that if it does not flood Africa with money, then all Africans will immediately become Communists. But, my friend, Africans will never become Communists. Because communism is too artificial — too much like the Congo itself in a way — too much an affair of foreign disciplines which are totally alien to the African spirit. No, no, communism is not for Africa — certainly not the communism people comprehend in other parts of the world.

[Q] Playboy: Some people see Africa as a microcosm reflecting the difficulties confronting the rest of the world. Do you?

[A] Schweitzer: On a certain plane, yes, I suppose so. Basically, men in Africa are looking for the same things as men in India or China or the United States of America. The surroundings differ and the manifestations, of course, may be more violent at a time of immense political change. But really, all people want is a way of life, a religion.

[Q] Playboy: As an observer of the African situation, what solution do you see?

[A] Schweitzer: My friend, I am not a prophet. But time will certainly bring a solution suitable to the African himself; and that solution will come all the quicker if the pressures tugging the African this way and that are removed. The solution will not come with stupidities such as the United Nations' intervention in Katanga. They had no right to do this. They are bandits! Assassins! Katanga is a state in its own right and Mr. Tshombe is a wise and very competent individual. Unfortunately he is also a very sick man. There is no sound reason why he should not have been allowed to establish his own, self-contained state. Dag Hammarskjöld, although he was a very great man in other respects, made a grave mistake over Katanga. I think he himself realized this because he sent me a telegram just a few days before his death saying he was forced into the Katangan war. In the long term, what has been achieved by the war in Katanga? What will be the situation there in one year or two, when all the United Nations troops have been removed, perhaps not only from Katanga itself but from the rest of the Congo. As I said, Mr. Tshombe is a sick man; perhaps he will no longer be able to rule in his own country. So what has the fighting and bloodshed achieved?

[Q] Playboy: You have repeatedly stated that one of your guiding principles is "reverence for life." As we understand it, this is a respect for all forms of life, from the highest to the lowest. Isn't this doctrine incompatible with the daily needs of men? And isn't it particularly at odds with your own work as a doctor?

[A] Schweitzer: Who is to say which is the highest form and which is the lowest? Are you going to draw a line and say "Below this, life does not matter"? You cannot have a scale of values making that chicken higher than this goat. Mankind must accept that mystery of our life which sometimes makes the taking of life inevitable. Yes, it is true that a doctor is faced with continual and puzzling difficulties. A man has life, but so does a microbe. And sometimes it is necessary to kill that microbe to save the man and this involves a decision. The man with reverence for life must accept the responsibility for destroying that life. A man must think and meditate not only about the mysteries of his own life but about the links between his own life and the multitude of other lives around him. He must learn not only to consider and have respect for his own life but for all other life forms. And this need not be difficult. Because the man who thinks, and keeps thinking, is almost bound to progress from awareness and respect for his own life to sharp awareness of the lives around him.

[Q] Playboy: Was this basic principle of your philosophy — respect for life, as you just called it — always in the back of your mind, or does it date only from your years at Lambarene?

[A] Schweitzer: Whether it was always in my mind, who can say? But certainly it was here that it became clear, while I was on the river, that this one phrase came into my mind which clarified my thoughts and resolved my struggle to give coherence to my point of view. It seemed, I remember, incredible to me that it had not been thought of by others, but only by an imbecile like me.

[Q] Playboy: You have long said man should be governed by the rule of reason, and you have added that civilized man must follow four principles: he must not lie, must not steal, must learn to value property, and to be kind to animals. Don't you feel that this quartet should be expanded to include, say, kindness to human beings?

[A] Schweitzer: Surely respect for human beings follows naturally from respect for animals. The principles you have mentioned are merely an outline, not a complete philosophy of life. But if you follow through the deep implications, for example, of kindness to animals, the love of God must surely follow.

[Q] Playboy: Do you feel that formal religion, and in particular, Christianity, is still a major force in the world?

[A] Schweitzer: No, it is not; not in a true sense. You have only to look at the wars in which mankind is now and then engaged to see that this could not happen if religion in any absolute way was a force. But there is a longing for religion among many people. Especially since the War, the letters I receive show a longing for religion. Christianity in the last century and at present is often untrue to itself. It has lost the essential element of willingness to love, and of reaching communion with God through that willingness.

[Q] Playboy: If Christianity has in the last century become untrue to itself, would you say that the ideals of the last century are now worthless?

[A] Schweitzer: An ideal which has true merit cannot be worthless or out-of-date. Time has no impact on the true ideal. But it can become obscured, and that is often what has happened. Mankind today is technically brilliant but often spiritually empty because the habit of fundamental thought has been abandoned. Yet fundamental and rational thinking is essential for mankind to reach true awareness. Men must discover for themselves, in their own minds, the truth of existence. Or they must try to discover it and up here, here in their minds, explore the mysteries of the world. They must struggle against that spirit of the age which tries to submerge independent thought under a blanket. This struggle is supremely important.

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Schweitzer, at the moment of your greatest recognition in the academic worlds you had chosen, you suddenly embarked on a new career. Was this — as some persons have suggested — because of an unrequited love affair or a feeling of inadequacy in theology and music? Or was it your reaction to what you just called the "spirit of the age"?

[A] Schweitzer: These suggestions have been made before; but really, the story is a simple one although a little long. I decided early that my life up to the age of about 30 would be to do as I wished; but after that, it would be for my fellow men. As to why I chose to be a doctor, here in Lambarene, this I have explained in Out of My Life and Thought. I wanted to apply in a material way a Christian concept of love, and medicine seemed the obvious course. Lambarene was not, of course, always part of my ambition. It was only after I read about the difficulties the Paris Missionary Society was having here in finding a staff, after the mission had been established by some Americans, that I chose Equatorial Africa. I think it was the right choice, because, here, human beings were struggling to exist and needed help.

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Schweitzer, your hospital is now 50 years old. In the past few years, it has been severely criticized by some visitors who say it is dirty, primitive and inefficient. It has been alleged that crates of modern drugs have been left to spoil in the open and never used.

[A] Schweitzer: I never reply to that sort of criticism. But so far as drugs are concerned you can look for yourself — here, in the dispensary. You see, every consignment of drugs is carefully put on the shelves and issued as needed. I have here about four-hundred patients, not many nurses and only about six doctors — sometimes more, sometimes less, because many doctors come as visitors for a short time from all over the world. This year we have had a great American dentist, for example, and there is a Japanese doctor running the leper village two kilometers away. I have tried to create a hospital suitable to the circumstances of the forest. Many of the people who come here have never seen anything of civilization before and to throw them into a European type of hospital would make them feel strange and shocked. Here, they are surrounded by their families, by people they know. At the same time, the relatives who come with them can look after many of their physical needs.

[Q] Playboy: Looking back on a long, full life, do you have any regrets?

[A] Schweitzer: No, I have no regrets. I never have regrets because they are pointless and negative.

[Q] Playboy: It is some time since your last book was published. Are you writing another at the moment?

[A] Schweitzer: Oh now, my friend, you do not ask a woman if she is pregnant...! There are many things I wish to say still, especially about nuclear disarmament. But a book? You had better wait and see.

[Q] Playboy: You have said that the great secret of success is to go through life "as a man who never gets used up." Though you have achieved much, what do you feel you still have to do?

[A] Schweitzer: All the time I am allowed to remain here on earth I want to continue building my hospital. There is so much to do; always so much. And building with the hands is satisfying — and creative. Apart from that, there is the bomb. I want, before I die, to see all atomic weapons banned, no matter who makes them or what especial name they give them. This is the only possible hope for mankind if we are to avoid self-destruction. Already I have fought against this insanity for several years with my friend Bertrand Russell and others.

[Q] Playboy: What you are asking for is not just a ban on tests, but a ban on atomic weapons altogether. Do you think there is a prospect of achieving this?

[A] Schweitzer: It is not just a question of hope: we must achieve it. Do you want mankind to be obliterated?

[Q] Playboy: You have said that you do not intend to leave Lambaréné again. Don't you think you would be more effective if you personally urged this ban during a visit to Europe or America?

[A] Schweitzer: No, I shall not go away. An English university wanted me to go there this year but I told them the same thing. This is my home, this is where I am needed most and in any case, there is no difficulty in communicating with people. I spend several hours a day writing letters and my staff helps me. I am in almost constant touch with others regarding the bomb and I cannot see how my physical presence away from Lambaréné could be of particular help.

[Q] Playboy: Let us assume for a moment that the world does succeed in banning atomic weapons. We would still possess many means of waging war, and would still be possessed of many causes which might provoke conflict. Considering the differences which split the world, do you think war can be averted?

[A] Schweitzer: My friend, we must hope so. But deep-down among men, you know, the differences are not always as great as they appear on the surface. Look — quick! — look at those two chickens fighting under the tree. See how they rush at one another, make a big noise and ruffle their feathers ... and now, what? You see, it's all over. It was just bluff, just noise. Big nations are like those chickens. They also like to make big noises. But very often it means no more than two chickens, squabbling under a tree.

[Q] Playboy: But in today's world, innocent bluffs and squabbles — through misunderstanding or miscalculation — can quickly explode into global war, so much so that some persons have come to judge man's progress solely in terms of weapons. Do you think that man's historical predilection toward warfare belies the concept that he is basically good?

[A] Schweitzer: Why should man exist if he is bad? All living things have an elemental goodness, but in mankind, his true nature is often largely submerged, like a log in the river, by the environment he has created about him. But simply because it is submerged does not mean that idealism does not exist and despite times of pessimism I think the day will come when that idealism is allowed its full function and flowering.