Edited from Unancestral Voice by Owen Barfield (1965).
"I still wonder", said Chevalier, "if it is really as important as you suggest for people to find a meaning in history?"
"I will tell you one reason why it is important", came the swift answer. "As long as a man sees history as a meaningless jumble of events, he will see his own life - which is a part of history - and the lives of those around him in the same light... Just one-damn-thing -after another."
To find meaning in our own lives, or the lives of our friends, family, or those we admire - entails that history has a meaning; which entails that history has a direction, a destiny, an intended plan that is good.
It is also necessary that our own lives (and everybody else's life) be joined together; and joined with the destiny of history.
For there to be meaning in one thing requires a great deal more - in fact meaning in one thing requires meaning in every-thing.
And - taking a further step, which can't be explained briefly here, but may be obvious... Meaning in everything also requires that everything be alive and (to some degree, in some way) conscious...
Conversely... to deny meaning, shape, purpose to history (including that history which is the origin and evolution of the planet and life) - is to deny meaning in Everything.
