The Whence and the Whither of Man Part 12

The truth would appear to be that the law is present in environment, but hard to read; but it is stamped upon our structure and being so deeply and plainly that the dullest of us cannot fail to read it. We learned the fact of gravitation the first time that we fell down in learning to walk, long afterward we learned that its law guided earth and moon. And it is the presence of this law within us, and our own knowledge that we are conscious of it, that makes man without excuse. But conformity to that which is deepest in environment often, always, demands non-conformity to some of the most palpable of surrounding conditions.

There is no better statement of the ultimate law of conformity than the words of Paul: "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of G.o.d."

And this difference is exactly what I have been trying to put before you. The mollusk conformed, but the vertebrate conformed in a very different way, and was transformed, "metamorphosed," to translate the Greek word literally, into something higher. And let us not forget that man conforms consciously and voluntarily, if at all; he is able to read in himself and environment the law to which lower forms have been compelled unconsciously to conform.

These facts merely ill.u.s.trate a great law of life. No man's eye, much less hand, can grasp the whole of the present and at the same time the future. Rather what we usually call present advantage is not advantage at all, but the first step in degeneration. If one will be rich in old age he must deny himself some gratifications in youth; his present reward is his self-control. If a man will climb higher than his fellows he must expect to be sometimes solitary; his reward is the ever-widening view, though the path be rougher and the air more biting than in their lower alt.i.tude. If he point to heights yet to attain, the majority will disbelieve him or say, "Our present height was good enough for our ancestors, it is good enough for us.

Why sacrifice a good thing and make yourself ridiculous scrambling after what in the end may prove unattainable?" If you discover new truths you will certainly be called a subverter of old ones. And this is entirely natural. The upward path was never intended to be easy.

Read the "Gorgias" of Plato, and let us listen to the closing words of Socrates in that dialogue: "And so, bidding farewell to those things which most men account honors, and looking onward to the truth, I shall earnestly endeavor to grow, so far as may be, in goodness, and thus live, and thus, when the time comes, die. And, to the best of my power, I exhort all other men also; and you especially, in my turn, I exhort to this life and contest, which is, I protest, far above all contests here." You must remember that Callicles has been taunting Socrates with his lack of worldly wisdom and the certainty that in any court of justice he would be absolutely helpless because of his lack of knowledge of the rhetorician's art: "This way then we will follow, and we will call upon all other men to do the same, not that which you believe in and call upon me to follow; for that way, Callicles, is worth nothing."

And Socrates met the end which he expected: death at the hands of his fellow-citizens.

And here perhaps a little glimmer of light is thrown into one of the darkest corners of human experience. The wise old author of Ecclesiastes writes: "There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness; and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity." "I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all" (Eccles. viii.

14; ix. 11). It is this element of chance that threatens to make a mockery of effort, and sometimes seems to make life but a travesty.

The terrible feature of Tennyson's description of Arthur's last, dim battle in the west is not the "crash of battle-axe on shattered helm," but the all-engulfing mist.

Perhaps this is all intended to teach us that riches and favor, and even bread, are not the essentials of life, and that failure to attain these is not such ruin as we often think. But no man ever struggled for wisdom, righteousness, unselfishness, and heroism without attaining them; even though the more he attained the more dissatisfied he became with all previous attainment. And if our slight attainments in wisdom and knowledge always brought wealth and favor, we might rest satisfied with the latter, instead of clearly recognizing that wisdom must be its own reward. Uncertainty and deprivation are the best and only training for a hero, not sure reward paid in popular plaudits.

Political economists speak of the productiveness and prospectiveness of capital. We may well borrow these terms, using them in a somewhat modified sense. In our sense capital is productive in so far as it gives an immediate return; it is prospective in proportion as the return is expected largely in the future. A "pocket" may yield an immediate very large return of gold nuggets at a very slight expense of labor and appliances, but it is soon exhausted. In a mine the ore may be poor near the surface, but grow richer as the shaft deepens; the vein is narrow above, but widens below. The returns are at first small, its inexhaustible richness becomes apparent only after considerable time and labor. The value of the "pocket" is purely productive, that of the mine largely or purely prospective. Indeed it may be opened at a loss. But even a rich mine may be worked purely for its productive value; it may be "skinned."

Let us apply this thought to the development of a species; although what is true of the species will generally be true of the individual also, for the development of the two is, in the main, parallel. In the animal all functions are to a certain extent productive, and all directly or indirectly prospective. When we examine the sequence of functions we cannot but notice how largely their value is prospective. As long as a lower function is rising to supremacy in the animal, it appears to be retained purely for its productive value; thus digestion in hydra or gastraea. But after a time animals appeared which had some muscle and nerve. And, by the process of natural selection, those animals which used digestion as an end for its productive value became food for, and gave place to, those using it as a means of supporting muscle and nerve of greater prospective value. And similarly, those animals which used muscle, or even mind, productively gave place to others using these prospectively.

In other words, the functions and capacities of any animal, the extent of its conformity to environment, may be regarded as its capital. The animal may use this capital productively or prospectively. It may spend its income, and more too; it may increase its capital. Now social capital will always fall sooner or later to those communities whose members use it most prospectively, who are willing to forego, to quite an extent, present enjoyment, and look for future return. The same is true of all development.

Sessile forms and mollusks, and, in a less degree, crabs and reptiles, worked for immediate return. They are like extravagant heirs who draw on their capital and sooner or later come to poverty.

The primitive vertebrate, the mammal, and the other ancestors of man used their capital prospectively, and it increased, as if at compound interest.

The spendthrift appears at first sight to have the greatest enjoyment in life, the rising business man works hard and foregoes much. I believe that the latter is really by far the happier of the two. But, if you can spend only a day or two in a city, and your examination is superficial, you may easily make the mistake of considering the spendthrift as the most successful man in the community. So, in our brief visit to the world in times past, we picked out the crab, the reptile, and the carnivore as its rising members.

Once more, capital can be spent very quickly; to use it prospectively requires time. This is a truism; but it does no harm to call attention to truisms which have been neglected. Organs and powers of great prospective value are slow and difficult of development. If their increase is to be at all rapid, they must start early. If their development and culture is deferred, there will be little or no advance, but probably degeneration.

Extravagance grows rapidly and soon becomes irresistible; habits of saving must be formed early. The same is true of the development of all other virtues.

There is in the child an orderly sequence of development of mental traits. While these powers are in their earlier, so to speak embryonic, stages of development, they can be fostered and increased or r.e.t.a.r.ded. They are still plastic. Very early in a child's life acquisitiveness shows itself; he begins to say "I," and "mine," and desires things to be his "very own." And this can be fostered so that the child will grow up a "covetous machine." Or he may be taught to share with others.

Not so much later, while the child is still in the lower grades of his school life, comes the period of moral development. If, during this period, these powers are fostered and cultivated, they may, and probably will, be dominant throughout his life. And herein lies the dignity and glory of the unappreciated, underpaid, and overworked teachers of our "lower" schools, that they have the opportunity to cultivate these moral powers of the child during these most critical years of his life. Repression or neglect here works life-long and irreparable harm. The young man goes out into the world. Here "practical" men continually instruct him by precept upon precept, line upon line, that he cannot afford to be generous until he has acquired wealth; that he must first win success for himself, and that he can then help others. And, unless his character is like pasture-grown oak, he follows and improves upon their teachings. _He reverses the sequence of functions._ He puts acquisitiveness first and right and sterling honesty and unselfishness second. For a score or more of years he labors. At first he honestly intends to build up a strong character and a generous nature just as soon as he can afford to; but for the present he cannot afford it. If he is to succeed, he must do as others do and walk in the beaten track. He wins wealth and position, or learning and fame. He now has the ability and means to help others, but he no longer cares to do so.

Loyalty to truth, sterling honesty--the genuine, not the conventional counterfeit--unselfishness, in one word, character, these are plants of slow growth. They require cultivation by habit through long years. In his case they have become aborted and incapable of rejuvenescence. But his rudiment of a moral nature feels twinges of remorse. He ought not to have reversed the sequence of functions, and he knows it. But he cannot retrace his steps. He made the development of character impossible when he made wealth his first and chief aim. If he has a million dollars he tries to insure his soul by leaving in his will one-tenth to build a church, or, possibly, one-half for foreign missions. In the latter case he will be held up as a s.h.i.+ning example to all the youth of the land, and the churches will ring with his praises. But what has been the effect of his life on the moral, social capital of the community? Is the world better or worse for his life? He has all his life been disseminating the germs of a soul-blight more infectious and deadly than any bodily disease.

If he has made learning or fame his chief aim, he probably has not the money to buy soul-insurance. He takes refuge in agnosticism, like an ostrich in a bush. His agnosticism is in his will; he does not wish to see. Or its cause is atrophy, through disuse, of moral vision. He cannot see. There are agnostics of quite another stamp, whom we must respect and honor for their sterling honesty and high character, though we may have little respect for their philosophical tenets. But how much has our scholar advanced the morality of the community? He has probably done even more harm than the business man, who is a mere "covetous machine."

The "practical" man has reversed the sequence of functions.

Character is, and must be, first; and wealth, learning, power, and fame are the materials, often exceedingly refractory, which it must subjugate to its growth and use. And this subjugation is anything but easy. The reversal of the sequence results in a moral degradation and poverty indefinitely more dangerous to the community than the slums of our great cities. For these may be controlled and cleansed; but the moral slum floods our legislatures and positions of honor and trust, and invades the churches. The mental and moral water-supply of the community is loaded with disease-germs.

The social wealth of a community is the sum total of the wealth of its individual members. And a community is truly wealthy only when this wealth is, to a certain extent, diffused. If there is any truth in our argument that the sequence of functions culminates in righteousness and unselfishness, the real social wealth of a community consists in its moral character, not in its money, or even in its intelligence. We may rest a.s.sured that character, resulting in industry and economy, will bring sufficient means of subsistence, so that all its members will be fed and housed and clothed. And art and culture, of the most enn.o.bling and inspiring sort, will surely follow. And even if such literature failed as largely composes our present _fin-de-siecle_ garbage-heap, we would not regret its absence. That community will and must survive in which the largest proportion of members make the acc.u.mulation of character their chief and first aim. And to this community every rival must in time yield its place and power, and all its acquisitions. And in every advancing community the position of any cla.s.s or profession will in time be determined by its moral wealth.

But this moral wealth is intangible. The rewards and penalties of moral law easily escape notice in our hasty and superficial study of life. The G.o.d immanent in our environment often seems to hide himself. The altar of Jehovah is fallen down, and Baal's temples are crowded with loud-mouthed wors.h.i.+ppers. The bribes of present enjoyment and of immediate success loom up before us, and we doubt if any other success is possible.

But the law of progress, even now so dimly discernible in environment, is written in our minds in letters of fire. For we have already seen that environment can be understood only by tracing its effects in the development of life. What is best and highest in us is the record of the working of what is best and highest in environment. And the personal G.o.d so dimly seen in environment is revealed in man's soul. Man must study himself, if he is to know what environment requires of him. And if the knowledge of himself and of the laws of his being is the highest knowledge, is not the vision of, and struggle toward, higher attainments, not yet realized and hence necessarily foreseen, the only mode of farther progress?

And what is this pursuit of, and devotion to, ideals not yet realized and but dimly foreseen, if it is not Faith, "the substance of things hoped for, and evidence of things not seen?" By it alone can man "obtain a good report." Man must "walk by faith, not by sight." "For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

CHAPTER VIII

MAN

In Kingsley's fascinating historical romance, Raphael Aben-Ezra says to Hypatia, "Is it not possible that we have been so busy discussing what the philosopher should be, that we have forgotten that he must first of all be a man?" This truth we too often forget. No statesman, philosopher, least of all teacher, can be truly great who is not, first of all, and above all, a great man. And in our study of man are we not p.r.o.ne to forget that he stands in certain very definite and close relations with surrounding nature?

Man has been the object of so much special study, his position, owing to his higher moral and mental power, is so unique that he has often been regarded not only as a special creation, but as created to occupy a position not only unique, but also exceptional, above many of the very laws of nature, and not bound by them. Many speak and write of him as if it were his chief glory and prerogative to be as far removed as possible, not only from the animal, but even from the whole realm of nature. The mistake of making him an exception arises, after all, not so much from too high a conception of man, at least of his possibilities, as from too low a view of nature.

But however this view may have arisen, it is one-sided and mistaken.

Man certainly has a place in Nature--not above it. If he is the goal toward which the ascending series of living forms has continually tended, he is a part of the series--the real goal lies far above him.

Pascal says, "It is dangerous to show a man too clearly how closely he resembles the brute without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is equally dangerous to impress upon him his greatness without his lowliness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is of great advantage to point out to him both characteristics side by side."

A great German thinker began his work on the human soul with a discussion of the law of gravitation.

All study of man must begin with the study of the atom. Man's life we have seen to be the aggregate of the work of all the cells of his body. But the protoplasm which composes his cells is a chemical compound, and hence subject to all the laws of all the atoms of which it is composed. And its molecules, or the smallest mechanically separable compounds of these atoms, are arranged and related according to the laws of physics, so as to permit or produce the play of certain forces which are always the result of atomic or molecular combination. Every motive or thought demands the combustion of a certain amount of material which has been already a.s.similated in the microscopic cellular laboratories of our body.

Every vital activity is manifested at least through chemical and physical forces. And the elements of the fuel for our engines we receive through plants from the inorganic world. For the plant, as we have seen, stores up as potential energy in its compounds the actual energy of the sun's rays. And thus man lives and thinks by energy, obtained originally from the sun. But man not only consumes food and fuel. The complicated protoplasm is continually wearing out and being replaced. Every cell in our bodies is a centre toward which particles of material stream to be a.s.similated and form for a time a part of the living substance, and then to be cast out again as dead matter. Our very existence depends upon this continual change. There is synthesis of simple substances into more complex compounds, and then a.n.a.lysis of these complex compounds into simpler, and from this latter process results the energy manifested in every vital action. We are all whirlpools on the surface of nature; when the whirling ceases we disappear. Man, like every other living being, exists in a condition of constant interchange with surrounding nature; he is rooted in innumerable ways in the inorganic world.

And because of these close relations the great characteristic of living beings is the necessity and power of conformity to environment. Hence a very common definition of life is the continual adjustment of internal relations to external relations or conditions. To a very slight extent man can rise superior to certain of the ruder elements of his surroundings, but he gains this victory only by learning and following the laws of the very environment which he succeeds in subjecting to himself. Indeed his higher development and finer build bring him into touch with an indefinitely wider range of surroundings than even the lower animal.

Forces, conditions, and relations which never enter the sphere of life of lower forms, crowd and press upon him and he cannot escape them. His higher position, instead of freeing him from dependence upon environment and subjection to law, makes him thus more sensitive, as well as more capable of exact conformity to an environment of almost infinite complexity; and more sure of absolute ruin, if ignorant, negligent, or disobedient. The words of the German poet are literally true:

"Nach ehernen, eisernen, grossen Gesetzen, Mussen wir alle unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden."

But man is an animal. And the princ.i.p.al characteristic of an animal is that it eats a certain amount of solid food. The plant lives on fluid nutriment, and this comes to it by the process of diffusion in every drop of water and breath of air. The acquisition of food requires no effort, and the plant makes none. It has therefore always remained stationary and almost insensible. Not taking the first step it has never taken any of the higher ones. But solid food would not, as a rule, come to the animal--though stationary and sessile animals are not uncommon in the water--he must go in search of it. This called into play the powers of locomotion and perception. And in the sequence of function we have seen digestion calling for the development of muscle; and muscle, of nerve and brain. And the brain became the organ of mind.

Man as a mere animal is necessarily active and energetic; otherwise he stagnates and degenerates. Labor is a curse, but work a blessing; and man's best work, of every kind, is done in the friction of life, not in ease and quiet. Man is, further, a being composed of cells, tissues, and organs, which were successively developed for him by the lower animal kingdoms. The old view, that man was the microcosm, had in it a certain amount of every important truth. We need to be continually reminded of our indebtedness in a thousand ways to the lowest and most insignificant forms of life.

Man is a vertebrate animal. This means that he has a locomotive, not protective, skeleton, composed of cartilage--a tough, elastic, organic material, hardened, as a rule, by the deposition of mineral salts, mainly phosphate of lime, in exceedingly fine particles, so as to form a h.o.m.ogeneous, flawless, elastic, tough, light, and unyielding skeleton, held together by firm ligaments.

The skeleton is internal, and this fact, as we have seen, gives the possibility of large size. And size is in itself no unimportant factor. Professor Lotze maintains that without man's size and strength, agriculture and the working of metals, and thus all civilization, would have been impossible. But we have already seen that there is an extreme of size, _e.g._, in the elephant, which makes its possessor clumsy, able to exist only where there are large amounts of food in limited areas, slow to reproduce, and lacking in adaptability. This extreme also is avoided in man; in this, as in many other particulars, he holds the golden mean. But we have also seen that large size is, as a rule, correlated with long life and great opportunity for experience and observation. And these are the foundations of intelligence. Hence the deliverance of the higher vertebrate, and especially of man, from any iron-bound subjection to instinct.

And here another question of vital importance meets us. Is man's life at present as long as it should or can be? The question is exceedingly difficult, but a negative answer seems more probable. We cannot but hope that, with a better knowledge of our physical structure, a clearer vision of the dangers to which we are exposed, more study of the laws of physiology, heredity, and of our environment, and above all, less reckless disregard of these in a mad pursuit of pleasure, wealth, and position, man's period of mature, healthy, and best activity may be lengthened, perhaps, even a score of years. The mitigation of hurry and worry alone, the two great curses of our American civilization, might postpone the collapse of our nervous systems longer than we even dream. And if we could add even five years to the working life of our statesmen, scholars, and discoverers, the work of these last five years, with the advantage of all previously acquired knowledge and experience, might be of more value than that of their whole previous life. Human advance could not but be greatly, or even vastly, accelerated.

Moreover, we have seen that the history of vertebrates is really the history of the development of the cerebrum, forebrain or large brain, as we call it in man. This is the seat in man of consciousness, thought, and will. This portion as a distinct and new lobe first appears in lowest vertebrates, increases steadily in size from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, reaches its most rapid development by mammals, and its culmination in man. During the tertiary period--the last of the great geological periods--the brain in many groups of mammals increased in size, both absolutely and relatively, eight to tenfold.

Dr. Holmes says, that the education of a child should begin a century or two before its birth; man really began his mental education at least as early as the appearance of vertebrate life.

But man is a mammal. This means that every organ is at its best. The digestive system, while making but a small part of the weight of the body, and built mainly on the old plan, is wonderfully perfect in its microscopic details. The muscles are heavy and powerful, arranged with the weight near the axis of the body, and replaced near the ends of the appendages by light, tough sinews. The higher mammal is this compact, light, and agile. The skeleton is strong, and the levers of the appendages are fitted to give rapidity of motion even at the expense of strength. And this again is possible only because of the high development and strength of the muscles.

Moreover, the highest mammals are largely arboreal, and in connection with this habit have changed the foreleg into an arm and hand. The latter became the servant of the brain and gave the possibility of using tools.

But increase in size and activity, and the expense of producing each new individual, led to the adoption of placental development. And the mammal is so complex, the road from the egg to the fully developed young is so long, that a long period of gestation is necessary. And even at birth the brain, especially of man, is anything but complete. Hence the necessity of the mammalian habit of suckling and caring for the young. And this feebleness and dependence of the young had begun far below man to draw out maternal tenderness and affection. And the mammalian mode of reproduction and care of young led to a more marked difference and interdependence between the s.e.xes.

The result of this is man's family life, as Mr. John Fiske has shown so beautifully in that fascinating monograph, "The Destiny of Man." And family life once introduced becomes the foundation and bulwark of all civilization, morality, and religion. Far down in the mammalian series, before the development of the family, maternal education has become prominent, and the young begins life, benefited by the experiences of the parent. How much more efficient is this in family life. But, furthermore, the family is perhaps the first, certainly the most important, of those higher unities in which men are bound together. Social life of a sort undoubtedly existed, before man, among birds, insects, and lower mammals. The community was often defective or incomplete in unity, or existed under such limitations that it could not show its best results, but that it was of vast benefit from an even higher than mere physical standpoint, no one will, I think, deny. But with the family a new era of education and social life began.

First of all, the struggle for existence is thereby greatly modified and mitigated. This crowding out and trampling down of the weaker by the stronger is transferred, to a certain extent, from the individual to the family and, in great degree, from the family to larger and larger social units. For within the limits of the family compet.i.tion tends to be replaced by mutual helpfulness, and not only are the loneliness and horror of the struggle between isolated individuals banished, but, what is vastly more, the family becomes the school of unselfishness and love. And what has thus become true of the single family, and groups of nearly related families, is slowly being realized in the larger units of communities and states. For, as families and communities are just as really organisms as are the individual men and women, whose soundness depends upon the healthy activity of every organ, so there is a survival, first of families, then of communities and rival civilizations, in proportion to their unity and soundness in every part. For on account of the close bonds of family and social life, and in connection with the development of articulate speech, a new kind of heredity, so to speak, arises, of vast importance for both good and evil. This mental and moral heredity, over-leaping all boundaries of blood and natural kins.h.i.+p, spreads light and good influence or an immoral contagion through the community. And thus, in sheer self-defence, society pa.s.ses laws setting limits to the oppression of the poor and weak, lest, degraded and brutalized, they become breeding centres of physical and moral disease in the community. The positive lesson that the surest mode of self-defence is the elevation of these submerged cla.s.ses, we are just beginning to learn and apply.

By the ever-increasing acceleration of the development the gap between man and the lower animal widens with wonderful rapidity. Of course it is only in man, and higher man, that these last and highest results of mammalian structure appear. But that, far removed as they are, they are the results of mammalian and vertebrate characteristics cannot, I think, be well denied. And this is only one of innumerably possible ill.u.s.trations of the fact that all our most highly prized inst.i.tutions are rooted far back in our ancestry, often ineradicably in the very organs of our bodies. And thus evolution, which many view only from its radical side--and it has a radical side--is really the conservative bulwark of all that is essentially worth possessing in the past.