The Whence and the Whither of Man Part 8

Still only in man does intelligence reign supreme and clearly show its innate powers. But even in man certain realms, like those of the internal organs, are rarely invaded by consciousness, but are normally left to the control of reflex action. These actions go on better without the interference of consciousness.

But other lines of action are relegated as rapidly as possible to the same control. We learn to walk by a conscious effort to take each step; afterward we take each step automatically, and think only whither we wish to go. We learn by conscious effort to talk and write, to sing, or play the piano. Afterward we frame each letter or note automatically, and think only of the idea and its expression.

So also in our moral and spiritual nature.[A]

[Footnote A: Mr. James Freeman Clarke has stated this better than I can. "We may state the law thus: 'Any habitual course of conduct changes voluntary actions into automatic or involuntary (_i.e._, reflex) actions.' By practice man forms habits, and habitual action is automatic action, requiring no exercise of will except at the beginning of the series of acts. The law of a.s.sociation does the rest. As voluntary acts are transformed into automatic, the will is set free to devote itself to higher efforts and larger attainments.

After telling the truth a while by an effort, we tell the truth naturally, necessarily, automatically. After giving to good objects for a while from principle, we give as a matter of course. Honesty becomes automatic; self-control becomes automatic. We rule over our spirit, repress ill-temper, keep down bad feelings, first by an effort, afterwards as a matter of course.

"Possibly these virtues really become incarnate in the bodily organization. Possibly goodness is made flesh and becomes consolidate in the fibres of the brain. Vices, beginning in the soul, seem to become at last bodily diseases; why may not virtues follow the same law? If it were not for some such law of acc.u.mulation as this, the work of life would have to be begun forever anew. Formation of character would be impossible. We should be incapable of progress, our whole strength being always employed in battling with our first enemies, learning evermore anew our earliest lessons. But by our present const.i.tution he who has taken one step can take another, and life may become a perpetual advance from good to better. And the highest graces of all--Faith, Hope, and Love--obey the same law." See James Freeman Clarke, Every-Day Religion, p. 122.]

There has been therefore in the successive forms and stages of animal life a clear sequence of dominant nervous actions. The actions of all animals below the annelid are mainly reflex or automatic, unconscious and involuntary. But in insects and lower vertebrates the highest actions at least are instinctive.

Consciousness plays a continually more important part. Still the actions are controlled by hereditary tendency far more than by the will of the individual. But in man instinct has been almost entirely replaced by conscious, voluntary, intelligent action. And yet in man, as rapidly as possible, actions which at first require conscious effort become, through repet.i.tion and habit, reflex and automatic. All our conscious effort and the energy of the will, being no longer required for these oft-repeated actions, are set free for higher attainments. The territory which had to be conquered by hard battles has become an integral part of the realm. It now hardly requires even a garrison, but has become a source of supplies for a new advance and march of conquest.

But all this time we have been talking about action and have not given a thought to the will. And we have spoken as if conscious perception and intelligence directly controlled will and action. But this is of course incorrect. Will is practically power of choice.

You ask me whether I prefer this or that, and I answer perhaps that I do not care. Until I "care" I shall never choose. The perception must arouse some feeling, if it is to result in choice. I see a diamond in the road and think it is merely a piece of gla.s.s. I do not stop. But as I am pa.s.sing on; I remember that there was a remarkable brilliancy in its flash. It must have been, after all, a gem. My feelings are aroused. How proud I shall feel to wear it. Or how much money I can get for it. Or how glad the owner will be when it is returned to her. I turn back and search eagerly. Perception is necessary, but it is only the first step. The perception must excite some feeling, if choice or exertion of the will is to follow. This is a truism.

Now reflex action takes place independently of consciousness or will. Instinctive action may be voluntary, but it is, after all, not so much the result of individual purpose as of hereditary tendency.

Is there then no will in the animal until it has become intelligent?

I think there has been a sort of voluntary action all the time. Even the amoeba selects or chooses, if I may use the word, its food among the sand grains. And the will is stimulated to act by the appet.i.te. Hunger is the first teacher. And how did appet.i.te develop?

Why does the animal hunger for just the food suited to its digestion and needs? We do not know. And the reproductive appet.i.te soon follows. One of these results from the condition of the digestive, the other from that of the reproductive, cells or protoplasm. These appet.i.tes are due to some condition in a part of the organism and can be _felt_. They are in a sense not of the mind but of the body.

And the response to them on the part of the mind is in some respects almost comparable to reflex action. But the mode of the response is, to a certain extent at least, within the control of consciousness.

They train and spur the will as pure reflex action never could. But the will is as yet hardly more than the expression of these appet.i.tes. It expresses not so much its own decision as that of the stomach. It is the body's slave and mouthpiece. And once again it is best and safest for the animal that it should be so.

And these appet.i.tes are at first comparatively feeble. There is but little muscle or nerve and but little food is required. But these continually strengthen and spur the will harder and more frequently.

And the will stirs up the weary and flagging muscles. The will may be a poor slave and the appet.i.tes hard taskmasters. But under their stern discipline it is growing stronger and more completely subjugating the body. Better slavery to hard taskmasters than rottenness from inertia. The first requirement is power, activity, and then this power can be directed to ever higher ends. You cannot steer the vessel until she has sails or an engine; with no "way on"

she will not mind the helm, she only drifts. But the condition of the animal at this stage certainly looks very unpromising. Can the will emanc.i.p.ate itself from appet.i.te and control it? Or is it to remain the slave of the body?

In time an emotion appears which marks the influence not directly of the body but of the individual consciousness. This is fear; it is for the body, but not, like hunger, directly of it. It arises in the mind. It results from experience and memory. The first animal which feared took a long step upward. But when and where was the dawn of fear? I touch a sea-anemone and it contracts. Has it felt fear? I think not. The action certainly may be purely reflex. Natural selection, not mind, deserves the credit of that action. But I am sure that the cat fears the dog, or the dog the cat, as the case may be. I have little or no doubt that the bird fears the cat. I am inclined to believe that the insect fears the bird and the spider the wasp. But does the highest worm fear? I do not know. I do not see how there can have been any fear until there was a nerve-centre highly enough developed to remember past experiences of danger and fair sense-organs to report the present risk.

Other emotions soon follow. Anger appears early. The order of appearance of these emotions or motives I shall not attempt to give to you. Indeed this is to us of relatively slight importance. The important point to notice is that a host of these have appeared in mammals and birds, and that each one of these is a new spur to the will. And the will of a horse or dog, to say nothing of a pig, is by no means feeble. And these are slowly emanc.i.p.ating the animal from the tyranny of appet.i.te. But how slow the progress is! Has the emanc.i.p.ation yet become complete in man? I need not answer.

The will has in part, at least, escaped from abject slavery to appet.i.te; it sometimes rises superior to fear. But it is evidently self-centred. The animal may have forgotten the claims of his dead ancestors, he is certainly fully alive to his own interests. Can he even partially rise superior to prudential considerations, as he has to some extent to the claims of appet.i.te? Is it possible to develop the unselfish out of the purely selfish? And if so, how is this to be accomplished? It is not accomplished in the animal; it is but very incompletely accomplished in man. It will be accomplished one day.

In action, at least, the animal is not purely selfish. As Mr.

Drummond has shown, reproduction, that old function and first to gain an organ, is not primarily for the benefit of self, but for the species. And not only the storing up of material in the egg, but care for the young after birth, is found in some fish and insects, and increases from fish upward. I readily grant you that this in its beginnings may be purely instinctive, and that not a particle of genuine affection for the young may as yet be present in the mind of the parent. But beneficial habits may, under the fostering care of selection, develop into instincts. The animal may at first be unconscious of these, and yet they may grow continually stronger.

But one day the animal awakens to its actions, and from that time on what had been done blindly and unconsciously is continued consciously, intelligently, and from set purpose. This story is repeated over and over again in the history of the animal-kingdom.

The care for the young once started as an instinct, affection will follow from the very a.s.sociation of parent with young. Certainly in birds and mammals there seems to be a very genuine love of the parents for their young. This is at first short lived, and the young are and have to be driven away, often by harsh treatment, to s.h.i.+ft for themselves. But while it lasts it certainly seems entirely real and genuine. And how strong it is. "A bear robbed of her whelps" is no meaningless expression. And even the weak and timid bird or mammal becomes strong and fierce in defence of her young. In the presence of this emotion appet.i.te and fear are alike forgotten.

But this affection or love once started does not remain limited to parent and offspring. Mammals, especially the higher forms, are social. They frequently go in herds and troops, and appear to have a genuine affection for each other. You all know how in herds of cattle or wild horses the males form a circle around the females and young at the approach of wolves. A troop of orangs were surprised by dogs at a little distance from their shelter. The old male orangs formed a ring and beat off the dogs until the females and young could escape, and then retreated. But as they were now in comparative safety a cry came from one young one, who had been unable to keep up in the scramble over the rocks, and was left on a bowlder surrounded by the dogs. Then one old orang turned back, fought his way through the dogs, tucked the little fellow under one arm, fought his way out with the other, and brought the young one to safety. I call that old orang a hero, but I am prejudiced and may easily be mistaken.

In a cage in a European zoological garden there were kept together a little American monkey and a large baboon of which the former was greatly afraid. The keeper, to whom the little monkey was strongly attached, was one day attacked and thrown down by the baboon and in danger of being killed. Then the little monkey ran to his help, and bit and beat his tyrant companion until he allowed the keeper to escape. We are all proud that the little monkey was an American.

Instances of disinterested actions are so common among dogs and horses that farther ill.u.s.trations are entirely unnecessary. And disinterested action is limited to fewer cases because the environment is rarely suited to its development in the animal world.

But do you answer that the affection of the dog is never really disinterested, but a very refined form of selfishness. Possibly. But it were to be greatly desired that selfishness would more frequently take that same refined form among men. But I cannot see how selfishness can ever become so refined as to lead an animal to die of grief over its master's grave.

And if refined selfishness were all, I for one cannot help believing that the dog would long ago have been asleep on a full stomach before the kitchen fire. Has no attempt been made to prove that all human actions are due to selfishness more or less refined? It is very unwise to apply tests and use arguments concerning animals which, if applied with equal strictness to human conduct, would prove human society irrational and purely selfish.

Mammals may be self-centred. But the highest forms have set their faces away from self and toward the non-self; some have at least started on the road which leads to unselfishness.

And man is governed to a certain extent by prudential considerations. If he entirely disregarded these he would not be wise. But the development of the rational faculty has brought before his mind a series of motives higher than these, which are slowly but surely superseding them. Truth, right, and duty are motives of a different order. With regard to these there can be no question of profit or loss. Here the mind cannot stop to ask, Will it pay? Self must be left out of account.

"When duty whispers low, Thou must, The soul replies, I can."

And thus man rises above appet.i.te, above prudential considerations, and becomes a free and moral agent. And family and social life bring him into new relations, press home upon him new duties and responsibilities, every one of which is a new motive compelling him to rise above self. And thus the unselfish, altruistic emotions have made man what he is, and are in him, ever advancing toward their future supremacy. But some one will say, This is a very pretty theory; it is not history. But the perception of truth and right is certainly a fact, the result of ages of development. And the very highest which the intellect can perceive is bound to become the controlling motive of the will. It always has been so. It must be so, if evolution is not to be purely degeneration. Thus only has man become what he is. And the voice of the people demanding truth and justice, whenever and wherever they see them, is the voice of G.o.d promising the future triumph of righteousness. For it is proof positive that man's face is resolutely set toward these, as his ancestors have always marched steadily toward that which was the highest possible attainment.

We find thus that there is a sequence in the motives which control the will. The first and lowest motives are the appet.i.tes, and here the will is the mouthpiece of the bodily organs. Then fear and a host of other prudential considerations appear. The lowest of these tend purely to the gratification of the senses or to the avoidance of bodily discomfort. But they originate in the mind, and that is a great gain. But the higher prudential considerations take into account something higher than mere bodily comfort or discomfort.

Approbation and disapprobation are motives which weigh heavily with the higher mammals. The lower prudential considerations are purely selfish. The higher ones, which stimulate to action for fellow-animals or men, show at least the dawn of unselfishness. And the altruistic motives, which stimulate to action for the happiness and welfare of others, predominate in, and are characteristic of, man. The human will is slowly rising above the dominance of selfishness. With the dawn of the rational perception of truth, right, and duty, the very highest motives begin to gain control.

And the will becomes more and more powerful as the motives become higher. It is almost a mis-use of language to speak of the will of a slave of appet.i.te. He is governed by the body, not at all by the mind.

The man who is governed by prudential considerations, and is always asking, Will it pay? is the incarnation of fickleness, instability, and feebleness. The apparent strength of the selfish will is usually a hollow sham. But truth, right, and love are motives stronger than death. And the will, dominated by these, gives the body to be burned. The man of the future will have an iron will, because he will keep these highest motives constantly before his mind.

In the preceding lectures we have traced the sequence of functions and have found that brain and mind, not digestion and muscle, are the goal of animal development. In this lecture we have attempted to trace a corresponding series of functions in the realm of mind. We have found, I think, that there has been an orderly and logical development of perceptions, modes of action, and finally of motives in the animal mind. Let us now briefly review this history and see whether it throws any light on the path of man's future progress.

Most of the sensory cells of the animal minister at first to reflex action, and there is thus little true perception. The stimuli which have called forth the reflex action may result afterward in consciousness; but until brain and muscle have reached a higher grade, this could be of but slight benefit to the animal. Perception and consciousness are exercised mainly in the recognition and attainment of food. When the animal begins to show fear, we may feel tolerably certain that it has been conscious of past experience of danger and remembers these experiences. But the sense-organs are all the time improving, whether as servants of conscious perception or of reflex action, and the development of the higher sense-organs, especially of the eyes, has called forth a higher development of the brain. The brain continually develops both through constant exercise and through natural selection. Through the higher and more delicate sense-organs it perceives a continually wider range of more subtile elements in its environment. And the higher the sense-organ the more directly and purely does it minister to consciousness. The eye, when capable of forming an image, is almost never concerned in a purely reflex action.

From the constant recurrence of perceptions and experiences in a constant order the animal begins to a.s.sociate these, and when he has perceived the one to expect the other. Out of this grows, in time, inference and understanding. The mind is beginning to turn its attention not merely to objects and qualities, but to perceive relations. And thus it has taken the first step toward the perception of abstract truth. And if it has the aesthetic perception and can perceive beauty, we have every reason to believe that the same faculty will one day perceive truth and right. But on the purely animal plane of existence these powers could be of but little service, and we can expect to find them developed only very slightly and under peculiar surroundings. And in this connection it is interesting to notice the great results of man's training and education in the dog. For the wolf and the jackal, the dog's nearest relatives, if not his actual ancestors, are not especially intelligent mammals. Compared with them the dog is a sage and a saint.

The earliest form of action is the reflex. This is independent of both consciousness and will. The only conscious voluntary action of the animal is limited mainly or entirely to the recognition and attainment of food. The motive for the exertion of the will is the appet.i.te, and the will is the slave or mouthpiece of the body. Far higher than this is the stage of instinct. Here the animal is conscious of its actions and new motives begin to appear. But the animal is guided by tendencies inherited from its ancestors. The will has, so to speak, advisory power; it is by no means supreme.

But with a wider and deeper knowledge of its environment, with the memory of past experiences, carried by the higher locomotive powers into new surroundings, brought face to face with new emergencies outside of the range of its old instincts, it is compelled to try some experiments of its own. It begins to modify these instincts, and in time altogether does away with many of them. It has risen a little above its old abject slavery to the appet.i.tes, it is slowly throwing off the bondage to heredity. New emotions or motives have arisen appealing directly to the individual will. The heir has been long enough under guardians and regents, it a.s.sumes the government and can rightly say, "L'etat, c'est moi."

But a greater problem confronts it; can it rise above self? The animal often seems absolutely selfish. Can the unselfish be developed out of the selfish? This seems at first sight impossible.

And the first lessons are so easy, the first steps so short, that we do not notice them. Reproduction comes to the aid of mind. The young are born more and more immature. They begin to receive the care of the parent. The love of the parent for the young is at first short lived and feeble. But it is the genuine article, and, like the mustard-seed planted in good soil, must grow. It strengthens and deepens. Soon it begins to widen also. Social life, very rude and imperfect, appears. And the members of this social group support, help, and defend one another. And doing for one another and helping each other, however slightly and imperfectly, strengthens their affection for one another. The animal is still selfish, so is man frequently, but it is in a fair way to become unselfish, and this is all we can reasonably expect of it.

For these are vast revolutions from reflex action to instinct, and from instinct to the reign of the individual will, and from appet.i.te to selfishness on the ground of higher motives, and from immediate gratification to prudential considerations. And the crowning change of all is from selfishness to love. And each one of them takes time.

Remember that the Old Testament history is the record of how G.o.d taught one little people that there is but one G.o.d, Jehovah. Think of the struggles, defeats, and captivities which the Israelites had to undergo before they learned this lesson, and even then only a fraction of the people ever learned it at all. As the prophet foretold, so it came to pa.s.s. Though Israel was as the sand by the sea-sh.o.r.e, but a remnant was saved.

But while we seek to do full justice to the animal, let us not underestimate the vast differences between it and man. The true evolutionist takes no low view of man's present actual attainments; in his possibilities he has a larger faith than that of the disbeliever in evolution. In intelligence and thought, in will power and freedom of choice, in one word, in all that makes up character and personality, man is immeasurably superior to the animal. These powers raise him to a new plane of being, give him an indefinitely higher and broader life, and his appearance marks a new era. He alone is a moral, responsible being, to a certain extent the former of his own destiny and recorder of his doom, if he fails. This gives to all his actions a peculiar stamp of a dignity only his. What he is and is to be we must attempt to trace in another lecture. But to one or two characteristic results of his progress we must call attention here.

The princ.i.p.al subject of man's study is not so much the things which surround him as his relation to them and theirs to each other. His environment has become really one, not so much one of tangible and visible objects as of invisible relations. And these will demand endless investigation. The more he studies them the more wonderful do they become. The vein broadens and grows indefinitely richer the deeper he searches into it. We find thus the purpose of the intellect; it is to study environment.

And now a little about motives. The animal begins with appet.i.te, and some animals and men never get any farther. And yet how easily this appet.i.te for food is satiated! We all remember our experiences as children around the Thanksgiving or Christmas table. What a disappointment it was to us to find how soon our appet.i.te had forsaken us, and that we had lost the power of enjoying the delicacies which we had most antic.i.p.ated. And over-indulgence often brought sad results and was followed by a period of penitential fasting. And the appet.i.tes for sense gratification must always lead to this result. They not only crave things which "perish with the using;" temporarily at least, often permanently, the appet.i.te itself perishes with the gratification.

But what of the appet.i.te, if you will pardon the expression, for truth and right? All attainment only strengthens it; and, instead of enslaving, it makes men ever more free. And yet what a power there is in the appet.i.te for truth and righteousness? In obedience to it man gives his body to be burned, or pours out his life-blood drop by drop for its attainment, and rejoices in the sacrifice. There are victims to appet.i.te: there are only martyrs to truth. This soul hunger for truth and right, growing more intense as the soul is filled with the object of desire, is the only one capable of indefinite development and dominance of the will. This must be and is the mental goal of animal development, if man has a future corresponding in length at all to his past. Otherwise the history of life becomes a "story told by an idiot." For its satisfaction is the only one which never causes satiety, and of which over-indulgence is impossible. All others lead only to a slough of despond, or the deeper and more treacherous slough of contentment, beyond which rise no delectable mountains or golden city.

And now in closing let me call your attention to one thought of practical vital importance.

According to the theory which we have agreed to adopt, higher species have arisen through a process of natural selection, those species surviving which are best conformed to their environment.

And this applies to man as well as to lower animals. All knowledge is in man, therefore, primarily, a means by which he may conform to environment, survive, and progress. But conformity includes more than mere knowledge of environment. A man might have all knowledge, and yet refuse to conform; and then his knowledge could not save him from destruction. For conformity alone gives survival. Conformity in man requires an effort of the will. It is intelligent, but it is also voluntary action. And knowledge is a necessary means of conformity because through it we see how we may conform, and because it furnishes the motives which stimulate the will to the necessary effort.

Now, that faculty of the intellect which is dominant in man, and which has raised him immeasurably above the animal, and made him man, is the rational intelligence. If there is any such thing as a law of history or as continuity in evolution, man's future progress must depend upon his clearer vision and recognition of the perceptions of this faculty. Through it man perceives beauty, truth, and goodness, and attains knowledge of himself as a person and moral agent, and recognizes his rights and duties. Of all this the animal is and remains unconscious; indeed he is not yet a moral being and person in any proper sense of the word.

Inasmuch as the rational perception is the dominant faculty in man, it must perceive the lines along which he is to conform. Truth, right, and duty must be his watchwords. These are to be the rules and motives of all his actions. He cannot live for the body, but for something higher, the mind. This was proven before man appeared on the globe. He is to be a mental, intelligent being. But he is not to be governed by appet.i.te or mere prudential considerations. These are animal, not human motives. These are not to be disregarded any more than digestion can be safely disregarded by man. But they are not to be his chief motives. He must subordinate these to the higher motives furnished by right and duty. Man is not merely a mental but a moral being. If he sinks below this plane of life he is not following the path marked out for him in all his past development.

In order to progress, the higher vertebrate had to subordinate everything to mental development. In order to become man it had to develop the rational intelligence. In order to become higher man, present man must subordinate everything to moral development. This is the great law of animal and human development clearly revealed in the sequence of physical and mental functions.

Must man be a religious being also? This question we must try to answer in a future lecture.