Is civilization a disease? Part 1

Is civilization a disease?

by Stanton Coit.

I. TRADE TYPICAL OF CIVILIZATION

In choosing "The Morals of Trade" as the general t.i.tle of the Weinstock Lectureship, I am informed that its founder meant the word "Trade" to be understood in its comprehensive sense, as commensurate with our whole system of socialized wealth--at least, upon the present occasion I shall interpret it in this broad way.

I shall furthermore ask you to consider our system of socialized wealth--its practice and principles--in relation to the whole of that vast artificial structure of human life which is labelled "Civilization," and which began to prevail some ten thousand years ago.

Such a comprehensive sweep of vision is, in my judgment, necessary if we are to view trade in true human perspective; nor can we estimate the degree of praise or blame we ought to confer upon it until we have determined the worth of civilization itself. For trade is not only bound up inextricably with the whole of our social order, but, as it seems to me, manifests in a most acute form the universal character of civilization in general. We must therefore discover the structural principle which began to co-ordinate the lives of any group of human beings when their tribe finally pa.s.sed out of barbarism. Having discovered this, we shall be able to judge whether by its ever-advancing application to the life of men, and its ever-increasing domination over their wills, it has furthered the cause of ideal humanity or not. If we find that it has been essentially humane, we shall have arrived at the conclusion that its offspring, trade, is moral. If, however, we unearth in the very principle of historic civilization something radically wrong, anti-human and inhuman, and if we can discover another co-ordinating principle which is humane and feasible, civilization will then be seen to be a thing to be "superseded"--as Nietzsche thought man himself was--and trade, its latest and l.u.s.tiest issue, will be felt to be a usurper deserving to be disinherited in favor of some true economic child of the "Holy Spirit of Man."

II. IS CIVILIZATION JUST?

In order to open such lines of anthropological investigation and ethical reflection, I have raised the question: "Is Civilization a Disease?"

Had I asked, "Is Civilization Christian?" I should have defeated my own end. You would have answered "No" as soon as you saw the subject of my discourse announced, and would have stayed at home. But you might still have given your ethical sanction to trade. You might have said, "It does not pretend to be Christian; but that is nothing against it, for the vital principle of Christianity is sentimental and impracticable: and what won't work can't be right."

Had I raised the question in the form, "Could trade ever have emanated from an intelligent motive of universal love--of deference for the humanity in every man?" you would have replied, "Never!" But you might have consoled yourself with the thought that it is only a small part of our boasted civilization. We have art and education and family life and monogamy and religion; and these come in as correctives, so that trade, although not conceived of benevolence and not bearing the stamp of humanity in its character, is comparatively harmless under the restraints laid upon it. Then, too, the idea of universal love savors of theology, and would have put my lecture under that general ban which in philosophical circles has been set up against theological ethics.

Indeed, I even shrank from asking, "Is civilization unethical, or wrong, or bad?" For nowadays we find moral judgments more attractive when they are disguised or at least slightly veiled. When we are really curious to know what is good, we become shy; we are not sure that our neighbors may not put a cynical interpretation upon any appearance of enthusiasm in our effort to find out what is right. Antic.i.p.ating such delicacy in my prospective audience of to-night, I threw a physiological drapery, not to say pathological, over the ethical bareness of my theme, by introducing into it the idea of disease. For while it may no longer be a stigma to be un-Christian, and while some have been trying to break all the traditional tables of moral values and prevent any new ones from being inscribed, n.o.body, so far as I have been able to learn, has denied that disease, whether physical or only mental, is an evil and a thing which it would be wicked to spread for the mere delight in spreading it. Happily, there is still astir throughout the community an active, virile, and unashamed desire--and not only among women--for health. And in alertness and resourcefulness it is second only to the desire for wealth itself. The result is, that if anything which we have admired and been proud of has been discovered by experts to be of the nature of disease, we want to be notified, so that we may reverse our sentiments towards it, and if possible destroy it. The word "disease" is still plainly one of reproach.

On the other hand, the very term "civilization" sets emotions vibrating of deference and awe towards the inst.i.tution it signifies. Indeed, pride in being civilized is still so nearly universal--especially among Americans--that many persons upon hearing the point mooted whether civilization be a disease or not, are disposed to resent the bare suggestion as smacking of whimsicality.

III. A METAPHORICAL USE OF THE WORD "DISEASE"

I, therefore, hasten to hide myself thus early in my discourse behind the man, bigger than I, who many years ago first aroused this question in my mind, a question which, having once fastened itself upon the soul, may allow one no rest and may prevent one from ever again going on gayly through life singing with Browning's _Pippa_:--

G.o.d's in His Heaven-- All's right with the world.

It is now twenty-six years since I first read Mr. Edward Carpenter's penetrating essay, then but recently published, ent.i.tled _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_. The very name of the book made one ask: "Is civilization then a disease?" And if one deigned, as I did, to read the essay carefully, one found the author defending the affirmative in all seriousness and with much thoroughness, and displaying acute a.n.a.lytical power throughout his argument. The charge of whimsicality could not hold against him. The author showed an adequate insight into the social structure which is called civilization. What was equally essential, his knowledge of the latest speculations as to the nature of disease,--theories which have not yet been superseded and which when applied by Sir Almroth Wright proved to be most fruitful working hypotheses,--Carpenter's knowledge of these was comprehensive and discriminating. He accordingly never pressed the a.n.a.logy between civilization and disease unduly--he knew that it could not be made to fit all particulars. And he never fell into any confusion of thought; he easily avoided being caught in his own metaphor. He employed it only within limits and only when it rendered the moral issue more concrete and vivid. Because he had a scientific knowledge both of civilization and of disease, he could safely use language which appealed to the moral emotions as an aid to our moral judgment.

Indeed, Mr. Carpenter showed himself not only scientific in his ethics, but what is much rarer in these days, ethical in his science. For it is questionable whether one can ever arrive at any moral judgment except there be a deep and strong emotional accompaniment to one's rational investigation. If we do not take sides with humanity at the outset, if we eliminate all preference for certain kinds of conduct and goals of pursuit which grew up in the human mind before we began our scientific criticism of morals, how shall we ever get back again into the sphere of distinctively ethical judgment? For instance, how could we strike out from the field of observation the something which we count the moral factor in life, and then proceed to investigate the morals of trade? Evidently we must in every ethical enquiry start by taking sides with that trend of the Race-Will in us, which moves plainly towards an ever-increasing self-knowledge, self-reverence and self-control on the part of man. For it is this race-will in us whereby we have the capacity and interest to call any line of conduct or any disposition of the mind good or bad, right or wrong.

IV. OUTLINE OF MY ARGUMENT

Nor do I simply mean that we must show loyalty to life as opposed to death, or to health as against disease. It is more than that. The lifeward effort of some beings clashes with the corresponding attempt to live on the part of others, and the actualization of one impersonal ideal of beauty, truth, or society exacts the sacrifice of one set of human lives and favors the survival of another, so that an opposition in ideals may mean an antagonism in the struggle of cla.s.ses and ma.s.ses of men for existence. There is a combat, and we are called upon to choose which side to encourage and support. One and the same state of things often spells disease and death to the one party and life and health to the other. I shall be able on this account to show that whether civilization appears to us as a disease or not depends upon what sort of a person we are, and to which side we are const.i.tutionally disposed to attach ourselves. To show this, I will first draw an a.n.a.logy on the biological plane and then I will cite the judgment of great humanists who have sided against civilization. After that, I will submit instances in civilization itself for your own judgment. Only then shall I return to Edward Carpenter, to give a _resume_ of his position, and to point out how far and why I agree with him, and at what stage I part company with him and for what reasons. Then I shall attempt to present a bird's-eye view of the steps in human advancement towards civilization as the best anthropologists have traced them.

Thus, we shall be able to see our historic social order in right relation to that ideal humanity which our own spiritual const.i.tution projects prophetically above the threshold of our consciousness. Then, if ever, we shall be in a state of mind to judge whether the thing which civilization has begotten after its own kind and named "trade" is good or bad.

V. MAN _VERSUS_ CIVILIZATION

Now to my biological a.n.a.logy: It was recently my privilege to be conducted over the Rockefeller Inst.i.tute for Medical Research in New York City. You will remember that to it some millions of dollars have been a.s.signed, for the purpose of discovering the cause and cure of bacterial diseases. In one department of the Inst.i.tute a j.a.panese professor showed under the rays of the ultra-microscope specimens of a remarkable bacillus, the existence of which he had been the first to detect. It was that kind of bacillus which, if it is present in the marrow of a man's spinal cord, induces a state of the body that is called locomotor-ataxy. This state is one in which the man who manifests it is unable to control properly the movements of his feet and legs. He has lost command from the supreme cerebral centre; the lower nerve ganglia seem to have become insubordinate and to act on their own initiative. But is locomotor-ataxy a disease? Clearly your answer will depend upon whether you are on the side of the man or the microbe. If you sympathize with the man and are thinking of him, it is a disease; but if your heart is with the microbe there in the spinal cord, the locomotor-ataxy will be to you life and health abundant, and that not only for the individual specimen whom you pick out for observation, but for his whole family which, as the ataxy advances, reproduces itself proportionately, and with an inconceivable rapidity.

What is to determine whether you are on the side of the man or the microbe? Surely the const.i.tutional bent of your emotional and volitional preference. It is not a matter for the science of fact to consider. Mere intellect, mere reason, knows nothing of health and disease, unless it a.s.sumes this distinction as its starting-point. It knows only the order of sequences. Suppose, then, we were to find that civilization had pitted itself against Man, so that it was a case of Man _versus_ Civilization, as Herbert Spencer conceived an antagonism between Man and the State. Should we not be compelled, in order to decide what condition of things was one of health, to open up conscious relations with our deepest trend of heart and will, and find out whether we flowed with humanity or with civilization? Nor would there be any escape from the necessity of remaining true to our own trend and favoring whatever flowed the same way. In case of a clash between the social order and humanity, the health of each is to the other as a disease and, therefore, the question inevitably arises, "Which is in our judgment to be preserved?" and each one's answer must depend on whether he finds himself after full deliberation irresistibly drawn to the one side or the other. Civilization may be to man as the microbe to the locomotor-ataxy subject; but innate civilizationists would delight in the surrender of humanity to the social order. To them what would humanity be but civilization's opportunity, its habitat, its food-supply? I am saying that, to prove trade immoral it is not enough to show that man is a sacrifice to the economic order; you would be required also to demonstrate that man ought not to be sacrificed to any social order, that he must always be the final end, and never a mere means. But that is exactly what you can never demonstrate to any one who is not innately, spiritually, naturally, on the side of man against all other objects of interest. I mean that there is no arguing with any one who const.i.tutionally hesitates to side with man. You might pray for such a one; but it would be folly to reason with him, for the foundation is not in him upon which your reasonings could mount. All this seems to me necessary to say, because I get the impression from books on political economy that most writers and readers first dehumanize themselves as a prerequisite to a discussion of the morals of trade.

VI. THE LIVING FOUNDATIONS

In one of his allegorical poems, James Russell Lowell depicted the antagonism of sentiment to which I am referring as existing between Christ and his conventional worshippers. The poem is a slight thing: although strict in metre and perfect in rhyme, it is too flowing and fantastic to be cla.s.sed high in literature. But if we view it as a scientific essay in dynamic sociology, it is admirable beyond criticism. As its meaning is quite separable from its form and sensuous contents, I therefore ask you not to think of it as poetry or Christian mythology, but to regard it only as a compact treatise in ethical economics. Because this poem is familiar to you all, it will serve my object the better. It represents Christ as coming back to earth after eighteen hundred years, and all the grandees as rendering Him elaborate homage. Nor do they omit to direct His attention to His own image set up in the places of highest honor. But still, according to our dynamic sociologist:--

... wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down His head, And from under the heavy foundation stones The Son of Mary heard bitter groans.

And in church and palace and judgment-hall, He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and still more wide As the living foundations heaved and sighed.

"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men?

And think ye that building shall endure Which shelters the n.o.ble and crushes the poor?"

Then Christ sought out an artisan-- A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly Want and Sin.

These set He in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said He, "The images ye have made of Me!"

To-day no one denies that the foundations are alive and that they heave and sigh. In our age one need not be of the order of Christ to have ears to hear the bitter groans. Everybody hears them, if one may judge from the universal reports of the daily papers. Indeed, how to suppress the groans or to prevent them from becoming more articulate and coherent is the most vexing problem of the government of the most civilized state in the world. At least Prince von Bulow so represents the case in his book ent.i.tled _Imperial Germany_. And the party leaders of the United States have all been alert for two decades to discover how to render impossible an upheaval of the living foundations of America. There is, as I say, no denying the fact that the foundations are alive, and that they not only groan bitterly, but--what is more serious--heave threateningly. Whether any one person, however, is on the side of the living foundations, as according to Lowell Jesus Christ was, or on the side of the thrones and altars, as his conventional worshippers are depicted to be by Lowell and many another American writer since, depends upon what the special person's innate taste is.

The thrones and altars have become more and more magnificent in beauty, costliness, and splendor, with the progress of civilization; but not so the mob, the rabble, the "underworld," whose stirrings have rent the walls. Christ's taste, it would seem, was not primarily aesthetic. But then not every one is a son of Mary, and not every carpenter's son sides with the cla.s.s to which his father belonged.

VII. CIVILIZATION CONDEMNED BY CHRIST AND ALL SONS OF MAN

I said that after my biological a.n.a.logy I should cite the judgments of some great sages who saw in civilization an enemy of man. Of these I have just been mentioning the greatest. The Founder of Christianity set His Will dead against the established order of society, rebuking the upholders of thrones and altars, and becoming the champion of the outcasts. The kingdom, He announced, was not to be of this our world of moneylenders. No wonder the rulers of His day gave Him short quarter, so that after three years of agitation this speaker of rousing parables to the mult.i.tude, who had no bank account, was silenced forever.

Likewise, it was a foregone conclusion that every disciple of Christ whose spirit was to be set aflame by His--like St. Francis, and Savonarola, Wycliffe, Luther (at the first), and John Wesley--should turn in pity to the living foundations and in horror of spirit from the entombing thrones.

But the protest against the sacrifice of man to mammonized society has been no monopoly of Christ and those spiritually descended from Him.

The ancient Hebrew prophets taught equally a kingdom that was to be diametrically the opposite in principle from that which prevailed in the Jewish State or in Babylon, and later in Macedon or Rome. It should be noted that the prophets and Christ accompanied their censure of the formative principle, upon which nations and traders had built up their dealings with one another, with a proposed subst.i.tute. But if we go back to Gautama and the India of his time, we find that the Buddha's protest against civilization was still more extreme; for he did not wait to submit a new principle before condemning the old. Indeed, he felt that self-conscious existence for the individual, as he beheld it everywhere, was a tragic calamity, and altogether unendurable.

Preferable would be the extinction utterly of all individualized selfhood. He would isolate the individual and submit him to a discipline, the object of which was escape forever from the wheel of existence. He advocated not mere individualistic anarchy, but the annihilation of individuality as preferable to civilized life. A third of the human race still believe in his discipline, and in the alternative he proposed to the highly developed type of social order which prevailed in his time in India.