Morals and the Evolution of Man Part 3

It is a form of anthropomorphism, the most widespread and stubborn of errors in thought among those men who try to understand the unintelligible, and are content with the most unfounded explanation which their nave imagination freely invents for them. This same anthropomorphism, not even at a loss to solve the problem of the origin and essence of the universe, replies unhesitatingly that G.o.d by an act of volition created it out of nothing to prove to Himself His own omnipotence and omniscience; in like manner it has no scruple in ascribing the phenomenon of Morality to a creative act of G.o.d's, and makes Ethics, which properly speaking form the chief part of psychology, anthropology and sociology, a subdivision of theology, that is, of anthropomorphic mythology.

Critical Reason, which realizes that deceptive fictions are not true thought, but dreams--not the result of ripe intellectual effort, but of the childish play of the imagination, seeks the roots of Morality not in the air or in the ether, but in the solid earth; not in some indemonstrable, transcendental sphere, but in an obvious need of human nature. The biological necessities of the species, which can only survive by dint of living in communities, sufficiently explain the origin of the feeling of joint responsibility, of consideration for one's neighbour, of the concepts Good and Evil and of conscience; and we have no use for the dogmas of revealed Morality derived from some fabulous, supernatural source, or for the Kantian categorical imperative.

Morality, understood as a form of joint responsibility, determines the inner and outer relations of the individual to the community; that is to say, to as much of it as he comes in immediate contact with, to wit, his neighbour. Morality provides him with the notions of Duty and Right, of the consideration he owes his neighbour and of that which he may demand from his neighbour. It is customary to look upon Rights and Duties as opposites. This is mere indolence of thought. Right and Duty are supplementary, forming together one concept. They are in reality one and the same thing regarded from different points of view. My Duty is the subjective form of my neighbour's Right; my Right the subjective form of other people's Duty. That which is Duty, when I have to do it out of consideration for others, becomes my Right, when others have to do it out of consideration for me.

Respect for the personality of others, which is the feeling from which the concept of Right and Duty emanates, seems to be a late and n.o.ble product of Morality and a particularly praiseworthy victory of prescient intelligence over selfishness. This factor of our consciousness which determines our will and which gradually becomes an instinct, is really only a special application of the law of least resistance which governs all organic life. We have no selfless, ideal respect for the personality of another; but, made wise by experience and observation, we a.s.sume that that other has the power to resist and to retaliate if a wrong is done to him or he is injured; hence we avoid, to the best of our ability, actions to which he is likely to object, so as not to come into conflict with him, because to overcome his opposition would require effort and expose us to danger. Respect for the personality of another and for his rights may be expressed by a mechanical formula which runs as follows: this respect varies directly as the real or supposed might of the other person, and inversely as our own real or supposed might.

The society of which he is a member, and which makes his existence possible, prescribes to the individual the laws governing his moral conduct. That which a community at any given time approves and demands, rejects or forbids, const.i.tutes the precept whereby its members regulate their conduct, and offers ample security for their conscience.

The concepts Good and Bad originate simultaneously with society; they are the form in which its actual conditions of existence are conveyed to the consciousness of its members. The only immutable thing about them is the fact of their continued existence. Without the coercive discipline of a rule conducive to the common weal and governing the mutual relations between its members, no society could be imagined to exist, unless its members were all similar in nature, reacted in an identical fashion to all impressions and possessed the same feelings and sensations, the same inclinations and the same impulses of volition. In that case no difference could ever arise between one individual and another, or between an individual and the community, which would have to be smoothed over by the moral law emanating from the community and controlling the individual, or be suppressed by the community's order.

Every individual could be left to the guidance of his own instincts, for he would know himself always to be in agreement with the community; no consideration for others need hamper or modify his actions; he could behave just as if he were alone in the world. But as individuals differ from one another, feel, think and want different things, collisions in which they hurt, cripple or even kill one another are the inevitable consequence of their opposing movements; and the interference of the moral law is absolutely necessary to polarize these movements and guide them into parallel courses, so that they do not run counter to one another.

But Good and Bad derive not only their existence but their measure and their significance from the views of the community. They are therefore not absolute but variable; they are not an immutable standard amid the ever-changing conditions of humanity, a rule by which the value of the actions and aims of mortals are indisputably determined, but are subject to the laws of evolution in society and therefore in a constant state of flux. At different times and in different places they present the most varied aspects. What is virtue here and now may have been vice formerly and at another spot, and _vice versa_. In the royal family of ancient Egypt marriage between brothers and sisters was the prescribed custom.

We call this incest and it fills us with horror. To the sons of Egypt it seemed meritorious and const.i.tuted a claim to special veneration. The Babylonians and Canaanites burnt their first-born in Moloch's fiery furnace, and this sacrifice was accounted a highly praiseworthy act of piety and of the fear of G.o.d. The Spartans taught their sons, their future warriors, the art of stealing without being caught; and he who did this most cleverly achieved the most flattering recognition. The Cherusci butchered the Roman prisoners taken from the legions of Varus as a sacrifice to their tribal G.o.ds, and a n.o.ble-minded and brave man like Arminius considered this absolutely honourable and knightly. The Aztecs, who had undeniably attained an advanced degree of civilization, at high festivals used with obsidian knives to cut open the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of human sacrifices on the altars of their G.o.ds, and tear the heart out of their living bodies. That was an action finding favour in the sight of the G.o.ds, and the people watched it with awe and those mystic emotions which religious rites are intended to arouse.

Moral law in Europe, during the Middle Ages and almost up to modern times, permitted, and even ordained, the punishment by horrible torture and death of those whose religious convictions differed from the teaching of the established church; and with its consent supposed witches were sent to the stake. In feudal times the most terrible and revolting of crimes was felony--that is, a breach of faith on the part of the va.s.sal against his overlord--and no torture was too cruel as a punishment. n.o.bles, who had so delicate a sense of honour that for a wry look or the accidental touch of an elbow they would draw their swords, enunciated the principle: "the king's blood does not defile," and vied with each other in forcing their daughters upon the king as concubines.

Until Wilberforce roused the English conscience at the end of the eighteenth century, and Scholcher did the same in France in the middle of the nineteenth, slavery was considered a state of affairs which a moral community could tolerate. The North American descendants of those Puritans whom no persecution and no martyrdom could prevent from leading a life consonant with the dictates of their conscience, did not scruple to exercise proprietary rights over human beings who, in the case of octoroons and even of quadroons, did not even differ from them in colour, supposing that difference of colour could be considered an excuse. The code, which began with the "Declaration of Rights,"

contained heavy penalties for those who helped a slave to escape. Men, whose uprightness no one could doubt, did not hesitate to set bloodhounds on the track of an escaped n.i.g.g.e.r, and four years of a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war were needed before refractory slave-owners were forced to acknowledge the immorality of forced labour.

These examples have been taken from the customs of civilized nations.

Amongst races that have not attained the high degree of development to which the white man has risen, we meet with much more revolting deviations from the moral law obtaining among white men. Tribes are known in which the commandment, "Honour thy father and thy mother," is interpreted so, that the children kill and eat their parents as soon as the latter have attained a considerable age. The North American Indians, who had a well developed sense of honour, were capable of chivalrous feelings and kept their word with absolute loyalty, used to torture helpless prisoners and scalp their defeated enemies, even the women.

Among the Dyaks, who are under Dutch rule and are familiar with the laws and customs of Christian Europe, a marriageable youth must first cut off a human being's head before he is allowed to wed. He need not overcome his victim in honourable combat; he may creep upon him surrept.i.tiously, and even fall upon him in his sleep and murder him in cowardly fashion without danger to himself.

All these are instances which we unhesitatingly condemn. To our idea they are crimes and misdeeds which among us would make their perpetrators liable either to contempt and expulsion from decent society or to the extremest penalties of the law; yet at their time and in their place they were considered meritorious and virtuous, and were approved by public opinion and the conscience of their authors. But we can go farther and subject our own moral law to a similar independent consideration. We shall find that to us also deeds appear permissible, virtuous and even splendid, which do not differ essentially from the thefts of the Spartans or the head-hunting of the Dyaks. A company promoter who sells on the Stock Exchange shares that he must know to be worthless, can with Spartan cunning rob thousands of trustful victims of the fruits of their labour and economy, and reduce them to beggary; and not only does he go unpunished, but if by his knavery he becomes a millionaire and uses his wealth cleverly, he can attain the highest political and social honours and distinctions. We may admit that financial roguery of this sort can now no longer be cla.s.sed among strictly moral actions, that public opinion is on the verge of placing it in the category of vice and crime, and that legislators are beginning to make attempts to inflict severe and humiliating penalties on its perpetrators.

But another series of deeds is still generally considered so undoubtedly virtuous and laudable, that it evokes the highest homage from the best intellects of the age, poets, musicians, scientists, teachers, sculptors and painters, and the leaders of the people--the deeds of war. The most horrible butchery of men, the theft of property and liberty, ill-treatment, destruction are not only permissible but obligatory and laudable, if they occur in war, and if their authors can point to the fact that they are acting in the service of their country at the order of a legitimate authority. Neither the soldiers nor their leaders are bound to inquire whether the authority, whether their mother country is waging war for a purpose that moral law can approve. "Right or wrong, my country." In the eyes of her sons the country is always in the right, even if it be objectively in the wrong, and by its orders every soldier murders, robs, burns and ravages, plays the executioner to harmless, unarmed, innocent strangers, compels prisoners to forced labour, steals letters that fall into his hands and prevents families who are cruelly separated from communicating with one another; and his conscience does not reproach him in the least, nor is he conscious of being a criminal deserving of all the penalties of the law. Every single one of these actions, if perpetrated by an individual on his own account and for his own purposes, would result in the death penalty, and it would be richly deserved, too. But in war, carried out collectively at the bidding of a government, they become deeds of heroism, filling the doer with pride, moving the community to tears of enthusiasm, and they are held up to youth as shining examples to be imitated. It is more than likely that future times will judge the esteem in which these deeds are held not otherwise than we do the value placed by other forms of society on human sacrifices, the slaughter of parents and head-hunting.

It is hard to determine the exact part which conscience plays in the changes undergone by the concepts Good and Evil. As conscience is the voice of the community in the consciousness of the individual, it approves on principle what seems right and praiseworthy to the community. Just as little as conscience prevented a Babylonian mother from sacrificing her child to Moloch, does it in these days stop the average citizen from doing a soldier's work of killing and destroying in time of war. If an individual knows himself to be in complete agreement with the general opinion, then he lives at peace with his conscience. No impulse to change the customs, to set up a new Morality, to condemn long-established usages, is to be expected from such an one.

The mechanism whereby changes are wrought in views on Good and Evil is quite different. Everywhere and at all times there are exceptional persons whose abilities render them specially fit to feel and think independently. To their idea the community has no determining but only an advisory voice. They reserve to themselves the right of decision in every case. In their consciousness there persists a clear recognition of the fact that the essence of Morality lies in consideration for others, and when the current acceptation of the moral law among the majority allows them, nay, commands them to disregard this consideration, they experience a feeling of discomfort which dull, unthinking imitation of the general example does not soothe. They meditate upon the deviation from the fundamental rule of considering one's neighbour, they test its justification, and they condemn it, if its difference with the general moral law cannot be adjusted. If the essence of Morality is consideration for one's neighbour, its purpose is the well-being of the community; its essence must be adapted to this purpose, that is to say, consideration for one's neighbour must be subordinated to the general welfare. The thief, the robber and the murderer have no claim upon consideration, and even a man with the most delicate sense of Morality will agree that coercion of the criminal is desirable. Tolstoy's warning: "Do not oppose the evildoer," is not Morality, but an exaggerated parody of it, which renders it nugatory. Thus the most moral person will not raise any objection to a war waged in defence of hearth and home when their safety is threatened by a ruthless attack.

But, if a mode of action which, though it be generally practised and approved, injures the individual and causes him to suffer, cannot be justified on the grounds of an obvious benefit to the community, then a small, sometimes an almost infinitesimal minority of independent thinkers will rise against the custom; they are not afraid of coming into violent conflict with generally accepted views; they defend the fundamental principle of Morality, namely, consideration for the individual, against the exception, namely, oppression of the individual for the ostensible good of the community; they brand as immoral what is generally accounted moral; they announce that the current acceptation of the goodness or badness of a certain order of actions must cease.

The intervention of such reformers always gives offence, and arouses anger which at times rises to murderous fury. But this wrathful indignation is just what makes a break in the automatic fashion in which the majority of average men act according to traditional custom; the attention of more and more minds is arrested, critically they examine the accepted moral law, they are penetrated first by the suspicion and finally by the clear conviction that it is contrary to the essence of Morality, and they swell the ranks of the innovators who inveigh against the tradition. The struggle lasts long and is carried on pitilessly. The preachers of the new Morality seem corrupt and criminal to the supporters of the old. They are persecuted and slandered and not seldom have to suffer martyrdom, but they always emerge victorious if their doctrine is in agreement with the logic of the fundamental principles of Moral law. That is the history of the abolition of human sacrifices, of the vendetta, of slavery, of legal torture, of religious coercion.

Whoever looks about him with open eyes will note that civilized men are at the moment adopting new ideas with regard to the operation of state omnipotence, to war, to the right of the economically strong to exploit others, to the rights of women, to s.e.xual morality, to the penal system.

The advocates of a new Morality must still put up with the most humiliating abuse. He who wishes to defend the individual from coercion by the state is an anarchist and deserves to be hanged or broken on the wheel. He who maintains that war is immoral belongs to the rabble of vagabonds who own no nationality, for whom no contempt is too deep and no punishment too severe. He who refuses a duel is a dishonoured coward, and thereby cuts himself off from decent society. He who recognizes woman's right to motherhood is a dastardly purveyor of opportunities for prost.i.tution. He who attacks the present relation between Capital and Labour as a hypocritical continuation of slavery is an ignorant agitator or an enemy of society. He who would like to see the idea of punishment excluded from the law, as being retrograde and unscientific, and who wishes only the point of view of the defence of society to be recognized as valid, talks sentimental nonsense, disarms justice and places the community at large at the mercy of criminals.

But the issue of the struggle is not in doubt. The present systems, which present exceptions to the moral law of consideration for one's neighbour, must go. Although they are considered moral to-day, are, in fact, Morality itself, to-morrow they will be felt to be immoral and be abhorred by all men of moral feelings. Thus the concepts Good and Bad gradually change their meaning; views on what is moral and what immoral are constantly in a state of flux; and the only permanent thing is recognition of the fact that man's actions must be withdrawn from the control of subjective choice and whim, and must be subject to a law set up by the community; the justification of this law lies in its being necessary to the existence of society. Every revision of Moral values originates in some vexation, and ends by refining and deepening moral sentiment. In this chapter only the scheme of development of moral views and of their changes has been indicated. The question of moral progress will be dealt with fully later on.

To sum up the arguments of this section, Morality is not transcendental but immanent; it is a social phenomenon and restricted to the sphere of living beings. Its beginnings may be traced in animal societies, it is developed among mankind. The preliminary condition necessary for this development is the ability to visualize future happenings, since moral conduct is determined by estimating its effects and results, that is, by conceiving something in the future. Morality has a positive, concrete aim. It makes the existence of society possible, and this, given the circ.u.mstances obtaining on our planet, is the necessary condition for the preservation of each individual, and it originated from the instinct of self-preservation in the species. Its essence lies in consideration for one's neighbour, because without this the communal life of individuals, that is, a society, would be impossible.

If individuals had been able to live alone, Morality could never have come into existence. The concepts Good and Bad characterize those actions which society feels to be beneficial or harmful to itself. As moral conduct implies consideration for one's neighbour, it is often, if not always, in conflict with selfishness, that is, with the immediate and instinctive impulses, and is, in the first place, accompanied by disagreeable sensations. The pleasurable emotion of satisfaction arises later through habit and reflection; it accompanies the thought of the merit and praiseworthiness of the victory over self. Conscience is the voice of the community in the individual's consciousness. The idea of Duty is the subjective conception of the Rights of our neighbour; the idea of Rights is the subjective conception of our neighbour's Duty to us. Morality is not absolute, but relative, and is subject to continual changes. To maintain that Morality is cosmic, eternal, immutable, that it aims neither at profit nor pleasure, but const.i.tutes its own aim, is pure anthropomorphic superst.i.tion.

CHAPTER III

THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORALITY

Morality is a restraint which the community imposes on each of its members. It demands from the individual the sacrifice of his transitory and momentary comfort in favour of his general welfare which is dependent on that of the community. It prohibits the pleasure of gratifying his desires in order that by this unpleasant renunciation his lasting well-being may be ensured. Subjectively experienced and viewed, therefore, Morality always implies the limitation of free will, the curbing of desire, opposition to inclinations and appet.i.tes, and the diminution or suppression of free, or let us rather say of unbridled, action. Before Morality can profit the community, it disturbs and incommodes the individual, it rouses in him disagreeable sensations which may reach such a pitch as to be intense pain. It is only after deep reflection, of which not everyone is capable, that the individual realizes that Morality is an essential condition of the life of society, and that the preservation of society is an essential condition of his own life; before he investigates, before he even meditates on Morality, the individual feels it directly to be unpleasant, laborious, stern--nay, hostile.

The control which Morality exercises over the actions, and indeed in many cases over the most secret thoughts of the individual, appears at the first glance to be somewhat paradoxical. It is by no means obvious why the individual should always take sides against himself and, adopting a defensive and disapproving att.i.tude, hold his instinctive tendencies in check. Moral conduct would be intelligible if the community were always ready with means of coercion and could constrain the individual by brute force to place its interest before his own pleasure. But the individual does not wait for police intervention on the part of the community. He frowns upon himself with the awful severity of the law. He threatens himself with a cudgel. He divides himself into two beings, one of which wants to follow its instincts, while the other curbs them vigorously; one is a rearing, often a refractory, horse, the other a rider with bridle, whip and spur.

This reduplication of the ego, one-half of which establishes control over the other, one-half of which tries to remain true to itself, while the other divests itself of its ident.i.ty and denies itself--this is the inner process, the outward manifestation of which is moral conduct. This demands investigation and explanation. We must show how the organism could develop from within itself the power to paralyse, or completely repress, its own elemental activities, and how Morality was able to become an integral part in the general scheme of life processes.

The mechanism whereby the mind, appraising, foreseeing and judging, checks the first movement of impulse, is inhibition or repression.

Without inhibition moral conduct would not be possible. The mind would have no method of indicating the path and prescribing rules to the organism's instinct. It would have no means of making its insight prevail over the desires of the senses. It would have no weapon with which to force its being to actions opposed to its organic inclinations.

Without inhibition the individual would never give precedence to the demands of the community and lay himself open to disagreeable emotions in order to please the community. Inhibition was the necessary organic preliminary to the phenomenon of Morality. It had to be pre-existent in the individual, so that Morality could make itself at home in his intellectual life, so that it could acquire creative, ruling and practical power among the elect, and become an unconscious and easy habit among the average. Morality took possession of a pre-existent organic apt.i.tude and made it serve its own purposes. But organic apt.i.tudes are not alike in all individuals. In some cases they are more or less perfect; in others they may be lacking altogether. Indeed only individuals with highly developed powers of inhibition are capable of that heroic Morality which liberates them from the weakness of the flesh and makes them independent of the demands of the body; those in whom this power of inhibition is scantily developed evade the influence of Morality entirely, and it has no authority over them.

That which is called character is at bottom the name we give to the power of inhibition. Where it is weak we speak of lack of character, whereas by strength of character we mean that the power of inhibition is great. The will makes use of inhibition. With its help the will guides the living machine in a certain direction and urges it to perform given tasks. At the first glance it may not seem obvious that positive actions can come of repression, which is something negative. But if we a.n.a.lyse psychologically the actions demanded and promoted by the will, and trace them back to their organic origins, we shall find that, as a rule, the first elements consist in the prevention of impulsive movements, and that the impetus to positive effort is given by the will, which converts these movements into contrary ones. A few instances may make this psychic process clearer. Winkelried, at Sempach, cleaves a path through the cuira.s.siers while they bury their lances in his breast; he becomes capable of this great deed of self-sacrifice in that, by a mighty effort of will power, he suppresses the strongest of all instincts, that of self-preservation, and forces all his energies, which are naturally directed towards flight from danger, to challenge danger and yield completely to it. The lover who overcomes his pa.s.sion and renounces its object, because his idol is the bride of his best friend, begins with the determined inhibition of the impulse which urges him towards the woman, and attains renunciation by the suppression of his desire; this renunciation finds expression in positive actions, in the rupture of relations which bring him happiness, the avoidance of meetings which would prevent the wound in his heart from healing, and so on. The brave rescuer who plunges into the waves to save a drowning man, or enters a burning house to save a fellow creature threatened by the flames, must first overcome his natural shrinking fear of the water and the fire; and not till after the suppression of strong impulses to avoid the uncanny adventure, does he succeed in making his muscles obey the impulse to save life.

Inhibition, therefore, is the organic foundation on which Morality builds, not only that Morality which consists in abstention from certain actions, but that which is manifested in active virtue. But inhibition is a faculty which the organism has developed for its own ends, the better and more easily to preserve its own life, and to render its power of achievement greater. Morality makes use of this faculty, which it finds ready to hand, for the ends of the community, and very often against the immediate interests of the individual for whose advantage it is nevertheless intended. Now the individual would not put up with this inexpedient use, one is tempted to say this clever misuse, of one of its organic capacities, if this yielding up of the mechanism of inhibition to Morality were not beneficial to life and therefore came within the sphere of the biological purpose of inhibition. By being grafted on a pre-existent organic faculty Morality becomes such itself; it forms a link in the chain of biological processes within the individual organism; it ceases to be purely a product of society forced upon the individual to his molestation and in spite of his annoyance; it acquires the character of a differentiation of inhibition in order to help the individual, or even to make it at all possible for him to adapt himself to life in a society.

That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality, which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the biological point of view.

The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will.

The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.

Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid others. Not only unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively highly developed animals, such as the daphniae, for if light is sent through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover, we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniae, wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.

Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very distinguished scientists have been unable to resist the temptation to a.s.sume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista,"

and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile imagination, just as the fairy story is.

More prosaic and less imaginative scientists do not see evidences of psychology in the signs of life in the protista, or ethics in the movements of a cell, but merely the effects of universal chemical and physical laws which also control lifeless inorganic matter. To these laws they trace the tropisms of simple organisms which tempt the imagination, p.r.o.ne as it is to anthropomorphism, into errors; such tropisms, that is to say, as their tendency to seek moderate warmth, certain rays of light and weak alkaline solutions, or to avoid acids, heat and ultra-violet rays. The little organisms probably do not obey these impulses for reasons of pleasure or pain any more than the iron filings obey the attraction of a magnet for such reasons. They do not fly to it because it gives them pleasure; the little metal leaves of an electroscope do not move apart because contact with each other displeases them. All forms of tropism, chemicotropic, thermotropic, phototropic manifestations, active and pa.s.sive tropisms clearly show that minute organisms involuntarily and unresistingly respond to the influence of natural forces, just as if they were inanimate particles.

Microscopic investigations reveal many phenomena which one is tempted to consider signs of life, but which cannot be such, as they occur in connexion with inanimate matter. The Brownian movements are rhythmical molecular changes of position, not due to any mechanical impulse emanating from the surroundings, nor to a current in the fluid in which the object of investigation is immersed, but arising from the object itself, mostly very finely divided, tiny b.a.l.l.s of mercury. A very small drop of chloroform introduced into a fluid of different density behaves exactly like a unicellular organism. It sends out pseudopods, wriggles and draws them in again. The pseudopods seem to feel and examine particles of matter with which they come in contact, and then either to withdraw quickly from them or to surround and incorporate them in the drop. This is deceptively similar to the behaviour of a living cell absorbing food, though there can be no question of this in the case of the drop of chloroform. In the latter it is merely a question of the effects of surface tension, that is, of the normal behaviour of matter in accordance with the laws governing the forces of nature, the investigation of which lies in the domain of chemistry and physics.

Impartial thought comes to a conclusion about these phenomena different from that derived from anthropomorphic delusions. It does not try to smuggle dim, dark life into the collections of mercury molecules apparently obeying some inner impulse, or into the seeking or feeling about of a pseudopod of chloroform. On the contrary, it understands life as the play of natural forces under the conditions supplied by a living organism, as the automatic working of a machine-like apparatus to which natural forces supply the motive power. Similar manifestations in inanimate matter and in elementary organisms seem to justify the conclusion that the distinction between living and non-living matter is arbitrary, that there are only forces, or perhaps one single force, that is to say, one movement, in the universe, whose activity is manifested in the most manifold forms, of which life is one. Modern Monism has come to this conclusion, but it is not alone in so doing. Long before Monism there was a philosophy which conceived all cosmic energies to form a unity; and really it is only an obstinate quarrel about words, for the Hylozoists regard the universe as something living and ascribe life to all matter and all atoms of which matter is made up, while the Materialists regard life as a play of forces in matter. Fundamentally the Hylozoists and Materialists hold the same views, only that the former call force life and the latter call life force; just as the only point of difference between them and the Pantheists is that these have given the majestic t.i.tle of G.o.d to the universal life they a.s.sume--as Spinoza has it, "_Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt_."

The question, what is life? is the greatest that the human understanding can ask of itself. For thousands of years man has cudgelled his brain over this, and is as far from finding an answer to-day as he was on the first day. The definition most often repeated runs thus: Life is the ability possessed by certain bodies to react to stimuli, to absorb nourishment and to reproduce themselves. That is a statement of observed facts, but it is no explanation. It informs us that we are familiar with bodies which behave in a way distinguishing them from other bodies; but why they conduct themselves differently from others, what the particular thing is which is present in certain combinations of matter and absent in others--that is an impenetrable secret.

Science has tried by the most varied methods to solve the problem. It seemed a triumph of research that Woehler produced urea, that chemists later on manufactured carbohydrates, that Fischer is on the high road to the production of synthetic alb.u.men. What is gained by these discoveries? We bring about the same combinations as the living cell does. That is, no doubt, an interesting achievement, but its value as an addition to our knowledge on this point is infinitesimal. For we accomplish the production of sugar, urea and amine in a manner very different to that of the living cell, and he who copies the things turned out in a workshop has contributed nothing to our knowledge of the workman who plies his trade in the workshop. The dividing line between life and lifelessness was supposed to have been obliterated when elementary manifestations of life were proved to exist in inanimate matter; the Brownian movements in the smallest particles; the growth of crystals immersed in a solution of the same chemical composition as themselves; crystallization itself which represents a kind of very simple organization of matter, and at any rate proves the sway of a regulating and directive force; the tendency of certain elements to combine, which has been called their affinity. But this name is only a poetical metaphor which no one will take literally. The growth of crystals in their mother liquor is merely mechanical precipitation on their surface, an external addition of layers of the same material; but not growth by the incorporation of such matter, that is, through the absorption of nourishment.

These and similar results of observation do not suffice absolutely to justify the a.s.sumption, seductive though it be, that life is a fundamental attribute of matter, that it is present everywhere though graduated in intensity, that therefore apparently inanimate matter differs not qualitatively, but only quant.i.tatively from living beings, that life stretches in an unbroken line from the block of metal or rock, in which it is completely obscured, to man, the most highly developed organism we know of; and that at a certain point in its range it reveals itself in a form which permits no distinction between organic and inorganic matter.

The origin of life is as completely unknown to us as its essence. For thousands of years the a.s.sumption was lightheartedly made that under certain, somewhat vague circ.u.mstances, life originated of its own accord. Pasteur showed that a _generatio spontanea_ cannot be proved to exist, that every living thing comes from another living thing, a parent organism, and that the old philosophers were right in propounding "_omne vivum ex ovo_" as a law, although they only guessed it and had not proved it experimentally. A very few critics, who are hard to convince, still dare to a.s.sert in a small voice that Pasteur's work and all the facts established by microbiology do not prove conclusively that life does not nevertheless originate from inorganic matter under conditions which we cannot nowadays reproduce in our laboratories. No answer can be made to this objection. An experiment is only conclusive for the conditions in which it is made, and not for others. All that we can positively a.s.sert is that on earth the genesis of life without a demonstrable parent organism has never been observed. To go farther, and to a.s.sert that a _generatio spontanea_ is absolutely impossible under any conditions, on earth or elsewhere, is arbitrary, just as it is to a.s.sert the contrary.

Those who are supporters of the theory that life can be developed from non-living matter for a long time thought they had conclusively proved their case; they argued as follows: At the present time life exists on our planet; according to the Kant-Laplace hypothesis our planet was formed from a cosmic nebula and pa.s.sed through a state of fluid incandescence; in this state life is impossible; therefore life must have originated spontaneously one day after the Earth had cooled down; consequently either the Kant-Laplace hypothesis is wrong or the a.s.sertion that life can only be generated by life is erroneous; the two a.s.sumptions are incompatible. This conclusion no longer presents any insuperable difficulties. It has been observed that spores which have been kept for months at the temperature of frozen hydrogen, that is, very nearly at absolute zero, have retained their germinative power and have developed when they were brought back to a favourable temperature.

Therefore they would not be killed by the cold of interstellar s.p.a.ce on their way from one heavenly body to another, and could become the seeds of life on another hitherto inanimate star. That large numbers of tiny particles of matter exist in interstellar s.p.a.ce and are precipitated on the heavenly bodies is proved by the cosmic dust that arctic explorers have collected from the surface of snow and ice. Therefore the Earth may well have been in an incandescent state, and may yet have received from interstellar s.p.a.ce the germs of life which developed and multiplied when the Earth's crust had cooled sufficiently to provide the conditions favourable to their existence; and these germs may have been the ancestors of all the life that exists on earth to-day after a period of evolution lasting hundreds of millions of years.

This would account for the origin of life upon the Earth, but not of life in general. The germs, which travel as carriers of life from an older heavenly body to a younger one, must have sprung from parents, and however far back we trace their genealogical tree we are always finally faced by this dilemma: either life did, after all, originate at one time from something lifeless, and what has happened once must be able to happen again, now and always; or life never originated at all, but has always existed; it is eternal like matter, in forms whose variety we cannot even dimly grasp, its threads, having neither beginning nor end, wind through eternity. Of these two a.s.sumptions the latter is incomparably more in harmony with our present-day views on the universe.

We believe the matter of which the universe is built up to be everlasting. It costs no great effort to believe life to be eternal too.

True, the idea of eternity is inconceivable to us; it is a dim conception which has given rise to a word, a tone picture which portrays something indefinite, but within the bounds of the inconceivable there is room for both semi-obscurities, the everlastingness of matter and the everlastingness of life.

But the most enigmatical point in the riddle of life is not life itself, which is a form of being, and is neither more nor less comprehensible than the existence of an inanimate object, of a stone, of water, of the air; it is consciousness. Descartes proves his own existence to himself by the fact that he thinks. Life must be accompanied by consciousness in order to convince the living being that it exists. The formula: "_cogito ergo sum_" has been admired for hundreds of years. It certainly is specious. But how many questions it leaves unanswered! Has it the right to deny life to an ent.i.ty that does not conceive itself? Must it not be completed by the proof that life without thought, that is, without consciousness, does not exist, that consciousness is the necessary complement of life? And, above all, ought not Descartes to have given us an explanation of what thought and consciousness are?