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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44094 ***
+
++-------------------------------------------------+
+|Transcriber's note:                              |
+|                                                 |
+|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.  |
+|                                                 |
++-------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE
+
+_AND OTHER ESSAYS_
+
+(NEWLY-ENLARGED AND COMPLETE EDITION)
+
+BY
+EDWARD CARPENTER
+
+AUTHOR OF "TOWARDS DEMOCRACY,"
+"MY DAYS AND DREAMS," ETC.
+
+[Illustration: logo]
+
+LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
+RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1
+
+
+First Edition, _June 1889_; Second Edition, _December 1890_;
+Third Edition, _November 1893_; Fourth Edition, _July 1895_;
+Fifth Edition, _September 1897_; Sixth Edition, _October 1900_;
+Seventh Edition, _July 1902_; Eighth Edition, _March 1903_;
+Ninth Edition, _January 1906_; Tenth Edition, _January 1908_;
+Eleventh Edition, _October 1910_; Twelfth Edition, _Dec. 1912_;
+Thirteenth Edition, _Aug. 1914_; Fourteenth Edition, _June 1916_;
+Fifteenth Edition, _Sept. 1917_; Complete Edition, _Jan. 1921_
+
+(_All rights reserved_)
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO COMPLETE EDITION
+
+(1920)
+
+
+In looking over this volume, first published in 1889, with a view to a
+final Edition, I am glad to note that after all there is not much in it
+requiring alteration. Considering that the original issue took place
+more than 30 years ago, I had thought that the great changes in
+scientific and philosophic thought which have taken place during that
+period would probably have rendered "out of date" a good deal of the
+book.
+
+As a matter of fact, the first paper--that on Civilisation--was given as
+a lecture before the Fabian Society, in 1888; and I shall not easily
+forget the furious attacks which were made upon it on that occasion. The
+book--published as a whole in 1889--came in for a very similar reception
+from the press-critics. They slated it to the top of their bent--except
+in those not unfrequent cases when they ignored it as almost beneath
+notice. The whole trend of the thought of the time was against its
+conclusions; and it is perhaps worth while to recall these facts in
+order to measure how far we have travelled in these 30 years. For to-day
+(I think we may say) these conclusions are generally admitted as
+correct; and the views which seemed so hazarded and precarious at the
+earlier date are now fairly accepted and established.
+
+The word Civilisation has undoubtedly during this period suffered an
+ominous change of color. It is no longer an easy term denoting all that
+is ideal and delightful in social life, but on the contrary, carries
+with it a sense of doubt and of criticism, as of something that is by no
+means accepted yet, but is rather on its trial--if not actually
+condemned!
+
+I am sorry to note, however, that the suggestion made more than once in
+the course of my book--namely that the term (Civilisation) should
+properly be given an _historical_ instead of ideal value, as applicable
+to a certain period only in the history of each people, has not yet been
+generally taken up. Yet a paper by some more competent person than
+myself on the definite marks and signs of the civilisation-period in
+History--their first appearance in the course of human progress and
+evolution, and their probable disappearance again at a later
+stage--would be greatly interesting and instructive.
+
+My little essay on this subject was written at the time of its
+composition with a good deal of imaginative _élan_; and is of course
+open to criticism on that side, as being mainly enthusiastic in
+character and only slenderly supported by exact _data_, proofs,
+historical illustrations, analogies, and so forth. But to largely alter
+or amend the essay without seriously crippling it would be impossible;
+and though the form may be hurried or inadequate, yet as far as the
+actual contents and conclusions are concerned I still adhere to them
+absolutely, and believe that time will show them to be fully justified.
+
+With regard to my views on Modern Science the last quarter of a century
+has curiously corroborated them. For while on the one hand--as
+expected--the progress in actual discovery and application of observed
+facts has been enormous, the _theories_ on the other hand about all
+these things have receded more and more into the background, and have
+passed almost out of sight. While knowing, for instance, infinitely more
+about electrical actions and adaptations than we did, we seem to be if
+anything further off than ever from any valid theory of what Electricity
+_is_. The same with regard to Heat and Light, to Astronomical,
+Biological and Geological "laws," and so forth. On such matters Modern
+Science is on the verge of confessing itself bankrupt, but not wishing
+to do that, it keeps a discreet silence.
+
+The Atom, which I ventured (to the disgust of my scientific friends) to
+make fun of 30 years ago, has now exploded of itself as thoroughly as a
+German "coal-box"; and the fixed Chemical Elements of older days have of
+late dissolved into protean vapours and emanations, ions and electrons,
+impossible to follow through their endless transformations. As to the
+numerous "Laws of Nature" which in the nineteenth century we were just
+about to establish for all eternity, it is only with the greatest
+difficulty that any of these can now be discovered--most of them having
+got secreted away into the darkness of ancient text-books: where they
+lead forlorn and sightless existences, like the fish in the caves of
+Kentucky.
+
+Here again--in my chapters on Science--though some expressions remain
+which are now out of date, I have thought it best to leave them as
+originally written: the meanings and general conclusions being still
+valid and as they were. It will be seen that the general drift of these
+chapters is to point the moral that the true field of science is to be
+found in Life, and that the best way to _know_ things is to _experience_
+their meaning and to identify oneself with them through Action. From a
+study on these principles will ultimately emerge a Science truly humane
+and creative, masterful, and capable of building a true home for
+men--instead of the feverish, spectral and self-deluding thing which has
+usurped the name up to now.
+
+Something the same will happen with the conception of Morality. The
+abstract codes on this subject, which have wrought so much havoc by
+their fatal intrusion on the field of human Life, are rapidly fading
+away. These ghosts, like the ghosts of Nature's "Laws," are receiving
+their _quietus_. And the general outline which was suggested in "The
+Defence of Criminals" has now been traced more positively in the chapter
+on "The New Morality" inserted at the end of the present volume.
+Morality has at last to become truly human, and the real expression of
+our organic need. Man has to be liberated from the cramps and
+suppressions and fixations which have hitherto paralysed him in the
+moral field. He has to emerge from the swathing bands of his pupal stage
+into the free air of heaven, and to become in the highest sense
+self-determining and creative.
+
+Thus three things, (1) the realisation of a new order of Society, in
+closest touch with Nature, and in which the diseases of class-domination
+and Parasitism will have finally ceased; (2) the realisation of a
+Science which will no longer be a mere thing of the brain, but a part of
+Actual Life; and (3) the realisation of a Morality which will signalise
+and express the vital and organic unity of man with his fellows--these
+three things will become the heralds of a new era of humanity--an era
+which will possibly prefer _not_ to call itself by the name of
+Civilisation.
+
+In order to corroborate and confirm the first paper in the book an
+Appendix has now been added containing notes and _data_ on the life and
+customs of many "uncivilised" peoples; for much of which Appendix I am
+indebted to the assistance of my widely-read and resourceful friend, E.
+Bertram Lloyd.
+
+E. C.
+
+_December, 1920._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                      PAGE
+PREFACE TO COMPLETE EDITION                              7
+
+CIVILISATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE                        15
+
+MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM                             79
+
+THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST                  120
+
+DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS: A CRITICISM OF MORALITY          143
+
+EXFOLIATION: LAMARCK _versus_ DARWIN                   181
+
+CUSTOM                                                 206
+
+A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE                          219
+
+THE NEW MORALITY                                       243
+
+APPENDIX--BEING NOTES ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS
+AND CUSTOMS OF PRE-CIVILISED PEOPLES                   265
+
+
+
+
+CIVILISATION:
+
+ITS CAUSE AND CURE
+
+The friendly and flowing savage, who is he? Is he waiting for
+civilisation, or is he past it, and mastering it?--WHITMAN.
+
+
+We find ourselves to-day in the midst of a somewhat peculiar state of
+society, which we call Civilisation, but which even to the most
+optimistic among us does not seem altogether desirable. Some of us,
+indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind of disease which the
+various races of man have to pass through--as children pass through
+measles or whooping cough; but if it is a disease, there is this serious
+consideration to be made, that while History tells us of many nations
+that have been attacked by it, of many that have succumbed to it, and of
+some that are still in the throes of it, we know of no single case in
+which a nation has fairly recovered from and passed through it to a more
+normal and healthy condition. In other words the development of human
+society has never yet (that we know of) passed beyond a certain
+definite and apparently final stage in the process we call
+Civilisation; at that stage it has always succumbed or been arrested.
+
+Of course it may at first sound extravagant to use the word disease in
+connection with Civilisation at all, but a little thought should show
+that the association is not ill-grounded. To take the matter on its
+physical side first, I find that in Mullhall's Dictionary of Statistics
+(1884) the number of accredited doctors and surgeons in the United
+Kingdom is put at over 23,000. If the extent of the national sickness is
+such that we require 23,000 medical men to attend to us, it must surely
+be rather serious! And _they_ do not cure us. Wherever we look to-day,
+in mansion or in slum, we see the features and hear the complaints of
+ill-health; the difficulty is really to find a healthy person. The state
+of the modern civilised man in this respect--our coughs, colds,
+mufflers, dread of a waft of chill air, &c.--is anything but creditable,
+and it seems to be the fact that, notwithstanding all our libraries of
+medical science, our knowledges, arts, and appliances of life, we are
+actually less capable of taking care of ourselves than the animals are.
+Indeed, talking of animals, we are--as Shelley I think points out--fast
+depraving the _domestic_ breeds. The cow, the horse, the sheep, and even
+the confiding pussy-cat, are becoming ever more and more subject to
+disease, and are liable to ills which in their wilder state they knew
+not of. And finally the savage races of the earth do not escape the
+baneful influence. Wherever Civilisation touches them, they die like
+flies from the small-pox, drink, and worse evils it brings along with
+it, and often its mere contact is sufficient to destroy whole races.
+
+But the word Disease is applicable to our social as well as to our
+physical condition. For as in the body disease arises from the loss of
+the physical unity which constitutes Health, and so takes the form of
+warfare or discord between the various parts, or of the abnormal
+development of individual organs, or the consumption of the system by
+predatory germs and growths; so in our modern life we find the unity
+gone which constitutes true society, and in its place warfare of classes
+and individuals, abnormal development of some to the detriment of
+others, and consumption of the organism by masses of social parasites.
+If the word disease is applicable anywhere, I should say it is--both in
+its direct and its derived sense--to the civilised societies of to-day.
+
+Again, mentally, is not our condition most unsatisfactory? I am not
+alluding to the number and importance of the lunatic asylums which cover
+our land, nor to the fact that maladies of the brain and nervous system
+are now so common; but to the strange sense of mental unrest which marks
+our populations, and which amply justifies Ruskin's cutting epigram:
+that our two objects in life are, "Whatever we have--to get more; and
+wherever we are--to go somewhere else." This sense of unrest, of
+disease, penetrates down even into the deepest regions of man's
+being--into his moral nature--disclosing itself there, as it has done
+in all nations notably at the time of their full civilisation, as the
+sense of Sin.[1] All down the Christian centuries we find this strange
+sense of inward strife and discord developed, in marked contrast to the
+naive insouciance of the pagan and primitive world; and, what is
+strangest, we even find people glorying in this consciousness--which,
+while it may be the harbinger of better things to come, is and can be in
+itself only the evidence of loss of unity, and therefore of ill-health,
+in the very centre of human life.
+
+Of course we are aware with regard to Civilisation that the word is
+sometimes used in a kind of ideal sense, as to indicate a state of
+future culture towards which we are tending--the implied assumption
+being that a sufficiently long course of top hats and telephones will in
+the end bring us to this ideal condition; while any little drawbacks in
+the process, such as we have just pointed out, are explained as being
+merely accidental and temporary. Men sometimes speak of civilising and
+ennobling influences as if the two terms were interchangeable, and of
+course if they like to use the word Civilisation in this sense they have
+a right to; but whether the actual tendencies of modern life taken in
+the mass _are_ ennobling (except in a quite indirect way hereafter to be
+dwelt upon) is, to say the least, a doubtful question. Any one who
+would get an idea of the glorious being that is as a matter of fact
+being turned out by the present process should read Mr. Kay Robinson's
+article in the _Nineteenth Century_ for May, 1883, in which he
+prophesies (quite solemnly and in the name of science) that the human
+being of the future will be a toothless, bald, toeless creature with
+flaccid muscles and limbs almost incapable of locomotion!
+
+Perhaps it is safer on the whole not to use the word Civilisation in
+such ideal sense, but to limit its use (as is done to-day by all writers
+on primitive society) to a definite historical stage through which the
+various nations pass, and in which we actually find ourselves at the
+present time. Though there is of course a difficulty in marking the
+commencement of any period of historical evolution very definitely, yet
+all students of this subject agree that the growth of property and the
+ideas and institutions flowing from it did at a certain point bring
+about such a change in the structure of human society that the new stage
+might fairly be distinguished from the earlier stages of Savagery and
+Barbarism by a separate term. The growth of Wealth, it is shown, and
+with it the conception of Private Property, brought on certain very
+definite new forms of social life; it destroyed the ancient system of
+society based upon the _gens_, that is, a society of equals founded upon
+blood-relationship, and introduced a society of classes founded upon
+differences of material possession; it destroyed the ancient system of
+mother-right and inheritance through the female line, and turned the
+woman into the property of the man; it brought with it private ownership
+of land, and so created a class of landless aliens, and a whole system
+of rent, mortgage, interest, etc.; it introduced slavery, serfdom and
+wage-labour, which are only various forms of the dominance of one class
+over another; and to rivet these authorities it created the State and
+the policeman. Every race that we know, that has become what we call
+civilised, has passed through these changes; and though the details may
+vary and have varied a little, the main order of change has been
+practically the same in all cases. We are justified therefore in calling
+Civilisation a historical stage, whose commencement dates roughly from
+the division of society into classes founded on property and the
+adoption of class-government. Lewis Morgan in his _Ancient Society_ adds
+the invention of writing and the consequent adoption of written History
+and written Law; Engels in his _Ursprung der Familie, des
+Privateigenthums und des Staats_ points out the importance of the
+appearance of the Merchant, even in his most primitive form, as a mark
+of the civilisation-period; while the French writers of the last century
+made a good point in inventing the term _nations policées_
+(policemanised nations) as a substitute for civilised nations; for
+perhaps there is no better or more universal mark of the period we are
+considering, and of its social degradation, than the appearance of the
+crawling phenomenon in question. [Imagine the rage of any decent North
+American Indians if they had been told they required _policemen_ to keep
+them in order!]
+
+If we take this historical definition of Civilisation, we shall see that
+our English Civilisation began hardly more than a thousand years ago,
+and even so the remains of the more primitive society lasted long after
+that. In the case of Rome--if we reckon from the later times of the
+early kings down to the fall of Rome--we have again about a thousand
+years. The Jewish civilisation from David and Solomon downwards
+lasted--with breaks--somewhat over a thousand years; the Greek
+civilisation less; the series of Egyptian civilisations which we can now
+distinguish lasted altogether very much longer; but the important points
+to see are, first, that the process has been quite similar in character
+in these various (and numerous other) cases,[2] quite as similar in fact
+as the course of the same disease in various persons; and secondly that
+in no case, as said before, has any nation come _through_ and passed
+beyond this stage; but that in most cases it has succumbed soon after
+the main symptoms had been developed.
+
+But it will be said, It may be true that Civilisation regarded as a
+stage of human history presents some features of disease; but is there
+any reason for supposing that disease in some form or other was any less
+present in the previous stage--that of Barbarism? To which I reply, I
+think there is good reason. Without committing ourselves to the
+unlikely theory that the "noble savage" was an ideal human being
+physically or in any other respect, and while certain that in many
+points he was decidedly inferior to the civilised man, I think we must
+allow him the superiority in some directions; and one of these was his
+comparative freedom from disease. Lewis Morgan, who grew up among the
+Iroquois Indians, and who probably knew the North American natives as
+well as any white man has ever done, says (in his _Ancient Society_, p.
+45), "Barbarism ends with the production of grand Barbarians." And
+though there are no native races on the earth to-day who are actually in
+the latest and most advanced stage of Barbarism;[3] yet, if we take the
+most advanced tribes that we know of--such as the said Iroquois Indians
+of twenty or thirty years ago, some of the Kaffir tribes round Lake
+Nyassa in Africa, now (and possibly for a few years more) comparatively
+untouched by civilisation, or the tribes along the river Uaupes, thirty
+or forty years back, of Wallace's _Travels on the Amazon_--all tribes in
+what Morgan would call the _middle_ stage of Barbarism--we undoubtedly
+in each case discover a fine and (which is our point here) _healthy_
+people. Captain Cook in his first Voyage says of the natives of
+Otaheite, "We saw no critical disease during our stay upon the island,
+and but few instances of sickness, which were accidental fits of the
+colic;" and, later on, of the New Zealanders, "They enjoy perfect and
+uninterrupted health. In all our visits to their towns, where young and
+old, men and women, crowded about us ... we never saw a single person
+who appeared to have any bodily complaint, nor among the numbers we have
+seen naked did we once perceive the slightest eruption upon the skin, or
+any marks that an eruption had left behind." These are pretty strong
+words. Of course diseases exist among such peoples, even where they have
+never been in contact with civilisation, but I think we may say that
+among the higher types of savages they are rarer, and nothing like so
+various and so prevalent as they are in our modern life; while the power
+of recovery from _wounds_ (which are of course the most frequent form of
+disablement) is generally admitted to be something astonishing. Speaking
+of the Kaffirs, J. G. Wood says, "Their state of health enables them to
+survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any civilised
+European." Mr. Frank Oates in his Diary[4] mentions the case of a man
+who was condemned to death by the king. He was hacked down with axes,
+and left for dead. "What must have been intended for the _coup de grâce_
+was a cut in the back of the head, which had chipped a large piece out
+of the skull, and must have been meant to cut the spinal cord where it
+joins the brain. It had, however, been made a little higher than this,
+but had left such a wound as I should have thought that no one could
+have survived ... when I held the lanthorn to investigate the wound I
+started back in amazement to see a hole at the base of the skull,
+perhaps two inches long and an inch and a half wide, and I will not
+venture to say how deep, but the depth too must have been an affair of
+inches. Of course this hole penetrated into the substance of the brain,
+and probably for some distance. I dare say a mouse could have sat in
+it." Yet the man was not so much disconcerted. Like Old King Cole, "He
+asked for a pipe and a drink of brandy," and ultimately made a perfect
+recovery! Of course it might be said that such a story only proves the
+lowness of organisation of the brains of savages; but to the Kaffirs at
+any rate this would not apply; they are a quick-witted race, with large
+brains, and exceedingly acute in argument, as Colenso found to his cost.
+Another point which indicates superabundant health is the amazing animal
+spirits of these native races! The shouting, singing, dancing kept up
+nights long among the Kaffirs are exhausting merely to witness, while
+the graver North American Indian exhibits a corresponding power of life
+in his eagerness for battle or his stoic resistance of pain.[5]
+
+Similarly when we come to consider the social life of the wilder
+races--however rudimentary and undeveloped it may be--the almost
+universal testimony of students and travelers is that within its limits
+it is more harmonious and compact than that of the civilised nations.
+The members of the tribe are not organically at warfare with each other;
+society is not divided into classes which prey upon each other; nor is
+it consumed by parasites. There is more true social unity, less of
+disease. Though the customs of each tribe are rigid, absurd, and often
+frightfully cruel,[6] and though all outsiders are liable to be regarded
+as enemies, yet _within those limits_ the members live peacefully
+together--their pursuits, their work, are undertaken in common, thieving
+and violence are rare, social feeling and community of interest are
+strong. "In their own bands Indians are perfectly honest. In all my
+intercourse with them I have heard of not over half-a-dozen cases of
+such theft. But this wonderfully exceptional honesty extends no further
+than to the members of his immediate band. To all outside of it, the
+Indian is not only one of the most arrant thieves in the world, but this
+quality or faculty is held in the highest estimation." (Dodge, p. 64.)
+If a man set out on a journey (this among the Kaffirs) "he need not
+trouble himself about provisions, for he is sure to fall in with some
+hut, or perhaps a village, and is equally sure of obtaining both food
+and shelter."[7] "I have lived," says A. R. Wallace in his _Malay
+Archipelago_ vol. ii. p. 460, "with communities in South America and the
+East, who have no laws or law courts, but the public opinion of the
+village ... yet each man scrupulously respects the rights of his
+fellows, and any infraction of those rights rarely takes place. In such
+a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide
+distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and
+servant, which are the product of our civilisation." Indeed this
+_community_ of life in the early societies, this absence of division
+into classes, and of the contrast between rich and poor, is now admitted
+on all sides as a marked feature of difference between the conditions of
+the primitive and of civilised man.[8]
+
+Lastly, with regard to the mental condition of the Barbarian, probably
+no one will be found to dispute the contention that he is more
+easy-minded and that his consciousness of Sin is less developed than in
+his civilised brother. Our unrest is the penalty we pay for our wider
+life. The missionary retires routed from the savage in whom he can awake
+no sense of his supreme wickedness. An American lady had a servant, a
+negro-woman, who on one occasion asked leave of absence for the next
+morning, saying she wished to attend the Holy Communion? "I have no
+objection," said the mistress, "to grant you leave; but do you think you
+_ought_ to attend Communion? You know you have never said you were sorry
+about that goose you stole last week." "Lor' missus," replied the
+woman, "do ye think I'd let an old goose stand betwixt me and my Blessed
+Lord and Master?" But joking apart, and however necessary for man's
+ultimate evolution may be the temporary development of this
+consciousness of Sin, we cannot help seeing that the condition of the
+mind in which it is absent is the most distinctively _healthy_; nor can
+it be concealed that some of the greatest works of Art have been
+produced by people like the earlier Greeks, in whom it was absent; and
+could not possibly have been produced where it was strongly developed.
+
+Though, as already said, the latest stage of Barbarism, _i.e._, that
+just preceding Civilisation, is unrepresented on the earth to-day, yet
+we have in the Homeric and other dawn-literature of the various nations
+indirect records of this stage; and these records assure us of a
+condition of man very similar to, though somewhat more developed than,
+the condition of the existing races I have mentioned above. Besides
+this, we have in the numerous traditions of the Golden Age,[9] legends
+of the Fall, etc., a curious fact which suggests to us that a great
+number of races in advancing towards Civilisation were conscious at some
+point or other of having lost a primitive condition of ease and
+contentment, and that they embodied this consciousness, with poetical
+adornment and licence, in imaginative legends of the earlier Paradise.
+Some people indeed, seeing the universality of these stories, and the
+remarkable fragments of wisdom embedded in them and other extremely
+ancient myths and writings, have supposed that there really was a
+general pre-historic Eden-garden or Atlantis; but the necessities of the
+case hardly seem to compel this supposition. That each human soul,
+however, bears within itself some kind of reminiscence of a more
+harmonious and perfect state of being, which it has at some time
+experienced, seems to me a conclusion difficult to avoid; and this by
+itself might give rise to manifold traditions and myths.
+
+
+II
+
+However all this may be, the question immediately before us--having
+established the more healthy, though more limited, condition of the
+pre-civilisation peoples--is, why this lapse or fall? What is the
+meaning of this manifold and intensified manifestation of
+Disease--physical, social, intellectual, and moral? What is its place
+and part in the great whole of human evolution?
+
+And this involves us in a digression, which must occupy a few pages, on
+the nature of Health.
+
+When we come to analyse the conception of Disease, physical or mental,
+in society or in the individual, it evidently means, as already hinted
+once or twice, _loss of unity_. Health, therefore, should mean unity,
+and it is curious that the history of the word entirely corroborates
+this idea. As is well known, the words health, whole, holy, are from
+the same stock; and they indicate to us the fact that far back in the
+past those who created this group of words had a conception of the
+meaning of Health very different from ours, and which they embodied
+unconsciously in the word itself and its strange relatives.
+
+These are, for instance, and among others: heal, hallow, hale, holy,
+whole, wholesome; German heilig, Heiland (the Saviour); Latin salus (as
+in salutation, salvation); Greek kalos; also compare hail! a salutation,
+and, less certainly connected, the root _hal_, to breathe, as in inhale,
+exhale--French haleine--Italian and French alma and âme (the soul);
+compare the Latin spiritus, spirit or breath, and Sanskrit âtman, breath
+or soul.
+
+Wholeness, holiness ... "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be
+full of light." ... "thy faith hath made thee _whole_."
+
+The idea seems to be a positive one--a condition of the body in which it
+is an entirety, a unity--a central force maintaining that condition; and
+disease being the break-up--or break-down--of that entirety into
+multiplicity.
+
+The peculiarity about our modern conception of Health is that it seems
+to be a purely negative one. So impressed are we by the myriad presence
+of Disease--so numerous its dangers, so sudden and unforetellable its
+attacks--that we have come to look upon health as the mere absence of
+the same. As a solitary spy picks his way through a hostile camp at
+night, sees the enemy sitting round his fires, and trembles at the
+crackling of a twig beneath his feet--so the traveller through this
+world, comforter in one hand and physic-bottle in the other, must pick
+his way, fearful lest at any time he disturb the sleeping legions of
+death--thrice blessed if by any means, steering now to the right and now
+to the left, and thinking only of his personal safety, he pass by
+without discovery to the other side.
+
+Health with us is a negative thing. It is a neutralisation of opposing
+dangers. It is to be neither rheumatic nor gouty, consumptive nor
+bilious, to be untroubled by head-ache, back-ache, heart-ache, or any of
+the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." These are the
+realities. Health is the mere negation of them.
+
+The modern notion, and which has evidently in a very subtle way
+penetrated the whole thought of to-day, is that the essential fact of
+life is the existence of innumerable external forces, which, by a very
+delicate balance and difficult to maintain, concur to produce Man--who
+in consequence may at any moment be destroyed again by the
+non-concurrence of those forces. The older notion apparently is that the
+essential fact of life _is_ Man himself; and that the external forces,
+so-called, are in some way subsidiary to this fact--that they may aid
+his expression or manifestation, or that they may hinder it, but that
+they can neither create nor annihilate the Man. Probably both ways of
+looking at the subject are important; there is a man that can be
+destroyed, and there is a man that cannot be destroyed. The old words,
+soul and body, indicate this contrast; but like all words they are
+subject to the defect that they are an attempt to draw a line where no
+line can ultimately be drawn; they mark a contrast where, in fact, there
+is only continuity--for between the little mortal man who dwells here
+and now, and the divine and universal Man who also forms a part of our
+consciousness, is there not a perfect gradation of being, and where (if
+anywhere) is there a gulf fixed? Together they form a unit, and each is
+necessary to the other: the first cannot do without the second, and the
+second cannot get along at all without the first. To use the words of
+Angelus Silesius (quoted by Schopenhauer), "Ich weiss dass ohne mich
+Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben."
+
+According then to the elder conception, and perhaps according to an
+elder experience, man, to be really healthy, must be a unit, an
+entirety--his more external and momentary self standing in some kind of
+filial relation to his more universal and incorruptible part--so that
+not only the remotest and outermost regions of the body, and all the
+assimilative, secretive, and other processes belonging thereto, but even
+the thoughts and passions of the mind itself, stand in direct and clear
+relationship to it, the final and absolute transparency of the mortal
+creature. And thus this divinity in each creature, being that which
+constitutes it and causes it to cohere together, was conceived of as
+that creature's saviour, healer--healer of wounds of body and wounds of
+heart--the Man within the man, whom it was not only possible to know,
+but whom to know and be united with was the alone salvation. This, I
+take it, was the law of health--and of holiness--as accepted at some
+elder time of human history, and by us seen as thro' a glass darkly.
+
+And the condition of disease, and of sin, under the same view, was the
+reverse of this. Enfeeblement, obscuration, duplicity--the central
+radiation blocked; lesser and insubordinate centres establishing and
+asserting themselves as against it; division, discord, possession by
+devils.
+
+Thus in the body, the establishment of an insubordinate centre--a boil,
+a tumor, the introduction and spread of a germ with innumerable progeny
+throughout the system, the enlargement out of all reason of an existing
+organ--means disease. In the mind, disease begins when any passion
+asserts itself as an independent centre of thought and action. The
+condition of health in the mind is loyalty to the divine Man within
+it.[10] But if loyalty to money become an independent centre of life, or
+greed of knowledge, or of fame, or of drink; jealousy, lust, the love of
+approbation; or mere following after any so-called virtue for
+itself--purity, humility, consistency, or what not--these may grow to
+seriously endanger the other. They are, or should be, subordinates; and
+though over a long period their insubordination may be a necessary
+condition of human progress, yet during all such time they are at war
+with each other and with the central Will; the man is torn and
+tormented, and is not happy.
+
+And when I speak thus separately of the mind and body, it must be
+remembered, as already said, that there is no strict line between them;
+but probably every affection or passion of the mind has its correlative
+in the condition of the body--though this latter may or may not be
+easily observable. Gluttony _is_ a fever of the digestive apparatus.
+What is a taint in the mind is also a taint in the body. The stomach has
+started the original idea of becoming itself the centre of the human
+system. The sexual organs may start a similar idea. Here are distinct
+threats, menaces made against the central authority--against the Man
+himself. For the man must rule or disappear; it is impossible to imagine
+a man presided over by a Stomach--a walking Stomach, using hands, feet,
+and all other members merely to carry it from place to place, and serve
+its assimilative mania. We call such a one an Hog. [And thus in the
+theory of Evolution we see the place of the hog, and all other animals,
+as fore-runners or off-shoots of special faculties in Man, and why the
+true man, and rightly, has authority over all animals, and can alone
+give them their place in creation.]
+
+So of the Brain, or any other organ; for the Man is no organ, resides in
+no organ, but is the central life ruling and radiating among all
+organs, and assigning them their arts to play.
+
+Disease then, in body or mind, is from this point of view the break-up
+of its unity, its entirety, into multiplicity. It is the abeyance of a
+central power, and the growth of insubordinate centres--life in each
+creature being conceived of as a continual exercise of energy or
+conquest, by which external or antagonistic forces (and organisms) are
+brought into subjection and compelled into the service of the creature,
+or are thrown off as harmful to it. Thus, by way of illustration, we
+find that plants or animals, when in good health, have a remarkable
+power of throwing off the attacks of any parasites which incline to
+infest them; while those that are weakly are very soon eaten up by the
+same. A rose-tree, for instance, brought indoors, will soon fall a prey
+to the aphis--though when hardened out of doors the pest makes next to
+no impression on it. In dry seasons when the young turnip plants in the
+fields are weakly from want of water the entire crop is sometimes
+destroyed by the turnip fly, which then multiplies enormously; but if a
+shower or two of rain come before much damage is done the plant will
+then grow vigorously, its tissues become more robust and resist the
+attacks of the fly, which in its turn dies. Late investigations seem to
+show that one of the functions of the white corpuscles in the blood is
+to devour disease-germs and bacteria present in the circulation--thus
+absorbing these organisms into subjection to the central life of the
+body--and that with this object they congregate in numbers toward any
+part of the body which is wounded or diseased. Or to take an example
+from society, it is clear enough that if our social life were really
+vivid and healthy, such parasitic products as the idle shareholder and
+the policeman above-mentioned would simply be impossible. The material
+on which they prey would not exist, and they would either perish or be
+transmuted into useful forms. It seems obvious in fact that life in any
+organism can only be maintained by some such processes as these--by
+which parasitic or infesting organisms are either thrown off or absorbed
+into subjection. To define the nature of the power which thus works
+towards and creates the distinctive unity of each organism may be
+difficult, is probably at present impossible, but that some such power
+exists we can hardly refuse to admit. Probably it is more a subject of
+the growth of our consciousness, than an object of external scientific
+investigation.
+
+In this view, Death is simply the loosening and termination of the
+action of this power--over certain regions of the organism; a process by
+which, when these superficial parts become hardened and osseous, as in
+old age, or irreparably damaged, as in cases of accident, the inward
+being sloughs them off, and passes into other spheres. In the case of
+man there may be noble and there may be ignoble death, as there may be
+noble and ignoble life. The inward self, unable to maintain authority
+over the forces committed to its charge, declining from its high
+prerogative, swarmed over by parasites, and fallen partially into the
+clutch of obscene foes, may at last with shame and torment be driven
+forth from the temple in which it ought to have been supreme. Or, having
+fulfilled a holy and wholesome time, having radiated divine life and
+love through all the channels of body and mind, and as a perfect workman
+uses his tools, so having with perfect mastery and nonchalance used all
+the materials committed to it, it may quietly and peacefully lay these
+down, and unchanged (absolutely unchanged to all but material eyes) pass
+on to other spheres appointed.
+
+And now a few words on the medical aspect of the subject. If we accept
+any theory (even remotely similar to that just indicated) to the effect
+that Health is a positive thing, and not a mere negation of disease, it
+becomes pretty clear that no mere investigation of the latter will
+enable us to find out what the former is, or bring us nearer to it. You
+might as well try to create the ebb and flow of the tides by an
+organised system of mops.
+
+Turn your back upon the Sun and go forth into the wildernesses of space
+till you come to those limits where the rays of light, faint with
+distance, fall dim upon the confines of eternal darkness--and phantoms
+and shadows in the half-light are the product of the wavering conflict
+betwixt day and night--investigate these shadows, describe them,
+classify them, record the changes which take place in them, erect in
+vast libraries these records into a monument of human industry and
+research; so shall you be at the end as near to a knowledge and
+understanding of the sun itself--which all this time you have left
+behind you, and on which you have turned your back--as the investigators
+of disease are to a knowledge and understanding of what health is. The
+solar rays illumine the outer world and give to it its unity and
+entirety; so in the inner world of each individual possibly is there
+another Sun, which illumines and gives unity to the man, and whose
+warmth and light would permeate his system. Wait upon the shining forth
+of this inward sun, give free access and welcome to its rays of love,
+and free passage for them into the common world around you, and it may
+be you will get to know more about health than all the books of medicine
+contain, or can tell you.
+
+Or to take the former simile: it is the central force of the Moon which
+acting on the great ocean makes all its waters one, and causes them to
+rise and fall in timely consent. But take your moon away; hey! now the
+tide is flowing too far down this estuary! Station your thousands with
+mops, but it breaks through in channel and runlet! Block it here, but it
+overflows in a neighboring bay! Appoint an army of swabs there, but to
+what end? The infinitest care along the fringe of this great sea can
+never do, with all imaginable dirt and confusion, what the central power
+does easily, and with unerring grace and providence.
+
+And so of the great (the vast and wonderful) ocean which ebbs and flows
+within a man--take away the central guide--and not 20,000 doctors, each
+with 20,000 books to consult and 20,000 phials of different contents to
+administer, could meet the myriad cases of disease which would ensue, or
+bolster up into "wholeness" the being from whom the single radiant unity
+had departed.
+
+Probably there has never been an age, nor any country (except
+Yankee-land?) in which disease has been so generally prevalent as in
+England to-day; and certainly there has never (with the same exception)
+been an age or country in which doctors have so swarmed, or in which
+medical science has been so powerful, in apparatus, in learning, in
+authority, and in actual organisation and number of adherents. How
+reconcile this contradiction--if indeed a contradiction it be?
+
+But the fact is that medical science does not contradict disease--any
+more than laws abolish crime. Medical science--and doubtless for very
+good reasons--makes a fetish of disease, and dances around it. It is (as
+a rule) only seen where disease is; it writes enormous tomes on disease;
+it induces disease in animals (and even men) for the purpose of studying
+it; it knows, to a marvelous extent, the symptoms of disease, its
+nature, its causes, its goings out and its comings in; its eyes are
+perpetually fixed on disease, till disease (for it) becomes the main
+fact of the world and the main object of its worship. Even what is so
+gracefully called Hygiene does not get beyond this negative attitude.
+And the world still waits for its Healer, who shall tell us--diseased
+and suffering as we are--_what_ health is, where it is to be found,
+whence it flows; and who having touched this wonderful power within
+himself shall not rest till he has proclaimed and imparted it to men.
+
+No, medical science does not, in the main, contradict disease. The same
+cause (infidelity and decay of the central life in men) which creates
+disease and makes men liable to it, creates students and a science of
+the subject. The Moon[11] having gone from over the waters, the good
+people rush forth with their mops; and the untimely inundations, and the
+mops and the mess and the pother, are all due to the same cause.
+
+As to the lodgment of disease, it is clear that this would take place
+easily in a disorganised system--just as a seditious adventurer would
+easily effect a landing, and would find insubordinate materials ready at
+hand for his use, in a land where the central government was weak. And
+as to the treatment of a disease so introduced there are obviously two
+methods: one is to reinforce the central power till it is sufficiently
+strong of itself to eject the insubordinate elements and restore order;
+the other is to attack the malady from outside and if possible destroy
+it--(as by doses and decoctions)--independently of the inner vitality,
+and leaving that as it was before. The first method would seem the best,
+most durable and effective; but it is difficult and slow. It consists in
+the adoption of a healthy life, bodily and mental, and will be spoken
+of later on. The second may be characterised as the medical method, and
+is valuable, or rather I should be inclined to say, _will_ be valuable,
+when it has found its place, which is to be subsidiary to the first. It
+is too often, however, regarded as superior in importance, and in this
+way, though easy of application, has come perhaps to be productive of
+more harm than good. The disease may be broken down for the time being,
+but, the roots of it not being destroyed, it soon springs up again in
+the same or a new form, and the patient is as badly off as ever.
+
+The great positive force of Health, and the power which it has to
+_expel_ disease from its neighborhood is a thing realised, I believe, by
+few persons. But it _has_ been realised on earth, and will be realised
+again when the more squalid elements of our present-day civilisation
+have passed away.
+
+
+III
+
+The result then of our digression is to show that Health--in body or
+mind--means unity, integration as opposed to disintegration. In the
+animals we find this physical unity existing to a remarkable degree. An
+almost unerring instinct and selective power rules their actions and
+organisation. Thus a cat before it has fallen (say before it has become
+a very wheezy fireside pussy!) is in a sense perfect. The wonderful
+consent of its limbs as it runs or leaps, the adaptation of its
+muscles, the exactness and inevitableness of its instincts, physical and
+affectional; its senses of sight and smell, its cleanliness, nicety as
+to food, motherly tact, the expression of its whole body when enraged,
+or when watching for prey--all these things are so to speak absolute and
+instantaneous--and fill one with admiration. The creature is "whole" or
+in one piece: there is no mentionable conflict or division within
+it.[12]
+
+Similarly with the other animals, and even with the early man himself.
+And so it would appear returning to our subject--that, if we accept the
+doctrine of Evolution, there is a progression of animated beings--which,
+though not perfect, possess in the main the attribute of Health--from
+the lowest forms up to a healthy and instinctive though certainly
+limited man. During all this stage the central law is in the ascendant,
+and the physical frame of each creature is the fairly clean vehicle of
+its expression--varying of course in complexity and degree according to
+the point of unfoldment which has been reached. And when thus in the
+long process of development the inner Man (which has lain hidden or
+dormant within the animal) at last appears, and the creature
+consequently takes on the outer frame and faculties of the human being,
+which are only as they are because of the inner man which they
+represent; when it has passed through stage after stage of animal life,
+throwing out tentative types and likenesses of what is to come, and
+going through innumerable preliminary exercises in special forms and
+faculties, till at last it begins to be able to wear the full majesty of
+manhood itself--_then_ it would seem that that long process of
+development is drawing to a close, and that the goal of creation must be
+within measurable distance.
+
+But then, at that very moment, and when the goal is, so to speak, in
+sight, occurs this failure of "wholeness" of which we have spoken, this
+partial break-up of the unity of human nature--and man, instead of going
+forward any longer in the same line as before, to all appearance
+_falls_.
+
+What is the meaning of this loss of unity? What is the cause and purpose
+of this fall and centuries-long exile from the earlier Paradise?
+
+There can be but one answer. It is self-knowledge--(which involves in a
+sense the abandonment of self). Man has to become conscious of his
+destiny--to lay hold of and realise his own freedom and blessedness--to
+transfer his consciousness from the outer and mortal part of him to the
+inner and undying.
+
+The cat cannot do this. Though perfect in its degree, its interior
+unfoldment is yet incomplete. The human soul within it has not yet come
+forward and declared itself; some sheathing leaves have yet to open
+before the divine flower-bud can be clearly seen. And when at last
+(speaking as a fool) the cat becomes a man--when the human soul within
+the creature has climbed itself forward and found expression,
+transforming the outer frame in the process into that of
+humanity--(which is the meaning I suppose of the evolution theory)--then
+the creature, though perfect and radiant in the form of Man, still lacks
+one thing. It lacks the knowledge of itself; it lacks its own identity,
+and the realisation of the manhood to which as a fact it has attained.
+
+In the animals consciousness has never returned upon itself. It radiates
+easily outwards; and the creature obeys without let or hesitation, and
+with little if any _self_-consciousness, the law of its being. And when
+man first appears on the earth, and even up to the threshold of what we
+call civilisation, there is much to show that he should in this respect
+still be classed with the animals. Though vastly superior to them in
+attainments, physical and mental, in power over nature, capacity of
+progress, and adaptability, he still in these earlier stages was like an
+animal in the unconscious instinctive nature of his action; and on the
+other hand, though his moral and intellectual structures were far less
+complete than those of the modern man--as was a necessary result of the
+absence of self-knowledge--he actually lived more in harmony with
+himself and with nature,[13] than does his descendant; his impulses,
+both physical and social, were clearer and more unhesitating; and his
+unconsciousness of inner discord and sin a great contrast to our modern
+condition of everlasting strife and perplexity.
+
+If then to this stage belongs some degree of human perfection and
+felicity, yet there remains a much vaster height to be scaled. The human
+soul which has wandered darkling for so many thousands of years, from
+its tiny spark-like germ in some low form of life to its full splendor
+and dignity in man, has yet to come to the _knowledge_ of its wonderful
+heritage, has yet to become finally individualised and free, to know
+itself immortal, to resume and interpret all its past lives, and to
+enter in triumph into the kingdom which it has won.
+
+It has in fact to face the frightful struggle of self-consciousness, or
+the disentanglement of the true self from the fleeting and perishable
+self. The animals and man, unfallen, are healthy and free from care, but
+unaware of what they are; to attain self-knowledge man must fall; he
+must become less than his true self; he must endure imperfection;
+division and strife must enter his nature. To realise the perfect Life,
+to know what, how wonderful it is--to understand that all blessedness
+and freedom consists in its possession--he must for the moment suffer
+divorce from it; the unity, the repose of his nature must be broken up,
+crime, disease and unrest must enter in, and by contrast he must attain
+to knowledge.
+
+Curious that at the very dawn of the Greek and with it the European
+civilisation we have the mystic words "Know Thyself" inscribed on the
+temple of the Delphic Apollo; and that first among the legends of the
+Semitic race stands that of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of the
+Knowledge of good and evil! To the animal there is no such knowledge, to
+the early man there was no such knowledge, and to the perfected man of
+the future there will be no such knowledge. It is a temporary
+perversion, indicating the disunion of the present-day man--the disunion
+of the outer self from the inner--the horrible dual
+self-consciousness--which is the means ultimately of a more perfect and
+conscious union than could ever have been realised without it--the death
+that is swallowed up in victory. "For the first man is of the earth,
+earthy; but the second man is the Lord from heaven."
+
+In order then, at this point in his Evolution, to advance any farther,
+Man must first fall; in order to know, he must lose. In order to realise
+what Health is, how splendid and glorious a possession, he must go
+through all the long negative experience of Disease; in order to know
+the perfect social life, to understand what power and happiness to
+mankind are involved in their true relation to each other, he must learn
+the misery and suffering which come from mere individualism and greed;
+and in order to find his true Manhood, to discover what a wonderful
+power it is, he must first lose it--he must become a prey and a slave to
+his own passions and desires--whirled away like Phaethon by the horses
+which he cannot control.
+
+This moment of divorce, then, this parenthesis in human progress, covers
+the ground of all History; and the whole of Civilisation, and all crime
+and disease, are only the materials of its immense purpose--themselves
+destined to pass away as they arose, but to leave their fruits eternal.
+
+Accordingly we find that it has been the work of Civilisation--founded
+as we have seen on Property--in every way to disintegrate and corrupt
+man--literally to corrupt--to _break up_ the unity of his nature. It
+begins with the abandonment of the primitive life and the growth of the
+sense of shame (as in the myth of Adam and Eve). From this follows the
+disownment of the sacredness of sex. Sexual acts cease to be a part of
+religious worship; love and desire--the inner and the outer
+love--hitherto undifferentiated, now become two separate things. (This
+no doubt a necessary stage in order for the development of the
+_consciousness of love_, but in itself only painful and abnormal.) It
+culminates and comes to an end, as to-day, in a complete divorce between
+the spiritual reality and the bodily fulfilment--in a vast system of
+commercial love, bought and sold, in the brothel and in the palace. It
+begins with the forsaking of the hardy nature-life, and it ends with a
+society broken down and prostrate, hardly recognisable as human, amid
+every form of luxury, poverty and disease. He who had been the free
+child of Nature denies his sonship; he disowns the very breasts that
+suckled him. He deliberately turns his back upon the light of the sun,
+and hides himself away in boxes with breathing holes (which he calls
+houses), living ever more and more in darkness and asphyxia, and only
+coming forth perhaps once a day to blink at the bright god, or to run
+back again at the first breath of the free wind for fear of catching
+cold! He muffles himself in the cast-off furs of the beasts, every
+century swathing himself in more and more layers, more and more
+fearfully and wonderfully fashioned, till he ceases to be recognisable
+as the Man that was once the crown of the animals, and presents a more
+ludicrous spectacle than the monkey that sits on his own barrel organ.
+He ceases to a great extent to use his muscles, his feet become
+partially degenerate, his teeth wholly, his digestion so enervated that
+he has to cook his food and make pulps of all his victuals, and his
+whole system so obviously on the decline that at last in the end of
+time a Kay Robinson arises and prophesies as aforesaid, that he will
+before long become wholly toothless, bald and toeless.
+
+And so with this denial of Nature comes every form of disease; first
+delicatesse, daintiness, luxury; then unbalance, enervation, huge
+susceptibility to pain. With the shutting of himself away from the
+all-healing Power, man inevitably weakens his whole manhood; the central
+bond is loosened, and he falls a prey to his own organs. He who before
+was unaware of the existence of these latter, now becomes only too
+conscious of them (and this--is it not the very object of the process?);
+the stomach, the liver and the spleen start out into painful
+distinctness before him, the heart loses its equable beat, the lungs
+their continuity with the universal air, and the brain becomes hot and
+fevered; each organ in turn asserts itself abnormally and becomes a seat
+of disorder, every corner and cranny of the body becomes the scene and
+symbol of disease, and Man gazes aghast at his own kingdom--whose extent
+he had never suspected before--now all ablaze in wild revolt against
+him. And then--all going with this period of his development--sweep vast
+epidemic trains over the face of the earth, plagues and fevers and
+lunacies and world-wide festering sores, followed by armies, ever
+growing, of doctors--they too with their retinues of books and bottles,
+vaccinations and vivisections, and grinning death's-heads in the rear--a
+mad crew, knowing not what they do, yet all unconsciously, doubtless,
+fulfilling the great age-long destiny of humanity.
+
+
+In all this the influence of Property is apparent enough. It is evident
+that the growth of property through the increase of man's powers of
+production reacts on the man in three ways: to draw him away namely, (1)
+from Nature, (2) from his true Self, (3) from his Fellows. In the first
+place it draws him away from Nature. That is, that as man's power over
+materials increases he creates for himself a sphere and an environment
+of his own, in some sense apart and different from the great elemental
+world of the winds and the waves, the woods and the mountains, in which
+he has hitherto lived. He creates what we call the artificial life, of
+houses and cities, and, shutting himself up in these, shuts Nature out.
+As a growing boy at a certain point, and partly in order to assert his
+independence, wrests himself away from the tender care of his mother,
+and even displays--just for the time being--a spirit of opposition to
+her, so the growing Man finding out his own powers uses them--for the
+time--even to do despite to Nature, and to create himself a world in
+which she shall have no part. In the second place the growth of property
+draws man away from his true Self. This is clear enough. As his power
+over materials and his possessions increases, man finds the means of
+gratifying his senses at will. Instead of being guided any longer by
+that continent and "whole" instinct which characterises the animals,
+his chief motive is now to use his powers to gratify this or that sense
+or desire. These become abnormally magnified, and the man soon places
+his main good in their satisfaction; and abandons his true Self for his
+organs, the whole for the parts. Property draws the man outwards,
+stimulating the external part of his being, and for a time mastering
+him, overpowers the central Will, and brings about his disintegration
+and corruption. Lastly, Property by thus stimulating the external and
+selfish nature in Man, draws him away from his Fellows. In the anxiety
+to possess things for himself, in order to gratify his own bumps, he is
+necessarily brought into conflict with his neighbor and comes to regard
+him as an enemy. For the true Self of man consists in his organic
+relation with the whole body of his fellows; and when the man abandons
+his true Self he abandons also his true relation to his fellows. The
+mass-Man must rule in each unit-man, else the unit-man will drop off and
+die. But when the outer man tries to separate himself from the inner,
+the unit-man from the mass-Man, then the reign of individuality
+begins--a false and impossible individuality of course, but the only
+means of coming to the consciousness of the true individuality. With the
+advent of a Civilisation then founded on Property the unity of the old
+tribal society is broken up. The ties of blood relationship which were
+the foundation of the gentile system and the guarantees of the old
+fraternity and equality become dissolved in favor of powers and
+authorities founded on mere possession. The growth of Wealth
+disintegrates the ancient Society; the temptations of power, of
+possession, etc., which accompany it, wrench the individual from his
+moorings; personal greed rules; "each man for himself" becomes the
+universal motto; the hand of every man is raised against his brother,
+and at last society itself becomes an organisation by which the rich
+fatten upon the vitals of the poor, the strong upon the murder of the
+weak. [It is interesting in this connection to find that Lewis Morgan
+makes the invention of a written alphabet and the growth of the
+conception of private property the main characteristics of the
+civilisation-period as distinguished from the periods of savagery and
+barbarism which preceded it; for the invention of writing marks perhaps
+better than anything else could do the period when Man becomes
+_self-conscious_--when he records his own doings and thoughts, and so
+commences History proper; and the growth of private property marks the
+period when he begins to sunder himself from his fellows, when therefore
+the conception of sin (or separation) first enters in, and with it all
+the long period of moral perplexity, and the denial of that community of
+life between himself and his fellows which is really of the essence of
+man's being.]
+
+And then arises the institution of Government.
+
+Hitherto this had not existed except in a quite rudimentary form. The
+early communities troubled themselves little about individual ownership,
+and what government they had was for the most part essentially
+democratic--as being merely a choice of leaders among blood-relations
+and social equals. But when the delusion that man can exist for himself
+alone--his outer and, as it were, accidental self apart from the great
+inner and cosmical self by which he is one with his fellows--when this
+delusion takes possession of him, it is not long before it finds
+expression in some system of private property. The old community of life
+and enjoyment passes away, and each man tries to grab the utmost he can,
+and to retire into his own lair for its consumption. Private
+accumulations arise; the natural flow of the bounties of life is dammed
+back, and artificial barriers of Law have to be constructed in order to
+preserve the unequal levels. Outrage and Fraud follow in the wake of the
+desire of possession; force has to be used by the possessors in order to
+maintain the law-barriers against the non-possessors; classes are
+formed; and finally the formal Government arises, mainly as the
+expression of such force; and preserves itself, as best it can, until
+such time as the inequalities which it upholds become too glaring, and
+the pent social waters gathering head burst through once more and regain
+their natural levels.
+
+Thus Morgan in his "Ancient Society" points out over and over again that
+the civilised state rests upon territorial and property marks and
+qualifications, and not upon a personal basis as did the ancient _gens_,
+or the tribe; and that the civilised government correspondingly takes on
+quite a different character and function from the simple organisation
+of the gens. He says (p. 124), "Monarchy is incompatible with
+gentilism." Also with regard to the relation of Property to Civilisation
+and Government he makes the following pregnant remarks (p. 505): "It is
+impossible to over-estimate the influence of property in the
+civilisation of mankind. It was the power that brought the Aryan and
+Semitic nations out of barbarism into civilisation. The growth of the
+idea of property in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in
+becoming its master passion. Governments and Laws are instituted with
+primary reference to its creation, protection and enjoyment. It
+introduced human slavery as an instrument in its production; and after
+the experience of several thousand years it caused the abolition of
+slavery upon the discovery that a freeman was a better property-making
+machine." And in another passage on the same subject, "The dissolution
+of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which
+property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements
+of self-destruction. Democracy is the next higher plane. It will be a
+revival in a higher form of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the
+ancient gentes."
+
+The institution of Government is in fact the evidence in social life
+that man has lost his inner and central control, and therefore must
+resort to an outward one. Losing touch with the inward Man--who is his
+true guide--he declines upon an external law, which must always be
+false. If each man remained in organic adhesion to the general body of
+his fellows, no serious dis-harmony could occur; but it is when this
+vital unity of the body politic becomes weak that it has to be preserved
+by artificial means, and thus it is that with the decay of the primitive
+and instinctive social life there springs up a form of government which
+is no longer the democratic expression of the life of the whole people;
+but a kind of outside authority and compulsion thrust upon them by a
+ruling class or caste.
+
+Perhaps the sincerest, and often though not always the earliest, form of
+Government is Monarchy. The sentiment of human unity having been already
+partly but not quite lost, the people choose--in order to hold society
+together--a man to rule over them who has this sentiment in a high
+degree. He represents the true Man and therefore the people. This is
+often a time of extensive warfare and the formation of nations. And it
+is interesting in this connection to note that the quite early "Kings"
+or leaders of each nation just prior to the civilisation period were
+generally associated with the highest religious functions, as in the
+case of the Roman _rex_, the Greek _basileus_, the early Egyptian Kings,
+Moses among the Israelites, and Druid leaders of the Britons, and so on.
+
+Later, and as the central authority gets more and more shadowy in each
+man, and the external attraction of Property greater, so it does in
+Society. The temporal and spiritual powers part company. The king--who
+at first represented the Divine Spirit or soul of society, recedes into
+the background, and his nobles of high degree (who may be compared to
+the nobler, more generous, qualities of the mind) begin to take his
+place. This is the Aristocracy and the Feudal Age--the Timocracy of
+Plato; and is marked by the appearance of large private tenures of land,
+and the growth of slavery and serfdom--the slavery thus outwardly
+appearing in society being the symbol of the inward enslavement of the
+man.
+
+Then comes the Commercial Age--the Oligarchy or Plutocracy of Plato.
+Honour quite gives place to material wealth; the rulers rule not by
+personal or hereditary, but by property qualifications. Parliaments and
+Constitutions and general Palaver are the order of the day.
+Wage-slavery, usury, mortgages, and other abominations, indicate the
+advance of the mortal process. In the individual man gain is the end of
+existence; industry and scientific cunning are his topmost virtues.
+
+Last of all the break-up is complete. The individual loses all memory
+and tradition of his heavenly guide and counterpart; his nobler passions
+fail for want of a leader to whom to dedicate themselves; his industry
+and his intellect serve but to minister to his little swarming desires.
+This is the era of anarchy--the democracy of Carlyle; the rule of the
+rabble, and mob-law; caucuses and cackle, competition and universal
+greed, breaking out in cancerous tyrannies and plutocracies--a mere
+chaos and confusion of society. For just as we saw in the human body,
+when the inner and positive force of Health has departed from it, that
+it falls a prey to parasites which overspread and devour it; so, when
+the central inspiration departs out of social life, does it writhe with
+the mere maggots of individual greed, and at length fall under the
+dominion of the most monstrous egotist who has been bred from its
+corruption.
+
+Thus we have briefly sketched the progress of the symptoms of the
+"disease," which, as said before, runs much (though not quite) the same
+course in the various nations which it attacks. And if this last stage
+were really the end of all, and the true Democracy, there were indeed
+little left to hope for. No words of Carlyle could blast that black
+enough. But this is no true Democracy. Here in this "each for himself"
+is no rule of the Demos in every man, nor anything resembling it. Here
+is no solidarity such as existed in the ancient tribes and primæval
+society, but only disintegration and a dust-heap. The true Democracy has
+yet to come. Here in this present stage is only the final denial of all
+outward and class government, in preparation for the restoration of the
+inner and true authority. Here in this stage the task of civilisation
+comes to an end; the purport and object of all these centuries is
+fulfilled; the bitter experience that mankind had to pass through is
+completed; and out of this Death and all the torture and unrest which
+accompanies it, comes at last the Resurrection. Man has sounded the
+depths of alienation from his own divine spirit, he has drunk the dregs
+of the cup of suffering, he has literally descended into Hell;
+henceforth he turns, both in the individual and in society, and mounts
+deliberately and consciously back again towards the unity which he has
+lost.[14]
+
+And the false democracy parts aside for the disclosure of the true
+Democracy which has been formed beneath it--which is not an external
+government at all, but an inward rule--the rule of the mass-Man in each
+unit-man. For no outward government can be anything but a make-shift--a
+temporary hard chrysalis-sheath to hold the grub together while the new
+life is forming inside--a device of the civilisation-period. Farther
+than this it cannot go, since no true life can rely upon an external
+support, and, when the true life of society comes, all its forms will be
+fluid and spontaneous and voluntary.
+
+
+IV
+
+And now, by way of a glimpse into the future--after this long digression
+what is the route that man will take?
+
+This is a subject that I hardly dare tackle. "The morning wind ever
+blows," says Thoreau, "the poem of creation is uninterrupted--but few
+are the ears that hear it." And how can we, gulfed as we are in this
+present whirlpool, conceive rightly the glory which awaits us? No limits
+that our present knowledge puts need alarm us; the impossibilities will
+yield very easily when the time comes; and the anatomical difficulty as
+to how and where the wings are to grow will vanish when they are felt
+sprouting!
+
+It can hardly be doubted that the tendency will be--indeed is already
+showing itself--towards a return to nature and community of human life.
+This is the way back to the lost Eden, or rather forward to the new
+Eden, of which the old was only a figure. Man has to undo the wrappings
+and the mummydom of centuries, by which he has shut himself from the
+light of the sun and lain in seeming death, preparing silently his
+glorious resurrection--for all the world like the funny old chrysalis
+that he is. He has to emerge from houses and all his other hiding
+places wherein so long ago ashamed (as at the voice of God in the
+garden) he concealed himself--and Nature must once more become his home,
+as it is the home of the animals and the angels.
+
+As it is written in the old magical formula: "Man clothes himself to
+descend, unclothes himself to ascend." Over his spiritual or wind-like
+body he puts on a material or earthy body; over his earth-body he puts
+on the skins of animals and other garments; then he hides this body in a
+house behind curtains and stone walls--which become to it as secondary
+skins and prolongations of itself. So that between the man and his true
+life there grows a dense and impenetrable hedge; and, what with the
+cares and anxieties connected with his earth-body and all its skins, he
+soon loses the knowledge that he is a Man at all; his true self slumbers
+in a deep and agelong swoon.
+
+But the instinct of all who desire to deliver the divine _imago_ within
+them, is, in something more than the literal sense, towards unclothing.
+And the process of evolution or exfoliation itself is nothing but a
+continual unclothing of Nature, by which the perfect human Form which is
+at the root of it comes nearer and nearer to its manifestation.
+
+Thus, in order to restore the Health which he has lost, man has in the
+future to tend in this direction. Life indoors and in houses has to
+become a fraction only, instead of the principal part of existence as it
+is now. Garments similarly have to be simplified. How far this process
+may go it is not necessary now to enquire. It is sufficiently obvious
+that our domestic life and clothing may be at once greatly reduced in
+complexity, and with the greatest advantage--made subsidiary instead of
+being erected into the fetishes which they are. And everyone may feel
+assured that each gain in this direction is a gain in true life--whether
+it be the head that goes uncovered to the air of heaven, or the feet
+that press bare the magnetic earth, or the elementary raiment that
+allows through its meshes the light itself to reach the vital organs.
+The life of the open air, familiarity with the winds and waves, clean
+and pure food, the companionship of the animals--the very wrestling with
+the great Mother for his food--all these things will tend to restore
+that relationship which man has so long disowned; and the consequent
+instreaming of energy into his system will carry him to perfections of
+health and radiance of being at present unsuspected.
+
+Of course, it will be said that many of these things are difficult to
+realise in our country, that an indoor life, with all its concomitants,
+is forced upon us by the climate. But if this is to some small--though
+very small--extent true, it forms no reason why we should not still take
+advantage of every opportunity to push in the direction indicated. It
+must be remembered, too, that our climate is greatly of our own
+creation. If the atmosphere of many of our great towns and of the lands
+for miles in their neighbourhood is devitalised and deadly--so that in
+cold weather it grants to the poor mortal no compensating power of
+resistance, but compels him at peril of his life to swathe himself in
+greatcoats and mufflers--the blame is none but ours. It is we who have
+covered the lands with a pall of smoke, and are walking to our own
+funerals under it.
+
+That this climate, however, at its best may not be suited to the highest
+developments of human life is quite possible. Because Britain has been
+the scene of some of the greatest episodes of Civilisation, it does not
+follow that she will keep the lead in the period that is to follow; and
+the Higher Communities of the future will perhaps take their rise in
+warmer lands, where life is richer and fuller, more spontaneous and more
+generous, than it can be here.
+
+Another point in this connection is the food question. For the
+restoration of the central vigour when lost or degenerate, a diet
+consisting mainly of fruits and grains is most adapted. Animal food
+often gives for the time being a lot of nervous energy--and may be
+useful for special purposes; but the energy is of a spasmodic feverish
+kind; the food has a tendency to inflame the subsidiary centres, and so
+to diminish the central control. Those who live mainly on animal food
+are specially liable to disease--and not only physically; for their
+minds also fall more easily a prey to desires and sorrows. In times
+therefore of grief or mental trouble of any kind, as well as in times of
+bodily sickness, immediate recourse should be had to the more elementary
+diet. The body under this diet endures work with less fatigue, is less
+susceptible to pain, and to cold; and heals its wounds with
+extraordinary celerity; all of which facts point in the same direction.
+It may be noted, too, that foods of the seed kind--by which I mean all
+manner of fruits, nuts, tubers, grains, eggs, etc. (and I may include
+milk in its various forms of butter, cheese, curds, and so forth), not
+only contain by their nature the elements of life in their most
+condensed forms, but have the additional advantage that they can be
+appropriated without injury to any living creature--for even the cabbage
+may inaudibly scream when torn up by the roots and boiled, but the
+strawberry plant _asks_ us to take of its fruit, and paints it red
+expressly that we may see and devour it! Both of which considerations
+must convince us that this kind of food is most fitted to develop the
+kernel of man's life.
+
+Which all means cleanness. The unity of our nature being restored, the
+instinct of bodily cleanness, _both_ within and without, which is such a
+marked characteristic of the animals, will again characterise
+mankind--only now instead of a blind instinct it will be a conscious,
+joyous one; dirt being only disorder and obstruction. And thus the whole
+human being, mind and body, becoming clean and radiant from its inmost
+centre to its farthest circumference--"transfigured"--the distinction
+between the words spiritual and material disappears. In the words of
+Whitman, "objects gross and the unseen soul are one."
+
+But this return to Nature, and identification in some sort with the
+great cosmos, does not involve a denial or depreciation of human life
+and interests. It is not uncommonly supposed that there is some kind of
+antagonism between Man and Nature, and that to recommend a life closer
+to the latter means mere asceticism and eremitism; and unfortunately
+this antagonism does exist to-day, though it certainly will not exist
+for ever. To-day it is unfortunately perfectly true that Man is the only
+animal who, instead of adorning and beautifying, makes Nature hideous by
+his presence. The fox and the squirrel may make their homes in the wood
+and add to its beauty in so doing; but when Alderman Smith plants his
+villa there, the gods pack up their trunks and depart; they can bear it
+no longer. The Bushmen can hide themselves and become indistinguishable
+on a slope of bare rock; they twine their naked little yellow bodies
+together, and look like a heap of dead sticks; but when the chimney-pot
+hat and frock-coat appear, the birds fly screaming from the trees. This
+was the great glory of the Greeks that they accepted and perfected
+Nature; as the Parthenon sprang out of the limestone terraces of the
+Acropolis, carrying the natural lines of the rock by gradations scarce
+perceptible into the finished and human beauty of frieze and pediment,
+and as, above, it was open for the blue air of heaven to descend into it
+for a habitation; so throughout in all their best work and life did they
+stand in this close relation to the earth and the sky and to all
+instinctive and elemental things, admitting no gulf between themselves
+and them, but only perfecting their expressiveness and beauty. And some
+day we shall again understand this which, in the very sunrise of true
+Art, the Greeks so well understood. Possibly some day we shall again
+build our houses or dwelling places so simple and elemental in character
+that they will fit in the nooks of the hills or along the banks of the
+streams or by the edges of the woods without disturbing the harmony of
+the landscape or the songs of the birds. Then the great temples,
+beautiful on every height, or by the shores of the rivers and the lakes,
+will be the storehouses of all precious and lovely things. There men,
+women and children will come to share in the great and wonderful common
+life, the gardens around will be sacred to the unharmed and welcome
+animals; there all store and all facilities of books and music and art
+for every one, there a meeting place for social life and intercourse,
+there dances and games and feasts. Every village, every little
+settlement, will have such hall or halls. No need for private
+accumulations. Gladly will each man, and more gladly still each woman,
+take his or her treasures, except what are immediately or necessarily in
+use, to the common centre, where their value will be increased a hundred
+and a thousand fold by the greater number of those who can enjoy them,
+and where far more perfectly and with far less toil they can be tended
+than if scattered abroad in private hands. At one stroke half the labour
+and all the anxiety of domestic caretaking will be annihilated. The
+private dwelling places, no longer costly and labyrinthine in proportion
+to the value and number of the treasures they contain, will need no
+longer to have doors and windows jealously closed against fellow men or
+mother nature. The sun and air will have access to them, the indwellers
+will have unfettered egress. Neither man nor woman will be tied in
+slavery to the lodge which they inhabit; and in becoming once more a
+part of nature, the human habitation will at length cease to be what it
+is now for at least half the human race--a prison.
+
+Men often ask about the new Architecture--what, and of what sort, it is
+going to be. But to such a question there can be no answer till a new
+understanding of life has entered into people's minds, and then the
+answer will be clear enough. For as the Greek Temples and the Gothic
+Cathedrals were built by people who themselves lived but frugally as we
+should think, and were ready to dedicate their best work and chief
+treasure to the gods and the common life; and as to-day when we must
+needs have for ourselves spacious and luxurious villas, we seem to be
+unable to design a decent church or public building; so it will not be
+till we once more find our main interest and life in the life of the
+community and the gods that a new spirit will inspire our architecture.
+Then when our Temples and Common Halls are not designed to glorify an
+individual architect or patron, but are built for the use of free men
+and women, to front the sky and the sea and the sun, to spring out of
+the earth, companionable with the trees and the rocks, not alien in
+spirit from the sunlit globe itself or the depth of the starry
+night--then I say their form and structure will quickly determine
+themselves, and men will have no difficulty in making them beautiful.
+And similarly with the homes or dwelling places of the people. Various
+as these may be for the various wants of men, whether for a single
+individual or for a family, or for groups of individuals or families,
+whether to the last degree simple, or whether more or less ornate and
+complex, still the new conception, the new needs of life, will
+necessarily dominate them and give them form by a law unfolding from
+within.
+
+In such new human life then--its fields, its farms, its workshops, its
+cities--always the work of man perfecting and beautifying the lands,
+aiding the efforts of the sun and soil, giving voice to the desire of
+the mute earth--in such new communal life near to nature, so far from
+any asceticism or inhospitality, we are fain to see far more humanity
+and sociability than ever before: an infinite helpfulness and sympathy,
+as between the children of a common mother. Mutual help and combination
+will then have become spontaneous and instinctive: each man contributing
+to the service of his neighbor as inevitably and naturally as the right
+hand goes to help the left in the human body--and for precisely the same
+reason. Every man--think of it!--will do the work which he _likes_,
+which he desires to do, which is obviously before him to do, and which
+he knows will be useful, without thought of wages or reward; and the
+reward will come to him as inevitably and naturally as in the human body
+the blood flows to the member which is exerting itself. All the endless
+burden of the adjustments of labour and wages, of the war of duty and
+distaste, of want and weariness, will be thrown aside--all the huge
+waste of work done against the grain will be avoided; out of the endless
+variety of human nature will spring a perfectly natural and infinite
+variety of occupations, all mutually contributive; Society at last will
+be free and the human being after long ages will have attained to
+deliverance.
+
+This is the Communism which Civilisation has always _hated_, as it hated
+Christ. Yet it is inevitable; for the cosmical man, the instinctive
+elemental man accepting and crowning nature, necessarily fulfils the
+universal law of nature. As to External Government and Law, they will
+disappear; for they are only the travesties and transitory substitutes
+of Inward Government and Order. Society in its final state is neither a
+Monarchy, nor an Aristocracy nor a Democracy, nor an Anarchy, and yet in
+another sense it is all of these. It is an Anarchy because there is no
+outward rule, but only an inward and invisible spirit of life; it is a
+Democracy because it is the rule of the Mass-man, or Demos, in each unit
+man; it is an Aristocracy because there are degrees and ranks of such
+inward power in all men; and it is a Monarchy because all these ranks
+and powers merge in a perfect unity and central control at last. And so
+it appears that the outer forms of government which belong to the
+Civilisation-period are only the expression in separate external symbols
+of the facts of the true inner life of society.
+
+And just as thus the various external forms of government during the
+Civilisation-period find their justification and interpretation in the
+ensuing period, so will it be with the mechanical and other products of
+the present time; they will be taken up, and find their proper place and
+use in the time to come. They will not be refused; but they will have to
+be brought into subjection. Our locomotives, machinery, telegraphic and
+postal systems; our houses, furniture, clothes, books, our fearful and
+wonderful cookery, strong drinks, teas, tobaccos; our medical and
+surgical appliances; high-faluting sciences and philosophies, and all
+other engines hitherto of human bewilderment, have simply to be reduced
+to abject subjection to the real man. All these appliances, and a
+thousand others such as we hardly dream of, will come in to perfect his
+power and increase his freedom; but they will not be the objects of a
+mere fetish-worship as now. Man will use them, instead of their using
+him. His real life will lie in a region far beyond them. But in thus for
+a moment denying and "mastering" the products of Civilisation, will he
+for the first time discover their true value, and reap from them an
+enjoyment unknown before.
+
+The same with the moral powers. As said before, the knowledge of good
+and evil at a certain point passes away, or becomes absorbed into a
+higher knowledge. The perception of Sin goes with a certain weakness in
+the man. As long as there is conflict and division within him, so long
+does he seem to perceive conflicting and opposing principles in the
+world without. As long as the objects of the outer world excite emotions
+in him which pass beyond his control, so long do those objects stand as
+the signals of evil--of disorder and sin. Not that the objects are bad
+in themselves, or even the emotions which they excite, but that all
+through this period these things serve to the man as indications of
+_his_ weakness. But when the central power is restored in man and all
+things are reduced to his service, it is impossible for him to see
+badness in anything. The bodily is no longer antagonistic to the
+spiritual love, but is absorbed into it. All his passions take their
+places perfectly naturally, and become, when the occasions arise, the
+vehicles of his expression. Vices under existing conditions are vices
+simply because of the inordinate and disturbing influence they exercise,
+but will cease again to be vices when the man regains his proper
+command. Thus Socrates having a clean soul in a clean body could drink
+his boon companions under the table and then go out himself to take the
+morning air--what was a blemish and defect in them being simply an added
+power of enjoyment to himself!
+
+The point of difference throughout (being the transference of the centre
+of gravity of life and consciousness from the partial to the universal
+man) is symbolised by the gradual resumption of more universal
+conditions. That is to say that during the civilisation-period, the body
+being systematically wrapped in clothes, the _head_ alone represents
+man--the little finnikin, intellectual, _self-conscious_ man in
+contra-distinction to the cosmical man represented by the entirety of
+the bodily organs. The body has to be delivered from its swathings in
+order that the cosmical consciousness may once more reside in the human
+breast. We have to become "all face" again--as the savage said of
+himself.[15]
+
+Where the cosmic self is, there is no more self-consciousness. The body
+and what is ordinarily called the self are felt to be only parts of the
+true self, and the ordinary distinctions of inner and outer, egotism and
+altruism, etc., lose a good deal of their value. Thought no longer
+returns upon the local self as the chief object of regard, but
+consciousness is continually radiant from it, filling the body and
+overflowing upon external Nature. Thus the Sun in the physical world is
+the allegory of the true self. The worshiper must adore the Sun, he must
+saturate himself with sunlight, and take the physical Sun into himself.
+Those who live by fire and candle-light are filled with phantoms; their
+thoughts are Will-o'-th'-wisp-like images of themselves, and they are
+tormented by a horrible self-consciousness.
+
+And when the Civilisation-period has passed away, the old
+Nature-religion--perhaps greatly grown--will come back. This immense
+stream of religious life which, beginning far beyond the horizon of
+earliest history, has been deflected into various metaphysical and other
+channels--of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and the like--during the
+historical period, will once more gather itself together to float on its
+bosom all the arks and sacred vessels of human progress. Man will once
+more _feel_ his unity with his fellows, he will feel his unity with the
+animals, with the mountains and the streams, with the earth itself and
+the slow lapse of the constellations, not as an abstract dogma of
+Science or Theology, but as a living and ever-present fact. Ages back
+this has been understood better than now. Our Christian ceremonial is
+saturated with sexual and astronomical symbols; and long before
+Christianity existed, the sexual and astronomical were the main forms of
+religion. That is to say, men instinctively felt and worshiped the great
+life coming to them through Sex, the great life coming to them from the
+deeps of Heaven. They deified both. They placed their gods--their own
+human forms--in sex, they placed them in the sky. And not only so, but
+wherever they felt this kindred human life--in the animals, in the ibis,
+the bull, the lamb, the snake, the crocodile; in the trees and flowers,
+the oak, the ash, the laurel, the hyacinth; in the streams and
+water-falls, on the mountain-sides or in the depths of the sea--they
+placed them. The whole universe was full of a life which, though not
+always friendly, was _human_ and kindred to their own, _felt_ by them,
+not reasoned about, but simply perceived. To the early man the notion of
+his having a separate individuality could only with difficulty occur;
+hence he troubled himself not with the suicidal questionings concerning
+the whence and whither which now vex the modern mind.[16] For what
+causes these questions to be asked is simply the wretched feeling of
+isolation, actual or prospective, which man necessarily has when he
+contemplates himself as a separate atom in this immense universe--the
+gulf which lies below seemingly ready to swallow him, and the anxiety to
+find some mode of escape. But when he feels once more that he, that _he_
+himself, is absolutely indivisibly and indestructibly a part of this
+great whole--why then there is no gulf into which he can possibly fall;
+when he is sensible of the fact, why then the _how_ of its realisation,
+though losing none of its interest, becomes a matter for whose solution
+he can wait and work in faith and contentment of mind. The Sun or Sol,
+visible image of his very Soul, closest and most vital to him of all
+mortal things, occupying the illimitable heaven, feeding all with its
+life; the Moon, emblem and nurse of his own reflective thought, the
+conscious Man, measurer of Time, mirror of the Sun; the planetary
+passions wandering to and fro, yet within bounds; the starry destinies;
+the changes of the earth, and the seasons; the upward growth and
+unfoldment of all organic life; the emergence of the perfect Man,
+towards whose birth all creation groans and travails--all these things
+will return to become realities, and to be the frame or setting of his
+supra-mundane life. The meaning of the old religions will come back to
+him. On the high tops once more gathering he will celebrate with naked
+dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the
+stars, or greet the bright horn of the young moon which now after a
+hundred centuries comes back laden with such wondrous associations--all
+the yearnings and the dreams and the wonderment of the generations of
+mankind--the worship of Astarte and of Diana, of Isis or the Virgin
+Mary; once more in sacred groves will he reunite the passion and the
+delight of human love with his deepest feelings of the sanctity and
+beauty of Nature; or in the open, standing uncovered to the Sun, will
+adore the emblem of the everlasting splendour which shines within. The
+same sense of vital perfection and exaltation which can be traced in the
+early and pre-civilisation peoples--only a thousand times intensified,
+defined, illustrated and purified--will return to irradiate the redeemed
+and delivered Man.
+
+
+In suggesting thus the part which Civilisation has played in history, I
+am aware that the word itself is difficult to define--is at best only
+one of those phantom-generalisations which the mind is forced to employ;
+also that the account I have given of it is sadly imperfect, leaning
+perhaps too much to the merely negative and destructive aspect of this
+thousand-year long lapse of human evolution. I would also remind the
+reader that though it is perfectly true that under the dissolving
+influence of civilisation empire after empire has gone under and
+disappeared, and the current of human progress time after time has only
+been restored again by a fresh influx of savagery, yet its corruptive
+tendency has never had a quite unlimited fling; but that all down the
+ages of its dominance over the earth we can trace the tradition of a
+healing and redeeming power at work in the human breast and an
+anticipation of the second advent of the son of man. Certain
+institutions, too, such as Art and the Family (though it seems not
+unlikely that both of these will greatly change when the special
+conditions of their present existence have disappeared), have served to
+keep the sacred flame alive; the latter preserving in island-miniatures,
+as it were, the ancient communal humanity when the seas of individualism
+and greed covered the general face of the earth; the former keeping up,
+so to speak, a navel-cord of contact with Nature, and a means of
+utterance of primal emotions else unsatisfiable in the world around.
+
+And if it seem extravagant to suppose that Society will ever emerge from
+the chaotic condition of strife and perplexity in which we find it all
+down the lapse of historical time, or to hope that the
+civilisation-process which has terminated fatally so invariably in the
+past will ever eventuate in the establishment of a higher and more
+perfect health-condition, we may for our consolation remember that
+to-day there are features in the problem which have never been present
+before. In the first place, to-day Civilisation is no longer isolated,
+as in the ancient world, in surrounding floods of savagery and
+barbarism, but it practically covers the globe, and the outlying
+savagery is so feeble as not possibly to be a menace to it. This may at
+first appear a drawback, for (it will be said) if Civilisation be not
+renovated by the influx of external Savagery its own inherent flaws will
+destroy society all the sooner. And there would be some truth in this if
+it were not for the following consideration, namely, that while for the
+first time in History Civilisation is now practically continuous over
+the globe, now also for the first time can we descry forming in
+continuous line _within its very structure_ the forces which are
+destined to destroy it and to bring about the new order. While hitherto
+isolated communisms, as suggested, have existed here and there and from
+time to time, now for the first time in History both the masses and the
+thinkers of all the advanced nations of the world are consciously
+feeling their way towards the establishment of a socialistic and
+communal life on a vast scale. The present competitive society is more
+and more rapidly becoming a mere dead formula and husk within which the
+outlines of the new and _human_ society are already discernible.
+Simultaneously, and as if to match this growth, a move towards Nature
+and Savagery is for the first time taking place from within, instead of
+being forced upon society from without. The nature movement begun years
+ago in literature and art is now, among the more advanced sections of
+the civilised world, rapidly realising itself in actual life, going so
+far even as a denial, among some, of machinery and the complex products
+of Civilisation, and developing among others into a gospel of salvation
+by sandals and sunbaths! It is in these two movements--towards a complex
+human Communism and towards individual freedom and Savagery--in some
+sort balancing and correcting each other, and both visibly growing up
+within, though utterly foreign to--our present-day Civilisation, that we
+have fair grounds, I think, for looking forward to its cure.
+
+
+NOTES
+
+     (See p. 26) The following remarks by Mr. H. B. Cotterill on the
+     natives around Lake Nyassa, among whom he lived at a time, 1876-8,
+     when the region was almost unvisited, may be of interest. "In
+     regard of merely 'animal' development and well-being, that is in
+     the delicate perfection of bodily faculties (perceptive), the
+     African savage is as a rule incomparably superior to us. One feels
+     like a child, utterly dependent on them, when travelling or hunting
+     with them. It is true that many may be found (especially amongst
+     the weaker tribes that have been slave-hunted or driven into barren
+     corners) who are half-starved and wizened, but as a rule they are
+     splendid animals. In _character_ there is a great want of that
+     strength which in the educated civilised man is secured by the
+     roots striking out into the Past and Future--and in spite of their
+     immense perceptive superiority they feel and acknowledge the
+     superior force of character in the white man. They are the very
+     converse of the Stoic self-sufficient sage--like children in their
+     'admiration' and worship of the Unknown. Hence their absolute want
+     of _Conceit_, though they possess self-command and dignity. They
+     are, to those they love and respect, faithful and devoted--their
+     faithfulness and truthfulness are dictated by no 'categorical
+     imperative,' but by personal affection. Towards an enemy they can
+     be, without any conscientious scruples, treacherous and inhumanly
+     cruel. I should say that there is scarcely any possible idea that
+     is so foreign to the savage African mind as that of general
+     philanthropy or enemy-love."
+
+     "In _endurance_ the African savage beats us hollow (except trained
+     athletes). On one occasion my men rowed my boat with 10 foot oars
+     against the wind in a choppy sea for _25 hours at one go_, across
+     Kuwirwe Bay, about 60 miles. They never once stopped or left their
+     seats--just handed round a handful of rice now and then. I was at
+     the helm all the time--and had enough of it!... They carry 80 lbs.
+     on their heads for 10 hours through swamps and jungles. Four of my
+     men carried a sick man weighing 14 stones in a hammock for 200
+     miles, right across the dreaded Malikata Swamp. But for _sudden_
+     emergencies, squalls, etc., they are nowhere."
+
+
+     (See p. 27) "So lovely a scene made easily credible the suggestion,
+     otherwise highly probable, that the Golden Age was no mere fancy of
+     the poets, but a reminiscence of the facts of social life in its
+     primitive organisation of village and house-communities." (J. S.
+     Stuart-Glennie's _Europe and Asia_, ch. i. Servia.)
+
+
+     (See p. 72) "It was only on the up-break of the primitive
+     socialisms that the passionate desire of, and therefore belief in,
+     individual Immortality arose. With an intense feeling, not of an
+     independent individual life, but of a dependent common life, there
+     is no passionate desire of, though there may be more or less of
+     belief in, a continuance after death of individual existence."
+     (_Ibid_, p. 161.)
+
+
+     Following is an extract from a letter from my friend Havelock
+     Ellis, which he kindly allows me to reprint. The passage is
+     interesting as indicating _one_ cause, at any rate, of the failure
+     of the modern civilisations. "Your remark that you are
+     re-publishing _Civilisation: its Cause and Cure_ has led me to read
+     it once again, and I see how well adapted it is for reissue just
+     now when there is so widespread a discontent with 'civilisation.' I
+     do not see any reason for changing the essay, though, no doubt,
+     much might be added to supplement it. What has, however, struck me
+     is that you leave out of account the _reason_ for the greater
+     health, vigour, and high spirit of savages (when such conditions
+     exist), and that is _the more stringent natural_ selection among
+     savages owing to the greater hardness of their life. You doubtless
+     know ch. xvii of Westermarck's _Moral Ideas_, where he shows how
+     widespread among savages (when they have got past the first crude
+     primitive stage), and in the ancient civilisations, was the
+     practice of infanticide applied to inferior babies and the habit of
+     allowing sick persons to die. That was evidently the secret of the
+     natural superiority of the savage and of the men of the old
+     civilisation, for the Greeks and Romans were very stringent in this
+     matter. The flabbiness of the civilised and the prevalence of
+     doctors and hygienists, which you make fun of, is due to the modern
+     tenderness for human life which is afraid to kill off even the most
+     worthless specimens and so lowers the whole level of 'civilised'
+     humanity. Introduce a New Hardness in this matter and we should
+     return to the high level of savagery, while the doctors would
+     disappear as if by magic. I don't myself believe we _can_ introduce
+     this hardness; and that is why I attach so much importance to
+     _intelligent_ eugenics, working through birth-control, as the only
+     _now possible_ way of getting towards that high natural level you
+     aim at."--HAVELOCK ELLIS (1920).
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] It is interesting to note that the "sense of Sin" seems now (1920)
+to have nearly passed away. And this fact probably indicates a
+considerable impending change in our Social Order.
+
+[2] For proof I must refer the reader to Engels, or to his own studies
+of history.
+
+[3] Say like the Homeric Greeks, or the Spartans of the Lycurgus period.
+
+[4] _Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls_, p. 209.
+
+[5] A similar physical health and power of life are also developed among
+Europeans who have lived for long periods in more native conditions. It
+is not to our _race_, which is probably superior to any in capacity, but
+to the state in which we live that we must ascribe our defect in this
+particular matter.
+
+[6] See Col. Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_.
+
+[7] Wood's _Natural History of Man_.
+
+[8] See Appendix.
+
+[9] See Note at end of this chapter.
+
+[10] No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate
+this--no enthronement of _any_ virtue can take its place; for all virtue
+enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice.
+
+[11] It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the
+word Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure.
+
+[12] And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that among
+the animals there is anything like immunity from it--since diseases of a
+more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes of plants and
+animals--still they seem to be rarer, and the organic instinct of health
+greater, than in the civilised man.
+
+[13] As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter
+seemingly beyond dispute; their keenness of sense, sensitiveness to
+atmospheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of
+animals, etc., have been the subject of frequent remark; but beyond
+this, their strong _feeling_ of union with the universal spirit,
+probably only dimly self conscious, but expressing itself very markedly
+and clearly in their customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning.
+The dances of the Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild
+festival of the new moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the
+processions through the forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums,
+the torture-dances of the young Red Indian bravos in the burning heat of
+the sun; the Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks; and indeed the
+sacrificial nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of
+second-sight found among all primitive peoples; all these things
+indicate clearly a faculty which, though it had hardly become
+self-conscious enough to be what we call religion, was yet in truth the
+foundation element of religion, and the germ of some human powers which
+wait yet to be developed.
+
+[14] There is another point worth noting as characteristic of the
+civilisation-period. This is the abnormal development of the abstract
+intellect in comparison with the physical senses on the one hand, and
+the moral sense on the other. Such a result might be expected, seeing
+that abstraction from reality is naturally the great engine of that
+false individuality or apartness, which it is the object of Civilisation
+to produce. As it is, during this period man builds himself an
+intellectual world apart from the great actual universe around him; the
+"ghosts of things" are studied in books; the student lives indoors, he
+cannot face the open air--his theories "may prove very well in
+lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and along
+the landscape and flowing currents"; children are "educated" afar from
+actual life; huge phantom-temples of philosophy and science are reared
+upon the most slender foundations; and in these he lives defended from
+actual fact. For as a drop of water, when it comes in contact with
+red-hot iron, wraps itself in a cloud of vapor and is saved from
+destruction, so the little mind of man, lest it should touch the burning
+truth of Nature and God and be consumed, evolves at each point of
+contact a veil of insubstantial thought which allows it for a time to
+exist apart, and becomes the nurse of its self-consciousness.
+
+[15] See Alonso di Ovalle's _Account of the Kingdom of Chile_ in
+Churchill's _Collection of Voyages and Travels_, 1724.
+
+[16] See Notes at end of this chapter.
+
+
+
+
+MODERN SCIENCE: A CRITICISM
+
+[Greek: panti logô logos isos antikeitai.]
+
+
+It is one of the difficulties which meet anyone who suggests that modern
+science is not wholly satisfactory, that it is immediately assumed that
+the writer is covertly defending what Ingersoll calls the "rib-story,"
+or that he wishes to restore belief in the literal inspiration of the
+Bible. But, religious controversy apart, and while admitting that
+Science has done a great work in cleaning away the kitchen-middens of
+superstition and opening the path to clearer and saner views of the
+world, it is possible--and there is already a growing feeling that
+way--that her positive contributions to our comprehension of the order
+of the universe have in late times been disappointing, and that even her
+methods are only of limited applicability. After a glorious burst of
+perhaps fifty years, amid great acclamations and good hopes that the
+crafty old universe was going to be caught in her careful net, Science,
+it must be confessed, now finds herself in almost every direction in
+the most hopeless quandaries; and, whether the rib-story be true or not,
+has at any rate provided no very satisfactory substitute for it. And the
+reason of this failure is very obvious. It goes with a certain defect in
+the human mind, which, as we have pointed out (note, p. 57), necessarily
+belongs to the Civilisation-period--the tendency, namely, to separate
+the logical and intellectual part of man from the emotional and
+instinctive, and to give it a _locus standi_ of its own. Science has
+failed, because she has attempted to carry out the investigation of
+nature from the intellectual side alone--neglecting the other
+constituents necessarily involved in the problem. She has failed,
+because she has attempted an impossible task; for the discovery of a
+permanently valid and purely _intellectual_ representation of the
+universe is simply impossible. Such a thing does not exist.
+
+The various theories and views of nature which we hold are merely the
+fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of human growth--each set of
+theories and views belonging organically to the moral and emotional
+stage which has been reached, and being in some sort the expression of
+it; so that the attempt at any given time to set up an explanation of
+phenomena which shall be valid in itself and without reference to the
+mental condition of those who set it up, necessarily ends in failure;
+and the present state of confusion and contradiction in which modern
+Science finds itself is merely the result of such attempt.
+
+Of course this limitation of the validity of Science has been
+recognised by most of those who have thought about the matter;[17] but
+it is so commonly overlooked, and latterly the notion has so far gained
+ground that the "laws" of science are immutable facts and eternal
+statements of verity, that it may be worth while to treat the subject a
+little more in detail.
+
+The method of Science is the method of all mundane knowledge; it is that
+of limitation or actual ignorance. Placed in face of the great
+uncontained unity of Nature we can only deal with it in thought by
+selecting certain details and isolating those (either wilfully or
+unconsciously) from the rest. That is right enough. But in doing so--in
+isolating such and such details--we practically beg the question we are
+in search of; and, moreover, in supposing such isolation we suppose what
+is false, and therefore vitiate our conclusion. From these two radical
+defects of all intellectual inquiry we cannot escape. The views of
+Science are like the views of a mountain; each is only possible as long
+as you limit yourself to a certain standpoint. Move your position, and
+the view is changed.[18]
+
+Perhaps the word "species" will illustrate our meaning as well as any
+word; and, in a sense, the word is typical of the method of Science. I
+see a dog for the first time. It is a fox-hound. Then I see a second
+fox-hound, and a third and a fourth. Presently I form from these few
+instances a general conception of "dog." But after a time I see a
+grey-hound and a terrier and a mastiff, and my old conception is
+destroyed. A new one has to be formed, and then a new one and a new one.
+Now I overlook the whole race of civilised dogs and am satisfied with my
+wisdom; but presently I come upon some wild dogs, and study the habits
+of the wolf and the fox. Geology turns me up some links, and my
+conception of dog melts away like a lump of ice into surrounding water.
+My species exists no more. As long as I knew a few of the facts I could
+talk very wise about them; or if I limited myself arbitrarily, as we
+will say, to a study only of animals in England at the present day, I
+could classify them; but widen the bounds of my knowledge, the area of
+observation, and all my work has to be done over again. My species is
+not a valid fact of Nature, but a fiction arising out of my own
+ignorance or arbitrary isolation of the objects observed.
+
+Or to take an instance from Astronomy. We are accustomed to say that the
+path of the moon is an ellipse. But this is a very loose statement. On
+enquiry we find that, owing to perturbations said to be produced by the
+sun, the path deviates considerably from an ellipse. In fact in strict
+calculations it is taken as being a certain ellipse only for an
+instant--the next instant it is supposed to be a portion of another
+ellipse. We might then call the path an irregular curve somewhat
+resembling an ellipse. This is a new view. But on further enquiry it
+appears that, while the moon is going round the earth, the earth itself
+is speeding on through space about the sun--in consequence of which the
+actual path of the moon does not in the least resemble an ellipse!
+Finally the sun itself is in motion with regard to the fixed stars, and
+_they_ are in movement too. What then is the path of the moon? No one
+knows; we have not the faintest idea--the word itself ceases to have any
+assignable meaning. It is true that if we agree to ignore the
+perturbations produced by the sun--as in fact we _do_ ignore
+perturbations produced by the planets and other bodies--and if we agree
+to ignore the motion of the earth, and the flight of the solar system
+through space, and even the movement of any centre round which that may
+be speeding, we may then _say_ that the moon moves in an ellipse. But
+this has obviously nothing to do with actual facts. The moon _does_ not
+move in an ellipse--not even "relatively to the earth"--and probably
+never has done and never will do so. It may be a convenient view or
+fiction to say that it would do so under such and such
+circumstances--but it is still only a fiction. To attempt to isolate a
+small portion of the phenomena from the rest in a universe of which the
+_unity_ is one of Science's most cherished convictions, is obviously
+self-stultifying and useless.
+
+But you say it can be proved by mathematics that the ellipse would be
+the path under these conditions; to which I reply that the mathematical
+proof, though no doubt cogent to the human mind (as at present
+constituted in most people), is open to the same objection that it does
+not deal with actual facts. It deals with a mental supposition, _i.e._,
+that there are only two bodies acting on each other--a case which never
+has occurred and never can occur--and then, assuming the law of
+gravitation (which is just the thing which has to be proved), it arrives
+at a mental formula, the ellipse. But to argue from this process that
+the ellipse is really a thing in Nature, and that the heavenly bodies do
+move or even tend to move in ellipses, is obviously a most unwarrantable
+leap in the dark. Finally you argue that the leap is warranted because,
+by assuming that the moon and planets move in ellipses, you can actually
+foretell things that happen, as for instance the occurrences of
+eclipses; and in reply to that I can only say that Tycho Brahé foretold
+eclipses almost as well by assuming that the heavenly bodies moved in
+epicycles, and that modern astronomers do apply the epicycle theory in
+their mathematical formulæ. The epicycles were an assumption made for a
+certain purpose, and the ellipses are an assumption made for the same
+purpose. In some respects the ellipse is a more convenient fiction than
+the epicycle, but it is no less a fiction.
+
+In other words--with regard to this "path of the moon" (as with regard
+to any other phenomenon of Nature)--our knowledge of it must be either
+absolute or relative. But we cannot know the absolute path; and as to
+the relative, why all we can say is that it does not exist (any more
+than species exists)--we cannot break up Nature so; it is not a thing in
+Nature, but in our own minds--it is a view and a fiction.[19]
+
+Again, let us take an example from Physics--Boyle's law of the
+compressibility of gases. This law states that, the temperature
+remaining constant, the volume of a given quantity of gas is inversely
+proportional to its pressure. It is a law which has been made a good
+deal of, and at one time was thought to be true, _i.e._, it was thought
+to be a statement of fact. A more extended and careful observation,
+however, shows that it is only true under so many limitations, that,
+like the ellipse in Astronomy, it must be regarded as a convenient
+fiction and nothing more. It appears that air follows the supposed law
+pretty well, but not by any means exactly except within very narrow
+limits of pressure; other gases, such as carbonic acid and hydrogen,
+deviate from it very considerably--some more than others, and some in
+one direction and some in the opposite. It was found, among other
+things, that the nearer a gas was to its liquefying point, the greater
+was the deviation from the supposed law, and the conclusion was jumped
+at that the law was true for _perfect_ gases only. This idea of a
+perfect gas of course involved the assumption that gases, as they get
+farther and farther removed from their liquifying point, reach at last a
+fixed and stable condition, when no further change in their qualities
+takes place--at any rate for a very long time--and Boyle's law was
+supposed to apply to this condition. Since then, however, it has been
+discovered that there is an ultra-gaseous state of matter, and on all
+sides it is becoming abundantly clear that the change in the condition
+of matter from the liquid state to the ultra-gaseous state is perfectly
+continuous--through all modifications of liquidity and condensation and
+every degree of perfection and imperfection of gasiness to the utmost
+rarity of the fourth state. At what point, then, does Boyle's law really
+apply? Obviously it applies _exactly_ at only one point in this long
+ascending scale--at one metaphysical point--and at every other point it
+is incorrect. But no gas in Nature remains or can be maintained just at
+one point in the scale of its innumerable changes. Consequently, all we
+can say is that out of the innumerable different states that gases are
+capable of, and the innumerable different laws of compressibility which
+they therefore follow, we could theoretically find one state to which
+would correspond the law of compressibility called Boyle's law; and
+that, _if_ we could preserve a gas in that state (which we can't),
+Boyle's law really _would_ be true just for that case. In other words,
+the law is metaphysical. It has no real existence. It is a convenient
+view or fiction, arising in the first place out of ignorance, and only
+tenable as long as further observation is limited or wilfully ignored.
+
+This then is the Method of Science. It consists in forming a law or
+statement by only looking at a small portion of the facts; then, when
+the other facts come in, the law or statement gradually fades away
+again. Conrad Gessner and other early zoologists began by classifying
+animals according to the number of their horns! Political Economy begins
+by classifying social action under a law of Supply and Demand. When
+people believed that the earth was flat, they generalised the facts
+connected with the fall of heavy bodies into a conception of "up and
+down." These were two opposite directions in space. Heavy bodies took
+the "downward"; it was their nature. But in time, and as fresh facts
+came in, it became impossible to group animals any longer by their
+horns; "up and down" ceased to have a meaning when it was known that the
+earth was round. Then fresh laws and statements had to be formed. In the
+last-mentioned case--it being conceived that the earth was the centre of
+the universe--the new law supposed was that all heavy bodies tended to
+the centre of the earth as such. This was all right and satisfactory for
+a while; but presently it appeared that the earth was _not_ the centre
+of the universe, and that some heavy bodies--such as the satellites of
+Jupiter--did not in fact tend to the centre of the earth at all. Another
+lump of ignorance (which had enabled the old generalisation to exist)
+was removed, and a new generalisation, that of universal gravitation,
+was after a time formed. But it is probable that this law is only
+conceived of as true through our ignorance; nay it is certain that
+belief in its truth presents the gravest difficulties.
+
+In fact here we come upon an important point. It is sometimes said that,
+granting the above arguments and the partiality and defectiveness of the
+laws of Science, still they are approximations to the truth, and as each
+fresh fact is introduced the consequent modification of the old law
+brings us _nearer and nearer_ to a limit of rigorous exactness which we
+shall reach at last if we only have patience enough. But is this so?
+What kind of rigorous statement shall we reach when we have got _all_
+the facts in? Remembering that Nature is _one_, and that if we try to
+get a rigorous statement for one set of phenomena (as say the lunar
+theory) by isolating them from the rest, we are thereby condemning
+ourselves beforehand to a false conclusion, is it not evident that our
+limit is at all times infinitely far off? If one knew all the facts
+relating to a given inquiry except two or three, one might reasonably
+suppose that one was near a limit of exactness in one's knowledge; but
+seeing that in our investigation of Nature we only know two or three, so
+to speak, out of a million, it is obvious that at any moment the fresh
+law arising from increased experience may completely upset our former
+calculations. There is a difference between approximating to a wall and
+approximating to the North Star. In the one case you are tending to a
+speedy conclusion of your labours, in the other case you are only _going
+in a certain direction_. The theories of Science generally belong under
+the second head. They mark the direction which the human mind is taking
+at the moment in question, but they mark no limits. At each point the
+_appearance_ of a limit is introduced--which becomes, like a mirage in
+the desert, an object of keen pursuit; but the limit is not really
+there--it is only an effect of the standpoint, and disappears again
+after a time as the observer moves. In the case of gravitation there is
+for the moment an appearance of finality in the law of the inverse
+square of the distance, but this arises probably from the fact that the
+law is derived from a limited area of observation only, namely the
+movements (at great distances from each other) of some of the heavenly
+bodies.[20] The Cavendish and Schehallien experiments do not show more
+than that the law at ordinary distances on the earth's surface does not
+vary _very_ much from the above; while the so-called molecular forces
+compel us (unless we make the very artificial assumption that a variety
+of attractions and repulsions co-exist in matter alongside of, and yet
+totally distinct from, the attraction of gravitation) to suppose very
+_great_ modifications of the law for small distances. In fact, as we saw
+of Boyle's law before--the Newtonian law is probably metaphysical--true
+under certain limited conditions--and the appearance of finality has
+been given to it by the fact that our observations have been made under
+such or similar conditions. When we extend our observation into quite
+other regions of space, the law of the inverse square ceases to appear
+as even an approximation to the truth--as, for instance, the law of the
+inverse _fifth_ power has been thought to be nearer the mark for small
+molecular distances.
+
+And indeed the state of the great theories of Science in the present
+day--the confusion in which the Atomic theory of physics finds itself,
+the dismal insufficiency of the Darwin theory of the survival of the
+fittest; the collapse in late times of one of the fundamental theories
+of Astronomy, namely that of the stability of the lunar and planetary
+orbits; the cataclysms and convulsions which Geology seems just now to
+be undergoing; the appalling and indeed insurmountable difficulties
+which attach to the Undulatory theory of Light; the final wreck and
+abandonment of the Value-theory, the foundation-theory of Political
+Economy--all these things do not seem to point to very near limits of
+rigorous exactness! An impregnable theory, or one nearing the limit of
+impregnability, is in fact as great an absurdity as an impregnable
+armour-plate. Certainly, given the cannon-balls, you can generally find
+an armour-plate which will be proof against them; but given the
+armour-plate, you can always find cannon-balls which will smash it up.
+
+The method of Science, as being a method of artificial limitation or
+actual ignorance, is curiously illustrated by a consideration of its
+various branches. I have taken some examples from Astronomy, which is
+considered the most exact of the physical sciences. Now does it not seem
+curious that _Astronomy_--the study of the heavenly bodies, which are
+the most distant from us of all bodies, and most difficult to
+observe--should yet be the most perfect of the sciences? Yet the reason
+is obvious. Astronomy is the most perfect science _because we know least
+about it_--because our ignorance of the actual phenomena is most
+profound. Situated in fact as we are, on a speck in space, with our
+observations limited to periods of time which, compared with the
+stupendous flights of the stars, are merely momentary and evanescent, we
+are in somewhat the position of a mole surveying a railway track and the
+flight of locomotives. And as a man seeing a very small arc of a very
+vast circle easily mistakes it for a straight line, so we are easily
+satisfied with cheap deductions and solutions in Astronomy which a more
+extensive experience would cause us to reject. The man may have a long
+way to go along his "straight line" before he discovers that it is a
+curve; he may have much farther to go along his curve before he
+discovers that it is not a circle; and much farther still to go before
+he finds out whether it is an ellipse or a spiral or a parabola, or none
+of these; yet _what_ curve it is will make an enormous difference in his
+ultimate destination. So with the astronomer; and yet Astronomy is
+allowed to pass as an exact science![21]
+
+Well then, as in Astronomy we get an "exact science," because the facts
+and phenomena are on such a tremendous scale that we only see a minute
+portion of them--just a few details so to speak--and our ignorance
+therefore allows us to dogmatise; so at the other end of the scale in
+Chemistry and Physics we get quasi-exact sciences, because the facts and
+phenomena are on such a _minute_ scale that we overlook _all the
+details_ and see only certain general effects here and there. When a
+solution of cupric sulphate is treated with ammonia, a mass of
+flocculent green precipitate is formed. No one has the faintest notion
+of all the various movements and combinations of the molecules of these
+two fluids which accompany the appearance of the precipitate. They are
+no doubt very complex. But among all the changes that are taking place,
+one change has the advantage of being visible to the eye, and the
+chemist singles that out as the main phenomenon. So chemistry at large
+consists in a few, very few, facts taken at random as it were (or
+because they happen to be of such a nature as to be observable) out of
+the enormous mass of facts really concerned: and because of their
+fewness the chemist is able to arrange them, as he thinks, in some
+order, that is, to generalise about them. But it is certain as can be
+that he only has to extend the number of his facts, or his powers of
+observation, to get all his generalisations upset. The same may be said
+of magnetism, light, heat, and the other physical sciences; but it is
+not necessary to prove in detail what is sufficiently obvious.
+
+But now, roughly speaking, there is a third region of human
+observation--a region which does not, like Astronomy (and Geology), lie
+so far beyond and above us that we only see a very small portion of it;
+nor, like Chemistry and Physics, so far below us and under such minute
+conditions of space and time that we can only catch its general effects;
+but which lies more on a level with man himself--the so-called organic
+world--the study of man, as an individual and in society, his history,
+his development, the study of the animals, the plants even, and the laws
+of life--the sciences of Biology, Sociology, History, Psychology, and
+the rest. Now this region is obviously that which man knows most of. I
+don't say that he generalises most about it, but he knows the facts
+best. For one observation that he makes of the habits and behaviour of
+the stars, or of chemical solutions--for one observation in the remote
+regions of Astronomy or Chemistry--he makes thousands and millions of
+the habits and behaviour of his fellowmen, and hundreds and thousands of
+those of the animals and plants. Is it not curious then that in this
+region he is least sure, least dogmatic, most doubtful whether there be
+a law or no? Or, rather, is it not quite in accord with our contention,
+namely that Science, like an uninformed boy, is most definite and
+dogmatic just where actual knowledge is least.
+
+It will however be replied that the phenomena of living beings are far
+more complex than the phenomena of Astronomy or Physics--and that is
+the reason why exact science makes so little way with them. Though man
+knows many million times more about the habits of his fellow-men than
+about the habits of the stars, yet the former subject is so many million
+times more complicated than the latter that all his additional knowledge
+does not avail him. This is the plea. Yet it does not hold water. It is
+an entire assumption to say that the phenomena of Astronomy are less
+complicated than the phenomena of vitality. A moment's thought will show
+that the phenomena of Astronomy are in reality infinitely complex. Take
+the movement of the moon: even with our present acquaintance with that
+subject we know that it has some relation to the position and mass of
+the earth, including its ocean tides; also to the position and mass of
+the sun; also to the position and mass of every one of the planets; also
+of the comets, numerous and unknown as they are; also the meteoric
+rings; and finally of all the stars! The problem, as everyone knows, is
+absolutely insoluble even for the shortest period; but when the element
+of Time enters in, and we consider that to do anything like justice to
+the problem in an astronomical sense we should have to solve it for at
+least a million years--during which interval the earth, sun, and other
+bodies concerned would themselves have been changing their relative
+positions, it becomes obvious that the whole question is infinitely
+complex--and yet this is only a small fragment of Astronomy. To debate,
+therefore, whether the infinite complexity of the movements of the
+stars is greater or less than the infinite complexity of the phenomena
+of life, is like debating the precedence of the three persons of the
+Trinity, or whether the Holy Ghost was begotten or proceeding: we are
+talking about things which we do not understand.
+
+Nature is one; she is not, we may guess, less profound and wonderful in
+one department than another; but from the fact that we live under
+certain conditions and limitations we see most deeply into that portion
+which is, as it were, on the same level with us. In humanity we look her
+in the face; there our glance pierces, and we see that she is profound
+and wonderful beyond all imagination; what we learn there is the most
+valuable that we can learn. In the regions where Science rejoices to
+disport itself we see only the skirts of her garments, so to speak, and
+though we measure them never so precisely, we still see them and nothing
+more.
+
+There is another point, however, of which much is often made as a plea
+for the substantial accuracy of the scientific laws and generalisations,
+namely that they enable us to _predict_ events. But this need not detain
+us long. J. S. Mill in his "Logic" has pointed out--and a little thought
+makes it obvious--that the success of a prediction does not prove the
+truth of the theory on which it is founded. It only proves the theory
+was good enough for that prediction.
+
+There was a time when the sun was a god going forth in his chariot every
+morning, and there was a time when the earth was the centre of the
+universe, and the sun a ball of fire revolving round it. In those times
+men could predict with certainty that the sun would rise next morning,
+and could even name the hour of its appearance; but we do not therefore
+think that their theories were true. When Adams and Leverrier foretold
+the appearance of Neptune in a certain part of the sky, they made a
+brief prediction to an unknown planet from the observed relations of the
+movements of the known planets; that does not show, however, that the
+grand generalisation of these movements, called the "law of
+gravitation," is correct. It merely shows that it did well enough for
+this very brief step--brief indeed compared with the real problems of
+Astronomy, for which latter it is probably quite inadequate.
+
+Tycho Brahé, excellent astronomer as he was, kept as we saw to the
+epicycle theory. He imagined that the moon's path round the earth was a
+fixed combination of cycle and epicycle. Kepler introduced the
+conception of the ellipse. Later on the motion of the perigee and other
+deviations compelled the abandonment of the ellipse and the supposition
+of an endless curve, similar to an ellipse at any one point, and
+maintaining a fixed mean distance from the earth, but never returning on
+itself or making a definite closed figure of any kind. Finally the
+researches of Mr. George Darwin have destroyed the conception of the
+fixed mean distance, and introduced that of a continually enlarging
+spiral. Certainly no four theories could well be more distinct from
+each other than these; yet if an eclipse had to be calculated for next
+year it would scarcely matter which theory was used. The truth is that
+the actual problem is so vast that a prediction of a few years in
+advance only touches the fringe of it so to speak; yet if the fulfilment
+of the prediction were taken as a proof of the theory in each of these
+different cases, it would lead in the end to the most hopelessly
+contradictory results.
+
+The success of a prediction therefore only shows that the theory on
+which it is founded has had practical value so far as a working
+hypothesis. As working hypotheses, and as long as they are kept down to
+brief steps _which can be verified_, the scientific theories are very
+valuable--indeed we could not do without them; but when they are treated
+as objective facts--when, for instance, the "law of
+gravitation"--derived as it is from a brief study of the heavenly
+bodies--has a universal truth ascribed to it, and is made to apply to
+phenomena extending over millions of years, and to warrant unverifiable
+prophecies about the planetary orbits, or statements about the age of
+the earth and the duration of the solar system--all one can say is that
+those who argue so are flying off at a tangent from actual facts. For as
+the tangent represents the direction of a curve over a small arc, so
+these theories represent the bearing of facts well enough over a small
+region of observation; but as following the tangent we soon lose the
+curve, so following these theories for any distance beyond the region
+of actual observation we speedily part company with facts.[22]
+
+
+To proceed with a few more words about the general method of Science.
+Science passes from phenomena to laws, from individual details which can
+be seen and felt to large generalisations of an intangible and
+phantom-like character. That is to say, that for convenience of thought
+we classify objects. How is this classification effected? It is effected
+through the perception of identity amid difference. Among a lot of
+objects I perceive certain attributes in common; this group of common
+attributes serves, so to speak, as a band to tie these objects together
+with--into a bundle convenient for thought. I give a name to the band,
+and that serves to denote any unit of the bundle by. Thus perceiving
+common attributes among a lot of dogs--as in an example already given--I
+give the name foxhound to this group of attributes, and thenceforth use
+the name foxhound to connect these objects by in my mind; again
+perceiving other common attributes among other similar objects, I
+invent the word greyhound to denote these latter by. The concept
+foxhound differs from the objects which it denotes, in this respect that
+these latter are (as we say) _real_ dogs with thousands and thousands of
+attributes each: one of them has a broken tooth, another is nearly all
+white, another answers to the name "Sally," and so on; while the concept
+is only an imaginary form in my mind, with only a few attributes and no
+individual peculiarities--a kind of tiny G.C.M. arising from the
+contemplation of a long row of big figures.
+
+Now having created these concepts "foxhound," "greyhound," and a lot of
+other similar ones, I find that they in their turn have a few attributes
+in common and thus give rise to a new concept "dog." Of course this
+"dog" is more of an abstraction than ever, the concept of a concept. In
+fact the peculiarity of this whole process is that, as sometimes stated,
+the broader the generalisation becomes the less is its depth; or in
+other words and obviously, that as the number of objects compared
+increases, the number of attributes common to them all decreases.
+Ultimately as we saw at the beginning, when a sufficient number of
+objects are taken in, the concept ("dog" or whatever it may be) fades
+away and ceases to have any meaning. This therefore is the dilemma of
+Science and indeed of all human knowledge, that in carrying out the
+process which is peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of
+reality for the watery region of abstractions, which abstractions
+become ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and
+ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a quite
+necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things.
+
+To dwell for a moment over this last point: it is clear that every
+object has relation to every other object in the world--exists in fact
+only in virtue of such relation to other objects; it has therefore an
+infinite number of attributes. The mind consequently is powerless to
+deal with such object--it cannot by any possibility think it. In order
+to deal with it, the mind is forced to single out a _few_ of its
+attributes (the _method of ignorance_ or abstraction already alluded
+to)--that is a few of its relations to other objects, and to think them
+first. The others it will think afterwards--all in good time. In thus
+stripping or abstracting the great mass of its attributes from our
+object, and leaving only a few, which it combines into a concept, the
+mind practically abandons the real article and takes up with a shadow;
+but in return for this it gets something which it can handle, which is
+light to carry about, and which, like paper-money, _for the time and
+under certain conditions_ does really represent value. The only danger
+is lest it--the mind--carried away by the extensive applicability of the
+partial concept which it has thus formed, should credit it with an
+actual value--should project it on the background of the external world
+and ascribe to it that reality which belongs only to objects
+themselves, _i.e._, to things embodying an _infinite_ range of
+attributes.
+
+The peculiar method of Science is now clear to us, and can be abundantly
+illustrated from modern results. Our experience consists in sensations,
+we feel the weight of heavy bodies, we see them fall when let go, we
+have sensations of heat and cold, light and darkness, and so forth. But
+these sensations are more or less local and variable from man to man,
+and we naturally seek to find some common measure of them, by which we
+can talk about and describe them _exactly_, and independently of the
+peculiarities of individual observers. Thus we seek to find some common
+phenomenon which underlies (as we say) the sensations of heat and cold,
+or of light and darkness, or something which explains (_i.e._, is always
+present in) the case of falling bodies--and to do this we adopt the
+method of generalisation above described, _i.e._, we observe a great
+number of individual cases and then see what qualities or attributes
+they have in common. So far good. But it is just here that the fallacy
+of the ordinary scientific procedure comes in; for, forgetting that
+these common qualities are mere abstractions from the real phenomena we
+credit _them_ with a real existence, and regard the actual phenomena as
+secondary results, "effects" or what-not of these "causes." This in
+plain language is putting the cart before the horse--or rather the
+shadow before the man. Thus finding that a vast number of variously
+shaped and coloured bodies tend to fall towards the earth, we erect
+this common attribute of falling into an independent existence which we
+call "attraction" or "gravitation"--and ultimately posit a universal
+gravitation _acting_ on all bodies in Nature!--or finding that a number
+of different substances, such as water, air, wood, etc., convey to us
+the sensation we call sound, and that in all these cases the common
+element is vibration, we detach the attribute vibration, credit it with
+a separate existence, and speak of it as the cause of sound. But though
+we may thus _think_ of the shadow as separate from the man, the shadow
+cannot _be_ separate from the man; and though we may try to think of the
+falling or the vibration as separate from the wood or the stone, such
+falling and vibration cannot exist apart from these and other such
+materials, and the effort to speak of it as so existing ends in mere
+nonsense. More strange still is the fatuity, when, as in the case of the
+undulatory Theory of light or the Atomic theory of physics, the concepts
+thus erected into actualities are composed of purely imaginary
+attributes--of which no one has had any experience--an undulatory ether
+in the one case, a hard and perfectly elastic atom in the other. The
+total result is of course--just what we see--Science landing itself in
+pure absurdities in every direction. Beginning by detaching the
+attribute of falling from the bodies that fall--beginning that is by an
+abstraction, which of course is also a falsity--it generalises and
+generalises this abstraction till at last it reaches a perfectly
+generalised absurdity and thing without any meaning--the law of
+gravitation.[23] The statement that "every particle in the universe
+attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the mass of
+the attracting particle and inversely proportional to the square of the
+distance between the two" is devoid of meaning--the human mind can give
+no definite meanings to the words "mass," "attract," and "force," which
+do not overlap and stultify each other. The law in every way baffles
+intelligence. Newton, who invented it, declared that no philosophic mind
+would suppose that bodies could thus act on one another "without the
+mediation of anything else by and through which their action might be
+conveyed;" scientific men to-day are fain to see that a material
+mediation of this kind would only make the law still more remote from
+our comprehension than it already is, while, on the other hand, an
+immaterial mediation or a fourth-dimensional mediation, such as some
+propose, would simply remove the problem out of the regions of
+scientific analysis.[24] Again, the form of the law is declared to be
+the inverse square of the distance; but this is the law by the nature of
+space itself of any perfect radiation, and if true of gravitation
+involves the conclusion that that radiation of force (whatever its
+nature may be) takes place without loss or dissipation of any kind. This
+would make gravitation absolutely unique among phenomena. More than
+this, its propagation is supposed to be _instantaneous_ over the most
+enormous distances of space, and to take place always unhindered and
+unretarded, whatever be the number or the nature of the bodies between!
+What can be more clear than that the law is simply metaphysical--a
+projection into a monstrous universality and abstraction, of partially
+understood phenomena in a particular region of observation--a
+Brocken-shadow on the background of Nature of the observer's own
+momentary attitude of thought?
+
+Again, the undulatory theory of Light. Studying the phenomena of a vast
+number of coloured and bright bodies, Science finds that it can think
+about these phenomena--can generalise and tie them into bundles best by
+_assuming_ that the bodies are all in a state of vibration; a vibration
+so minute that (unlike the vibrations connected with Sound) it cannot be
+directly perceived. So far good. There is no harm in the assumption of
+vibration, as long as it is understood to be a mere assumption for a
+temporary convenience of thought. But now Science goes farther than
+this, and not only supposes a common attribute to all visible bodies,
+but credits this common attribute with a real existence independent of
+the visible bodies in which it was supposed to inhere--and makes this
+the _cause_ of their visibility! Obviously now a common and universal
+medium is required for this common and universal assumed vibration (just
+as Newton required a medium for his universal "falling")--and so, hey
+presto! we have the Undulatory Ether. And having got it we find that to
+fulfil our requirements it must have a pressure of 17 million million
+pounds on the square inch, and yet be so rare and tenuous as not to
+hinder the lightest breath of air; that while it is thus rare enough to
+surpass all our powers of direct scrutiny, its vibrations must yet be
+capable of agitating and breaking up the solidest bodies; that it must
+pass freely through some dense and close structures like glass, and yet
+be excluded by some light and porous, like cork, and so on and on! In
+fact we find that it is unthinkable. Against this adamantine, impalpable
+Ether, as against this instantaneous, untranslatable gravitation,
+Science bangs its devoted head in vain. Having created these absurdities
+by the method of "personification of abstractions"[25] or the
+"reification of concepts,"[26] it seriously and in all good faith tries
+to understand them; having dressed up its own Mumbo Jumbo (which it once
+jeered at religion for doing) it piously shuts its eyes and endeavours
+to believe in it.
+
+The Atomic Theory affords a good example of the "method of ignorance."
+When we try to think about material objects generally--to generalise
+about them--that is, to find some attribute or attributes common to
+them, we are at first puzzled. They present such an immense variety. But
+after a time, by dint of stripping off or abstracting all such
+attributes or qualities as we think we perceive in one body and not in
+another--as for example, redness, blueness, warmth, saltness, life,
+intelligence, or what not--we find an attribute left, namely resistance
+to touch, which is common to _all_ material bodies. This quality in the
+body we call "mass," and since it is only known by motion, mass and
+motion become correlative attributes which we find useful to class
+bodies by, not because they represent the various bodies particularly
+well, but because they are found in all bodies; just as you might class
+people by their boots--not because boots are a very valuable method of
+classification, but simply because every one wears boots of one kind or
+another. So far there is no great harm done. But now having by the
+method of ignorance _thought away_ all the qualities of bodies, except
+the two correlatives of mass and motion, we set about to _explain_ the
+phenomena of Nature generally by these two "thinks" that are left. We
+credit these "thinks" (mass and motion) with an independent existence
+and proceed to derive the rest of phenomena from them. The proceeding of
+course is absurd, and ends by exposing its own absurdity. Thinking of
+mass and motion as existing in the various bodies _apart_ from colour,
+smell, and so forth--which of course is not the case--we combine the two
+attributes into one concept, the atom, which we thus assume to exist in
+all bodies. The atom has neither colour, smell, warmth, taste, life or
+intelligence; it has only mass and motion; for it came by the method of
+divesting our thought of everything _but_ mass and motion. It is a
+projection of a "think" upon the background of nature. And it is an
+absurdity. No such thing exists in all the wide universe as mass and
+motion divested from colour, smell, warmth, life and intelligence. The
+atom is unthinkable. It is perfectly hard and it is perfectly
+elastic--which is the same as saying that it bends and it doesn't bend
+at the same time; it has form, and it hasn't form; it has affinities and
+yet is perfectly indifferent. To justify to men the ways of their Mumbo
+Jumbo has sorely exercised the votaries of the Atom. One philosopher
+says that it is mere matter, passive, exercising no force but
+resistance; another says that it is a centre of force, without matter; a
+third suggests that it is not itself matter, but only a vortex in other
+matter! All agree that it is not an object of sense, and there remains
+no conclusion but that it is nonsense![27]
+
+And so on in all directions. Human thought flying off at its tangents
+from Nature lands itself in infinite nothings afar off, poor ghostly
+skeletons and abstractions from Nature--which indeed is all right, for
+human thought as yet can only see ghosts and not realities; but let
+there be no mistake, let these ghosts not be mistaken for realities--for
+they are not even compatible with each other. The Atom that suits the
+physicist does not suit the chemist. The Ether that does for the vehicle
+of Light will not do for the vehicle of universal Gravitation.
+
+
+It would be hardly worth while entering into these criticisms, were it
+not evident that Science in modern times, either tacitly or explicitly,
+has been seeking, as I said at the beginning, to enounce facts
+independent of Man, the observer. Seeing that the ordinary statements of
+daily life are obviously inexact and relative to the observer--charged
+with human sensation in fact--Science has naturally tried to produce
+something which should be exact and independent of human sensation; but
+here it has of course condemned itself beforehand to failure; for no
+statement of isolated phenomena or groups of phenomena _can_ be exact
+except by the method of ignorance aforesaid, and no statement obviously
+can be really independent of human sensation. When a man says _It is
+cold_, his statement, it must be confessed, is deplorably human and
+vague. _It_--what is that? _Is_--do you mean _is_? or do you mean
+_feels_, _appears_? _Cold_--in what sense? Cold to yourself, or to
+other people, or to polar bears, or by the thermometer? And so on.
+Science therefore steps in with an air of authority and sets him right.
+It says _the temperature is_ 30° _Fahrenheit_, as if to settle the
+matter. But does this really settle the matter? _Temperature_--who knows
+what that is? What is the scientific definition of it? I find
+(Clerk-Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 2.) "the temperature of a body is a
+quantity which indicates how hot or how cold the body is." This sounds
+very much like saying, "the colour of a body is a quantity which
+indicates how blue, red, or yellow the body is." It does not bring us
+much farther on our way. But in the next paragraph Maxwell shows the
+object of his definition (which of course is only preliminary) by
+saying, "By the use, therefore, of the word temperature, we fix in our
+minds the conviction that it is possible not only to feel, but to
+_measure_, how hot a body is." That is to say he clearly maintains that
+it is possible to find an absolute standard of hotness or coldness--or
+rather of the unknown thing called temperature--outside of ourselves and
+independent of human sensation. When the man said he was cold he was
+probably just describing his own sensations, but here Science indicates
+that it is in search of something which has an independent existence of
+its own, and which therefore when found we can measure exactly and once
+for all. What then is that thing? _What_ is temperature? say, what is
+it?
+
+We cudgel our brains in vain. Perhaps the remainder of the sentence
+will help us. "The temperature is 30° Fahrenheit." "The unknown thing is
+thirty degrees." What then is a degree? That is the next question. When
+the Theory of Heat went out from sensation and left it behind, one of
+its first landing places was in the expansion of liquids--as in
+thermometer tubes. Here for some time was thought to be a satisfactory
+register of "temperature." But before long it became apparent that the
+degree--Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or what-not--was an entirely arbitrary
+thing, also that it was not the _same_[28] thing at one end of the scale
+as the other, and finally that the scale itself had no starting point!
+This was awkward, so a move was made to the air thermometer, and there
+was some talk about an absolute zero and absolute temperatures; it was
+thought that the Unknown thing showed itself most clearly and simply in
+the expansion of air and other gases, and that the "degree" might fairly
+be measured in terms of this expansion. But in a little time this kind
+of thermometer--chiefly because no gas turned out to be "theoretically
+perfect"--broke down, absolute zero and all, and another step had to be
+made--namely, to the dynamical theory. It was announced that the Unknown
+thing might be measured in terms of mechanical energy, and Joule at
+Manchester proclaimed that the work done by any quantity of water
+falling there a distance of 772 feet is capable of raising that water
+one degree Fahrenheit.[29] Here seemed something definite. To measure
+temperature by mass and velocity, to measure a degree by the flight of a
+stone, or the heat in the human body by the fall of a factory
+chimney--if rather roundabout and elusive of the main question--seemed
+at any rate promising of exact results! Unfortunately the difficulty was
+to pass from the theory to its application. The complicated nature of
+the problem, the "imperfection" of the gases and other bodies under
+consideration, the latent and specific heats to be allowed for, the
+elusive nature of heat in experiment, and the variable value of the
+degree itself--all render the conclusions on this subject most
+precarious; and the general equations connecting the Fahrenheit or other
+temperatures with a thermo-dynamic scale--while they become so unwieldy
+as to be practically useless--are themselves after all only approximate.
+
+Finally, to give a last form to the mechanical theory of heat, the
+conception of flying atoms or molecules was introduced, and a number of
+neat generalisations were deduced from dynamical considerations. Of
+course it was inevitable, having once started with a mechanical theory,
+that one should arrive at the Atom some time or other--and (from what
+has already been said) it was also inevitable that the result should be
+unsatisfactory. It is sufficient to say that the molecular theory of
+heat is _not_ in accordance with facts. Such things as the law of
+Charles and the law of Boyle, which according to it should be strictly
+accurate and of general application, are known to be true only over a
+most limited range. This failure of the theory may be said to arise
+partly from its being pursued by the statistical method; but if, on the
+other hand, we were to try and follow out the individual movement of
+each molecule we should be landed in a problem far exceeding in
+complexity the wildest flights of Astronomy, and should have exchanged
+for the original difficulty about "temperature" a difficulty far
+greater.
+
+The result of all this has been that notwithstanding the talk about
+energy and atoms, Science has sadly to confess that it can still give no
+valid meaning to the word temperature: the unknown thing is still
+unknown, the independent existence round the corner still escapes us. By
+the very effort to arrive at something independent of human sensation,
+Science has, in a roundabout way, arrived at an absurdity. When the man
+said he was cold, his statement--deplorably vague as it certainly
+was--had some meaning; he was describing his feelings, or possibly he
+had seen some snow or some ice on the road; but when, in the endeavour
+to leave out the human and to say something absolute, Science declared
+that the temperature was thirty degrees, it committed itself to a remark
+which possibly was exact in form, but to which it has never given and
+never can give any definite meaning.[30]
+
+Similarly with other generalities of Science: the "law" of the
+Conservation of Energy, the "law" of the Survival of the Fittest--the
+more you think about them the less possible is it to give any really
+intelligible sense to them. The very word Fittest really begs the
+question which is under consideration, and the whole Conservation law is
+merely an attenuation of the already much attenuated "law" of
+Gravitation. The Chemical Elements themselves are nothing but the
+projection on the external world of concepts consisting of three or four
+attributes each: they are not more real, but very much less real than
+the individual objects which they are supposed to account for; and their
+"elementary" character is merely fictional. It probably is in fact as
+absurd to speak of pure carbon or pure gold, as of a pure monkey or a
+pure dog. There are no such things, except as they may be arrived at by
+arbitrary definition and the method of ignorance.
+
+In the search for exactness, then, Science has been continually led on
+to discard the human and personal elements in phenomena, in the hope of
+finding some residuum as it were behind them which should not be
+personal and human but absolute and invariable. And the tendency has
+been (hitherto) in all the sciences to get rid of such terms as blue,
+red, light, heavy, hot, cold, concord, discord, health, vitality, right,
+wrong, etc., and to rely on any less human elements discoverable in each
+case; as for instance in Sound, to deal less and less with the judgments
+and sensations of the ear, and to rely more and more on measurements of
+lengths of strings, numbers of vibrations, etc. Each science has been
+(as far as possible) reduced to its lowest terms. Ethics has been made a
+question of utility and inherited experience. Political Economy has been
+exhausted of all conceptions of justice between man and man, of charity,
+affection, and the instinct of solidarity; and has been founded on its
+lowest discoverable factor, namely self-interest. Biology has been
+denuded of the force of personality in plants, animals, and men; the
+"self" here has been set aside, and the attempt made to reduce the
+science to a question of chemical and cellular affinities, protoplasm,
+and the laws of osmose. Chemical affinities, again, and all the
+wonderful phenomena of Physics are emptied down into a flight of atoms;
+and the flight of atoms (and of astronomic orbs as well) is reduced to
+the laws of dynamics--which the student sitting in his chamber may write
+down on a piece of paper. Thus the idea, formulated by Comte, of a great
+scale of sciences arising from the simplest to the most complex, has
+tacitly underlain modern scientific work. It--Science--has sought to
+"explain" each stage by reference to a lower stage--"blueness" by
+vibrations, and vibrations by flying atoms--the human always by the
+sub-human. Going out from humanity dissatisfied, it has wandered through
+the animal and vegetable kingdoms, through the regions of Chemistry and
+Physics, into that of Mechanics. "Here at last, in Mechanics, is
+something outside humanity, something exact in itself, something
+substantial," it has said. "Let us build again on this as on a
+foundation, and in time we shall find out what humanity is." This I say
+has been the dream of Modern Science; yet the fallacy of it is obvious.
+We have not got outside the human, but only to the outermost verge of
+it. Mass and motion, which in this process are taken to be real entities
+and the first progenitors of all phenomena, are simply the last
+abstractions of sensible experience, and our emptiest concepts. The
+_material_ explanation of the universe is simply an attempt to account
+for phenomena by those attributes which appear to us to be common to
+them all--which is, as said before, like accounting for men by their
+boots:--it may be possible to get an exact formula this way, but its
+contents have little or no meaning.
+
+The whole process of Science and the Comtian classification of its
+branches--regarded thus as an attempt to explain Man by Mechanics--is a
+huge vicious circle. It professes to start with something simple, exact,
+and invariable, and from this point to mount step by step till it comes
+to Man himself; but indeed it starts with Man. It plants itself on
+sensations low down (mass, motion, etc.), and endeavours by means of
+them to explain sensations high up, which reminds one of nothing so much
+as that process vulgarly described as "climbing up a ladder to comb your
+hair." In truth Science has never left the great world, or cosmos, of
+Man, nor ever really found a _locus standi_ without it; but during the
+last two or three centuries it has gone in this _direction_, outwards,
+continually. Leaving the central basis and facts of humanity as too vast
+and unmanageable, and also as apparently variable from man to man and
+therefore affording no certain consent to work upon, it has wandered
+gradually outwards, seeking something of more definite and universal
+application Discarding thus one by one the interior phases of
+sensation--as the sense of personal relationship, the sense of justice,
+duty, fitness in things or what-not (as too uncertain, or perhaps
+developed to an unequal degree in different persons, embryonic in one
+and matured in another), drifting past the more specialised bodily
+senses, of colour, sound, taste, smell, etc., as for similar reasons
+unavailable--Science at last in the primitive consciousness of muscular
+contraction and its abstraction "mass" or "matter" comes to a pause.
+Here in this last sense, common probably to man and the lowest animals,
+it finds its widest, most universal ground--its farthest limit from the
+Centre. It has reached the outermost shell, as it were, of the great
+Man-cosmos.
+
+Even this shell is partially human; it is not entirely osseous, and so
+far not entirely exact and invariable; but Science can go no
+farther--and there, for the present, it may remain!
+
+Some day perhaps, when all this showy vesture of scientific theory
+(which has this peculiarity that only the learned can see it) has been
+quasi-completed, and Humanity is expected to walk solemnly forth in its
+new garment for all the world to admire--as in Anderssen's story of the
+Emperor's New Clothes--some little child standing on a door-step will
+cry out: "But he has got nothing on at all," and amid some confusion it
+will be seen that the child is right.
+
+
+NOTE
+
+     "I fear I have very imperfectly succeeded in expressing my strong
+     conviction that, before a rigorous logical scrutiny, the Reign of
+     Law will prove to be an unverified hypothesis, the Uniformity of
+     Nature an ambiguous expression, the certainty of our scientific
+     inferences to a great extent a delusion." (Stanley Jevons,
+     _Principles of Science_, p. ix.)
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[17] See note, p. 119.
+
+[18] Since the above was written there has certainly been a great
+change, and the dogmatic confidence in the verity of the scientific
+"laws" has now (1920) almost disappeared.
+
+[19] Such fictions, however, are (I need not say) quite necessary as our
+only means of thinking out, however imperfectly, the problems before us
+(1920).
+
+[20] It is not generally realised how feeble a force gravitation is. It
+is calculated (Encycl. Brit., Art. Gravitation) that two masses, each
+weighing 415,000 tons, and placed a mile apart, would exert on each
+other an attractive force of only one pound. If one, therefore, was as
+far from the other as the moon is from the earth, their attraction would
+only amount to 1/57,600,000,000th of a pound. This is a small force to
+govern the movement of a body weighing 415,000 tons! and it is easy to
+see that a slight variation in the law of the force might for a long
+period pass undetected, though in the course of hundreds of centuries it
+might become of the greatest importance.
+
+[21] As another instance of the same thing, let me quote a passage from
+Maxwell's _Theory of Heat_, p. 31; the italics are mine: "In our
+description of the physical properties of bodies as related to heat we
+have begun with solid bodies, as those which we can _most easily
+handle_, and have gone on to liquids, which we can keep in open vessels,
+and have now come to gases, which will escape from open vessels, and
+which are generally _invisible_. This is the order which is most natural
+in our first study of these different states. But as soon as we have
+been made familiar with the most prominent features of these different
+conditions of matter the most _scientific_ course of study is in the
+_reverse_ order, beginning with gases, on account of the greater
+simplicity of their laws, then advancing to liquids, the more complex
+laws of which are much more imperfectly known, and concluding with the
+little that has been hitherto discovered about the constitution of solid
+bodies." That is to say that Science finds it easier to work among
+gases--which are invisible and which we can know little about--than
+among solids, which we are familiar with and which we can easily handle!
+This seems a strange conclusion, but it will be found to represent a
+common procedure of Science--the truth probably being that the laws of
+gases are not one whit _simpler_ than the laws of liquids and solids,
+but that on account of our knowing so much less about gases it is easier
+for us to _feign_ laws in their case than in the case of solids, and
+less easy for our errors to be detected.
+
+[22] All our thoughts, theories, "laws," etc., may perhaps be said to
+_touch_ Nature--as the tangent touches the curve--at a point. They give
+a direction--and are true--at that point. But make the slightest move,
+and they all have to be reconstructed. The tangents are infinite in
+number, but the curve is one. This may not only illustrate the relation
+of Nature to Science, but also of Art to the materials it uses. The poet
+radiates thoughts: but he sets no store by them. He knows his thoughts
+are not true in themselves, but they _touch_ the Truth. His lines are
+the envelope of the curve which is his poem.
+
+[23] See the report of the joint meeting of the Royal Society and the
+Royal Astronomical Society, November 6, 1919, when Einstein's theory was
+discussed.
+
+[24] It is obvious that the Einstein theory, in which Time enters as a
+kind of fourth dimension in relation to Space, removes us at once out of
+the whole field of ordinary scientific reasoning and lands us, so to
+speak, in a new world. The nature of Space (or of the universal medium,
+whatever it is) in any region--its possible fundamental accelerations
+there, its "curvature" or non-Euclidean character, and so forth--is
+supposed, according to this theory, to vary with the amount of matter
+in, or density of, that region; and the movements of bodies are
+consequently supposed to take on the characters (accelerations, etc.,)
+which we ascribe to the action of Gravitation. Gravitation in fact in
+any region is the manifestation in Time of the attributes of the
+universal Medium in that region--which latter again is dependent on the
+degree of Matter present. Thus, Matter, Time, and Space are _one
+phenomenon_.
+
+The whole Einstein theory, in fact, is a device to present these three
+Protean and variable elements of all material existence (Matter, Time
+and Space) as so far involved and interlaced in each other that they
+form always an absolute and complete unity. As such the theory is no
+doubt suggestive, and along the line of future speculation: but it
+awaits corroboration. If corroborated it will point the way to a new
+conception of the Universe.
+
+[25] J. S. Mill.
+
+[26] See Stallo's excellent _Concepts of Modern Physics_.
+
+[27] See, for instance, the last new thing in this style--the Helmholtz
+molecule as improved upon by Sir William Thomson; it is described as
+follows: "A heavy mass connected by massless springs with a massless
+enclosing shell; or there may be several shells enclosing each other
+connected by springs with a dense mass in the centre (far more dense
+than the ether)." It is not, of course, seriously maintained that this
+nonsensical creation exists--but that if it did exist it would account
+for certain unexplained phenomena in the dispersion of light, etc.
+
+Later still (1920) we have the following delightful verdict on the
+Structure of the Atom, given by Sir Ernest Rutherford--and which I
+commend to all lovers of clear thinking:--
+
+"The Bakerian Lecture was delivered yesterday before the Royal Society
+by Sir Ernest Rutherford, whose subject was 'The Nuclear Construction of
+the Atom.' He said that during recent years much attention had been paid
+to the nature and structure of atoms. The atomic theory of matter had
+been definitely proved. The mass of the individual atoms, and the number
+in any given weight of matter, were now known with considerable
+accuracy. Not only was matter known to be made up of atoms, but
+electricity was also atomic in nature, and there was a definite unit of
+electrical charge which could not further be subdivided. The negative
+electron, which was a constituent of all atoms of matter, was probably
+nothing more than an isolated unit of negative electricity, and its
+small mass was electrical in origin. It had long been considered
+probable that the atom is an electrical structure, consisting of
+positive and negative particles, held in equilibrium by electric or
+magnetic forces. In recent years evidence had accumulated that an atom
+consists of a positively charged nucleus surrounded at a distance by a
+distribution of electrons to make it electrically neutral." (From _The
+Morning Post_ of June 4, 1920.)
+
+[28] The very fact alone that the degrees on a thermometer are _equal_
+space divisions shows that they must bear a _varying_ relation to the
+total volume of liquid as that expands from one end of the tube to the
+other.
+
+[29] A statement obviously applying--from what has been already said--at
+only one point in the scale.
+
+[30] I am not, of course, here arguing against the use of thermometers
+or other instruments for practical purposes. This is certainly the
+legitimate field of Science. But (as in the case of _prediction_ before
+mentioned) the exactness of results obtained is a very different matter
+from the truth of the generalities which are supposed to underlie these
+results. In using a thermometer you need not even mention the word
+"temperature."
+
+
+
+
+THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE: A FORECAST
+
+Once let that [the human ideal] slip out of the thought, and science is
+of no more use than the invocations in the Egyptian papiri.--RICHARD
+JEFFERIES.
+
+
+It would appear then, from the preceding paper, that in some sense a
+mistake has been made in the method of modern scientific work; not that
+the vast amount of labour expended in it has been altogether wasted, for
+in return for this there is a mass of practical results and detailed
+observations to show; but that in attempting to solve the problem of
+science by the intellect alone, a radical mistake has been made which
+_could_ only land us in absurdity, and that this mistake has for the
+time being also vitiated the results that have been attained. For--in
+reference to this last point--the divorce of the intellectual from the
+emotional has caused a great portion of our scientific observations to
+become merely pedantic and trifling; while it has turned the practical
+results--as industrial and military machinery, etc.--into engines of
+evil as often as into engines of good.
+
+Science in searching for a permanently valid and purely intellectual
+representation of the universe has, as already said, been searching for
+a thing which does not exist. The very facts of Nature, as we call them,
+are at least half feeling. If we try to clean the feeling out of a fact
+and to produce a statement which shall be devoid of the human or sense
+element, it simply amounts to cleaning the meaning out; and though our
+resulting statement may be exact it is nugatory and of no value. We
+might as well try to take the clay out of a brick. It must never be
+forgotten that the logical processes--important as they are--cannot
+stand by themselves, have no standing ground of their own. They
+presuppose assumptions and are the expression of things that are
+unreasoning, perhaps illogical. The strictest logic is a mere hooking
+together of links in a chain, and the last link is of no use--you can
+put no stress on it--unless the first is secured somewhere. The strength
+of the intellectual chain is no greater than that of the staple from
+which it hangs--and that is a human feeling The strength of Euclid is no
+greater than that of the axioms--and _they_ are feelings; they are
+unreasoning statements of which all that we can say is, "I _feel_ like
+that." In fact all the propositions of Geometry are nothing but the
+analysis and elaborate expression, so to speak, of these primary
+convictions--and the Geometry-structure stands and falls with them.
+There is no such thing as intellectual truth--that is, I mean, a truth
+which can be stated as existing apart from feeling. If, for instance, a
+proposition in Geometry can be really shown to be based on the axioms,
+it is true, not intellectually or absolutely, but as an expression of my
+primary Geometrical sense; and if my giving a few pence to a crossing
+sweeper is based not on a mere impression of duty, or an anxiety to
+appear charitable, or wish to escape his importunity, but on genuine
+regard for the man, then it is true, not in any absolute signification,
+but just as an expression of what it professes to represent--namely my
+primary sense of humanity. Indeed the truest truth is that which is the
+expression of the deepest feeling, and if there is an absolute truth it
+can only be known and expressed by him who has the absolute feeling or
+Being within himself.
+
+This being so--and the nature of the intellectual processes being, like
+the links in a chain, transitional--it becomes obvious that the
+intellectual results may figure as a _means_ but never as an end in
+themselves. To hang any weight of reliance on them in the latter sense
+is like the Chinese Trick--described by Marco Polo--of throwing a rope's
+end up in the air and then climbing up the rope. Hence it appears that
+our scientific theories are perfectly legitimate, as long as they are
+formed as a means towards _practical_ applications. In that sense they
+are transitional; they are formed, not as substantial truths, but merely
+as links in a chain towards some definite practical result. For this
+purpose we may form whatever theories are convenient: if we are
+calculating the strength of bridges, we may adopt what generalisations
+we like concerning mechanical structure, as long as they give us actual
+and practical results; if we are predicting eclipses, we may make use of
+any theory that will do. The theory does not matter, as long as it hauls
+the practical result after it, just as it does not matter whether your
+cable is of iron or hemp or silk, as long as you can get your ship into
+dock with it. In this sense our Modern Science is, I conceive,
+admirable. For practical results and brief predictions it affords a
+quantity of useful generalisations--shorthand notes and conventional
+symbols and pocket summaries of phenomena--which bear about the same
+relation to the actual world that a map does to the country it is
+supposed to represent. It cannot be said to have any resemblance to the
+real thing--but, when you understand the principle on which it is
+formed, it is exceedingly useful for finding your way about. As long as
+Science therefore keeps the practical end in view, and starting from
+sense seeks to return to sense again, its intermediate theorising is
+perfectly legitimate; but the moment it credits its theory with a
+positive and authoritative existence, as an actual representation of
+facts--and endeavours to pass by means of it into unverifiable and
+abstract regions, as of invisible germs or atoms, or far distances of
+space, or the remote past or future--it is simply throwing its rope's
+end into the sky and trying to climb up! That "the wish is father to the
+thought" is in its wide sense profoundly true. In the individual,
+feeling precedes thinking--as the body precedes the clothes. In history,
+the Rousseau precedes the Voltaire. There is, I believe, a physiological
+parallel; for behind the brain and determining its action stands the
+great sympathetic nerve--the organ of the emotions. In fact here the
+brain appears as distinctly transitional. It stands between the nerves
+of sense on the one hand and the great sympathetic on the other.
+
+Change the feeling in an individual, and his whole method of thinking
+will be revolutionised; change the axiom or primary sensation in a
+science, and the whole structure will have to be re-created. The current
+Political Economy is founded on the axiom of individual greed; but let a
+new axiomatic emotion spring up (as of justice or fair play instead of
+unlimited grab), and the base of the science will be altered, and will
+necessitate a new construction.
+
+So when people argue (on politics, morality, art, etc.) it will
+generally be found that they differ at the _base_; they go out, perhaps
+quite unconsciously, from different axioms and hence they _cannot_
+agree. Occasionally of course a strict examination will show that, while
+agreeing at the base, one of them has made a false step in deduction; in
+that case his thought does _not_ represent his primary feeling, and when
+this is pointed out he is forced to alter it. But more often it is found
+that the difference lies deep down at a point beyond the reach of
+reason; and they disagree to the end. In this case neither is right and
+neither is wrong. They simply feel differently; they are different
+persons.
+
+The Thought then is the expression, the outgrowth, the covering of
+underlying Feeling. And in the great life of Man as a whole, as in the
+lesser life of the individual, his continual new birth and inward growth
+causes his thought-systems also continually to change and be replaced by
+new ones. Like the bud-sheaths and husks in a growing plant or tree they
+give form for a time to the life within; then they fall off and are
+replaced. The husk prepares the bud underneath, which is to throw it
+off. The thought prepares and protects the feeling underneath, which
+growing will inevitably reject it; and when a thought has been formed it
+is already _false_, _i.e._, ready to fall.
+
+We are now, then, in a position to come back to the question of a
+genuine Science, truly so-called.
+
+As there is no invariable and absolute datum on the fringe of
+Humanity--no definable flying atom on which we can found our
+reasonings--and as Modern Science, considered as an actual
+representation of the universe, falls miserably to pieces in
+consequence--is it possible that we have made a mistake in the
+_direction_ in which we have sought for our datum; and may it be that we
+should look for that in the very Centre of Humanity instead of in its
+remotest circumference? In that direction evidently, if we could
+penetrate, we should expect to find, not a shadowy intellectual
+generalisation, but the very opposite of that--an intense immutable
+_feeling_ or state, an axiomatic condition of Being. Is it possible that
+here, blazing like a sun (if we could only see it--and the sun is its
+allegory in the physical world), there exists within us absolutely such
+a thing--the one _fact_ in the universe, of which all else are shadows,
+_to_ which everything has relation, and round which, itself
+unanalysable, all thought circles and all phenomena stand as indirect
+modes of expression?
+
+Is it possible? That is the question--the question which each one of us
+has to solve. At any rate, let us throw this out as a suggestion. Let us
+suggest that as we have got nothing satisfactory by cleaning the
+sense-element out of phenomena, we should take the opposite course and
+put as much sense into them as we can!
+
+"Facts" are, at least, half feelings. Let us acknowledge this and not
+empty the feeling out of them, but deepen and enlarge that which we
+already have in them. Who knows whether we have ever _seen_ the blue
+sky? Who knows whether we have ever seen each other? Is it not a
+commonplace to say that one man sees in the common objects of Nature
+what another is wholly unconscious of? "The primrose on the river's brim
+a yellow primrose is to him--and nothing more." To what extent may the
+facts of Nature thus be deepened and made more substantial to us--and
+whither will this process lead us?
+
+Do we not want to feel _more_, not less, in the presence of
+phenomena--to enter into a living relation with the blue sky, and the
+incense-laden air, and the plants and the animals--nay, even with
+poisonous and hurtful things to have a keener _sense_ of their
+hurtfulness? Is it not a strange kind of science, that which wakes the
+mind to pursue the shadows of things, but dulls the senses to the
+reality of them--which causes a man to try to bottle the pure atmosphere
+of heaven and then to shut himself in a gas-reeking, ill-ventilated
+laboratory while he analyses it; or allows him to vivisect a dog,
+unconscious that he is blaspheming the pure and holy relation between
+man and the animals in doing so? Surely the man of Science (in its
+higher sense, that is) should be lynx-eyed as an Indian, keen-scented as
+a hound--with all senses and feelings trained by constant use and a pure
+and healthy life in close contact with Nature, and with a heart beating
+in sympathy with every creature. Such a man would have at command, so to
+speak, the keyboard of the universe; but the mechanical, unhealthy,
+indoor-living student--is he not really _ignorant of the
+facts_?--Certainly, since he has not felt them, he is.
+
+The process of the true Science consists first in the naming and
+defining of phenomena (_i.e._, the facts of human consciousness), and
+secondly, in the discovery of the true relation of these phenomena to
+each other; and since the definitions of phenomena and their relations
+keep varying with the standpoint of the observer, the process evidently
+involves all experience, and ultimately the discovery of that last fact
+of experience to which and through which all the other facts are
+related. It is therefore an age-long process, and has to do with the
+emotional and moral part of man as well as with the logical and
+intellectual. It is, in fact, the discovery of the nature of Man
+himself, and of the true order of his being.
+
+Modern Science--though seeking for a unity in Nature--fails to find it,
+because, from the nature of the case, any large body of knowledge in
+which all people will agree is limited to certain small regions of human
+experience--regions in which very likely no unity is discoverable. It
+takes the emerald, and breaks it up; treats of its colour and
+light-refracting qualities on the one hand; of its crystalline structure
+and hardness on the other; of its weight and density; and of its
+chemical properties; all separately, and producing long strings of
+generalisation from each aspect of the subject. But how all these
+qualities are conjoined together, what their relation is which
+_constitutes_ the emerald--yea, even the smallest bit of emerald
+dust--it (wisely) does not attempt to say. It takes the man and dissects
+him; treats of his blood, his nerves, his bones, his brain; of his
+senses of sight, of touch, of hearing; but of that which binds these
+together into a unity, of their true relation to each other in the man,
+it is silent.
+
+Yet the man knows of himself that he _is_ a unity; he knows that all
+parts of his body have relation to _him_, and to each other; he knows
+that his senses of sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell are
+conjoined in the focus of his individual life, in his "I am;" he knows
+that all his faculties and powers, however much they may belong to
+different planes, spiritual or material, or may come under the
+inquisition of different Sciences, have an order of their own among each
+other--that there _is_ an ultimate Science of them--even though he be
+not yet wholly versed in it. And he knows, moreover, that in a grain of
+dust, or in an emerald, or in an orange, or in any object of Nature, the
+different attributes of the object--which the Sciences thus treat of
+separately--are only the reflexion of his different senses; so that the
+problem of the conjunction of different attributes in a body comes back
+to the same problem of the union of various senses and powers in
+himself--each individual object being only a case, externalised as it
+were, and made a matter of consciousness, of the general relation to
+each other of his own sensations and feelings. Knowing all his--I
+say--he sees that the understanding of Nature in general and of the laws
+or relations which he thinks he perceives among external things must
+always depend on the relations and laws which he tacitly assumes, or
+which he is directly conscious of, as existing between the various parts
+of his own being; and that the ultimate truth which Science--the divine
+Science--is really in search of is a moral or psychologic Truth--an
+understanding of what man is, and the discovery of the true relation to
+each other of all his faculties--involving all experience, and an
+exercise of every faculty physical, intellectual, emotional and
+spiritual, instead of one set of faculties only.
+
+Not till we know the law of ourselves, in fact, shall we know the law of
+the emerald and the orange, or of Nature generally; and the law of
+ourselves is not learnt, except subordinately, by intellectual
+investigation; it is mainly learnt by life. The relation of gravity to
+vitality is learnt not so much by outer experiment in a laboratory as by
+long experience within ourselves from the day when as infants we cannot
+lift ourselves above the floor, through the years of the proud strength
+of manhood scaling the loftiest mountains, to the hour when our
+disengaged spirits finally overcome and pass beyond the attraction of
+the earth; and just as the sense of weight--which first appears as a
+quite external sensation--is thus at last found to stand in most
+pregnant relation with our deepest selves, so of the other senses which
+feed the individual life--the senses of light, of warmth, of taste, of
+sound, of smell. Taste, which begins as it were on the tip of the
+tongue, becomes ultimately, if normally developed, a sense which
+identifies itself with the health and well-being of the whole body; the
+pleasure of taste becomes vastly more than a mere surface pleasure, and
+its discrimination of food more than a mere regard for the nutrition of
+the ordinary corporeal functions. The sense of Light, which begins in
+the material eye, grows and deepens inwardly till the consciousness of
+it pervades the whole body and mind with a kind of inward illumination
+or divine Reason, showing the places of all things and enfolding the
+sense of beauty in itself. The sense of Warmth in the same manner is
+related to and leads up to Love; and Sound, in the voices of our friends
+or the divine chords of music, has passed away from being an external
+phenomenon and has established itself as the language of our most tender
+and intimate emotions.
+
+All the senses thus, as they develop and deepen, are found to unite in
+the very focus of individual life. Slowly, and through long experience,
+their relation to each other, _their very meaning_ unfolds, or will
+unfold; and as this process takes place the man knows himself _one_, a
+unity, of which the various faculties are the different manifestations.
+Then further through his less localised feelings or more glorified
+senses the individual finds his relation to other individuals. Through
+his loves and hatreds, through his senses of attraction, repulsion,
+cohesion, solidarity, order, justice, charity, right, wrong and the
+rest--these feelings, each like the others deepening back more and more
+as time goes on--he gradually discovers his true and abiding
+relationship to other individuals, and to the divine society of which
+they all form a part--and so at last, if we may venture to say so, his
+relationship to the absolute and universal. At present, since our most
+important relation to each other is conceived of as one of rivalry and
+Competition, we of course think of the objects of Nature as being
+chiefly engaged in a Struggle for Existence with each other; but when we
+become aware of all our senses and feelings, and of ourselves as
+individuals, as having relation to the Absolute and universal,
+proceeding from it, as the branches and twigs of a tree from the
+trunk--then we shall become aware of a Divine or absolute science in
+Nature; we shall at last understand that all objects have a permanent
+and indissoluble relation to each other, and shall see their true
+meaning--though not till then.
+
+Is it possible then that Science, having hitherto--and we shall see in
+time that this process has been really most valuable and important--gone
+outwards from the centre towards the very fringe of Humanity--emptying
+facts as far as possible as it went of all feeling, and reducing itself
+at last to the most shadowy generalisations on the very verge of sense
+and nonsense--is it possible, I say, that it will now return, and
+_first_ filling up facts with feeling as far as practicable (that is, by
+direct and the most living contact with Nature in every form, learning
+to enter into direct personal sense-relationship with every phenomenon
+and phase), will so gradually ascend to the great central fact and
+feeling, and then at last and for the first time become fully conscious
+of a vast organisation--absolutely perfect and intimately knit from its
+centre to its utmost circumference--(the true cosmos of Man--the
+conceptions of man and god combined)--existing inchoate or embryonic in
+every individual man, animal, plant, or other creature--the object of
+all life, experience, suffering, and toil--the ground of all sensation,
+and the hidden, yet proper, theme of all thought and study?
+
+For this is it possible that Science will, speaking broadly, have to
+leave the laboratory and become one with Life; or that the great
+currents of human life will have to be turned on into these often Augean
+stables of intellectual pruriency?--the investigation of Nature no
+longer a matter of the intellect alone, but of patient listening and the
+quiet eye, and of love and faith, and of all deep human experience,
+bearing not superciliously its weight towards the interpretation of the
+least phenomenon--every "fact" thus deepened to its utmost--all
+experience (rather than experiment) courted, and filial walking with
+Nature, rather than tearing of veils aside--the life of the open air,
+and on the land and the waters, the companionship of the animals and the
+trees and the stars, the knowledge of their habits at first hand and
+through individual relationship to them, the recognition of their voices
+and languages, and listening well what they themselves have to say; the
+keenest education of the senses towards the physical powers and
+elements, and the acceptance of _all_ human experience, without
+exception--till Science become a reality.
+
+Is it possible that in some sense, instead of reducing each branch of
+Science to its lowest terms, we shall have to read it in the light of
+its _highest_ factors, and "take it up" into the Science above--that we
+shall have to take up the mechanical sciences into the physical, the
+physical into the vital, the vital into the social and ethical, and so
+forth, before we can understand them? Is it possible that the phenomena
+of Chemistry only find their due place and importance in their relation
+to living beings and processes; that the phenomena of vitality and the
+laws of Biology and Zoology--Evolution included--can only be "explained"
+by their dependence on self-hood--both in plants and animals; that
+Political Economy and the Social Sciences (which deal with men as
+individual selves) must, to be understood aright, be studied in the
+light of those great ethical principles and enthusiasms, which to a
+certain extent override the individual self; and that, finally, Ethics
+or the study of moral problems is only comprehensible when the student
+has become aware of a region beyond Ethics, into which questions of
+morality and immorality, of right and wrong, do not and cannot enter?
+
+Of this reversal of the ordinary scientific method Ruskin has given a
+great and signal instance in his treatment of Political Economy; it
+remains, perhaps, for others to follow his example in the other branches
+of Science.[31]
+
+With regard to the absolute datum question we have seen that Science
+has two alternatives before it--either to be merely intellectual and to
+seek for its start-point in some quite external (and imaginary) thing
+like the Atom, or to be divine and to seek for its absolute in the
+innermost recesses of humanity. We have two similar alternatives in the
+doctrine of Evolution, which looks either to one end of the scale or the
+other for its interpretation--either to the amoeba or to the man--to
+something it knows next to nothing of, or to that which it knows most
+of. Goethe, when gazing at a fan-palm at Padua, conceived the idea of
+leaf-metamorphosis, which he afterwards enunciated in the now accepted
+doctrine that all parts of a plant--seed-vessel, pistil, stamens,
+petals, sepals, stalk, etc.--may be regarded as modifications of a leaf
+or leaves. In this view the distinctions between the parts are effaced,
+and we have only one part instead of many--but the question is "what is
+that part?" It is of course arbitrary to call it a leaf, for since it is
+continually varying it is at one time a leaf, and at another a stalk,
+and then a petal or a sepal, and so forth. What then is it? For the
+moment we are baffled.
+
+So with the doctrine of Evolution as applied to the whole organic
+kingdom up to man. Like the doctrine of leaf-metamorphosis it
+obliterates distinctions. Geoffroy St. Hilaire proposed to show the
+French Academy that a Cephalopod could be assimilated to a Vertebrate by
+supposing the latter bent backwards and walking on its hands and feet.
+There is a continuous variation from the mollusc to the man--all the
+lines of distinction run and waver--classes and species cease to
+exist--and Science, instead of many, sees only _one_ thing. What then is
+that one thing? Is it a mollusc, or is it a man, or what is it? Are we
+to say that man may be looked upon as a variation of a mollusc or an
+amoeba, or that the amoeba may be looked on as a variation of man? Here
+are two directions of thought; which shall we choose? But the plain
+truth is, the Intellect can give no satisfactory answer. Whichever, or
+whatever, it chooses, the choice is quite arbitrary--just as much so as
+the choice of the "leaf" in the other case. There is no answer to be
+given. And thus it is that _the appearance of the doctrine of Evolution
+is the signal of the destruction of Science_ (in the ordinary
+acceptation of the word). For Evolution is the successive obliteration
+of the arbitrary distinctions and landmarks which by their existence
+_constitute_ Science, and as soon as Evolution covers the whole ground
+of Nature inorganic and organic (as before long it will do)--the whole
+of Nature runs and wavers before the eye of Science, the latter
+recognises that its distinctions _are_ arbitrary, and turns upon and
+destroys itself. This has happened before, I believe--ages back in the
+history of the human race--and probably will happen again.
+
+The only conceivable answer to the question, "What is that which is now
+a mollusc and now a man and now an inorganic atom?"[32] is given by man
+himself--and his answer is, I fear, not "scientific." It is "I Am." "I
+am that which varies." And the force of his answer depends on what he
+means by the word "I." And so also the only conceivable answer to the
+absolute datum question is to be found in the meaning of the word
+"I"--in the deepening back of consciousness itself. Man is the measure
+of all things. If we are to use Science as a minister to the most
+external part of man--to provide him with cheap boots and shoes,
+etc.--then we do right to seek our absolute datum in his external part,
+and to take his _foot_ as our first measure. We found a science on feet
+and pounds, and it serves its purpose well enough. But if we want to
+find a garment for his inner being--or, rather, one that shall fit the
+_whole_ man--to wear which will be a delight to him and, as it were, a
+very interpretation of himself--it seems obvious that we must not take
+our measure from outside, but from his very most central principle. The
+whole question is, whether there _is_ any absolute datum in this
+direction or not. There have been men through all ages of history (and
+from before) who have declared that there is. They have perhaps been
+conscious of it in themselves. On the other hand there have been men
+who, starting from their feet, declared that consciousness itself was a
+mere incident of the human machine--as the whistle of the engine--and
+thus the matter stands. On the whole, at the present day, the _feet_
+have it, and (notwithstanding their variety in size and boot-induced
+conformation) are generally accepted as the best absolute datum
+available.
+
+Under the foot _régime_ the universe is generally conceived of as a
+medley of objects and forces, more or less orderly and distinct from
+man, in the midst of which man is placed--the purpose and tendency of
+his life being "adaptation to his environment." To understand this we
+may imagine Mrs. Brown in the middle of Oxford Street. 'Buses and cabs
+are running in different directions, carts and drays are rattling on all
+sides of her. This is her environment, and she has to adapt herself to
+it. She has to learn the laws of the vehicles and their movements, to
+stand on this side or on that, to run here and stop there, conceivably
+to jump into one at a favourable moment, to make use of the law of its
+movement, and so get carried to her destination as comfortably as may
+be. A long course of this sort of thing "adapts" Mrs. Brown
+considerably, and she becomes more active, both in mind and body, than
+before. That is all very well. But Mrs. Brown has a _destination_.
+(Indeed how would she ever have got into the middle of Oxford Street at
+all, if she had not had one? and if she did get there with no
+destination at all, but merely to skip about, would there be any Mrs.
+Brown left in a short time?) The question is, "What is the destination
+of Man?"
+
+About this last question unfortunately we hear little. The theory is (I
+hope I am not doing it injustice) that by studying your environment
+sufficiently you will find out--that is, that by investigating
+Astronomy, Biology, Physics, Ethics, etc., you will discover the destiny
+of man. But this seems to me the same as saying that by studying the
+laws of cabs and 'buses sufficiently you will find out where you are
+going to. These are ways and means. Study them by all means, that is
+right enough; but do not think _they_ will tell you where to go. You
+have to use them, not they you.
+
+In order therefore for the environment to act, there must be a
+destination. This I suppose is expressed in the biological dictum,
+"organism is made by function as well as environment." What then is the
+function of Man? And here we come back again to the meaning of the word
+"I."
+
+Nothwithstanding then the prevalence of the foot régime, and that the
+heathen so furiously rage together in their belief in it, let us suggest
+that there is in man a divine consciousness as well as a
+foot-consciousness. For, as we saw that the sense of taste may pass from
+being a mere local thing on the tip of the tongue to pervading and
+becoming synonymous with the health of the whole body; or as the blue of
+the sky may be to one person a mere superficial impression of colour,
+and to another the inspiration of a poem or picture, and to a third--as
+to the "god-intoxicated" Arab of the desert--a living presence like the
+ancient Dyaus or Zeus; so may not the whole of human consciousness
+gradually lift itself from a mere local and temporary consciousness to a
+divine and universal? There is in every man a local consciousness
+connected with his quite external body; that we know. Are there not also
+in every man the makings of a universal consciousness? That there are in
+us phases of consciousness which transcend the limit of the bodily
+senses, is a matter of daily experience; that we perceive and know
+things which are not conveyed to us by our bodily eyes or heard by our
+bodily ears, is certain; that there rise in us waves of consciousness
+from those around us, from the people, the race, to which we belong, is
+also certain; may there not then be in us the makings of a perception
+and knowledge which shall not be relative to this body which is here and
+now, but which shall be good for all time and everywhere? Does there not
+exist, in truth, as we have already hinted--an inner Illumination--of
+which what we call light in the outer world is the partial expression
+and manifestation--by which we can ultimately see things, _as they are_,
+beholding all creation, the animals, the angels, the plants, the figures
+of our friends and all the ranks and races of human kind, in their true
+being and order--not by any local act of perception but by a cosmical
+intuition and presence, identifying ourselves with what we see? Does
+there not exist a perfected sense of Hearing--as of the morning-stars
+singing together--an understanding of the words that are spoken all
+through the universe, the hidden meaning of all things, the word which
+is creation itself--a profound and far pervading sense, of which our
+ordinary sense of sound is only the first novitiate and initiation? Do
+we not become aware of an inner sense of Health and of Holiness--the
+translation and final outcome of the external sense of taste--which has
+power to determine for us absolutely and without any ado, without
+argument and without denial, what is good and appropriate to be done or
+suffered in every case that can arise?
+
+And so on; it is not necessary to say more. If there are such powers in
+man, then there is indeed an exact science possible. Short of it there
+is only a temporary and phantom science. "Whatever is known to us by
+(direct) consciousness," says Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, "is
+known to us beyond possibility of question;" what is known by our local
+and temporary consciousness is known _for the moment_ beyond possibility
+of question; what is known by our permanent and universal consciousness
+is permanently known beyond possibility of question.[33]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Thus the study of Geometry would be primarily an education of the
+eye, and the mind's eye, to the perception of geometrical forms and
+facts, the judgment of angles, etc.--and secondarily only a process of
+deductive reasoning--a body of empirical knowledge strengthened and tied
+together by bands of logic; the study of Natural History would be
+primarily an affectionate intimacy with the habits of animals and
+plants, and classification would be treated as a secondary matter and as
+a help to the former; Physiology would be studied in the first place by
+the method of Health--the pure body--becoming gradually transparent with
+all its organs to the eye of the mind--and dissection would be used to
+corroborate and correct the results thus attained; and so on.
+
+[32] Compare the Sphinx-riddle: What is that which goes on four legs,
+etc.
+
+[33] See for continuation of this subject the chapter on "A Rational and
+Humane Science," p. 219 _infra_.
+
+
+
+
+DEFENCE OF CRIMINALS:
+
+A CRITICISM OF MORALITY
+
+The State is the actually existing realised moral life. For it is the
+unity of the universal essential Will with that of the individual, and
+this is "Morality."--HEGEL.
+
+
+A criminal is literally a person accused--accused, and in the modern
+sense of the word convicted, of being harmful to Society. But is he
+there in the dock, the patch-coated brawler or burglar, really harmful
+to Society? is he more harmful than the mild old gentleman in the wig
+who pronounces sentence upon him? That is the question. Certainly he has
+infringed the law: and the law is in a sense the consolidated public
+opinion of Society: but if no one were to break the law, public opinion
+would ossify, and Society would die. As a matter of fact Society keeps
+changing its opinion. How then are we to know when it is right and when
+it is wrong? The Outcast of one age is the Hero of another. In
+execration they nailed Roger Bacon's manuscripts out in the sun and
+rain, to rot crucified upon planks--his bones lie in an unknown and
+unhonoured grave--yet to-day he is regarded as a pioneer of human
+thought. The hated Christian holding his ill-famed love-feasts in the
+darkness of the catacombs has climbed up to the throne of S. Peter and
+the world. The Jew moneylender whom Front-de-Boeuf could torture with
+impunity is become a Rothschild--guest of princes and instigator of
+commercial wars; and Shylock is now a highly respectable Railway
+Bondholder. And the Accepted of one age is the Criminal of the next. All
+the glories of Alexander do not condone in our eyes for his cruelty in
+crucifying the brave defenders of Tyre by thousands along the sea-shore;
+and if Solomon with his thousand wives and concubines were to appear in
+London to-morrow, even our most frivolous circles would be shocked, and
+Brigham Young by contrast seem a domestic model. The judge pronounces
+sentence on the prisoner now, but Society in its turn and in the lapse
+of years pronounces sentence on the judge. It holds in its hand a new
+canon, a new code of morals, and consigns its former representative and
+the law which he administered to a limbo of contempt.
+
+It seems as if Society, as it progresses from point to point, forms
+ideals--just as the individual does. At any moment each person,
+consciously or unconsciously, has an ideal in his mind toward which he
+is working (hence the importance of literature). Similarly Society has
+an ideal in its mind. These ideals are tangents or vanishing points of
+the direction in which Society is moving at the time. It does not reach
+its ideal, but it goes in that direction--then, after a time, the
+direction of its movement changes, and it has a new ideal.
+
+When the ideal of Society is material gain or possession, as it is
+largely to-day, the object of its special condemnation is the thief--not
+the rich thief, for he is already in possession and therefore
+respectable, but the poor thief. There is nothing to show that the poor
+thief is really more immoral or unsocial than the respectable
+money-grubber; but it is very clear that the money-grubber has been
+floating with the great current of Society, while the poor man has been
+swimming against it, and so has been worsted. Or when, as to-day,
+Society rests on private property in land, its counter-ideal is the
+poacher. If you go in the company of the county squire-archy and listen
+to the after-dinner talk you will soon think the poacher a combination
+of all human and diabolic vices; yet I have known a good many poachers,
+and either have been very lucky in my specimens or singularly prejudiced
+in their favour, for I have generally found them very good fellows--but
+with just this one blemish that they invariably regard a landlord as an
+emissary of the evil one! The poacher is as much in the right, probably,
+as the landlord, but he is not right for the time. He is asserting a
+right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time--when for hunting
+purposes all land was held in common--or to a time in the future when
+such or similar rights shall be restored. Cæsar says of the Suevi that
+they tilled the ground in common and had no private lands, and there is
+abundant evidence that all early human communities, before they entered
+on the stage of modern civilisation, were communistic in character. Some
+of the Pacific Islanders to-day are in the same condition. In those
+times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to
+retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the
+common ground and--like the modern landlord--would allow no one to till
+it who did not pay him a tax--was a criminal of the deepest dye.
+Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have
+become the respectables of modern Society. And it is quite probable that
+in like manner the criminals of to-day will push to the front and become
+the respectables of a later age.
+
+The ascetic and monastic ideal of early Christian and mediæval ages is
+now regarded as foolish, if not wicked; and poverty, which in many times
+and places has been held in honour as the only garb of honesty, is
+condemned as criminal and indecent. Nomadism--if accompanied by
+poverty--is criminal in modern Society. To-day the gipsy and the tramp
+are hunted down. To have no settled habitation, or worse still, no place
+to lay your head, are suspicious matters. We close even our outhouses
+and barns against the son of man, and so to us the son of man comes not.
+And yet--at one time and in one stage of human progress--the nomadic
+state is the rule; and the settler is then the criminal. His crops are
+fired and his cattle driven off. What right has he to lay a limit to the
+hunting grounds, or to spoil the wild free life of the plains with his
+dirty agriculture?
+
+As to the marriage relation and its attendant moralities, the forms are
+numerous and notorious enough. Public opinion seems to have varied
+through all phases and ideals, and yet there is no indication of
+finality. Modern investigations show that in primitive human societies
+the affinities admitted or barred in marriage are most various--the
+relation of brother and sister being even in cases allowed; in the
+present day such a bond as the last-mentioned would be considered
+inhuman and monstrous.[34] Polyandry prevails among one people or at one
+time, polygyny prevails among another people or at another time. In
+Central Africa to-day the chief offers you his wife as a mark of
+hospitality, in India the native Prince keeps her hidden even from his
+most intimate guest. Among the Japanese, public opinion holds young
+women--even of good birth--singularly free in their intercourse with
+men, _till they are married_; at Paris they are free after. In the Greek
+and Roman antiquity marriage seems, with some brilliant exceptions, to
+have been a prosaic affair--mostly a matter of convenience and
+housekeeping--the woman an underling--little of the ideal attaching to
+the relationship of man and wife. The romance of love went elsewhere.
+The better class of free women or Hetairai were those who gave a
+spiritual charm to the passion. They were an educated and recognised
+body, and possibly in their best times exercised a healthy and
+discriminating influence upon the male youth. The respectful treatment
+of Theodota by Socrates and the advice which he gives her concerning her
+lovers: to keep the insolent from her door, and to rejoice greatly when
+the accepted succeed in anything honourable, indicates this. That their
+influence was at times immense the mere name of Aspasia is sufficient to
+show; and if Plato in the Symposium reports correctly the word of
+Diotima, her teaching on the subject of human and divine love was
+probably of the noblest and profoundest that has ever been given to the
+world.
+
+With the influx of the North-men over Europe came a new ideal of the
+sexual relation, and the wife mounted more into equality with her
+husband than before. The romance of love, however, still went mainly
+outside marriage, and may, I believe, be traced in two chief forms--that
+of Chivalry, as an ideal devotion to simple Womanhood; and that of
+Minstrelsy, which took quite a different hue, individual and
+sentimental--the lover and his mistress (she in most cases the wife of
+another), the serenade, secret amour, etc.--both of which forms of
+Chivalry and Minstrelsy contain in themselves something new and not
+quite familiar to antiquity.
+
+Finally in modern times the monogamic union has risen to
+pre-eminence--the splendid ideal of an equal and life-long attachment
+between man and wife, fruitful of children in this life, and hopeful of
+continuance beyond--and has become the great theme of romantic
+literature, and the climax of a thousand novels and poems. Yet it is
+just here and to-day, when this ideal after centuries of struggle has
+established itself, and among the nations that are in the van of
+civilisation--that we find the doctrine of perfect liberty in the
+marriage relationship being most successfully preached, and that the
+communalisation of social life in the future seems likely to weaken the
+family bond and to relax the obligation of the marriage tie.
+
+If the Greek age, splendid as it was in itself and in its fruits of
+human progress, did not hold marriage very high, it was partly because
+the ideal passion of that period, and one which more than all else
+inspired it, was that of comradeship, or male friendship carried over
+into the region of love. The two figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton
+stand at the entrance of Greek history as the type of this passion,
+bearing its fruit (as Plato throughout maintains is its nature) in
+united self-devotion to the country's good. The heroic Theban legion,
+the "sacred band," into which no man might enter without his lover--and
+which was said to have remained unvanquished till it was annihilated at
+the battle of Chæronæa--proves to us how publicly this passion and its
+place in society were recognised; while its universality and the depth
+to which it had stirred the Greek mind are indicated by the fact that
+whole treatises on love, in its spiritual aspect, exist, in which no
+other form of the sentiment seems to be contemplated; and by the
+magnificent panorama of Greek statuary, which was obviously to a large
+extent inspired by it. In fact the most remarkable Society known to
+history, and its greatest men, cannot be properly considered or
+understood apart from this passion; yet the modern world scarcely
+recognises it, or if it recognises, does so chiefly to condemn it.[35]
+
+Other instances might be quoted to show how differently moral questions
+are regarded in one age and another--as in the cases of Usury, Magic,
+Suicide, Infanticide, etc. On the whole we pride ourselves (and justly I
+believe) on the general advance in humanity; yet we know that to-day the
+merest savages can only shudder at a civilisation whose public opinion
+allows--as among us--the rich to wallow in their wealth, while the poor
+are systematically starving; and it is certain that the vivisection of
+animals--which on the whole is approved by our educated classes (though
+not by the healthier sentiment of the uneducated)--would have been
+stigmatised as one of the most abominable crimes by the ancient
+Egyptians[36]--if, that is, they could have conceived such a practice
+possible at all.
+
+But not only do the moral judgments of mankind thus vary from age to age
+and from race to race, but--what is equally remarkable--they vary to an
+extraordinary degree from class to class of the same society. If the
+landlord class regards the poacher as a criminal, the poacher, as
+already hinted, looks upon the landlord as a selfish ruffian who has the
+police on his side; if the respectable shareholder, politely and
+respectably subsisting on dividends, dismisses navvies and the
+frequenters of public-houses as disorderly persons, the navvy in return
+despises the shareholder as a sneaking thief. And it is not easy to see,
+after all, which is in the right. It is useless to dismiss these
+discrepancies by supposing that one class in the nation possesses a
+monopoly of morality and that the other classes simply rail at the
+virtue they cannot attain to, for this is obviously not the case. It is
+almost a commonplace, and certainly a fact that cannot be contested,
+that every class--however sinful or outcast in the eyes of
+others--contains within its ranks a large proportion of generous,
+noble, self-sacrificing characters; so that the public opinion of one
+such class, however different from that of others, cannot at least be
+invalidated on the above ground. There are plenty of clergymen at this
+moment who are models of pastors--true shepherds of the people--though a
+large and increasing section of society persist in regarding priests as
+a kind of wolves in sheep's clothing. It is not uncommon to meet with
+professional thieves who are generous and open-handed to the last
+degree, and ready to part with their last penny to help a comrade in
+distress; with women living outside the bounds of conventional morality
+who are strongly religious in sentiment, and who regard atheists as
+_really_ wicked people; with aristocrats who have as stern material in
+them as quarry-men; and even with bondholders and drawing-room loungers
+who are as capable of bravery and self-sacrifice as many a pitman or
+ironworker. Yet all these classes mentioned have their codes of
+morality, differing in greater or lesser degree from each other; and
+again the question forces itself upon us: Which of them all is the true
+and abiding code?
+
+It may be said, with regard to this variation of codes within the same
+society, that, though various codes may exist at the same time, one only
+is really valid, namely, that which has embodied itself in the law--that
+the others have been rejected because they were unworthy. But, when we
+come to look into this matter of law, we see that the plea can hardly be
+maintained. Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or
+ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and slowly modified, but
+always added to and always administered by the ruling class. To-day the
+code of the dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word
+Respectability--and if we ask why this code has to a great extent
+overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side
+(so far that in the main it characterises those classes who do not
+conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because
+it _is_ the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the
+code of those who have the wealth and the command, and as these have
+also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern
+literature and the press. It is not necessarily a better standard than
+others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it is the
+code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the
+code of the Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the
+past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the
+Democratic code of the future--of brotherhood and of equality; it is the
+code of the Commercial age--and its distinctive watchword is property.
+
+The respectability of to-day is the respectability of property. There is
+nothing so respectable as being well-off. The Law confirms this:
+everything is on the side of the rich; justice is too expensive a thing
+for the poor man. Offences against the person hardly count for so much
+as those against property. You may beat your wife within an inch of her
+life and only get three months; but if you steal a rabbit, you may be
+"sent" for years. So again, gambling by thousands on Change is
+respectable enough, but pitch and toss for half-pence in the streets is
+low, and must be dealt with by the police; while it is a mere
+commonplace to say that the high-class swindler is "received" in society
+from which a more honest but patch-coated brother would infallibly be
+rejected. As Walt Whitman has it, "There is plenty of glamour about the
+most damnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special and general, of the
+feudal and dynastic world over there, with its personnel of lords and
+queens and courts, so well-dressed and handsome. But the people are
+ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred."
+
+Thus we see that though there are, for instance in the England of
+to-day, a variety of classes and a variety of corresponding codes of
+public opinion and morality, one of these codes, namely that of the
+ruling class whose watchword is property, is strongly in the ascendant.
+And we may fairly suppose that in any nation from the time when it first
+becomes divided into well-marked classes this is or has been the case.
+In one age--the commercial age--the code of the commercial or
+money-loving class is dominant; in another--the military--the code of
+the warrior class is dominant; in another--the religious--the code of
+the priestly class; and so on. And even before any question of division
+into classes arises, while races are yet in a rudimentary and tribal
+state, the utmost diversity of custom and public opinion marks the one
+from the other.
+
+What, then, are we to conclude from all these variations (and the far
+greater number which I have not mentioned) of the respect or stigma
+attaching to the _same_ actions, not only among different societies in
+different ages or parts of the world, but even at any one time among
+different classes of the same society? Must we conclude that there is no
+such thing as a permanent moral code valid for all time; or must we
+still suppose that there is such a thing--though society has hitherto
+sought for it in vain?
+
+I think it is obvious that there is no such thing as a permanent moral
+code--at any rate as applying to _actions_. Probably the respect or
+stigma attaching to particular classes of actions arose from the fact
+that these classes of actions were--or were thought to be--beneficial or
+injurious to the society of the time; but it is also clear that this
+good or bad name once created clings to the action long after the action
+has ceased in the course of social progress to be beneficial in the one
+case, or injurious in the other; and indeed long after the thinkers of
+the race have discovered the discrepancy. And so in a short time arises
+a great confusion in the popular mind between what is really good or
+evil for the race and what is reputed to be so--the bolder spirits who
+try to separate the two having to atone for this confusion by their own
+martyrdom. It is also pretty clear that the actions which are beneficial
+or injurious to the race must by the nature of the case vary almost
+indefinitely with the changing conditions of the life of the race--what
+is beneficial in one age or under one set of conditions being injurious
+in another age or under other circumstances--so that a permanent or
+ever-valid code of moral action is not a thing to be expected, at any
+rate by those who regard morality as a result of social experience, and
+as a matter of fact is not a thing that we find existing. And, indeed,
+of those who regard morals as intuitive, there are few who have thought
+about the matter who would be inclined to say that any _act_ in itself
+can be either right or wrong. Though there is a superficial judgment of
+this kind, yet when the matter comes to be looked into, the more general
+consent seems to be that the rightness or wrongness is in the _motive_.
+To kill (it is said) is not wrong, but to do so with murderous intent
+is; to take money out of another person's purse is in itself neither
+moral nor immoral--all depends upon whether permission has been given,
+or on what the relations between the two persons are; and so on.
+Obviously there is no mere act which under given conditions may not be
+justified, and equally obvious there is no mere act which under given
+conditions may not become unjustifiable. To talk, therefore, about
+virtues and vices as permanent and distinct classes of actions is
+illusory: there is no such distinction, except so far as a superficial
+and transient public opinion creates it. The theatre of morality is in
+the passions, and there are (it is said) virtuous and vicious
+passions--eternally distinct from each other.
+
+Here, then, we have abandoned the search for a permanent moral code
+among the actions; on the understanding that we are more likely to find
+such a thing among the passions. And I think it would be generally
+admitted that this is a move in the right direction. There are
+difficulties however here, and the matter is not one which renders
+itself up at once. Though, vaguely speaking, some passions seem nobler
+and more dignified than others, we find it very difficult, in fact
+impossible, to draw any strict line which shall separate one class, the
+virtuous, from the other class, the vicious. On the whole we place
+Prudence, Generosity, Chastity, Reverence, Courage among the
+virtues--and their opposites, as Rashness, Miserliness, Incontinence,
+Arrogance, Timidity, among the vices; yet we do not seem able to say
+that Prudence is always better than Rashness, Chastity than
+Incontinence, or Reverence than Arrogance. There are situations in which
+the less honoured quality is the most in place; and if the extreme of
+this is undesirable, the extreme of its opposite is undesirable too.
+Courage, it is commonly said, must not be carried over into
+foolhardiness; Chastity must not go so far as the monks of the early
+Church took it; there is a limit to the indulgence of the instinct of
+Reverence. In fact the less dignified passions are necessary sometimes
+as a counterbalance and set-off to the more dignified, and a character
+devoid of them would be very insipid; just as among the members of the
+body, the less honoured have their place as well as the more honoured,
+and could not well be discarded.
+
+Hence a number of writers, abandoning the attempt to draw a fixed line
+between virtuous and vicious passions, have boldly maintained that vices
+have their place as well as virtues, and that the true salvation lies in
+the golden mean. The [Greek: epieikeia] and [Greek: sôphrosunê] of the
+Greeks seem to have pointed to the idea of a blend or harmonious
+adjustment of all the powers as the perfection of character. Plutarch
+says (_Essay on Moral Virtue_), "This, then, is the function of
+practical reason following nature, to prevent our passions either going
+too far or too short.... Thus setting bound to the emotional currents,
+it creates in the unreasoning part of the soul moral habits which are
+the mean between excess and deficiency."
+
+The English word "gentleman" seems to have once conveyed a similar idea.
+And Emerson, among others, maintains that each vice is only the "excess
+or acridity of a virtue," and says "the first lesson of history is the
+good of evil."
+
+According to this view rightness or wrongness cannot be predicated of
+the passions themselves, but should rather be applied to the use of
+them, and to the way they are proportioned to each other and to
+circumstances. As, farther back, we left the region of actions to look
+for morality in the passions that lie behind action, so now we leave the
+region of the passions to look for it in the power that lies behind the
+passions and gives them their place. This is a farther move in the same
+direction as before, and possibly will bring us to a more satisfactory
+conclusion. There are still difficulties, however, the chief ones lying
+in the want of definiteness which necessarily attaches to our dealings
+with these remoter tracts of human nature; and in our own defective
+knowledge of these tracts.
+
+For these reasons, and as the subject is a complex and difficult one, I
+would ask the reader to dwell for a few minutes longer on the
+considerations which show that it is really as impossible to draw a
+fixed line between moral and immoral passions as it is between moral and
+immoral actions, and which therefore force us, if we are to find any
+ground of morality at all, to look for it in some further region of our
+nature.
+
+Plato in his allegory of the soul, in the Phædrus, though he apparently
+divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the
+heavenward and the earthward--figured by the white horse and the black
+horse respectively--does not recommend that the black horse should be
+destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse)
+should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to
+intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the
+passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely
+move. In fact, if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were
+removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the
+human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times--but, after all, the true
+value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is
+put. Anger, though inhuman at one time, is magnificent at another.
+Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest
+virtue on a battle-field, when an important position has to be held
+against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and
+monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated
+from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have
+entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally,
+to the smiter, is (_pace_ Tolstoi) only to encourage smiting; and when
+society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the
+coal-scuttle, we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The
+white-washed heroes of our biographies, with their many virtues and no
+faults, do not please us. We have an impression that the man without
+faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being--a picture
+without light and shade--and the conventional semi-pious classification
+of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept
+and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.
+
+What the student of human nature rather has to do is not to divide the
+virtues (so-called) from the vices (so-called), not to separate the
+black horse and the white horse, but to find out what is the relation of
+the one to the other--to see the character as a whole, and the mutual
+interdependence of its different parts--to find out what that power is
+which constitutes it a unity, whose presence and control makes the man
+and all his actions "right," and in whose absence (if it is really
+possible for it to be entirely absent) the man and his actions must be
+"wrong."
+
+What we call vices, faults, defects, appear often as a kind of
+limitation: cruelty, for instance, as a limitation of human sympathy,
+prejudice as a blindness, a want of discernment; but it is just these
+limitations--in one form or another--which are the necessary conditions
+of the appearance of a human being in the world. If we are to act or
+live at all we must act and live under limits. There must be channels
+along which the stream is forced to run, else it will spread and lose
+itself aimlessly in all directions--and turn no mill-wheels. One man is
+disagreeable and unconciliatory--the directions in which his sympathy
+goes out to others are few and limited--yet there are situations in life
+(and everyone must know them) when a man who is _able and willing_ to
+make himself disagreeable is invaluable: when a Carlyle is worth any
+number of Balaams.
+
+Sometimes again vices, etc., appear as a kind of raw material from which
+the other qualities have to be formed, and without which, in a sense,
+they could not exist. Sensuality, for instance, underlies all art and
+the higher emotions. Timidity is the defect of the sensitive imaginative
+temperament. Bluntness, stupid candor, and want of tact are
+indispensable in the formation of certain types of Reformers. But what
+would you have? Would you have a rabbit with the horns of a cow, or a
+donkey with the disposition of a spaniel? The reformer has not to
+extirpate his brusqueness and aggressiveness, but to see that he makes
+good use of these qualities; and the man has not to abolish his
+sensuality, but to humanise it.
+
+And so on. Lecky, in his "History of Morals," shows how in society
+certain defects necessarily accompany certain excellences of character.
+"Had the Irish peasants been less chaste they would have been more
+prosperous," in his blunt assertion, which he supports by the contention
+that their early marriages (which render the said virtue possible) "are
+the most conspicuous proofs of the national improvidence, and one of the
+most fatal obstacles to industrial prosperity." Similarly he says that
+the gambling table fosters a moral nerve and calmness "scarcely
+exhibited in equal perfection in any other sphere"--a fact which Bret
+Harte has finely illustrated in his character of Mr. John Oakhurst in
+the "Outcasts of Poker Flat;" also that "the promotion of industrial
+veracity is probably the single form in which the growth of manufactures
+exercises a favorable influence upon morals;" while, on the other hand,
+"Trust in Providence, content and resignation in extreme poverty and
+suffering, the most genuine amiability, and the most sincere readiness
+to assist their brethren, an adherence to their religious opinions which
+no persecutions and no bribes can shake, a capacity for heroic,
+transcendent, and prolonged self-sacrifice, may be found in some
+nations, in men who are habitual liars and habitual cheats." Again he
+points out that thriftiness and forethought--which, in an industrial
+civilisation like ours, are looked upon as duties "of the very highest
+order"--have at other times (when the teaching was "take no thought for
+the morrow") been regarded as quite the reverse, and concludes with the
+general remark that as society advances there is some loss for every
+gain that is made, and with the special indictment against
+"civilisation" that it is not favorable to the production of
+"self-sacrifice, enthusiasm, reverence, or chastity."
+
+The point of all which is that the so-called vices and defects--whether
+we regard them as limitations or whether we regard them as raw materials
+of character, whether we regard them in the individual solely or whether
+we regard them in their relation to society--are necessary elements of
+human life, elements without which the so-called virtues could not
+exist; and that therefore it is quite impossible to separate vices and
+virtues into distinct classes with the latent idea involved that one
+class may be retained and the other in course of time got rid of.
+Defects and bad qualities will not be treated so--they clamour for their
+rights and will not be denied; they effect a lodgment in us, and we
+have to put up with them. Like the grain of sand in the oyster, we are
+forced to make pearls of them.
+
+These are the precipices and chasms which give form to the mountain. Who
+wants a mountain sprawling indifferently out on all sides, without angle
+or break, like the oceanic tide-wave of which one cannot say whether it
+is a hill or a plain? And if you want to grow a lily, chastely white and
+filling the air with its fragrance, will you not bury the bulb of it
+deep in the dirt to begin with?
+
+Acknowledging, then, that it is impossible to hold permanently to any
+line of distinction between good and bad passions, there remains no
+course for us but to accept both, and to _make use_ of them--redeeming
+them, both good and bad, from their narrowness and limitation by so
+doing--to make use of them in the service of humanity. For as dirt is
+only matter in the wrong place, so evil in man consists only in actions
+or passions which are uncontrolled by the human within him, and
+undedicated to its service. The evil consists not in the actions or
+passions themselves, but in the fact that they are inhumanly used. The
+most unblemished virtue erected into a barrier between one self and a
+suffering brother or sister--the whitest marble image, howsoever lovely,
+set up in the Holy Place of the temple of Man, where the spirit alone
+should dwell--becomes blasphemy and a pollution.
+
+Wherein exactly this human service consists is another question. It may
+be, and, as the reader would gather, probably is, a matter which at the
+last eludes definition. But though it may elude exact statement, that is
+no reason why approximations should not be made to the statement of it;
+nor is its ultimate elusiveness of intellectual definition any proof
+that it may not become a real and vital force within the man, and
+underlying inspiration of his actions. To take the two considerations in
+order. In the first place, as we saw from the beginning, the experience
+of society is continually leading it to classify actions into beneficial
+and harmful, good and bad; and thus moral codes are formed which eat
+their way from the outside into the individual man and become part of
+him. These codes may be looked upon as approximations in each age to a
+statement of human service; but, as we have seen, they are by the nature
+of the case very imperfect; and since the very conditions of the problem
+are continually changing, it seems obvious that a final and absolute
+solution of it by this method is impossible. The second way in which man
+works towards a solution is by the expansion and growth of his own
+consciousness, and is ultimately by far the most important--though the
+two methods have doubtless continually to be corrected by each other. In
+fact, as man actually forms a part of society externally, so he comes to
+know and _feel_ himself a part of society through his inner nature.
+Gradually, and in the lapse of ages, through the development of his
+sympathetic relation with his fellows, the individual man enters into a
+wider and wider circle of life; the joys and sorrows, the experiences,
+of his fellows become his own joys and sorrows, his own experiences; he
+passes into a life which is larger than his own individual life; forces
+flow in upon him which determine his actions, not for results which
+return to him directly, but for results which can only return to him
+indirectly and through others; at last the ground of humanity, as it
+were, reveals itself within him, the region of human equality--and his
+actions come to flow directly from the very same source which regulates
+and inspires the whole movement of society. At this point the problem is
+solved. The growth has taken place from within; it is not of the nature
+of an external compulsion, but of an inward compunction. By actual
+consciousness the man has taken on an ever-enlarging life, and at last
+the life of humanity, which has no fixed form, no ever-valid code; but
+is itself the true life, surpassing definition, yet inspiring all
+actions and passions, all codes and forms, and determining at last their
+place.
+
+It is the gradual growth of this supreme life in each individual which
+is the great and indeed the only hope of Society--it is that for which
+Society exists: a life which so far from dwarfing individuality enhances
+immensely its power, causing the individual to move with the weight of
+the universe behind him--and exalting what were once his little
+peculiarities and defects into the splendid manifestations of his
+humanity.
+
+To return then for a moment to the practical bearing of this on the
+question before us, we see that so soon as we have abandoned all codes
+of morals there remains nothing for us but to put _all_ our qualities
+and defects to human use, and to redeem them by so doing. Our defects
+are our entrances into life, and the gateway of all our dealings with
+others. Think what it is to be plain and _homely_. The very word
+suggests an endearment, and a liberty of access denied to the
+faultlessly handsome. Our very evil passions, so called, are not things
+to be ashamed of, but things to look straight in the face and to see
+what they are good for--for a use can be found for them, that is
+certain. The man should see that he is worthy of his passion, as the
+mountain should rear its crest conformable to the height of the
+precipice which bounds it. Is it women? let him see that he is a
+magnanimous lover. Is it ambition? let him take care that it be a grand
+one. Is it laziness? let it redeem him from the folly of unrest, to
+become heaven-reflecting, like a lake among the hills. Is it
+closefistedness? let it become the nurse of a true economy.
+
+The more complicated, pronounced, or awkward the defect is the finer
+will be the result when it has been thoroughly worked up. Love of
+approbation is difficult to deal with. Through sloughs of duplicity, of
+concealment, of vanity, it leads its victim. It sucks his sturdy
+self-life, and leaves him flattened and bloodless. Yet once mastered,
+once fairly torn out, cudgeled, and left bleeding on the road (for this
+probably has to be done with every vice or virtue some time or other),
+it will rise up and follow you, carrying a magic key round its neck,
+meek and serviceable now, instead of dangerous and demoniac as before.
+
+Deceit is difficult to deal with. In some sense it is the worst fault
+that can be. It seems to disorganise and ultimately to destroy the
+character. Yet I am bold to say that this defect has its uses. Severely
+examined perhaps it will be found that no one can live a day free from
+it. And beyond that--is not "a noble dissimulation" part and parcel of
+the very greatest characters: like Socrates, "the white soul in a satyr
+form"? When the divine has descended among men has it not always, like
+Moses, worn a veil before its face? and what is Nature herself but one
+long and organised system of deception?
+
+Veracity has an opposite effect. It knits all the elements of a man's
+character--rendering him solid rather than fluid; yet carried out too
+literally and pragmatically it condenses and solidifies the character
+overmuch, making the man woodeny and angular. And even of that essential
+Truth (truth to the inward and ideal perfection) which more than
+anything else perhaps _constitutes_ a man--it is to be remembered that
+even here there must be a limitation. No man can in act or externally be
+quite true to the ideal--though in spirit he may be. If he is to live in
+this world and be mortal, it must be by virtue of some partiality, some
+defect.
+
+And so again--since there is an analogy between the Individual and
+Society--may we not conclude that as the individual has ultimately to
+recognise his so-called evil passions and find a place and a use for
+them, society also has to recognise its so-called criminals and discern
+their place and use? The artist does not omit shadows from his canvas;
+and the wise statesman will not try to abolish the criminal from
+society--lest haply he be found to have abolished the driving force from
+his social machine.[37]
+
+From what has now been said it is quite clear that in general we call a
+man a criminal, not because he violates any eternal code of
+morality--for there exists no such thing--but because he violates the
+ruling code of his time, and this depends largely on the ideal of the
+time. The Spartans appear to have permitted theft because they thought
+that thieving habits in the community fostered military dexterity and
+discouraged the accumulation of private wealth. They looked upon the
+latter as a great evil. But to-day the accumulation of private wealth is
+our great good and the thief is looked upon as the evil. When however we
+find, as the historians of to-day teach us, that society is now probably
+passing through a parenthetical stage of private property from a stage
+of communism in the past to a stage of more highly developed communism
+in the future, it becomes clear that the thief (and the poacher
+before-mentioned) is that person who is protesting against the
+too-exclusive domination of a passing ideal. Whatever should we do
+without him? He is keeping open for us, as Hinton I think expresses it,
+the path to a regenerate society, and is more useful to that end than
+many a platform orator. He it is that makes Care to sit upon the Crupper
+of Wealth, and so, in course of time, causes the burden and bother of
+private property to become so intolerable that society gladly casts it
+down on common ground. Vast as is the machinery of Law, and multifarious
+the ways in which it seeks to crush the thief, it has signally failed,
+and fails ever more and more. The thief will win. He will get what he
+wants, but (as usual in human life!) in a way and in a form very
+different from what he expected.
+
+And when we regard the thief in himself, we cannot say that we find him
+less human than other classes of society. The sentiment of large bodies
+of thieves is highly communistic among themselves; and if they thus
+represent a survival from an earlier age, they might also be looked upon
+as the precursors of a better age in the future. They have their pals in
+every town, with runs and refuges always open, and are lavish and
+generous to a degree to their own kind. And if they look upon the rich
+as their natural enemies and fair prey, a view which it might be
+difficult to gainsay, many of them at any rate are animated by a good
+deal of the Robin Hood spirit, and are really helpful to the poor.
+
+I need not I think quote that famous passage from Lecky in which he
+shows how the prostitute, through centuries of suffering and ill-fame,
+has borne the curse and contempt of Society in order that her more
+fortunate sister might rejoice in the achievement of a pure marriage.
+The ideal of a monogamic union has been established in a sense directly
+by the slur cast upon the free woman. If, however, as many people think,
+a certain latitude in sexual relations is not only admissible but, in
+the long run, and within bounds, desirable, it becomes clear that the
+prostitute is that person who against heavy odds, and at the cost of a
+real degradation to herself, has clung to a tradition which, in itself
+good, might otherwise have perished in the face of our devotion to the
+splendid ideal of the exclusive marriage. There has been a time in
+history when the prostitute (if the word can properly be used in this
+connection) has been glorified, consecrated to the temple-service and
+honoured of men and gods (the hierodouloi of the Greeks, the kodeshoth
+and kodeshim of the Bible, etc.) There has also been a time when she has
+been scouted and reviled. In the future there will come a time when, as
+free companion, really free from the curse of modern commercialism, and
+sacred and respected once more, she will again be accepted by society
+and take her place with the rest.
+
+And so with other cases. On looking back into history we find that
+almost every human impulse has at some age been held in esteem and
+allowed full play; thus man came to recognise its beauty and value. But
+then, lest it should come (as it surely would) to tyrannise over the
+rest, it has been dethroned, and so in a later age the same quality is
+scouted and banned. Last of all it has to find its perfect human use and
+to take its place with the rest. Up to the age of Civilisation
+(according to writers on primitive Society) the early tribes of mankind,
+though limited each in their habits, were essentially democratical in
+structure. In fact, nothing had occurred to make them otherwise. Each
+member stood on a footing of equality with the rest; individual men had
+not in their hands an arbitrary power over others; and the tribal life
+and standard ruled supreme. And when, in the future and on a much higher
+plane, the true Democracy comes, this equality which has so long been in
+abeyance will be restored, not only among men but also, in a sense,
+among all the passions and qualities of manhood: none will be allowed to
+tyrannise over others, but all will have to be subject to the supreme
+life of humanity. The chariot of Man instead of two horses will have a
+thousand; but they will all be under control of the charioteer.
+Meanwhile it may not be extravagant to suppose that all through the
+Civilisation-period the so-called criminals are keeping open the
+possibility of a return to this state of society. They are preserving,
+in a rough and unattractive husk it may be, the precious seed of a life
+which is to come in the future; and are as necessary and integral a part
+of society in the long run as the most respected and most honoured of
+its members at present.
+
+The upshot then of it all is that "morals" as a permanent code of action
+have to be discarded. There exists no such permanent code. One age, one
+race, one class, one family, may have a code which the users of it
+consider valid, but only they consider it valid, and then only for a
+time. The Decalogue may have been a rough and useful ready-reckoner for
+the Israelites; but to us it admits of so many exceptions and
+interpretations that it is practically worthless. "Thou shalt not
+steal." Exactly; but who is to decide, as we saw at the outset, in what
+"stealing" consists? The question is too complicated to admit of an
+answer. And when we _have_ caught our half-starved tramp "sneaking" a
+loaf, and are ready to condemn him, lo! Lycurgus pats him on the back,
+and the modern philosopher tells him that he is keeping open the path to
+a regenerate society! If the tramp had also been a philosopher, he would
+perhaps have done the same act not merely for his own benefit but for
+that of society, he would have committed a crime in order to save
+mankind.
+
+There is nothing left but Humanity. Since there is no ever-valid code of
+morals we must sadly confess that there is no means of proving ourselves
+right and our neighbours wrong. In fact the very act of thinking
+whether _we_ are right (which implies a sundering of ourselves, even in
+thought, from others) itself introduces the element of wrongness; and if
+we are ever to _be_ "right" at all, it must be at some moment when we
+fail to notice it--when we have forgotten our apartness from others and
+have entered into the great region of human equality. Equality--in that
+region all human defects are redeemed; they all find their place. To
+love your neighbour _as_ yourself is the whole law and the prophets; to
+feel that you are "equal" with others, that their lives are as your
+life, that your life is as theirs--even in what trifling degree we may
+experience such things--is to enter into another life which includes
+both sides; it is to pass beyond the sphere of moral distinctions, and
+to trouble oneself no more with them. Between lovers there are no duties
+and no rights; and in the life of humanity, there is only an instinctive
+mutual service expressing itself in whatever way may be best at the
+time. Nothing is forbidden, there is nothing which may not serve. The
+law of Equality is perfectly flexible, is adaptable to all times and
+places, finds a place for all the elements of character, justifies and
+redeems them all without exception; and to live by it is perfect
+freedom. Yet not a law: but rather as said, a new life, transcending the
+individual life, working through it from within, lifting the self into
+another sphere, beyond corruption, far over the world of Sorrow.
+
+The effort to make a distinction between acting for self and acting for
+one's neighbor is the basis of "morals." As long as a man feels an
+ultimate antagonism between himself and society, as long as he tries to
+hold his own life as a thing apart from that of others, so long must the
+question arise whether he will act for self _or_ for those others. Hence
+flow a long array of terms--distinctions of right and wrong, duty,
+selfishness, self-renunciation, altruism, etc. But when he discovers
+that there is no ultimate antagonism between himself and society; when
+he finds that the gratification of every desire which he has or can have
+may be rendered social, or beneficial to his fellows, by being used at
+the right time and place, and on the other hand that every demand made
+upon him by society will and must gratify some portion of his nature,
+some desire of his heart--why, all the distinctions collapse again; they
+do not hold water any more. A larger life descends upon him, which
+includes both sides, and prompts actions in accordance with an unwritten
+and unimagined law. Such actions will sometimes be accounted "selfish"
+by the world; sometimes they will be accounted "unselfish"; but they are
+neither, or--if you like--both; and he who does them concerns himself
+not with the names that may be given to them. The law of Equality
+includes all the moral codes, and is the standpoint which they cannot
+reach, but which they all aim at.
+
+Judged by this final standard then, it may doubtless fairly be
+said--since we all fall short of it--that we are all criminals, and
+deserve a good hiding; and even that some of us are greater criminals
+than others. Only of this real criminality the actual moral and legal
+codes afford but ineffectual tests. I may be a far worse or more
+self-included ("idiotic" or brutal) man than you, but the mere fact that
+I have violated the laws and been clapped into prison does not prove it.
+There may be, probably is, a real and eternal difference represented by
+the words Right and Wrong, but no statement that we can make will ever
+quite avail to define it. One use, however, of all these laws and codes
+in the past, imperfect though they were, may have been to gradually
+excite the consciousness in the individual of his opposition to society,
+and so prepare the way for a true reconcilement. As Paul says, "I had
+not known sin, but by the law," and, if we had not been cudgeled and
+bruised for centuries by this rough bludgeon of social convention, we
+should not now be so sensitive as we are to the effect of our actions
+upon our neighbours, nor so ready for a social life in the future which
+shall be superior to law.
+
+Of course, the ultimate reconcilement of the individual with society--of
+the unit Man with the mass-Man--involves the subordination of the
+desires, their subjection to the true self. And this is a most important
+point. It is no easy lapse that is here suggested, from morality into a
+mere jungle of human passion, but a toilsome and long ascent--involving
+for a time at any rate a determined self-control--into ascendancy over
+the passions; it involves the complete mastery, one by one, of them all,
+and the recognition and allowance of them only because they are
+mastered. And it is just this training and subjection of the
+passions--as of winged horses which are to draw the human chariot--which
+necessarily forms such a long and painful process of human evolution.
+The old moral codes are a part of this process; but they go on the plan
+of extinguishing some of the passions--seeing that it is sometimes
+easier to shoot a restive horse than to ride him. We however do not want
+to be lords of dead carrion, but of living powers; and every steed that
+we can add to our chariot makes our progress through creation so much
+the more splendid, providing Phoebus indeed hold the reins, and not the
+incapable Phaeton.
+
+And by becoming thus one with the social self, the individual, instead
+of being crushed, is made far vaster, far grander than before. The
+renunciation (if it must be so called) which he has to accept in
+abandoning merely individual ends is immediately compensated by the far
+more vivid life he now enters into. For every force of his nature can
+now be utilised. Planting himself out by contrast he stands all the
+firmer because he has a left foot as well as a right, and when he acts,
+he acts not half-heartedly as one afraid, but, as it were, with the
+whole weight of Humanity behind him. In abandoning his exclusive
+individuality he becomes for the first time a real and living
+individual; and in accepting as his own the life of others he becomes
+aware of a life in himself that has no limit and no end. That the self
+of any one man is capable of an infinite gradation from the most petty
+and exclusive existence to the most magnificent and inclusive seems
+almost a truism. The one extreme is disease and death, the other is life
+everlasting. When the tongue for example--which is a member of the
+body--regards itself as a purely separate existence for itself alone, it
+makes a mistake, it suffers an illusion, and descends into its pettiest
+life. What is the consequence? Thinking that it exists apart from the
+other members, it selects food just such as shall gratify its most local
+self, it endeavours just to titillate its own sense of taste; and living
+and acting thus, ere long it ruins that very sense of taste, poisons the
+system with improper food, and brings about disease and death. Yet, if
+healthy, how does the tongue act? Why, it does not run counter to its
+own sense of taste, or stultify itself. It does not talk about
+sacrificing its own inclinations for the good of the body and the other
+members; but it just acts as being one in interest with them and they
+with it. For the tongue _is_ a muscle, and therefore what feeds it feeds
+all the other muscles; and the membrane of the tongue _is_ a
+prolongation of the membrane of the stomach, and that is how the tongue
+knows what the stomach will like; and the tongue _is_ nerves and blood,
+and so the tongue may act for nerves and blood all over the body, and so
+on. Therefore the tongue may enter into a wider life than that
+represented by the mere local sense of taste, and experiences more
+pleasure often in the drinking of a glass of water which the whole body
+wants, than in the daintiest sweetmeat which is for itself alone.
+
+Exactly so man in a healthy state does not act for himself alone,
+practically cannot do so. Nor does he talk cant about "serving his
+neighbors," etc. But he simply acts for them as well as for himself,
+because they are part and parcel of his life--bone of his bone and flesh
+of his flesh; and in doing so he enters into a wider life, finds a more
+perfect pleasure, and becomes more really a man than ever before. Every
+man contains in himself the elements of all the rest of humanity. They
+lie in the background; but they are there. In the front he has his own
+special faculty developed--his individual façade, with its projects,
+plans and purposes: but behind sleeps the Demos-life with far vaster
+projects and purposes. Some time or other to every man must come the
+consciousness of this vaster life.
+
+The true Democracy, wherein this larger life will rule society from
+within--obviating the need of an external government--and in which all
+characters and qualities will be recognised and have their freedom,
+waits (a hidden but necessary result of evolution) in the constitution
+of human nature itself. In the pre-Civilisation period these vexed
+questions of "morals" practically did not exist; simply because in that
+period the individual was one with his tribe and moved (unconsciously)
+by the larger life of his tribe. And in the post-Civilisation period,
+when the true Democracy is realised, they will not exist, because then
+the man will know himself a part of humanity at large, and will be
+consciously moved by forces belonging to these vaster regions of his
+being. The moral codes and questionings belong to Civilisation, they are
+part of the forward effort, the struggle, the suffering, and the
+temporary alienation from true life, which that term implies.[38]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[34] Yet there is no doubt that lasting and passionate love may exist
+between two persons thus nearly related. The danger to the health of the
+offspring from occasional in-breeding of the kind appears to arise
+chiefly from the accentuation of infirmities common to the two parents.
+In a state of society free from the diseases of the civilisation-period,
+such a danger would be greatly reduced.
+
+[35] Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this
+love (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate
+the spiritual) have entered their protest as against the mere obscenity
+into which the thing fell--for instance in the days of Martial--but have
+missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is,
+however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with
+their disintegration.
+
+[36] In the _later_ Egyptian centuries vivisection apparently became an
+approved practice.
+
+[37] The derivation of the word "wicked" seems uncertain. May it be
+suggested that it is connected with "wick" or "quick," meaning _alive_?
+
+[38] For further on the same subject see the last chapter, _infra_, on
+"The New Morality."
+
+
+
+
+EXFOLIATION
+
+     "Creation's incessant unrest, exfoliation."
+                                              WHITMAN.
+
+
+I think it may perhaps be agreed, once for all, that the human mind is
+incapable of really defining even the smallest fact of nature. The
+simplest thing, or event, baffles us at the last. It is like trying to
+look at the front and back of a mirror at the same time. The utmost
+squinting avails not. The ego and the non-ego dance eluding through
+creation. To catch them both in any mortal object and pin them there,
+surpasses our powers. And yet they are there. Montaigne quotes somewhere
+the words of S. Augustine: _Modus quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus ...
+omnino mirus est, nec comprehendi ab homine potest; et hoc ipse homo
+est_. "The manner whereby spirits adhere to bodies is altogether
+wonderful, and cannot be conceived of by men; and yet this _is_ man."
+Man himself contains, or rather is, the reconcilement of this and
+numberless other contradictions. We actually every day perform and
+exhibit miracles which the mental part of us is utterly powerless to
+grapple with. Yet the solution, the intelligent solution and
+understanding of them _is_ in us; only it involves a higher order of
+consciousness than we usually deal with--a consciousness possibly which
+includes and transcends the ego and the non-ego, and so can envisage
+both at the same time and equally--a fourth-dimensional consciousness to
+whose gaze the interiors of solid bodies are exposed like mere
+surfaces--a consciousness to whose perception some usual antitheses like
+cause and effect, matter and spirit, past and future, simply do not
+exist. I say these higher orders of consciousness are in us waiting for
+their evolution; and, until they evolve, we are powerless really to
+understand anything of the world around us.
+
+Meanwhile, since we _must_ have formulæ and generalisations to think by,
+we are fain to accept our local views, and look on the world from this
+side or from that. Sometimes we are idealists, sometimes we are
+materialists; sometimes we believe in mechanics, sometimes in human or
+spiritual forces. The science of the last fifty years has, as pointed
+out in a preceding paper, looked at things more from the mechanical than
+the distinctively human side--from the point of view of the non-ego,
+rather than of the ego. Reacting from an extreme tendency towards a
+subjective view of phenomena, which characterised the older
+speculations, and fearing to be swayed by a kind of partiality towards
+himself, the modern scientist has endeavoured to remove the human and
+conscious element from his observations of Nature. And he has done
+valuable work in this way--but of course has been betrayed into a
+corresponding narrowness.
+
+In fact the main scientific doctrine of the day, Evolution, is obviously
+suffering from this treatment, and the following remarks are merely a
+few notes by way of suggestion of some things which may be said on its
+more specially human side. For since each man is a part of nature, and
+in that sense a part also of the evolution-process, his own subjective
+experience ought at least to throw some light on the conditions under
+which evolution takes place, and to contribute something towards an
+understanding of the problem.
+
+If the question is: What is the cause of Variation among animals? some
+approximation towards an answer ought to be got by each person asking
+himself, "Why do I vary?" Why--he might say--am I a different person
+from what I was ten years ago, or when I was a boy? Why have I varied in
+one direction and my brothers and sisters from the same nest in other
+directions? Though my individual consciousness only covers the small
+ground of my own life, and does not extend back to that of my father or
+forward to that of my son, still the intimate knowledge that I have of
+the forces acting on me during that short period may help me to an
+understanding of the forces that bring about the modification of men and
+animals at large, and the discovery of some laws of my own growth may
+reveal to me the laws of race-growth.
+
+In answer to such a question, it would speedily appear that there were
+two general causes determining direction of change or growth in the
+individual, which might be conveniently distinguished from each
+other--an external and an internal. In the first place the supposed
+person might say, "External conditions forced me along these lines. My
+father was a town artisan, but he apprenticed me to a farmer. I grew up
+a farmer's boy, and became an agricultural type as you see. I did not
+particularly care for farming, sometimes indeed I would have been glad
+to be out of it; but practically I succumbed to circumstances, and here
+I am." But in the second place he might answer thus:--"My father was
+himself a farmer; I was early used to the craft, and should no doubt
+have grown up in it, had I not hated it like poison. I loved music,
+broke away from home, joined a band, got on the musical staff of a small
+theatre, and am now a professional musician. My frame is comparatively
+slight, and my hands are of the nervous type, as you see. Of course, I
+have some of the old agricultural stock left in me, but I feel that that
+is dying out." The one cause would be a change of external conditions,
+forcing the man to accommodate himself to them; the other would be a
+change of internal conditions, an inward growth, expressing itself first
+in the form of an intense desire, and compelling the man to change
+himself and probably also his environment in obedience to it. Two such
+general sets of causes, I say, could be roughly distinguished from each
+other; and probably indeed are recognised less or more distinctly by
+everyone as acting to modify his life. Nor can the life of a man at any
+time be said to be ruled by one of these forces alone. No man is
+modified by external conditions alone, without any play or reaction of
+inner needs and desires and growth from within; nor is any man
+transformed in obedience to an inner expansion without sundry lets and
+hindrances from without. The two forces are in constant play upon one
+another; but in some ways that would appear to be the more important
+which proceeds from the Man (or creature) himself, since this is
+obviously vital and organic to him, and therefore the most consistent
+and reliable factor in his modification, while the external
+force--arising from various and remote causes--must rather be regarded
+as discontinuous and accidental.
+
+I propose, therefore, in these few pages to consider especially this
+inner force producing modification in man and animals--to try and find
+out of what nature it is, what is the law, and what are the limits of
+its action--premising always, as already suggested, that this
+distinction between "inner" and "outer," which is convenient and easy to
+handle on certain planes of thought, may ultimately, and in the last
+resort, prove very difficult or even impossible to maintain.
+
+It is often said by Biologists that _function precedes
+organisation_--that is, man fights with his fellows before he makes
+weapons to fight with; the rudimentary animal digests food (as in the
+case of the amoeba) before it acquires a stomach or organ of digestion;
+it sees or is sensitive to light before it grows an eye; in society
+letters are carried by private hands before an organised postal system
+is created. Such facts properly considered are of vital importance. They
+show us, as it were by a sign-post, the direction of creation. They show
+how any new thing or modification of an old thing may come into being.
+They may be supplemented by a second statement--namely that _desire
+precedes function_. That is, man desires to injure his fellow before he
+actually fights with him; he experiences the wish to communicate with
+distant friends before ever he thinks of sending such a thing as a
+letter; the amoeba craves for food first, and circumvents its prey
+afterwards. Desire, or inward change, comes first, action follows, and
+organisation or outward structure is the result.
+
+In man this "order of creation," if it may so be called, _i.e._, from
+within outwards, is very marked. Whenever a man creates anything new he
+pursues it; when he builds a house, for instance, or composes a poem or
+piece of music, or designs an Alpine tunnel, or whatever it may be. The
+order seems to be: first, a feeling--a dim want or desire; then the
+feeling becomes conscious of itself, takes shape in thought; the thought
+becomes more defined and issues in a distinct plan; the plan is
+committed to paper, models are made, etc.; and finally the actual work
+is begun and completed. The process appears as a movement from within
+outwards--the earliest and most authentic discernible source of the
+movement being a feeling--(though there may lie something behind that).
+Even in ordinary action the same order is manifest; for, though of
+course _every_ action is not preceded by desire--since we know that
+actions soon become habitual and more or less unconscious--still a vast
+number of them are immediately so preceded; and in the case of any
+action that is _new_, either to the individual or to the race, its
+inception is generally accompanied by effort so painful that it would
+not be exerted unless the desire were very strong. The difficulty which
+a man experiences in learning any new art, and the records of the many
+failures, struggles, oppositions, persecutions, etc., which have
+attended every new invention or innovation of any kind in human history,
+afford plenty of evidence of this last point. Certainly the effort that
+accompanies a new action is not always faced so much from sheer desire
+of the new thing itself as from fear perhaps of something else--as it
+may be contended that monkeys did not take to climbing trees because
+they loved trees, but because they feared the beasts below, or that the
+giraffe did not stretch its neck because it particularly desired to feed
+on leaves, as because it could not get food any other way--but still,
+even in these cases the desire may be said to exist, though it is
+secondary--being founded upon another and more elementary desire--the
+desire namely of escaping pain or obtaining food. In either case a
+desire of some kind is a precedent condition of the new action. And so
+as we know of no case of a new action coming into play without being
+preceded by desire, we seem to be justified in supposing that all our
+actions when they were first initiated (in our forefathers, if not in
+ourselves) were so preceded. If this is so, then, since function is
+always preceded by desire, and organisation is preceded by function,
+organisation must necessarily be preceded by desire. And if this is the
+order of creation in man, should we not reasonably look in this
+direction for the key to the variation of animals and the order of
+creation in general?[39]
+
+If a farmer's son is occasionally born who hates farming and loves
+music, and who ultimately through the force of his desire (driving him
+into oppositions and difficulties and penurious struggles) transforms
+himself into a musician, is it not also likely that occasionally an
+animal is born who hates the customs of his tribe, and at last (also
+through struggles) transforms himself into something else? Even if he
+does not succeed (the animal) in entirely transforming himself, he
+likely transmits the desire in some degree to his descendants, and the
+transformation is thus carried on and completed later. For everywhere
+among the animals there _is_ desire, of some kind or another, obviously
+acting; and if in man, by our own experience, desire is the precursor
+and first expression of growth, is there any reason why it should not
+also be so among animals? Lamarck gives the instance--among others--of a
+gasteropod; how the need or desire of touching bodies in front of it as
+it crawled along would result in the formation of tentacles. The
+gasteropod, he says, would keep making efforts to feel with the front of
+its head, and the determination of consciousness that way would be
+accompanied by a supply of nervous and other fluids, which would nourish
+the part and cause growth there--the _form_ of the growth continuing in
+the same way to be determined by need--till at last two or more
+tentacles would appear. True, the inward determinations of consciousness
+may not be so vivid and varied in animals as they are in men; but they
+are persistent, and by the very cumulative force of habit which is so
+strong in animals, must at length penetrate down through function into
+organisation and external form. Who shall say that the lark, by the mere
+love of soaring and singing in the face of the sun, has not altered the
+shape of its wings, or that the forms of the shark or of the gazelle are
+not the long-stored results of character leaning always in certain
+directions, as much as the forms of the miser or the libertine are among
+men?
+
+Such modification as this is very different from the "survival of the
+fittest" of the Darwinian evolution theory. We may fairly suppose that
+both kinds of modification take place; but the latter is a sort of easy
+success won by an external accident of birth--a success of the kind that
+would readily be lost again; while the former is the uphill fight of a
+nature that has grown inwardly and wins expression for itself in spite
+of external obstacles--an expression which therefore is likely to be
+permanent. If the progenitors of man took to going upright on two legs
+instead of on all fours, merely because a few of them by _chance_ were
+born with a talent for that position, which enabled them to escape the
+fanged and pursuing beasts, then when this danger was removed they might
+have plumped down again into the old attitude; but if the change was
+part and parcel of a true evolution, the fulfilment of a positive desire
+for the upright position, a true _unfolding_ of a higher form latent
+within--an organic growth of the creature itself, then, though the
+moment of the evolution of this particular faculty might be determined
+by the fanged beasts, the fact of such evolution could not be determined
+by them. Besides, are we to suppose that Man, the lord and ruler of the
+animals, came merely by way of _escape_ from the animals? Do lords and
+rulers generally come so? Was it fear that made him a man? Were it not
+likelier that in that case he would have turned into a worm? He would
+have escaped better perhaps that way. Is it not rather probable that it
+was some nobler power that worked transforming--some dim desire and
+prevision of a more perfect form, the desire itself being the first
+consciousness of the urge of growth in that direction--that prompted him
+to push in the one direction rather than the other when he had to hold
+his own against the tigers? In fact is it not thus to-day, when a man
+has to meet danger, that the ideal which he has within him determines
+_how_ he shall meet that danger, and others like it, and so ultimately
+determines the whole attitude and carriage of his body?
+
+On the whole then, judging from man himself (and it seems most cautious
+and scientific to derive our main evidence from the being that we are
+best acquainted with), it certainly seems to me that, though the
+external conditions are a very important factor in Variation, the
+central explanation of this phenomenon should be sought in an inner law
+of Growth--a law of expansion more or less common to all animate nature.
+Partly because, as said before, the unfolding of the creature from its
+own needs and inward nature is an organic process, and likely to be
+persistent, while its modification by external causes must be more or
+less fortuitous and accidental and sometimes in one direction and
+sometimes in another; partly also because the movement from within
+outwards seems to be most like the law of creation in general. Under
+this view the external conditions would be considered a
+secondary--though important cause of modification; and regarded rather
+as the influences that give form and detail to the great primal impulse
+of growth from within; while the creature's own ingenuity and good luck
+would occupy the ground between the two--as the means whereby the
+external conditions in each individual case would be turned to account
+to satisfy the inner needs, or the inner life would be accommodated to
+the external conditions.
+
+If we take the external view of Variation--which is the one most
+favoured by modern science--modification or race-growth appears as an
+unconscious or accretive process, similar to the formation of a coral
+reef. There is no line of growth native in the race itself, but at any
+moment it is supposed to have an equal tendency to vary in any
+direction. Surrounding conditions act selectively; and by a process of
+weeding out certain types survive; small successive modifications are
+thus accumulated; and gradually and in the lapse of ages a more pliable
+and differentiated creature, and more adaptable to a variety of
+conditions, is produced--in whom however mind is incidental, and has
+played but small part in the creature's evolution. This in the main is
+the Darwinian-evolution theory.
+
+If we take the internal view, growth is from the first eminently
+conscious. Every change begins in the mental region--is felt first as a
+desire gradually taking form into thought, passes down into the bodily
+region, expresses itself in action (more or less dependent on
+conditions), and finally solidifies itself in organisation and
+structure. The process is not accretive, but exfoliatory--a continual
+movement from within outwards. When the desire or mental condition,
+which at first was painfully conscious, has overcome opposition and
+established itself in altered bodily structure, it has done its work,
+and becomes unconscious--the bodily function continuing for a long
+period to act automatically, till finally it is thrown off to make room
+for some later development. Thus race-growth or Variation is a process
+by which change begins in the mental region, passes into the bodily
+region where it becomes organised, and finally is thrown off like a
+husk. This may be called the theory of Exfoliation.
+
+To illustrate our meaning. Let us take the development of an eye. In the
+amoeba there is a dim pervasive sensitiveness to light over the whole
+body, but there is no eye, nothing that we should call vision. Still
+this vague sensitiveness is of use to the amoeba. The shadow of its prey
+falling upon the creature and exciting a sensation hardly yet
+differentiated from touch helps to guide its movements. On this dim
+sensation it relies to some extent; its attention is directed towards
+it. Gradually, and in some descendant form, there comes to be a point on
+the body on which this attention is most specially concentrated. The
+faculty is localised; and from that moment a change is effected there, a
+differentiation and a special structure; everything that favours
+sensitiveness is encouraged at that place, everything that dulls it is
+removed; and before long--there is a rudimentary eye. To-day we use our
+perfected eyes, and are hardly conscious that we are doing so; but every
+power of vision that we have was thus won for us by some lowlier
+creature, step by step, with effort and with concentration. Or to take
+an illustration from society. To-day society is ill at ease; a dim
+feeling of discontent pervades all ranks and classes. A new sense of
+justice, of fraternity, has descended among us, which is not satisfied
+with mere chatter of demand and supply. For a long time this new
+sentiment or desire remains vague and unformed, but at last it resolves
+itself into shape; it takes intellectual form, books are written, plans
+formed; then after a time definite new organisations, for the distinct
+purpose of expressing these ideas, begin to exist in the body of the old
+society; and before so very long the whole outer structure of society
+will have been reorganised by them. After a few centuries the ideas for
+whose realisation we now fight and struggle with an intense
+consciousness will have become commonplace, accepted institutions, more
+or less effete and ready to succumb before fresh mental births taking
+place from within.
+
+The modern evolution theory would maintain that among many amoebas and
+descendant forms, one would at last by chance be born having the usual
+sensitiveness localised in a particular spot, and, surviving by force of
+this advantage, would transmit this "eye" to its posterity; or that in
+the progress of society, new economic conditions having arisen, that
+people would prosper best which most effectually and rapidly adapted
+itself to them. But though there is doubtless truth in this view, yet it
+seems, when all has been said, to be inadequate and even feeble; it
+omits at least one half of the problem. If we look at ourselves, as
+already pointed out, we see the two forces--the inner and the
+outer--acting and re-acting on each other. May it not be so in animals?
+Lamarck, poorly off, blind, derided, was a true poet. "Animals vary from
+low and primitive types chiefly by dint of wishing"--and the world
+laughed and still laughs. But it was his deep sympathy even with the
+worms and insects (which he studied till he could discern them with his
+mortal eyes no longer) that led Lamarck to see the human nature and the
+human laws that moved within them; and as his outward sight grew dim
+there arose before him the inward vision of the true relationship which
+binds together all living creatures--which was indeed a vision of divine
+things, and as different from the mere mechanism-theory of the survival
+of the fittest as the sight of the starry heavens is different from a
+governess's lesson on the use of the globes.
+
+On the theory of Exfoliation, which was practically Lamarck's theory,
+there is a force at work throughout creation, ever urging each type
+onward into new and newer forms. This force appears first in
+consciousness in the form of _desire_. Within each shape of life sleep
+needs and wants without number, from the lowest and simplest to the
+most complex and ideal. As each new desire or ideal is evolved, it
+brings the creature into conflict with its surroundings, then gaining
+its satisfaction externalises itself in the structure of the creature,
+and leaves the way open for the birth of a new ideal. If then we would
+find a key to the understanding of the expansion and growth of all
+animate creation, such a key may exist in the nature of desire itself
+and the comprehension of its real meaning. It is not certain that it can
+be found here; but it may be.
+
+What then is desire in Man? Here we come back again, as suggested at the
+outset, to Man himself. Though we see pretty clearly that desire is at
+work in the animals, and that it is the same in kind as exists in man,
+still, among the animals it is but dim and inchoate, while in man it is
+developed and luminous; in ourselves, too, we know it immediately, while
+in the animals only by inference. For both reasons, therefore, if we
+want to know the nature of desire--even to know its nature among
+animals--we should study it in Man. What then is this desire in Man,
+which seems to be the instigation and origin of all his growth and
+development? At first it seems a hydra-headed senseless thing without
+rhyme or reason; but the more one regards it the more clearly one sees
+that even in its lowest forms it is steadily building up and liberating
+all the functions of the human being. In its most perfect form--as in
+what we call Love--it is the sum and solution of human activities, that
+in which they converge, for which they all exist, and without which
+they would be considered useless. The more you look into this matter,
+the plainer it becomes. The lesser desires--the self-preservation
+desires--hunger, thirst, the desire of power--exist, but when they are
+satisfied they empty themselves into this one; they find their
+interpretation in it. The other desires are nothing by themselves--the
+most absorbing, avarice, ambition, desire of knowledge, taken alone,
+stultify themselves--but love perpetuates itself; it is a flame which
+uses all the rest as its fuel. And this Love, which is the culmination
+of desire, does it not appear to us as a worship of and desire for the
+human form? In our bodies a desire for the bodily human form; in our
+interior selves a perception and worship of an ideal human form, the
+revelation of a Splendour dwelling in others, which--clouded and dimmed
+as it inevitably may come to be--remains after all one of the most real,
+perhaps the most real, of the facts of existence? Desire, therefore--as
+it exists in man, look at it how you will--as it unfolds and its
+ultimate aim becomes clearer and clearer to itself, is seen to be the
+desire and longing for the deliverance and expression of the real human
+Being. May it not, must it not, be the same thing in animals and all
+through creation? Beginning in the most elementary and dim shapes, does
+it not grow through all the stages of organic life clearer and more and
+more powerful, till at last it attains to self-consciousness in humanity
+and becomes avowedly the leading factor in our development?
+
+The desire which runs through creation is one desire. Rudimentary at
+first and hardly conscious of itself, throwing out a tentacle here, a
+foot there, developing an eye, a claw, a nostril, a wing, it seeks in
+innumerable shapes and with ever partial success to realise the image it
+has dimly conceived. The animal kingdom is the gymnasium, the school,
+the antechamber, of humanity; to walk through a zoological garden is to
+see the inchoate types of man, perched on branches, or browsing grass,
+or boring holes in the ground; it is to witness a grand rehearsal of
+some stupendous part, whose character we do not even yet fully see or
+understand. From such half-conscious beginnings the desire grows, its
+aim becomes clearer, till in the higher animals--the horse, the dog, the
+elephant, the bird, and many others--it becomes a marked and
+unmistakable force drawing them close to man, uniting them to him in a
+kind of acknowledged kinship, and as obviously at work modifying their
+structure as can be. Finally in man himself it becomes an absorbing
+power; love becomes a conscious worship of the divine form; generation
+itself is the means whereby, in time, the supreme object of desire is
+realised. When at last the perfect Man appears, the key to all nature is
+found, every creature falls into its place and finds its Interpreter,
+and the purpose of creation is at last made manifest.
+
+The Theory of Exfoliation then differs from that very specialised form
+of Evolution which has been adopted by modern science, in this
+particular among others: that it fixes the attention on that which
+appears last in order of Time, as the most important in order of
+causation, rather than on that which appears first; and recalls to us
+the fact that often in any succession of phenomena, that which is first
+in order of precedence and importance is the last to be externalised.
+Thus in the growth of a plant we find leaf after leaf appearing, petal
+within petal--a continual exfoliation of husks, sepals, petals, stamens
+and what-not; but the object of all this movement, and that which in a
+sense sets it all in motion, namely the seed, is the very last thing of
+all to be manifested. Or when a volcano breaks out--first of all we have
+a cracking and upheaval of superficial layers of ground, then of layers
+below these, then the outflow of lava, and _last of all_ the uprush of
+the inner fires and forces which set it all agoing. What appears first
+in time, or in the outer world is--in the case of the building of a
+house, the making of bricks; in the case of the flower, the outermost
+bracts; in the case of a volcano, the stirring of the surface of the
+ground; and in the case of Life on the Earth, the appearance of
+protoplasms and primordial cells. The bricks are not the cause of the
+house (if indeed the word "cause" should be used here at all) but rather
+the house--or the conception of the house--is the cause of the bricks;
+and the cells are not the origin of Man, but Man is the original of the
+cells. The rationale of sea-anemones and mud-fish and flying foxes and
+elephants has to be looked for in man: he alone underlies them. And man
+is not a vertebrate because his ancestors were vertebrate; but the
+animals are vertebrate, because or in so far as they are forerunners and
+offshoots of Man.
+
+It has been frequently said that great material changes are succeeded by
+intellectual and finally by moral revolutions--as the conquests of
+Alexander passed on into the literary expansion of the Alexandrian
+schools and thence into the establishment of Christianity, or as the
+mechanical developments of our own time have been followed by immense
+literary and scientific activities, and are obviously passing over now
+into a great social regeneration; but a reconsideration of the matter
+might, I take it, lead us not so much to look on the later changes as
+_caused_ by the earlier, as to look on the earlier as the indications
+and first outward and visible signs of the coming of the later. When a
+man feels in himself the upheaval of a new moral fact, he sees plainly
+enough that that fact cannot come into the actual world all at once--not
+without first a destruction of the existing order of society--such a
+destruction as makes him feel satanic; then an intellectual revolution;
+and lastly only, a new order embodying the new impulse. When this new
+impulse has thoroughly materialised itself, then after a time will come
+another inward birth, and similar changes will be passed through again.
+So it might be said that the work of each age is not to build _on_ the
+past, but to rise _out_ of the past and throw it off; only of course in
+such matters where all forms of thought are inadequate it is hard to say
+that one way of looking at the subject is truer than another. As before,
+we should endeavour to look at the thing from different sides.
+
+We are obliged to use images to think by--_e.g._ the opening of a flower
+or the accretive growth of a coral reef--and possibly it would save a
+good deal of trouble if we did not disguise by long words the truth that
+all our theories in science and philosophy are simply metaphors of this
+kind--but the _fact_ still lies behind and below them.
+
+Perhaps, if we are to use the word Cause at all, we should do well to
+use it in the old sense in which the _final_ cause and the _efficient_
+cause are one (the _eidos_ of Aristotle)--to use it not so much to link
+phenomena or externals to _each other_ as to link each phenomenon in a
+group to the thought or feeling which underlies that group. The notes in
+the Dead March in Saul, for instance. We cannot say that one note is the
+cause of another, but we might say that each note stands in a causal
+subordination to the feeling which inspired the piece--which is the
+_origin_ of the piece and the _result_ of its performance--the alpha and
+omega of it. Similarly, the ground floor in a house is not the cause of
+the first floor, nor the first floor of the second floor, nor that of
+the roof; but these actualities and the whole house itself stand in
+strict relationship to a mental something which is not in the same
+plane with them at all, nor an actuality in the same sense.
+
+According to this view the notion that one configuration of atoms or
+bodies determines the next configuration turns out to be illusive. Both
+configurations are determined by a third something which does not belong
+to quite the same order of existence as the said atoms or bodies. Chance
+"laws" of succession may doubtless be found among physical events, and
+are valuable for practical purposes, but at any moment--owing to their
+superficiality--they may fail. Thus, an insect observing the expansion
+of the petals of a chrysanthemum might frame a law of their order of
+succession in size and colour, which would be valid for a time, but
+would fail entirely when the stamens appeared. Or, to take another
+illustration, physical science acts like a man trying to find direct
+causal relations between the various leaves of a tree, without first
+finding the relations of these to the branches and trunk--and so solving
+the problem indirectly. It deals only with the _surface_ of the world of
+Man.
+
+In thinking about such matters, Music, as Schopenhauer shows, is
+wonderfully illustrative, because in creating music man recognises that
+he is creating a world of his own--apart from and not to be confused
+with that other world of Nature (in which he does not recognise any of
+his handiwork). Supposing a non-musical person were to examine and
+analyse the score of a Beethoven symphony, he would be in the same
+position as a man examining and analysing Nature by purely scientific
+or intellectual methods. He would discover the recurrence of certain
+groups among the notes, he would establish laws of their sequences,
+would make all kinds of curious generalisations about them, and point
+out some remarkable exceptions, would even very likely be able to
+predict a bar or two over the page; his treatise would be very learned,
+and from a certain point of view interesting also, but how far would he
+be from any real understanding of his subject? Let him change his
+method: let him train his ear, let him hear the symphony performed, over
+and over, till he understands its meaning and knows it by heart; and
+then he will know at any rate something of why each note is there, he
+will see its fitness and feel in himself the "law" of its occurrence,
+and possibly in some new case will be able to predict several bars over
+the page! The symphony is not understood by examination and comparison
+of the notes alone, but by _experience_ of their relation to deepest
+feelings; and Nature is not explained by laws, but by its becoming--or
+rather being felt to be--the body of Man; marvellous interpreter and
+symbol of his inward being.
+
+There is a kind of knowledge or consciousness in us--as of our bodily
+parts, or affections, or deep-seated mental beliefs--which forms the
+base of our more obvious and self-conscious thought. This systemic
+knowledge grows even while the brain sleeps. It is not by any means
+absolute or infallible, but it affords, at any moment in man's history,
+the axiomatic ground on which his thought-structures, scientific and
+other, are built. Thus the axioms of Euclid are part of our present
+systemic knowledge, and afford the ground of all our geometry
+structures. But as the systemic consciousness grows, the ground shifts
+and the structures reared upon it fall. All our modern science, for
+instance, is founded on the acceptation of mechanical cause and effect
+as a basic fact of consciousness; but when that base gives way the
+entire structure will cave in, and a new edifice will have to be reared.
+Similarly, when the human form becomes distinctly visible to us in the
+animals--as an unavoidable part of our consciousness--this consciousness
+will form a new base or axiom for all our thought on the subject, and
+the theory of evolution, as hitherto conceived by science, will be
+entirely transformed.
+
+Thus, although the experimental investigatory coral-reef accretion
+method of modern science is very valuable within its range, it must not
+be forgotten that the human mind does not progress more than temporarily
+by this method--that its progression is a matter of growth from within,
+and involves a continual _breaking away of the bases_ of all
+thought-structures; so that, while this latter--_i.e._, the progression
+of the systemic consciousness of man--is necessary and continuous, the
+rise and fall of his thought-systems is accidental, so to speak, and
+discontinuous.
+
+It is then finally in Man--in our own deepest and most vital
+experience--that we have to look for the key and explanation of the
+changes that we see going on around us in external Nature, as we call
+it; and our understanding of the latter, and of History, must ever
+depend from point to point on the exfoliation of new facts in the
+individual consciousness. Round the ultimate disclosure of the essential
+Man all creation (hitherto groaning and travailing towards that perfect
+birth) ranges itself, as it were, like some vast flower, in concentric
+cycles; rank beyond rank; first all social life and history, then the
+animal kingdom, then the vegetable and mineral worlds. And if the outer
+circles have been the first in fact to show themselves, it is by this
+last disclosure that light is ultimately thrown on the whole plan; and,
+as in the myth of the Eden-garden, with the appearance of the perfected
+human form that the work of creation definitely completes itself.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[39] This does not, of course, preclude the action of external
+conditions, or imply that organisation is determined by desire _alone_.
+In fact organisation may be regarded as the expression of desire acting
+under conditions--as in the cases of the monkey and giraffe above.
+
+
+
+
+CUSTOM
+
+"Whatever is off the hinges of custom is believed to be also off the
+hinges of reason; though how unreasonably, for the most part, God
+knows."--MONTAIGNE.
+
+
+Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it
+as the swathing clothes enfold the infant. The sacred customs of its
+early home, how fixed and immutable they appear to the child! It surely
+thinks that all the world in all times has proceeded on the same lines
+which bound its tiny life. It regards a breach of these rules (some of
+them at least) as a wild step in the dark, leading to unknown dangers.
+
+Nevertheless its mental eyes have hardly opened ere it perceives, not
+without a shock, that whereas in the family dining-room the meat always
+precedes the pudding, below-stairs and in the cottage the pudding has a
+way of coming before the meat; that, whereas its father puts the manure
+on the top of his seed-potatoes in spring, his neighbor invariably
+places his potatoes on top of the manure. All its confidence in the
+sanctity of its home life and the truth of things is upset. Surely
+there must be a right and a wrong way of eating one's dinner or of
+setting potatoes, and surely, if any one, "father" or "mother" must know
+what is right. The elders have always said (and indeed it seems only
+reasonable) that by this time of day everything has been so thoroughly
+worked over that the best methods of ordering our life--food, dress,
+domestic practices, social habits, etc., have long ago been determined.
+If so, why these divergencies in the simplest and most obvious matters?
+
+And then other things give way. The sacred seeming-universal customs in
+which we were bred turn out to be only the practices of a small and
+narrow class or caste; or they prove to be confined to a very limited
+locality, and must be left behind when we set out on our travels; or
+they belong to the tenets of a feeble religious sect; or they are just
+the products of one age in history and no other. And the question forces
+itself upon us, Are there really no natural boundaries? has not our life
+anywhere been founded on reason and necessity, but only on arbitrary
+habit? What is more important than food, yet in what human matter is
+there more unaccountable divergence of practice? The Highlander
+flourishes on oatmeal, which the Sheffield ironworker would rather
+starve than eat; the fat snail which the Roman country gentleman once so
+prized now crawls unmolested in the Gloucestershire peasant's garden;
+rabbits are taboo in Germany; frogs are unspeakable in England;
+sauer-kraut is detested in France; many races and gangs of people are
+quite certain they would die if deprived of meat, others think spirits
+of some kind a necessity, while to others again both these things are an
+abomination. Every country district has its local practices in food, and
+the peasants look with the greatest suspicion on any new dish, and can
+rarely be induced to adopt it. Though it has been abundantly proved that
+many of the British fungi are excellent eating, such is the force of
+custom that the mushroom alone is ever publicly recognised, while
+curiously enough it is said that in some other countries where the
+claims of other agarics are allowed the mushroom itself is not used!
+Finally, I feel myself (and the gentle reader probably feels the same)
+that I would rather die than subsist on _insects_, such is the
+deep-seated disgust we experience towards this class of food. Yet it is
+notorious that many races of respectable people adopt a diet of this
+sort, and only lately a book has been published giving details of the
+excellent provender of the kind that we habitually overlook--tasty
+morsels of caterpillars and beetles, and so forth! And indeed, when one
+comes to think of it, what can it be but prejudice which causes one to
+eat the periwinkle and reject the land-snail, or to prize the lively
+prawn and proscribe the cheerful grasshopper?
+
+It is useless to say that these local and other divergencies are rooted
+in the necessities of the localities and times in which they occur.
+They are nothing of the kind. For the most part they are mere customs,
+perhaps grown originally out of some necessity, but now perpetuated from
+simple habit and inherent human laziness. This can perhaps best be
+illustrated by going below the human to the kingdom of the animals. If
+customs are strong among men they are far stronger among animals. The
+sheep lives on grass, the cat lives on mice and other animal food. And
+it is generally assumed that the respective diets are the most "natural"
+in each case, and those on which the animals in question will readiest
+thrive, and indeed that they could not well live on any other. But
+nothing of the kind. For cats can be bred up to live on oatmeal and milk
+with next to no meat; and a sheep has been known to get on very
+comfortably on a diet of port wine and mutton chops! Dogs, whose
+"natural" food in the wild state is of the animal kind, are undoubtedly
+much healthier (at any rate in the domestic state) when kept on
+farinaceous substances with little or no meat, and indeed they take so
+kindly to a vegetable diet that they sometimes become perfect nuisances
+in a garden--eating strawberries, gooseberries, peas, etc., freely off
+the beds when they have once learned the habit. Any one, in fact, who
+has kept many pets knows what an astonishing variety of food they may be
+made to adopt, though each animal in the wild state has the most
+intensely narrow prejudices on the subject, and will perish rather than
+overstep the customs of its tribe. Thus pheasants will eat fern-roots
+in winter when snow covers the ground, but the grouse "don't eat
+fern-roots," and die in consequence. A wolf of an inquiring turn of mind
+would probably find strawberries and peas as good food as a dog does,
+but it is practically certain that any ordinary member of the genus
+would perish in a garden full of the same if deprived of his customary
+bones.
+
+All this seems to indicate what an immensely important part mere custom
+plays in the life of men and animals. The main part of the power which
+man acquires over the animals depends upon his establishing habits in
+them which, once established, they never think of violating: and the
+almost insuperable nature of this force in animals throws back light on
+the part it plays in human life.
+
+Of course, I am not contending in the above remarks upon food that there
+is no physiological difference between a dog and a sheep in the matter
+of their digestive organs, and that the one is not by the nature of its
+body more fitted for one kind of food than the other; but rather that we
+should not neglect the importance of mere habit in such matters. Custom
+changed first; the change of physiological structure followed slowly
+after. What happened was probably something like this. Some time in the
+far back past a group of animals, driven perhaps by necessity, took to
+hunting in packs in the woods; it developed a modified physical
+structure in consequence, and special habits which in the course of time
+became deeply fixed in the race. Another group saved its life by taking
+to grazing. Grass is poor food; but it was the only chance this group
+had, and in time it got so accustomed to eating grass that it could not
+imagine any other form of diet, and at first would refuse even oysters
+when placed in its way! Another group saw an opening in trees; it
+developed a long neck and became the giraffe. But the fact that the
+giraffe lives on leaves, and the sheep on grass, and the wolf on animal
+matter, and that custom is in each so strong that at first the creature
+will refuse any other kind of diet, does not of itself prove that that
+diet is the best or most physiologically suitable for it. In other
+words, it is an assumption to suppose that "adaptation to environment"
+is the sole or even the main factor in the constitution of well-marked
+varieties or genera; for this is to neglect (among other things) the
+force of mere use or wont, which has about the same import in
+race-growth that momentum has in dynamics; and causes the race, once
+started in any direction, to maintain its line of movement--and often in
+despite of its environment--even for thousands of years.
+
+Returning to man we see him enveloped in a myriad customs--local
+customs, class customs, race customs, family customs, religious customs;
+customs in food, customs in clothing, customs in furniture, form of
+habitation, industrial production, art, social and municipal and
+national life, etc.; and the question arises, Where is the grain of
+necessity which underlies it all? How much in each case is due to a
+real fitness in nature, and how much to mere otiose habit! The first
+thing that meets my eye in glancing out of the window is a tile on a
+neighboring roof. Why are tiles made S-shaped in some localities and
+flat in others? Surely the conditions of wind and rain are much the same
+in all places. Perhaps far back there was a reason, but now nothing
+remains but--custom. Why do we sit on chairs instead of on the floor, as
+the Japanese do, or on cushions like the Turk? It is a custom, and
+perhaps it suits with our other customs. The more we look into our life
+and consider the immense variety of habit in every department of
+it--even under conditions to all appearances exactly similar--the more
+are we impressed by the absence of any very serious necessity in the
+forms we ourselves are accustomed to. Each race, each class, each
+section of the population, each unit even, vaunts its own habits of life
+as superior to the rest, as the only true and legitimate forms; and
+peoples and classes will go to war with each other in assertion of their
+own special beliefs and practices; but the question that rather presses
+upon the ingenuous and inquiring mind is, whether any of us have got
+hold of much true life at all?--whether we are not rather mere
+multitudinous varieties of caddis-worms shuffled up in the cast-off
+skins and clothes and débris of those who have gone before us, and with
+very little vitality of our own perceptible within? How many times a day
+do we perform an action that is authentic and not a mere mechanical
+piece of repetition? Indeed, if our various actions and practices were
+authentic and flowing from the true necessity, perhaps we shouldn't
+quarrel with each other over them so often as we do.
+
+And then to come to the subject of morals. These also are
+customs--divergent to the last degree among different races, at
+different times, or in different localities; customs for which it is
+often difficult to find any ground in reason or the "fitness of things."
+Thieving is supposed to be discountenanced among us, yet our present-day
+trade-morality sanctions it in a thousand different forms; and the
+respectable usurer (who can hardly be said to be other than a thief)
+takes a high place at the table of life. To hunt the earth for game has
+from time immemorial been considered the natural birthright and
+privilege of man, until the landlord class (whom wicked Socialists now
+denounce!) invented the crime of poaching and hanged men for it. As to
+marriage customs, in different times and among different peoples, they
+have been simply innumerable. And here the sense of inviolability in
+each case is most powerful. The severest penalties, the most stringent
+public opinion, biting deep down into the individual conscience, enforce
+the various codes of various times and places; yet they all contradict
+each other. Polygamy in one country, polyandry in the next; brother and
+sister marriage allowed at one time, marriage with your mother's cousin
+forbidden at another; prostitution sacred in the temples of antiquity,
+trampled under foot in the gutters of our great cities of to-day;
+monogamy respectable in one land, a mark of class-inferiority in
+another; celibacy scorned by some sections of people, accepted as the
+highest state by others; and so on.
+
+What are we to conclude from all this? Is it possible, once we have
+fairly faced the immense variety of human life in _every_ department of
+arts, manners, and morals--a variety, too, existing in a vast number of
+cases under conditions to all intents and purposes quite similar--is it
+possible ever again to suppose that the particular practices which _we_
+are accustomed to are very much better (or, indeed, very much worse)
+than the particular practices which others are accustomed to? We have
+been born, as I said at first, into a sheath of custom which enfolds us
+with our swaddling-clothes. When we begin to grow to manhood we see what
+sort of a thing it is which surrounds us. It is an old husk now. It does
+not bear looking into; it is rotten, it is inconsistent, it is
+thoroughly indefensible; yet very likely we have to accept it. The
+caddis-worm has grown to its tube and cannot leave it. A little spark of
+vitality amid a heap of dead matter, all it can do is to make its
+dwelling a little more convenient in shape for itself, or (like the
+coral insect) to prolong its growth in the most favourable direction for
+those that come after. The class, the caste, the locality, the age in
+which we were born has determined our form of life, and in that form
+very likely we must remain. But a change has come over our minds. The
+vauntings of earlier days we abandon. _We_, at any rate, are no better
+than anybody else, and at best, alas! are only half alive.
+
+If these, then, are our conclusions, is it not with justice that
+children and early races keep so rigidly to the narrow path that custom
+has made for them? Have they not an instinctive feeling that to forsake
+custom would be to launch out on a trackless sea where life would cease
+to have any special purpose or direction, and morality would be utterly
+gulfed? Custom for them is the line of their growth; it is the
+coral-branch from the end of which the next insect builds; it is the
+hardening bark of the tree-twig which determines the direction of the
+growing shoot. It may be merely arbitrary, this custom, but that they do
+not know; its appearance of finality and necessity may be quite
+illusive; but the illusion is necessary for life, and the arbitrariness
+is just what makes one life different from another. _Till he grows to
+manhood_, the human being, _he cannot do without it_.
+
+And when he grows to manhood, what then? Why he dies, and so becomes
+alive. The caddis-fly leaves his tube behind and soars into the upper
+air; the creature abandons its barnacle existence on the rock and swims
+at large in the sea. For it is just when we die to custom that, for the
+first time, we rise into the true life of humanity; it is just when we
+abandon all prejudice of our own superiority over others, and become
+convinced of our entire indefensibleness, that the world opens out with
+comrade faces in all directions; and when we perceive how entirely
+arbitrary is the setting of our own life, that the whole structure
+collapses on which our apartness from others rests, and we pass easily
+and at once into the great ocean of freedom and equality.
+
+This is, as it were, a new departure for man, for which even to-day the
+old world, overlaid with myriad customs now brought into obvious and
+open conflict with each other, is evidently preparing. The period of
+human infancy is coming to an end. Now comes the time of manhood and
+true vitality.
+
+Possibly this is a law of history, that when man has run through every
+variety of custom a time comes for him to be freed from it--that is, he
+uses it indifferently according to his requirements, and is no longer a
+slave to it; all human practices find their use, and none are forbidden.
+At this point, whenever reached, "morals" come to an end and humanity
+takes its place--that is to say, there is no longer any code of action,
+but the one object of all action is the deliverance of the human being
+and the establishment of equality between oneself and another, the entry
+into a new life, which new life when entered into is glad and perfect,
+because there is no more any effort or strain in it; but it is the
+recognition of oneself in others, eternally.
+
+Far as custom has carried man from man, yet when at last in the
+ever-branching series the complete human being is produced, it knows at
+once its kinship with all the other forms. "I have passed my spirit in
+determination and compassion round the whole earth, and found only
+equals and lovers." More, it knows its kinship with the animals. It sees
+that it is only habit, an illusion of difference, that divides; and it
+perceives after all that it is the same human creature that flies in the
+air, and swims in the sea, or walks biped upon the land.
+
+
+_The two following chapters--though not part of the original work--are
+included in the present edition because they form continuations or
+expansions of the chapters which criticise modern Science and modern
+Morality respectively. The chapter entitled "A Rational and Humane
+Science" is in fact a reprint of an address given before the
+Humanitarian League in London in 1896. It was first included in the
+present volume in 1906. The chapter entitled "The New Morality" is, with
+slight alterations, a reprint of an article which appeared in the_
+Albany Review _in September, 1907, under the title "Morality under
+Socialism"; and it now appears in the present book for the first time_.
+
+
+
+
+A RATIONAL AND HUMANE SCIENCE
+
+
+In bringing before you this subject of a Rational and Humane Science you
+will perhaps forgive me if I dwell for a few moments on some points of
+personal history in relation to it. After reading mathematics for some
+four years at Cambridge, it happened to me for the next ten years or so
+to be engaged in the study of the physical sciences, and in lectures on
+these subjects. Naturally, during the earlier part of this period I
+accepted the current methods and conclusions without any question. But
+as time went on I became aware of a certain dissatisfaction; I felt that
+many of the laws of Science, enounced as universal truths, were of very
+limited application only, that many of the conclusions, so strongly
+insisted on, were of quite doubtful validity; and at last this
+increasing dissatisfaction culminated in a rather violent attack or
+criticism of Modern Science which I wrote and published about the year
+1884.[40]
+
+Now, looking back, at this interval of time, though I admit that my
+attack was somewhat hasty and crude in detail, I feel that in its main
+contention it was thoroughly justified, and I do not feel the least
+inclined to withdraw it.
+
+What was that main contention? It was as follows. Modern Science is an
+attempt (and no doubt it would accept this definition of itself) to
+survey and classify the phenomena of the world in the pure dry light of
+the intellect, uncoloured by feeling; and so far is an effort to
+separate the intellectual in man from the merely perceptive, the
+emotional, the moral, and so forth. It was in this very fact that my
+criticism lay; for I contended that such a separation was in the long
+run quite impossible.
+
+But before proceeding to defend this position, let me admit at once that
+this attempt of Modern Science to get rid of human feeling and to look
+at everything in the dry light of the intellect was in some respects a
+very grand one. When you consider what the Old-time Science was, with
+its fancies and prejudices, its dragons pasturing upon the sun and moon
+in eclipses, its immolations of hundreds of human beings to appease some
+god of pestilence or earthquake, its panics, its superstitions, and its
+incapability of regarding anything except from the point of view of that
+thing's influence on man's own comfort and his little hopes and fears,
+it was indeed a grand advance to try and see _facts_, uncoloured and for
+themselves alone. It was an effort of Man as it were to rise above
+himself, to which I accord the fullest credit and honour.
+
+And yet, during the time spoken of, it kept growing on me: first, that
+the attempt was an impossible one; secondly, that the Science so-called
+was not a true Science; and thirdly, that in its pretence to an
+intellectual exactitude which it did not really possess, this Modern
+Science was leading to a narrow-mindedness and a dogmatism as bad as the
+old.
+
+There is in fact (so I think) a fallacy in the attempt. But how shall I
+describe it? Our relations to the world may, quite roughly speaking, be
+divided into three groups--those that are sensuous and perceptional,
+those that are purely intellectual, and those that are of an emotional
+and moral order. Take any object of Nature--a bird, for instance. We may
+look upon the bird as an object of sense-perceptions--its form, its
+colour, its song, and so forth. Some people attain to extraordinary
+skill and quickness in this department, recognising in a moment the note
+or even the flight of a songster. Then again we may look upon the bird
+from the intellectual side--we may study it in relation to its
+surroundings--the form of its wings, the length of its leg, the
+character of its beak, and their adaptation to its habits, to its
+locality, to its food, and so forth. Thus we may get a whole series of
+purely intellectual results--relations of the bird to the world in which
+it lives. This is the special field of the present-day Science. But,
+again, we may regard the bird in its emotional and moral relations to
+_us_. One man at the sight of it may be affected with admiration of its
+beauty, with tenderness towards it, or sympathy; another may be
+stimulated to wonder whether he can kill it, or whether it is good to
+eat! Modern Science is indifferent to what this last set of relations
+may be; it does not concern itself much with the first; but it takes the
+middle term, the purely intellectual, and seeks to abstract that from
+the others, to study the bird, or whatever the object may be, in the one
+aspect only. But can that really be done? The answer is, of course, No.
+
+To show my general meaning, and why I consider the claim an impossible
+one, let us imagine a little cell--one of the myriads which constitute
+the human body--professing in the same sort of way to stand outside the
+body and explain the laws of the other cells and the body at large. It
+is obvious that the little cell, swept along in the currents of the body
+and swayed by its emotions, in close proximity and contact with some
+portions of the organism, and far remote from others, cannot possibly
+pretend to any such impartial judgment. It is obvious not only that it
+would not have all the clues of the problem at its command, but that its
+own needs and experiences would prejudice it frightfully in the
+interpretation of such clues as it had. Yet man is such a little cell in
+the body of Nature, or, if you like, in the body of the Society of which
+he forms a part.
+
+There is, however, one way, it seems to me, in which a cell in the
+human body _might_ come to an adequate understanding of the body; and
+that would be rather through experience than through direct reasoning.
+It is conceivable that there might be some cell in the body which,
+through the nerves, etc., was in actual touch and sympathetic
+relationship with every other cell. Then it certainly would have the
+materials of the required solution. Every change in other parts of the
+body would register itself in this particular cell; and its little brain
+(if it had one), without exactly making any great effort, would reflect
+sympathetically the structure of the whole body--would become, in fact,
+a mirror of it. This will perhaps give you the key to my notion of what
+a true Science might be.
+
+But before proceeding to that, I want to go a little more in detail into
+the fallacy of the absolute intellectual view of Science. I say, first,
+that a complete summary of any object or process in Nature is
+impossible; secondly, that such summary as we do make is, and must
+inevitably and necessarily be, coloured by the underlying _feeling_ with
+which we approach that phase of Nature.
+
+To take the first point. You say, Why is a complete summary not
+possible? A watch or other machine may be completely described and
+defined; why should not (with a little more knowledge) a fir-tree, or
+the human eye, or the solar system, be completely described and defined?
+
+And this brings us to what may be called the Machine-view of Science.
+It is curious (and yet I think it will presently be seen that it is
+quite what might have been expected) that during this century or so, in
+which Machinery has played such an important part in our daily and
+social life, mechanical ideas have come to colour all our conceptions of
+Science and the Universe. Modern Science holds it as a kind of ideal
+(even though finding it at times difficult to realise) to reduce
+everything to mechanical action, and to show each process of Nature
+intelligible in the same sense as a Machine is intelligible. Yet this
+conception, this ideal, involves a complete fallacy. For the moment you
+come to think of it, you see that _no_ part of Nature really even
+resembles a machine.
+
+What is a machine in the ordinary sense? It is an aggregation of parts
+put together to fulfil certain definite actions and no others. A
+sewing-machine fulfils the purpose of sewing, a watch fulfils that of
+keeping time, and they fulfil those purposes only. All their parts
+subserve those actions, and in that sense may be completely
+described--as far as just their mechanical action is concerned--the same
+by a thousand mechanicians. But I make bold to say that _no_ object in
+Nature fulfils just one action, or series of actions, and no others. On
+the contrary, every object fulfils an endless series of actions.
+
+Let us take the Human Eye. And I choose this as an instance most adverse
+to my position, for there is no doubt that the Human Eye is one of the
+most highly specialised objects in creation. Helmholtz, as you know, is
+said to have remarked concerning it that if an Optician had sent him an
+instrument so defective he should have returned it with his compliments.
+Helmholtz was a great man, and I will not do him the injustice to
+suppose that he did not know what he was saying. He knew that, regarded
+as a machine for focussing rays of light, the eye was decidedly
+defective; but then he knew well enough, doubtless, _why_ it was
+defective--namely, because it is by no means merely such a machine, but
+a great deal more.
+
+The Eye, in fact, not only fulfils the action of focussing rays of
+light--like an Opera Glass or a Telescope--but it might be compared to
+another instrument, a Photographic Camera, in respect of the fact that
+it forms a picture of the outer world which it throws on a sensitive
+plate at the back--the Retina. But then, again, it is unlike any of
+these "machines," in the fact that it was never made by any Optician,
+human or divine, for any one definite purpose. On the contrary, as we
+know, it has grown, it has evolved; it has come down to us over the
+centuries, and over thousands and thousands of centuries, from dim
+beginnings in the lowliest organisms who first conceived the faculty of
+Sight, continually modified, continually shapen by small increments in
+various directions, in accordance with the myriad needs of a myriad
+creatures, living, some of them in water, some of them in air, requiring
+some of them to see at close quarters, some at great distances, some by
+one kind of light, some by another, and so forth. So that to-day it not
+only contains a great range of inherited, yet latent, faculties, but it
+is actually, in its complex structure, an epitome and partial record of
+its own extraordinary history.
+
+As an instance of this last point, let me remind you that Sight was
+originally a differentiation of Touch. The light, the shadows, falling
+on the sensitive general surface of a primitive organism provoke a
+tactile irritation. In the course of evolution this sense specialises
+itself at some point of the surface into what we call Sight. Now,
+to-day, when the little picture formed by the fore-part of the Human Eye
+falls upon the Retina at the back, it falls upon a screen formed by the
+myriad congregated finger-tips, so to speak, of the optic nerve--the
+rods and cones, so-called--which cover like a mosaic the whole ground of
+the Retina, and _feel_ with their sensitive points the images of the
+objects in the outer world. And so Sight is still Touch--it is the power
+of feeling or touching at a distance--as one sometimes in fact becomes
+aware in looking at things.
+
+But then again on and beyond all these things--beyond the focussing and
+photographing of rays, beyond the latent adaptations to the needs of
+innumerable creatures, and the epitomising of ages of evolution--the
+Human Eye has faculties even more far-reaching perhaps and wonderful. It
+is the marvellous organ of human Expression. By the dilatations and
+contractions of the iris, by the altering convexities of the lens and
+the eyeball, and in a hundred other ways, it manages somehow to convey
+intelligence of Command, Control, Power, of Pity, Love, Sympathy, and
+all those myriad emotions which flit through the human mind--an endless
+series--a perfect encyclopædia. It is difficult even to imagine the eye
+without this power of language. And what other functions it may have it
+is not necessary to inquire. Highly specialised though it is, it is
+already obvious enough that to call it a Machine for focussing rays of
+light is monstrously and ludicrously inadequate--even as it would be to
+call the Heart (the very centre of emotion and life, and the symbol of
+human love and courage) a common Pump.
+
+Nature is an infinitude, and can at no point be circumscribed by the
+human intellect. Nor obviously is there any sense in taking one little
+portion of Nature and isolating it from the rest, and then describing it
+exhaustively _as if_ it really were so isolated. A thousand mechanicians
+will agree, as I have said, in their description of a machine, because
+in fact they will agree to view the machine just in the one aspect of
+its particular action; but ask a thousand people to describe one and the
+same face--or, better still, get a thousand portrait-painters, skilled
+in their art, to paint portraits of the same face--and you know
+perfectly well that all the likenesses will be different. And why will
+they be different? Simply because every face, however rude, has infinite
+sides, infinite aspects, and each painter selects what he paints from
+his own point of view. And the same is true of every object and process
+in Nature.
+
+Then if these things are true (you ask again) how is it that scientific
+men _do_ arrive at definite conclusions, and do agree with each other so
+far as they do?
+
+It is, and obviously must be, by the method of isolation; by the method
+of selecting certain aspects of the problems presented to them, and
+ignoring others. For since _all_ the relations of any phenomenon of
+Nature cannot possibly be compassed, the only way _must_ be to ignore
+some and concentrate attention on others; and when there is a kind of
+tacit agreement as to which aspects shall be passed over and which
+considered, there is naturally an agreement in the results. Thus by this
+method, waiving all other aspects of the problem, the Eye may be
+described and defined as an optical instrument, the Heart as a common
+Pump, and the Solar System as a neat illustration of certain mechanical
+laws discovered by Galileo and Newton.
+
+On the subject of the Solar System and Astronomy I will dwell for a few
+moments, as here--in this great example of the perfection of Modern
+Science--we have again a case apparently most adverse to my contention.
+The generalisations by which Newton established the nature of the
+planetary orbits has been a wonder to succeeding generations; the
+positions of the planets can be foretold, eclipses can be calculated
+with amazing accuracy. Yet every tyro in Mathematics knows that the
+equations which give these results can only be solved by what is called
+"neglecting small quantities"--that is, the problems cannot be solved in
+their entirety, but by leaving out certain terms and elements, which do
+not appear important, a solution can be approached. And naturally it has
+been an important point to show that these small quantities _may_ be
+safely neglected. In the case, for instance, of the orbits of the
+planets round the sun, and of the moon round the earth, it was for a
+long time taken as proved that the small variations in the shape and
+position of each elliptic orbit would never be accompanied by any
+permanent increase or diminution in its _size_--that is, that the _mean
+distances_ of the planets from the sun, and of the moon from the earth,
+would always remain within certain limits. Of late years however
+Professor George Darwin, taking up one of these poor little neglected
+quantities in the theory of the moon, found that it indicated after all
+very vast and very permanent, though of course very slow, changes in her
+mean distance from the earth; so that now it appears probable that the
+Moon's true orbit, instead of being a limited ellipse, is a continually
+though gradually enlarging Spiral, which may some day carry the Moon to
+a great distance from the earth. If an eclipse were calculated for
+twenty years in advance on the Elliptic theory or the Spiral theory, it
+would probably--so slow would be the divergence--make no perceptible
+difference; but in a hundred centuries the two theories would lead to
+results utterly different.
+
+Thus the certitude of Astronomy as a Science arises largely from the
+fact that our _times_ are so brief compared with Celestial periods. The
+proper periods of Celestial changes are to be reckoned by thousands,
+perhaps millions, of years; but we, ignoring _that_ aspect of the
+problem, fix our observations on one little point of time, and are quite
+satisfied with the result!
+
+As another illustration of my meaning, consider the Fixed Stars,
+so-called. These stars in their groups and clusters, which we know so
+well by sight, have remained apparently in the very same, or nearly the
+same, relative positions during all the 2,000 or 3,000 years that we
+have any record of the shapes of the Constellations. Yet now by minute
+telescopic and spectroscopic examination we know that they are moving,
+and have been moving all the time, in various differing directions with
+great velocities, amounting to miles per second. Nevertheless, so great
+are the spaces concerned, so great the times, that all this long period
+has not sufficed to bring them into any greatly changed attitude with
+regard to each other! What would you think of an intelligent foreigner
+who, coming to England to study the game of cricket, remained on the
+cricket field for a quarter of a minute--during which time the players
+would have hardly changed their positions--and having noted a few
+points, went away and wrote a volume on the laws of the game? And what
+are we to think of poor little Man who, having noted the stars for a
+few centuries, is so sure that he understands their movements, and that
+he is versed in all the "ordinances of heaven."
+
+Thus it would appear that every Nature-problem is so enormously complex
+that it can only be got at by what we have called the Method of
+Ignorance. Let us take a practical Science problem like that of
+Vaccination. The question here, put in its simplest terms, seems to be,
+Whether Vaccination, with calf or human lymph, prevents or alleviates
+Smallpox; and if it does, whether it does so without engendering other
+evils at least as great. At first sight this may appear to you a very
+simple question, and easy to solve; but the moment you come to think
+about it, you see its extreme complexity. In the first place, it is
+obvious that in a question like this, individual cases afford no test.
+It is obvious that the fact that A. is vaccinated and has not taken
+small-pox proves nothing, for there is nothing to show that he would
+have taken it if he had not been vaccinated. And when you have got
+people vaccinated by the hundred and the thousand, you still are not
+certain; for these people may belong to a certain class, or a certain
+locality, or may have certain habits and conditions of life, which may
+account for their comparative immunity, and these causes must be
+eliminated before any definite conclusion can be reached. Thus it is not
+till the great mass of the population is vaccinated that we can expect
+reliable statistics. But the introduction of a practice of this kind on
+so great a scale necessarily takes a long period of years, and meanwhile
+changes are taking place in the habits of the people, Sanitation is
+being improved, customs of Diet are altering, possibly (as so often
+happens in the history of an epidemic) the disease, having run its
+course, is beginning spontaneously to decline. And thus another series
+of possible causes has to be discussed.
+
+Then, supposing the question, notwithstanding all these difficulties, to
+be so far settled in favour of the present system--there still arises
+that whole other series of difficulties with regard to the possibility
+of the spread of _other_ diseases by the practice, and with regard to
+the _extent_ of such spread, before we can arrive at any finale. This
+series of questions is almost as complex as the other; and it includes
+that great element of uncertainty--the question what interval of time
+may elapse between inoculation with a disease and its actual appearance.
+For if in several cases children break out with erysipelas immediately
+after vaccination, of course there is a certain presumption that
+vaccination has been the cause; but if the erysipelas only appears some
+years after, its connection with the operation may, though real, be
+impossible to trace.
+
+The matter standing thus, it seems to us almost a mystery how it was
+that the medical authorities of the early days of Jennerism were so
+cocksure of their conclusions--until we remember that in arriving at
+those conclusions they practically _ignored_ all these other points
+that I have mentioned, like changes of Sanitation, spontaneous decline
+of Small-pox, the spread of other diseases, etc., and simply limited
+themselves to one small aspect of the problem. But now, after this
+interval of time, when the neglected facts and aspects have meanwhile
+_forced_ themselves on our attention, how remarkable is the change of
+attitude as evidenced by the finding of the late Royal Commission!
+(1896).
+
+From all this do not understand me to deride Science--for I have no
+intention of doing that; on the contrary, I think the debt we owe to
+modern investigation quite incalculable; but I only wish to warn you how
+complex all these problems are, how impossible that notion of settling
+even one of them by a cut-and-dried intellectual formula.
+
+But you will ask (for this is the second point I mentioned some little
+time back) _how_ people's emotions and feelings come in to colour their
+scientific conclusions? And the answer is--very simply, namely by
+directing their choice as to what aspects of the problem they will
+ignore and what aspects they will envisage; by determining their point
+of view, in fact. To return to that illustration of several
+portrait-painters painting the same face; just as each painter is led by
+his feeling, his sympathies, his general temperament, to select certain
+points in the face and to pass over others, so each group of scientific
+men in each generation is led by its sympathies, its idiosyncrasies, to
+envisage certain aspects of the problems of the day and to ignore
+others.
+
+The whole history of Science illustrates this. We are all familiar with
+the way in which the predilections of religious feeling in the time of
+Copernicus and Galileo retarded the progress of astronomical Science. As
+long as people believed that a divine drama of redemption had been
+enacted on this earth alone, they naturally concluded that this earth
+was the centre of the universe, and refused to look at facts which
+contradicted their conclusion. When Galileo turned his newly-made
+telescope on Jupiter and saw it circled by its satellites, he saw in
+this an image of the Copernican system and of the planets circling round
+the central Sun; but when he asked others to share his observation and
+his inference, they would not. "O, my dear Kepler," he writes in a
+letter to his fellow astronomer, "how I wish we could have one hearty
+laugh together. Here at Padua is the principal Professor of Philosophy,
+whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and
+planets through my glass; but he pertinaciously refuses to do so. What
+shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly!"
+
+And though we laugh at the folly of those before us, we do the same
+things ourselves to-day. Take the science of Political Economy. A
+revolution has taken place in that, almost comparable to the change from
+the geocentric to the heliocentric view in Astronomy. During the
+distinctively commercial period of the last 100 years, the leading
+students of social science, being themselves filled with the spirit of
+the time, have been fain to look upon the acquisition of private wealth
+as the one absorbing motive of human nature; and so it has come about
+that the economists, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, have founded
+their science on self-seeking and competition, as the base of their
+analysis. To-day another series of economists coming to the front--their
+minds preoccupied with the great facts of Community of life and
+Co-operation--have discovered that Society is in the main an
+illustration of these latter principles, and have evolved a quite new
+phase of the science. It is not that Society has changed so much during
+this period, as that the altered point of view of the students of
+Society has caused them simply to fix their attention on a different
+aspect of the problem and a different range of facts.
+
+I have alluded already to the way in which the prevalent use of
+Machinery in practical life has affected our mental outlook on the
+world. It is curious that during this mechanical age of the last 100
+years or so, we have not only come to regard Society in a mechanical
+light, as a concourse of separate individuals bound together by a mere
+cash-nexus, but have extended the same idea to the universe at large,
+which we look upon as a concourse of separate atoms, associated together
+by gravitation, or possibly by mere mutual impact. Yet it is certain
+that both these views are false, since the individuals who compose
+Society are _not_ separate from each other; and the theory that the
+universe, in its ultimate analysis, is composed of a vast number of
+discrete atoms is simply unthinkable.
+
+When we come to a practical and modern question like Medicine, the
+influence of the spirit in which it is approached on the course of the
+science is very easy to see. For if the science of Medicine is
+approached (as it perhaps mostly is to-day) in a spirit of combined Fear
+and Self-indulgence--fear for one's own personal safety, combined with a
+kind of anxiety to continue living in the indulgence of habits known to
+be unhealthy--if it is approached in this uncomfortable and
+contradictory state of mind, it is pretty obvious that its course will
+be similarly uncomfortable: that it will consist for the most part in a
+search for drugs which shall, without effort on our part, palliate the
+effects of our misconduct; in the discovery, as in a kind of nightmare,
+that the air round us is full of billions of microbes; in a terrified
+study of these messengers of disease, and in a frantic effort to ward
+them off by inoculations, vaccinations, vivisections, and so forth,
+without end.
+
+If, on the other hand, the science is approached from quite a different
+side--from that of the love of Health, and the desire to make life
+lovely, beautiful and clean; if the student is filled not only with
+this, but with a great belief in the essential _power_ of Man, and his
+command in creation, to control not only all these little microbes
+whose name is Legion, but through his mind all the processes of his
+body; then it is obvious enough that a whole series of different facts
+will arise before his eyes and become the subject of his study--facts of
+sanitation, of the laws of cleanly life, diet, clothing and so forth,
+methods of control, and the details and practice of the influence of the
+mental upon the physical part of man--facts quite equally real with the
+others, equally important, equally numerous perhaps and complex, but
+forming a totally different range of science.
+
+In conclusion, you begin to see doubtless that I do not believe in a
+science of mere Formulas, which can be poured from one brain to another
+like water in a pot. I believe in something more organic to
+Humanity--which shall combine Sense, Intellect and Soul; which shall
+include the keenest training of the Senses, the exactest use of the
+Brain, and the subordination of both of these to the finest and most
+generous attitude of Man towards Nature.
+
+To come to quite practical aspects, I think that Physical Science, and
+for that matter Natural History too, ought to be founded on the closest
+observation and actual intimacy with Nature. It is notorious that in
+many respects the perceptions, the Nature-intuitions, of savage races
+far outdo those of civilised man. We have let that side go slack, and
+too often the man of science when he comes out of his study is a mere
+baby in the external world. I look back with a kind of shame when I
+think that I studied the mathematical side of Astronomy for three or
+four years at Cambridge and absolutely at the time hardly knew one star
+from another in the sky. But such are the methods of teaching that have
+been in use. They ought however to be reversed, and practical
+acquaintance with the facts should come a long way first, and then be
+succeeded by inductive and deductive reasoning when the difficulties of
+the subject have forced themselves on the student's mind.
+
+Then in Natural History and Botany I think that we have hitherto not
+only neglected the perceptive side, but also what may be called the
+intuitive and emotional aspects. If any one will attend to the subject,
+I believe they will perceive that there are dormant in the mind the
+finest intuitions and instincts of relationship to the various animals
+and plants--intuitions which have played a far more important part in
+the life of barbaric races than they do to-day.[41] Primitive peoples
+have a remarkable instinct of the medicinal and dietetic uses of herbs
+and plants--an instinct which we also find well developed among
+animals--and I believe that this kind of knowledge would grow largely
+if, so to speak, it were given a chance. The formal classification of
+animals and plants--which now forms the main part of these
+sciences--would then come in simply as an aid and an auxiliary to the
+more direct and human study.
+
+Again, let us take the science of Physiology. At present this is mainly
+carried on by means of Dissection or Vivisection. But both these methods
+are unsatisfactory. Dissection, because it amounts to studying the
+organisation of a living creature by the examination of its dead
+carcase; and Vivisection, because it is not only open to a similar
+objection, but because it necessarily violates the highest relation of
+man to the animal he is studying. There is, I believe, another method--a
+method which has been known in the East for centuries, though little
+regarded in the West--which may perhaps be called the method of Health.
+It consists in rendering the body, by proper habits of life, pure and
+healthy, till it becomes, as it were, transparent to the inner eye, and
+then projecting the consciousness _inward_ so as to become almost as
+sensible of the structure and function of the various internal organs,
+as it usually is of the outer surface of the body. Of course this is a
+process which cannot be effectuated at once, and which may need help and
+corroboration by external methods of study, but I believe it is one
+which will lead to considerable results. There is no doubt that many of
+the Yogis of India attain to great skill in it.
+
+Similarly, from what we have already said about Political Economy, it
+is obvious that satisfactory results in that science must depend
+immensely on the high degree of social instinct and feeling with which
+the student approaches it, and on the thoroughness of his acquaintance
+with the _actual life_ of a people; and that the development of these
+factors is fully as important a part of the science as that which
+consists in the logical ordering and arrangement of the material
+obtained.
+
+I need not, I think, go any further into detail of new methods in each
+Science. You remember what I said at the beginning about the Cell
+studying the Body of which it formed a part. We may imagine, if we like,
+three stages in this process. In the first stage the Cell regards the
+other cells and the Body simply from the point of view of how they
+affect _it_, and its comfort and safety. This might be taken to
+correspond to the Old-time Science. In the second stage the Cell, with
+its tiny experience of the other cells and the small part of the body in
+which it is placed, becomes highly intellectual, and professes to lay
+down the laws of the structure of the body generally. This corresponds
+to the attitude of Modern Science. In the third stage the Cell, growing
+and evolving, and coming daily into closer sympathetic relationship with
+all parts of the body, begins to find its true relation to the other
+cells, not to use _them_, but to fulfil its part in the whole. Gradually
+drawing all the threads together and coming more and more, so to say,
+into a central position, it at last in its little brain spontaneously
+and inevitably reflects the whole, and becomes the mirror of it. This
+would answer to what we have called a really rational and humane
+Science.
+
+Man has to find and to _feel_ his true relation to other creatures and
+to the whole of which he is a part, and has to use his brain to further
+this. Science _is_, as we all know, the search for Unity. That is its
+ideal. It unites innumerable phenomena under one law; and then it unites
+many laws under one higher; always seeking for the ultimate complete
+integration. But (is it not obvious?) Man cannot find that unity _of_
+the Whole until he feels his unity _with_ the Whole. To found a Science
+of one-ness on the murderous Warfare and insane Competition of men with
+each other, and on the Slaughter and Vivisection of animals--the search
+for unity on the practice of disunity--is an absurdity, which can only
+in the long run reveal itself as such.
+
+I do not know whether it seems obvious to you, but it does to me, that
+Man will never find in theory the unity of outer Nature till he reaches
+in practice the unity of his own. When he has learnt to harmonise in
+himself all his powers, bodily and mental, his desires, faculties,
+needs, and bring them into perfect co-operation--when he has found the
+true hierarchy of himself--then somehow I think that Nature round him
+will reflect this order, and range itself in clear and intelligible
+harmony about him.
+
+But I can say no more. I have dragged you by the neck, as it were,
+through a recondite and difficult subject; and even so I do not feel
+that I have by any means done justice to it. But it is possible,
+perhaps, that I have cast the germ of an idea among you, which, if you
+think over it at leisure, may develop into something of value.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[40] Afterwards reprinted in a modified form, as "Modern Science--a
+Criticism," in the first edition (1889) of the present book.
+
+[41] Elisée Reclus, in his remarkable paper, _La Grande Famille_, points
+out the wide-reaching _Friendship_, and free alliance for various
+purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing long before the
+so-called "domestication" of the latter. See _Humane Review_, January,
+1906.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW MORALITY
+
+
+The tendency of the Evolution Theory, as it penetrates human thought, is
+to rub out lines--the old lines of formal classification. We no longer
+now put in a class apart those animals which have horns or cloven
+hooves, because we find that continuous descent and close kinship weave
+relations which are not bounded by horns or hooves. And, for a not
+dissimilar reason, modern thought, based on the theory of evolution, is
+tending to rub out the hard and fast lines between moral Right and
+Wrong--the old formal classifications of _actions_ as some in their
+nature good, and some in their nature bad.
+
+The Eastern, or at least Indian, thought and religion rubbed out these
+lines long ago. Its philosophy indeed was founded on a theory of
+Evolution--the continuous evolution or emanation of the Many from the
+One. It could not therefore regard any _class_ of beings or creatures as
+essentially bad, or any _class_ of actions as essentially wrong, since
+all sprang from a common Root. The only essential evil was ignorance
+(_avidya_)--that is, the fact of the being or creature not knowing or
+perceiving its emanation from, or kinship with, the One--and of course
+any action done under this condition of _avidya_, however outwardly
+correct, was essentially wrong; while on the other hand _all_ actions
+done by beings fully realising and conscious of their union with the One
+were necessarily right.
+
+Of this attitude towards Right and Wrong there are abundant instances in
+the Upanishads. The choice of the path does not lie _between_ Good and
+Bad, as in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, but it lies above and in a region
+transcending them both. "By the serenity of his thoughts a man blots out
+_all_ actions, whether good or bad."[42] "He does not distress himself
+with the thought, Why did I not do what is good? Why did I do what is
+bad?"[43] All religions indeed, by the very fact of their being
+religions, have indicated a sphere above morality, to which their
+followers shall and must aspire. What else is St. Paul's reiterated
+charge to escape from the dominion of sin and law, into the glorious
+liberty of the children of God? And in all ages the great mystics--those
+who stand near the fountain-sources of evolution and emanation--have
+seen and said the same. Says Spinoza:--"With regard to good and evil,
+these terms indicate nothing positive in things considered in
+themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought, or
+notions which we form from _the comparison of one thing with another_.
+For one and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil,
+or indifferent."[44]
+
+Here indeed, in these pregnant words, we come upon the very root of the
+matter. A thing, an action, may be called good or bad in respect to a
+certain purpose or object; but in itself, No. Wine may be good for the
+encouragement of sociability, but may be bad for the liver. The
+Sabbath-day may be pronounced a beneficial institution from some points
+of view, but not from others. A scrupulous respect for private property
+may certainly be a help to settled social life; but the practice of
+thieving--as recommended by Plato--may be very useful to check the lust
+of private riches. To speak of wine as in its nature good or bad is
+manifestly absurd; and the same of a pious respect for private property
+or the Sabbath-day. These things are good under certain conditions or
+for certain purposes, and bad under other conditions or for other
+purposes. But of course it belongs and goes with the brute externalising
+tendency of the mind, to stereotype the actual material thing--which
+should be only the vehicle of the spirit--and give _it_ a character and
+a cult as good or bad. The Sabbath ceases to be made for man, and man is
+made for the Sabbath. Law, Custom, Pharisaism, and Self-righteousness
+spring up and usurp the sphere of morality, and all the histories of
+savage and civilised nations, with their endless fetishes and taboos
+and superstitions and ceremonies, and caste-marks and phylacteries, and
+petty regulations and proprieties,--including bitter scorn and
+persecution of those who do not fulfil them,--are but illustrations of
+this process.
+
+All the prophets and saviours of the world have been for the Spirit as
+against the letter--and the teachings of all religions have in their
+turn become literalised and fossilised! Perhaps there has been no
+greater anti-literal than Jesus of Nazareth, and yet perhaps no religion
+has become more a thing of forms and dogmas than that which passes under
+his name. Even his counsels of Gentleness and Love--which one would
+indeed have thought might escape this process--have been corrupted into
+mere prescriptions of morality, such as those of Non-resistance, and of
+philanthropic Altruism.
+
+It seems strange indeed that so great a man as Tolstoy should have lent
+himself to this process--to the pinning down of the excellent spirit of
+Christ (who by the way was man enough to drive the money-changers out of
+the Temple) to a mere formula, as one might pin a dragon-fly to a
+labelled card--_Thou shalt not use Violence: thou shalt not Resist!_ And
+all the while to cleave to a formula only means to admit the evil in
+some other shape which the formula does not meet--to forswear the stick
+only means to resort to rebuke and sarcasm in self-defence, which may
+inflict more pain and a deeper scar, and in some cases more injury,
+than the stick; or if self-defence in any shape is quite forsworn then
+that only means to resign and abandon one's place in the world
+completely.
+
+And the same of the somewhat spooney Altruism, which was at one time
+much recommended as the maxim of conduct. For all the while it is
+notorious that the specially altruistic people are as a rule painfully
+dull and uninteresting, and afford far less life and charm to those
+around them than many who are frankly egotistic; and so by following a
+formula of Altruism it seems they wreck the very work they set before
+themselves to do--namely, that of making the world brighter!
+
+Against these weaknesses of Christianity Nietzsche was a healthy
+reaction. It was he insisted on the terms "good" and "bad" being
+restored to their proper use, as terms of relation--"good" for what?
+"bad" for what? But his reaction against maudlin altruism and
+non-resistance led him towards a pitfall in the opposite direction,
+towards the erection of the worship of Force almost into a formula, Thou
+_shalt_ use Violence, thou _shalt_ Resist. His contempt for the feeble
+and the spooney and the knock-kneed and the humbug is very delightful
+and entertaining, and, as I say, healthy in the sense of reaction; but
+one does not get a very clear idea what the strength which Nietzsche
+glorifies is for, or whither it is going to lead. His blonde beasts and
+his laughing lions may represent the Will to Power; but Nietzsche seems
+to have felt, himself, that this latter alone would not suffice, and so
+he passed on to his discovery or invention of the Beyond-man,--_i.e._ of
+a childlike being who, without argument, _affirms_ and creates, and
+before whom institutions and conventions dissolve, as it were of their
+own accord.[45] This was a stroke of genius; but even so it leaves
+doubtful what the relation of such Beyond-men to each other may be, and
+whether, if they have no common source of life, their actions will not
+utterly cancel and destroy each other.
+
+The truth is that Nietzsche never really penetrated to the realisation
+of that farther state of consciousness in which the deep underlying
+unity of man with Nature and his fellows is perceived and felt. He saw
+apparently that there is a life and an inspiration of life beyond all
+technical good and evil. But for some reason--partly because of the
+natural difficulty of the subject, partly perhaps because the Eastern
+outlook was uncongenial to his mind--he never found the solution which
+he needed; and his outline of the Superman remains cloudy and uncertain,
+vague and variously interpreted by followers and critics.
+
+The question arises, What do _we_ need? We are to-day, in this matter,
+in a somewhat parlous state. The old codes of Morality are moribund; the
+Ten Commandments command only a very qualified assent; the Christian
+religion as a real inspiration of practical life and conduct is dead;
+the social conventions and Mrs. Grundy remain, feebly galling and
+officious. What are we to do? Are we to bolster up the old codes, in
+which we have largely ceased to believe, merely in order to have a
+code?--or are we to let them go?
+
+Of course, if we have decided what the final purpose or life of Man is,
+then we may say that what is good for that purpose is finally "good,"
+and what is bad for that purpose is finally "evil." The Eastern
+philosophy, as I have said, deciding that the final purpose of Man is
+identification with Brahm, declares _all_ actions to be evil (even the
+most saintly) which are done by the self as separate from Brahm; and all
+actions as good which are done in the condition of _vidya_ or conscious
+union. But here, though a final good and evil are allowed and
+acknowledged, as existing respectively in the conditions of vidya or
+avidya, those conditions altogether escape any external rule or
+classification.
+
+Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, taking up this subject not long ago in a
+criticism[46] of Mr. Orage's little book on Nietzsche, said that all
+this talk about "beyond good and evil" was nonsense; that we must have
+some code; and that in effect, any code, even a bad one, was better than
+none. And one sees what he means. It is perfectly true, in a sense, that
+the harness, the shafts, and the blinkers keep a large part of the
+world on the beaten road and out of the ditch, and that folk are always
+to be found who, rather than use their higher faculties, will rely on
+these external guides; but to encourage this kind of salvation by
+blinkers seems the very reverse of what ought to be done; and one might
+even ask whether salvation by such means is salvation at all--whether
+the ditch were not better!
+
+Besides, what _can_ we do? It is not so much that we are deliberately
+abandoning the codes as that they are abandoning us. With the gradual
+infiltration of new ideas, of Eastern thought, of Darwinian philosophy,
+of customs and creeds of races other than our own, with Bernard Shaw
+lecturing on the futility of the Ten Commandments, and so forth, it is
+not difficult to see that in a short while it will be impossible to
+rehabilitate any of the ancient codes or to give them a sanction and a
+sense of awe in the public mind. If with Gilbert Chesterton we should
+succeed in bolstering up such a thing for a time--well, it will only be
+for a time.
+
+And the question is, whether the time has not really come for us to
+stand up--like sensible men and women--and _do without rules_; whether
+we cannot trust ourselves at last to throw aside the blinkers. The
+question is whether we cannot realise that solid and central life which
+underlies and yet surpasses all rules. For truly, if we cannot do this,
+our state is pitiable--having ceased to believe in the letter of
+Morality, and yet unable to find its spirit!
+
+It is here, then, that the New Morality comes in, as more or less
+clearly understood and expressed by the progressive sections to-day.
+Modern Socialism, in effect, taking up a position in its way somewhat
+similar to that of Eastern philosophy, says: Morality in its essence is
+not a code, but simply the realisation of the Common Life;[47] and that
+is a thing which is not foreign and alien to humanity, but very germane
+and natural to it--a thing so natural that without doubt it would be
+more in evidence than it is, did not the institutions and teachings of
+Western civilisation tend all along to deny and disguise it. To liberate
+this instinct of the Common Life, freeing it from hard and cramping
+rules, and to let it take its own form or forms--grafted on and varied
+of course by the personal and selective element of Affection and
+Sympathy--is the hope that lies before the world to-day for the solution
+of all sorts of moral and social problems.
+
+And the more this position is thought over, the more, I believe, will it
+commend itself. The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the
+instinct of Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in
+all directions through the very fibre of our individual and social
+life--just as they do through that of the gregarious animals. In a
+thousand ways: through heredity and the fact that common ancestral blood
+flows in our veins--though we be only strangers that pass in the street;
+through psychology, and the similarity of structure and concatenation in
+our minds; through social linkage, and the necessity of each and all to
+the others' economic welfare; through personal affection and the ties of
+the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense which, diving deep
+below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal being--in
+these and many other ways does this Common Life compel us to recognise
+itself as a fact--perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence.
+
+To teach this simple foundational fact and what flows from it to every
+child--not only as a theory, but as a practical habit and inspiration of
+conduct--is not really difficult, but easy. Children, having this sense
+woven into their very being, grow up in the spirit and practical
+habitude of it, and from the beginning possess the inspiration of what
+we call Morality--far more effectually indeed than copy-book maxims can
+provide. Respect for truth, consideration towards parents and elders,
+respect for the reasonable properties, dignities, conveniences of
+others, as well as for one's own needs and dignities, become perfectly
+natural and habitual. And that this is no mere hypothesis the example of
+Japan has lately shown where every young thing is brought up so far
+drenched in the sentiment of community that to give one's life for one's
+country is looked upon as a privilege.[48] The general lines, I say, of
+morality would be secure, and much more secure than they now are, if we
+could only bring the children up in an educational and practical
+atmosphere of that solidarity which as a matter of fact is demanded
+to-day by socialism and the economic movement generally.
+
+And on this ground-work, as I have hinted, Personal Affection and
+Sympathy would build a superstructure of their own; they would outline a
+society as much more beautiful, powerful and closely knit than the
+present one founded on the Cash-nexus, as, say, the Athenian society of
+the time of Pericles was superior to that of the Lapithæ who first
+bitted and bridled the horse.
+
+While the general Life, equal, pervasive, and in a sense
+undifferentiated, is a great fact which has to be acknowledged; so this
+personal Love and Affection, choosing, selecting, and giving outline and
+form to that life, is equally a fact, equally undeniable, equally
+sacred--and one which has to be taken in conjunction with the other.
+
+I say equally sacred: because there has been a tendency (no doubt due to
+certain causes) to look upon personal affection, in its various phases
+from slight inclinations of sympathy to the stronger compulsions of
+passion, as something rather dubious in character, at best an amiable
+weakness not to be encouraged. Tolstoy, in one of his writings, figures
+the case of a little household in days of famine not really having bread
+enough for their own wants. Then a stranger child comes to the door and
+pleads for food. Tolstoy suggests that the mother ought to take the
+scanty crust from her own child to feed the stranger withal, or at least
+to share the food equally between the two children. But such a
+conclusion seems to me doubtful.
+
+Whatever "ought" may mean in such a connexion, we know pretty well that
+such never _will_ be the rule of human life, we may almost say never can
+be; perhaps we should be equally justified in saying, never "ought" to
+be. For obviously there must be preferences, selections. Our affections,
+our affinities, our sympathies, our passions, are not given us for
+nothing. It is not for nothing that every individual person, every tree,
+every animal has a _shape_, a shape of its own. If it were not so the
+world would be infinitely, inconceivably, dull. Yet to ask that a mother
+should in all cases treat strange children exactly the same as her own,
+that a man from the oceanic multitude should single out no special or
+privileged friends, but should love all alike, is to ask that these folk
+in their mental and moral nature should become as jellyfish--of no
+distinct shape or satisfaction to themselves or any one else. Profound
+and indispensable as is the Law of Equality--the law, namely, that there
+is a region within all beings where they touch to a common and equal
+life--the other law, that of Individual predilection, is equally
+indispensable. Try to reduce all to the one motive of the general
+interest, and you might have a perfect morality, but a morality woodeny,
+hard and dull, without form and feature. Try to dispense with this, and
+to found society on individual affection and love, and on individual
+initiative, without morals, and you would have a flighty, unstable
+thing, without consistency or backbone.
+
+My contention, then, is that our hope for the future society lies in its
+embodiment of these two great principles jointly: (1) the recognition of
+the Common Life as providing the foundation-element of general morality,
+and (2) the recognition of Individual Affection and Expression--and to a
+much greater degree than hitherto--as building up the higher groupings
+and finer forms of the structure. And in proportion as (1) provides a
+solider basis of morals than we have hitherto had, so will it be
+possible to give to (2) a width of scope and freedom of action hitherto
+untried or untrusted. Conjointly with the strengthening of these
+principles of Solidarity and Affection in society must of course come
+the strengthening of Individuality--the right and the desire of every
+being to preserve and develop its own proper _shape_, and so to add to
+the richness and interest of life--and this involves the right of
+Resistance, and (once more) the relegation of the formula of
+non-resistance into the background.
+
+These considerations, however, are leading us too far afield, and away
+from the special subject of our paper. I mention them chiefly in order
+to show that while we are considering Morality as a foundation-element
+of Society, it must never be lost sight of that it is not the only
+element, and that it would be comparatively senseless and useless unless
+grafted on and complemented and completed by the others.
+
+The method of the New Morality, then, will be to minimise formulæ, and
+(except as illustrations) to use them sparely; and to bring children
+up--and so indirectly all citizens--in such conditions of abounding life
+and health that their sympathies, overflowing naturally to those around,
+will cause them to realise in the strongest way their organic part in
+the great whole of society--and this not as an intellectual theory, so
+much as an abiding consciousness and foundation-fact of their own
+existence. Make this the basis of all teaching. Make them realise--by
+all sorts of habit and example--that to injure or deceive others is to
+injure themselves--that to help others somehow satisfies and fortifies
+their own inner life. Let them learn, as they grow up, to regard all
+human beings, of whatever race or class, as ends in themselves--never to
+be looked upon as mere things or chattels to be made use of. Let them
+also learn to look upon the animals in the same light--as beings, they
+too, who are climbing the great ladder of creation--beings with whom
+also we humans have a common spirit and interest. And let them learn to
+respect _themselves_ as worthy and indispensable members of this great
+Body. Thus will be established a true Morality--a morality far more
+searching, more considerate of others, more adaptive and more genuine
+than that of the present day--a morality, we may say, of common-sense.
+
+For it may indeed be said that Morality--taking a downright and almost
+physiological view of it--is simply _abundance of life_. That is, that
+when a man has so abounding and vital an inner nature that his
+sympathies and activities overflow the margin of his own petty days and
+personal advantage, he is by that fact entering the domain of morality.
+Before that time and while limited to the personal organism, the
+creative life in each being is either non-moral like that of the
+animals, or simply selfish like that of the immature man; but when it
+overflows this limit it necessarily becomes social, and moves to the
+support and consideration of the neighbour. Having formerly found its
+complete activity in the sustentation of the personal self it now
+spreads its helpful energies into the lives of the other selves around.
+Altruism, in fact, in its healthy forms, is the overflow of abounding
+vitality. It is a morality without a code, and happily free from
+limiting formulæ.[49]
+
+And if it be again said that a morality of this kind, which rests on a
+principle and a mental attitude only, is a danger, let us pause for a
+moment to consider how much more dangerous is one which rests on
+formulæ. If morality without a code is a serious matter, how much more
+serious is one which is nailed up _within_ a code! For looking back on
+history it would sometimes seem that the black-and-white, the
+this-thing-right-and-that-thing-wrong morality has been the most wicked
+thing in the world. It has been an excuse for all the most devilish
+deeds and persecutions imaginable. A formula of the Sabbath-day, a
+formula about Witchcraft, a formula of Marriage (regardless of the real
+human relation), a formula concerning Theft (regardless of the dire need
+of the thief)--and burnings, hangings, torturings without mercy! The
+terrible thing about this Right-and-Wrong morality is not only that it
+leads to these dreadful reprisals; but that it brands upon the victim as
+well as upon the oppressor the fatuous notions that a certain _thing_ is
+right or wrong, and that what one has to do is to save _oneself_--two
+notions both of which are directly contrary to true Morality. A boy
+tells a verbal lie--perhaps through fear, perhaps through inadvertence.
+He has broken a formula and is immediately caned. Moral: he will keep to
+verbal truth afterwards--however mean or insidious it may be--and be
+pharisaically self-satisfied; but he will never realise that the
+importance of truth and lies rests not in the words, but in the
+confidence and mutual trust which they either create or destroy. The
+peculiarly English worship of Duty is open to the same objection.
+"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," and splendid as is the
+conception and practice of Duty, as a self-oblivious inspiration and
+enthusiasm, it becomes a truly revolting thing when it takes the
+all-too-common form "I have done _my_ Duty, I'm all right!" "I am going
+to do _my_ Duty, whatever becomes of you." Can anything be imagined more
+disintegrating to society, more certain to split it up into a dustheap
+of self-regarding units, than a formula of this kind? "It is my painful
+Duty to condemn you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead," says
+the Judge to the wretched girl who, in a frenzy of despair, has drowned
+her baby. What he really means is that while he perfectly recognises the
+monstrosity of the Law which he has sworn to administer, and the
+soul-killing effect on the girl which his sentence may have, yet in
+order to save _himself_ from the risk or the wrong of breaking that Law,
+he is willing and ready to pronounce that sentence. "It is my duty to
+burn you," says the Inquisitor to the heretic; and the implication is
+really, "I am afraid that if I do not burn you I shall get burnt myself,
+in the next world."
+
+The sooner an end can be made of this sort of morality, the
+better--which under the cloak of public advantage or benefit is only
+thinking about self-promotion and self-interest, either in this world
+or the next, and which truly is calculated not to further human
+solidarity but to destroy it. It runs and trickles through all of modern
+society, poisoning the well-springs of affection, this morality which,
+having paid its domestic servants their regular wages, is quite
+satisfied with itself, and expects them to do _their_ duty in return,
+but is silent about their real needs and welfare; which treats its
+wage-workers as simple machines for the grinding out of profits, and
+lifts its eyebrows in serene surprise when they retaliate against such
+treatment; which can only regard a criminal as a person who has broken a
+formula, and in return must be punished according to a formula; and a
+pig as an animal for which you provide reasonable provender and a stye,
+and which in return you are entitled to _eat_. Pharisaical, self-centred
+and self-interested, materialistic to the last degree, and really
+senseless in its outlook, this current morality is indeed, and very
+seriously, a public peril.
+
+
+     Thou shalt not steal: an empty feat,
+     When it's so lucrative to cheat.
+
+
+Keep _within_ the code, within the letter; always speak the nominal
+truth (whoever may suffer thereby); keep up the accepted formulæ of
+marriage and the sex-relation (though hearts may be bleeding and
+perishing); pay every respect to property, and so forth; and you may
+have the gratification of being looked upon as a bulwark of society. But
+none the less it is probable that you are undermining and corrupting
+that society to the core. Your outlook is merely on the surface, while
+you are condoning deep-seated ill.
+
+Of course the New Morality--to look _within_, to feel and refer to the
+needs of others almost as instinctively as to one's own, to refuse to
+regard any _thing_ as in itself good or bad, and to look upon all
+beings, oneself included, as ends in themselves and not as a means of
+personal self-advancement and glorification--while it is the more
+natural, is also the more difficult in a sense, as providing no set
+pattern or rule. But surely the time has arrived for its adoption. It is
+the morality which must underlie the freer, more varied forms of the
+society of the future; and it is the only escape from the corruption of
+the old order.
+
+To take particular examples. Truth, in word or act, is--we all
+feel--very important, very fundamental. It is the basis of the common
+understanding of which I have spoken. It is the basis of the expression
+of oneself, and of the recognition of others. Any one who is deeply
+imbued with the consciousness of the common life will necessarily have a
+deep respect for the Truth; he will also have a deep respect for the
+Life, the Property, the good Name, the Affections, and so forth, of
+others, as well as for his own similar attributes. He will not be able
+to say, as a formula: I will _never_ deceive another (tell a lie); I
+will _never_ take the life of others, man or animal (kill); and so on,
+because he knows there are situations in which that very Life arising
+within him, or even his own absolute necessity, will demand such
+actions, will compel him to the performance of them; but all the same he
+will in his ordinary existence carry out the principle which underlies
+these formulæ, and much more thoroughly, probably, than the formulæ
+themselves would demand.
+
+Similarly about such matters as sexual morality. There are outcries
+against Lady-Godiva-shows and living statuary--apparently because folk
+are afraid of such things rousing the passions. No doubt the things may
+act that way. But why, we may ask, should people be afraid of rousing
+passions which, after all, are the great driving forces of human life?
+Clearly it is because they think the other forces which should guide
+these passions or give them a helpful and useful direction are too weak.
+And in this last respect they are right. The guiding and inhibiting
+forces in our present society are feeble--because they consist only in a
+few conventional formulæ, which are rapidly being undermined. We are
+generating steam in a boiler which is already cankered with rust. The
+cure is not to cut off the passions, or to be weakly afraid of them, but
+to find a new, sound, healthy engine of general morality and
+common-sense within which they will work. And this is what in the future
+we must try to do.
+
+This morality, this organic, vital, almost physiological morality of the
+common life--which means a quick response of each unit to the needs of
+the other units, and much the same in the body politic as health means
+in the physical body--must underlie and be the basis of the societies of
+the future. It will mean the liberation of a thousand and one instincts,
+desires and capacities which since our childhood's days have lain buried
+within us, concealed and ignored because we have thought them wrong or
+unworthy, when really all they have wanted has been recognition and the
+opportunity to become healthy _by_ recognition--by the process in fact
+of balancing against each other, and against opposing and complementary
+elements, and so finding their places in the Whole. On this new Morality
+of acceptance and recognition and wide-reaching redemption, it will be
+possible, as I have already said, to graft not only a stronger
+expression of individuality all round, but also a higher and more varied
+and more gracious life of _personal affection_--which now alas! lies
+like a thing wounded and half dead. Its establishment will, I take it,
+mean the oncoming of a society which will liberate personal affection
+and love--will liberate forces hitherto artificially crippled because
+their liberation would tear our current morality of formulæ to mere rags
+and tatters. It means, I take it, the oncoming of a society whose main
+motive will no longer be the struggle for Bread (since that is ruled out
+by the enormous growth of our wealth-producing powers), but the desire
+for the satisfaction of the Heart--thus preparing no doubt new and
+unforeseen difficulties and sufferings, yet filling life with such
+beautiful things that the motives of greed and the mean pursuit of
+money, which now weigh upon the world, will be like an evil nightmare of
+the Past from which the dawn delivers us.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[42] _Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad_, vi. 34, 4.
+
+[43] _Taittiriyaka-Up_, ii. 9, etc.
+
+[44] Spinoza's _Ethic_, part iv.
+
+[45] It must be remembered that Nietzsche supposes three stages of the
+spirit--(1) the Camel, (2) the Lion, and (3) the Child. And the
+Beyond-man properly corresponds to the last stage.
+
+[46] _Daily News_, December 29, 1906.
+
+[47] I need hardly say that this does not mean, as Nietzsche so often
+and sardonically suggests, the realisation of the _common-place_ life,
+but something very different.
+
+[48] Many Japanese committed suicide on account of not being allowed to
+join in the Russian War. See also Lafcadio Hearn's description of the
+habitual dignity and courtesy of the youth of Japan.--_Life and
+Letters_, vol. i, pp. 12, 113.
+
+[49] This morality, indeed, may be said to be implicit in much of the
+teaching of Christ; yet, curiously enough, it has never been seriously
+adopted by the Churches. And as to the regard for animals as ends in
+themselves, the Roman Catholic Church, I believe, positively repudiates
+any such attitude.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+As the author's attacks in the body of this book upon the Civilisation
+peoples have sometimes been regarded as extreme and unjustified, it has
+been thought appropriate, here in the Appendix, to collect a few notes
+from reliable authorities on the characteristics and customs of
+pre-civilised men--not so much of course with the object of proving the
+latter always superior to the former, as of bringing to light the many
+admirable virtues of the early peoples, which a cheap modern
+civilisation has neglected or somewhat contemptuously ignored.
+
+No one would deny that there are many cases of primitive folk--folk
+unclean and ignorant and absurdly superstitious--who can hardly be said
+to command our admiration. On the other hand there are a vast number of
+cases of an opposite sort--cases which present to us the realisation of
+some remarkable human characteristic or social capacity well worthy of
+consideration or even of imitation. If our Civilisation is ever to move
+on to some form better than the present, it is these latter cases which
+ought to be of assistance; for they not only direct our attention to
+human possibilities, but by showing what has been realised in the past
+assure us that such ideals are by no means unattainable now.
+
+It is therefore with a view to cases of this kind that the following
+Appendix has been framed.
+
+E. C.
+
+
++Civilisation does not Engross all the Virtues.+
+
+     Quotations from Herman Melville's _Typee_, pp. 225, etc. (John
+     Murray, 1861.)
+
+"Civilisation does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not
+even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and
+attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of
+the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the
+faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass
+anything of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe. If
+truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist
+unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the
+social condition of the Typees? So pure and upright were they in all the
+relations of life, that entering their valley, as I did, under the most
+erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in
+amazement: 'Are these the ferocious savages, the bloodthirsty cannibals
+of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with
+each other, and are more humane, than many who study essays on virtue
+and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer
+breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.' I will
+frankly declare, that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the
+Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever
+before entertained. But alas! since then I have been one of the crew of
+a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly
+overturned all my previous theories.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How little do some of these poor islanders comprehend, when they look
+around them, that no inconsiderable part of their disasters originate
+in certain tea-party excitements, under the influence of which
+benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old
+ladies in spectacles, and young ladies in sober russet low gowns,
+contribute sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which
+is to ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose
+end has almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal destruction!
+
+"Let the savages be civilised, but civilise them with benefits, and not
+with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the
+heathen. The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater
+part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise
+extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilisation is
+gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism,
+and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.
+
+"Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned,
+the temples demolished, and the idolaters converted into _nominal_
+Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their
+appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious
+hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its
+borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat
+villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the
+poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his
+fathers, and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"During my whole stay on the island I never witnessed a single quarrel,
+nor any thing that in the slightest degree approached even to a dispute.
+The natives appeared to form one household, whose members were bound
+together by the ties of strong affection. The love of kindred I did not
+so much perceive, for it seemed blended in the general love; and where
+all were treated as brothers and sisters, it was hard to tell who were
+actually related to each other by blood.
+
+"Let it not be supposed that I have overdrawn this picture. I have not
+done so. Nor let it be urged that the hostility of this tribe to
+foreigners, and the hereditary feuds they carry on against their
+fellow-islanders beyond the mountains, are facts which contradict me.
+Not so: these apparent discrepancies are easily reconciled. By many a
+legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have
+passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon
+white men with abhorrence. The cruel invasion of their country by Porter
+has alone furnished them with ample provocation; and I can sympathize in
+the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to
+his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the
+beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the
+intruding European."
+
+
++Influences of "Civilisation"+
+
+     From R. L. Stevenson's _In the South Seas_, p. 43. (Chatto and
+     Windus, 1908.)
+
+[It is asked] "Was not the Polynesian always unchaste? Doubtless he was
+so always: doubtless he is more so since the coming of his remarkably
+chaste visitors from Europe. Take the Hawaiian account of Cook: I have
+no doubt it is entirely fair. Take Krusenstern's candid, almost innocent
+description of a Russian man-of-war at the Marquesas; consider the
+disgraceful history of missions in Hawaii itself ... add the practice of
+whaling fleets to call at the Marquesas and carry off a complement of
+women for the cruise ... and bear in mind how it was the custom of the
+adventurers, and we may almost say the business of the missionaries, to
+deride and infract even the most salutary _tapus_ (taboos)."
+
+
++Captain Cook at Owyhee in 1799+
+
+     From his _Life and Voyages_, p. 379. (George Newnes, 1904.)
+
+"In the progress of the intercourse which was maintained between our
+voyagers and the natives, the quiet and inoffensive behaviour of the
+latter took away every apprehension of danger, so that the English
+trusted themselves among them at all times and in all situations. The
+instances of kindness and civility which our people experienced from
+them were so numerous that they could not easily be recounted. A society
+of priests, in particular, displayed a generosity and munificence of
+which no equal example had hitherto been given: for they furnished a
+constant supply of hogs and vegetables to our navigators, without ever
+demanding a return, or even hinting at it in the most distant manner."
+Of the island of Wateeoo (p. 309), "the inhabitants are very numerous,
+and many of the young men were perfect models in shape."
+
+
++Natives of Tahiti+
+
+     From Havelock Ellis' _Sex in relation to Society_, p. 148. (1910.)
+
+"The example of Tahiti is instructive as regards the prevalence of
+chastity among peoples of what we generally consider low grades of
+civilisation. An early explorer, J. R. Forster (_Observations made on a
+voyage round the World_, 1778), speaks of the fine climate and the
+beauty of the females, as inviting powerfully to the enjoyments and
+pleasures of love. Yet he is over and over again impelled to set down
+facts which bear testimony to the virtues of these people. Though rather
+effeminate in build they are athletic, he says. Moreover in their wars
+they fight with great bravery and valour. They are, for the rest,
+hospitable. He remarks that they treat their married women with great
+respect, and that women generally are nearly the equals of men, both in
+intelligence and social position; he gives a charming description of the
+women. 'In short their character,' he concludes, 'is as amiable as that
+of any nation that ever came unimproved out of the hands of
+Nature'[!]"...
+
+"When Cook," continues Ellis, "who visited Tahiti many times, was among
+this 'benevolent, humane' people, he noted their esteem for chastity,
+and found that not only were betrothed girls strictly guarded before
+marriage, but that men also who had refrained from sexual intercourse
+for some time before marriage were believed to pass at death immediately
+into the abode of the blessed."
+
+
++Radack--one of the Caroline Islands+
+
+     From Chamisso's _Reise um die Welt_, p. 183. (Leipzig.)
+
+"Thus we made acquaintance with a people who have endeared themselves to
+me more than any others of the children of Earth. The very weaknesses of
+the Radack folk removed mistrust on our side; their very gentleness and
+goodness caused them to be trustful towards us, the all-powerful
+strangers; we became declared friends. I found among them simple,
+unsophisticated manners, charm, natural grace, and the pleasant bloom
+of modesty. In the matter, certainly, of strength and manly independence
+the O-Waihier [Owyhees] are greatly their superiors. My friend, Kadu,
+who, though not belonging to this island-group, attached himself to us,
+was one of the finest characters I have ever met and one of the most
+dear to me of human beings; and he afterwards became my instructor with
+regard to Radack and the Caroline Islands."
+
+
++Adaptation of Early Peoples to Surroundings+
+
+     THE DINKAS (Central Africa): from Grogan's _Cape to Cairo_, p. 278.
+     (Hurst & Blackett, 1900.)
+
+"Every one in Dinka-land carries a long spear, or pointed fish-spear,
+and a club made of a heavy purple wood, while the more important
+gentlemen wear enormous ivory bracelets round their upper arm; strict
+nudity is the fashion, and a marabout feather in the hair is the essence
+of _chic_. They are all beautifully built, having broad shoulders, small
+waist, good hips, and well-shaped legs. The stature of some is colossal.
+It was most curious to see how these Dinkas, living as they do in the
+marshes, approximate to the type of the waterbird. They have much the
+same walk as a heron, picking their feet up very high and thrusting them
+well forward; while their feet are enormous. Their colossal height is
+indeed a great advantage in the reed grown country in which they live.
+The favourite pose of a Dinka (on one foot, with the other foot resting
+on the knee) is in reality the favourite pose of a water bird.... They
+are the complete antithesis of the pigmy, as the country in which they
+live is the complete antithesis of the dense forest which is the home of
+the dwarfs.... Our camp was near a large village where there were at
+least 1,500 head of cattle, besides sheep and goats, and the chief
+brought me a fine fat bull-calf--which settled the nervous question of
+food for two days.... The rambling village with its groups of figures
+and long lines of home-coming cattle, dimly seen in the smoke of a
+hundred fires as I approached at sunset, was very picturesque."
+
+
+THE PIGMIES: from _Cape to Cairo_, pp. 144 and 161.
+
+"The pigmies have no settled villages, nor do they cultivate anything.
+They live the life of the brute in the forests, perpetually wandering in
+search of honey or in pursuit of elephant; when they succeed in killing
+anything, they throw up a few grass shelters and remain there till all
+the meat is either eaten or dried. They depend upon the other natives
+for the necessary grain, which they either steal or barter for elephant
+meat or honey. All their knives, spearheads and arrow-heads they
+likewise purchase from other people, but they make their own bows and
+arrows. So well are these made that they are held in great esteem by the
+surrounding people." ... "An hour later I met an elderly pigmy in the
+forest and managed to induce him to talk. He was a splendid little
+fellow, full of self-confidence, and gave me most concise information,
+stating that the white man with many belongings had passed near by two
+days before, and had then gone down to the lake-shore, where he was
+camped at that moment. These people must have a wonderful code of signs
+and signals, as despite their isolated and nomadic existence they always
+know exactly what is happening everywhere. He was a typical pigmy as
+found on the volcanoes--squat, gnarled, proud, and easy of carriage. His
+beard hung down over his chest, and his thighs and chest were covered
+with wiry hair. He carried the usual pigmy bow made of two pieces of
+cane spliced together with grass, and with a string made of a single
+strand of a rush that grows in the forests. The pigmies are splendid
+examples of the adaptability of Nature to her surroundings; the
+combination of strength and conciseness enabling them to move with
+astonishing rapidity in the pig-runs that form the only pathway through
+the impenetrable growth, and to endure the fatigue of elephant-hunting."
+
+
+NATIVES IN RUANDA (near Lake Kivu): _Cape to Cairo_, p. 118.
+
+"Society in Ruanda is divided into two castes, the Watusi and the
+Wahutu. The Watusi are the descendants of a great wave of Galla invasion
+that reached even to Tanganyika. They still retain their pastoral
+instincts, and refuse to do any other work than the tending of cattle;
+and so great is their affection for their beasts, that rather than sever
+company they will become slaves, and do the menial work of their beloved
+cattle for the benefit of their conquerors. This is all the more
+remarkable when one takes into account their inherent pride of race and
+contempt for other peoples, even for the white man.... Many signs of
+superior civilisation, observable in the peoples with whom the Watusi
+have come into contact, are traceable to this Galla influence.
+
+"The hills are terraced, thus increasing the area of cultivation, and
+obviating the denudation of fertile slopes by torrential rains. In many
+cases irrigation is carried out on a sufficiently extensive scale, and
+the swamps are drained by ditches. Artificial reservoirs are built with
+side troughs for watering cattle. The fields are in many cases fenced in
+by planted hedges of euphorbia and thorn, and similar fences are planted
+along the narrow parts of the main cattle tracks, to prevent the beasts
+from straying or trampling down the cultivation.
+
+"There is also an exceptional diversity of plants cultivated, such as
+hungry rice, maize, red and white millet, several kinds of beans, peas,
+bananas, and the edible arum. Some of the higher growing beans are even
+trained on sticks planted for the purpose. Pumpkins and sweet potatoes
+are also common; and the Watusi own and tend enormous herds of cattle,
+goats and sheep. Owing to the magnificent pasturage the milk is of
+excellent quality, and they make large quantities of butter. They are
+exceedingly clever with their beasts, and have many calls which the
+cattle understand. At milking time they light smoke-fires to keep the
+flies from irritating the beasts.... They are tall slightly built men of
+graceful nonchalant carriage, and their features are delicate and
+refined. I noticed many faces that, bleached and set in a white collar,
+would have been conspicuous for character in a London drawing-room. The
+legal type was especially pronounced." ...
+
+"The Wahutu are their absolute antithesis. They are the aborigines of
+the country, and any pristine originality or character has been
+effectually stamped out of them. Hewers of wood and drawers of water,
+they do all the hard work, and unquestioning in abject servility give up
+the proceeds on demand. Their numerical proportion to the Watusi must be
+at least a hundred to one, yet they defer to them without protest; and
+in spite of the obvious hatred in which they hold their over lords,
+there seems to be no friction."
+
+
++Natives of the Andaman Islands+
+
+The following extracts, about the Andaman-islanders of the Bay of
+Bengal, the Bushmen of South Africa, and the Eskimo tribes of Northern
+latitudes, are specially interesting because they deal with peoples
+whose present-day culture is undoubtedly on a par with, and in all
+probability directly inherited from, the peoples of a long-past Stone
+Age. Thus we get indirectly a glimpse of what the culture of the Stone
+Ages was--both in its material acquisitions and its grade of social and
+psychological evolution.
+
+
+     From _In the Andamans and Nicobars_, p. 184, by C. Boden Kloss.
+     (Murray, 1903.)
+
+"The Andaman Islands are inhabited by people of pure Negrito blood,
+members of perhaps the most ancient race remaining on the earth, and
+standing closest to the primitive human type.... It would be impossible
+to find anywhere a race of purer descent than the Andamanese, for ever
+since they peopled the islands in the Stone Age, they have remained
+secluded from the outer world.... In stature they are far below the
+average height; but although they have been called dwarfs and pygmies,
+these words must not be understood to imply anything in the nature of a
+monstrosity. Their reputation for hideousness, like their poisoned
+arrows and cannibalism, has long been a fallacy which, though widely
+popular, should now be exploded. The average heights of the men and
+women are found to be 4 feet 10¾ inches, and 4 feet 7¼ inches
+respectively, and their figures, which are proportionately built, are
+very symmetrical and graceful. Although not to be described as muscular,
+they are of good development, the men being agile, yet sturdy, with
+broad chests and square shoulders."
+
+
+     From E. H. Man on _The Aborigines of the Andaman Islands_, p. 14.
+     (Trübner, 1883.)
+
+"No idiots, maniacs or lunatics have ever yet been observed among them,
+and this is not because those so afflicted are killed or confined by
+their fellows, for the greatest care and attention are invariably paid
+to the sick, aged and helpless."
+
+Mr. Man also remarks (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ XII, 92): "It has been
+observed with regret by all interested in the race, that intercourse
+with the alien population has, generally speaking, prejudicially
+affected their morals; and that the candour, veracity, and self-reliance
+they manifest in their savage and untutored state are, when they become
+associated with foreigners, to a great extent lost, and habits of
+untruthfulness, dependence and sloth engendered."
+
+
++The Bushmen+
+
+     Extract from F. C. Selous' _African Nature-Notes_, pp. 344 and 347.
+     (1908.)
+
+"When I met with the first Bushmen I ever saw, on the banks of the
+Orange River in 1872, I was a very young man, and, regarding them with
+some repugnance, wrote in my diary that they appeared to be removed by a
+very few steps from the brute creation. That was a very foolish and
+ignorant remark to make, and I have since found out that though Bushmen
+may possibly be to-day in the same backward state of material
+development and knowledge as once were the palæolithic ancestors of the
+most highly cultured European races in prehistoric times, yet
+fundamentally there is very little difference between the natures of
+primitive and civilised men, so that it is quite possible for a member
+of one of the more cultured races to live for a time quite happily and
+contentedly amongst beings who are often described as degraded savages,
+and from whom he is separated by thousands of years in all that is
+implied by the word 'civilisation.' I have hunted a great deal with
+Bushmen, and during 1884 I lived amongst these people continuously for
+several months together. On many and many a night I have slept in their
+encampments without even any Kafir attendants, and though I was entirely
+in their power I always felt perfectly safe among them. As most of the
+men spoke Sechwana I was able to converse with them, and found them very
+intelligent, good-natured companions, full of knowledge concerning the
+habits of all the wild animals inhabiting the country in which they
+lived.... I have never seen their women and children ill-treated by
+them, and I have seen both the men and the women show affection for
+their children."
+
+Elsewhere Selous speaks of "John"--a member of the close-related Korana
+clan--who was in his service, as "of a pale yellow-brown colour,
+beautifully proportioned, with small delicately made hands and feet."
+
+
+     From preface by Henry Balfour to the book _Bushmen Paintings
+     Copied_, by Helen Tongue.
+
+"It is certain that the designs representing animals, etc., which are
+painted upon the walls of their caves and rock-shelters, frequently
+exhibit a realism and freedom in treatment which are quite remarkable in
+the art of so primitive a people. The skill with which many of the
+characteristic South African animals are portrayed testifies not only to
+unusual artistic efficiency, but also to a close observance of and an
+intimate acquaintanceship with the habits and peculiarities of the
+animals themselves.... The paintings are remarkable not only for the
+realism exhibited by so many, but also for a freedom from the limitation
+to delineation in _profile_ which characterises for the most part the
+drawings of primitive peoples, especially where animals are concerned.
+Attitudes of a kind difficult to render were ventured upon without
+hesitation, and an appreciation even of the rudiments of perspective is
+occasionally to be noted."
+
+
+     Note from the same book, by S. Bleek, daughter of the well-known
+     Dr. Bleek, of the Grey Library at Cape Town (1870).
+
+"Bushmen are called liars and thieves all over the Colony, but all those
+who stayed with us were truthful and very honest. On no occasion did
+they steal even a pocket-knife lost in the garden, or fruit from the
+trees. They might have taken sheep from hostile farmers, but they would
+never rob a friend or neighbour. They were cleanly in their habits, and
+most particular about manners.... As a people they were grateful and
+revengeful, independent in spirit, excellent fighters--who preferred
+death to captivity.... Captives were sometimes made servants, but not
+often well-treated, nor did they take to a settled life easily. Even
+kind masters found their longing for freedom hard to conquer."
+
+
++The Nechilli Eskimo+
+
+     From Amundsen's _North West Passage_, vol. i, p. 294. (Constable,
+     1908.)
+
+"We were suddenly brought face to face here with a people from the Stone
+Age: we were abruptly carried back several thousand years in the advance
+of human progress, to people who as yet knew no other method of
+procuring fire than by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and who with
+great difficulty managed to get their food just lukewarm, over the
+seal-oil flame on a stone slab, while we cooked our food in a moment
+with our modern cooking apparatus. We came here, with our most ingenious
+and most recent inventions in the way of firearms, to people who still
+used lances, bows and arrows of reindeer horn.... However, we should be
+wrong if from the weapons, implements, and domestic appliances of these
+people we were to argue that they were of low intelligence. Their
+implements, apparently so very primitive, proved to be as well adapted
+to their existing requirements and conditions as experience and the
+skilful tests of many centuries could have made them."
+
+
++Ugpi, an Eskimo+
+
+     From Amundsen vol. i, p. 190.
+
+"Ugpi or Uglen (the 'Owl') as we always called him, attracted immediate
+attention by his appearance. With his long black hair hanging over his
+shoulders, his dark eyes and frank honest expression, he would have been
+good-looking if his broad face and large mouth had not spoilt his beauty
+from a European standpoint. There was something serious, almost dreamy,
+about him. Honesty and truthfulness are unmistakably impressed on his
+features, and I would never have hesitated for a moment to entrust him
+with anything. During his association with us he became an exceptionally
+clever hunter both for birds and reindeer. He was about thirty years old
+and was married to Kabloka, a very small girl of seventeen."
+
+
++Eskimo and Civilisation+
+
+     From Amundsen vol. ii, p. 48.
+
+"During the voyage of the _Gjoa_, we came into contact with ten
+different Eskimo tribes in all ... and I must state it as my firm
+conviction that the Eskimo living absolutely isolated from civilisation
+of any kind are undoubtedly the happiest, healthiest, most honorable
+and most contented among them. It must therefore be the bounden duty of
+civilised nations who come into contact with the Eskimo to safeguard
+them against contaminating influences, and by laws and stringent
+regulations protect them against the many perils and evils of so-called
+civilisation. Unless this is done they will inevitably be ruined.... My
+sincerest wish for our friends the Nechilli Eskimo is that Civilisation
+may _never_ reach them."
+
+
++High Standard of Tribal Morality among the Aleoutes+
+
+     Witnessed to by the Russian missionary, Veniaminoff. See _Mutual
+     Aid_, pp. 99 and 100, by P. Kropotkin.
+
+The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been
+mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon
+the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin to the Eskimos--will better
+illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten
+years' stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian
+missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:--
+
+Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal.
+Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked
+on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when
+at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined.
+During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his
+children; he gives them all he has, and himself fasts. They are not
+inclined to stealing; that was remarked even by the first Russian
+immigrants. Not that they never steal; every Aleoute would confess
+having sometime stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole
+is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is
+touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The Aleoute
+is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he
+will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a gift of
+dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the
+departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the
+missionary was in January; and in November and December there was a
+great scarcity of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never
+touched by the starving people, and in January it was sent to its
+destination.)
+
+
++Home Life of the Eskimo+
+
+     By Villialm Stefansson. From _Harper's Monthly_, October, 1908.
+
+Stefansson lived for thirteen months in the household of a Chief,
+Ovaynak, on the Mackenzie River, and knew his subject well. He says:--
+
+"With their absolute equality of the sexes and perfect freedom of
+separation, a permanent union of uncongenial persons is well-nigh
+inconceivable. But if a couple find each other congenial enough to
+remain married a year or two, divorce becomes exceedingly improbable,
+and is much rarer among the middle-aged than among us. People of the age
+of twenty-five and over are usually very fond of each other, and the
+family--when once it becomes settled--appears to be on a higher level of
+affection and mutual consideration than is common among us. In an Eskimo
+home I have never heard an unpleasant word between a man and his wife,
+never seen a child punished, nor an old person treated inconsiderately.
+Yet the household affairs are carried on in an orderly way, and the good
+behaviour of the children is remarked by practically every traveller.
+
+"These charming qualities of the Eskimo home may be largely due to their
+equable disposition and the general fitness of their character for the
+communal relations; but it seems reasonable to give a portion of the
+credit to their remarkable social organisation; for they live under
+conditions for which some of our best men are striving--conditions that
+with our idealists are even yet merely dreams."
+
+
++Religious Beliefs among the Eskimos+
+
+     From Rasmussen's _People of the Polar North_, pp. 125 and 127.
+     (1908.)
+
+"Their religious opinions do not lead them to any sort of worship of the
+supernatural, but consist--if they are to be formulated in a creed--of a
+list of commandments and rules of conduct controlling their relations
+with unknown forces hostile to man."
+
+"A wise and independent thinking Eskimo, Otag the Magician, said to me
+of death: 'You ask, but I know nothing of death; I am only acquainted
+with life. I can only say what I believe: either death is the end of
+life, or else it is the transition into another mode of life. In neither
+case is there anything to fear. Nevertheless I do not want to die,
+because I consider that it is good to live.' This calm way of envisaging
+death is not unusual; I have seen many pagan Eskimos go to meet certain
+death without a trace of fear."
+
+
++Periodical Distributions to Obviate Accumulations of Wealth+
+
+     From Kropotkin's _Mutual Aid_, p. 97. (Heinemann, 1908.)
+
+"(The Eskimos) have an original means for obviating the inconveniences
+arising from a personal accumulation of wealth--which would soon destroy
+their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich he convokes the folk of
+his clan to a great festival, and after much eating, distributes among
+them all his fortune. On the Yukon river Dall saw an Aleoute family
+distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, two hundred
+strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, two hundred beavers
+and five hundred zibellines. After that they took off their festival
+dresses, and putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their
+kinsfolk, saying that, though they are now poorer than any one of them,
+they have won their friendship.[50] Like distributions of wealth appear
+to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain
+season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the
+year. In my (Kropotkin) opinion, these distributions reveal a very old
+institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of personal
+wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among
+the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment
+of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical
+abandonment of all debts, which took place in historical times with so
+many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival
+of that old custom."
+
+
++The Samoyedes+
+
+     From _Icebound on the Kolguev_, p. 384, by A. Trevor-Battye.
+     (Constable, 1895.)
+
+"Family affection among the Samoyeds is very strongly developed. It
+would be impossible to find greater evidence of this among any people.
+Another extremely marked character among them is family order. All
+everyday offices and occupations are carried out by a well-defined
+method and subdivision of labour. I never saw a single instance of
+anything approaching a family quarrel.... They are very handy sailors,
+patient and successful hunters and fishermen, and admirable workmen with
+such tools as they understand. No man can repair a damaged boat more
+quickly than a Samoyed, and from the roughest drift-wood (such as an
+English carpenter would throw on the fire), they fashion bows, arrows,
+sleighs, spoons, drinking-cups, bullet-moulds, and a variety of articles
+of everyday use."
+
+
++The Belle of Kolguev+
+
+     From _Icebound on the Kolguev_, p. 130.
+
+"Her sister-in-law Ustynia was really, if you accept the type, a pretty
+girl.... Her eyes were bright, and a pleasant smile played about her
+lips. When she laughed--and these people are always laughing--she
+betrayed the most perfectly beautiful teeth it is possible to imagine.
+Indeed all these people, even old Uano, had most wonderful teeth--white,
+regular and perfectly shaped. On her fingers Ustynia wore heavy rings of
+white and yellow metal, and her hands, like those of all Samoyeds, were
+faultless in shape and extraordinarily supple. If you add to this a
+dress reaching to the knees, formed of young reindeer skin, worked in
+many stripes of white and brown, the skirt banded with scarlet cloth and
+dogskin fur, and foot and leg coverings of soft patterned skin reaching
+above the knee--there you have Ustynia, the belle of Kolguev."
+
+
++The Todas+
+
+     Quoted from _The Todas_, by W. H. Rivers (1906).
+
+These people live on a very lofty and isolated plateau of the Nilgiri
+Hills in South India; and are especially interesting to us because till
+1812 "they were absolutely unknown to Europeans," and developed their
+own customs untouched by Western civilisation. "They are a purely
+pastoral people, limiting their activities almost entirely to the care
+of their buffaloes and to the complicated ritual which has grown up in
+association with these animals." (p. 6) ... They have a completely
+organised and definite system of polyandry. When a woman marries a man,
+it is understood that she becomes the wife of his brothers at the same
+time. When a boy is married to a girl, not only are his brothers usually
+regarded as also the husbands of the girl, but any brother born later
+will similarly be regarded as sharing his older brother's rights." (p.
+515.)
+
+"The men are strong and very agile; the agility being most in evidence
+when they have to catch their infuriated buffaloes at the funeral
+ceremonies. They stand fatigue well, and often travel great
+distances.... In going from one part of the hills to another a Toda
+always travels as nearly as possible in a straight line, ignoring
+altogether the influence of gravity, and mounting the steepest hills
+with no apparent effort. In all my work with the men it seemed to me
+they were extremely intelligent. They grasped readily the points of any
+enquiry on which I entered, and often showed a marked appreciation of
+complicated questions.... I can only record my impression, after several
+months' intercourse with the Todas, that they were just as intelligent
+as one would have found any average body of educated Europeans.... The
+characteristic note in their demeanour is their absolute belief in their
+own superiority over the surrounding races. They are grave and
+dignified, and yet thoroughly cheerful and well-disposed towards all."
+(pp. 18-23.)
+
+
++Nudity+
+
+     THE PELEW ISLANDS: from J. G. Wood (vol. _America_, p. 447). _See_
+     Captain H. Wilson, who was wrecked there in 1783.
+
+"The inhabitants are of a dark copper colour, well-made, tall, and
+remarkable for their stately gait. They employ the tattoo in rather a
+curious manner, pricking the patterns thickly on their legs from the
+ankles to a few inches above the knees, so that they look as if their
+legs were darker in colour than the rest of their bodies. They are
+cleanly in their habits, bathing frequently and rubbing themselves with
+coco-nut oil, so as to give a soft and glossy appearance to the skin....
+The men wear no clothing, not even the king himself having the least
+vestige of raiment, the tattoo being supposed to answer the purposes of
+dress.... In spite, however, of the absence of dress, the deportment of
+the sexes towards each other is perfectly modest. For example, the men
+and women will not bathe at the same spot, nor even go near a bathing
+place of the opposite sex unless it be deserted."
+
+
++Natives of the Amazon Region+
+
+Alfred Russell Wallace, in his _Travels on the Amazon_ (1853), speaks
+most warmly about the aborigines of that district--both as to their
+grace of form, their quickness of hand, and their goodnatured
+inoffensive disposition. He says (chap. xvii): "Their figures are
+generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at
+the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the human form."
+In his _My Life_, vol. ii, p. 288, he says: "Their whole aspect and
+manner were different (from the semi-civilised tribes); they walked with
+the free step of the independent forest-dweller ... original and
+self-sustaining as the wild animals of the forest ... living their own
+lives in their own way, as they had done for countless generations
+before America was discovered. The true denizen of the Amazonian
+forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten."
+
+
+     From _The Putumayo, or Devil's Paradise_. By W. E. Hardenburg
+     (1912).
+
+"The Huitotos are a well-formed race, and although small, are stout and
+strong, with a broad chest and a prominent bust; but their limbs,
+especially the lower, are but little developed.... That repugnant sight,
+a protruding abdomen, so common among the 'whites' and half-breeds on
+the Amazon, is very rare among these aborigines.... Notwithstanding some
+defects it is not rare to find among these women many who are really
+beautiful--so magnificent are their figures, and so free and graceful
+their movements." (p. 152).
+
+"Unions are considered binding among the Huitotos, and it is very rarely
+that serious disagreements arise between husband and wife. The women
+are naturally chaste, and it was not till the advent of the rubber
+collectors that they began to lose this primitive virtue--so generally
+met with among people not yet in contact with white men" (p. 154).
+
+[N.B.--These were some of the people so villainously tortured--men,
+women and children--for the collection of rubber, by commercial
+scoundrels, whose atrocities were exposed by Roger Casement and others.
+E.C.]
+
+
++Fine Figures and Features of the Dyaks+
+
+     Quotations from Beccar's _In the Forests of Borneo_, pp. 325 and
+     329. (Constable 1904.)
+
+"On the morning of October 19, as previously arranged, Ladja, with eight
+other Dyaks, came to the fort duly equipped for the journey. Ladja was a
+handsome young man, tall like most of his companions, slender, and
+beautifully made. His profile was nearly regular, the nose perfectly
+straight, but the cheek bones rather too prominent and the chin rather
+pointed. His complexion was very light." ... "Our Arno boatmen in
+Florence always pole where the river is shallow, and use their poles
+exactly as the Dyaks do theirs, only they certainly cannot compare with
+the latter in the length of the journeys thus performed with their light
+canoes. Ours literally flew over the water handled with incomparable
+dexterity by my six young savages. There is to my mind no lighter and
+more pleasant mode of progression, and certainly no kind of work
+displays so well the elegant movements and perfect proportions of these
+young Dyaks, who, practically unencumbered with clothing, are truly
+splendid specimens of humanity."
+
+
+     From Ida Pfeiffer's book _Meine zweite Weltreise_, vol. i, p. 116.
+     (Vienna, 1856.)
+
+"I must confess that I would gladly have journeyed longer among the free
+Dayaks. I found them wonderfully honourable, gentle and modest; indeed
+in these respects I put them above any people that I have as yet become
+acquainted with. I could leave all my things about, and go away for
+hours together, and never was the least thing missing. They begged me
+occasionally for many an object they saw, but immediately gave way when
+I explained that I needed it myself. They were never over-pressing or
+tiresome. It will be said, in denial of this, that the beheading of
+corpses and preservation of skulls does not look exactly like
+gentleness; but it must be remembered that this sad custom is chiefly
+the result of rude and ignorant superstition. I stick to my opinion, and
+as a further proof, would cite their domestic and thoroughly patriarchal
+mode of life, their morals and manners, the love that they have for
+their children, and the respect their children show to them."
+
+
++A Rodiya Boy+
+
+Ernst Haeckel in his _Visit to Ceylon_, describes the devotion to him of
+his Rodiya serving-boy at Belligam near Galle. The keeper of the
+rest-house there was an old man whom Haeckel, from his likeness to a
+well-known head, called by the name of Socrates. And Haeckel continues:
+"It really seemed as though I should be pursued by the familiar aspects
+of classical antiquity from the first moment of my arrival at my idyllic
+home. For as Socrates led me up the steps of the open central hall of
+the rest-house, I saw before me, with uplifted arms in an attitude of
+prayer, a beautiful naked brown figure, which could be nothing else than
+the famous statue of the 'Youth Adoring.' How surprised I was when the
+graceful bronze statue suddenly came to life, and dropping his arms fell
+on his knees, and after raising his black eyes imploringly to mine bowed
+his handsome face so low at my feet that his long black hair fell on the
+floor! Socrates informed me that this boy was a Pariah, a member of the
+lowest caste, the Rodiyas, who had lost his parents at an early age. He
+was told off to my exclusive service, and in answer to the question what
+I was to call my new body-servant, the old man informed me that his name
+was Gamameda. Of course I immediately thought of Ganymede, for the
+favorite of Jove himself could not have been more finely made, or have
+had limbs more beautifully proportioned and moulded.
+
+"Among the many beautiful figures which move in the foreground of my
+memories of the Paradise of Ceylon, Ganymede remains one of my dearest
+favorites. Not only did he fulfil his duties with the greatest attention
+and conscientiousness, but he developed a personal attachment and
+devotion to me which touched me deeply. The poor boy, as a miserable
+outcast of the Rodiya caste, had been from his birth the object of the
+deepest contempt of his fellow-men, and subjected to every sort of
+brutality and ill-treatment. He was evidently as much surprised as
+delighted to find me willing to be kind to him from the first.... I owe
+many beautiful and valuable contributions to my museum to Ganymede's
+unfailing zeal and dexterity. With the keen eye, the neat hand, and the
+supple agility of the Cinghalese youth, he could catch a fluttering moth
+or a gliding fish with equal promptitude; and his nimbleness was really
+amazing when, out hunting, he climbed the tall trees like a cat, or
+scrambled through the densest jungle to recover the prize I had killed."
+(p. 200.)
+
+
++Second Sight+
+
+     Native "diviners" in South Africa, from _The Spiritualism of the
+     Zulu_, by C. H. Bull, of Durban.
+
+"Many years ago I was riding transport between Durban and the Umzimkulu.
+I checked my loads at Durban and found them correct with the waybill,
+but when I reached my destination I discovered that I was one case
+short, for which I had to pay. On my return to my farm, I mentioned the
+fact to my brother, who proposed, more in the spirit of fun than
+anything else, that we should visit a diviner, and endeavour to discover
+what had become of it. I consented, and together we repaired to a native
+diviner. He immediately informed us of the object of our visit,
+although, so far as I can tell, it was morally impossible for him to
+have known it through any ordinary channels, and then he went on
+speaking as though in a dream: 'I see a waggon loaded with cases
+climbing up the Umgwababa Hill; there has been a lot of rain and the
+roads are slippery. Half way up the hill the rains have washed a gully;
+into this the waggon lurches, displacing a small case, which falls to
+the ground, but the driver, who is busy urging his team up the hill,
+does not notice it. Now the waggon has passed out of sight, but I see a
+Kaffir coming up the hill. When he reaches the spot where the case is
+lying, he stops for a few moments to examine it, and then proceeds to
+the top of the hill, where he stands for a few moments shading his eyes
+with his hand, as though looking beyond. Now he returns to where the
+case is lying, and lifting it up, crosses the road, and pushing his way
+through some tall tambootie grass, he reaches a large indonie tree;
+under the tree there is a stunted clump of wild bananas. He places the
+case in the centre of the clump, and after concealing it with some of
+the dry leaves, he goes on his way. The case is still there.'
+
+"Though wholly incredulous of the truth of the vision, I sent two 'boys'
+to the spot indicated, and they returned bringing with them the lost
+case, having found it exactly where the diviner said that he saw it."
+
+
++The Zulus+
+
+     THE ZULUS: Quotations from General Sir W. Butler's _Naboth's
+     Vineyard_, p. 263 (given in Blyden's _African Life and Customs_, p.
+     43).
+
+"In all the sad history of South Africa few things are sadder than the
+Zulu question. Where the Zulu came (in those days), no lock or key were
+necessary. No man who knew the Zulu--not even the white colonist, whose
+rage was largely the result of his being unable to get servile labour
+from him--could say that he had not found the Zulu honest, truthful,
+faithful; that the white wife and child had not been entirely safe from
+insult or harm at the hands of this black man; or that money and
+property were not immeasurably more secure in Zulu charge than in that
+of Europeans or Asiatics."
+
+
+From Blyden's _African Life and Customs_, p. 37.
+
+"There are to-day hundreds of so-called civilised Africans who are
+coming back to themselves. They have grasped the principles underlying
+the European social and economic order and reject them as not equal to
+their own as means of making adequate provision for the normal needs of
+all members of society both present and future--from birth all through
+life to death. They have discovered all the waste places, all the
+nakedness of the European system, both by reading and travel. The great
+wealth can no longer dazzle them, or conceal from their view the vast
+masses of the population living under what they once supposed to be the
+ideal system--who are of no earthly use to themselves or to others....
+Under the African system of communal property and co-operative effort,
+every member of a community has a home and a sufficiency of food and
+clothing and other necessaries of life--and for life; and his children
+after him have the same advantages. In this system there is no workhouse
+and no necessity for such an arrangement."
+
+
++Over-government+
+
+     From Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_, p. 336. (1894 edition.)
+
+"This motley, ignorant, bloodthirsty, thievish population (Papuans,
+Javanese, Chinese, etc.), live here without the shadow of a government,
+with no police, no courts, and no lawyers; yet they do not cut each
+other's throats; do not plunder each other day and night; do not fall
+into the anarchy such a state of things might be supposed to lead to. It
+is very extraordinary! It puts strange thoughts into one's head about
+the mountain-load of government under which people exist in Europe, and
+suggests the idea that we may be over-governed. Think of the hundred
+Acts of Parliament annually enacted to prevent us, the people of
+England, from cutting each other's throats, or from doing to our
+neighbours as we would _not_ be done by. Think of the thousands of
+lawyers and barristers whose whole lives are spent in telling us what
+the hundred Acts of Parliament mean, and one would be led to infer that
+if Dobbo has too little law England has too much."
+
+
++Society without Government+
+
+     From Morley's _Rousseau_, vol. ii, p. 227, _note_. (Eversley
+     edition, 1910.)
+
+"Jefferson, who was American minister in France from 1784 to 1789, and
+absorbed a great many of the ideas then afloat, writes in words that
+seem as if they were borrowed from Rousseau: 'I am convinced that those
+societies (as the Indians), which live without government, enjoy in
+their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those
+who live under European governments. Among the former public opinion is
+in the state of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did
+anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of government, they have
+divided the nation into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not
+exaggerate; this is a true picture of Europe.'" (From Tucker's _Life of
+Jefferson_, vol. i, p. 255.)
+
+
++Security without Government+
+
+From _Tafilet_, p. 353. By W. B. Harris. (Blackwood, 1895.)
+
+"The Moors have a proverb, and it is a very true one, that safety and
+security can only be found in the districts where there is no
+government--that is to say, where the government is a _tribal_ one."
+
+
++Degradation through "Civilisation"+
+
+     From _The Spiritualism of the Zulu_. By C. H. Bull, of Durban.
+
+"Thirty-two years ago, I lived for some time in a district in Natal,
+then thickly populated with natives, still conforming to the primitive
+customs of their race, yet honest, manly and intelligent people, with
+very definite ideas in regard to moral questions. After an absence of
+thirty years, just prior to my sailing for England, I again visited the
+district and was amazed to observe the change which had taken place in
+the people; their habits, characters and physique. Sordid poverty,
+dressed in mean rags or tawdry finery, suggestive of service to vice,
+had displaced the old dignity, born of conscious physical strength and
+symmetry of form, which once, though attired only in the trappings that
+simple art could devise from the rough products of nature, was
+characteristic; whilst drunkenness, dishonesty and immorality sought
+shelter under the meagre cloaks of the religion dispensed by the
+different sections of belief, established in the little iron, or wattle
+and daub churches, which everywhere disfigured the country side. The
+change was complete and deplorable, nor were the natives unconscious of
+their degradation, or without regret for the passing of the old days."
+
+
++Slavery+
+
+     From Waitz's _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, vol. ii, p. 281.
+     (Leipzig, 1860.)
+
+"One finds that the fate of Slaves among the ruder peoples is much
+happier than among the civilised; indeed it seems to grow worse and
+worse in proportion to the civilisation of the ruling folk. Strange and
+incredible as at first sight this seems, the following facts establish
+it beyond doubt. And indeed it is not difficult to explain. The chief
+reason is that with the increase of _merely material culture_, Time and
+Labour-force are more and more prized, and consequently always more
+violently and unscrupulously exploited, while on the contrary among
+primitive people in general a lesser value is placed on these things."
+
+
++The Fraud of Western Civilisation+
+
+     Extract from "A Letter to a Chinese Gentleman," by Leo Tolstoy.
+     (Published in _Saturday Review_, December 1, 1906.)
+
+"Amongst all these Western nations there unceasingly proceeds a strife
+between the destitute exasperated working people and the government and
+wealthy, a strife which is restrained only by coercion on the part of
+deceived men who constitute the army; a similar strife is continually
+waging between the different states demanding endlessly increasing
+armaments, a strife which is any moment ready to plunge into the
+greatest catastrophes. But however dreadful this state of things may be,
+it does not constitute the essence of the calamity of the Western
+nations. Their chief and fundamental calamity is that the whole life of
+these nations who are unable to furnish themselves with food is entirely
+based on the necessity of procuring means of sustenance by violence and
+cunning from other nations, who like China, India, Russia and others
+still preserve a rational agricultural life.
+
+"Constitutions, protective tariffs, standing armies, all this together
+has rendered the Western nations what they are--people who have
+abandoned agriculture and become unused to it, occupied in towns and
+factories in the production of articles for the most part unnecessary,
+people who with their armies are adapted only to every kind of violence
+and robbery. However brilliant their position may appear at first sight
+it is a desperate one, and they must inevitably perish if they do not
+change the whole structure of their life founded as it now is on deceit
+and the plunder and pillage of the agricultural nations."
+
+
+     From O'Brien's _White Shadows in the South Seas_. (New York, 1919.)
+
+"A hundred years ago there were 160,000 Marquesans in these [South Sea]
+Islands. To-day their total number does not reach 2,100." O'Brien
+describes the bad effects of Christianity on these "savages." For he
+says the so-called superstitions of these races had a great vitalising
+influence. Their dancing, their tattooing, their religious rites, their
+chanting and their warfare gave them a zest in life. But "to-day all
+Polynesians from Hawaii to Tahiti are dying because of the suppression
+of the play-instinct that had its expression in most of their customs
+and occupations." And they are now "nothing but joyless machines" and
+"tired of life."
+
+
++Failure of Our Civilisation+
+
+For a searching comparison between our social conditions and those of
+the many savage communities visited by him--and much to the general
+advantage of the latter--_see_ A. R. Wallace's _Malay Archipelago_ (1st
+ed. 1869), pp. 456, 7 (ed. 1894). And he ends the book by saying:
+
+"Until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our
+civilisation--resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop
+more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our
+nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our
+legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation--we shall
+never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important
+superiority over the better class of savages. This is the lesson I have
+been taught by my observations of uncivilised man.
+
+"I now bid my readers--Farewell!"
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[50] Dall, _Alaska and its Resources_, Cambridge, U.S., 1870.
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, by 
+Edward Carpenter
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44094 ***