Part 4 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX
IN human affairs everything happens by chance--that is, in defiance of human ideas, and without any direction of an intelligence. A man bathes in a pool, a crocodile seizes and lacerates his flesh. If any one maintains that an intelligence directed that cruelty, I can only reply that his mind is under an illusion. A man is caught by a revolving shaft and torn to pieces, limb from limb. There is no directing intelligence in human affairs, no protection, and no a.s.sistance. Those who act uprightly are not rewarded, but they and their children often wander in the utmost indigence. Those who do evil are not always punished, but frequently flourish and have happy children. Rewards and punishments are purely human inst.i.tutions, and if government be relaxed they entirely disappear. No intelligence whatever interferes in human affairs. There is a most senseless belief now prevalent that effort, and work, and cleverness, perseverance and industry, are invariably successful. Were this the case, every man would enjoy a competence, at least, and be free from the cares of money. This is an illusion almost equal to the superst.i.tion of a directing intelligence, which every fact and every consideration disproves.
How can I adequately express my contempt for the a.s.sertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and are ordered by a humane intelligence! It is the most utter falsehood and a crime against the human race. Even in my brief time I have been contemporary with events of the most horrible character; as when the mothers in the Balkans cast their own children from the train to parish in the snow; as when the Princess Alice foundered, and six hundred human beings were smothered in foul water; as when the hecatomb of two thousand maidens were burned in the church at Santiago; as when the miserable creatures tore at the walls of the Vienna theatre. Consider only the fates which overtake the little children. Human suffering is so great, so endless, so awful that I can hardly write of it. I could not go into hospitals and face it, as some do, lest my mind should be temporarily overcome. The whole and the worst the worst pessimist can say is far beneath the least particle of the truth, so immense is the misery of man. It is the duty of all rational beings to acknowledge the truth. There is not the least trace of directing intelligence in human affairs. This is a foundation of hope, because, if the present condition of things were ordered by a superior power, there would be no possibility of improving it for the better in the spite of that power.
Acknowledging that no such direction exists, all things become at once plastic to our will.
The credit given by the unthinking to the statement that all affairs are directed has been the bane of the world since the days of the Egyptian papyri and the origin of superst.i.tion. So long as men firmly believe that everything is fixed for them, so long is progress impossible. If you argue yourself into the belief that you cannot walk to a place, you cannot walk there. But if you start you can walk there easily. Any one who will consider the affairs of the world at large, and of the individual, will see that they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our own happiness if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with unlimited power, such as is credited to the intelligence which does not exist. A man of intellect and humanity could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner.
Could one like the divine Julius--humane, generous, broadest of view, deep thinking--wield such power, certainly every human being would enjoy happiness.
But that which is thoughtlessly credited to a non-existent intelligence should really be claimed and exercised by the human race. It is ourselves who should direct our affairs, protecting ourselves from pain, a.s.sisting ourselves, succouring and rendering our lives happy.
We must do for ourselves what superst.i.tion has. .h.i.therto supposed an intelligence to do for us. Nothing whatsoever is done for us. We are born naked, and not even protected by a s.h.a.ggy covering. Nothing is done for us. The first and strongest command (using the word to convey the idea only) that nature, the universe, our own bodies give, is to do everything for ourselves. The sea does not make boats for us, nor the earth of her own will build us hospitals. The injured lie bleeding, and no invisible power lifts them up. The maidens were scorched in the midst of their devotions, and their remains make a mound hundreds of yards long. The infants perished in the snow, and the ravens tore their limbs. Those in the theatre crushed each other to the death--agony. For how long, for how many thousand years, must the earth and the sea, and the fire and the air, utter these things and force them upon us before they are admitted in their full significance?
These things speak with a voice of thunder. From every human being whose body has been racked by pain; from every human being who has suffered from accident or disease; from every human being drowned, burned, or slain by negligence, there goes up a continually increasing cry louder than the thunder. An awe-inspiring cry dread to listen to, which no one dares listen to, against which ears are stopped by the wax of superst.i.tion and the wax of criminal selfishness:--These miseries are your doing, because you have mind and though, and could have prevented them. You can prevent them in the future. You do not even try.
It is perfectly certain that all diseases without exception are preventable, or, if not so, that they can be so weakened as to do no harm. It is perfectly certain that all accidents are preventable; there is not one that does not arise from folly or negligence. All accidents are crimes. It is perfectly certain that all human beings are capable of physical happiness. It is absolutely incontrovertible that the ideal shape of the human being is attainable to the exclusion of deformities. It is incontrovertible that there is no necessity for any man to die but of old age, and that if death cannot be prevented life can be prolonged far beyond the farthest now known. It is incontrovertible that at the present time no one ever dies of old age.
Not one single person ever dies of old age, or of natural causes, for there is no such thing as a natural cause of death. They die of disease or weakness which is the result of disease either in themselves or in their ancestors. No such thing as old age is known to us. We do not even know what old age would be like, because no one ever lives to it.
Our bodies are full of unsuspected flaws, handed down it may be for thousands of years, and it is of these that we die, and not of natural decay. Till these are eliminated, or as nearly eliminated as possible, we shall never even know what true old age is like, nor what the true natural limit of human life is. The utmost limit now appears to be about one hundred and five years, but as each person who has got so far has died of weaknesses inherited through thousands of years, it is impossible to say to what number of years he would have reached in a natural state. It seems more than possible that true old age--the slow and natural decay of the body apart from inherited flaw--would be free from very many, if not all, of the petty miseries which now render extreme age a doubtful blessing. If the limbs grew weaker they would not totter; if the teeth dropped it would not be till the last; if the eyes were less strong they would not be quite dim; nor would the mind lose its memory.
But now we see eyes become dim and artifical aid needed in comparative youth, and teeth drop out in mere childhood. Many men and women lose teeth before they are twenty. This simple fact is evidence enough of inherited weakness or flaw. How could a person who had lost teeth before twenty be ever said to die of old age, though he died at a hundred and ten? Death is not a supernatural event; it is an event of the most materialistic character, and may certainly be postponed, by the united efforts of the human race, to a period far more distant from the date of birth than has been the case during the historic period.
The question has often been debated in my mind whether death is or is not wholly preventable; whether, if the entire human race were united in their efforts to eliminate causes of decay, death might not also be altogether eliminated.
If we consider ourselves by the a.n.a.logy of animals, trees, and other living creatures, the reply is that, however postponed, in long process of time the tissues must wither. Suppose an ideal man, free from inherited flaw, then though his age might be prolonged to several centuries, in the end the natural body must wear out. That is true so far. But it so happens that the a.n.a.logy is not just, and therefore the conclusions it points to are not tenable.
Man is altogether different from every other animal, every other living creature known. He is different in body. In his purely natural state--in his true natural state--he is immeasurably stronger. No animal approaches to the physical perfection of which a man is capable.
He can weary the strongest horse, he can outrun the swiftest stag, he can bear extremes of heat and cold hunger and thirst, which would exterminate every known living thing. Merely in bodily strength he is superior to all. The stories of antiquity, which were deemed fables, may be fables historically, but search has shown that they are not intrinsically fables. Man of flesh and blood is capable of all that Ajax, all that Hercules did. Feats in modern days have surpa.s.sed these, as when Webb swam the Channel; mythology contains nothing equal to that. The difference does not end here. Animals think to a certain extent, but if their conceptions be ever so clever, not having hands they cannot execute them.
I myself maintain that the mind of man is practically infinite. It can understand anything brought before it. It has not the power of its own motion to bring everything before it, but when anything is brought it is understood. It is like sitting in a room with one window; you cannot compel everything to pa.s.s the window, but whatever does pa.s.s is seen. It is like a magnifying gla.s.s, which magnifies and explains everything brought into its focus. The mind of man is infinite.
Beyond this, man has a soul. I do not use this word in the common sense which circ.u.mstances have given to it. I use it as the only term to express that inner consciousness which aspires. These brief reasons show that the a.n.a.logy is imperfect, and that therefore, although an ideal animal--a horse, a dog, a lion--must die, it does not follow that an ideal man must. He has a body possessed of exceptional recuperative powers, which, under proper conditions, continually repairs itself. He has a mind by which he can select remedies, and select his course and carefully restore the waste of tissue. He has a soul, as yet, it seems to me, lying in abeyance, by the aid of which he may yet discover things now deemed supernatural.
Considering these things I am obliged by facts and incontrovertible argument to conclude that death is not inevitable to the ideal man. He is shaped for a species of physical immortality. The beauty of form of the ideal human being indicates immortality--the contour, the curve, the outline answer to the idea of life. In the course of ages united effort long continued may eliminate those causes of decay which have grown up in ages past, and after that has been done advance farther and improve the natural state. As a river brings down suspended particles of sand, and depositing them at its mouth forms a delta and a new country; as the air and the rain and the heat of the sun desiccate the rocks and slowly wear down mountains into sand, so the united action of the human race, continued through centuries, may build up the ideal man and woman. Each individual labouring in his day through geological time in front must produce an effect. The instance of Sparta, where so much was done in a few centuries, is almost proof of it.
The truth is, we die through our ancestors; we are murdered by our ancestors. Their dead hands stretch forth from the tomb and drag us down to their mouldering bones. We in our turn are now at this moment preparing death for our unborn posterity. This day those that die do not die in the sense of old age, they are slain. Nothing has been acc.u.mulated for our benefit in ages past. All the labour and the toil of so many millions continued through such vistas of time, down to those millions who at this hour are rus.h.i.+ng to and fro in London, has acc.u.mulated nothing for us. Nothing for our good. The only things that have been stored up have been for our evil and destruction, diseases and weaknesses crossed and cultivated and rendered almost part and parcel of our very bones. Now let us begin to roll back the tide of death, and to set our faces steadily to a future of life. It should be the sacred and sworn duty of every one, once at least during lifetime, to do something in person towards this end. It would be a delight and pleasure to me to do something every day, were it ever so minute. To reflect that another human being, if at a distance of ten thousand years from the year 1883, would enjoy one hour's more life, in the sense of fulness of life, in consequence of anything I had done in my little span, would be to me a peace of soul.
CHAPTER X
UNITED effort through geological time in front is but the beginning of an idea. I am convinced that much more can be done, and that the length of time may be almost immeasurably shortened. The general principles that are now in operation are of the simplest and most elementary character, yet they have already made considerable difference. I am not content with these. There must be much more--there must be things which are at present unknown by whose aid advance may be made. Research proceeds upon the same old lines and runs in the ancient grooves. Further, it is restricted by the ultra-practical views which are alone deemed reasonable. But there should be no limit placed on the mind. The purely ideal is as worthy of pursuit as the practical, and the mind is not to be pinned to dogmas of science any more than to dogmas of superst.i.tion. Most injurious of all is the continuous circling on the same path, and it is from this that I wish to free my mind.
The pursuit of theory--the organon of pure thought--has led incidentally to great discoveries, and for myself I am convinced it is of the highest value. The process of experiment has produced much, and has applied what was previously found. Empiricism is worthy of careful re-working out, for it is a fact that most things are more or less empirical, especially in medicine. Denial may be given to this statement, nevertheless it is true, and I have had practical exemplification of it in my own experience. Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism. If the eye is always watching, and the mind on the alert, ultimately chance supplies the solution.
The difficulties I have encountered have generally been solved by chance in this way. When I took an interest in archaeological matters--an interest long since extinct--I considered that a part of an army known to have marched in a certain direction during the Civil War must have visited a town in which I was interested. But I exhausted every mode of research in vain; there was no evidence of it. If the knowledge had ever existed it had dropped again. Some years afterwards, when my interest had ceased, and I had put such inquiries for ever aside (being useless, like the Egyptian papyri), I was reading in the British Museum. Presently I returned my book to the shelf, and then slowly walked along the curving wall lined with volumes, looking to see if I could light on anything to amuse me. I took out a volume for a glance; it opened of itself at a certain page, and there was the information I had so long sought--a reprint of an old pamphlet describing the visit of the army to the town in the Civil War. So chance answered the question in the course of time.
And I think that, seeing how great a part chance plays in human affairs, it is essential that study should be made of chance; it seems to me that an organon from experiment. Then there is the inner consciousness--the psyche--that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions. Besides which there is a super-sensuous reason. Often I have argued with myself that such and such a course was the right one to follow, while in the intervals of thinking about it an undercurrent of unconscious impulse has desired me to do the reverse or to remain inactive. Sometimes it has happened that the supersensuous reasoning has been correct, and the most faultless argument wrong. I presume this supersensuous reasoning, preceeding independently in the mind, arises from perceptions too delicate for a.n.a.lysis. From these considerations alone I am convinced that, by the aid of ideas yet to be discovered, the geological time in front may be immeasurably shortened.
These modes of research are not all. The psyche--the soul in me--tells me that there is much more, that these are merely beginnings of the crudest kind.
I fully recognise the practical difficulty arising from the ingrained, hereditary, and unconscious selfishness which began before history, and has been crossed and cultivated for twelve thousand years since. This renders me less sanguine of united effort through geological time ahead, unless some idea can be formed to give a stronger impulse even than selfishness, or unless the selfishness can be utilised. The complacency with which the ma.s.s of people go about their daily task, absolutely indifferent to all other considerations, is appalling in its concentrated stolidity. They do not intend wrong--they intend rightly: in truth, they work against the entire human race. So wedded and so confirmed is the world in its narrow groove of self, so stolid and so complacent under the immense weight of misery, so callous to its own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, that I almost despair to see it awakened. Cemeteries are often placed on hillsides, and the white stones are visible far off. If the whole of the dead in a hillside cemetery were called up alive from their tombs, and walked forth down into the valley, it would not rouse the ma.s.s of people from the dense pyramid of stolidity which presses on them.