Volume II Part 18 (2/2)
[Sidenote: His life and that of the planet alike.] Moreover, it appears that the order of development in the life of individual man and the order of development in the life of the earth are the same, their common features indicating a common plan. The one is the movement of a few hours, the other of myriads of ages. This sameness of manner in their progression points out their dependence on a law immutable and universal. The successive appearance of the animal series in the endless course of time has not, therefore, been accidental, but as predetermined and as certain as the successive forms of the individual. In the latter we do not find any cause of surprise in the a.s.sumption of states ever increasing in improvement, ever rising higher and higher toward the perfection destined to be attained. We look upon it as the course of nature. Why, then, should we consider the extinctions and creations of the former as offering any thing unaccountable, as connected with a sudden creative fiat or with an arbitrary sentence of destruction?
[Sidenote: Progress of humanity is according to law.] In this book I have endeavoured to investigate the progress of humanity, and found that it shows all the phases of individual movement, the evidence employed being historical, and, therefore, of a nature altogether different from that on which our conclusions in the collateral instances rest. It may serve to a.s.sure us that the ideas here presented are true when we encounter, at the close of our investigation, this harmony between the life of the individual, the life of society, and the life of the earth.
Is it probable that the individual proceeds in his movement of development under law, that the planet also proceeds in its movements under law, but that society does not proceed under law?
[Sidenote: Eternity and universality of that law.] Man, thus, is the last term of an innumerable series of organisms, which, under the domination of law, has, in the lapse of time, been evolving. Law has controlled the inorganic world, and caused the earth to pa.s.s through various physical conditions, gently and continuously succeeding one another. The plastic forms of organic beings have been modelled to suit those changing conditions. The invariability of that law is indicated by the numberless ages through which it has been maintained, its universality by its holding good in the life of the meanest individual.
But it is only a part of sociology that we have considered, and of which we have investigated the development. [Sidenote: Comparative sociology.]
In the most philosophical aspect the subject includes comparative as well as human sociology. For, though there may not be society where actions are simply reflex, there is a possibility of it where they are instinctive, as well as where they are intellectual. Its essential condition being intercommunication, there are necessarily modifications depending respectively on touch or upon the higher and more delicate senses. That is none the less society which, among insects, depends upon antennal contacts. Human society, founded on speech, sight, hearing, has its indistinct beginnings, its rudiments, very low down in the animal scale, as in the bell-like note which some of the nudibranchiate gasteropods emit, or the solitary midnight tapping with which the death-watch salutes his mate. Society resting on instinct is characterised by immobility; it is necessarily unprogressive. Society resting on intellect is always advancing.
But, for the present, declining this general examination of sociology, and limiting our attention strictly to that of humanity, we can not fail to be struck with the fact that in us the direction of evolution is altogether toward the intellectual, a conclusion equally impressed upon us whether our mode of examination be anatomical or historical.
[Sidenote: The aim of Nature is not at moral, but intellectual development.] Anatomically we find no provision in the nervous system for the improvement of the moral, save indirectly through the intellectual, the whole aim of development being for the sake of intelligence. Historically, in the same manner, we find that the intellectual has always led the way in social advancement, the moral having been subordinate thereto. The former hay been the mainspring of the movement, the latter pa.s.sively affected. It is a mistake to make the progress of society depend on that which is itself controlled by a higher power. In the earlier and inferior stages of individual life we may govern through the moral alone. In that way we may guide children, but it is to the understanding of the adult that we must appeal.
[Sidenote: Systems of policy must be in accordance therewith.] A system working only through the moral must sooner or later come into an antagonism with the intellectual, and, if it do not contain within itself a means of adaptation to the changing circ.u.mstances, it must in the end be overthrown. This was the grand error of that Roman system which presided while European civilization was developing. It a.s.sumed as its basis a uniform, a stationary psychological condition in man.
Forgetting that the powers of the mind grow with the possessions of the mind, it considered those who lived in past generations as being in no respect mentally inferior to those who are living now, though our children at sixteen may have a wider range of knowledge than our ancestors at sixty. That such an imperfect system could exist for so many ages is a proof of a contemporary condition of undeveloped intellect, just as we see that the understanding of a child does not revolt against the moral suasion, often intrinsically feeble, through which we attempt to influence him. But it would be as unphilosophical to treat with disdain the ideas that have served for a guide in the earlier ages of European life, as to look with contempt on the motives that have guided us in youth. Their feebleness and incompetency are excused by their suitability to the period of life to which they are applied.
But whoever considers these things will see that there is a term beyond which the application of such methods cannot be extended. [Sidenote: The Age of Reason demands intellectual incentives for the individual.] The head of a family would act unwisely if he attempted to apply to his son at twenty-one the methods he had successfully used at ten; such methods could be only rendered effective by a resort to physical compulsion. A great change in the intervening years has taken place, and ideas once intrinsically powerful can exert their influence no more. The moral may have remained unchanged; it may be precisely as it was--no better, no worse; but that which has changed is the understanding. Reasoning and inducements of an intellectual kind are now needful. An attempt to persist in an absolute system by constraint would only meet with remonstrance and derision.
[Sidenote: And the same holds good for humanity.] If it is thus with the individual, so it is likewise with humanity. For centuries nations may live under forms that meet their requirements, forms suitable to a feeble state; but it is altogether illusory to suppose that such an adaptedness can continue for ever. A critical eye discerns that the mental features of a given generation have become different from those of its ancestors. New ideas and a new manner of action are the tokens that a modification has silently taken place. Though after a short interval the change might not amount to much, in the course of time there must inevitably be exhibited the spectacle of a society that had outgrown its forms, its rules of life.
Wherever, then, such a want of harmony becomes perceptible, where the social system is incompatible with the social state, and is, in effect, an obsolete anachronism, it is plainly unphilosophical and unwise to resort to means of compulsion. No matter what the power of governments or of human authorities may be, it is impossible for them to stop the intellectual advancement, for it forces its way by an organic law over which they have no kind of control.
[Sidenote: Summary of the investigation of the position of man.]
Astronomers sometimes affirm that the sun is the cause, directly or indirectly, of all the mechanical movements that take place upon the earth. Physiologists say that he is the generator of the countless living forms with which her surface is adorned.
[Sidenote: Influence of the sun on inorganic nature, and on organic nature.] If the light, the warmth, and other physical influences of the sun could be excluded, there would be a stagnant and icy sea encircling silent and solitary sh.o.r.es. But the veil once withdrawn, or the influences permitted to take effect, this night and stillness would give place to activity and change. In the morning beams of the day, the tropical waters, expanding, would follow from east to west the course of the sun, each renewed dawn renewing the impulse, and adding force to the gentle but resistless current. At one place the flowing ma.s.s would move compactly; at another, caught by accidentally projecting rocks, it would give off little eddies, expending their share of its force; or, compressed in narrow pa.s.sages, it would rush impetuously along. Upon its surface myriads of momentary ripples would play, or opposing winds, called into existence by similar disturbances in the air, would force it into waves, making the sh.o.r.es resound with their breaking surge. Twice every day, under the conjoint influences of the sun and moon, as if the inanimate globe itself were breathing, the tide would rise and fall again upon the bosom of the deep.
The eddy, the ripple, the wave, the current, are accidental forms through which the originally imparted force is displayed. They are all expending power. Their life, if such a term can be used, is not the property of themselves, but of the ocean to which they belong.
Influences which thus metaphorically give life to the sea, in reality give life to the land. Under their genial operation a wave of verdure spreads over the earth, and countless myriads of animated things attend it, each like the eddies and ripples of the sea, expending its share of the imparted force. The life of these accidental forms, through which power is being transposed, belongs, not to itself, but to the universe of which it is a part.
[Sidenote: Nature of animals.] Of the waves upon the ocean there may not be two alike. The winds, the sh.o.r.es, their mutual interferences, a hundred extraneous influences, mould them into their ephemeral shapes.
So those collections of matter of which animated things consist offer a plastic substance to be modified. The number of individuals counts like the ripples of the sea.
[Sidenote: They const.i.tute a series.] As external circ.u.mstances change, animated forms change with them, and thus arises a series of which the members stand in a connected relation. The affiliated sequence of the external circ.u.mstances is represented in the affiliated succession of living types. From parts, or from things already existing, new parts and new things emerge, the new not being added or juxtaposed to the old, but evolved or developed from it. From the h.o.m.ogeneous or general, the heterogeneous or special is brought forth. A new member, fas.h.i.+oned in secrecy and apart, is never abruptly ingrafted on any living thing. New animal types have never been suddenly located among old ones, but have emerged from them by process of trans.m.u.tation. As certainly as that every living thing must die, so must it reach perfection by pa.s.sing through a succession of subordinate forms. An individual, or even a species, is only a zoological phase in a pa.s.sage to something beyond. An instantaneous adult, like an immortal animal, is a physiological impossibility.
[Sidenote: The doctrine of progressive improvement.] This bringing forth of structure from structure, of function from function, incidentally presents, upon the whole, an appearance of progressive improvement, and for such it has been not unfrequently mistaken. Thus if the lowest animals, which move by reflex action instantly but unconsciously, when an impression is made upon them, be compared with the higher ones, whose motions are executed under the influence of antecedent impressions, and are therefore controlled by ideas, there seems to have been such an improvement. Still, however, it is altogether of a physical kind. Every impression of which the dog or elephant is conscious implies change in the nerve centres, and these changes are at the basis of the memory displayed by those animals. Our own experience furnishes many ill.u.s.trations. When we gaze steadfastly on some brightly-illuminated object, and then close or turn aside our eyes, a fading impression of the object at which we have been looking still remains; or, when a spark is made to revolve rapidly, we think we see a circle of fire, the impression upon the retina lasting until the spark has completed its revolution. In like manner, though far more perfectly, are impressions registered or stored up in the sensory ganglia, the phantoms of realities that have once been seen. In those organs countless images may thus be superposed.
[Sidenote: a.n.a.logies between animals and man.] Man agrees with animals thus approaching him in anatomical construction in many important respects. He, too, represents a continuous succession of matter, a continuous expenditure of power. Impressions of external things are concealed in his sensory ganglia, to be presented for inspection in subsequent times, and to const.i.tute motives of action. But he differs from them in this, that what was preparatory and rudimentary in them is complete and perfect in him. From the instrument of instinct there has been developed an instrument of intellection. In the most perfect quadrupeds, an external stimulus is required to start a train of thought, which then moves on in a determinate way, their actions indicating that, under the circ.u.mstances, they reason according to the same rules as man, drawing conclusions more or less correct from the facts offered to their notice. But, the instrument of intellection completed, it is quickly brought into use, and now results of the highest order appear. The succession of ideas is under control; new trains can be originated not only by external causes, but also by an interior, a spontaneous influence. The pa.s.sive has become active.
Animals remember, man alone recollects. Every thing demonstrates that the development and completion of this instrument of intellection has been followed by the super-addition of an agent or principle that can use it.
[Sidenote: Points of distinction between them.] There is, then, a difference between the brutes and man, not only as respects const.i.tution, but also as respects destiny. Their active force merges into other mundane forces and disappears, but the special principle given to him endures. We willingly persuade ourselves that this principle is actually personified, and that the shades of the dead resemble their living forms. To Eastern Asia, where philosophy has been accustomed to the abstract idea of force, the pleasures we derive from this contemplation are denied, the cheerless doctrine of Buddhism likening the life of man to the burning of a lamp, and death to its extinction. Perceiving in the mutation of things, as seen in the narrow range of human vision, a suggestion of the variations and distribution of power throughout nature, it rises to a grand, and, it must be added, an awful conception of the universe.
But Europe, and also the Mohammedan nations of Asia, have not received with approbation that view. [Sidenote: The human soul.] To them there is an individualized impersonation of the soul, and an expectation of its life hereafter. The animal fabric is only an instrument for its use. The eye is the window through which that mysterious principle perceives: through the ear are brought to its attention articulate sounds and harmonies; by the other organs the sensible qualities of bodies are made known. From the silent chambers and winding labyrinths of the brain the veiled enchantress looks forth on the outer world, and holds the subservient body in an irresistible spell.
[Sidenote: Extension of these views to the nature of the world.] This difference between the Oriental and European ideas respecting the nature of man reappears in their ideas respecting the nature of the world. The one sees in it only a gigantic engine, in which stars and orbs are diffusing power and running through predestined mutations. The other, with better philosophy and a higher science, a.s.serts a personal G.o.d, who considers and orders events in a vast panorama before him.
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