Part 12

In the old times we accounted for creation in the simple terms of the Hebrew Scriptures--“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” We even saw no discrepancy in the tradition that creation took place in the spring. But when we attempt to account for creation in the terms of science or naturalism, the problem is far from being so simple. We have not so tangible a point from which to start. It is as if we were trying to find the end or the beginning of the circle. Round and round we go, caught in the endless and beginningless currents of the Creative Energy; no fixity or finality anywhere; rest and motion, great and small, up and down, heat and cold, good and evil, near and far, only relative; cause and effect merging and losing themselves in each other; life and death perpetually playing into each other’s hands; interior within interior; depth beneath depth; height above height; the tangible thrilled and vibrating with the intangible; the material in bonds to the non-material; invisible, impalpable forces streaming around us and through us; perpetual change and transformation on every hand; every day a day of creation, every night a revelation of unspeakable grandeur; suns and systems forming in the cyclones of stardust; the whole starry host of heaven flowing like a meadow brook, but where, or whence, who can tell? The center everywhere, the circumference nowhere; pain and pleasure, good and evil, inextricably mixed; the fall of man a daily and hourly occurrence; the redemption of man, the same! Heaven or hell waiting by every doorstep, boundless, beginningless, unspeakable, immeasurable--what wonder that we seek a short cut through this wilderness and appeal to the supernatural?

When I look forth upon the world and see how, regardless of man and his well-being, the operations of Nature go on--how the winds and the storms wreck him or destroy him, how the drought or the floods bring to naught his industries, how not the least force in heaven or earth turns aside for him, or makes any exception to him; in short, how all forms of life are perpetually ground between the upper and the nether millstones of the contending and clashing natural material forces, I ask myself: “Is there nothing, then, under the sun, or beyond the sun, that has a stake in our well-being? Is life purely a game of chance, and is it all luck that we are here in a world so richly endowed to meet all our requirements?” Serene Reason answers: “No, it is not luck as in a lottery. It is the good fortune of the whole. It was inherent in the constitution of the whole, and it continues because of its adaptability; life is here because it fits itself into the scheme of things; it is flexible and compromising.” We find the world good to be in because we are adapted to it, and not it to us. The vegetable growth upon the rocks where the sea is forever pounding is a type of life; the waves favor its development. Life takes advantage of turbulence as well as of quietude, of drought as well as of floods, of deserts as well as of marshes, of the sea-bottom as well as of the mountain-tops. Both animal and vegetable life trim their sails to the forces that beat upon them. The image of the sail is a good one. Life avails itself of the half-contrary winds; it captures and imprisons their push in its sails; by yielding a little, it makes headway in the teeth of the gale; it gives and takes; without struggle, without opposition, life would not be life. The sands of the shore do not struggle with the waves, nor the waves with the sands; the buffeting ends where it began. But trees struggle with the wind, fish struggle with the flood, man struggles with his environment; all draw energy from the forces that oppose them. Life gains as it spends; its waste is an investment. Not so with purely material bodies. They are like the clock, they must be perpetually wound from without. A living body is a clock, perpetually self-wound from within.

The faith and composure of the naturalist or naturist are proof against the worst that Nature can do. He sees the cosmic forces only; he sees nothing directly mindful of man, but man himself; he sees the intelligence and beneficence of the universe flowering in man; he sees life as a mysterious issue of the warring element; he sees human consciousness and our sense of right and wrong, of truth and justice, as arising in the evolutionary sequence, and turning and sitting in judgment upon all things; he sees that there can be no life without pain and death; that there can be no harmony without discord; that opposites go hand in hand; that good and evil are inextricably mingled; that the sun and blue sky are still there behind the clouds, unmindful of them; that all is right with the world if we extend our vision deep enough; that the ways of Nature are the ways of God if we do not make God in our own image, and make our comfort and well-being the prime object of Nature. Our comfort and well-being are provided for in the constitution of the world, but we may say that they are not guaranteed; they are contingent upon many things, but the chances are upon our side. He that would save his life shall lose it--lose it in forgetting that the universe is not a close corporation, or a patented article, and that it exists for other ends than our own. But he who can lose his life in the larger life of the whole shall save it in a deeper, truer sense.

VIII

A FALLACY MADE IN GERMANY

During the Great War the question was asked, “Do the inexorable laws of evolution apply to human beings as they apply to the lower animals and to plants?” Most assuredly they do, but with a difference. Man is as certainly one of the results of the evolutionary process as is the horse or the dog, the tree or the plant. We are as certain of his animal origin as we can well be of anything in the biological history of the globe. But the inference which has so often been drawn from this fact--namely, that man’s development involves the same factors, and is along parallel lines--is a fallacy. That the supremacy of might, which has ruled, and still rules in nature below man, justifies the rule of might in human communities in our day, is an invention of perverted human ambition.

As Nature rules by the law of might, and as man is a part of Nature, why is he not under the same rule? The answer is that man is an exceptional creature; that while he is a part of the animal kingdom, he is a new kind of animal; and while he is the outcome of evolution, like the rest, new factors which are not operative in the orders below him have played a leading part in his later development. These factors are his reason, which gives him a sense of the true and the false, and his conscience, which gives him a sense of right and wrong. These faculties subordinate the rule of might to the rule of right. They have resulted in the establishment of standards of conduct for individuals, for communities, and for organized governments that do not exist among the lower animal orders, and only in a very limited sense in the lower human orders.

There is no question of right and wrong among the plants of the field, or the trees of the forest, or the birds of the air, or the beasts of the earth--only the question of power to survive; might in the sense of power of adaptation settles the question.

Since the dawn of history man’s moral and intellectual faculties have come more and more to the fore, the moral standards always lagging a little behind the intellectual and the æsthetic standards. Among nearly all the more advanced ancient races the concepts of justice, of mercy, and of fair dealing were dull and sluggish in comparison with their intellectual acumen and their artistic achievements. The Greeks would lie and steal and set on foot piratical expeditions against their neighbors, while yet they produced such men as Aristotle and Plato, and such artists as Phidias and Praxiteles.

In our day the whole civilized world was shocked and alarmed by the moral lapse of a great people ranking among the highest in intelligence and material efficiency, suddenly preaching and practicing the doctrine of might over right which prevails in the orders below man. The German philosophers brazenly justified their nation’s course in their aggressive war, with all its attendant horrors, by an appeal to the Darwinian doctrines of the struggle for existence, and the consequent survival of the fittest, doctrines which play such a prominent part in biological evolution. The nation suddenly slumped into a barbarism worse than that of their ancestral Huns. The Hun was again triumphant, gloating over the prospect of the rich plunder and the orgies of wine and lust that awaited him in new fields of conquest. It was a spectacle to make the Genius of Humanity veil her face and weep tears of blood.

All that was noble and precious in international relations; standards of conduct that it had taken long generations to achieve; the peace and good-will of the world; coöperation in scientific fields, and in endeavors toward human betterment--all went by the board before the Teutonic debauch of greed and lust for blood and conquest.

Seriously to discuss in our day the question of the rule of might over right--that force is the arbiter of justice in human relations, except when it is invoked to chastise the offender--seems a waste of time. On how low a plane must a people live whose leaders appeal to the way of the tiger with his prey, or of the boa constrictor with his victim, in establishing relations with other peoples! This ferocious appeal of kaiserism to predatory nature--to “Nature red in tooth and claw”--in order to set itself right before the conscience of mankind, is as fatuous as it is fallacious. If we could reckon without the sense of right and wrong, which has a survival value as real as any form of physical might or power of adaptation, especially with the later civilized nations (except Germany), a different face would be put upon the question. But we cannot. The floodtide of world democracy and humanity is setting too strongly in that direction, and we can only hope and pray that misguided Germany may in the new generation be caught up and borne forward to new greatness and world usefulness, on the bosom of the same tide.

THE PRICE OF DEVELOPMENT

The biological law of the supremacy of the strong over the weak, of the fit over the less fit, which prevails throughout the world of living things, gives us pause when it is applied to human history and to the relations of man with man. Yet it is true that the price of development is the struggle for life. The road of evolution is an uphill road. When struggle ceases, progress ceases, and evolution becomes devolution. Our strength is the strength of the obstacles we overcome. The living machine, contrary to the non-living, gains power from the friction it begets.

When we open the book of the biological history of the globe, we find, to begin with, no force but that which we call brute force, no justice but power, no crime but weakness, no law but the law of battle. The victory is to the strong and the race to the swift. And it is well. It is on this plan, as I have so often said, that the life of the globe has come to what we behold it. Man has come to his present estate, the trees in the forest, the grasses and flowers of the field, the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea, have each and all attained their present stage of development through the operation of this law of natural competition, and the survival of the fittest. Though marked by what we call cruelty and injustice, in the totality of its operations it is a beneficent law. If it were not so, how could the world of living things have attained its present development? If it were a malevolent law, would not life have suffered shipwreck long ago? The world of living things and of non-living still merits the primal approval--“Behold, it is very good!” Not your good, nor my good, but a general good, the good of all. Nature’s scheme, if we may say she has a scheme, embraces the totality of things, and that the totality of things is good who but a born pessimist, a radically negative nature, can deny? Mixed good undoubtedly it is, but is there, or can there be, any other good in the universe? Good forever freeing itself from the non-good, or from the fetters of evil--good to eat, to drink, to behold, to live by, to die by--good for the body, good for the mind, good for the soul, good in time, and good in eternity?

From solar systems to atoms and molecules, the greater bodies, the greater forces, prevail over the lesser, and yet flowers bloom, and life is sweet, sweet for the minor forms as well as for the major.

Inert matter knows only the laws of force. In the world of living matter, up to a certain point, the same rule prevails. In the fields and woods the more vigorous plants and trees run out the less vigorous. In the dryer meadows in my section of the Catskills the orange hawkweed completely crowds out the meadow grasses; it plants itself on every square inch of the surface, and every four or five years the farmer has to intervene with his plow to turn the battle in favor of the grass again. In the gardens, unless the gardener take a hand in the game, the weeds choke down or smother all his vegetables. The weeds are rank with original sin and they easily supplant our pampered and cultivated cereals and legumes.

In the animal world there are few exceptions to the rule of the supremacy of power. There is no question of right or wrong, of mercy or cruelty. It is not cruel or unjust for the bird to catch the insect, or for the cat to catch the bird, or for the lion to devour the lamb, or for the big fishes to eat up the little fishes. It is the rule of nature, and never a question of right or wrong.

Biological laws are as remorseless as physical laws. The course of animal evolution through the geologic ages is everywhere marked by the triumph of new and superior forms over the old and inferior forms. Among the lower races of man, our remote savage ancestors, might ruled. The strong and prolific tribes supplanted those that were less so, and, among the nations, up to our own day, the rule of natural competition, or survival of the fittest, has held full sway. Those nations which are dominant are so by virtue of their superior qualities, physical, moral, or intellectual. It is not a question of might except in so far as this question is linked with the question of moral and intellectual superiority.

Is there, then, no such thing as equity, justice, fair play in the world? Shall I seize my neighbor’s farm and despoil him of his goods and chattels because I am stronger than he? Shall one state invade and despoil another, or seize its territory, because it is stronger and considers itself more fit to survive?

The rule of might, as I have said, prevails throughout the world of matter and of life below man, and long prevailed in pre-human and human history. But the old law of nature has been limited and qualified by a new law which has come into the world and which is just as truly a biological law in its application to man as was the old law of might. I refer to the law of man’s moral nature, the source of right, justice, mercy. The progress of the race and of the nations is coming more and more to depend upon the observance of this law. Without it there is no organization, no coöperation, no commerce, no government. Without it anarchy would rule, and our civilization would crumble and society disintegrate.

The moral sense of mankind is now the dominant fact in human history; the rule of might has been superseded by the rule of right. It is this sense in the civilized world that has revolted so overwhelmingly against the Prussian military power in precipitating the World War; and this conscience will probably be so developed and intensified by the useless waste and cruelty of the war that such a calamity will never again befall the world. Those nations will become the most powerful that are the most just, the most humane, that develop in the highest degree a world conscience, and realize the most intensely that the nations all belong to one family, in which the good and evil of one are the good and evil of all. What can the progress of civilization mean but the progress of international comity, sympathy, coöperation, fair-dealing; in fact, the fullest recognition of the validity of the ethical laws to which we hold individuals and communities amenable?

History is full of violence, cruelty, injustice, and the triumph of the strong over the weak, wherein the end seemed to justify the means; yet never since the world began did physical might alone make moral right. The sheriff and the hangman have made the doctrine unpopular among individuals--the ethical sense of mankind will in time make it equally unpopular among nations.

Nature is not moral; primitive biological laws are not moral; they are unmoral. There is no moral law until it is born of human intercourse; then it becomes more and more a biological law, more and more prominent in social and national progress. The law of the jungle begins and ends in the jungle; when we translate it into human affairs, we must take the cruelty of the jungle out of it, and read it in terms of beneficent competition. Man is the jungle humanized; the fangs and claws are drawn, and the stealthy spring gives place to open and fair competition.

In the Darwinian struggle for existence there is first the struggle with environment, or with the non-living forces--heat, cold, storm, wind, flood; the organic always at war with the inorganic out of which its power comes. The fateful physical and mechanical forces go their way regardless of the life that surrounds them and which draws its energy from them. Gravity would pull down every tree and shrub and every animal that walks or flies. The wind and the storm would flatten down the flowers and grasses and grains like a steam roller, and often succeeds in doing so. See the timothy and wheat and corn struggle to lift themselves again. Behold how the trees grip the rocks and soil, and brace themselves against the wind! This struggle is, of course, not a conscious one. Apart from the original push of life, it can all be explained in terms of physics and chemistry. The bio-chemist will tell you why the plant leans toward the light, and why it rights itself when pressed down; but why or how matter organizes itself into the various living forms is a question before which natural philosophy is dumb. Neither chemistry nor physics can give us the secret of life. The ingenious devices to secure cross-fertilization among certain plants, devices for scattering the seed among others,--the hooks, the wings, the springs,--to me all seem to imply intelligence, not apart from, but inherent in, the things themselves. Power of adaptation--to take advantage of wind and flood, of solid and fluid--is one of the mysterious attributes of life. And yet we know that vegetable life takes advantage of these things not, as we do, by forethought and invention, but by a mysterious inherent impulse.

How the bee and the bird battle with the wind, the fish with the waves and the rapids, the fur-bearers with the cold and the snow! how all living creatures struggle to escape or resist the dissolving power of the natural forces!

The ever-present instinct of fear in all wild creatures and in children, and the quickness with which it can be aroused in all persons, throw light upon the crueler aspects of this struggle for existence which is common to all forms of animal life. Had life never been beset with perils, we should have been strangers to the emotion of fear, as would all other creatures. Even the fly that alights on my paper as I write fears my hand. It is ever on guard against its natural enemies. This is the proof of the universal struggle. Among the lower forms the struggle or competition of the fleet with the slow, the cunning with the stupid, the sharp-eyed, the sharp-eared, and the keen of scent with those less so; of the miscellaneous feeders with the more specialized feeders; and, among mankind, the competition of men of purpose, of foresight, of judgment, of experience, of probity, and of other personal resources, with men who are deficient in these things; and, among nations and peoples, the inevitable competition of those who cherish the highest national ideals, the best-organized governments, the best race inheritance, the most natural resources, and so on, with the less fortunate in these respects--all this struggle and competition, I say, is beneficent and on the road to progress.

Myriads of different types of animal and vegetable life fit into the scheme of organic nature without conflict or hindrance, but when there is conflict, the strong prevail. The small and the gigantic, the feeble and the mighty, the timid and the bold, the frail and the robust--birds, insects, mice, squirrels, cattle--exist in the same landscape and all prosper. Only when there is rivalry do the feeble go to the wall, which means only that their numbers are kept down. The cats do not exterminate the mice and rats, nor do the hawks and owls exterminate the other birds; they are a natural check on their undue increase. Nature’s checks and balances are all important. When species subsist upon species, as weasels upon rodents and hawks upon other birds, there seems to be some law that keeps the bloodthirsty in check. Why should there be so few weasels, since they appear as prolific as their victims? Why so few pigeon hawks, since the hawks have no natural enemies, while the trees swarm with finches and robins?