Part 19

When we try to think in terms of spheres and solar systems, our everyday concepts avail us very little; in fact, they set us down wrong-end up. We look at the moon or the sun and we say, Surely if we were at the South Pole of either of these bodies, we should be as truly on the under side of it as the fly is when it alights at the South Pole of the globe in our study. We should be in a position opposite to that which we should occupy at the North Pole. That every point on the surface of a cosmic sphere should be on top, or rather that there should be no top, and no bottom; that these concepts should be abolished; that if two inhabited globes should come in collision, each would seem to the people upon the other to be falling down out of the heavens upon them; that out in sidereal space not even the Huns could drop bombs, or send up balloons, because there would be no up and no down--when we grasp these facts, I say, we are at the end of our tether; we not only do not know “where we are at,” but we find there is no “at.” Our minds can deal with the cosmos only in an abstract or mathematical way. As a concrete fact even our little earth is too much for us. Not merely too big, it contradicts all our experience. If we could build a sphere a mile through, or ten miles or a hundred miles, or ten thousand miles through, could we stand upon it at the South Pole? When we think of the daily revolutions of the earth upon its axis, we are compelled to think of it as turning over, because it brings the sun above us by day and beneath us by night, and hence the puzzle to the unlettered mind as to why the lakes and ponds do not all spill out.

Among the heavenly bodies other laws prevail; there is motion without friction or dissipation of energy; there is no body at rest; there is no motion in right lines, but only in curved lines; there is no beginning nor ending; there is only eternal progression; and this is a condition of things that throws our mental adjustments all out of gear. The problem of God, the problem of creation, the problem of future life, throw our mental adjustments out of gear in the same way.

There is order and harmony in our own solar system and doubtless in countless others in the immensity of space, but the cosmos as a whole does not seem to present this harmony, as collisions actually occur. Astronomers tell us that the units of the starry hosts are moving in all directions and that collisions are inevitable, though at such vast intervals, owing to the inconceivable spaces, that human time can take no note of them. A billion of our years, like a billion of our miles, count for but little in the infinitudes of the universe.

When we try to think that the universe had a creator, that there was a time when it did not exist, that it was called into being by a power apart from itself, do we not fall down completely? We can, of course, think in arbitrary terms; our imaginations are equal to almost any feat (Lewis Carroll’s was equal to “Alice in Wonderland”; Dante’s was equal to making the world shudder over his pictures of the inferno): but the understanding has to have solid ground to go upon, and where is the solid ground in our idea of creation? We are off the sphere, alone in space, face to face with the Infinite, and we have no language in which to express ourselves.

IX. MAN A PART OF NATURE

We habitually think or speak of ourselves as something apart from Nature, as belonging to some higher order of reality, when, in fact, we are as much a part of the total scheme of things as are the trees and the beasts of the field. True, we are separated from them by a gulf, but the gulf has been bridged, and bridged by Nature, and both sides are equally her territory.

Nature is the one supreme reality, the sum total of the visible and invisible bodies and forces that surround us, out of which we came and of which we form a part. Nature is all things to all men, because she is the larger fact, and holds an infinite diversity in an all-embracing unity.

When we come to look upon man in this light, when we see his whole civilization and all his achievements upon the earth--his science, his philosophy, his art, his religion, yea, his follies and crimes and superstitions, his wars and hatreds, as well as his heroism and devotion--as parts of Nature, as expressions of the same total cosmic energy as are all things else, we have gained an astronomic point of view; we see things in orbic completeness.

Nature is all-inclusive. We cannot draw a circle around that circle. We have so long been wont to solve our riddles by invoking the supernatural that the habit has become ingrained. We can only do as Carlyle did, feed our minds with words and fall back upon the natural-supernatural.

Our attitudes toward Nature differ as widely as do our occupations, our characters, and our temperaments. There is the direct, practical attitude of the farmer, the miner, the engineer, the sailor, the sportsman, the traveler, and the explorer; there is the gay and holiday attitude of the camper-out and the picnicker; there is the sympathetic and appreciative attitude of the nature-lover; there is the imaginative and creative attitude of the artist and the poet; there is the more or less rapt and mystical attitude of the religious enthusiast; there is the inquisitive and experimental attitude of the man of science; and there is the meditative and speculative attitude of the philosopher.

We almost invariably personify Nature and read our own traits and limitations into her. We say she is wise or she is foolish; she is cruel or she is kind; she fails or she succeeds. The early philosophers said that Nature abhorred a vacuum. Darwin says that she “tells us in the most emphatic manner that she abhors perpetual self-fertilization.” There are times when the most rigid man of science humanizes Nature in this way. We look upon ourselves as taking liberties with her; we discipline her and train her in the ways she should go for our good; we pit her forces against one another. Her flowers, her birds, her sunsets, her rainbows, her waterfalls, her mountain lakes, her ocean-shores, her midnight skies, at times move us and lift us above ourselves. On the other hand, there are times when we frown upon her, or despitefully use her and call her hard names. When her storms or her frosts or her blights or her droughts or her insect hordes destroy our crops, or lay waste our forests or sweep away our buildings or kill our cattle or inundate our towns and villages, we instinctively look upon her as our enemy, and, so far as we are able, arm ourselves against her. Emerson speaks of Nature as that “terrific or beneficent force.” It is both. Indeed, we may use a stronger adjective and say that at times it is a malevolent force.

We ascribe all our human qualities and traits to Nature. Indeed, we can hardly speak of her without personifying her. As we are a part of her, how can we fail to see our own traits in her? At least, how else can we interpret her except in terms of our own being? Early man did this entirely. All the natural forces and appearances took on his own image, and were for or against him. When we seek to interpret Nature we still do it in the terms of literature, of poetry. We humanize her, which means, of course, that we interpret ourselves. Nature reflects the spirit we bring to her. She is gay, somber, beautiful, winsome, repellent, wise or foolish, just in the degree in which we ourselves are capable of these emotions or possess these qualities. She is terrifying because we have a capacity for terror. She is soothing when we are in a mood to be soothed. She is sublime only so far as we have the capacity to experience this emotion.

It is our reactions to Nature that give rise to the qualities we ascribe to her. The music of the æolian harp is not in the wind; its origin is the reaction of the harp to the wind, but it is not music until it reaches the human ear. The colors of the landscape are not in the rocks and trees and waters, but in the experiences of the eye when the vibrations of ether which we call light are reflected back to it from these objects.

We create the world in which we live. I love Nature, but Nature does not love me. Love is an emotion which rocks and clouds do not feel. Nature loves me in my fellow beings. The breezes caress me, the morning refreshes me, the rain on the roof soothes me--that is, when I am in a mood to be caressed and refreshed and soothed. The main matter is the part I play in these things. All is directed to me and you because we are adjusted to all. No more is the kite or the sail adjusted to the wind, the water-wheel to the falling water, than are we adjusted to outward Nature. She is the primary and everlasting fact; we, as living beings, are the secondary and temporary facts.

X. THE FITTEST TO SURVIVE

The survival of the fittest does not mean the survival of the best from the human point of view. The lower orders of humanity are better fitted to survive than the higher orders--hardier, more prolific, having a fuller measure of life. The cultivated plants--wheat, corn, rye, barley, oats--are less fitted to survive than what we call weeds. The latter can shift for themselves, but the former cannot.

We lament the decay of the native Anglo-Saxon stock in this country, and the increase of the races from southern Europe and from the Orient. They stand our pitiless sunlight better than do the descendants of our Puritan ancestors. From our point of view this rule of natural selection will not result in a superior race, but in an inferior; not in better men, but in better animals. Character and intellect win in those fields where character and intellect tell, but where muscle and brawn and vitality tell more they fail.

The Japanese have great power of survival; they are hardy, prolific and pushing. The Germans also have great survival power, greater than the French; they are more prolific, more materialistic, nearer the brutes; they are not handicapped with much soul. They are morally blind, but intellectually clever. Their moral blindness and insensibility have resulted in their downfall. Great Britain leads the European nations because she is not only hardy and prolific, but she also has the gift of empire; she builds upon law and order; she establishes justice and fair play.

In the Darwinian sense the Jews are the fittest to survive of all the races of man. They are prolific and grasping; they will always get what belongs to them, and a little more; they are bound to possess the earth. The only drawback I see is that they do not take kindly to the soil. Trade alone will not give a nation the supremacy.

XI. THE POWER OF CHOICE

Think how we come into the world, what an important thing it is to each of us and to the world, and yet how fortuitous and haphazard it all is, and what precautions are often taken to prevent our coming!

See the deformed, the half-witted, the low-browed, the degenerate, that come. The great army of the common, the few capable of higher and finer things. Nature apparently finds her account in one class the same as in the other, in Pat as well as in Paul, in the inferior races as well as in the higher.

In our manufacturing affairs we aim to turn out the best article possible--the best shoe, the best hat, the best gun, the best book; but Nature makes no such effort in the case of man, though she does in the case of the lower orders. Probably every individual bird or bug or four-footed beast in a state of nature is perfect of its kind, that is, suited to its place in the scheme of organic life. But how different with man! It is the price he pays for his freedom, his power of choice. The birds and the beasts have no power of choice, they are entirely in the hands of Nature. They are all moulded to one pattern.

The advantage that comes to man from his power of choice is greater variation, hence greater progress. He crosses or reverses or turns aside the laws of Nature, or bends them to his will, and for this privilege he pays the price of idiocy, deformity, and the vast mass of commonplace humanity. His gain is now and then men of exceptional ability, geniuses, who lead the race forward. We know that every improved breed of chicken or sheep or swine will come true, but we do not know in anything like the same degree of certainty that the Emersons and the Lincolns and the Tennysons will repeat and continue the type. Cultivated fruit relapses in the seed, and cultivated persons often do the same.

On the other hand, rude and ordinary humanity now and then far transcends itself in its offspring, just as the new and choice apple or peach or plum has its humble origin in a seedling.

XII. ILLUSIONS

In his “Conduct of Life” Emerson has an essay on “Illusions” in which he describes the semblance to midnight skies paved with stars which the guide produces in the Mammoth Cave by hiding himself and throwing the rays of his torch athwart the ceiling set thick with transparent rock crystals. The effect is quite startling. For the moment it is hard to resist the conviction that you are actually looking upon the cloudless sky at night. But in reality is not the noonday sky just as much of an illusion, except that there are no mimic stars? The blue dome overhead is an illusion. There is no dome there. The sky is a mere apparition. It is not a body or a reality as it seems to be; it is mere empty space, though it has the effect upon us of a vast blue dome. How genial and inviting it looks when we see it peeping through the clouds, and how glorious when we see it swept free from clouds! Its purity, its serenity, its elevated character, move us to regard it as the abode of superior beings. The telescope dispels our illusions; the sky is not a transparent realm, but only an extension of earthly conditions. Heaven, the abode of the blest, takes its name from this negation of vacancy. Our notions of a personal God are similar illusions. God is as real as the sky is, and no more so, even though in our devout moods we lift our eyes heavenward and identify him with this comforting illusion.

All our life illusions brood over us. The night is only a shadow--the negation of light; and yet it plays a part in our lives as real as that of health or friends or climate, as real, but of another kind.