CONFLICT NATURE AND LIFE A STUDY OF ANTAGONISM IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THINGS. FOR THE ELUCIDATION OF THE PROBLEM OF GOOD AND EVIL, AND THE RECONCILIATION OF OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. JUN 18 1883 7^ No... .•..'.... Q ^' NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. I883. COPYRIGHT BY D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 1883. PREFACE The development of the individual mind is not apt to be a uniform movement. It has critical stages when a new thought brings about a mental revolution. The writer may be permitted to illustrate by his own experience. He may recall as the first mental acquisition which necessitated new ways of looking at things, the idea that the brain is the organ of mind — that the mental faculties are dependent on physical conditions; as the second, the conception of natural law everywhere operative, which took the place of foreknowledge and predestination — these two allied forms of doctrine having been early forced upon his conviction by logical considerations on the old assumption of the government of the universe by personal supervision; as the third, the idea that mankind have made their own gods by magnifying and deifying human nature — this came with the shock of origi- nality, to discover at leisure, however, that it was the common property of many thinking people, and that Xenophanes had explicitly taught it more than two thousand years ago; as the fourth, the doctrine of Evolution with the multiplicity of mental IV PREFACE. readjustments which it necessitated; as the fifth, and last I shall name, the conception of inevitable and necessary antagonism in the constitution of things, in consequence of which the notion of universal harmony, attainable perfection, and unmixed happiness is Utopian and illusory. This last point is the subject of this volume. It is now over twenty years since it was first suggested to the writer's mind by observation and reflection on human nature and its experiences in life. The conception may not strike the reader as "path- breaking " by any means, yet such has it been to the author. Each of the above-named acquisitions necessitated the dropping of something as error, which had previously been held as truth. This was not less the case with the last than with any of the others. It revolutionized his method of looking at the possibili- ties of life, and changed the direction of his efforts with regard to those possibilities. It seemed to have a practical use, as well as philosophical interest; and it occurred to him then to work it out in some of its scientific, historical, and practical relations, with the hope that it might be of interest to others, and perhaps, not altogether without a desirable influence on conduct. The writer has been in no haste to organize his study of the subject into a book, wishing it, whenever it might take form, to be as little crude as possible. Besides, he has been too busy with more immediate and pressing interests, to make rapid progress in the systematic study of a philosophical problem having such a multiplicity of connections as this. The writer has been more solicitous to be true than to seem original. He has been more careful to strengthen the positions taken than to create the appearance of novelty in the statement of them. Between the critic who should pro- nounce the book true but not new, and the other who should PREFACE. V think it new, but singular and fanciful, it would be preferable to believe the former the more nearly correct. The principle of the work is not altogether new, as the author has sufficiently learned since it occurred to him; but the use heretofore made of it has been only partial and fragmentary. And however new the views of some of the chapters may have at one time seemed to the writer of them to be, a further acquaintance with the literature of the subject has made sad havoc with many of his originalities; and with every hour publication is delayed, this process of destruction is going on. As an example may be named the conception of the part Conflict plays in originating and strengthening sociality and political organization, the chap- ter on General History having been written before reading Mandeville, and years before Herbert Spencer's chapters, and Morgan's and Tylor's works, from which quotation is made on this subject, had been published. And quite generally it is true, that the quotations which have been used to corroborate state- ments have been met with since the chapters were written, and sometimes inserted without changing a word of the text. Each chapter bears evidence that somebody at some time and some place has been thinking pretty much the same thing. There may be some sparks of originality — still not put out — in parts of chapters ; but if any claim of originality were made, that con- cerning the ensemble would, perhaps, be most likely to bear scrutiny. The effect of the whole, when all the parts are brought together as a co-operative unit, the author should hope, may go some way to convince the reader that the journey is not to be made wholly on a beaten track, nor yet wholly in vain. It is impossible to write a book without covering some ground which has often been gone over ; so that if the author has not a central principle which organizes the old facts into new rela- VI PREFACE. tions with new meanings, there is perhaps no very urgent need for his book. This book has been written precisely because it was believed that it embodies such a principle, able to deter- mine a new application of known facts to an old study, and that, if, in some instances, the proof should fail, the treatment of the subject would nevertheless be usefully suggestive. Those books are most successful which coincide with opinions already formed, or which are at least in process of formation among considerable bodies of people. The happy author is he who expresses clearly and incisively what a great many have already been feeling and thinking somewhat more vaguely. Like Socrates, he assists at the parturition of ideas. It depends much on the public temper whether an author shall be con- demned for his pains or rewarded for his services. He may be sure that the leading affirmations of his book are true, and that, if appreciated, they would be fruitful of results; but he may have no assurance that the subject and his treatment of it will fall in so happily with the drift of the times as to secure atten- tion. As this volume aims to strike the Middle Way, it has not the advantage of extremes which startle and fascinate. Its mes- sage is not so jubilant as optimism requires, nor yet so terrible as. to administer like pessimism to the delight of desperation. The author has persistently struggled against the increasing size of the volume. Everything suggested as a foot-note has been rigorously suppressed. The intelligent reader will readily see that the chapters are but summaries on a wide range of sub- jects which are legitimately linked together, in one way or another, by the common principle of Conflict. This great variety of subjects, touching at certain points and appealing to different tastes, seemed to render it desirable that certain chap- ters, brief though they are, should be made as complete, each PREFACE. Vll within itself, as possible, even at the risk of some repetition. The principal literary aim has been so to make the statement, that, with a reasonable degree of care and candor in the read- ing, it would not be easy to mistake the meaning intended. The Author. New York, September, 1882. CONTENTS. PART FIRST. THE SUBJECT IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF ANTAGONISM AND OF THE EVILS OF LIFE. SECTION. PAGE. i. The aim — Oriental views — Chinese, Hindoos, Egyptians, Persians . i 2. Greek views — Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Cleanthes, Anaximander, Empedocles, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Plato . 3 3. Conflict as an element in primitive religions . . . 4 4. Evil in fate — Herodotus, Plutarch, Seneca, Csesar, Pliny, Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics, and early Christians 5 5. Greek poets on evil — Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes —Note ........ 7 CHAPTER II. MODERN VIEWS OF PHYSICAL AND MORAL DISCORD. 6. Notions of evil — Diversity and relations . . . -9 7. St. Augustine's solution of the problem of evil ... 10 8. Paley and Butler on the cause of evil . . . .11 9. Leibnitz and King on evil ...... 13 10. Geological difficulties — Hitchcock and M. Secretan . . .14 11. A Philosopher, Moore, Rise and Fall, Bolingbroke, Blake, Gcethe, Tyndall, Morselli, Hume, Erasmus Darwin, Harrison . 15 12. William Smith, Winwood Reade, Frances Power Cobbe . . 18 13. Burton, Samuel Johnson, Rousseau, Bayle, Sainte Beuve, Carlyle, Mandeville, Lessing, Spenser, Prior .... 19 14. The wail of poets .... . . 21 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PESSIMISM. SECTION. PAGE. 15. Schopenhauer's pessimism . . . . . .22 16. Hartmann's more moderate pessimistic view ... 23 17. Hartmann — Why evil must outweigh good — Weighing emotions . 24 18. Hartmann— Most pleasures illusory — A gloomy picture . . 25 19. Pessimism of Humboldt and Swift . . . . .26 20. A disease of civilization — Mallock, A. Campbell, G. Smith . 27 CHAPTER IV. OPTIMISM — PERFECTION AND THE GOLDEN AGES. 21. Compensation past and future for present misery . . '3° 22. Golden ages — Oriental, Greek, Jewish, Christian ... 30 23. Modernized Christian view — Walker, Hitchcock . . . 32 24. Scientists and philosophers — Lubbock, Priestly, Mill, Greg, Spencer . . . . . * . -33 25. Spiritualistic optimism — Davis ..... 36 26. Socialistic and Radical — Fourier, Comte — Difficulties . . 36 27. General — Rousseau, Reade, Hartley, Royce ... 38 28. Shaftesbury, Condorcet, Godwin, Pope . . . .40 CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM STATED. 29. Optimism, pessimism, meliorism . . . . .44 30. Opinion drifting from optimism to meliorism ... 46 31. Different shades of meliorism — Purpose of the work . . . 47 32. Universality of Conflict — Note on pleasure . . .48 PART SECOND. CONSIDERATIONS FROM SCIENCE. CHAPTER VI. EXISTENCE. SECTION. PAGE. 33. No conception possible of absolute beginning . . .51 34. Idealism, realism, perception — Draper, Huxley — Entanglement 52 35. Perceptions not copies — Cudworth, Reid, Stewart, Brown, Hamil- ton, Porter, Spencer's transfigured realism, McCosh, Lewes 54 36. A Profession of Faith ...... "58 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER VII. THE UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. SECTION. 37. Force and matter — Chu-hi, Faraday, Stallo, Macomber, Cooke Maxwell, Tait and Thomson .... 38. The force unit — Boscovich, Faraday, Bayma, Birks, Wiener, Max well, M. Couchy ....... 39. Vortex atoms — Maxwell, Tait, Helmholtz and Thomson, Wurtz Macomber ...... 40. Order in the play of forces ..... CHAPTER VIII. 41. 42. 43- 44- 45- 46. 47- 48. 49. 5°- 5 1 - 52. 53- 54- 55- 56. 57- 59- 60. 61. 62. 63- 64. -Newton and Young, 3irks, Norton, Hickok, THE PRIMARY FORCES. Attraction and repulsion as primary forces . Accounting for attraction by repulsion- Glennie, LeSage, Walling, Croll Two primary antagonistic forces — Bayma, Lewes, Kant, Taylor, Maxwell ..... Primal force dual and antagonistic — Lame" Attraction and repulsion in early stages of the solar system Matter acquiring new properties by loss of heat — Lockyer, Fara- day, Crookes — Notes ...... CHAPTER IX. CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. The atom incomplete of itself — Affinity for other atoms The strife of atoms and molecules Affinity proportional to contrast of sensible qualities Three different forms of attraction — their antagonists . Liberation of energy by the union of atoms and molecules The atom never at rest ..... Elasticity of gases due to atomic motion— Stallo Opposite states necessary to a working force Overcoming resistance the leading idea of mechanics Polarity in physics and chemistry Obscured antagonism in orbital and vortical motion All the working energy of nature due to antagonism CHAPTER X. 59 63 64 66 67 69 7i 76 78 79 83 84 84 85 87 87 89 90 90 92 94 CONFLICT IN THE BIOLOGICAL FORCES, Opposing activities within the organism — the rising scale of antago- nism — Barker, Ludwig ...... 97 Waste and repair . . ... . . . 99 Breathing and circulation ...... 100 Contraction and expansion of the muscles . . . 101 Opposing factors determine the build and bulk of animals . . roi Conflict in plant life and in life generally — Tyndall, Ward . roi Xll CONTENTS. SECTION. PAGE. 65. The war between species — DeCondolle, Spencer, Darwin . . 103 66. The warfare of animals — Van Benedin, Tennyson, Arnold . 105 67. Parasites — Van Benedin ...... 107 68. Compensatory action between plants and animals . . 109 69. Superiority due to Conflict . . . . . .110 70. Persistence and divergence of type . . . . no 71. Antagonism between growth and reproduction a typical example . no CHAPTER XI. ANTAGONISM IN THE SPHERE OF MIND. 72. Mind and organization — Man's mind as a product of Evolution . 112 73. Primitive man a creature of war — First inventions due to Conflict 114 74. Communal sympathy fostered by common hostility . . .117 7$. Mental action counter-action — Lewes, Griesinger, Schiff, Huxley, Piderit, Bain, Maudsley, Luys . . . . 118 76. Analogies illustrating mental reflex action — Lewes, Spencer . 124 jj. Contrast necessary to mental action — Spencer . . . 126 78. Emotional reaction from one extreme to another . . . 126 79. Antagonism by exclusion in mental action . . . 127 80. Direct antagonism between the emotions— Buchanan . . 128 81. Passional balance in mind and in society — Hobbes, Plato, Combe, Spinoza, Pope, Rousseau, Guizot, Buckle . . . 130 82. The will the theatre of Conflict — Hartley, Bastion . . . 133 CHAPTER XII. CONFLICT AS A FACTOR IN MORALS. 83. Order and utility in the social and defensive habits of animals — Spencer, Darwin . . . . . . . 135 84. Contest determining the incipient form of order . . . 137 85. Good behavior among animals — Uncle Sam, Zeke and the oxen, self- restraint in animals ...... 137 86. The Conflict which morality implies — Spencer, Hutcheson, Shaftes- bury, Campbell, Hickok, Lewes, London Times, Pouchet . 141 87. The leading element of morals — Utility, stress, Stephen . . 147 88. Incipient molality among mankind — Darwin . . . 148 89. Courage and faithfulness the earliest virtues — Cicero . . 149 90. Fixing moral intuitions and habits by association — Spencer, Lewes, Shaftesbury, Lecky . . . . - . 151 91. Virtue founded in the plurality of interest — Tacitus, Billson . 153 92. Origin and development of woman's chief virtue . . 156 93. Origin and development of the property instinct — Diderot . . 158 94. The Conflict definition of morality .... 159 95. Religion and morality — Adaptation of moral codes — Moral heroism and survival ....... 160 96. Morality as command — A joker, Duke of Argyll, Mallock — The sanctions of morality — Note ..... 164 CONTENTS. Xlll PART THIRD. HISTORICAL BREVITIES ILLUSTRATING CONFLICT. CHAPTER XIII. GENERAL HISTORY. SECTION. PAGE. 97. History a record of Conflict ...... 169 98. War-necessity first unites people — Infancy — Shaftesbury, Condorcet, Fiske, Cicero, Morgan, Mandeville, Spencer, Tylor . 170 99. Fealty to chiefs — Tacitus, Freeman, Lecky, McClellan — Early Ameri- can confederations — Woolsey ..... 175 100. Origin of executive and legislative functions — Rowley, Spencer, Maine . . . . . . 177 101. National integration and disintegration .... 181 102. Progress and reaction — Stagnant China— Japan — The Jews . 182 103. The discord of class-interests increases with development . . 185 CHAPTER XIV. GRECIAN HISTORY. 104. Forms of Conflict in Greece ...... 186 105. Athenian culture ....... 187 106. Oligarchy versus democracy ...... 187 107. btate autonomy versus nationality . * - . . 188 108. State-alliances versus state-alliances ..... 191 109. Greece succumbed for want of nationality . . . 192 no. The fashion of war too strong for the traditions of kinship . 193 in. Development in Athens with stagnation in Sparta . . 195 112. The good and evil of unscrupulous conflict .... 195 113. Growing rationality versus tradition . . . . 197 CHAPTER XV. ROMAN HISTORY — THE REPUBLIC. 114. Early leagues among the Latin kindred .... 199 115. Struggle of different peoples on Italian soil . . . 199 116. The plebeian struggle for political rights .... 200 117. The binding and explosive forces within Rome . . . 202 118. Slavery and piracy ....... 204 119. Social and civil wars and the fall of the commonwealth . 205 CHAPTER XVI. ROMAN HISTORY— THE EMPIRE. 120. Centers of conflict — Aggression versus resistance. . . . . 205 121. Debauchery within, aggression without .... 207 122. Rigidity of virtue necessary to the greatness of peoples . . 208 XIV CONTENTS. SECTION. PAGE. 123. Developing weakness within ..... 208 124. Religious dissension — Donatists, Arians, natures of Christ, images, — Paulicians . . . . . . .210 125. The Blues and Greens ...... 213 126. Prelude to the fall, and fall of Constantinople . . . 214 127. Fall of the empire into municipal fragments — Roscher . . 214 128. Rise of the New from a complication of disturbance and conflict . 215 CHAPTER XVII. EARLY ENGLISH HISTORY. 129. Early struggles on English soil ..... 218 130. Minor conflicts — Unity and freedom through struggle — Magna Charta . . . . ... . 220 CHAPTER XVIII. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 131. Paradoxes of like and unlike systems — Feudalism and patriarchalism — Maine ....... 222 132. A question to whom fealty due ..... 224 133. The fall of feudalism by the growth of civilization — Freeman . 225 CHAPTER XIX. THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM UNDER CONTACT WITH OTHER SYSTEMS. 134. With Judaism — Christianity composite by derivation . . 227 135. With Paganism — Became polytheistic and idolatrous . . 228 136. With the religions of the East — Gnosticism, Monachism, Mani- cheanism, the Marcionites, Paulicans, Albigenses, Calvin . 229 137. With Mohammedanism — Without influence on each other . 232 CHAPTER XX. PAPAL SUPREMACY. 138. The spiritual and temporal powers — The spiritual gets the upper hand ........ 234 139. Rise of learning and decline of the Papal power . • 236 CHAPTER XXI. THE GREAT MODERN CONFLICT. 140. Innovation in primitive society, and later .... 237 141. Kingcraft gained as priestcraft lost — Reformation — Finalities — Per- secution by Protestants — Tolerance through conflict . 239 142. Political action and reaction in France and England . . . 244 143. Traditions and dogmas vs. science — Mosaic geology — Theological "cranks" — Science and religion not antagonistic . . 244 144. Change in the war of ideas — modified persecution — Greater sensi- bility — Loss with gain . . . . .251 145. Incompatible ideas and methods of the same mind . . 252 146. Two kinds of conservatism and two of liberalism . . . 253 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER XXII. ANTAGONISM AS A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION. SECTION. 147. Spencer's general definition of evolution 148. Spencer's more distinctive definitions of evolution 149. The line of motion under conflicting forces 150. Rhythm a corollary of antagonism 151. Conditions of mobility necessary to evolution 152. Heterogeneity under action and re-action. 153. Segregation and integration .... 154. Antagonism a necessary condition of natural selection . 155. The tendency toward equilibrium 156. The relative claims of antagonism and persistence 157. Priority of antagonism over persistence 158. Spencer's view that persistence is an ultimate datum of conscious- ness ........ 159. Counter-movement — Chauncey Wright — Degradation and dissolu tion as well as evolution — Cannot identify the maximum of gen eral development .... 160. Equilibrium — Blessedness or death ? . . . . 161. The moving equilibrium — Evolution advances pain as well as pleasure ...... PAGE. 256 258 259 260 261 262 263 265 266 269 266 272 275 278 279 PART FIFTH. EVIL IN RELATION TO THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS OF LIFE. CHAPTER XXIII. PARADOXES OF FEELING IN RELATION TO FUNCTION. SECTION. PAGE. 162. Invigorating function pleasurable . . . . . 284 163. Buoyancy of temper favors early marriage and the sum of happiness 286 164. Stimulants pleasurable — Harm in excess . . . 287 165. Labor a choice of evils — The price paid for enjoyment . . 288 166. Proper labor invigorates — Mental growth and business necessity — Work and progress — Ease versus development . . 290 167. Spencer's transmutation of labor into pleasure — Labor essentially repugnant and becoming more so ... 292 CHAPTER XXIV. MAN'S ENVIRONMENT— GEOLOGICAL CONDITIONS. 168. Aqueous agencies conditions of life — Wearing away the land . 296 169. Volcanic and aqueous action antagonistic and co-operative . 299 XVI CONTENTS. SECTION. PAGE. 170. Pain from the antagonistic action which makes earth habitable — Torre del Greco ....... 302 171. Ante-geological theories of the earth — Burnet, Dick, Wesley, Gis- borne, Lyell ....... 304 CHAPTER XXV. MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC CURRENTS. 172. Ocean currents — Exchange of cold and warm waters makes life possible . . . . , . . 305 173. Atmospheric currents ...... 308 174. Counter currents of air and ocean and counter causes . . 310 175. Discord and pain from the meteorological conditions of life . 310 CHAPTER XXVI. MAN'S ENVIRONMENT— LIMITATIONS OF THE HABITABLE AREA. 176. Extending the habitable area ..... 312 177. Desolation of lands by clearing and culture — Geikie, Marsh, Oswald — Terracing — Ruskin .... 313 178. Difficulty of conserving the soil — Immediate, versus remote, inter- ests ........ 318 179. Absolute limitation of the habitable area . . . 320 180. Disturbances from change of climate — An ice age . . . 322 181. Oscillations of climate due to precession and eccentricity . 324 CHAPTER XXVII. MAN'S ENVIRONMENT — ECONOMICAL DIFFICULTIES OF LIMITATION. 182. Multiplying demands of increasing population versus supply by increasing labor, capital, and invention . . . 328 183. Progressive exactions of multiplying wants . . . 334 184. Will all the vacant places of the earth be filled up ? . . 336 185. Change of diet through over-population — Exclusive vegetable food ........ 338 186. Best results from a mixed diet ..... 340 CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. 187. The possibility of harmony between man and his environment considered . . . . . . . 344 188. What would relieve physical discord would deteriorate the condi- tions of life ....... 345 189. Our present period may be the happiest — Alphonse de Con- dolle ........ 347 190. Visonary schemes for remodeling the environment . . . 350 CHAPTER XXIX. ORIGIN AND CONFLICT OF NATURAL LAWS. 191. What a law of nature is, and when it arises . . . 352 CONTENTS. Xvil SECTION. PAGE. 192. Interruption of one train of physical sequences by another . . 354 193. Interference with organic action — Higher organisms easily dis- turbed ....... 355 194. Races and institutions conserved by sacrifice for the general good . 357 195. Exclusion of one good by another — Good from evil and evil from good . . . . . . . . 359 PART SIXTH. THE OUTLOOK, SOCIAL AND MORAL. CHAPTER XXX. SANITARY CONDITIONS. SECTION. PAGE. 196. Ineradicable causes of disease — Malaria — Tropical heat . . 363 197. Increase of death-rate with greater density of population — Brassey ....... 365 198. Conserving the feeble — Le Conte, Black, Darwin — The enfeebling vanities —Frances Power Cobbe ..... 366 199. Mining and machine industries — Nervous diseases — Dr. Beard — Insanity — Suicide . . . . . . 369 200. The race overweighted — Galton — Human sacrifice . . . 373 CHAPTER XXXI. PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON, WORKING PEOPLE. 201. Influence of education on the happiness of the worker — Mande- ville ........ 374 202. High wages and short hours, saving and improvement — Brassey, Greg, Florence Nightingale . 376 203. The drift under education to the cities and to fancy industries — Thompson, M. Salacis — Home influence — Race education — Emily Pfeiffer-^High life in Rome — The worst most imi- tated — Teaching limited ... . . 379 204. Improvement and discontent — De Tocqueville, Lecky — Vanity and degeneracy — Royce — Fashion in the church — Purifying civili- zation and comforting the lowly— Pleasure of discontent . 385 205 — Adjustment of the laborer to his work — Mobility and diversified skill — Industrial education — Future changes . . 390 206. Competition among laborers — The economical harmonies — Perry 394 XV111 CONTENTS. SECTION. PAGE, 207. Henry George's attack on Malthus — Ignoring capital — Persistence — Roscher — Causes of famines — Wealth and subsistence . 396 CHAPTER XXXII. INFLUENCE OF THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY OF CLASSES ON SOCIETY. 208. Incompatible facts — Arrest and acceleration of reproduction — Population not necessarily stationary under high civilization . 400 209. Prolificacy in classes — Xo escape from toil— Beard — Education ver- sus psychological elevation — Wright and Lowell — The great middle class ....... 404 210. Race multiplication — Intermixture and new races — Relative mor- tality ........ 408 211. Development in careers — Blood and brain necessary to elevation- Development of the individual mind — Improvement of mental type ........ 412 212. Recent progress — Reacting forces and the see-saw of nations — Summary of influences affecting the coming man — Note . 417 CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 213. Protean forms of marriage ...... 420 214. Diversification of temper and increasing difficulties of marriage — Le Conte ....... 421 215. Increase of physical and mental divergencies between men and women ........ 423 216. Forms of divergence between the sexes — Controlling discordances of temper ....... 425 217. What marriage is — Conflicting views — Legality — The sentimental views — Mrs. Faucett — Education of children . . . 429 218. Moral and physiological discordance — Sex strengthened with civili- zation ....... 431 219. Marriage and prostitution — Lecky, Mandeville, Woolsey . . 433 220. The right of maternity subordinated to a higher law . . 435 221. Necessary origin of monogamic marriage under the play of social forces ........ 437 222. Affectional freedom — Differentiated marriage — Counter elements in marriage ....... 438 223. Modifications of marriage in the future — The Nation, Morgan — No matrimonial Utopia ...... 443 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. 224. Element of fear in primitive religions. .... 446 CONTENTS. XIX SECTION. PAGE. 225. Immortality — Devils versus angels— Dread versus joy — Heaven and hell corollaries — Suffering of the lost adding to the happiness of the saved — Peter Lombard, Edwards . . . 447 226. Thinking versus believing — Doubtful compensation for loss of ani- mistic faith . . . . . . . 451 CHAPTER XXXV. PLEASURE AND PAIN INSEPARABLE. 227. Pain necessary to the consciousness of pleasure . . . 454 228. Sensation and its stimulus — Pleasures pall — Wealth and happiness ■ — Cost of pleasures — Seneca .... 455 229. Mixed character of desire — Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure — Sully — Self-restraint as the price of pleasure Franklin's moral algebra ....... 459 230. Overcoming opposition — Pains of labor necessary to pleasure of attainment ...... 461 231. The measure of satisfaction with wealth and office . . 462 232. Pleasure and pain proportional — Bouillier, Hinton — Same nerves for both — Enjoyment with high development — Mill, Wollaston 464 233. Utopia the creation of something out of nothing — Note, Saxon, Romanes, Hinton ...... 466 CHAPTER XXXVI. USES IN GENERAL, SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 234. The doctrine as a chart for direction — The best apt to do futile work — Optimistic and despondent temperaments — Sully . 469 235. Artistic temperament and perfection — Panaceas — General indiffer- ence — Chartist and anti-corn law agitations — Guidance for san- guine reformers ....... 472 236. Incompatible forms of reputed good — The sequel of prosperity — Careers of movement ..... 475 237. The doctrine in relation to effort — Manliness of struggle — Caird — No warrant for insensibility— Bryant .... 478 238. Not incompatible with evolution .... 479 239. Shadows of good — Ours one of the happiest of human eras . 480 240. Extremes in thought and action — Meliorism versus optimism and pessimism ....... 481 241. Active minds most in need of guidance .... 482 242. Resignation — Spinoza, Seneca, Davids, Beard — Fortitude — The dying colonels ...... 483 243. The Mean or Middle Way— The price of happiness . . 484 244. Logical value of the doctrine ..... 486 245. The directive element growing out of scientific and industrial changes ........ 486 246. Any doctrine best recommended by its truth . . . 488 CONFLICT IN NATURE AND IN LIFE, PART FIRST. THE SUBJECT IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS OF NECESSARY ANTAGONISM AND OF THE EVILS OF LIFE. Section i. — There are two leading ideas of the subject con- templated: first, conflict in the relation of things; and secondly, the discord and pain which attend such conflict. The first, or that of physical conflict, has often been conceived of without being made the basis of an explanation of the evil in the world. Many of the views which follow regard physical antagonism as quite distinct from evil, or they regard evil as having no neces- sary connection with antagonism. It is the design here to bring the two together and show that they are related. If there is antagonism in the constitution of nature, the evil, both physical and moral, which exists, may be largely due to this antagonism, and itself a form of it, and thus as ineradicable as the constitu- tion of nature itself. Dualism, antagonism, and resulting evil are fundamental con- ceptions in the Oriental systems of philosophy and religion. Chinese philosophy has long recognized the opposite prop- erties of the two cardinal elements of nature. These are primal 2 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. \Chap. I force and primal matter ; the one is the Yang, the active prin- ciple, the other the Yin, the passive principle, of all move- ment. The Yang and Yin are thus the polar forces from which proceed all action, all evolution. The law of balance is the order of nature. The Yang and Yin lie at the base of a general philosophical system which molds religion, morals, and the prac- tical phases of life. In the system of the Hindoos, matter and spirit stand in cer- tain relations of antagonism to each other. Matter only be- comes active in the production of phenomena under coercion by the spiritual principle, to which, however, it yields only in a partial and refractory manner; and hence, the evils of the world. While they hold that good and evil are dispensed by the same divine hand, yet the Hindoos have their good and evil deities. Vishnu and Indra are especially concerned for the welfare of mankind, while Ravana and his legion of evil spirits seek to do evil. The Sooras and Assooras represent good and evil as em- bodied in spirit and matter, and are perpetually at war. In India, the good spirits, the Sooras, are the step brothers of the evil spirits, the Assooras; as, in Egypt, Osiris, the good deity, was the twin brother of Typho, the god of evil. Antagonism is even more pronounced in the Persian system. From the supreme and uncreated One proceeded two equal and antagonistic powers, which are forever battling for the upper hand in the control of the world. Ormuzd, the god of light, created a hierarchy of good spirits to attend to all things in the interest of good, whereupon Ahrimanes created an equal hierar- chy of bad spirits to be everywhere present in the interest of evil. A good and an evil spirit attend every human being from birth to death, struggling with each other for the mastery over him. Religions, like migrations, drifted westward, and these battle doctrines of the East have not been without influence on the religious and philosophical creeds of the West. And they acted the more readily as they fell in with the natural experiences of human life. The doctrine concerning Satan, the adversary of Sec. 2.] GREEK VIEWS. 3 God and man, was accepted by the Jews on their acquaintance with Persian dualism, and thence it found its way into the faith of the early Christians and spread throughout the world with trie Christian system. Through a somewhat distinct line of more philosophical character, this strongly marked dualism of the Christian creed may be traced back through the Gnostics, Mani and Marcion, and the Fathers, Tatian and Justin Martyr, to the Brahminical doctrine which affirms the essential and eternal malignity of matter. This same doctrine, either by propagandism or by native reproduction, found its way into Greek philosophy, and through it into the general thought of European peoples. Section 2. — Pythagoras held the principle of all things to be unity from which went forth an infinite dualism. His fol- lowers recognized certain co-ordinates, or offsetting principles, as finite and infinite, odd and even, the one and the many, the right and the left, male and female, light and darkness, good and evil, etc. The system viewed the world as harmonic, but re- garded it as a combination of contraries. Heraclitus maintained that fire, acting by opposite tendencies, is the cause of all the activities in nature, and that the products consist of contraries, so that even the good is evil, the living is dead, etc. Out of these conflicting impulses came what he re- garded as "harmony." If "all life is change and change is strife," as he affirms, then is life but one of the forms of conflict. The suggestiveness to the ancient mind of the conflict in nature is shown by Heraclitus' doctrine, "That strife between opposite tendencies is the parent of all things." Cleanthes sings in his Hymn to Jupiter: "Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings To one apt harmony the strife of things." Anaximander of Miletus held that from a divine substance of indefinite form in infinite space, all individual objects are pro- jected by the separation of opposites. Empedocles conceived of the activity of nature as dualistic, consisting in the reciprocal or complemental play of combina- 4 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. [Ckap. L tion and dissolution. Back of the phenomenal lay the forces of love and hate ; the function of love being to combine, that of hate to dissolve. Love is, therefore, the creative, and hate the destructive power.in the phenomenal world, where "all the mem- bers of God war together one after the other." . Parmenides conceived of the opposite principles in nature as, fire the ethereal essence, and night the phenomenal. According to Zeno, the stoic, nothing exists without its con- trary, as, the truth implies falsehood, and good is accompanied with necessary evil. It is especially to our purpose to note that, "Zeno, forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, intro- duced even into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement of fluctuation up and down." — (Grote, L, 513). Anaxagoras taught the Eastern idea of the antagonism of mind and matter. Plato was by instinct an a priori optimist ; that is, God took things as he found them, and did with them the very best that was possible. Being good he must do what was best. In Plato's system, God and matter are from eternity distinct and opposite in character. Intelligence is good, but matter is, in consequence of its refractory nature, the source of all evil. Plato teaches that "contraries are produced from contraries," that there is reciprocity in the production and reproduction of things, and that, if this were not so, but " generation direct from one thing alone into its opposite," " all things would at length have the same form, be in the same state, and cease to be pro- duced." The necessary association of pleasure and pain is thus given : " What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be, which men call pleasure ; and how wonderfully is it related towards that which appears to be its contrary, pain ; in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if any one pursues and attends the one, he is almost always com- pelled to receive the other, as if they were united together from one head." — (Plato, L, 57). Section 3. — Strife, battle, and all that pertains thereto have always occupied a large share of human attention. This was, of course, made necessary by the universal experiences of life. Sec. 4.] MELANCHOLY VIEW OF LIFE. 5 Religion had its origin among primitive peoples through the contests they were compelled to wage with the powers of nature. It was in defeat, which they attributed to the interference of supernatural beings, that their emotional nature was most stirred, and they devised methods of placating such beings. The earliest gods were interested mainly in visiting evil on mankind. Religion was built up on the uncertain struggles of life; and out of this no doubt grew the deification of chieftains, strong in battle during life, and able and willing now, if honored with attentions, to avert defeat and other forms of evil. The gods of rude peoples are often beings of cruelty and horror exacting for their pleasure the sacrifice of the most precious things. Human beings have been sacrificed even on trivial occasions and for fanciful reasons. Most of the ancient gods were in the habit of inflicting pain upon very much such pretexts as men use; but among the Greeks it was especially the mission of the Furies to execute the vengeance of the gods and torment mankind. Black cattle were offered as a fitting sacrifice to the "infernal Jupiter," Night and the Furies. Among almost every people until far advanced in civilization, the worship of the gods of strife and war have possessed the most absorbing interest. This was true of the worship of Mars even at Rome. The chief god of the ancient Scythians was an iron cimeter fixed in the earth. And among our ancestors, the ancient Germans, death in battle was held to be the best preparation for the life hereafter. Section 4. — Among the ancients we find recognition in prac- tical life of the fatality of evil. This no doubt originated the story that, when a fit of tenderness seized upon Xerxes and he fell to weeping as he looked upon his vast army and reflected that in one hundred years not an individual in it would be alive, Arta- banus, his uncle, observed to him that death was not the greatest of evils, as in all that host there was probably not one who had not many times wished for death as a relief from the greater miseries of existence. Herodotus' avenging Nemesis is a witness to the same melancholy view of life. The envy of the gods would not permit continuous prosperity and unmixed happiness; and Amasis 6 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. [Chap. I. advised his friend, Polycrates, to do something to bring calamity upon himself in order to avert the jealousy of the gods and secure the prosperity which might remain. Solon is represented in an interview with Croesus, king of Lydia, to liken life to a contest in which there is uncertainty and danger to the end. Camillus' prayer on the taking of Veii assumes that so great a success must be attended with some necessary evil. On the same principle Fabius wanted a successor appointed to Scipio, whose successes were so great as to threaten misfortune. Paulus ^Emilius found confirmation of the same doctrine when he lost his sons, one just before his triumph over Perseus, and another just afterward, while the sons of the conquered king still lived; and ./Emilius is made to exclaim : " Nay, when I arrived safe among my countrymen, and beheld the city full of joy, festivity, and gratitude, still I suspected fortune, knowing that she grants us no favors without some mixture of uneasiness,~or tribute of pain," Plutarch thought " that, perhaps, there is some superior being, whose office it is to cast a shade upon any great and eminent prosperity, and so to mingle the lot of human life that it may not be perfectly free from calamity;" and on this basis he explains the domestic misfortune of Pompey the Great. Seneca declared that "the whole of life is lamentable," and death "the best invention of nature." Caesar contended that death was not a punishment but the end of human suffering. Pliny the elder believed that "no mortal is happy," and held that human beings are worse off in this respect than the lower animals. He doubted whether nature is to man a kind parent or a cruel step- mother, and believed the evils of life to be so great that death had been granted as man's chief good. The good emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was an optimistic philosopher, yet he declares that "life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn." The stoical solution of the problem of evil is founded on a definition which begs the question : "Nothing is evil," says Marcus Aurelius, "that is according to nature ;" and Seneca observes that "many afflictions may befall a good man, but no evil." And the good emperor illustrates : " But death certainly, and life, honor and Sec. J.] PESSIMISM IN GREEK POETRY. 7 dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good and bad men, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil." — (Long. M. Aurelius Antoninus, section II. , 17, 11.) And Seneca defines "pleasures and pains, prosperity and adversity, which can only operate upon our outward condition, without any proper and necessary effect on the mind," as things which are "in themselves neither good nor evil." — (Morals, 129.) The New Testament view of the natural life of man is a thoroughly pessimistic one. The redemption purchased by the blood of Christ is most esteemed for the deliverance it brings from "this present evil world." It is declared that, "If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him." And the glory of the life to come is most fully brought into relief by contrast with the pessimistic gloom which brooded over all earthly things. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world were set over against each other as opposite in character. Life here had value only as the battle-ground where Christians might win the victory of eternal life. It is but the extreme of this idea that has animated the ascetics of all religions. The ancient Stoic admitted the afflictions of life, but put them aside as if they were not, by his philosophical views of moral conduct; the ancient Christian recognized the evils of life, but triumphed over them by the exaltation of his faith in the life to come. Section 5. — The Greek poets are full of the desponding view of life. Evil is wrapped up in Fate, and Fate dominates even the gods: " The necessary ill Will come; its fatal course no god can check." — [Megara in Euripides. In the tragic vein evil is affirmed to outweigh the good ; but this appears to have been a disputed point : "Warmly this argument with others oft Have I disputed, who assert that ill To mortal man assigned outweighs the good, Far otherwise I deem, that good is dealt To man in larger portions: were it not, We could not bear the light of life." — [Theseus in Euripides. 8 ANCIENT CONCEPTIONS. \Cha,p. L Homer sums it up in this philosophical way: " Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood, The source of evil one, the one of good. From thence the cup of mortal man he fills, Blessings to these, to those distributes ills; To most he mingles both; the wretch decreed To taste the bad, unmixed, is cursed indeed, The happiest taste not happiness sincere, But find the cordial draft is dashed with care. " — [Achilles to Priam, Sophocles makes Philoctetes say : " I did not doubt it:' evil never dies; The gods take care of that: if aught there be Fraudful and vile , 'tis safe; the good and just Perish unpi tied by them." In a similar vein is justice denied as an attribute of the gods: "Adic. — What is justice? There is no such thing — I traverse your appeal. Die. — How, no, such thing as justice? Adic. — No, where is it? Die. — With the immortal gods. Adic. — If it be there, How chanced it Jupiter himself escaped For his unnatural deeds to his own father?" — [A ristophanes. Still it was the pious humor to declare that the gods were just. In Euripides it is affirmed that "no mortal man is happy;" that one may be more fortunate than another merely. And again : "The happiest fate of man is not to be; And next in bliss is he who, soon as born, From the vain world and all its sorrows free, Shall whence he came with speediest foot return. " The Greeks had a saying that those whom the gods love die young; and this coincides with the story of the Greek mother who, in the evening, prayed to the gods to bestow upon her sons their most precious gift: the prayer was answered, and in the morning she found her sons dead. Yet, notwithstanding this saying, and the moral of this apologue, the Greeks appear to have been a people who made the most of life and enjoyed it, Sec. 6.] REPETITION OF GLOOMY VIEWS. 9 while they had no high opinion of the shadowy existence in Hades. While there were ancients who had a vague idea of the strife or conflict in nature, they did not assume this as the basis of necessary evil and human suffering; they referred the miseries of existence to a different source — to the decrees of Fate and the humor of the gods. In all the concernments of life religion overwhelmed philosophy and science. NOTE. — The statements of this chapter are to be found in books which are in most libraries, and few, if any of them, call for reference. They are in some sort the common possession of reading people. This, however, is not true of the statements in all the chapters of this book. The author would have been glad to give references, but the volume threatened to attain a size which would render this undesirable; and formal references have generally been omitted. Not all the quotations given have been taken direct from their authors. Whatever seemed to the purpose has been used, wherever found, provided the source seemed to be of sufficient authority. On disputed points more care has been taken to name the authorities given. It may be added concerning the many extracts from authors nearly to the same points in the following and Fourth chapters, and to a less extent in others of the earlier chapters of the volume, that, while the method is not in the line of artistic book-making, it was adopted as the most authoritative means to the end in view. The reader may imagine some of these to be foot-notes, as there are no other, and touch them lightly, if he wishes. CHAPTER II. MODERN VIEWS OF MORAL AND PHYSICAL DISCORD. Section 6. — These ancient views have been repeated from time to time throughout the entire intellectual history of the world. How much the doctrines of one period have influenced the formation of similar doctrines at a later period, it is impossible in most instances now to ascertain. The human mind in like IO MODERN VIEWS. \Chap. II. phases of evolution, is sure to fall into similar trains of thought, and work out independently similar systems of doctrine. But while the nucleus may be even identical, the ultimate form may be so shaded by the prevailing fashions of opinion at different periods of elaboration, as frequently to obscure the identity. The diversity is due rather to the different intellectual garniture of different nations, peoples, and periods, than to any essential difference in the constitution of mind, or in its methods of manifestation. The same nation in different stages of its career may evince different and even contradictory phases of thought and feeling. While rising it may be hopeful and buoy- ant, and optimism prevail; while sinking, despondency may attend calamity, and a pessimistic cloud brood over all. The discussion of the difficulties concerning the constitution of the world in regard to discord and evil, became very different under the Christian scheme from what it had been in classical times. The old philosophers were little influenced by the pre- vailing systems of religion; but under the dogmas of Christianity the problem could not be divorced from theological considera- tions. It had become the leading idea that man has an immor- tal soul which is involved in sin, and in great danger of being lost. The whole question of physical and moral discord was merged in religious considerations concerning the origin and consequence of sin. Section 7. — St. Augustine took hold of the subject with a determined hand, treating it metaphysically, and with a fertility of resource to which even the sophisms of his method bear witness. According to his view, sovereign good is that which cannot be corrupted. What is not good cannot be corrupted. Therefore, corruption implies good but not sovereign good. Things wholly deprived of good must cease to be; "for if they shall be, and can now no longer be corrupted, they shall be better than before, because they shall abide incorruptibly. And what more mon- strous than to affirm things to become better by losing all their good ? Therefore if they shall be deprived of all good, they shall no longer be. So long therefore as they are, they are good : Sec /.] ST. AUGUSTINE ON EVIL. II therefore, whatever is is good. That evil then which I sought whence it is, is not any substance : for were it a substance it should be good. For either it shall be an incorruptible sub- stance, and so a chief good; or a corruptible substance, which unless it were good could not be corrupted. I perceive there- fore, and it was manifested to me, that Thou madest all things good." " Since no nature whatever is evil, and the name [evil] belongeth only to privation of good, but from things earthly to things heavenly, from things visible to things invisible, some things are better than others, being good; being unequal to this end, that they all might be." " And to Thee is nothing whatso- ever evil: Yea, not only to Thee, but also to thy creatures as a whole, because there is nothing without, which may break in and corrupt that order which thou hast appointed it. But in the parts thereof some things, because unharmonizing with other some, are accounted evil; whereas those very things harmonize with others, and are good; and in themselves are good. And all these things which harmonize not together, do yet (harmon- ize) with the inferior part, which we call earth, having its own cloudy and windy sky harmonizing with it." " I did not now long for things better, because I conceived of all; and with a sounder judgment I comprehended that the things above were better than those below, but all together better than those above by themselves." " And I inquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but a perversion of the will, turned aside from Thee, O God, the Supreme, towards these lower beings, and casting out his bowels, and puffed up outwardly." — (Con- fessions, chapter vil). Thus is God exculpated and man made responsible. This view of the negative character of evil has been worked over and over from that day to this, and is still to be found in the current discussions of the question of evil. Section 8. — Under the doctrine of the government of the world by special Providence, the problem of evil was more formidable than it is under the modern idea of government by law. Well might the human mind falter in presence of the difficulty of explaining how evil and suffering came to exist, 12 MODERN VIEWS. [Chap. II. when the Creator and Ruler of the world is infinite in wisdom, goodness, and power. In the popular religion of the Greeks the difficulty was not so great, since the gods themselves were made subject to inexorable fate. This difficulty of the Christian theist is akin to that of the Orientalists, who resorted to logical subterfuges to maintain their Supreme Intelligence free from the taint of matter. In the modern view, the system of natural law, or of perpetual sequence, not being interfered with or thwarted, becomes essentially but another form of fate. Theo- logians have availed themselves of the idea of persistent law to explain the existence of evil in keeping with the attributes of the Creator. Paley speaks of the thwarting or crossing of the natural laws; that is, he explains discord to be necessary conflict, though he expresses it mildly as inconveniences. "Of the origin of evil," he says, "no universal solution has been discovered; I mean no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint. The most comprehensive is that which arises from the consider- ation of general rules. We may, I think, without much diffi- culty, be brought to admit the four following points : First, that important advantages may accrue to the universe from the order of nature proceeding according to general laws; secondly, that general laws, however well set and constituted, often thwart and cross one another ; thirdly, that from these thwartings and crossings frequent particular inconveniences will arise ; and, fourthly, that it agrees with our observation to suppose that some degree of these inconveniences takes place in the works of nature." — (Natural Theology, 300). Bishop Butler observes: "Now, that which affords a sufficient answer to objections against the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of nature, is its being a constitution, a system or scheme, in which means are made use of to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws." — (Analogy, 249). This, of course, assumes that ours is the best possible universe; and this implies that if the Maker of this universe is all-wise, all-good, and all-just, He is not all-powerful. Se& p.] LEIBNITZ AND KING ON EVIL. 13 Section 9, — The magnificent theory of Leibnitz on the origin of evil is, that God in the beginning having revolved in his mind the conceptions of all possible worlds, decided in the interest of beneficence to order into existence the best one of them all. But from the dire experience of mankind, we know that this best possible world is full of evil; therefore, was God not able to overcome whatever it is that causes discord and pain. Orientalists found the cause of evil in the refractory character of matter; Leibnitz in the absolute character of essences and abstract forms. In the one case evil was referred to physical causes, in the other to metaphysical. Leibnitz says: "Evil comes rather from the abstract forms themselves; that is to say, from ideas which God has not produced by an act of his will, any more than numbers or configuration, and any more, in short, than all pos- sible essences, which should be reckoned eternal and necessary — for they are found in the ideal region of possibles — that is to say, in the divine understanding." — (Quoted by Dr. Chalmers in Natural Theology.) On this view he affirms that God does not make wicked men; they are so from eternity, and are so freely, whatever that may mean. Thus is Leibnitz' God subject to the eternal and necessary ideas and essences, or abstract forms of fate, in the creation of the world, as Zeus and the other gods of the Greek Pantheon were subject to the personal form of Fate in ruling the world. As Plato's God works to patterns he did not create, so Leibnitz' God is hampered by necessities he can- not control. William King, Lord Archbishop of Dublin, who wrote on the Origin of Evil two centuries ago, recognized similar metaphysi- cal difficulties, only that they were still more intensely metaphys- ical, and on this basis he derived imperfection and evil in the actual world from the infinite goodness of God. He sets out with the affirmation that God cannot create a perfect being ; which is quite unlike another metaphysical notion that whatever God creates must necessarily be perfect as it comes from his hand. But the Lord Archbishop's reasons why God cannot cre- ate a perfect thing are unanswerable, being as follows: That a per- 14 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chafi. II, feet being would be self-existent, and if absolutely perfect would be God. He then proceeds to the solution of the problem: 11 God might indeed have refrained from creating, and continued alone, self-sufficient, and perfect to all eternity, but his infinite goodness would by no means allow it; this obliged him to produce external things, which things, since they could not possibly be perfect, the Divine Goodness preferred imperfect ones to none at all. Imperfection then arose from the infin- ity of divine goodness." — (p. 119). "If you say, God might have omitted the more imperfect beings, I grant it, and if that had been best he would undoubtedly have done it. But it is the part of infinite goodness to choose the very best; from thence proceeds, therefore, that the more imperfect beings have existence; for it was agreeable to that, not to omit the very least good that could be produced. Finite goodness might pos- sibly have been exhausted in creating the greater beings, but in- finite extends to all. The infinite power and goodness of God then were the causes why imperfect beings had existence together with the more perfect."-— (p. 141, 142). This resembles the better judgment of St. Augustine, which taught him that the higher and lower of created things are better altogether than the higher by themselves. Section 10. — It is the general faith throughout Christendom, or it has been until very recently, that pain and death came into the world as the penalty of Adam's transgression. On this view it is supposed that notwithstanding the presence and omnipo- tence of God, man is responsible for the physical, as well as for the moral evil in the world. Science, has, however, thrown diffi- culties in the way of this view by showing that pain and death existed on earth long anterior to the advent of man. Writers, who, at the same time, have been theologians and scientists, have not shrunk from grappling with this difficulty. As a sample of this kind of work, we may instance the Religion of Geology by Rev. Edward Hitchcock, president of Amherst college and geol- ogist to the State of Massachusetts. He goes on to state that God, having intended to create man, and foreseeing his fall, must Sec. II.] THE CONTRARIES. 1 5 needs so order creation as to adapt it to man's fallen condition and thus secure the harmony of the whole. "Death 5 therefore, entered into the original plan of the world in the Divine mind, and was endured by the animals and plants that lived anterior to man. Yet, as the constitution of the world is, doubtless, very different from what it would have been if sin had not existed in it, and as man alone was capable of sin, it is proper to regard man's transgression as the occasion of all the suffering and death that existed on the globe since its creation." — (p. 204). All the creatures which had existed on the earth during the geological ages for millions of years before the creation of man, were made to suffer and die, because Adam, when he should come, would eat of the forbidden fruit Independently, and in theological despair, perhaps, M. Secre- tin has put forth the same view of this difficult problem. — (Gold- win Smith.) While the logic is desperate and doing its utmost to put a cheerful face on things, it fails, since it concedes by impli- cation that there is a gloomy and inexorable fatality which occa- sioned things to be as they are with all their ills. Section ii. — A quaint little work entitled "Rambles with a Philosopher," written at the antipodes, and published at Duneden, New Zealand, in 1867, is devoted to an exposition of the "Rule of Contraries." Its illustrations from science are sometimes apt, sometimes fanciful. A few extracts will give the author's leading idea: "The rule of contraries is as little to be ignored by the moderns as by the ancients, . . , In it all things cir- culate, all things exist and have a being. This is true with regard to creation, organic and inorganic. Without the con- traries what would the world be but chaos?" "Reaction is the soul of nature." "Nature in opposition is life." "Man thus to exist, is to be a mixture of contraries; the law of nature is not to be gainsaid." "With the creation of the world entered the establishment of opposite principles." "Every thing to exist must have two opposites." The author, of course, makes a hobby of contraries; and his applications of the doctrine are apt to be puerile, as when he makes his philosopher affirm of the " vaunted id MODERN CONCEPTIONS. [Chap. II. American Republic," that while it retains its four millions of slaves to balance its four millions of voters, it will stand; but that when slavery is abolished, physical force running rampant, will destroy intelligence, put an end to the constitution, and "break the nation in pieces," when "four great nations will spring out of the debris "(!). The author makes no use of his doctrines to unlock the mystery of good and evil. Dr. Moore, the author of works on psychological subjects published in England and in this country, declares that "Crea- tion is a system of antagonisms. There are opposing forces both in the spiritual and physical world, and it is only in the diagonal between them that nature maintains her standing." "Man is the grand contradiction — a compound of paradoxes ; for he is constituted not only of opposites but of contraries." He further recognizes the doctrine that pleasure and pain are inevitably bound up together, being different degrees of the same thing, and the one necessary to the existence of the other. All this is but the revival of very old doctrines which even the most pronounced optimists could not overlook. The author of "The Rise and the Fall" says: "Thus it appears that when the Creator, having organized the inanimate universe with its method of forces and counter-forces, and formed the lower orders of animals, grade after grade, under the like system of impulses and checks in their subjective and objective conditions of being, came to create man, he constituted him upon no new principles, but both in his bodily structure and in his psychological system, in pursuance of this uniform and well-considered plan." — (p. 29). The optimist, Bolingbroke, finds that the world's beauty is founded on contraries, and universal concord on the mutual opposition of principles and things. And according to William Blake, "Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call good and evil. Good is the passive and obeys rea- son, evil is the active springing from energy. Good is heaven — SeC. II.] NECESSARY EVIL. 1 7 evil is hell." — (Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Goethe observed "that every action implies an opposite. Inhalation precedes expiration, and each systole has its corresponding diastole. Such is the eternal formula of life." — ("Farbenlehre," reported by Tyn- dall). And Tyndall, in a different connection, states it as fol- lows : " A magnet attracts iron, but, when we analyze the effect, we learn that the metal is not only attracted but repelled, the final approach to the magnet being due to the difference of two unequal and opposing forces. Social progress is, for the most part, typified by this duplex or polar action. As a general rule every advance is balanced by a partial retreat, every amel- ioration is associated more or less with deterioration. No great mechanical improvement, for example, is introduced for the benefit of society at large that does not bear hardly upon indi- viduals. Science, like other things, is subject to the operation of this polar law, what is good for it under one aspect being bad for it under another." A very recent writer says: "They judge wrongly who think that the evils of civilized society, such as misery, disease, prostitution, madness, suicide, are accidental and avoidable, but to those who look at things from the positive side, it appears clear that they are the effects of the same law of evolution to which all living beings are subject, and the aim of which is the well-being of animals, and for man that state of moral and physical perfection unconsciously desired by nature, and which metaphysicians define as the future happiness of the individual. These social evils represent the inevitable result of the struggle for exist- ence." — (Morselli, Suicide, 361). Evils follow like dismal shadows along the pathway of evolving good, and the latter can- not be had without the former, a proposition which following chapters may do something to elucidate. *— - * According to Hume there are four causes of evil in the world : The employment of pains and pleasures to excite creatures to action; the conducting of the world by general laws; the econ- omy of means in the production of results ; and defect of oper- ation in the great machine of nature. Before Paley, he wrote 1 8 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chdp. II. that, in consequence of general laws and susceptibility to pain, " It scarcely seems possible but some ill must arise in the vari- ous shocks of matter and the various concurrence and opposition of general laws." He insists that nature is a congeries of parts which are liable to run into excess of action and fill the world with discord. " The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children." — (Natural Religion.) The optimist, Erasmus Darwin, is compelled to recognize the war in nature, exclaiming : " Such is the condition of the order of nature, whose first law might be expressed in the words, ■ Eat, or be eaten,' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice ! " Frederick Harrison has beautifully stated the grim facts as fol- lows : " The world is not all radiant and harmonious ; it is often savage and chaotic. In thought we can see only the bright, but in the hard fact we are brought face to face with the dark side. Waste, ruin, conflict, rot, are about us everywhere. If tornadoes, earthquakes, glacier epochs are not very frequent, there is everywhere decay, dissolution, waste, every hour and in every part of the vast cosmos. See nature at its richest on the slopes of some Andes or Himalaya, where a first glance shows us one vision of delight and peace. We gaze more steadily, we see how animal, and vegetable, and inorganic life are at war, tearing each the other ; every leaf holds its destructive insect, every tree is a scene of torture, combat, death ; everything preys on everything; animals, storms, suns, and snows waste the flower and the herb ; climate tortures to death the living world, and the inanimate world is wasted by the animate, or by its own pent up forces." — (Nineteenth Century, August, 1881.) Section 12. — In "Gravenhurst; or Thoughts on Good and Evil," Mr. William Smith gives his solution of the vexed prob- lem on the stoical principle that, " What we call evil is only a condition of what is called good, and necessary to our concep- tions of good as well as to its actual existence; but that without Sec. rj.] evils of life. 19 which good cannot be, is not evil, therefore there is no evil." Westminster Review, Jan., 1865.) This is but the repetition of Plato, and more particularly of Marcus Aurelius and other stoics. It calls in the aid of a quibble and gets rid of evil by ignoring it. That evil is in some way necessary to good is no uncommon view of the subject. A modern optimist writes: "That unknown God has ordained that mankind should be elevated by misfor- tune, and that happiness should grow out of misery and pain. I give to universal history a strange but true title — The Martyr- dom of Man. In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it, therefore, unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come?" — (Martyrdom of Man. W. Reade.) So often what philosophy has taught, the muse has sung: "God draws a cloud over each gleaming morn, — Would you ask why ? It is because all noblest things are born In agony. Only upon some cross of pain and woe God's Son may lie : Each soul redeemed from self and sin, must know Its Calvary. — Frances Power Cobbe. Section 13. — Very many who have left a record of their feel- ings appear to have despaired concerning the happiness to be enjoyed in life. The first witness we summon is Burton: "If we could foretell what was to come, and put it to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, or wilderness, or den of thieves, cheaters, etc., full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke; wherein infirmities and calamities overtake and follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we 'scape Scylla we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labor, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moisture from water, brightness from the sun, as 20 MODERN CONCEPTIONS. \Chap. IL misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from man." Dr. Samuel Johnson declared that, in the present, man is never happy but when he is drunk; that is, only when in his delirium he is able to forget himself. He would not admit that he was himself happy. Rousseau testifies: "Souffrir est la premiere chose qu'il doit apprendre, et celle qu'il aura le plus grand besoin de savoir." "La felicite de l'homme ici-bas n'est done qu'un etat negatif; on doit la mesurer par le moindre quantite des maux qu'il souffre." Bayle: "Que l'homme est mechant et malheureux; qu'il y a partout des prisons et des hopitaux ; que l'histoire n'est qu'un recueil des crimes et des infortunes de genre humain." Sainte Beuve: "As soon as you penetrate a little under the veil of society, as in nature, you see nothing but wars, struggles, destructions, and recompositions." Carlyle: "Thus already Freewill often came in painful collision with Necessity, so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the child itself might taste that root of bitterness wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is mingled and tempered." Mandeville: "There is nothing good in all the universe to the best designing man, if either through mistake or ignorance he commits the least failing in the use of it; there is no innocence or integrity that can protect a man from a thousand mischiefs that surround him; on the contrary everything is evil which art and experi- ence have not taught us to turn into a blessing." In every conceit of thought and phase of feeling is the ancient world paralleled in the more modern. Lessing wondered at the foresight and good sense of his son, who on the day of his birth, had to be brought into the world by force, and was no sooner in it than he made haste to get out of it. Spenser sings in mournful strain : "They crying creep out of their mother's womb, . So wailing back go to their woeful tomb." And Prior : " Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn, And he alone is blest, who ne'er was born." SeC. 14.] WAIL OF THE POETS. 21 Section 14. — Poets may be quite generally visionary, and perhaps optimistic, but they are apt to sing in sad refrain. We may go to them for the wails of wrung hearts. The following from Byron appears to be pessimistic in spirit on a base of optim- istic philosophy : " Our life is a false nature: 'tis not in The harmony of things, — this hard decree, This ineradicable taint of sin, This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be, The skies, which rain their plagues o'er men like dew — Disease, death, bondage, — all the woes we see, And worse, the woes we see not — which throb through The immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new." Shelly exclaims : What is the world's delight ? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright." And again : ' ' We look before and after And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught, Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 1 Cowper : 'Ask what is human life — the sage replies, With disappointment low'ringin his eyes, A painful passage o'er a restless flood : A vain pursuit of fugitive false good ; A scene of fancied bliss and heartfelt care, Closing at last in darkness and despair." Young : "There's not a day, but to the man of thought, Betrays some secret that throws new reproach On life, and makes us sick of seeing more." Campbell : "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been 'Tis something better not to be." 2 2 pessimism. [Chap. III. Dryden : "When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; Yet fooled with hope, men favor the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay : To-morrow's falser than the former day." And we may close with the mournful and mocking words of Voltaire : " Ainsi du monde entier tous les membres gemissent: Nes tous pour les tourments, l'un par l'autre, ils perissent: Et vous composerez dans ce chaos fatal Des malheurs de chaque etre un bonheur general!" CHAPTER III. PESSIMISM. Section 15. — Pessimism may be regarded as of two kinds, emotional and intellectual, and the two are not necessarily con- joined in the same mind. Some of the most pessimistic passages to be found in literature have been written, no doubt, by intellect- ual optimists; on the other hand, some pessimists by principle appear not to be pessimistic in feeling. This chapter has refer- ence to systematic pessimism, that which has been intellectually elaborated and stoutly maintained as a great truth in philosophy. This has had its principal development in Germany. Schopen- hauer may be regarded as the prince of pessimists. He con- ceived of the world as will and idea, or conception ( Vorstellung). What appears to our senses as matter, as force, is will. He insists that by resolving force into will the problem is great- ly simplified, since our acquaintance with will is intimate, per- sonal, direct. This view of existence as will affords to Shopen- hauer the basis of his doctrine, that pain greatly predominates in life. Will is a constant strife, and this strife is painful. He SeC, l6.~\ SCHOPENHAUER AND HARTMANN. 23 sees only pain in desiring, wishing, which are but forms of willing, while the pleasure of gratification is so brief as to bear no com- parison with the antecedent pain. All pleasure then is the deliverance from pain, and is consequently negative, while pain is positive. Upon this theory mankind live constantly below the emotional zero, — that point in feeling where it may be supposed the equal weight of pleasure and pain balance each other. Schop- enhauer adopts the precise opposite of Leibnitz's view of the universe, and maintains that ours is the worst possible world, it being as bad as it can be and exist at all. Yet he contends that all we seem to gain by development is loss, and that the condition of things is becoming constantly worse instead of better. He sees no remedy for this deplorable state of things, but in abnegating the activities of existence, not by self-destruc- tion, but by stilling the will, crucifying all desire, and crushing out all interest in life. Section 16. — Hartmann, who is in some sence Schopenhauer's disciple, does not go so far. He does not believe that all pleasure is negative and all pain positive; for, though such is largely the case, he admits that there are sources of positive enjoyment — gratifications which are not necessarily coupled with any form of suffering. He instances as such the mental activ- ities concerned in cultivating art and science. While he rejects Leibnitz's views of the privative character of evil and its ultimate extinction in a millennial future, he accepts his theory of " the best possible world." The evil so far transcends the good that it is a very bad world, but it is, nevertheless, the best possible. It is the best because it is the production of the Unconscious All-One which never errs (unless it possibly did so when by a " blind impulse of the will," it brought this bad world into existence). Still, it is the best possible because it is capable of being eventually annihilated ! It is with reference to the excess of evil over good in existence and the desirableness of its extinc- tion, that Hartmann has framed his curious and weak but brilliant speculative system, the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." Hartmann maintains that if we have a universe at all, it must 24 pessimism. [Chap. Ill, be one in which there is more evil than good, more misery than happiness. There cannot be individualization without a whole train of attendant evils. There cannot be individualization without egoism, the preservation of self, involving conflict and the general crossing of purposes, with consequent injustice, cruelty, immorality, etc. He avers that since health, youth, freedom from anxiety, which constitute the greatest good, and contentment which constitutes the greatest happiness, do not sus- tain us above the emotional zero, therefore is the best possible form of existence worse than no existence at all. He declares that if mankind could wholly escape disease, could procure food from inorganic matter, and could secure all the pleasures of love without transcending the means of subsistence, nevertheless would all these acquisitions only palliate the worst of existing evils, and the sum of misery would still be greater than that of happiness. He is bound not to be pleased with life. Section 17. — Hartmann finds four reasons why it is a priori impossible to create a world in which the pleasure shall outweigh the pain. 1. The lassitude and pain which follow when the pleasure of nervous excitement ceases; for nervous exhaustion increases the struggle against pain and weakens the power to retain pleasure, thus adding to pain and detracting from pleasure. 2. The indirect character of all pleasure, which consists in release from pain, this constituting most of the pleasures we enjoy. 3. The brief term of gratification, which is little more than a moment compared with the persistent presence of ungratified feeling which is commensurate with volition and desire, and for which there is only the palliation of hope, and the relief which gratification affords. 4. The greater facility of pain (than of pleasure), by its very nature, to come into consciousness. Else- where this is amplified by the statement that equal quantities of pleasure and pain united in consciousness are not of equal value- they do not offset each other — the pain outweighs; and the exclusion of all sensation would be preferable to such union of pleasure and pain. We cannot regard this metaphysical method of treating the Sec. i£.] hartmann's views. 25 subject as at all satisfactory. The operation of weighing pleas- ures and pains against each other, we take to be very much wanting in precision. In things so unlike, it is impossible to say how much of one is equal to so much of the other. Beside, there is no uniformity of standard for testing the relation. No two scales would show the same result. A Mill and a Schopenhauer, would measure life with standards so different that their results would not be comparable. The one has it that the balance of happiness over pain in life may be considerable; the other holds that any suffering at all in the world would overbalance all possi- ble happiness, and make it a pessimistic world. Our estimate of the relative weight of pleasures and pains is very largely an affair of temperament, of sympathy, of mood, of health. Some natures of very elastic constitution will be happy any way, while others who are morbidly sensitive are bound to be miserable. Even the same individual in different moods would not make the same estimate of the relative proportions of suffering and enjoyment in life. Hence, although it will be necessary to speak of the relative proportions of pleasures and pains as if they were measurable, it must be with the understanding that this whole subject is one which is greatly wanting in precision. Section 18. — Hartmann insists that most of the pleasures of life are not real but illusory. He measures happiness by the quality of its cause, and seems to think that there is a difference between the reality of happiness and the feeling of happiness. But we submit that if a man is happy, he is happy, whether the cause of it be some illusory hope, or the acquisition of something having what is called substantial value. Mankind have no doubt in all times past found most of their happiness in cherishing the manifold forms of delusion. The less they have been blessed the more they believed they would be blessed. Hartmann finds three stages of illusion among mankind; the first is the hope of securing happiness in this life. Under this head he examines the claims of the appetites and emotions, and their results in life, love, and the family, fame, religion, etc., and finding that they are all fraught with an excess of misery, he con- 26 pessimism. \Chap. Ill, eludes that the most to be hoped for is the least possible unhappiness. The second form of illusion is that which looks to a future life for happiness ; and the third that which places it in some future period of existence on earth. But instead of becoming happier by what we call progress, as many fondly imag- ine, mankind are becoming more and more unhappy. Rousseau would go back to primitive life for relief from the abominations of civilization ; Hartmann would not stop there, — he insists on going back to a point beyond the very beginning of existence to get rid of the misery of existence. He presents an eloquent and gloomy picture of the old age of the world when all the illusions have been outlived; when the last hope has died, and all that ever seemed to be desir- able is in the past : when it is thus realized that there is nothing more to look forward to, and decrepit humanity hob- bles along from day to day, knowing that the most to be expected is a diminution of suffering, and longing for nothing so much as quiet, peace, eternal sleep. Having exhausted every hope and every effort for happiness, having realized to the utter- most the folly of existence, the only thing left to contemplate as desirable in destiny is the painlessness of utter extinction, the Nirwana ! Hartmann does not treat the question of good and evil in its physical, but only in its mental, relations. — (Philosophie des Unbewussten, XL, XII.). Section 19. — There are pessimists who frame theories, but act precisely as if their theories had no relation to conduct. Hart- mann is a married man and may leave successors to suffer the pangs of existence. Alexander Von Humboldt framed no pes- simistic theories — he was too busy with science; but he governed his life in a weighty matter by pessimistic considerations. Hear him : " I was not born in order to be the father of a family. Moreover, I regard marriage as a sin, and the propagation of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage — a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, Sec. 20.] humboldt's wail." 27 without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because he gives life to children, without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings after me ? The whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years one strives and inquires, still one is obliged finally to confess that he has striven for nothing. Did we at last only know why we are in this world ! But to the thinker, everything is a romance and riddle, and the greatest good luck is that of being born a flathead." — (Quoted by Dr. Bowen in North American Review, November, 1879). It must be admitted that this is eloquent and direct. It comes from a man of large experience, and if it be regarded as having weight, we may conclude in the spirit of the wail itself, that such views and feelings concerning life are only too apt to be the scourge of intellect; and one of the conditions of the " good time coming " is said to be the enlargement and enlightenment of intellect — a conflict of authorities with which we are not here properly concerned. The wail of the great scientist may be properly supplemented by that of the great satirist, Swift, who celebrated his birthday as a day of mourning : " Although reason were intended by Providence to govern our passions, yet it seems that in two points of the greatest moment to the being and continuance of the world, God has intended our passions to prevail over reason. The first is the propagation of our species, since no wise man ever married from the dictates of reason. The other is the love of life, which from the dictates of reason every man would despise, and wish it at an end, or that it never had a beginning." Section 20. — The melancholy view of life morbidly dwelt on appears to be in some sort a disease of civilization. It prevailed in ancient Greece and Rome, and it no doubt helped stoicism to its general acceptance in the Roman world, and furnished to Christianity the soil in which its characteristic contempt for the 28 pessimism. [Chap. III. flesh and the world took root and grew. In our own times pessimism is not confined to Germany by any means. Its " black hosts " are advancing into other countries, and pitching their tents as usual in the very centers of civilization. Where there is most enlightenment there appears to be most pessimism. English-speaking peoples are not apt to be demonstrative with heretical views; and if any had embraced the pessimistic tenets, they would be less apt, perhaps, than some others, to push them openly on their inherent merits. It is safer to state offensive doc- trines in the interest of more grateful views. This is especially well illustrated in the writings of Mr. Mallock, in which, how- ever, there is much heroic assertion and not a great deal of judi- cial thinking. His thoroughgoing pessimism is put forward as a basis on which to push the claims of an authoritative religion. He declares: "Nature, as positive observation reveals her to us, is a thing that can have no claim either on our reverence or our approbation. Once apply any moral test to her con- duct, as J. S. Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she becomes a monster. There is no crime that men abhor or perpetrate that nature does not commit daily on an exaggerated scale. She knows no sense, either of justice or mercy. Continually, indeed, she seems to be tender, and loving, and bountiful ; but all that, at such times, those that know her can exclaim to her, is ' Miseri quibus Intentata nites.' "At one moment she will be blessing a country with plenty, peace, and sunshine, and she will the next moment ruin the whole of it by an earthquake. Now she is the image of thrift, now of prodigality ; now of the utmost purity, now of the most revolting filth, and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any moral standard at all, her capacities for what is admirable not only make her crimes the darker, but they also make her virtues par- take of the nature of sin. How, then, can an intimacy with this eternal criminal be an ennobling or a sacred thing?" — (Is Life Worth Living). What then makes life worth the living? Revealed religion. Sec. 20.] MALLOCK AND CAMPBELL. 29 This conjunction of a bad system of nature with a good scheme of redemption is not new. Mr. Mallock himself says: "The emptiness of the things of this life, the incompleteness of even its highest pleasures, and their utter powerlessness to make us really happy, has been at least for fifteen hundred years a com- monplace, both with saints and sages. The conception that anything in this life could of itself be of any moment to us, was considered as much a puerility unworthy of a man of the world, as a disloyalty to God." Dr. Alexander Campbell, the founder of Bethany college and of a sect in this country, opposed natural theology on something very like pessimistic grounds. The blighting frost served his end as the earthquake does Mallock's. Goldwin Smith believes that, "Upon the materialist hypothesis of life the pessimist has the best of the argument; and the effect of his unsparing scru- tiny will soon appear." He declares that pessimism has the best of it, if there be no life beyond. It is not improbable that with the conquests of science, the prevalence of "hard-headed" meth- ods, the spread of knowledge, and the intensities of civilization, there may be going on a pronounced reaction from optimism toward pessimism, which will be seized upon by certain influ- ential orders to advance the interests of ecclesiasticism, as affording the only panacea for the infirmities of our common nature. CHAPTER IV. OPTIMISM PERFECTION AND THE GOLDEN AGES. Section 21. — The optimist is one who takes a cheerful view of the possibilities of life, and believes in the positive and pre- vailing character of good and the negative and incidental nature of evil. An extreme form of optimism is, that by means of con- tinuous progress or providential interference, all evil will finally disappear, earth will become a paradise, and life thereon elysian. This is both retrospective and prospective. There was once a time in contrast with the present when men were happy, and there will be such a time again. Nothing is more natural than the origin of such visions. The abject concern themselves in imagination with pomp and power, the indigent with heaps of gold, the hungry dream of feasts. There is always so much in the present to baffle and defeat, that the thoughts by way of compensation revert to a happier period in the past, "the good old times," or "the golden age," or they reach into the future when discord will end and paradise will be restored. This poverty of life, which will be rich in imaginary treasures, very generally refers the period of fruition to a future state of existence; but at the same time almost all peoples and religions have such a period in store for the future of life on earth. Section 22. — The Chinese are taught in their sacred writings that there was in the beginning an age of purity, harmony, rationality, justice, and unalloyed happiness. Confucius prophe- sied a future golden age for the Chinese empire when it should cover the whole earth, and under the auspices of a divine man secure universal happiness for mankind. The Brahmins, Buddh- ists, all who derived their speculative ideas from the Hindoos, SeC. 22. \ PARADISIACAL DREAMS. 31 believe in a golden age past and another to come. The Per- sians look forward to a glorious time when even Ahrimanes and his imps will all become lovers of good, and mankind, rejoicing in peace and harmony and in the ecstacy of every innocent delight, will not even cast shadows on the earth, now renovated into physical perfection. So ancient a Greek as Hesiod mourned the degeneracy of his times, and looked back to the reign of Saturn as the golden age of the world, when men lived like the gods, and with the gods, and were happy. Even Plato had his golden ages, one past, the other to come. He adopts Hesiod's idea of the age of Saturn, giving it, however, the Platonic coloring. God was then the Prince and common father of all, and governed the world in per- son, and not as now by inferior deities. The products of the earth were spontaneous, and the climate was so genial that people had no need of clothing. They reclined on beds of moss perpet- ually verdant, and were so mildly tempered that violence and cruelty were unknown. And only think of the contrast with all the historical period : there were neither magistrates, nor any civil policy, for all men were governed by reason and the love of order ! The Jews had their paradise at the beginning, and the end was to be equally happy, and more glorious still. There was to come a prince of the royal line of David, and he would bring together from among the nations the dispersed fragments of the chosen people, and summon from the dead all worthy Jews to be united with the living on a purified earth; and to reign with Him in bliss and glory for a thousand years. The Jews had suffered defeat and calamity, and had by no means been a righteous and happy people; they had incorporated into their system the Magian ideas of an evil principle in the world, and had given it anthropomorphic form as Satan, the chief of evil spirits, yet — it may be truly said, therefore — they dreamed of a millennium, as the destitute and hungry dream of plenty. The Jews were to be in paradise regained, and the hostile nations to be turned into hell. Even the Alexandrian Jews, with their 32 optimism. [Chap. IV. advantages of Greek culture, though they modified the idea with a little leaven of rationality, expected, nevertheless, a miraculous deliverance and endless ages of peace and happiness on earth. The prevailing Christian view is but a modified transcript of that of the Jews. The elements are to melt with fervent heat, and there is to be a new heaven and a new earth, and Christ is to descend and reign with his saints for a thousand years. The prophecy of Isaiah is to be fulfilled, and ravenous beasts are to lose their ferocity, and poisonous serpents their venom. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Section 23. — These ancient views are fully paralleled by those of modern times. What was held to be true under the notion of divine personal government, is still held to be true, though in a modified form, under the modern doctrine of natural law. And in periods when it was found that by the action of regular sequence, the course of things is obviously that of progress, still further modifications were made necessary by this new phase of intellectual experience. Even theologians have pressed the fact of progress into the service of their own peculiar views of future perfection. The following is an example: "The existence of a principle of progress in the creation being established, it is unwarrantable to suppose that its operation will cease until it has produced perfection. The fact that it is an established method of the divine procedure is evidence of its stability. We may announce it as an axiom that the will of God is realized only in the perfect. We have proved that the perfect in creation is attained by progress. The operation of the princi- ple, therefore, must continue until it has accomplished a perfect result. Such a result is not attained in the present constitution of things, hence we may confidently look for a further develop- ment of the divine plan." — (God Revealed in Creation and Christ, Rev. J. R. Walker, p. 126). Equally sanguine of man's future on earth is President Hitch- cock, referred to in a previous chapter (section 10). He presses Sec. 24.] scientific Utopias. 33 geology into the service of theological optimism: "But we have reason to believe, from the Christian scriptures, that the next economy of life which shall be placed upon the globe will far transcend all those that have gone before. Every vestige of sin, suffering, decay, and death, will disappear. . . In short, the change is no other than the conversion of the world into Heaven/' — (Relig. Geol. p. 395). Section 24. — Equally as extreme and sanguine as the above are the views of certain scientists and scientific philosophers. We quote: "It will, I think, be admitted that of the evils under which we suffer nearly all may be attributed to ignorance or sin. That ignorance will be diminished by the progress of science is of course self-evident, that the same will be the case with sin, seems little less so. Thus, then, both theory and experience point to the same conclusion. The future happiness of our race, which poets hardly ventured to hope for, science boldly predicts. Utopia, which we have long looked upon as synony- mous with an evident impossibility, which we have ungratefully regarded as 'too good to be true,' turns out on the contrary to be the necessary consequence of natural laws, and once more we find that the simple truth exceeds the most brilliant flights of the imagination." — (Prehistoric Times, John Lubbock, pp. 491, 492). This reminds one of Condorcet and Godwin; and it well illustrates the persistence of ideas to find a scientific writer with the advantages of modern research, and a practical scientist withal, so accurately reproducing Priestley's faith in a time com- ing which "will be glorious and paradisiacal beyond what our imaginations can conceive." The following is from one who has represented, and who still represents, a large and influential class of thinkers, sometimes designated as " hard-headed " : " In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and also so much to cor- rect and improve, every one who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable. . . . No one whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration can doubt that most 34 optimism. [Chap. IV. of the great positive evils of the world are in themselves remov- able, and will, if human affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced within narrow limits. . . . All the grand sources, in short, of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort, etc." — (Utilitarianism, J. S. Mill, 21, 22). This is very careful, indeed, and can hardly be regarded as optimism ; it is rather meliorism with an optimistic bias. A more recent writer states the case with much less reserve : " Some believe only that a considerable number of human evils may be materially mitigated; others more buoyant have con- vinced themselves that with time, patience, and intelligent exer- tion, every evil not inherent in or essential to a finite existence, may be eliminated, and the yawning gulf between the actual and the ideal at last bridged over. This faith is mine. I hold it with a conviction which I feel for scarcely any other conclusion of the reason. ... I distinctly refuse to believe in inevitable evils." — (Enigmas of Life, W. R. Greg ). This is sufficiently optimistic ; but the writer's thoughts do not seem to have been well defined. If there are evils which are " inherent in or essential to finite existence," then there are " inevitable evils." But the writer does not believe in inevitable evils ; then, is his qualification, " inherent in or essential to finite existence," totally without significance? Whatever Herbert Spencer's present views, he has been an ex- treme optimist. He will himself state it : "Finally, all excess and all deficiency must disappear; that is, all unfitness must dis- appear ; that is, all imperfection must disappear," and at the close of a long sentence intended to warrant this climax, he affirms: "So surely must the human faculties be moulded into complete fitness for the social state; so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect." Again, "Then for the first time in the history of the world will there exist beings whose individualities can be expanded to the full in all directions, and thus as before said, in the ultimate man perfect morality, perfect individualiza- Sec. 24.] spencer's optimism. 35 tion, and perfect life will be simultaneously realized." — (Social Statics, London, pp. 64, 65, 441). This idea of human perfection as a possible and attainable thing runs all through this early work of the author's; and the closing words of the first edition of his Psychology are in the same vein, when he speaks "of grand progression which is now bearing humanity onward to perfec- tion," — not toward, but to perfection. In First Principles (first Am. ed., p. 486; second ed., p. 5 1 7), speaking of the persistence of force, the author says: "After finding that from it are deducible the various characteristics of evolution, we finally draw from it a warrant for the belief that evolution can end only in the estab- lishment of the greatest perfection, and the most complete hap- piness." In justice to Mr. Spencer it must be observed that in the new edition of his Psychology (New York, vol. I., p. 503), he modifies the quotations we have given from the first edition to "that grand progress which is bearing humanity onwards to a higher intelligence and a nobler character," — a very significant change. Whatever may be the extent of change in Mr. Spencer's optimism, our quotations are still just, and fairly serve our pur- pose, inasmuch as they show how the prevailing Utopianism among liberal thinkers has involved so great a mind as his, and given color to his philosophy. Since the preceding was written Mr. Spencer has published his Data of Ethics. This work, it may be presumed, contains the author's matured views on the happiness question of "hu- manity on earth." It appears to be really as optimistic as his work on Social Statics, without the indulgence, however, of rhetorical flourishes in the optimistic vein. The cast of the future is somewhat more subdued in tone, and subjected to more thoughtful qualification, as in what is said, for example, of abso- lute and relative ethics. But this entire matter of "absolute ethics" appears to be an a priori figment of the artistic faculties, which, like all the Utopias, defies the stubborn fact of human nature. It is the beautiful creation of an amiable bias. ' Mr. Spencer still believes that mankind may become so thoroughly fitted to their situation, so completely harmonized with the con- 36 optimism. [Chap. IK ditions of life on earth as to secure unmixed pleasure in all the emotional, mental, moral, and physical activities of being. If, as he believes, all pain is the result of wrong-doing, then with right-doing, which he believes to be possible, all pain would come to an end. This is abundantly optimistic. Nothing need be added here. Some of the points in the optimistic phases of Spencer's evolution-philosophy will be noticed in future chapters. Section 25. — There is a large class of people in this country known as Spiritualists, whose philosophy is distinctively "har- monial." The doctrine is confidently held that a state of per- fect harmony and happiness is possible in this life, and that it is to come about in accordance with law through the influence which the spirit world is able to exercise over humanity on earth. "There is nothing more positively certain than that the Har- monial Age will eventually dawn upon this rudimental world." "Therefore, when accomplished, unity will be the harmony of man with himself, with his neighbor, with the universe — or, with Father-God and Mother-Nature." — (Magic Staff, A. J. Davis, p. 382, 383). The burthen of Mr. Davis' first work, his Divine Revelations of Nature, which is also the first philosophical pro- duct of the Spiritualistic school, is to define and establish the "Harmonial Philosophy," and the whole library of literature which has followed it from Spiritualistic writers, is in the same vein, and molded by the same purpose. Evil is regarded as privative, negative, incidental, as merely the friction of a divine (or natural) scheme of progress, which will carry mankind beyond the reach of all suffering into an earthly state of unal- loyed bliss. The orthodox millenium is to come through mir- acle by the direct action of the Supreme Ruler; the Spiritual- istic millennium is to come through natural law by the joint action of men and spirits. Section 26. — Another class, becoming constantly larger, and consisting of several schools, are the socialists and radicals. Upon the notions of none more than of these does the future peace or discord of society depend. Whatever the panacea they offer for the miseries of life, they acknowledge no inherent or SeC. 26.] SOCIALISTIC DREAMS. 37 necessary evils. They may allow of some as pertaining to an undeveloped condition of the earth and man, but the cardinal idea is that perfect harmony and order exist in the natural con- stitution of things, and are destined sooner or later to be fully established on earth. I may quote from Mr. Brisbane's render- ing of Charles Fourier as an example: "First, that the reign of order, harmony, and happiness can be established on this earth ; secondly, that to attain this great end a true system of society must be discovered and organized in the place of the present false and incoherent systems ; thirdly, that the true system must be based upon the laws which govern creation, and which produce order and harmony in its various depart- ments. — (Social Destiny of Man, p. 52). The thought appears never once to be entertained that the present system has come about by the natural action of laws, to which man himself in all the departments of his being and relations is irrevocably subject, or that changes for the improve- ment of the future can only take place through the steady oper- ation of these laws. No, "the true system" is to be "discov- ered" and formally applied in accordance with imaginary laws to bring order and harmony out of anarchy and discord ! The stream is to be turned suddenly and made to run against the natural tendencies of gravity. Even Comte and his followers, positive in their methods as they claim to be, conceive as prac- tical a scientific and formal organization of society to take the place of the present system of unnatural disorder and anarchy. Most socialists would stoutly deny any faith in the Hebrew tradition about the fall of man and its dire consequences, which has served theology so well in accounting for the wickedness of mankind, but they all assume that somehow or other, society has become as completely disordered, as if every word concern- ing the fall was true. Wrong exists because somebody is doing wrong who might do right. The rulers of the earth do wrong ; the rich men of the world do wrong; the upper classes of society do wrong ; indeed, pretty much everybody is doing wrong ; and this is what makes all the injustice and suffering among man- 38 optimism. [Chap. IV, kind. Socialists believe that they are able to specify what should be done in order that justice, plenty, peace, and happiness should prevail everywhere. Hence, the attitude is one of hos- tility to all these wrong-doers. They fully believe that if they could get into power, they would make such laws and establish such conditions of life that earth would speedily become a para- dise. The methods vary-; some think the change so desirable may be brought about by voluntary association or co-operative effort retaining individuality; others would merge the indi- vidual in the general mass, and by some sort of constituted authority appoint for each the place that will make him happy. It is to be paternalism and fraternity instead of individuality and free competition. Many look to the State as the power which should renovate society. Their optimism is complete, seeing none of the difficulties which lie in the way of its realization, — difficulties which exist in the very constitution of their own minds. While holding the ruling classes respon- sible for the poverty, want, and suffering which prevail, they forget that if they were in power they would be human too. The "Republics," "Utopias," and "Phalansteries" cannot be made real things for the same reason that Archimedes could not lift the world. Section 27. — It is not to be expected that a writer of Rous- seau's temperament shall be consistent. We have quoted him on the necessary relation of pain to pleasure. But in the same work he affirms the common optimistic notion that man is the cause of his own misery : " Le mal moral est incontestable- ment notre ouvrage, et le mal physique ne serait rien sans nos vices, qui nous l'ont rendre sensible." " Homme, ne cherche plus l'auteur du mal; cet auteur c'est toimeme. II n'existe point d'autre mal que celui que tu fais ou que tu souffres, et l'un, et l'autre te vient de toi. — (Emile, pp. 332-3.) Another writer whom we have quoted on necessary evil, gives expression in the same work to the wildest utopianism. He announces his faith in the " perfectibility of man," and expects marvelous results from science : " Disease will be extirpated; SeC, 2/.] VISIONARY EXTREMES. 39 the cause of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then the earth being small mankind will migrate into space and will cross the airless saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a holy land which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the uni- verse. Finally, men will master the forces of nature; they will themselves become architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be perfect; he will be a creator; he will there- fore be what the vulgar worship as a God." — (Martyrdom of Man, 514). All this is given with amplification; and it may be regarded as the " hyfalutin " of optimism. It really excels Charles Fourier's theory of the physical regeneration of earth, Von Prittwitz's transformation of earth into a universal park where people may migrate like birds to suit the season, and even Thomas Dick's idea of redeemed souls flying from world to world studying astronomy. But if Reade's be the extravagance of optimism, Hartley's is hardly less than the insanity of optimism in accepting the metaphysical delusion that " all individuals are actually and always infinitely happy." We quote an American writer: "The capabilities of art and science for making of earth a heaven will not be known, until pervading the masses, every child in the land will be tremulous with sensibility, and love of order and beauty. With the energy of thought peculiar to practical science and the sensibility attending art, every home will be the blessed abode of peace and plenty, of love, order, and beauty, in which sadness and sorrow will be unknown, as all will be industrious and live in natural simplicity, hardly ever visited by sickness, want, and misery." — (Race Education, Samuel Royce, pp. 183, 184). This is a char- acteristic passage. There is a like flaw here with that in the quo- tation from Greg (section 24). "Hardly," and the words which follow, betray an intellectual misgiving as to the previous confi- dent statement that "every home will be the blessed abode of peace and plenty, of love, order, and beauty, in which sadness and sorrow will be unknown." Emotional optimism may not wholly escape intellectual qualification. 40 Optimism. [Chap. IV. Section 28. — Optimism as allied with progress and law had its origin during the last century, under the stimulus perhaps of commercial, industrial, social, and educational activities in western Europe. Having passed into literature, it became the common property of the intelligent, and through them it has permeated all classes, till, scarcely any of us have escaped its subtile influence as an educational force for the moulding of opinion. Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hutcheson, Godwin, Con- dorcet, were among its chief expositors. Pope set it to singing, and rendered it irresistible. Shaftesbury : "Tis good which is predominant ; and every cor- ruptible and mortal nature by its mortality and corruption yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest nature, which is incorruptible and immortal." — (Characteristics, Vol. II, p. 216). "All is delightful, amiable, rejoicing, except with relation to man only, and his circumstances, which seem unequal. Here the calamity of ill arises ; and hence the ruin of this goodly frame." — (p. 291). " That in an infinity of things, mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, cm see nothing fully ; and must, therefore, frequently see that which is imperfect, which in itself is really perfect." The appearances of ill may be no real ill but good, and " all may be prefectly con- current to one interest; the interest of that Universal One." — (P- 364). - Condorcet : It can hardly be regarded as paradoxical that Condorcet should have written his extremely optimistic views during one of the gloomiest periods of modern times. Robes- pierre and his party were in power, and the Reign of Terror had driven Condorcet into concealment to escape the bloody tribunal which had been set up in the name of liberty. But nothing daunted he had his revenge by writing a hopeful view of the future — Tableau Historique des Progress de l'Esprit Humain. The author believes that there are no natural bounds set to the improvement of the human faculties, and that the perfectibility of man is really unlimited. Education properly directed would correct the prevailing inequality of the faculties, Sec. 28. ~\ CONDORCET AND GODWIN. 4 1 and work all kinds of miracles in bringing about equality among men. He dreams of a universal language, and a universal equality, including equal rights between the sexes. As with fanatical optimism generally, he charges the evils to be found in marriage to its regulation by law ^£<" Ce sont les prejuges de la superstition et ceux de l'orgueil, ce sont les systems hypocrites et tyranniques des legislateurs, qui changent en poison funeste le plus sur aliment de notre felicite, le sentiment consolateur de nos maux inevitables." — (Euvres, Tome VI., 524). All of the Fragment de l'Histoire de la Xe Epoque assumes the possibility of converting human society into a paradise by making man- kind rational ; and teaches the methods of bringing this about, chief of which is to remodel human nature during the tender- ness of youth. Thus of teaching children : " C'est en leur inspirant l'habitude de transformer ce sentiment individuel de la compassion, en un sentiment general d'humanite, qu'on peut par- venir a. rendre la philanthropic une affection vraiment univer- selle." — (553). Generally, Condorcet regards the universal pro- gress of reason as the cure for all the wrongs of life; he expects all the passions to obey the injunctions of reason. In this way he gets rid of war, injustice, oppression, and every form of evil. He is in the habit of regarding evils which have grown out of the action of human nature as it is, as the consequence of bad institutions, forgetting that the institutions themselves are but the outgrowth of human nature acting as it must. Godwin: True to the type of radical reformers, William Godwin, author of "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice," is very often just in criticism, but generally wild in reconstruction and in anticipation. When he says that, "Legislation is in almost every country grossly the favorer of the rich against the poor," he does not greatly overstate the case, nor yet when he adds: " The rich are encouraged to associate for the execution of the most partial and oppressive positive laws. Monopolies and patents are lavishly dispensed to such as are able to purchase them." — (pp. 29, 40). It was quite true then ; it is quite true yet, as has been munificently and magnificently proved in our 42 optimism. \Chap. IV. own country during the last twenty years. But when our author looks forward to what is to be, he readily goes off into extrava- gance: "How rapid and sublime would be the advances of intellect, if all men were admitted into the field of knowledge? At present ninety-nine persons in a hundred are no more excited to any regular exercise of general and curious thought, than the brutes themselves. What would be the state of public mind in a nation where all were wise, all had laid aside the shackles of prejudice and implicit faith, all had adopted with fearless confi- dence the suggestions of truth, and the lethargy of the soul was dismissed forever?" — (p. 807). And still more in the same strain. "The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud, these are the immediate growth of the established system of property. These are alike hostile to intellectual and moral improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where man lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or to provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his own individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbor, for they would have nothing for which to contend, and of consequence philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each man would assist the inquiries of all." -(p. 810). The author does not believe in co-operation, common labor, or meals in common, and is quite a stickler for individuality. He affirms that, "Sleep is one of the most conspicuous infirmities of the human frame," and believes it may be done away with. — (p. 868.) Eventually mankind will refuse to propagate and will become immortal on earth, "and men, therefore, to exist when SeC. 28."] APT TO BE FANATICAL. 43 the earth shall refuse itself to a more extended population, will cease to propagate, for they will no longer have any motive, either of error or duty, to induce them. In addition to this they will perhaps be immortal. The whole will be a people of men and not of children. Generation will not succeed generation, nor truth have in a certain degree to recommence her career at the end of every thirty years. There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. These latter articles are at no great distance; and it is not im- possible that some of the present race of men may live to see them accomplished. But besides this there will be no disease, no anguish, no melancholy, no resentment. Every man will seek with inevitable ardor the good of all." — (p. 872.) And thus he goes on with "this illustrious picture." Proper education, no accumulation of property, but perfect equality of possession, and a fine sense of justice are to bring about this millennium. The type of optimistic faith exemplified in the doctrine of Con- dorcet and Godwin is still that which, though it affords a no- ble incentive to endeavor, is almost sure to be coupled with fanaticism. Pope: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." Thus has optimism in its extreme form of perfect, or very nearly perfect bliss, either now, or to be in time to come, found lodgment in the minds of representative writers, sentimentalists, poets, theologians, spiritualists, socialists, even hard-headed thinkers and scientists. Such is the diversity of changes, which have been rung on this conception, that it has been difficult to find any principle to guide in the collocation of views given in this chapter. Fashions of opinions are not always correct; and this may not be. It seems to be rather the crude result of intel- lectual processes taking place under the pressure of optimistic 44 THE problem. [Chap. V. bias. Might not the subject be more judiciously treated under the methods of modern research, with results less extreme and more trustworthy? CHAPTER V. THE PROBLEM STATED. Section 29. — Between the extremes of optimism and pessi- mism there is of course every variety of opinion concerning the relative weights of good and evil, and the ultimate extinction of evil through progress or providence. There are thinkers — we may imagine that they constitute a school — whose views we wish here to bring into notice. They are neither optimists nor pessimists and yet they are in a certain sense both. They are optimists in believing that the sum of enjoyment in life is greater than the sum of suffering; but they are pessimists in believing that evil is inherent in the constitution of things and can never be eradicated from existence. They believe that the most that progress can do at any future period of the world's career is to modify the character of both good and evil, improving the one and palliating the other, and thus increasing the preponderance of happiness over unhappiness among man- kind. With these views the writer is in sympathy. After Pessimism and Optimism would probably follow a chap- ter on Meliorism, but the material is not at hand. The formal and definite conception of evil as something which can be modified and softened but not eradicated or in any way completely over- come, is one which has not recommended itself to the modern mind till very recently. The doctrine of progress appears to have been in full vigor during the first half of this century; and Sec. 2p.] THE INTERMEDIATE. 45 the obvious inference was that the movement of progression implies perfection, and would not cease till it had reached it. Many still so believe. The protest against optimism assumes two forms, the one extreme, pessimistic, the other moderate, melioristic. When the study of this subject was commenced twenty years ago (1861) by the writer, he supposed that "all the world" were in one way or another optimists, except a very few eccentric people who were pessimists. The name meliorism had not been thought of, the idea had not crystalized. The reasoning would have been almost certain to be put in some such form as this: Evil is either curable or incurable; if it is curable we are optimists; if it is incurable, why, then, of course, pessimism must be true. We so like to have things one way or the other, decisive and incisive. But pessimism does not necessarily follow from the ineradicable nature of evil. Many evils which cannot be extirpated may be palliated, and suffering which cannot be escaped may be mitigated. And with this incentive to action, labor should be expended for what seems to be the best possible. This is the melioristic view, i This, too, would properly include all cases in which certain evils gather force with time; they should be met at every step, and their progress as much as possible retarded; for this is a form of palliation which it is beneficent to promote. Life is a continued battle; and only under opposition and diffi- culty does manhood attain its full strength; and in this way even those stubborn evils which can only be palliated or par- tially arrested in their course, are not without some redeeming influence in the economy of life. Optimism and pessimism in their exclusive forms are extreme systems which embody both truth and error, as such systems nearly always do. The truth usually crystallizes into some intermediate form after having first passed through the extremes on either side. The mean, where in the end, it is usually found that the truth rests, is always the last in favor. This is true even in science as elsewhere, as the history of science abundantly proves; although the theoretical extremes are due rather to the 46 THE problem. \_Cha_p. V. neglect than to the application of rigid scientific methods. But as shown by the history of discovery, this is the way the human mind has of ultimately finding out precisely where the truth is. In the case under consideration it is the function of correct methods to bring together the truth, which the extremes embody, into an integral system with its basis resting in the facts of sci- ence and history. Section 30. — The summary of views given in the preceding chapter is, of course, intended to show reason for believing that unqualified optimism has entered largely into the faith and motives of men. Now, if such optimism be an extreme embodying cardinal error, it is less desirable than some other system with more truth and less error; — hence, the need of a new examination of the subject; hence, a use for this volume, if it prove equal to its opportunity. This may not be conclusive to the reader ; all that is asked is that it may be accepted as conclusive with the writer. But while this volume has been in preparation a change has been going on in the minds of many concerning the nature of evil and its relations to life. The change seems to have been taking place silently and almost unperceived — as many another change has done before — the cause of it being "in the air," and isolated minds becoming affected simultaneously, i Of course, all this may be traced eventually to progress in the work and methods of science and education, and to changes in practical life. Only within a few years has it been thought necessary by unprejudiced students to assail the legion of optimistic spirits raised by the incantation of such words as Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Under like condi- tions has the exigency of the times been revealed as well as met by efforts to obstruct the inroads of pessimism. And I will con- fess to some surprise on reading a recent statement in the North American Review (April, 188 1), by an English writer, that the exultant optimism prevailing half a century since has quite dis- appeared from the utterances of accredited teachers, and a modi- fied faith taken its place which recognizes man's ability — not to root out the evil of the world, but merely to lessen it. This Sec. 31.] meliorism. 47 does not come ostentatiously into the literature of the day, which is bound to be as rosy as possible ; the evidence of the change is rather negative and subdued, the gradual subsidence of one tone, and the gradual adoption of another as quietly as possible ; and consequently the change might be easily over- looked by contemporaries. The reviewer makes the change far greater than I should have taken it to be; but his estimate may be correct. I had long observed that some such view as this was not uncommon among practical men of the world, who think by spontaneity and work by profession, but who never write. Quite commonly such people's instincts of what affects life are more apt to be correct than the elaborately formed judgments of closet- thinkers and accredited public teachers. Section 31. — The intermediate views on this subject will no doubt vary considerably, leaning with one toward optimism, with another toward pessimism. The following is given to assist in forming a definite conception of what this intermediate ground is, premising that the summary may have a slight pessimistic tinge : " This view of human life, a view which lies midway between optimism and pessimism, has been called, I believe, by G. H. Lewes, meliorism [Sully says the name was given by Mrs. Lewes]. It assumes that misery is, on the whole, the lot of mankind, but that the mass of suffering and discomfort at pres- ent existing is capable of being indefinitely reduced by human endeavor. Progress in this view of the situation consists in a continual encroachment of human effort upon the domain of evil. We now conceive the 'what might be,' not as a heaven of positive bliss, but as a little more relief from the inevitable pain of being." — (Mark Pattison, in North American Review, April, 1881). Meliorists may put in their work with different views concern- ing the opposing force which most needs to be resisted. They may believe that optimism is strong by pre-occupancy and needs to be dislodged, or they may look upon pessimism as the young, vigorous, and aggressive power from which most is to be feared. On reading Mr. James Sully's work on this subject (Pessimism), 48 THE PROBLEM. [Chap. V, this view of its origin and execution is obviously suggested, — that the author had studied German pessimism both as to its plausibility as a philosophy and its proselytism as a practical move- ment, till he felt that it was a power of sufficient importance to be opposed. The leading purpose of the volume is to show that pessimism is not tenable. This is the author's bias, or rather, the idea which directed his effort. He really makes no formal argument against optimism; but in his discussion of pessimism, it turns out incidentally that good reasons must be recognized why optimism in its extreme form is not defensible. Hence, the author rejects both, and adopts meliorism. But while the work done in the interest of meliorism is, perhaps, most likely to be directed against pessimism, the present volume aims rather to fortify against optimism. It was conceived and has been written under the impression that English-speaking peoples are far more likely to go to extremes in the direction of optimism than in that of pessimism. The practical need appeared to be to show that the prevalent form of optimism concerning the inci- dental character of evil, and its gradual and certain elimination, is not warranted by science, history, or contemporary experience. And this concerns not only philosophy, but practical life as well. If it be true, it enters into the living questions of the day ; and we have ventured in future chapters (Parts VI. and VII.) with greater misgivings than in any other parts of the work, briefly to x discuss some of these questions. Section 32. — The system of nature is a unit with all its parts interrelated, and if the inseparable connection of good and evil in sentient and moral existence is inherent in the system, there is something which corresponds to it in the purely physical world, and that something may be found in its simplest form in the primitive action of the cosmical forces. If there be truth in this view, we should be able, to some extent, after finding in the sim- plest forms of action the germ of harmony and discord, of good and evil, to trace it as it becomes more complicated in the course of its unfolding in the evolution of the world, first in physics, afterward in sentient life, and finally in the intellectual Sec 32 .] FORMS OF CONFLICT. 49 and moral spheres of existence. The term " conflict " has beenN chosen to designate this general fact. In its primitive form it may be simple attraction and repulsion, which would afterwards, in the course of evolution, assume a multiplicity of forms with their accessories, which may be indicated by the terms alterna- tion, contrast, antithesis, contrariety, duality, polarity, compen- sation, reflex action, action and reaction, circular motion, imper- fect equilibrium, conflict of forces and laws, good and evil, enjoyment and suffering, pleasure and pain, happiness and, misery, etc. It will be the aim of this work to afford some elucidation of the law which involves the necessity of physical and moral dis- cord. The ancient views of good and evil were at best but vague anticipations of the truth, while the modern are for the most part fragmentary and contradictory. No satisfactory expla- nation has been given of the difficulties which it is acknowledged are involved in the subject ; and while there is disagreement as it regards the essential character and relations of good and evil, no adequate account has been given of the cause and origin of evil. If the subject admits of being modernized in scientific form, the attempt has not been successfully made. The follow- ing chapters may do something to fill this vacuum in systematic thought on a subject of acknowledged difficulty. Note. — The word pleasure is one which will occur a great many times in the course of this volume; and since it is somewhat ambiguous, it is necessary to explain in what sense it may be used. To many it conveys the idea of sensual enjoyment even to criminal indulgence, and is rather the antithesis than the synonym of happi- ness. It has received this sense from the trick of puritanism to decry indiscrim- inately the enjoyments of sense, however temperate and legitimate. In this sense it would of course be a very different thing from happiness; nevertheless will it be here used to designate whatever is legitimately agreeable or happifying. The intemperate indulgence of sense brings more pain than pleasure, while all happiness is in a sense pleasurable feeling. There is a pleasure even in martyr- dom — the gratification of certain faculties. In a lower sense there is fascination in the hardships of the chase and of war. Men even love to dare the dangers of battle. The word pleasure will be largely used as the antithesis of pain, misery, suffering, unhappiness, and consequently as quite synonymous with happiness, enjoyment. It will therefore represent pleasurable states of the mind as well as of the body — pleasures of conscience as well as pleasures of sense. The con- 50 THE PROBLEM. [Chap. V. sciousness of doing good, of having discharged a duty involving repugnant labor, of having chosen in any contingency the wiser part, of having been true to the convictions of right even at great cost, and of having conscientiously used the opportunities of life, — all these bring pleasurable feeling; and in this sense pleasure or the pleasurable is what all are seeking, even when they renounce it; — and this is true of the ascetic as well as of the voluptuary, each according to his own mistaken notions of the greatest good in life. Pleasure is a thing not to be concerned about as an end. When the pursuit is too hot it usually eludes the pur- suer. As friendships are best held by manly independence, so will pleasure not bear formal solicitation, but deigns companionship only on compliance with its laws. PART SECOND. CONSIDERATIONS FROM SCIENCE. CHAPTER VI. EXISTENCE. Section 33. — Existence is the sum of all* mysteries. Be the marvel at any point ever so great, it is only a fraction of the still greater marvel of existence. Within its sphere come all we think, feel, do, and are, and yet, of the essential nature of exist- ence we know nothing and can know nothing. Has existence had a beginning? The human mind is a blank in presence of the inquiry. There is no answer within the bounds of the knowable. We cannot master in any complete sense the conception of an eternity of existence past any more than we can master the conception of the creation of a universe out of nothing. We use the terms as we use notation many figures deep, only with a still less definite conception of their power. And since the mystery is inscrutable, the inquirer can well afford to pass it over for subjects which will yield a better return for the labor expended. Locke very wisely recommends that we "sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities." Still, from education and habit, rather than from necessary con- stitution, the mind inclines to find rest in the belief of a beginning; and since it cannot penetrate to the beginning of existence, it contents itself with the belief of mythical or philosophical doctrines concerning the origin or beginning of the present order of things. Theology proper is exclusive, and ad- 52 existence. [Chap. VI. mits of no speculation which ignores the absolute fiat of creation. The great body of speculation by scientific men favors the nebu- lar hypothesis, with more or less emendation, — the only system that approaches a rational explanation of the " becoming " of the present order of things. According to this view matter was already in existence in nebulous form, and passed to the evolution of systems of worlds by the continuous action of natural forces. " The beginning " "here has reference to forms, and not to that something out of which forms are evolved. Section 34. — What is that essential thing without which there could be no consciousness of existence? Is it the old dualism of matter and spirit, or the more modern dualism of matter and motion, the recent monism simply of motion, or something still more recondite; or is it mere consciousness without anything to correspond with it in the external world? Since idealism, which does not admit the existence of an external cause of sensation, but finds all existence within the mind itself in the form of consciousness, has the support of famous names in philosophy, it might seem that the first step should be to determine whether there is validity in this doc- trine. But to most readers as to myself, this would appear to be an idle inquiry; and there is already more than enough of litera- ture on the subject. Our belief in external existence is an ultimate fact which hardly admits of discussion. Realism may be regarded in this connection as taking two distinct forms : one is that of unthinking experience which takes the external world to be absolutely what it appears to our consciousness to be; the other is brought out by philosophical criticism, which proves that the external causes of sensation and the perception which follows, are not necessarily so related that the one is a copy of the other. It is shown that the external world may be, indeed must be, essentially different from what it appears to be in consciousness. Persons who are little in the habit of critical introversion, are apt to think of matter as if they knew just what sort of thing it is. Their error consists in mistaking the subjective for the ob- Sec. 34.] COGNITION. 53 jective, the phenomenal for the absolute. Sound, for example, and color, have no existence outside of the sentient mind. They have external causes, but these causes are neither sound nor color, being in the one case simply waves of the atmosphere which strike on the tympanum of the ear, and in the other, waves of a more ethereal substance which strike on the retina of the eye. What we call heat is purely subjective, the external cause of it being motion, as Locke and Bacon stated long since, and as science has abundantly proved. " Heat, light, actinism, are, then, not only principles existing independent of each other, but effects arising in bodies from the reception of motions in the ether, motions which differ from each other in their rapidity. Of those which the eye and ear take cognizance of, the most rapid impart to the mind the sen- sation of violet light, the slowest the sensation of red, and inter- mediate ones the intermediate optical tints. Colors, like light itself, are nothing existing exteriorly. They are simply mental interpretations of modes of motion in the ether, and in this they represent musical sounds, which exist only as interpretations by the mind of waves in the air." — (J. W. Draper, Memoirs, page 131-2). The following is from another distinguished scientist : " On the hypothesis which appears to me to be the most convenient, sensation is a product of the sensiferous apparatus caused by certain modes of motion which are set up in it by impulses from without. The sensiferous apparatuses are, as it were, factories, all of which at the one end receive raw materials of a similar kind — namely, modes of motion — while at the other, each turns out a special product, the feeling which constitutes the kind of sensation characteristic of it." " In ultimate analysis, then, it appears that a sensation is the equivalent in terms of consciousness for a mode of motion of the matter of the sensorium. But, if inquiry is pushed a stage further, and the question is asked, 1 what then do we know about matter and motion ? ' there is but one reply possible. All that we know about motion is that it is a name for certain changes in the relations of our visual, 4 54 existence. [Chap. VI. tactile, and muscular sensations; and all that we know about matter is that it is the hypothetical substance of physical phe- nomena — the assumption of the existence of which is as pure a piece of metaphysical speculation as that of the substance of mind." — (Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, 1879). This is indeed a luminous statement from the physiologico- philosopher's point of view, though we may not quite understand the closing words. In a philosophical sense it may be apt, indeed, to say that " all we know about matter is that it is the hypothetical substance of physical phenomena;" but the assump- tion of the existence of matter appears to be instinctive and inevitable rather than "a piece of metaphysical speculation." Animals, children, savages, and common people, as well as metaphysical philosophers, assume matter to exist, and act accord- ingly. The trouble with the subject is that, in treating of it, we have to assume the existence of certain things of which, at the same time, we must disclaim any real knowledge. What do we know more of the essential nature of motion than of the essential nature of sound or heat, which we call in motion to explain ? Thus, we say sound has an external cause in the form of atmospheric waves, and an instrument of value has been invented on this principle ; but our perception of waves is itself as purely subjective as that of sound ; and this is true of all our perceptions of force, motion, vibration, and the like. We cannot get out of ourselves, and when we seem to be treat- ing of things without, we are really treating of what is within. Every writer on this subject becomes entangled in this diffi- culty; and while Herbert Spencer, for example, shows that idealism cannot proceed a step without assuming the existence of what it denies, he does not himself wholly escape from the like absurdity. Section 35. — More than two thousand years ago, it was very well understood in certain schools of Greek philosophy that perceptions of external objects cannot be copies of those objects. The Pyrrhonists and New Academicians recognized this fact, &£• 35-1 PERCEPTION RELATIVE. 55 and drew from it mistaken inferences against the certainty of knowledge. Few who have studied the subject in modern times have failed to see that our perceptions of external things are necessarily subjective, being, we assume, an effect upon self by a cause which is not self. Cudworth taught that, " we cannot be sure merely by the passions of sense, what the absolute nature of a corporeal object is without us, our perception being only relative to ourselves, our several organs and bodily crasis," "and so do not comprehend the nature of the thing as it is abso- lutely in itself, but only our own passion of it." Even Reid, the common- sense philosopher, says that, "no man can conceive any sensation to resemble any known (?) qualities of bodies." Stewart, who followed the common-sense philosophy of Reid, denied that smell, taste, and hearing afford to the mind any image of external objects, the sensations peculiar to them as well as that of color being purely subjective. Thomas Brown agreed with Stewart that sensations of color "need contain no notion of extension, but that even sensations appropriate to touch are as truly subjective, and that both suggest the extended and external object only through an inveterate association." Hamilton taught that, "our whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative — conditioned — relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in themselves — be they external, be they internal — we know nothing, or know them to be incognizable." Even Dr. Porter (from whose work on the Human Intellect the preceding examples, except the first, are taken) who teaches that we can know the unconditioned and absolute, favors the view "that the objects touched, and tasted, and smelled, and colored, etc., etc., which we call the material universe, are not realities, but only phenomena jointly produced by two unknowable real- ities which we call matter and embodied soul." Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the second volume of his Psychology, has treated this subject very fully. While he rejects idealism he distinguishes between crude and transfigured realism. We quote: "The realism we are committed to is one which simply asserts objective existence as separate from, and independent of, 5 6 existence. [Chap. VI, subjective existence. But it affirms neither that any one mode of this objective existence is in reality that which it seems, nor that the connections among its modes are objectively what they seem. Thus it stands widely distinguished from crude realism ; and to mark the distinction it may properly be called trans- figured realism." What we have to do with wholly is phenomenon, and not absolute existence. We know nothing but phenomenon, and whatever else it may be, it cannot be divested of its subjective element ; consequently, when we speak of matter, force, energy, motion, action, we mean to designate externalities which take shape in consciousness under the laws of our mental constitu- tion. We are here limited by the conditions of perception, and there is no need of a struggle to pass this boundary, since phe- nomena come into consciousness under the order of uniform sequence, and are all that concern either life or philosophy. This subject has received so much philosophical attention that it could not well be passed over here without some slight notice. But while its literature is immense, its difficulties are insuperable. But for all practical purposes, — indeed, for all philosophico-scien- tific purposes, it suffices to accept the deliverances of the healthy and universal consciousness. This recognizes an external world, and it does not matter for practical and scientific ends whether we regard this world in the light of crude realism or of trans- figured realism, or as the ideal projection of the ego. After the philosopher has been grimly at work demolishing crude realism, or, after he has been happily engaged building up an idealistic world, he turns about and discourses of nature precisely as if crude realism were true. He has no alternative. Language itself has been constructed on the undoubted veracity of conscious- ness, and it has no meaning else. Language was not con- sciously originated by philosophers on a basis of scientific accuracy, but spontaneously by little-thinking people on a basis of crude conception and deceptive appearance. This language we have still to use. We all say the sun rises and sets, and nobody is misled ; we know scientifically that it does no such $ ec ' SS-] PERCEPTION RELIABLE. 57 thing. Physicists no longer believe that electricity is a "fluid," but they are constantly speaking of electrical currents. In this sense Dr. McCosh is correct enough when he affirms that "what we perceive originally are things," and that "when we classify plants by their resemblances, we classify the plants and not im- pressions;" but philosopically, it is a child's weapon with which to meet the scepticism of Hume or the agnosticism of Huxley. We have to do with our impressions of external things as they exist in consciousness, after having passed through the channels of the senses, and we very well understand one another when we speak of matter, force, or motion, though, like most words, their connotations are very different to different minds. We have to do with extension, with solidity, with motion, with suc- cession, with color, with taste, with smell, with sound ; and what- ever these things may be under the test of the philosophies, they are yet actual things relatively to us, and it is only relatively that we have to do with them. We can only know phenomena, and that is all we need to know. Science deals only with crude realism because only this is definite. Transformed or reasoned realism has no distinctness of outline as an interpretation of the external world, and belongs necessarily to the domain of specu- lation, and not to that of science. Spencer observes that "language absolutely refuses to express the idealistic and scepti- cal hypotheses." It just as absolutely refuses to express the hypothesis of transfigured realism; and the hypothesis is not utilized by any of us who hold it. It is a sort of philosophical toy elaborately constructed, and laid carefully away, to be shown occasionally to guests, but never more to be used in the serious work of intellect. Our notice of this subject may be closed with the lucid sum- ming up which G. H. Lewes has given it in his History of Phi- losophy (p. 304): "Do we then side with the Academicians in proclaiming all human knowledge deceptive? No, to them as to the Pyrrhonists, we answer : You are quite right in affirming that man cannot transcend the sphere of his own consciousness, cannot penetrate the real essences of things, cannot know 58 existence. [Chap. VI. causes, can only know phenomena. But this affirmation — though it crushes metaphysics — though it interdicts the inquiry into nownena, into essences and causes, as frivolous because futile — does not touch science. If all our knowledge is but a knowledge of phenomena, there can still be a science of phenomena adequate to all man's true wants. If sensation is but the effect of an external cause, we, who can never know that cause, know it in its relations to us, that is in its effects. These effects are as constant as their causes ; and, consequently, there can be a science of effects. Such a science is that named positive science, the aim of which is to trace the co-existences and successions of phenomena ; that is, to trace the relation of cause and effect throughout the universe submitted to our inspection." Section 36. — For the sake of emphasis we may imagine one of the modern school making a profession of (philosophical) faith, positive and negative, as follows: "I do not know in any definite sense what matter in itself really is; it has no revelations of the mysteries of existence for me: I am not a materialist. The external world does not come to my consciousness or my reason as a something projected from the ego : I am no idealist. Noumenon, the ding on stch, the substratum of being, by whatever name known, is to me a sealed mystery: I am no metaphysician. The absolute is a name with no definite mean- ing, and must ever remain so: I am no transcendentalist. The fourth dimension of space and the finitude and infinitude of the universe are quite beyond my reach: I am no pangeometer. I know nothing of force as an entity distinct from the form it assumes in consciousness; I know nothing of entities of any kind: I am no schoolman. I know nothing of mind and soul apart from conscious experience : I am not a supernaturalist. Essences, spirits, and ghosts are shut up forever in the realm of the unknowable; I am not able to transcend the operations of my own mind: I am no mystic. I believe in the veracity of per- ception, not as the copy of things, but as the uniform interpre- tator of relations between the ego and non-ego: I am no seep- Sec. 36.] PROFESSION OF FAITH. 59 tic. I believe in the relativity of all knowledge as a thing bound up with consciousness which there is no transcending. I know only phenomenon which is a compound of an external and an internal — or something which is not subjective and a some- thing which is. It is with consciousness we have to deal; and beyond what comes to the consciousness through the senses as the basis of experience and of ail thinking and knowing, I am absolutely in the dark — as all are, not excepting mystics and holy men, whatever light they imagine shines about them. I am by open confession what they are by the necessity which binds us all. Truth is the correct interpretation of the phenomena of life and nature; and I believe there is truth in the old as well as in the new; and that the best possible is to be had, not by cutting away from the past, but by its gradual transformation into the present. I believe in the value of systematic knowledge, and in the methods which have led through conflict to such knowledge. I believe in the order of Nature, in the science which interprets that order, and in the common sense which duly recognizes it in practical life; and these are the living, rational trinity of Faith, Thought, and Works." CHAPTER VII. THE UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. Section 37. — Between the mind and something else through the medium of the senses, an external world takes form within consciousness. Acknowledging the limitations of language, in what phraseology, or form of thought, is it most convenient to render our conception of this objective existence? It is usually spoken of as matter in various forms with various properties, 6o UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. and with various states of activity and rest. This method of regarding external things is so woven into all thought, that it is not possible to lay it aside if we would, though accuracy may require that the use of it in philosophical connections be made under protest, and with some qualification. This prevailing use of the word matter, quite commonly connotes that it is itself a dead thing, and manifests action only as it is acted upon. It is said to be acted on by the forces, or by an independent spiritual power; and matter and force, or dead matter and some living power are very generally regarded as distinct things. In this sense force hardly escapes the imputation of being a mythical something, a sort of metaphysical entity, which has a part to play only in the absence of more distinct conceptions. This may only show how primitive in philosophy we still are. The philosophers of China have no place in their system for such a thing as " dead matter." With them matter is not distinct from force, nor force from matter. The two are bound together as one, and it is inconceivable to them that one could have an exist- ence without the other. They are the two poles of the same thing. "The relation of force to matter is essential, and the terms before and after are so far inapplicable to it; though to the principle of force is given the precedence. All exists through the primal force, whose union with form and quantity is only possible through the primal matter, while of itself without this, it could neither strive, nor work, nor purpose." — (Chu-hi, Phi- losophy of Nature — Johnson's Oriental Religions, China, p. 928). This resembles the modern view which is probably quite com- mon among scientific men, that force is inherent in matter con- stituting an essential part of it, without which it would not be matter. . This is a simpler view, involving less of arbitrary theory and possessing greater logical aptness, than the dualistic. We know -nothing of matter but by the action of the forces which are reputed to be in some form associated with it. " We know matter only by its forces," says Faraday. And J. B. Stallo, who disclaims faith in the fundamental concepts of modern physics, declares, "that mass — or, to use the ordinary term inert matter, Sec. 37.] MATTER AND FORCE. 6 1 or matter per se — can not be an object of sensible experience. Things are objects of sensible experience only by virtue of their action and reaction. As Leibnitz said, • Whatever does not act does not exist.'" Again: "Mass reveals its presence, or evinces its reality only by its action, its balanced or unbalanced force, its tension or motion." — (Modern Physics, 149, 161). Professor Macomber observes : "It is noteworthy that matter and force are always found associated. In fact, we are ignorant of force except as it affects matter. This suggests the query whether there be such a thing as pure force. Since matter and force are never separated, may they not, after ail be identical? Not a few philosophers have seriously urged this doctrine. By simply assuming each molecule of matter to be a centre of force, we can account for all its properties. Regarded in this light, matter and force are one and the same." — (Matter and Force, p. 58). Prof. Cooke : " We may with Newton, regard them [atoms] as infinitely small, that is as mere points, or, as Boscovich called them, vari- able centres of attractive and repulsive forces. According to this view, matter is purely a manifestation of force." — (Chemical Physics, p. no). If matter is purely a manifesta- tion of force," if " we know matter only by its forces," then the dogma of "dead matter" — the idea of matter in the old "mate- rialistic " sense — is an assumption and a prejudice which mod- ern research is dissipating. We only know of objective existence by its action on mind through the senses. It is not possible to conceive of anything in the external world which is destitute of every form of action upon ourselves. " All that we know about matter relates to the series of phenomena in which energy is transferred from one portion of matter to another, till in some part of the series our bodies are affected, and we become conscious of a sensation." (Matter and Motion, J. Clerk Maxwell, p. 164.) The most permanent forms of matter are, under the necessi- ties and limitations of perception, but the imperfect equilibrium of forces. The simplest element of knowledge, our conscious- ness of resistance, arises from an external force opposed to our 62 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. own. What comes within the range of cognition, is the action of things — the play of some force. It is some power that acts, but we know nothing of that power except by its action. " In strict mathematical language the word force is used to sig- nify the supposed cause of the tendency which a material body is found to have towards alteration in its state of rest or motion. It is indifferent whether we speak of this observed tendency o*- or of its immediate cause, since the cause is simply inferred from the effect, and has no other evidence to support it." — (Elec- tricity and Magnetism, Maxwell, p. 146.) It is the work of science in its ultimate function to determine the character and relations of actions simply. What comes into consciousness as lying back of these actions is the result of infer- ence readily made ; and we easily conceive of the universe as a system of active powers. The term force occupies a position between those of power and action. In the plural it may be used to designate powers, but it has a more obvious reference to action. It is easier to conceive of a power not in action than so to conceive of a force. To speak of a living or active force may lend emphasis, but it verges on tautology. Latent, dormant, potential forces, it is true, are spoken of, but a force that is latent, dormant, or potential, is a power of which we know noth- ing while in that state. We only know of it from its antecedents or its consequents in the form of action. A power may be latent or inactive, but a force that is so, is no force at all — it is practically non-existent. "Force is wholly expended in the action it produces ;" and " the measure of a force is the quantity of motion which it produces in a unit of time." — (Elements Natural Philosophy, Tait & Thomson, 54, 55). Force also implies something more than action ; it might be defined as power in action, thus combining the inference of cause with the cognition of effect. " Force may be of divers kinds, as pressure, or gravity, or friction, or any of the attractive or repulsive actions of electricity, magnetism, etc." — (Tait & Thomson). Energy is a kindred term but has a reference peculiarly its own to the continuous supply of the means of action. The massive Sec. S8?[ THE FORCE-POINT. 63 bones and firm, bellying muscles of the athlete show that he has power though he be sleeping. When aroused into action he manifests force, and sustains it with energy. From the actions we observe in nature, and the energy with which they are carried on, we measure the intensity of the forces and define their char- acter. Concerning the power that lies back of these, we may- guess, but can know absolutely nothing. However, we are not to expect too much of such distinctions ; and I am well aware that in this attempt I have stepped upon unsafe ground. Power, force, energy are often interchangeable terms, so nearly are they allied in meaning, showing that in regard to the phenomena to which they relate, there has been no uniform conception of clear- cut and well defined ideas. Even the masters differ in their use of these terms. Section 38. — Speculations concerning the simplest element of force in nature have not brought out satisfactory results, as we should very naturally expect from the inherent obscurity of the subject, which barely lies within the region of the knowable, and which probably does still lie within the region of the unknown. The theory of Boscovich has held a prominent place in speculation of this kind, and has received a sort of theoret- ical endorsement by certain authorities in science of the highest character. His theory is that the point as the center of force is the simplest conceivable form of physical existence. Bos- covich's atom is not a material and extended something in which force resides; it is simply a point, a center of force or power. Faraday, who was not, however, a mathematician, adopted Bos- covich's theory, and upon it builds his magnificent scheme of polarity, chemical affinity, the transmutation of forces, etc. Joseph Bayma, professor of philosophy, Stonyhurst College, has elaborated this subject with apparent great care in his work on Molecular Mechanics. He appears to establish it as a mathematical necessity that force can only act from point to point. "Primitive substance cannot be materially extended." " In a material element the matter is a point, from which the action ot the element is directed towards other points in space, 64 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. [Chap. VII. and to which the actions of other material points in space are directed" (page 31). On this view, "the matter" is the force center, as he elsewhere explains more fully. We can only state the author's leading proposition without the reasoning with which he supports it. Thomas Rawson Birks, M. D., who has investigated the same subject, has recognized the same mathematical necessity in the simplest* element of existence. He says : " Every particle is either a mathematical point or else contains such a point, as the true center from which the attraction proceeds" (page 7). "The simplest view of matter, derived at once from the law ot gravi- tation, is that it consists of monads, or movable centers of force, unextended, but in definite position, which attract each other with a force varying inversely as the squares of the distance between the centers. This conception of points that are cen- ters of force, results plainly and unavoidably from the nature of the law of gravitation. Any further conception of the constitu- tion of matter is an unproved addition " (page 9). Dr. Christian Wiener, in his work, Die Grundziige der Welt- ordnung, while maintaining that there is nothing in the universe but matter and the forces, the forces residing within matter, which is extended and impenetrable substance (Wesen); yet in discussing the general properties of matter, he " yields to the logical necessity of recognizing infinitely small particles of mat- ter or points of matter " (page 8). According to J. Clerk Max- well, a high authority on this subject, "the diagram of a material particle is of course a mathematical point, which has no con- figuration." — (Matter and Motion, page 14). M. Couchy defines atoms as " material points without extension." Section 39. — The latest view taken by leading mathematicians and physicists of the ultimate unit of matter as known to us, is that it is a vortex ring in a universal fluid. This fluid has only the properties of invariable density (incompressibility), inertia, and perfect mobility — (Maxwell). The vortex ring in such a fluid is permanent as to volume and strength, and permanent as to qual- ity whether knotted on itself or linked with other rings; and is Sec. jp.] THE VORTEX RING. '65 capable of infinite changes of form, and may vibrate at different periods as we know molecules do. An advantage of the ring over the solid atom is that it vibrates. " But according to Thomson, though the primitive fluid is 'the only true matter,' yet that which we call matter is not the primitive fluid itself, but a mode of motion of that primitive fluid. It is the mode of motion which constitutes the vortex rings, and which furnishes us with examples of that permanence and continuity of existence which we are accustomed to attribute to matter itself. The primitive fluid, the only true matter, entirely eludes our percep- tions, when it is not endued with the mode of motion which converts certain portions of it into vortex rings, and thus renders it molecular." — (Encyclopedia Brittanica, Art. Atoms, J. C. Maxwell). Professor Tait (Recent Advances, page 294), observes : " This property of rotation (vortex rings) may be the basis of all that appeals to our senses as matter." This may, indeed, appear to be a speculation more curious than valuable. It resolves matter into motion, that is, matter as known to the senses. The cessation of this motion would, therefore, be to us the annihilation of matter. But whether or not the vortex ring be the particular mode of motion of this primitive fluid which renders the universe sensible, there is still a plausibility in the general elements of the view concerning the primitive fluid itself and the necessity of motion therein to give existence to sensible forms of matter, that commends it to con- sideration on a subject which is at once interesting and obscure. Two of the greatest names in modern research, Helmholtz and Thomson, are associated in the mathematical and experimental elucidation of the vortex ring as the unit of matter; two more belonging to the same class, Maxwell and Tait, have appeared in the statement of the theory herein given; and on a subject at once so curious, so difficult, and so instructive, we append brief statements of two others. C. A. Wurtz observes : "The circle is their position of equilibrium, and when their form is altered, they oscillate around this position, and finally resume the circular form. But if we try to cut them they recede before the knife, or bend around it, without allowing 66 UNIT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE \_Chap. VII. themselves to be injured. They give, therefore, a representation of something which would be indivisible. And when two rings meet each other, they behave like two solid elastic bodies; after the impact they vibrate energetically." Two rings may pass through each other alternately. ' ' But through all the changes of form and velocity, each preserves its own individuality, and these two circular masses of smoke move through the air as if they were something perfectly dis- tinct and independent." — (Atomic Theory,pp. 327-8). He adds: "Helmholtz, therefore, has discovered the fundamental properties of matter in vortex motion, and Sir William Thomson has stated, 'This perfect medium and these vortex rings which move through it, represent the universe'. A fluid fills all space, and what we call matter are portions of this fluid which are animated with vortex motion. There are innumerable legions of very small fractions, or portions, but each of these portions is perfectly limited, distinct from the entire mass, and distinct from all others, not only in its substance, but in its mass and its mode of motion — qualities which it will preserve forever. These portions are atoms. In the per- fect medium which contains them all, none of them can change or disappear, none of them can be formed spontaneously. Everywhere atoms of the same kind are constituted after the same fashion, and are endowed with the same properties" (pp.328-9). An American, Professor Macomber, thinks favorably of Thomson's suggestion "that what we call matter may be nothing but rotating portions of a perfect fluid which occupies all space. In other words, an atom is simply vortex motion. Every so-called atom is a vortex ring." — (Matter and Force, p. 20). But however much the conception of force or of motion may- invade the province of matter, the term "matter" is still as necessary and as useful as ever. If, for example, matter be vortex motion in a perfect fluid, then is vortex motion in a per- fect fluid precisely what we know by the name of matter, and the name is perfectly legitimate. And it is to be remembered that matter we know phenomenally as direct as we know any of the phenomena with which we have to deal in life, while vortex motion in a perfect fluid as constituting matter is at a much farther remove from the immediate field of human knowledge. It is entirely consistent, while entertaining these theories of matter, to use the term matter in the sense current in every day life and in science proper. Section 40. — The forces which we regard as constituting essen- tially the universe, have not played any simple role of movement in brief season, or in small circle of recurring activity: they appear rather to have worked out, and to be still working out, a mag- nificent destiny. They are passing in phenomenal results from Sec. 41.] THE SIMPLEST PROPERTIES, WHAT ? 67 one stage to another, mainly ascending, sometimes descending; the whole becoming constantly more complicated; and we give to the movement the name of evolution. But this is only one section of the career which we see. It points back to a simpler state of things, and forward to a maximum of organized complexity, when a general descending movement may begin in our world, not to end till it again reaches the simple and disor- ganized, in the original, or in some modified, form. It comes within the scope of our purpose and plan to inquire in the first place, what is the simplest form of activity in the economy of nature, of which we can conceive, or of which we have any definite knowledge ? This simplest form of the play of forces must be our point of beginning as the first term in the series of development — as the initiative of the magnificent succession of results in all the activities of nature and life. CHAPTER VIII. THE PRIMARY FORCES. Section 41. — What are the simplest known properties of mat- ter — those properties without which it would not be matter? Is it attraction? Is it repulsion? Or is it something simpler still? The problem of finding one original property of matter from which all other properties have been derived, and to which they may all be traced, has not been overlooked by students of nature. The property so honored is sometimes that of attraction. This view may have arisen from the habit of attending to the construction of bodies rather than to their dissolution. A writer who is not a physicist, and who appears only to see one side, thus states the case: "It is a very important generalization that all primary forces are attractive; there is no such thing in nature as a primary 68 THE PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIIL repulsive force. For this, as for every other physical law, no cause can be assigned except the Divine will. But its purpose is obvious. The universe is held together by attractive forces: and if, as I believe, the nebular, or, as I prefer to call it, the conden- sation theory of world-formation is true, the universe has been formed by the action of attractive forces. Repulsive forces, on the contrary, it is obvious, could neither form a world nor hold it together." — (J. J. Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, Vol. I., p. 43). It seems never to have occurred to the author to think out how attractive foices acting unresisted could form a world. If it be true that the worlds were formed through the loss of repulsion, and the relative gain of attraction, that does not by any means decide the question of primary force against repulsion. Its great prevalence in an earlier condition of our system proves it to be primitive, and indicates that it is a primary force. No doubt the prejudice in favor of the attractive forces as ruling and primary has grown up in the common mind from the fact that, in the current manifestations of the natural forces, attraction seems greatly to predominate. But this has not always been so. On the nebular hypothesis there was a time when repulsion was immensely greater than at present, and when it could hardly be contemplated as a derivative and secondary property of matter. We may allow that repulsion was at its maximum, when the volume of the nebula was greatest. By the loss of heat this volume would contract under the influence of gravitation; but attraction would lose nothing of its original power, since the mass of the nebula would be the same what- ever its bulk. But from that time till this, repulsion within our system has been becoming absolutely less through the radiation of heat, and at the same time relatively weaker in proportion to attraction. Now, if this repulsion passed out of existence or was transformed into attraction, then might there be some ground for a case against it as a primary force ; but though out of our system, it is still somewhere, maintaining strictly its integ- rity as a repulsive energy. It is primary. Even now, how much of a world should we have if there were Sec. 42.] EXPLAINING ATTRACTION BY REPULSION. 69 no repulsive energies operative within it ? They are everywhere present, and attraction would play a sorry part without them. There is repulsion among the atoms even of the solidest sub- stances, more in the liquids, in the gases still more. There can be no chemical action without the presence of that kind of atomic behavior which constitutes repulsion; without it no physiological function, no life. However negative in some respects it may seem, its presence is absolutely indispensable to phenomena. Section 42. — But even if attraction in its many forms pre- dominate in current phenomena, this is no evidence that it is a primary, and repulsion a derivative, force. It is difficult to con- ceive how attraction as the primary, could be changed into repulsion as the secondary. Indeed, it is easier to conceive how repulsion may change into attraction, or how apparent attraction may be the product of repulsion. Physicists have put forth theories upon which, if true, repulsion is the original, and gravi- tation a derivative force. Newton was by no means satisfied that gravitation was an inherent property of matter. At one time he advanced the theory of an interplanetary medium, very rare within the planetary bodies, but becoming denser and denser with the distance from them. This would cause among these bodies a phenomenon equivalent to gravitation, "every body endeavoring to go from the denser parts of the medium toward ' the rarer." And Dr. Young thus speaks of this theory : " The effects of gravitation might be produced by a medium thus con- stituted, if its particles were repelled by all material substances with a force decreasing like other repulsive forces, simply as the distances increase. Its density would then be everywhere such as to produce the appearance of an attraction varying like that of gravitation. Such an ethereal medium would therefore have the advantage of simplicity in the original law of its action, since the repulsive force which is known to belong to all matter would be sufficient, when thus modified, to account for the principal phenomena of attraction." Of the same import is the following from J. S. Stewart Glen- 7^> PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIII. nie: "A mechanical force, or the cause of a mechanical motion, we know to be in general the condition of a difference of pressure." "Hence it appears that if a general mechanical theory is possible, the ultimate property of matter must be con- ceived to be a mutual repulsion of its parts, and the indubitable Newtonian law of universal attraction be deduced herefrom, under the actual conditions of the world." "But it must be understood that the above proposition is given rather to show that as an actual law, universal attraction may be deduced from the theoretical conception of universal repulsion, than with any pretension to its being the best attainable form of an explana- tion of the law." Among the attempts to account for gravitation by repulsion, that of Le Sage has attracted most attention, having gained a prominence in its way as Boscovich's atom and Thomson's vor- tex ring have in theirs. It is favorably mentioned by many great physicists, among them Tait and Maxwell. It accounts for gravitation by supposing a repulsive ether whose particles moving in every possible direction would be intercepted by bodies in space. The action of this force on such bodies would drive them toward one another precisely as they are supposed to be drawn by attraction. They would move toward the vacuum which their own mutual interception of the flying parti- cles would create. A kindred theory is conceived by Professor Walling, of Lafayette college. He attempts to account for the chemical and physical behavior of matter by supposing that force is independent of matter, but acts upon it in infinite lines mov- ing in every possible direction. According to these views, gravity and gravitation are resolved into a force which is essen- tially repulsive, for Le Sage's corpuscles and Waiting's infinite lines of force moving in every possible direction form a perfect system of antagonistic action, and correspond perfectly with the physicist's conception of the expansivity, elasticity, or repulsion, of gases. James Croll, the physicist and mathematician, states his view as follows: "Gravity in all probability is of the nature of an SeC. 43, ~\ BOSCOVICH AND BAYMA. 7 1 impact or a pressure. Some of our most eminent physicists state that the force of gravity must either result from impact of ultramundane corpuscles, in some respects analogous to that of the particles of a gas (which has been found to be capable of accounting for gaseous pressure), or it must result from differ- ence of pressure in a substance continuously filling space, except where matter displaces it. That gravity is a force of the nature of pressure is, I think, beyond all doubt ; but that this pressure results from the impact of corpuscles, or from difference of pres- sure in a substance filling space, is purely hypothetical. Why not call it a force, without calling in the aid of corpuscles or a medium filling space?" This view and Professor Walling's are essentially the same. Section 43. — But it is doubtful if the supposition of a single primitive force from which attraction, gravitation, and all others are derived, does really compensate in simplicity for the theoreti- cal difficulties it involves. It has not the merit of being simple. Boscovich supposed both attraction and repulsion to belong to the original power-point, the one changing into the other accord- ing to the relation of the axis and the curve of force ; but the scheme is condemned by its obscurity and complexity. What- ever the supposition to begin with, whether vibrations, waves, flying corpuscles, lines of force, elastic ether, pressure, impact, attraction and repulsion immediately supervene as a necessary part of the problem. These must be primarily accounted for. Possibly we should gain in simplicity and clearness by the admission, to begin with, of two primary and antagonistic forces in nature. Bayma, from whom we have already quoted (section 38), believes it to be demonstrable that attraction and repulsion are not only the primary, but indeed the only properties of matter. He begins with points which are either wholly attractive or wholly repulsive, and with these original centers of force he proceeds to build up all the known forms of inorganic matter. He says: "No phenomenon has been observed anywhere in material things, which cannot proceed from the known powers of attraction and 72 PRIMARY FORCES. \Chdp. VIII. repulsion; nay, it is positively certain that all phenomena pro- ceed from these same powers. For each material point, when acted on, can only change its place; and therefore, the effect of the action of matter upon matter is only local motion, one ele- ment approaching to, or retiring from the other. And this is precisely what attractive and repulsive powers are especially competent to do." — (Molecular Mechanics, p. 46). According to this philosopher, the power is the entity, or real thing that exists; what he calls matter is simply the power- center. "The matter is a point in space;" and this point is sur- rounded by an indefinite sphere of power which decreases in inverse ratio to the square of the distance. The point is not the source or generator of this sphere of power, but exists simply by virtue of it as its center. In maintaining that these power- centers, or " simple elements " are either wholly attractive or wholly repulsive, he differs from Boscovich, who regards attrac- tion and repulsion as possible forces of the same point. Out of the "simple elements," both attractive and repulsive, Bayma constructs his molecules, which possess extension, and " imply volume." These molecules being composed of elements of opposite forces may be repulsive at certain distances and attract- ive at others. The definition of a molecule, as for example, of hydrogen, is given in full as follows: "A molecule is a system of simple elements, or material points, constituted by a centre, a number of regular concentric polyhedric nuclei, and a regular polyhedric repulsive envelope, all indissolubly bound with one another by dynamical ties, and subject to a kind of palpitating motion by which they constantly contract and dilate with a sur- prising rapidity" (p. 7). The whole scheme is worked out with an imposing array of algebraic formulae. The author's positions may not be impreg- nable, especially that which assumes the exclusively attractive nature of the ether which fills the inter-planetary spaces. But as abstruse as the subject' is, and as abstract as this treatment of it is, it is nevertheless throughout suggestive; and it is here presented as one of the simplest views of the subject, and Sec. 43 .] BIRKS AND NORTON. 73 one which brings out clearly the logical need of regarding attrac- tion and repulsion as necessary and original functions of mater- rial existence. Birks, who, as we have seen (section 38), takes the same gen- eral view of matter with Bayma, has wrought out quite a similar theory of its ultimate constitution and ultimate properties. Mat- ter, according to his theory, is constituted of points of attraction which obey the Newtonian law of inverse squares. But attrac- tion of itself does not account for cohesion, which he maintains is due to the pressure of ether as the embodiment of repulsive force in nature. He thus starts with the two forces ; the one of matter, attraction ; the other of ether, repulsion * and with them he proceeds to account for all the physical and chemical proper- ties of bodies (Matter and Ether). An earlier theory than those of Bayma and Birks is that of Professor Norton, of Harvard. According to this theory matter has three forms : First, that of ordinary or gross matter ; secondly, an electric ether which is attracted by common matter, but whose atoms repel one another ; thirdly, a luminiferous, or universal ether which pervades all space, is self-repulsive, but is attracted by ordinary matter. His conception of a molecule is that it consists of an atom of ponderable matter surrounded by atmospheres of these two forms of ether. He says : " The con- ception here formed of a molecule involves the idea of the oper- ation of the two forces of attraction and repulsion : a force of attraction is exerted by the atom upon each of the two atmos- pheres surrounding it; and a force of mutual repulsion between the atoms of each atmosphere. These we regard as the primary forces of nature, from which all known forces are derived." Again : "All the forces in nature are traceable to two primary forces, viz., attraction and repulsion." — (Stated by Bayma from Silliman's Journal). Original antagonism in the constitution of things is recom mended to the metaphysical, as well as to the physico-mathe- matical, mind, in its attempt to reach the primary forces of physical existence. This is shown by the elaborate system of 74 PRIMARY FORCES. '[C/lOp. VIII. cosmology by S. P. Hickok, who makes great account of the "insight of reason" to penetrate the order of nature. A system of rational cosmology which has been "evolved from the depths of consciousness " by a mind untrained in physical science, would not be likely to receive much attention from trained physicists ; but it is referred to here for the general coincidence in its points with those which are in favor with the profoundest students of physical science. This theorist accounts not only for the dissolution of physical forms, but also for their construc- tion, by the play of antagonistic forces which he calls antago- nistic and diremptive. This combining agency is an antago- nistic force, without which matter could not exist. "But our thought-conception of a space-filling force as the true substantial matter involves the full conception of both statics and dynamics; counteraction in equilibrium must stand self-fixed. It is a force holding itself in its place." The author's idea of the original antagonism which forms the space-filling molecule and atom is that of two equal and counter pushes or pulsions toward a common point. It is not the pull of attraction from all sides that combines, but the pulsion or pressure from opposite direc- tions. His diremptive force is the precise opposite of this, being that which pushes asunder. The "antagonistic" is that "which works from opposite sides upon itself;" the "diremptive" is that "which outworks from itself on each side of the point of divellant action." With these two forms of "activity," which are the opposite of each other, and each of which is within itself an opposite tendency, he constructs his system of "rational cosmology." He builds up the universe out of counter forces. — (Rational Cosmology). G. H. Lewes, a general as well as scientific student, clearly states the view we entertain concerning the necessity of opposing forces in nature : " Beside the unity of force we must accept the diversity of opposing forces. Physics could not stir a step without its discrete atoms and opposing forces. The atoms are infintesimal masses [or forms of motion] ; both are discrete. A SeC. 43. ~\ ANTAGONIZING TENSION. 75 single force could have no resultant, and produce no change." — ■ (Problems of Life and Mind, Third Series). Kant could not conceive of the existence of matter apart from the two properties of attraction and repulsion. But with these properties in hand he proceeded to build up a scheme of the universe, afterwards independently worked out by Laplace, — the nebular hypothesis. The following is a somewhat technical statement of the theo- retical necessity of antagonizing tensions in matter : " It may be well to affirm with some positiveness that without the cease- less co-operation of two antagonizing, or reciprocating statical tensions, a mechanical theory of heat is rationally impossible. Matter possessing only inertia and motion (whose product is momentum) would speedily arrive at a state of stable and inert equilibrium, without having ever exhibited a single phenomenon of force, and without the possibility of any dynamic potential. All gases would, under the operation of the first law of motion, tend to infinite and equable diffusion; and liquids and solids would quickly follow in their wake. Heat, whether considered as a vibration or a revolution (or preferable, as both a rectilinear and an orbital movement), could of course have no existence, since there could be neither recoil nor constraining bond; and the very first step toward an oscillation would also be the last one. Even the principle itself of * conservation of force ' is absolutely dependent on the existence of primordial static protentiality." — (William B. Taylor.) According to the doctrine of conservation, energy is a constant quantity which changes form without loss or gain. This obviously suggests that the universe is a system of balancing forces — a universal strain in opposite directions, with the lines of stress constantly chang- ing. This strain or compensating tendency is clearly necessary to maintain the integrity of the correlation and conservation of energy. The author last quoted does not believe that any attempt to explain gravitation has been successful. This universal attrac- tion is itself a function of nature so primal that the human mind 76 PRIMARY FORCES. \Chap. VIII. has not yet succeeded in resolving it into simpler known ele- ments. A similar view is taken by J. Clerk Maxwell. In his article on Attraction, in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittannica, he instances three hypotheses to account for gravita- tion: i. — The corpuscular theory of Le Sage. 2. — Robert Hooke's theory of waves in a medium; Professor Walling hav- ing presented a modification of this theory, and Professor Challis having improved upon it by his suggestion concerning the "effect of waves of condensation and rarefaction in an elastic fluid on bodies immersed in the fluid." 3. — Sir William Thom- son's view, showing how attraction and repulsion might take place between bodies by the emission or absorption of an incom- pressible fluid which fills all space. But he regards none of these theories as satisfactory; they add nothing to our knowl- edge of the real forces of nature; and we gain in simplicity by regarding attraction and repulsion as ultimate facts which admit of no explanation. Section 44. — If attraction and repulsion, as these philoso- phers and students of nature think, are to be regarded as prop- erly the primary forces of matter, we should no doubt be authorized to carry them back to the beginning and install them as the prim i tive forces of phenomenal existence. If these appear to discerning minds as the leading or only forces in nature when its phenomena are so diversified as at present, still more obvi- ously would they appear as such in the nebulous form of the worlds. What precisely were the active forces of matter in the state of diffusion such as the nebular hypothesis supposes, we are not able perhaps fully to say. We can only judge of such a thing by what we may know from our own experience of matter in the highest known degree of diffusion. What were not there even, we do not positively know. There might have been dis- cord, but there was no pain; there might have been harmony, but there was no pleasure. We should expect no manifestation of individualized mind, no animal or vegetable life, no sensibility, no crystallization, no cohesion of any kind, no chemical union, but only atomic dissociation. Sec. 44.] CONFLICT OF FORCES PRIMARY. 77 On the other hand, we should expect the presence of gravita- tion, every atom attracting every other atom, and the entire mass drawn toward the common centre. The extreme tenuity and diffusion supposed involves the presence of heat having an intensity beyond anything within our experience. The preva- lence of such heat implies other things. There was that condi- tion of matter which the eye interprets as light — the nebulae are self-luminous. There was motion — heat is motion, and the intenser the heat the greater the motion. As an inevitable accom- paniment of the heat there were expansion and elasticity ; and these imply repulsion. The heat-motion, the expansion and elasticity, are best summed up in the idea of repulsion. Besides the motion of particles there was no doubt the motion of masses, such as is now witnessed on a greatly reduced scale in the sun. The phenomena of nebulous existence are divided between the action of two antagonistic forces : Repulsion, which sustains the diffusion of the mass, and which would send its volume immensely further into space, but for attraction, which binds the mass together, and which, but for repulsion, would draw it into a compact mass at the centre. Nay, we cannot say what would be the condition of matter without repulsion; possibly, it is necessary to its existence. In the most primitive form in which we can conceive of cosmical existence, we find the antagonistic powers of attraction and repulsion in possession of the entire field of operations.. Thus we are met at the very threshold of our inquiry with the conflict of opposing powers. We are not able to conceive of this original seed-plot of worlds apart from the strife of forces. There is conflict in this germ of life to come; and conflict may be necessary to existence itself. The nearest approach that can be made to the conception of a unitary primal force, is to regard it as dual in character, involv- ing the perpetual union of counter forces. Something like this is the view of the geometer, G. Lame, who believes that while "the function of elasticity [repulsion] in nature is at least as important as of universal gravitation," "gravitation and elasticity should be considered as effects of the same cause, which cor- 5 78 PRIMARY forces. \Chap. VIIL relate or connect all the material parts of the universe." Per- haps we might regard attraction and repulsion as Plato regarded pleasure and pain, as "united from one head." Section 45. — In the nebulous mass of which worlds were born, certain initial changes took place. These were dependent solely on the mutual action of the two opposing forces, the attractive and repulsive. The sum of repulsion in the system would suffer loss by the radiation of heat, and attraction would draw the attenuated mass more closely together. This loss of repulsive energy would be in a sense, the cause of whatever changes might result from attraction. As the sum of attractive energy would not diminish, it would constantly gain in relative value over that of repulsion. Accompanying this, many other changes would be successively inaugurated; but since this part of our subject is so purely speculative, we shall pass on to that stage when planets had been evolved and were on their journeys round the sun. As the motion of masses is convertible into heat, all planetary motion may be regarded as the equivalent of heat. The tangential motion of the masses of planets keeps them from falling into the sun, by antagonizing the action of gravita- tion. This tangential motion is the equivalent of heat or atomic motion ; but heat is a form of repulsion or inseparably bound up with it; and repulsion antagonizes attraction. In the present status of the solar system, the tangential motion of the planets antagonizes attraction, and keeps the planetary masses away from the center of the system ; but if the planets should stop on their axes and in their orbits and fall into the sun, the con- version of their molar motion into molecular motion (heat) would dissipate them into vapor, and the repulsive energy thus developed would still keep the masses of matter away from the center of the system. In this case the result would be due to the direct antagonism of repulsion to attraction; in the present status of the system, it is due to the antagonism of tangential motion of masses to the attraction of masses; such motion being equivalent, in the one case, to the repulsion of particles in the other. Sec. 46.] lockyer's theory. 79 We know nothing, from our experience, either of the creation or the annihilation of force. The entire sum of it in existence within the range of observation is always the same. It may undergo change from one form into another, but in so changing, it neither gains nor loses. The original sum of heat and other forms of motion in our system, may now be inventoried under the heads : That which has radiated into space, and is outside the system; that which exists in the form of planetary motion; and .that which is still active as heat or some form of its equiva- lent mostly in or near the sun, planets and satellites. With the last only have we anything at present to do in following the course of evolution. Section 46. — In the nebulous state of our system, under the extreme attenuation which then existed, there could have been little or no diversity in the active properties of different kinds of matter. The several properties which characterize the different elementary substances as we know them were practically non- existent. The spectroscope appears to reveal the fact that the spectrum of certain stars is simpler than that of others, con- taining the lines only of three elements, hydrogen, calcium, and magnesium. These stars are believed to be the hottest. Hydrogen, nitrogen, and an unknown gas have been detected in nebulae. Perhaps, as Lockyer's theory supposes, if the heat was sufficient, some one form alone of elementary substance would appear as the ultimate form of material existence. Great heat or great attenuation by whatever caused would appear to be incompatible with the existence of most so-called ele- mentary substances. The effect of cooling and condensation would be to enable these elementary forms gradually to emerge; and as matter passed through the gaseous and liquid forms to the solid, its properties would steadily increase in number and variety. A passage from Faraday (quoted by Professor Crookes, Nature, August 28, 1879) illustrates this subject, beginning, however, with solid matter and following it through its changes of form and properties: " As we ascend from the solid to the fluid and gaseous states, 8o PRIMARY FORCES. [Chap. VIII. physical properties diminish in number and variety, each state losing some of those which belonged to the preceding state. When solids are converted into fluids, all the varieties of hard- ness and softness are necessarily lost. Crystalline and other shapes are destroyed. Opacity and color frequently give way to a colorless transparency, and a general mobility of particles is conferred. Passing onward to the gaseous state, still more of the evident characters of bodies are annihilated. The immense differences in their weight almost disappear; the remains of dif- ference in color that were left are lost. Transparency becomes universal, and they are all elastic. They now form but one set of substances, and the varieties of density, hardness, opacity, color, elasticity, and form, which render the number of solids and fluids almost infinite, are now supplied by a few slight variations in weight, and some unimportant shades of color." Professor Crookes has shown that, in radiant matter (extremely attenuated gas), the physical properties of different substances are identical. With sufficient cooling, our globe would assume the liquid form under the action of chemical and physical forces. It would then exhibit properties which belong to liquid substances. With further contraction, cohesion and adhesion come into play, and solid substances are formed. Minerals come into existence. An atmosphere surrounds the planet, and oceans cover the sur- face. Matter differentiates and new forms of it appear. Crys- talization takes place as the harbinger of organization. Colloidal substances are at length developed; the simplest forms of life emerge into existence, and become more and more complicated through vegetable and animal elaboration, till man appears, the highest individualized existence of which we have any experi- mental knowledge. Cohesion did not exist in the nebular form of matter, and when it was manifested, it was no special creation of a new force, but the modified manifestation of a force already in exist- ence. It was the result of attraction or gravitation — pressure under the atmosphere and other superincumbent masses — made Sec. 46.] ACTION AND LIFE DUAL. 8 1 possible through the reduction of repulsion by the loss of heat. The same is not so obvious of adhesion and chemical affinity ; but even these are forms of attraction which could become operative only through the loss of repulsion. Gases do not readily combine; it often requires pressure and other devices to enable them to do so. Solids rarely act upon each other in a chemical way. Most chemical actions take place in solutions in which the atoms are free to move among one another and near enough to be subject to mutual influence. Crystallization takes place most readily from liquids. All these activities con- note the presence of the requisite mean of heat, expansion, and repulsion. There can be no organization but in the presence of a comparatively small range of temperature. For this reason, in the early stage of the planet's existence, the loss of heat (and with it of light) was necessary to render organization possible on the planet, but when this condition was attained, organization was not possible without receiving motion in the form of light and heat from the sun. Owing to planetary rotation there was diurnal variation in temperature with the alternation of light and darkness, conditions of most forms of animated existence with which we are acquainted, and of all the higher. Motion adequate to the ends of organization has been conserved to our system by its central luminary, notwithstanding the loss of it in some of the surrounding planets. The sun radiates heat, light, and actinism on the earth ; the sun gives, the earth receives — a form of duality in which the sun becomes the generator and the planet the mother to bring forth organization and life. Now, all life, all phenomena of whatever kind, are ultimately resolved into active forces, into motion, and all motion is alternating, rhythmical, dual. All present phenomena depend on present forces, and these are all derived from the forces in the primitive nebula in which their simple form was that of attraction and repulsion, or what was substantially their equivalent. Notes. — 1. Of late the nebular hypothesis has fallen into a somewhat dis- turbed condition, and it would be quite impossible to make a statement like the preceding so general as not to conflict with some of the modifications. But, of 82 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. course, all the emendations assume the substantial truth of the theory ; only Stallo has attacked it apparently with intent to kill. 2. The quotations and statements in the preceding chapter, on the views of Newton, Young, Glennie, Croll, Lame\ and Taylor, are taken from an article on Kinetic Theories of Gravitation, by William B. Taylor, in the Smithsonian Report of 1876. An account of LeSage's theory is found both in Taylor's article and in Tait's Recent Advances in Physical Science; that of Walling in a number of the Record of Science. The sources of the others are indicated in the text. CHAPTER IX. CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. Section 47. — The behavior of the forces as made known by the sciences of physics and chemistry, goes to confirm the doc- trine of an original antagonism in the constitution of things with attraction and repulsion as primary and prevailing properties of matter. Chemical attraction and the strife of elementary atoms which results from it, and which might be called competitive affinity, are the leading facts with which chemistry has to deal. The molecule is defined to be the smallest particle of a substance which can exist and still retain its identity. The smallest par- ticle with which chemistry deals is the atom. Atoms combine to form molecules, and this is true of elementary as well as of compound substances. In compound substances the atoms are unlike, in elementary substances they are held to be of the same kind. But it is doubtful if even here there is absolute homo- geneity. The atom is not at all a perfectly rounded, isolated, and independent thing of itself. It has relations, and relations cannot exist without differences and contrasts. It is a property of the individual atom to combine with another atom even of its own kind. Thus two atoms of hydrogen unite to form a mole- Sec. 48.] ATOMIC POLARITY. 83 cule of hydrogen; the same is true of chlorine; but if the two elements are brought in contact, the atoms forming the hydrogen molecule separate, while the chlorine atoms behave in like man- ner, and the atoms of hydrogen uniting with an equal number of chlorine atoms form hydrochloric acid. Hydrogen gas does not exist in an atomic condition as simply H, but it is formed of molecules consisting of two atoms each, H-H. The same is true of oxygen, O-O. But while the hydrogen atom only unites with one atom of another element to form new compounds, the oxygen atom unites with two. The " valency " of the carbon atom is still greater; it unites with four atoms of other elements to form its compounds. It is owing to this property of the carbon atom — "the affinity of carbon for carbon" — that it enters into such a variety of compounds, and becomes the ruling element in organic chemistry (Wurtz). Thus we must regard the atom itself, not as an integral unit homogeneous throughout, but as polar in constitution with attractions for other polar units. Judged by known analogies, atoms must be in some sense, of unlike or opposite character, else they would not have the properties of " affinity " and " atomicity," whereby they unite together. The molecules of different elements may enter into chemical union with each other, not by virtue, however, of their molecular properties, but, as now interpreted on high authority, by virtue of their atomic properties. The unlike, polar, or what- ever property it may be in consequence of which the union takes place, resides wholly in the atoms. Certain atoms in the mole- cules, and not the molecules acting as units, exercise the mutual attraction necessary to the chemical union. Thus at the very deepest point to which it has been possible to pursue the mys- teries of the constitution of bodies — the atom — heterogeneity in the form of opposition or contrast is identified. But even if molecules enter into combination as chemical units, as able chemists still hold, none the less is this heterogeneity or polarity present in the chemical constitution of bodies. Section 48. — Chemical reactions in which one chemical atom or molecule replaces another present complications of inter- 84 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. change so diversified that no adequate conception of them can be given in few words. From our point of view, we might char- acterize these reactions as the strife of atoms and molecules to supplant, or take the place of, one another. Chemical changes to a very large extent may be regarded as the contest of chem- ical units for place and precedence. It is not necessary for our purpose to illustrate so familiar a subject by examples, since these may be found in abundance in works on chemistry, as elective decomposition and recomposition, or elective affinity, simple and compound. Section 49. — The energy with which atoms and molecules unite to form compounds depends primarily on the relative character of such atoms and molecules. The more unlike these are — the greater the contrast in their sensible qualities — the greater as a rule is their affinity for one another, uniting with greater avidity, and being separated with greater difficulty, "The opposition of properties is the cause of the chemical affinity," and "the more complete the opposition of properties may be, the more intense is the affinity by virtue of which com- bination is effected." — (Kane.) Oxygen and chlorine in combina- tion with the metals, acids with the bases, with the alkalies, are examples of great contrast in the qualities of the substances, and great energy in combination. And the resulting compounds are not a union of the qualities of the substances combined; are not like either, but totally unlike both, thus contributing to the diversity of material existence. Section 50. — The leading forms in which attraction manifests itself in the phenomenal world are: First, that of gravitation, or that which obtains between masses (physical) ; secondly, that of cohesion between like atoms or molecules (chemico-physical); and thirdly, that of affinity between unlike atoms and molecules (chemical). While gravitation has no direct form of antagonism it is nevertheless met by many indirect forms of it. The planets are held to their orbits against the force of attraction by the incessant strain of planetary movement to proceed in a straight line. In the formation of vapor by the sun, the molecular Sec. 51.] ATOMIC DISSOCIATION. 85 attraction of cohesion is overcome to be resumed on condensa- tion ; so that this antithetical phenomenon of the rise of vapor and the fall of rain does not take place without the concurrent struggle of attractive and repulsive forces, although in the rise of the vapor the antagonism to gravity is indirect in its method rather than direct. Motion in the form of heat — separative or repulsive motion — is the great antagonist of cohesion and chemical attraction. The homogeneous metal first expands, then melts, and is finally dissipated into vapor by the absorption of heat. The most refractory compounds are decomposed by the intense heat of the compound blow-pipe and of the electrical current. But for this same repulsive energy, gravity would force all substances into a compact mass, and there would be an end to the succes- sion of phenomena. Section 51. — The energy of chemical attraction is a matter of curious interest on account of the various antithetical forms under which it may be made to appear. While two unlike atoms are still in isolation, they may be regarded as containing a fund of energy which can only be manifested by entering into chemi- cal union. In view of their mutual relations they may be regarded as polar, as positive and negative, which on sufficient nearness of approach under proper conditions are united together by mutual attraction. The power which is in some way or other inherent in the nature of the atoms before union, may be denominated the energy of atomic dissociation. We should have no a priori conception of the existence of this energy ; we only know of the marvel because it has been revealed by the phenomena of chemical combination and decomposition. When chemical union is taking place the energy of atomic dissociation is manifested in a sensible form, usually as heat. Under ordinary circumstances the union of dilute sulphuric acid and zinc generates heat, but in the cell of the galvanic battery, with the collocations there provided, such union of acid and zinc generates a current of electricity. What- ever the product, there is nothing like creation in either case ; it 86 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. is only a change in the form of the energy by which it becomes revealed to the senses as heat or as electricity. If the electrical current be made to pass through water it decomposes the liquid into its elements, oxygen and hydrogen; and while the electrical current thus disappears, the energy of atomic dissociation reap- pears in the separated elements of the water. And this energy is shown to be very great ; that which is necessary to decompose a pound of water would lift more than five million pounds one foot high. Faraday is often quoted for the fact that the elec- tricity which disappears in decomposing a grain of water is equivalent to a flash of lightning in a thirty-five-acre cloud. The instantaneous union of oxygen and hydrogen to form a very small drop of water is attended with a deafening report ; when slowly burned in the compound blow-pipe their union to form water is attended with intense heat. In the explosion of dissociated oxygen and hydrogen to form water there is collapse; in the explosion of gunpowder there is sudden expansion. When gunpowder explodes it is the result of the chemical union of molecules ; when nitro-glycerine explodes it is supposed to be due to the direct union of atoms ; and atomic dissociation is so much more complete than molecular dissociation, that the union is more sudden, the volume more largely increased, and the violence of combination greater (Cooke). The energy of atomic dissociation is in this instance transformed, not into heat or electricity wholly, but into an expansive force which is irre- sistible. The violence of volcanoes and earthquakes is probably in part due to the repulsive energy which is generated in the interior of the earth by chemical changes. There is no doubt that, in the processes of nature as well as in those of art, the energy of atomic dissociation is transformed by chemical union into the energy of expansion, when we have the paradox that chemical attraction may generate physical repulsion with manifestations of extreme violence. Atomic dissociation con- stitutes an immense fund of working energy on our planet, of which the familiar forms of food and fuel are conspicuous examples. Sec. SJ-] ELASTICITY OF GASES. 87 Section 52. — The atom is never at rest. Even in apparently the most quiescent solids, and in bodies subjected to the lowest known temperature, there is constant action in their atomic and molecular constituents. In fluids the motion is still greater; in gases it is greatest, and the more the gas or vapor is heated, the greater is the energy with which atomic movement goes on. Bodies exist in different states, whether as solid, liquid, or gase- ous, in consequence of the relative degrees with which their "corpuscles" are affected by the antagonistic forces of attraction and repulsion. — (Davy and others). According to the law of Avogadro, equal volumes of gases or vapors, simple or compound, contain equal numbers of atoms, pressure and temperature being the same, no matter how different their specific gravity may be. The relative weights of equal volumes of different gases is in proportion to the relative weight of their atomic constituents. If a cubic inch of oxygen is sixteen times heavier than a cubic inch of hydrogen, the oxygen atom weighs sixteen times heavier than the hydrogen atom. Section 53. — The leading property of gases is their elasticity, the tendency to resist the limits to which they are confined. No gas keeps the precise limit of volume it may have, except by the compulsion of a force which acts in opposition to its struggle ever more to expand. It always fills the room allotted it, and many gases may occupy the same space by diffusion into one another, each one of them filling the space very much as if none of the others were present. The volume of any gas is, by the law of Boyle, in inverse proportion to the pressure to which it is submitted; — there are, however, slight variations from this law. Again, the volume of any gas is by the law of Charles, in direct proportion to the temperature. That is, reckoning from the absolute zero 273 below freezing, the volume of gas at freezing would be just half as great as at 273 above. Physicists agree that in gases and vapors the atoms or particles are flying about with great rapidity, and in every possible direc- tion, striking against one another, and against the walls of the vessel in which they are confined. It is in this way that their 88 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. elasticity is accounted for. When the volume is reduced by pressure, the atoms have less distance to go before impinging upon one another, and upon the sides of the vessel, their con- tact is more frequent, and consequently, the resistance to con- finement is greater than when the same number of particles occupy more space under less pressure. The expansive force of gases increases with the increment of heat, owing to the greater activity of the moving particles, in consequence of which they strike one another and the walls of the vessel with greater frequency and force. And since the resistance to pressure is the same for all gases under like conditions of heat and pressure, and since the number of their atoms is equal while their weight is different, the lighter atoms must make up in vigor of motion what they lack in mass in order to maintain the same degree of expansive force. It is calculated that at the temperature of freezing and under the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere, the atom of hydrogen moves at the rate of about seventy miles per minute, in which time it comes in contact with other atoms about 1,062,000,000 times! Thus we may look upon every ounce of air, of vapor, of the gaseous form of any substance, as the theatre of Liliputian warfare in which mutual blows are liberally given; and yet both in art and in nature this conflict of invisible atoms is attended with results which are truly gigantic. Steam is a . mighty and pliant servant if properly managed ; if not so managed, it becomes a remorseless agent of mischief. [I am aware that the able author of "Modern Physics" has attacked the kinetic theory of gases with a number of other concepts and theories current among physicists. While it is probable that physicists do not, so much as he represents, regard their concepts as identical with things, yet he appears somewhat to have shattered the current mechanical, framework of modern physics. But after all, this subject is very much entangled with the uncertainty of terms and their meanings, and we think that the disputants pro and con are very liable to lose the thread of strict logical consistency. I wish it to be understood that the statements of this and the two preceding chapters have been Sec. S4-\ CONTRAST NECESSARY TO PROPULSION. 89 made on authority mainly. Only a professed physicist could present these subjects with the authority of an original]. Section 54. — When a solid becomes a liquid, a large quantity of heat assumes a form which is not cognizable by the senses. It does not therefore pass out of existence; it is still a form of energy, now exerted to keep the particles asunder so that they may move among one another. When a liquid passes into a gaseous condition, a still larger quantity of heat becomes imperceptible, and the particles of gas are thrust still farther asunder. There is now a great amount of atomic motion, which, by suitable arrangements may be converted into the motion of masses. Machinery is made to move by the expan- sive power of steam. An absolute condition of such trans- formation of motion is that the point at which motion is com- municated shall be colder than the point from which such motion emanates. The steam in the boiler must be hotter than when it reaches the condenser. It cannot move the piston except by losing a part of its heat ; consequently, if the cylinder and the surrounding atmosphere are as hot as the steam when it reaches the piston, there can be no communication of motion, and upon opening the throttle-valve the machinery would respond only by continuing to stand perfectly still. Heat being equal at all points inside and outside the chambers, repulsion would be equal and opposite on the two faces of the piston. Modern civilization rests on the fact that great inequality of temperature may be produced whereby the repulsive force of a common-place vapor may be greater in one direction than in another, and thus be made a propulsive force available for the great ends of indus- try and commerce. Work is obtained out of that form of motion which we call heat by accumulating a "head" of it, so that it shall act with greater force for the time being on one end of the piston than on the other; just as on the hypothesis of LeSage, Walling, and Croll (section 42) concerning infinite lines of force moving in all possible directions, the work of gravitation takes place by the interception of those lines, in consequence of which, the impelling force acts with greater energy on one side go CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [C/lOp. IX. of the planet than on the other. In the compressed-air engine used in the tunnel of St. Gothard, there is an accumulated head of force in the reservoir of compressed air which is thence delivered where there is no such accumulation, and where work may be and is done. The point from which the working power emanates — the reservoir — and that at which it acts — the cylinder — stand in the relation to each other of plus and minus (March, 1877). There can be no work done without heterogeneity — without unlike conditions, without opposite states, answering to plus and minus or positive and negative. Section 55. — The leading conception of mechanics is the use of power by means of machinery to overcome resistance. With- out the conception of antagonistic forces there could be no phi- losophy of mechanics; without the means of overcoming resist- ance there could be no practical mechanics. Is there a weight to lift from a lower to a higher level, or to remove from one place to another, or a product of the earth, or an object in nature, to put in form for the uses of life? To these ends we have the "mechanical powers," — the lever, the wheel and axle, the pully, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the screw, with all the manifold forms of machinery into which these enter. It is the function of the vehicle on the highway, of the train on the steel rail, of the ship on the river or the sea, of the plow that turns the soil, of the one machine that harvests the grain and the other that threshes it, and the mill that grinds it, of the tool or the machine which shapes the fabric of whatever kind, — it is the function of all these to overcome resistance. The round of changes by which the lump of ore is transformed into a thing of use, or that by which the stone is lifted from the quarry, put into shape, and laid to its place in the wall, or wrought into marvel- ous shapes of beauty, — all these operations are so many forms of the encounter of opposing forces in which the principle of New- ton's third law of motion holds good, that "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Section 56. — Polarity is a term which has been used even by scientific men with considerable of latitude. Its character is best SeC. 56. \ POLARITY. 91 shown in magnetism and electricity. Here there are two actions called positive and negative which are equal and opposite; and they always accompany each other as "if they were united from the same head." Faraday exhausted his resources of experiment to charge bodies with absolute magnetism, that is, of one kind without the presence of the other, but without avail. This is a magnetic condition which it is not possible to bring about, and it is one which never exists. Like poles repel, unlike poles attract. The positive is not merely indifferent to positive, or negative to negative; they absolutely and always repel. This mutual repulsion of like, and the mutual attraction of unlike is the most pronounced form of polar phenomena. Chemical attraction is in some respects so like electrical attraction as to be suggestive of polar relations. Professor Cooke states that chemical affinity "is a manifestation of a molecular condition which we may distinguish as chemical polarity." But here like atoms do not repel; in crystallization they even attract one another. In cohesion and in crystallization the attraction may be regarded as polar in its character, in some such sense as the elementary molecule is polar when it consists of two halves or atoms coupled together as one. But in chemical reactions unlike atoms attract each other as the unlike poles of the magnet, or as objects in opposite electrical states. In such electrified objects, however, the degrees of attraction vary only according to a uniform scale, while in atomic attraction or chemical affinity each combination has its own measure of power; and we may assume that the more distinctively opposite in character the atoms are, the greater is the attraction of one for the other. It is held "that the chemical activity of a substance depends on the degree of polarity inherent in its molecules" — (Cooke). The term polarity is applied to light in a sense somewhat different still. A ray of light direct from the sun may be regarded as a thread with pulsations filling the thread to roundness ; but when this ray has passed through tourmaline, the vibrations take place only in one plane, and the thread is no longer round but flat; light is then said to be polarized. 92 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. In isomorphism different elements and compounds crystallize in identical forms; in dimorphism the same substance crys- tallizes in two unlike forms; in isomerism compounds of differ- ent sensible qualities contain precisely the same elements in the same proportions. Perfumes, which are very unlike, may have the same elementary constitution. Protein exists in upward of a thousand isomeric forms — (Cazelles). In allotropism the same elements assume different properties, as in the familiar example of oxygen and ozone. In all these instances of isomorphism, dimorphism, isomerism, and allotropism, the behavior of the atoms or molecules is suggestive of the presence of polarity. The relation of polar phenomena in chemistry and in elec- tricity is aptly shown by the production of the electrical current in the galvanic battery, and the action of that current on chem- ical compounds. Thus, as has already been stated, the current is generated by chemical combination in the cell, and thence passes along the conducting wire, and may end in the decom- position of water. In the act of combination, we may infer that a polar force is liberated in the form of a current which consists of two lines of force passing in opposite directions, and that this current when it enters the water changes into the polar energy of the separated atoms of oxygen and hydrogen. The two lines of force equal and opposite along the electrical track through the water are explained by the theory that, like two files of soldiers marching elbow to elbow, and step by step, in opposite directions, the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen slip by one another moving in two lines, the oxygen to the positive pole and the hydrogen to the negative pole, and deliver themselves an atom at a time endowed with the polar energy of separation — energy which is equivalent to and identical with that which the uncombined acid and zinc had at the commencement of the process. Section 57. — It may well be said that there is a tendency in nature for active forces to assume dualistic, polar, or opposite forms of manifestation. The princhple goes down deep into the constitution of things, impresses itself on the original sources of energy, and rules as a leading element in the phenomenal world Sec. S7-] DISGUISED POLARITY. 93 Physicists tell us that the universe is a machine worked by ade- quate powers; and in the working, we find the equality of action and reaction, polarity with equal and opposite properties, attrac- tion and repulsion, giving character to the constitution of bodies as well as to the manifestations of force. It is difficult to escape the conviction that the entire system of nature is compounded of the action of opposites, which in the aggregate balance each other. All phenomena are but transformations of energy, one body giving, another receiving. And we may add that in these transformations some form of polarity, contrast, or opposition enters as a prevailing feature. This is true of all the great cycles of movement and change in the physical world, which make life possible on earth. It lies obscurely even in forms and move- ments in which we should scarcely suspect it. Take the single example of rotary motion so much used in mechanics, and so apt to spring up in phenomenal activities. The polar action of electrical currents and of magnets may be placed in such relations to each other as to produce rotary motion, the conducting wire revolving around the magnet, or the magnet around the conducting wire. By the proper arrange- ment of machinery, forward and backward motion is readily changed into circular motion, and the play of the piston may be changed into the whir of a thousand wheels. Suspend a ball by a string and start it with a pendulum motion; it is no great step from the direct movement back and forth in the same plane to a divergence on each side of this plane so as to form an ellipse with an extreme difference between the lengths of the axes; and as this axial difference is diminished, the elliptical orbit approaches the circle. . During the oscillation of the ball in the same plane, the extremities of the arc described might be regarded as the poles of motion; with divergence to form an elliptical orbit, the poles would still be at the extremities of the longer axis; and when the orbit should become a circle, the polarity would be so obscured that any two points at which the circle would be cut into equal parts, might be assumed as the poles. In the first action of the ball it is counter-movement 94 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [Chap. IX. first one way and then the other; the counter movement is still obvious enough in the ellipse, and though obscured in the circle, it is still certainly there. Long ago Democritus derived rotary motion from impulse and reaction. The tipping of a vessel partly filled with liquid back and forth with only a slight variation from the direct line of move- ment, readily converts the motion of the contents into a vortex. A current meeting with obstruction, or two currents meeting each other are very apt to set up vortical movement. Pulver- ized indigo, charcoal, or carmine in water keeps up constant movement, mostly vibratory ; and when very fine, the particles not only vibrate, but manifest irregular axial rotation. — (Popular Science Monthly, October, 1877, p. 657). Now, even if the vortex atom or ring be received as the ultimate element of matter, still we do not get rid of dual and antagonistic action as the ground work of phenomena. Any motion of the kind, whether it be in a closed ring or an open spiral, involves counter movement without which the phenomenon could not take place. In the cylinder of the engine, the power acts in a straight line driving the piston back and forth. The rim of the balance wheel involves a similar antagonism of movement, find- ing limit at the end of any diameter assumed, and thence returning, not like the piston in a direct line, but in a curve to reach the opposite limit. While the one moves in a straight line, the other moves in curves on either side of such line ; but the movement is substantially as antagonistic in the one case as in the other. The vortex motion of Helmholtz and Thom- son involves antagonistic action as surely as the atom of Bos- covich, Bayma, or any of the others, however obviously such atom be endowed with original attraction and repulsion, and however much these properties may be obscured in the vortex ring. Section 58. — The principal sources from which working power is drawn are: 1, fuel; 2, food; 3, the wind; 4, streams of water; and all these are due to the action of opposing forces. By chemical combination with oxygen fuel gives off Sec. 58.] SOURCES OF WORKING POWER. 95 heat, and thence is obtained the power which heat affords. The motion which proceeds from the fire is communicated to the water and forces asunder its molecules, converting it into steam. Heat maintains the expansive tension — the repulsion of the par- ticles of vapor — which is communicated by suitable arrange- ments to the propulsion of machinery. A large part of the industries of civilization are dependent on the energy of the dis- sociated carbon and hydrogen of fuel. Food is of similar char- acter. The complex compounds which constitute food are held together by feeble affinity, and in course of the digestive pro- cess, the elements they contain readily fall into simpler and more permanent combinations, and a large amount of force is set free which the animal economy utilizes for locomotion and for all functional activities. Food is partly burned in the lungs and produces heat. Fuel and food are both of vegetable origin, and the vegetable is a medium of power with equal and opposite chemical reactions in its formation and destruction. By the action of the sun upon the leaf the carbon and oxygen of car- bonic acid are thrust asunder, and the carbon is appropriated by the plant or tree, and stored up as fuel in the form of wood and coal. The energy necessary to separate the carbon of a pound of coal from its oxygen in the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, would lift ten million pounds one foot high. In the act of com- bustion the carbon reunites with the oxygen, and this immense energy in the form of heat is given off to be utilized at will. This heat is a repulsive energy, and is the equivalent of that repulsive energy from the sun which effected the separation of carbon and oxygen in the leaves of the growing plant and tree. The work of chemical dissociation at one end absorbs a store of power ; recombination at the other end sets it free. The amount of heat developed by the oxygenation of the car- bon is the same whether that oxygenation take place rapidly by ■combustion or slowly by natural decay. In the case of food the elements are held together in a man- ner so feeble as to be equivalent to atomic or molecular dissoci- ation. In this form the compound is unstable, and its elements 96 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. [C/lOp. IX. in a condition to seize on one another in fast chemical union, This peculiar state of the food-elements is brought about like the condition of actual atomic separation in fuel, by the action of the sun; and as the fuel delivers energy on the reunion of carbon and oxygen in combustion, so food delivers energy by falling from a state of comparative dissociation into close chem- ical union in course of the several stages of digestion and vital utilization. The streams which run our mills and the winds which propel our vessels and drive machinery, are both originally due to the action of the sun. The molecules of the atmosphere are thrust further asunder by the action of heat, and thus made lighter, whereupon they rise to higher levels freighted with vapor. The motion as well as the direction of atmospheric currents are deter- mined by differences of weight in different strata and at differ- ent places, and by the earth's rotation and the inequalities of its surface. The wind-system is throughout the play of attractive and repulsive energies with constant disturbance of equilibrium and constant action to restore it; and motion takes place in the direction of least resistance. The power of running streams must be traced back to the action of the sun in expanding the water into vapor, when it rises into the upper regions of the air, and is carried far away by atmospheric currents to condense at lower temperatures, and fall as rain. The work done by the rain is manifold and indis- pensable. It brings down nitrogen from the atmosphere and dis- solves certain elements of plant-food to be utilized in the pro- cess of growth. Part of the rain which falls on the land is again evaporated; part of it flows over the surface and finds its way directly into streams. Another part of it sinks into the earth, and again emerges in the form of springs whose rivulets are the source and support of rivers. Thus the water which was first raised as vapor, gets back to the sea. By the repulsive energy of heat, water is made lighter by conversion into vapor, and then by the action of gravity it is pressed into higher regions of the atmosphere, where it condenses by attractive energy, then falls Sec. SP-] CAREER OF THE ORGANISM. 97 by gravity, and by gravity along the bed of least resistance the streams pursue their way down to the ocean, floating vessels, turning mills, and reducing the continental levels by freighting sediment from the land to the sea. Without the play of antagonistic forces there could be no rain, and without rain the earth would be a desert. CHAPTER X. CONFLICT IN THE BIOLOGICAL FORCES. Section 59. — The organism begins, grows, develops, and then declines, and at last comes to an end. The one is the movement of ascent, the other is that of descent. Throughout, the organism is itself in a sense a perpetual contest of opposing forces. The one set struggles to build up in an orderly manner, the other to pull to pieces. The one is integrating, the other disintegrating. From conception and birth till after maturity, the organizing forces prevail ; during decline, and at death, and after death, the disorganizing forces are in the ascendency. The career of the organism may be regarded as a dynamical contest between opposing forces, always with the same result in the end, the victory of the forces of dissolution. The forces which preserve the organism and operate it, when regarded as a related group, are called vital ; and yet it does not appear clear that they are essentially different from those which are concerned in the destruction of the organism. They are physical and chemical forces which build up, and they are chemical and physical forces which pull down. There can be no construction without destruction, no life without death. The formation of tissue in the life-processes and the consumption of tissue in the same processes go on simultaneously as essential 98 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. {Chap. X. conditions of the higher manifestations of life. Even the uncon- scious functions of the animal system involve a certain measure of the destruction of organized material for the power necessary to do the work. Every voluntary movement, every act of locomo- tion, every contraction of muscle in work or play, every thought, every feeling involves the destruction of living tissue. There is no manifestation of any form of organic power without the consumption and waste of organic material. But whatever we may think of "vital force," this we have to acknowledge, that it is manifested in any of its forms only in connection with what we know- as matter. We are here dealing with phenomenal things, and physical forces belong to matter, and chemical forces belong to matter, and in the same sense vital forces belong to matter — not to " brute, inanimate matter," but to phenomenal matter in the higher forms of its manifestations. Gravity and chemical affinity are not more properties of matter in general than life is a property of protoplasm in particular. Under the proper conditions electricity appears as a function of matter; under the proper conditions life appears as a function of matter. " Life is now universally regarded as a phenomenon of matter, and hence, of course, as having no separate existence." — (Prof. G. F. Barker). Science knows nothing of the mediaeval- ism that matter is a dead something moved only by an extrane- ous and living entity — that is a metaphysico-materialistic sur- vival. Our point, then, is that while there is antagonism in the physical properties of matter and in the chemical properties of matter, there is equal antagonism, now become more compli- cated and diversified, in the organic properties of matter. Or, it might be better to say that, in the physical, the chemical, and the organic behavior of matter, there is equal antagonism, assum- ing new and more diversified forms as the succession of phenom- ena rises in the scale of manifestation. But even on the theory that chemical force is an entity distinct from matter, and that vital force is a spiritual entity distinct from matter, still is antagonism, as obviously as ever, a fact of phenomenal existence, and this is the especial point in which our interest at present Sec. 60.] WASTE AND REPAIR. 99 centres. Ludwig, quoted by Stallo (Modern Physics, 19), said thirty years ago that, "Every analysis of the animal organism has thus far brought to light a limited number of chemical atoms, the presence of the light-(heat-) bearing ether and of the electric fluids. These data lead to the inference that all the phenomena of animal life are consequences of the simple attrac- tions and repulsions resulting from the concurrence of these elementary substances." Section 60. — What is the essential character of organic con- sumption and waste? It is a chemical change by the loss of force in consequence of which organized material loses its vital quality and becomes useless to the organic system. The com- plex substances which form the tissues and nourish them are held together by feeble chemical affinity, and readily fall into simpler and more stable combinations, and in doing so, they lib- erate force for the uses of the organism. In the contraction of a muscle, a part of the tissue undergoes this change and from living becomes inanimate, when the force thus liberated goes to the production of the mechanical result which the contraction of the muscle involves. We cannot think without the act involving a like change in brain substance, which in thus falling from a higher to a lower chemical state surrenders its living force and becomes waste matter subject to removal from the system. This waste which is constantly going on through all parts of the organism, must be repaired if the organism holds its own. It is the office of alimentation to do this. We have then the antithesis that while all the activities of the organism consume its tissues, and thus produce constant waste, the operation of the digestive functions furnishes material in fitting form and place for the repair of this waste. The once living material which becomes inert within the system is removed, and other material becomes organic to take its place. We are aware that this statement traverses disputed ground. That view has been adopted which appears to have the greater support of evidence and the principal weight of authority. But for the end here in view it does not matter whether the working IOO CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. energy of the system is derived from the breaking down of tissue in the animal, or from the direct breaking down of the unstable compounds which constitute food. In both instances it would be the falling from higher to lower organization, and the delivery in work of the energy thus set free. Section 6i. — The blood is the great carrier of the system. It takes away effete, used-up material, and delivers that which is to take its place. The waste is carried to the lungs, skin, kid- neys, and thrown from the system, while the new material is delivered everywhere throughout the organism. Concerned in these counter and compensating operations are two pumps, the blood-pump and the air-pump. The heart is a force-pump which sends the blood to every part of the system. This marvelous muscle is constantly exerted to overcome resist- ance, at more than seventy beats per minute during the entire period of life. It keeps in constant circulation about one-tenth the entire weight of the body. The circulation of the blood is but movement in opposite directions. The blood is constantly propelled from the heart, and as constantly returns to it. In its simple form in vegetable cells, the circulation consists of move- ment toward the nucleus with corresponding movement from it. In the lowest animal forms it may be only movement back and forth. And however large a part capillary attraction may play in the phenomena of circulation, we are still in the pres- ence of mechanical action and resistance, in which a fluid with- out chemical affinity for the tissue through which it passes, is propelled along the capillaries by another fluid which has such affinity.— (Draper's Memoirs, XXVI. and XXVII. and Phys.) By the lung pump, inspiration and expiration take place, being a movement in counter directions of the gaseous elements concerned in breathing. Oxygen is taken into the lungs, and oxygen, carbonic acid, and vapor exhaled from them. The blood receives oxygen through the lungs, and delivers in return carbonic acid, vapor, a waste material from the tissues of the system. SeC. 64.] PLANT-LIFE A BATTLE. IOI Section 62. — The contraction and expansion of muscles in every part of the animal structure are opposite forms of action, and in the contraction of muscles one action is opposed to another; and this counter strain is necessary to their co-opera- tion in the production of results. The simple act of standing erect is accomplished only by the mutually opposing action of muscles. And when it comes to walking, leaping, running, dancing, all the manifold movements of the body, this balancing of muscular action assumes an almost infinite diversity. Section 63. — The bulk of animals is determined by opposing factors. The weight of the body must be supported, and it may be greater in the water than in the air. The animal that walks may have more weight than the one that flies. The living creature whose tissues are frail must be small, although it crawls. The animal which has to protect itself by fleeing must be of lighter build than one which has some other means of defense. There will be an intimate relation between its means of procuring food on the one hand, and its size, build, strength, agility, arms or the want of arms, on the other. Adaptation presupposes defect and implies limitation. When there is gain on one side, there is apt to be loss on the other. Great strength and great fleetness, for example, are incompatible, and the race- horse and draft-horse, the greyhound and the bulldog illustrate the excluded element of the antithesis. Section 64. — The life of the plant is throughout a battle. The seed must get into the soil with sufficient moisture, and not too much. If too cold or too hot it would perish. When the germ has formed, it must push its way through the particles of earth, thus doing its first work in overcoming resistance. When above the surface a frost may nip it, or an animal, a bird may pluck it up, or an insect destroy it. Other plants may rob it of nourishment and shut out the light of the sun. It must make headway against the attraction of gravity; and if it prospers to become high enough to catch the wind, the storm may break it off. A drought may wilt it any time, or a flood may drown it. 6 102 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. And when it has reached the stage of bloom, it may fail of fer- tilization in a rain storm, or meet with untimely frost, and die at last without having accomplished the most important function of its existence, that of reproduction. Its part in the battle of life is not a strikingly active one, and little aggressive, but it is exposed throughout to attack, and only by the temper of steady resistance can it go through life successfully. Of all the innu- merable seeds which germinate, only a small percentage reach maturity. Only the few win, the many suffer defeat. The following is from an authority who had no theory of con- flict to subserve: "The phenomena of crystallization lead, of necessity, to this conception of molecular polarity. Under the operation of such forces the molecules of a seed take up posi- tion from which they would never move if undisturbed by an external impulse. But solar light and heat, which come to us as waves through space, are the great agents of molecular disturbance. On the inert molecules of seed and soil these waves impinge, disturbing the atomic equilibrium, which there is an immediate effort to restore. The effort, incessantly defeated — for the waves continue to pour in — is incessantly renewed ; in the molecular struggle matter is gathered from the soil and from the atmosphere, and built, in obedience to the forces which guide the molecules, into the special form of the tree. In a general way, therefore, the life of the tree might be defined as an unceasing effort to restore a disturbed equili- brium." — (Tyndall in Nineteenth Century). This is the dynam- ical view of tree-life in which the result springs from the con- flict of forces. A similar view, but applied to organization in general, is given by Lester F. Ward (Popular Science Monthly, October, 1877): "Organization is the necessary consequence of the competition of the integrating and disintegrating forces, so long as the former prevail. The influence of the sun upon the matter of the globe is toward its disintegration and dissipa- tion into gas. But for the opposing influence of gravitation, attraction, or concentration, this result would be speedly accom- plished. But the resultant of these two antagonistic forces, at Sec. 65.] THE WAR OF PLANTS. 103 a time when their relative power is substantially what it now is on the surface of our globe, is such as to render possible the form of evolution which we denominate organic life." And further: "We are thus brought into full view of the deepest truth that underlies the redistribution of matter — the profound antithesis between gravitation and ethereal vibration, which constitute in the last analysis, the true correlative principles of which evolution and dissolution are corresponding processes. These are the agencies which are at all times antagonizing each other in all parts of the universe, but whose exact equality in it seems to form a logical tenet of the modern cosmology. A cer- tain golden mean between these forces, but in which the former must predominate, results in organization ; star systems are formed in space, and life is developed out of the planetary ele- ments." If life be thus educed from the play of antagonism, it is but the completion of the antithesis that antagonism should reappear in the play of life itself. Section 65. — The battle of the plant is waged on its indi- vidual account, but in connection with its like, the success of every plant goes to the behoof of its species. There is a con- test between species throughout the vegetable world, and there has been for the millions of years during which plant life has existed on the earth. This is as truly a territorial war as any which has been waged by national armies. There is a univer- sal effort to advance as far over the earth's surface as the charac- ter of the soil and climate permit; and in this effort to advance, species meet on the same ground, and contend in Greek and Roman style for the mastery. "All the plants of a country are at war, one with the other." — (De Condone). The territorial limits of species have been largely determined by this struggle. "We must regard the bounds of each species' sphere of exist- ence, as determined by the balancing of two antagonistic sets of forces" — (H. Spencer). The geographical distribution of species, and the character in general of the flora of any locality are in a great measure the result of the contest of plant with plant and of species with species. In speaking of the forests on our 104 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. Indian mounds, Darwin exclaims: "What a struggle between the several kinds of trees must here have gone on during long centuries, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; that war between insect and insect — between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey — all striving to in- crease, and all feeding on each other or on the trees or their seeds and seedlings, or on the plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees! Throw up a handful of feathers, and all must fall to the ground according to definite laws; but how simple is this problem compared to the action and reaction of the innumerable plants and animals which have determined, in the course of centuries, the propor- tional numbers and kinds of trees now growing on the old Indian ruins !" — (Origin of Species). It is well known that as civilization advances certain plants disappear and others come in to take their place. This is the result of conflict between species under changed conditions of plant life which the clearing away of the forest and the cultiva- tion of the soil bring about. While man has played his part in this contest of vegetable species with one another, hindering one and favoring another, animals have contributed their share toward determining the issues of the conflict. Animals like men have their preferences in the vegetable world, but unlike men who cultivate and extend their favorites, animals feed on theirs, and contribute to their extinction rather than to their ex- tension. But, for this very reason, the grazing of herbivorous animals has no doubt had much to do with determining the character and limits of vegetable distribution. An annual, if largely fed upon, may perish from a locality entirely; the chances of a survival would, therefore, be with a perennial. If this peren- nial grew up quickly, and ripened its seed early, its chances of survival would be still greater. If, in addition it spread rapidly by means of underground runners, its chances would be stilL further enhanced. The grasses fill these conditions best, and some of them better than others. Even under the system of agriculture which has been devised by the intelligence of man, Sec. 66.] THE WAR OF ANIMALS. 105 these qualities favor the vigor with which certain grasses retain their hold on J;he soil, and find their way into new localities to the displacement of previous occupants. No small influence in determining the geographical limits of species is the action of birds in scattering far and wide the seeds of the fruits on which they feed. They extend the outposts and assist the territorial conquests of their favorites. The elevation of mountain ranges, and the elevation and sub- sidence of continental tracts have hindered and helped species by turns, and played no small part in making the floral map of the world. The change of climate thus effected by the change of level, and the isolation of districts by mountain barriers and submerged tracts could not but influence the ultimate results of the struggle between species. Add to this the great changes of climate which the earth must have undergone between such periods as that in which a semi-tropical flora prevailed within the arctic circle, and that in which ice a mile deep covered the north temperate zone down to the fortieth parallel, and we per- ceive what powerful agencies have assisted in determining the jurisdiction of the several floras among which the surface of the earth has been partitioned. Section 66. — Substantially what has been said of plants may be said of animals, with this difference, however, that the latter are more aggressive, attacking and feeding on one another as well as on members of the vegetable kingdom. The war among insects, fishes, birds, and quadrupeds is war indeed. Nor is this preying upon one another an incidental thing; it belongs to the system, and is part of the universal war in nature. So true is this, that even the paleontology of a period is incomplete till the remains of the carnivorous enemies of known herbivora have been discovered. Some species are fitted by structure and habit to prey on others, and without success in securing prey, they could not exist. Indeed, they never could have come into existence but by the development of tooth and claw, and instincts which enable them to sustain life by inflicting death. The cru- elty of killing is in the "plan" of nature, but the suffering thus 106 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. caused is no greater than that of dying a natural death, which is equally in this plan. Death inflicted by carnivorous animals may average even less pain to the individual than death which comes about in other ways; and if we admit that puerility in philosophy, anthropomorphic omnipotence, we must concede that the difficulties of its responsibility for the occurrence of death by killing are no greater than for the occurrence of death by starvation, disease, or old age. The pain of destruction and death appear to be necessary conditions of sentient enjoyment. If beings live they must die; and if certain portions of the living kingdoms did not prey upon other portions, the aggregate of sentient existence with what enjoyment there may be in it, would be much less than it is. These are simple facts of what we hold to be the only possible form of universe. Everything is prey; " every organized body, whether confervse or moss, insect or mammal, becomes the prey of some animal ; every organic substance, sap or blood, horn or feather, flesh or bone, disappears under the teeth of some of these." — (Animal Parasites, Van Benedjn). The poet was not pessimistic but only matter-of-fact when he sung: "For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal, The may-fly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow is speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood, where I sit, is a world of plunder and prey." — Tennyson. Amid the beauties of an oriental scene Siddartha (Gautama) saw deeper : "He saw The thorns which grew upon the rose of life: How the swart peasant sweated for his wage, Toiling for leave to live; and how he urged The great-eyed oxen through the flaming hours, Goading their velvet flanks: then marked he, too, How lizard fed on ant, and snake on him, And kite on both; and how the fish-hawk robbed The fish -tiger of that which it had seized; The shrike chasing the bulbul, which did chase The jeweled butterflies; till everywhere Each slew a slayer and in turn was slain, Life living upon death. So the fair show Sec, 6y.] PARASITIC LIFE. 107 Veiled our vast, savage, grim conspiracy Of mutual murder, from the worm to man, Who himself kills his fellow; seeing which — The hungry ploughman and his laboring kine, Their dewlaps blistered with the bitter yoke, The rage to live which makes all living strife — The Prince Siddartha sighed. 'Is this,' he said, " That happy earth they brought me forth to see ? '" — Edwin Arnold. Section 67. — Even deeper than the poets saw lie the phe- nomena of parasitic life. The microscope may penetrate farther than the vision of an oriental prince come to save the world. Microscopic creatures mercilessly prey on animals within and without, and while they consciously enjoy nothing themselves, their lives being purely reflex, they inflict pain on sentient crea- tures, thus lessening the aggregate of enjoyment. There are but few animals, if any, which have not their peculiar parasites, and there are " parasites on parasites." There is but one law governing the action of the parasite, and that is its own interest without the least benevolent regard for the friend on whom it preys. The mother ichneumon, by means of a thread-like ovi- positor, inserts its eggs into the caterpillar, the sequel of which is that "the young ichneumon devours its nurse piecemeal, organ after organ; and for fear that death should supervene too quickly, the mother takes care to chloroform the victim beforehand to make it last longer." " Remarkable examples of the refinement of cruelty are to be found in this little animal world. It is not enough that some among them feed on the entrails of their young neighbors; there are wasps which, in order to make the agony last longer, place by the side of the eggs which they lay, chloroformed flies, which wait patiently for the time when they can yield themselves up, still palpitating, to these young tyrants." We will waste no sympathy on spiders which scruple not to in- flict pain on their captives; but something like retribution may overtake them when the sphex seizes them, chloroforms them, and stows them away to be fed upon while still alive by the larvae of this insect. But if we have doubts as to whether insects, fishes, birds, or 108 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Ckap. X. beasts suffer when preyed upon by parasitic enemies, there is no longer room for doubt when we come to the higher animals and to man; and these are not exempt. "There is no organ which is sheltered from the invasion of parasites; neither the brain, the ear, the eye, the heart, the blood, the lungs, the spinal marrow, the nerves, the muscles, or even the bones. Cysticerci have been found in the interior of the lobes of the brain, in the eyeball, in the heart, and in the substance of the bones, as well as in the spinal marrow. . . One kind of worm inhabits the digestive passages, some at the entrance, others at the place of exit; another occupies the fossae of the nose; a third the liver or the kidneys." Trichinae are found in the flesh of most mam- mals. "Leuckart counted seven hundred thousand trichinae in a pound of the flesh of a man, and Zeuker speaks of even five millions found in a similar quantity of human flesh." — (Quota- tions of this section from Benedin's Animal Parasites.) But after all that has been definitely ascertained concerning animal parasites which infest human beings, the half has proba- bly not, been told. There are vegetable as well as animal para- sites, and some of them no doubt as deadly. A large portion of human diseases are believed with a good deal of reason to be caused by microscopic organisms which poison the currents of life. It is a cruel reflection, but one cannot help thinking, how many and what kinds of parasites will infest the "coming man." The relation of parasites to their principals, and of the eaters in general to the eaten, may be regarded as examples of unhappy adaptation ; but these should no more be taken as evidence of pessimism than examples of happy adaptation should be taken as evidence of optimism. If there be life at all on general prin- ciples — if the laws of life are not to be interfered with in an exceptional manner in the interest of well-being, this parasitic scourge must have place as the result of general causation in the legitimate operations of the system as a whole. The devouring process, even in its cannibal state, begins low down in the scale of animate existence. An enterprising amoeba will envelop another and digest it without scruple. The blood cor- Sec. 68.~\ PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE. 109 puscles in higher animals simulate this feat, and the larger ones swallow up the smaller. Cannibalism in nature has a long and diversified range of activity. Section 68. — It is not in outright war between plants and ani- mals that we are to look exclusively for reciprocal action between them and a mutual influence on each other's modes of being. The chlorophyl of plants absorbs carbonic acid, and having appropriated the carbon, exhales oxygen, while animals substan- tially inhale oxygen and exhale carbonic acid. Plants receive carbon through the green protoplasm of their leaves; animals throw it off through their lungs. In animals carbon is a waste product; in plants it is that which builds up. Plants purify the air for animal breathing, and animals enrich the air for plant nutrition. And again, plants under the influence of the sun elaborate organic material which is the ultimate support of all animal life; and the food having performed its function in the animal economy, returns disorganized to the earth and air, when plants again seize it, and subject it to renewed organization. The sun acts through plant life for the accumulation of force by atomic separation, changing inorganic into organic material — this is the lifting of the weight; and when these plant products are consumed by animals, they yield up their store of force to the production of results in the animal sphere, and in doing so the recombination of atoms into the inorganic form takes place — and this is the falling of the weight. The two operations are directly the opposite of each other, and yet only different phases of the same action, and necessary to the succession of phenomena. Accumulation and expenditure, the winding up and the running down, in the little as well as in the great, the one making the other not only possible but necessary in the economy of nature, are the two opposite and inseparable sides of the same thing. The unity of the whole is maintained by the antagonism of the parts. "Every action in nature is truly two opposite and equal changes, and, to be adequately apprehended requires to be seen in both its aspects." — (Westminster Review, July, 1865). Notwithstanding this opposition of results which compensate HO CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. \Chap. X. each other, there is no contradiction in the physiological func- tions of plants and animals, life in the one being but a higher development of life in the other. "The life of the animal and the life of the plant are, like their protoplasm, and in all essential points, identical." — (President Allman's Address, British Associa- tion). Section 69. — The universal struggle in the animate world is a condition of development and improvement in the character of living things. The weak and ill-adapted are weeded out; the stronger and better adapted survive. And this better adaptation implies, new structures and functions, and greater complexity of organization. Superiority of race has, therefore, grown out of the struggle of existence; it is the result of conflict whether with changing climate and soil, or with competing and aggressive races. And since conflict is the capital factor of the process of evolu- tion, it follows that man owes his superiority of structure, his existence as man, to conflict in the physical and organic worlds. Section 70. — In the evolution and maintenance of organic forms there are two conflicting tendencies constantly in opera- tion; the one is the persistence of type, the other the rise of variations which may be either improvement or deterioration. It is the conflict of heredity with an opposing factor, but the opposing factor would have no power to effect change of types but for the co-operation of heredity. The two counter forces unite to diversify and perpetuate species. Without persistence of type there would be no species, and without divergence there would be no diversity of type, and the organic world would be an impossibility. Section 71. — Physiology is coming to be looked upon as the play of opposite and compensating forces. The general features of biological antagonism have been distinctly brought out by Herbert Spencer, who had no theory of antagonism to bias his statement. According to him, the organism is a dynamical result of the constant balancing of opposing forces. An instruct- ive form of this antagonism obtains between the expenditure Sec. //.] ANTAGONISM IN VITAL FUNCTIONS. Ill for growth, development, and exertion of the individual on the one hand, and the expenditure for offspring on the other. Dr. Carpenter has formulated the theory that, "there is a certain degree of antagonism between the nutritive and reproductive functions, the one being executed at the expense of the other." — ■ (Popular Science Monthly, August, 1879). A fine statement on this subject is to be found in Part Sixth of Spencer's Biology. This particular form of antagonism is part of a general antago- nism which prevails among the functions of the organism; and we call especial attention to it, because it is typical of forms of antagonism which greatly prevail in the upper strata of existence, and with which man has much to do. The functions of the organism are maintained in healthy activity and in symmetry of relations with one another, only by due expenditure from a common fund of energy. If more is expended for any function, there is less for the others. This form of antagonism obtains between growth and reproduction. The two cannot go on in full vigor at the same time. While growth is active, its draft upon the resources of the organism leaves none for reproduction ; and hence, reproduction begins only when growth is nearly or fully completed. It is a part of the same fact that minute organisms usually multiply more rapidly than larger ones. Complexity of organism is in like manner opposed to fecundity. The simple organisms multiply more rapidly than the more complex. Again, if expenditure for the necessary activities of the individual life be great, there is less of the common fund for reproduction. Here are three sources of expenditure for the maintenance of the individual: That of growth, that which is concerned in building up com- plexity of organization, and that which administers to the wants of the individual. There are also three kinds of expenditure concerned in reproduction: That of maturing the egg or fetus, that of providing nourishment for the offspring after birth, and that which is required for the care of the young. While the first three forms of expenditure administer solely to the individual, the second three establish the offspring; both are drawn from the 112 CONFLICT IN BIOLOGY. [Chap. X. resources of the individual, and what is used for the individual cannot be applied to the offspring, and what the offspring gets is at the parents' expense. Such is the antagonistic relation. It may be expressed in plain Saxon that, in this nutritive competi- tion, what the one gets the other must do without. It may illustrate this, perhaps, to say that this simple fact is overlooked by the sticklers for woman's intellectual equality with man. They forget that, if she could maintain her own organic resources, and establish her offspring in theirs, and still be man's equal in intellectual resources, she would be a monster of power. Nature works in no such way. There is nothing accomplished in the organic world, or any other, without the expenditure of force ; and if this force is expended in one way, it cannot be expended in another. It is a part of this general antagonism that, beyond a certain point, physical activity and mental activity are antago- nistic; that, if the one is in excess, the other must be limited. It may be remarked that the form of antagonism here brought into view is relative rather than direct. It is the antagonism of limitations, of gain involving loss, of progress necessitating retrogression, — that form of antagonism mainly to which it is the object of these chapters to call attention. CHAPTER XI. ANTAGONISM IN THE SPHERE OF MIND. Section 72. — The mental sphere supervenes upon the bio- logical, as the biological supervenes upon the physical and chemical ; and in a certain sense and to a certain extent, the higher includes the lower. Mind is indeed very closely related to life ; it appears far down in the biological scale, in germinal Sec. ?2.~] MAN THE HEIR OF CONFLICT. 113 form at least, by the double act of the individual which perceives outer conditions and adapts itself thereto. Properly to sense the conditions of life and to adapt life to them — this is the pre- vailing function of mind in all the grades of its existence. As force appears only in connection with matter, as life appears only in con- nection with organization, so mind appears only in connection with life. "Among advanced thinkers it is now unhesitatingly admitted that mind is a form or function of life." — (Lewes.) We know nothing of mind as an independent entity ; we know it only as bound up with physical organization. No independent entity heralds the body; and when the body becomes non-living, the mind escapes from the field of cognizance. It is manifested only in connection with a nervous system ; and when that system is disturbed, the mind is disturbed ; and when that system per- ishes, the mind which was manifested in connection therewith stops all its manifestations to us ; and we may believe it to be still an existing entity, but we only know it as a thing that was. We have no quarrel with faith, but we have here to do only with science — with that which comes within the range of the knowable. Dr. Courtenay, Bishop of Kingston, and the great Dr. Priestly believed that the mind must perish with the body, and could only be restored to life by a miracle; but they had faith that this miracle would be wrought. It is often repeated that "man is an epitome of the universe." This is true if the doctrine of evolution be true, — man does comprehend the essential elements of all below him, with, of course, something else beside. We have found antagonism in the physical and chemical spheres and in the anatomical and physi- ological spheres. All these enter into the composition of man, and they bring their antagonism with them. If we look through the long lines of ascending forms in the living world, we find various forms of antagonistic phenomena, as the last chapter attempts to explain ; and if man is the ultimate result of these lines of evolution, we should expect to find conflict in the grain of his constitution, and provided for in the moral and physical elements of his being. But on any view man cannot be sepa- 114 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chdp. XL rated from the nature with which he is so intimately bound up in his life on earth. " Man and nature are two great effects, which coming from the same source, bear the same characteristics." — (Cousin.) If there be conflict in the physical world, there will be conflict in the mental world. If it be, however, that man is an advance beyond all else that is animate on earth, he must embody some things nowhere else to be found. The tautology may be allowed us to say that he is qualitatively more than all beneath him. It may be true, or very nearly true, as Haeckel observes, " that between the most highly developed animal souls and the lowest developed human souls, there exists only a small quantitative, but no qualitative difference;" but it is manifestly different when we come to com- pare the highest human with the highest animal souls. For, since development consists in the differentiation of a simple function or faculty into a complex one by giving rise to new branches for the division of labor, a process which involves qualitative additions to what had existed before, then does human psychology contain something which is not to be found in the psychology of beasts. Man is the creature of mind beyond all others. But if antagonism obtain in the lower psy- chology, it is almost certain to obtain in the higher with the difference which refinement gives. More of this, however, in other connections. Section 73. — The animal ancestry of man were actually forged into physical and mental form by conflict. Anthropoid forms were the composite result of these battle forces; and when the form which must be regarded as man was reached, he was a being framed by antagonism and fitted for war. No doubt the very first of beings worthy the name of man, were born to the heritage of battle. Climatic changes, inclemencies of the weather — excessive cold, excessive heat, storm and flood — are all aggressive forces which man must needs nerve himself to resist. The means of subsistence could be obtained only by a struggle. His right to esculent roots, nuts, berries, was con- tested by animals a little lower in the scale than himself. The SeC. 73. ] CONFLICT THE MOTHER OF INVENTION. 115 fishes, birds, and beasts on which he desired to feed, were coveted by other fishes, birds, and beasts which were better armed by nature than he to secure their prey. The contest was not merely with game for the possession of it, but with other creatures to prevent them from possessing it. Man was neces- sarily an aggressive being, pushing his own interests by making war on everything that stood in his way. And what more natural in the course of this universal self-seek- ing than that man should come in collision with man, and groups of men with other groups? The right to a slain stag not being clear, the rival claimants would be almost sure to decide it by a trial of strength; or, if only one would fight, he would get the prize, and the other would go hungry, and perhaps starve. Meeting on the same grounds to contest for the same food, they would natu- rally regard each other as enemies to be driven off as the most obvious condition of self-preservation. An inoffensive, non-resist- ant race of human beings, if such could have come into exist- ence, would very soon have been overwhelmed and extinguished by their more aggressive, violent, and self-seeking neighbors. Their bodies would have been taken for food, and their country used for a hunting-ground. If such a race should, by isolation, remain undisturbed till in later times when their conquerors had adopted agriculture, the innocent race would be reduced to slavery, from which they could only rise by the development of pugnacity — a condition not likely to come about. But in what way must the earliest human race have distin- guished itself from the anthropoid race from which it sprung? By greater efficiency in conflict — by that higher exercise of the reasoning faculties which led to the use of weapons of defense and of offense. To pick up a club from the ground, or break it from a limb, and wield it in self-defense, would be a masterly stroke of genius in whatever creature did it for the first time. To pick up a stone and hurl it at an aggressive beast would be a similar triumph of the inventive faculty. The genius who had shown the way would soon have imitators, and having tried these weapons for defense, they would soon use them for attack under Il6 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XL the pressure of hunger, and having used them on animals, they would very readily turn them against one another. As less primitive than the club, a desirable form of weapon would be a stick pointed at one end. Another stroke of inventive genius would be the insertion of a pointed sliver of flint into the end of a shaft, thus forming a rude spear. A sharp-edged sliver of flint would be turned to cutting purposes — perhaps the first tool used by mechanical man. From the use of accidental pieces of hard stone a great advance would be made by springing pieces of the desired form from the solid block. They could now make their own spear-points, and cutting and scraping stones. Strings might now be cut from the tendons and hides of animals. The string and the spear would be two elements of the bow-gun. Reduce the size of the spear for an arrow, and tie a string to the two ends of an elastic stick, and a new weapon would be invented, which appears to be very simple to us, but which was a great triumph of original suggestion when it was first done. Devices for attaching handles to axe-like and hammer-like stones, and slings for hurling round stones to great distances would be promising results of the improving intellect of primitive man. Weapons of stone would come at length to be polished by patient rubbing, and bone would be introduced for weapons, implements, and ornaments. Art would emerge into existence in connection with the leading ideas of hunting and war. The primitive artist would scratch a picture of the deer he hunted on the horns of the same animal. From a red-hot stream of lava, the naked savage would readily acquire some experience of intense heat. From the effects of fire on the dry tree when struck by lightning and burned up, he would see on what the monster fed, and in order to keep it alive, the happy thought might occur to him to add such fuel as lay around in convenient form, thus performing an interesting and useful philosophical experiment. But this would not be suffi- cient; the fire would go out, and then it must be kindled anew. The means of doing this at will would be a great discovery, and from the nature of the case, it must have been the result of acci- Sec. 74.] CONFLICT DEVELOPING SYMPATHY. 117 dent. Resorting to friction for some other purpose — perhaps the sharpening of a stick — it was happily discovered that it de- veloped heat, and by persistence the presence of fire was evoked. They had now the means of roasting their prisoners and their game if they wished. No doubt that all along the line of human development, necessity, aided by accident, has been the mother of invention, every new device having for its object some form of relief in diffi- cult situations. Discovery and invention gave power, and power gave victory. The elephant has been known to break a stick for the purpose of scratching off a leech, and to make a fly-brush out of a bush, and use it. Thus, the only tool-making and tool-using animal known, summons this resource of intelligence for protection against his enemies. Early man no doubt did the same. It is no exaggeration to say that man's first inventions, his first sallies of intellectual originality, were used to make himself stronger in the battle of life. Not only has the conflict, which man must needs carry on against all that oppose his wants, cultivated his pugnacity and made him a creature of conflict, but it has actu- ally contributed more than all things else to make him distinct- ively an intellectual being. The most intelligent and courage- ous survived; the stupid, indolent, and cowardly succumbed. Mankind made progress, and progress came through conflict. What wonder that the history of the human past is almost wholly the history of war ! What wonder if conflict is organized into the very tissue of the highest races on earth, and that they still fight with one another in manifold ways, while boasting of their civilization. Section 74 — All the manifold forms of human warfare have had two distinctive results in a sense the opposite of each other, yet co-operating to give strength for the conflict: while they cul- tivated the sentiment of hostility, they developed along with it the fellow feeling of mutual interest in a common cause, and made man a creature of sympathy, as well as of enmity. Two united were stronger than either alone, and nothing perhaps in 91 / Il8 ANTAGOISM IN MIND. \CJlClp. XL human experience has done more than the need of strength for every form of attack and defence, to induce men to unite their efforts, and cultivate by the absolute necessities of the case, the sympathies which pertain to fraternal co-operation. The com- mon sympathy of the clan, the tribe, the larger aggregations of men, has largely grown out of the exigencies of combat for mutual protection; and the patriotism of modern times owes much to the same cause. This will be treated a little more fully hereafter. — (Sections 97-99). Section 75. — While the organism may be defined a unit of resistance, or of response, to forces which act upon it from with- out: in all but the very lowest forms it adjusts this response by means of a nervous system, which forms the great connecting link between biological and psychological phenomena. G. H. Lewes observes that, "the genesis of subjective phenomena is determined by the action of the cosmos on our sensibility and the reaction of our sensibility. The mental forms or laws of thought which determine the character of particular experiences, were themselves evolved through a continued action and reaction of the cosmos and the soul, precisely as the laws of organic action which determine the character of particular functions were evolved through a continued adaptation of the organism to the medium." — (Physical Basis of Mind, 318). While thus the organ- ism is in a sense the antagonist of the inorganic and other forces without, it embraces within itself opposing forms of action which belong to the sphere of mind as well as to that of life. After a profound review of both fields of inquiry, Herbert Spencer affirms that, "As there are two antagonist processes by which consciousness is maintained, so there are two antagonist processes by which bodily life is maintained." — (Psychology II., 301, 302). In simple reflex action an external stimulus is conveyed along the afferent nerve to the ganglion, and thence transmitted along the efferent nerve to the muscles, which thereupon contract. This contraction is a response to the initiative stimulus of an SeC. 75-] MENTAL AND NERVOUS SERIES. 119 outside cause; and the method of it is by two currents of ner- vous energy running in opposite directions, the first from the point of excitement at the surface to some point within the organism, and the second thence back to the surface for the production of the muscular result as a self-protective or self- promotive adjustment to the outside stimulant. Such is the general character of reflex action, and it tells nothing against it that the vegetative functions of the organism are under nervous control, for this is truly reflex, as may be readily shown. Reflex action may exist independent of conscious mind, as in very low forms under all circumstances, and in the vegetative system of higher forms, and in profound sleep, when the muscles respond to external stimulus without consciousness as usually understood, or any form of cerebral activity. It is true, G. H. Lewes has labored to show that consciousness and sentience are co-exten- sive and even identical, but this view can only be maintained by wresting from consciousness its usual signification, and applying the term outside the limit which this permits. But aside from the niceties involved in the question of conscious- ness, there is an increasing school of psychologists who regard reflex action as the type of all mental action, and even as the germ which passes by development into unmistakable mind. As the recognition of external influences and response to them assume higher and more complicated forms, the nervous mechanism by which these higher results are produced, becomes more complicated in structure. Between the nervous system of man, and that of the lowest animal forms with traces of nervous structure, there are many degrees of difference, but these are supplied one after another from the lowest to the highest by the intermediate series of living things. The line of mentality, from the lowest to the highest, forms one series ; the line of nervous mechanism, from the lowest to the highest,forms another series; and the two series, though by no means minutely grad- uated, are parallel, having a general correspondence with each other, and would be, if Leibnitz' philosophy were true, a clear enough case of "pre-established harmony." In the mental 120 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [C/iaJ>. XL series we have (i) reflex action ; a little further on is (2) instinct- ive action ; and still higher, and reaching to the highest, (3) rational action. The adjustment of behavior to a new situation of simple character may be a lower form of rational action, as a higher form of it would be the adjustment of behavior to a new situation which involves the balancing of a number of complex considerations. In the nervous series, there are, first, the afferent and efferent nerves united at the inner extremity by a swelling of nervous substance for simple reflex action ; then, there are many such swellings having nervous connections with one another, and communicating further on with still larger aggregations of nervous matter, all of which in some sort serve for the registry of impressions, or the record of experience how- ever simple, and afford the basis of intuitive phenomena. The cerebrum belongs to higher creatures in the scale, and is the organ of reason and the will, there being a general correspond- ence between the degree of mental power and the texture, size, and complexity of the brain. In simple reflex action, we may contemplate the response as made to a simple touch or blow ; in rational action the response is made to a great complication of external influences. The worm which curls up at a touch, and the commander of an army who guards against surprise and repels an attack along his whole line, illustrate the differ- ence. The spinal cord is the principal organ of the reflex system and like the brain it consists of white and gray matter. Both the spinal cord and the brain are developed from the same " prim- itive trace," showing their intimate genetic relation to each other. The bones, moreover, which inclose the brain are but modified vertebrae, showing the genetic relation of the two. The spinal cord has two distinct functions: the one is receptive, sensational, and centripetal; the other is imparting, motor, and centrifugal. So it is probable that the similar sub- stance performs a similar office in the brain. In the spinal cord with its outer connections, there is on the one side feeling, on the other motion; the one receives, the other sends out. In the Sec. 75.] MENTAL ACTION REFLEX. 121 brain there are on the one side the impressions received from the stimulus of external things; on the other side, there is the impartation of executive purpose. Without these impressions from the outer world, the mind would be a blank, without thought and without will. This double action begins at the periphery and passing through the senses reaches the brain, whence it returns by nervous connections to the spinal cord and motor nerves to the external world, the place of beginning. This seems to be reflex action only become more complicated. In the case of the optic and olfactory nerves, the reflex action is directly from the brain, and in other instances it is from the medulla oblongata and spinal cord. It would be, of course, impossible in the present state of knowledge to show clearly the reflex nature of action in the higher phenomena of mind, and this may always remain an obscure subject; but analogical con- siderations point to the fact that in the higher as in the lower manifestations of mind — in the more complicated adaptation of the organism to its environment by complicated mental action, as well as in the simple adaptation which is effected by simple reflex action, the phenomena have the same type, similar to that of action and reaction in the physical world. G. H. Lewes, who believes that the process of sensation (as well as of thought) is triple, the third element being the ganglion which connects the afferent and efferent nerves, affirms that " sensation is a mental state under the same aspect that thought is a mental state; and that under the obverse aspect both are bodily states. In other words, both are functional activities of the sentient organism, involving the same structural conditions, the same laws of reaction, and differing only in the different proportions in which their elementary factors are combined." — (Problems of Life and Mind, Third Series, 267). Again : "The sexual instinct, the migratory instinct, the aggressive instinct, the social instinct may, indeed, 'act blindly,' if by that is meant that the animal has no distinct prevision of distant consequences; but they are sensorial processes of the same logical order as those which determine intelligent acts. The difference is this : 122 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \CJldp. XI. in the intelligent act there is interposed between the primary stimulation and the final response an excitation of residues of a wider experience; the stimulation rouses its retinue of nascent feelings, sometimes as auxiliaries, sometimes as checks, and among these are often ' General truths, which are themselves a sort Of elements and agents, under powers Subordinate helpers of the living mind.' These are represented by ideas of duty, danger, convenience, or pleasure, and they determine the final impulse." — (Problems, Third, 99). The following is authority to the point, given by Lewes: "In 1843 Griesinger — who appears to have known nothing of Dr. Laycock's paper — published his remarkably suggestive memoir on Psychical Reflexes in which he extends the principle of reflexion to all the cerebro-spinal centers. The whole course of subsequent research has confirmed this view ; so that we may say with Landry, 'L'existence du pouvoir reflexe dans l'enceph- ale ou dans quelques unes de ces parties etablit une nouvelle analogie entre le centre nerveux cranien et la moelle epiniere.' Indeed we have only to consider the laughter which follows a ludicrous idea, or the terror which follows a suggestion of dan- ger, — the varying and involuntary expression of emotion, — and the curious phenomena of imitation and contagion, — to see how large a place cerebral reflexion occupies."— (Phys. Basis, 454-5.) Again, Schiff in 1859, "thinks that so far from the actions of the cord being distinguishable from those of the brain by the char- acter of 'reflexion,' and depending on the mechanical arrange- ment — all actions, cerebral or spinal — are reflex; all depend on a mechanical arrangement." — (Phys. Basis, 45 9.) Huxley observes: " Descartes' line of argument is perfectly clear. He starts from reflex action in man, from the unquestionable fact that in our- selves co-ordinate purposive actions may take place without the intervention of consciousness or volition, or even contrary to the latter. As actions of a certain degree of complexity are brought about by mere mechanism, why may not actions of still greater SeC. 75.] COUNTER CURRENTS IN THE BRAIN. 1 23 complexity be the result of a more refined mechanism." — (Corn- hill Mag.) The writer first met with this view in a little work published in 1863, and devoted exclusively to setting it forthi "Die Summe der aufnehmenden Geistesnerven nenne ich Vorstellungs- organ die Summe der bewegenden Geistesnerven nenne ich Willensorgan. Und wle durch die graue Substanz des Riicken- maiks ein Reflexverhaltniss zwischen den empfindenden und bewegenden Nerven, so wird auch durch die graue Substanz des Geisteshirns ein Reflexverhaltniss zwischen den vorstellen- den und wollenden Nerven vermittelt. Mit diesen Voraussetz- ungen werde ich versuchen das geheimnissvolle Getriebe der Geistesthiitigkeit auf einfache, bekannte Krafte zuruckzufiihren und die Geistesthatigkeit darzustellen als ein Reflexthatigkeit" — (Piderit, Gehirn u. Geist, 45, 46). Professor Bain observes that, "when the mind is in the exer- cise of its functions, the physical accompaniment is the pass- ing and repassing of innumerable streams of nervous influ- ence. Whether under a sensation of something actual, or under an emotion or an idea, or a train of ideas, the general operation is still the same. It seems as if we might say, no currents, no mind. The transmission of influence along the nerve fibres from place to place, seems the very essence of cerebral action." — (Senses and Intellect, 66.) This dynamical view of currents in the brain, we may supplement with a passage from Dr. Maudsley explicitly to the point under consideration: "Reflec- tion is then, in reality, the reflex action of the cells in their relations in the cerebral ganglia: it is the reaction of one cell to a stimulus from a neighboring cell, and the subsequent trans- ference of its energy to another cell — the reflection of it." — Physiology of Mind, 120.) As these currents cannot be seen, there is no doubt much of hypothesis in such views, but they indicate very plainly the tendency of the best informed thought on the subject. . The last word which I am able to utilize for this section is that of J. Luys on the Brain and its Functions. Not only is 124 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Ckap. XL the fact of counter currents to and from the cerebral cortex recognized, but the road they travel is more distinctly pointed out than ever before. The impressions received from the outer world by the sensory nerves are carried to the optic thalamus, a small mass of gray substance in the center of the brain, and thence they are transmitted to the gray cortex of the cerebrum, whence they are sent on their return trip through the corpus striatum to the motor ganglions of the spinal axis to act on the muscular system. The afferent stream is no doubt modified by the optic thalamus on its way to the brain proper, and there modified again. The efferent stream is acted on by the corpus striatum assisted by the cerebellum, and thus fitted to play its part in adapting the organism to its outer conditions. The current begins at the periphery in relation to the external world, and it ends, for the most part, at the periphery in other rela- tions to the external world. It is from first to last an instance of action and reaction. Section 76. — Mental action might be defined as the response of an organized unit to the external forces which affect it. All phenomena are but the ever changing forms of adjustment. The unit of carbon plays between the objects of its attractions and repulsions, now drawn to and again driven away. And when it unites with other kinds of atoms to form molecules, the changes it undergoes are precisely those which are necessary to adapt it to surrounding objects according to the laws of its con- stitution. In like manner behaves the crystal; it takes on mat- ter and grows; and in default of suitable particles in its vicinity, it ceases to grow; and if submitted to the action of certain forces outside of it, it may disintegrate. In chemical union, the affinity of each atom or molecule for its fellow is a mutual action between them, and in chemical dissolution by heat or electricity, the repulsion of each particle for another is equal and opposite. In the inanimate world, the entire series of changes is the adaptation of the unit to its ever changing environment. It is the constant play of action and reaction. The same is true of the animate world. The vegetable is the Sec. ?6.] MENTAL RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENT. 1 25 response of an organic unit to the outside influences which affect it. No vegetable growth without moisture, heat, and light. The lowest animal form, however simple it may be, is but an organic unit in constant action and reaction with its external conditions. The amoeba? envelop organic atoms in an extem- porized stomach, and thus live and grow. This response to external things for definite ends comes by repetition, in forms a little higher, to lay the basis for a nervous system. Reflex action, or the answer of the organic unit to stimulus from with- out, takes place in animal forms without nerves; and such answer is still the highest function of simple animals with nerves; and under all circumstances is it the response of the animal unit to the external world. A little higher in the scale instinct- ive action arises — its field of play still lying between the creature and its environment. And when the creature rises in the scale to rationality, the sum of its functional activities consists in response to the conditions of its life by cognition thereof and adaptation thereto. It is still action and reaction become con- stantly more complicated in ascending the biological hierarchy. This is the function of the simplest forms of reflex action, it is the function of instinctive action, it is the function of intelli- gence. "When we call a man or animal intelligent, we mean that he shows a readiness in adapting his action to circum- stances; and he is more intelligent in proportion as he recog- nizes similarities amid diversities, and diversities amid similari- ties of circumstance, by these means guiding his conduct." — (Lewes). According to Herbert Spencer, "Every form of intel- ligence is in essence an adjustment of inner to outer rela- tions;" and that is what instinctive action is, and what reflex action is, and virtually what molecular and atomic action is. We do not agree with Nageli (Nature, October, 1877), in attrib- uting feeling, sensation, inclination, pleasure, to molecules. Still it must be admitted that there is an analogy between the impulse under which a molecule moves and that under which the animal moves, which is very striking. The animal seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is very much like the atom or mole- 7 126 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. cuie acting and reacting under the forces of attraction and repulsion. They are closely analogous, though not identical. The one is in a simple way very much what the other is in a complex way. Both remand us to the primary law of attraction and repulsion, and illustrate antagonism in the constitution of things. Section 77. — Mind cannot advance a step in the acquisition of knowledge, but by determining likeness and unlikeness in the perception of objects. This is the work which mind is con- stantly doing in its higher as well as in its lower activities. "In the lowest conceivable type of consciousness — that produced by the alternation of two states — there are involved the relations constituting the form of all thought." — (Spencer). Mentality depends on the act of comparing one feeling or impression with another, and so determining their relations of likeness, difference, contrast, opposition. If all impressions received from without were alike, there would be no consciousness, no mind. It is the experience of their differences by transition from one to another that makes possible the conception of both object and subject, these being; related as the poles of the magnet, each being absolutely necessary to the existence of the other. Without subject there could be no conception of object, and without objects there could be no conception of subject. All logical method, all mental activity as well as the physiological instru- mentalities of mind involve certain necessary elements of alterna- tion, contrast, opposition, antagonism. Section 78. — Another form of mental antithesis entitled to a place in this chapter may here be noted. Looking long at a bright color becomes offensive, and the complementary color often takes its place without external cause. An emotion long continued may become painful, and react into its opposite. A mind that is easily elated is apt to be easily depressed. By con- trast wit and humor often proceed from the saddest minds. The deprivation of freedom, or the suppression of desire invol- untarily awakens visions of the opposite state. Outrage to a Sec. yg.~\ mutual limitation of faculties. 127 feeling calls up its antagonist, and the intensity of love may add fuel to hatred, as when, in war, the sex that is most tender- hearted and devoted as a friend becomes the most implacable as an enemy. Without emotional contrast there would be no emotion, no enjoyment, on the admitted principle, that if all flavors were alike, there would be no flavor at all. Even masses of men pass from one extreme to another. The universal enmity which characterized primitive man, reacted into an exaggerated estimate of hospitality at a later age. The puritan- ism of one period passes into the licentiousness of the next. At one extreme is asceticism, at the other dissoluteness, as history shows. The attempt to establish virtue by repression is apt to lead to the opposite. Notwithstanding the stringency of the Scotch kirk, licentiousness and drunkenness prevailed in unusual excess among the Scotch people, apparently as an offset to pietistic repression. According to Plato tyranny grows out of the license of unrestrained feedom. The outburst of freedom which the English experienced under Charles the First, reacted under the restoration into a striking indifference concerning free- dom and independence. The example, familiar to us all, of the alternation of mad speculation and extravagance with com- mercial depression and want, illustrate this same principle. The alternation of opposites in mental and moral phenomena, is but an example of action and reaction so familiar in the physical world; and the mind simply works in accordance with the habits of its development, now fixed as the law of its constitution. Section 79. — There is an antagonism in mental functions like that which obtains between growth and reproduction, or between the physical and mental in man. Excessive development of the one term implies under development with relative weakness in the other. Strongly emotional natures are not noted for intellectual clearness; and a great intellect is usually accom- panied with deficiency of emotion. It has been said that the great actors in the world's affairs are never deliberate thinkers. Their measures being promptly taken under a sort of intuitive impulse, they do not stop to weigh considerations. Emotion 128 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chap. XI. and intellect, action and thinking are not absolutely antagonistic, but to some extent they mutually exclude each other. This is, however, to a certain extent true of all faculties which draw upon the same store of supply for the energy of manifestation; what one gets beyond its due share is deprivation to the rest. Section 80. — Our mental constitution, however, does not lack for elements which are truly antagonistic in character. A list of the human passions and moods would bring this clearly into view. Joy and sorrow, hope and despair, cruelty and kind ness, courage and cowardice, faithfulness and treachery, malevo lence and benevolence, philanthropy and misanthropy, love and hatred, friendship and enmity, covetousness and prodigality, lewdness and chastity, virtue and vice, — and still more — in their simple and compound forms, a very long list. The language is rich in the names of passions and propensities which lead to discord and unhappiness, as envy, jealousy, suspicion, depres- sion, sadness, despondency, melancholy, malignity, anger, revenge, lasciviousness, lust, and still many others. The craniologists of the Gallian school, with all due deference tc the prevailing prejudice concerning the essential harmony of all nature and the original innocence of man, treated the baser elements of the human character as "perversions:" whatever is not entirely compatible with the moral sentiments has been perverted from its original beneficent character. Dr. J. R. Buchanan, however, a craniologist of some originality, taught that the legitimate functions of certain tracts of brain were by their nature discordant and base. He divided the brain by a plane, above which the tendency of activity is upward, elevating, good; and below which it is downward, depressing, evil. With- out endorsing this writer's philosophy or methods, it is safe, nevertheless, to affirm that his doctrine concerning the charac- teristics of the passions and propensities, is much more philo- sophical than that of the Gallians and other optimists. We only know human nature by its manifestations; and when we see a mental quality like that of the destructive instinct in all the races of mankind, we must accept it as a normal constituent SeC. 80.] THE NEW PHRENOLOGY. I 29 of human nature. A strong feeling of benevolence or caution may suppress the manifestations of the destructive impulses, but that does not change their character. Just so far as they have any existence at all, they are destructive. And since mankind riave in all ages given abundant expression to this propensity, not only using it on necessary occasions, but vol- untarily making the occasions for its indulgence, it would be very singular if it did not now constitute a part of mental pro- pension ingrained into the human constitution. If man had not been a destructive creature, he could have had no con- tinued existence on this planet; and his present supremacy is due mainly to the fact that he has been the greatest of all destroyers. Perhaps we should be puzzled to identify the conditions which have given rise to such passions as envy, hatred, revenge, etc., but it is not necessary that we shall. These are no doubt to a cer- tain extent instances of correlated development, in which a useful and indispensable thing is necessarily accompanied by adjuncts of a kindred nature, whether with or without utility. The natural arms of animals for self-defense may be used for wanton and aimless attack. If military genius were content with order and peace as its end it would be a blessing, but it is only too apt in its madness for exercise to spread desolation at home and abroad. It is a paradox of endowment by uniform sequence that when there is enough for the end to be accom- plished, there is quite sure to be at the same time a sporadic surplus. No appeal can be made to the New Phrenology of Ferrier, Bastion and others. Its advances, slow and careful, have scarcely yet passed beyond the motor centers, localizing some of these, and admitting the general division of the cerebrum into an intellectual region in the frontal brain, a motor region in the middle lobes, and a sensitive region back of the latter, or interblended with other centers. It appears rather to eschew the division of the mind into distinct faculties, because, since mind is but the adjustment of inner and outer relations, the 130 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. faculties have gradually arisen in answer to constantly more complicated conditions of life, and do not, therefore, admit of distinct demarcations in a physiological system. — (Bastion, Brain as the Organ of Mind, 519). But we submit that this is precisely the way in which the different functions of the body have arisen, and yet they are as distinct as the organs with which they are associated. In a similar way, also, have species come into existence, and yet naturalists treat them as distinct, just as psychologists may treat the faculties of the mind. And if there are motor centers in the gray tissue of the brain, it is very likely that there are, also, sensitive and intellectual centers with which different kinds of intellection and different kinds of sensation, feeling, and emotion are especially identified. But, little is known of this, and I only refer to it in justification of the use herein made of distinct mental faculties. Section 81. — The very faculties which give to man spirit and power for defense and attack as the means of maintaining his existence and extending his empire, require a certain measure of balancing, else they would run riot, and defeat the end in view. Hence there is in every sane individual of the race two classes of faculties whose impulses antagonize each other. The moral and intellectual nature must oppose the strain of the passions and propensities, else these would lead to inevitable disorder and ruin, But this contest is not within the individual only; it takes place between individuals, and thus becomes social. The same impulses which were against the better sentiments in the indi- vidual, are liable to come in conflict with like impulses in other individuals. Two persons much given to aggression would very soon encounter each other. So with groups; in their raids for sustenance, they would meet with other groups on common ground, and fight for the mastery. Every individual and every group seeking its own ends, could not but come in conflict with other individuals and groups. In such a state " private appe- tite " would be " the measure of good and evil," and Hobbes was right in regarding " the condition of mere nature " as " the SeC. $Z.] DISCORDANT IMPULSES ANTAGONIZED. 131 condition of war." It was the result of individuality seeking the satisfaction of its wants. The discordant impulses in man are thus doubly antagonized, first, by the higher instincts in the same individual, and secondly, by the same discordant impulses in other individuals; and out of these conflicting elements of character arise the phenomena of moral control. Anger in one finds its limitation in the equal anger of another, and self-preservation renders mutual restraint necessary. In existing society, an individual who does not restrain his dangerous impulses, is himself soon crushed out of existence by an orderly power whose means of destruction are greatly superior to his own. The integrity of society is largely maintained by the balanced antagonism of like propensities in its constituents, and the moral control which grows out of it; just as the physical individual is kept erect by the balancing of antagonistic muscles under the unitizing control of the medulla oblongata. But in society this balancing of the passions and impulses is a very complicated affair, even more so than the balancing of the meteorological elements. Equilibrium in either case never comes about. There is violence and discord in the elements, and vice and crime in society. To say that these are incidental and transitory is to ignore the plainest teachings of history and science. There are infinite forms of conflict in the physical and in the organic worlds; why should there not be in the mental and social worlds ? Man's nature is the theater of conflict, because he has grown up in the midst of conflict, and has been molded by it. Man's mental and physical mold is what it is, precisely because it is the best attainable to resist the opposing forces which have pitilessly assailed him from the beginning till now. Man epitomizes within himself the antagonism which prevails in the sphere with which his experience has had to do. In this sphere conflict is ineradicable; therefore to extinguish the potencies of conflict in man would be to unfit him for his environment, and ensure his speedy destruction. That there is passional antagonism within man, and between 132 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. \Chdp. XI' man and man by the necessities of the human constitution is a fact so obvious that there would be no need of insisting on it, but for its relation to the leading idea of this treatise. The statement of it has often been made. Plato conceives of mind as a chariot drawn by a team of winged horses, one of which is good, the other vicious. The trouble is to get the horses to move along together; for one of them being of inferior nature, is liable, unless well trained, to force the vehicle out of its proper course, in spite of the driver. This, of course, implies that the lower propensities and present impulses are liable to have their way instead of the higher sentiments, with their remoter and finer gratifications. The philosophy of Combe's Constitution of Man which has had such widespread influence is built upon this conception. And even thus, Spinoza as given by Froude : "There are pleasures of sense and pleasures of intellect; a thousand tastes, tendencies, and inclinations form our mental composition; and since one contradicts another, and each has its tendency to become dominant, it is only in the harmonious equipoise of their several activities, in their due and just sub- ordination, that any unity of action or consistency of feeling is possible." — (Brief Studies, 308). Pope sings it as follows : "Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain; These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined, Make and maintain the balance of the mind : The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife Gives all the strength and color of our life." It is stated in a more general way by Rousseau: "En medi- tant sur la nature de l'homme j' y crus decouvrir deux principes distincts dont l'un l'elevait a l'etude des verites eternelles, a l'amour de la justice et du beau moral, aux regions du monde intellectual, dont la contemplation fait les delices du sage ; et dont l'autre le ramenait bassement en lui-meme, l'asservessait a l'empire des sense, aux passions qui sont leurs ministers, et con- trariat par ellestout ce que lui inspiraitle sentiment du premier." — (Emile, 329). Guizot observes in his Lectures on the General History ol Civ- Sec. 8l.] BALANCE OF THE PASSIONS. 133 ilization (pp. 117, 118) that, "Events are not so prompt in their consequences as the human mind in its deductions. There is in all things a mixture of good and evil, so profound, so insepa- rable, that, in whatever part you penetrate, if even you descend to the lowest elements of society, or into the soul itself, you will there find these two principles dwelling together, developing themselves side by side, perpetually struggling and quarrelling with each other, but neither of them ever obtaining a complete victory, or absolutely destroying its fellow. Human nature never reaches to the extreme either of good or evil. It passes, with- out ceasing, from one to the other ; it recovers itself at the moment when it seems lost forever. It slips and loses ground at the moment when it seems to have assumed the firmest posi- tion." It is given by Buckle as follows: "Of the different passions with which we are born, some are more prevalent at one time, some at another ; but experience teaches us that, as they are always antagonistic, they are held in balance by the forces of their own opposition. The activity of one motive is corrected by the activity of another." — (History , Civilization, I., 163). "The actions of individuals are greatly affected by their moral feelings and by their passions; but these being antagonistic to the passions and feelings of other individuals, are balanced by them.'*'— (165). Section 82. — The will is itself a theater of conflict. When- ever an animal elects to do one of two or more possible acts, there is conflict, however feeble and obscure, in the deter- mination of the will. The strongest immediate impulse, to whatever that strength may be due, will determine the action. It is just the same further on in the scale. The influences which act in determining the will greatly multiply and become more complicated as we rise into the higher regions of mind. The strong impulse in prospect of immediate gratification does not now always carry; the impulse or motive of long range which was totally unknown lower down in the scale acquires great weight. The happiness in view may now be put off till later in 134 ANTAGONISM IN MIND. [Chap. XI. life or even till the next life. The act of willing would be greatly modified and exalted by such a consideration. But under the highest moral and religious guidance, it is still true, that the strongest impulse determines the will. Hartley said : "The will appears to be nothing but a desire or aversion, suffi- ciently strong to produce an action that is not automatic, pri- marily, or secondarily. . . . The will is, therefore, that desire or aversion which is strongest for the present time." "Which mental mood," adds Bastion, " is to prevail is sometimes immediately settled, and at other times only after a process of deliberation, and concerning this process, Hobbes says: 'The whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes, and fears, continued till the thing be either done or thought impossible, is what we call deliberation."' — (Brain Organ of Mind, 551, 552). If "imme- diately settled," there is little conflict and it is soon over; delib- eration is the prolonged conflict of counter-considerations, which the ultimate determination of the will closes. CHAPTER XII. CONFLICT AS A FACTOR IN MORALS. Section 83. — Before life was on the planet there were no bio- logical laws; in like manner, before the existence of society, there were no moral laws. The existence of society implies a certain degree of order, and order implies system, and system in society implies moral government Then whence came society? Very largely out of the association which comes of conflict. The battle of life determines whether an animal with certain needs shall be social or solitary. Utility presides over the result, and battle determines it. Birds and beasts of prey mostly live alone and hunt alone ; it is easiest thus to satisfy hunger and live. Hawks, eagles, owls, lions, and many others succeed best on the lone hunt, and their habits are solitary. Pelicans help one another by fishing together ; wolves attack large prey, and they hunt in pairs or packs. Birds and animals which feed in flocks and herds assist one another in discovering enemies, and even in self-defense against them. They sometimes place sentinels, and sometimes the stronger ones give battle to the enemy. But conflict relates not merely to the contest with other crea- tures for prey, or to avoid becoming prey. It is not altogether figurative that life has so often been called a battle. Every creature that lives has to maintain a struggle with the fatalities of life, or else be overcome in the struggle and die. Especially does this appear in taking care of the young. The young must be protected against the inclemencies of the weather, and against living enemies, and they must be fed at whatever cost. In all this there is struggle, and being thus compelled by the exigencies of life to remain together for a certain period of time, there is incipient habit formed, which, if not thwarted by other exigen- cies of life of opposite tendency, persists, and the animal 136 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. becomes gregarious and social. If in addition to this, it suc- ceeds better in company than alone in procuring subsistence, it is sure to feed in company with its fellows, and it becomes so habituated to the presence of its kind, that it is uneasy and dis- contented when alone. "The perception of kindred beings, per- petually seen, heard, and smelt, will come to form a predominant part of consciousness — so predominant a part that absence of it will invariably cause discomfort." — (Spencer.) Thus originated the social habits of animals ; and all social animals have what corresponds to the moral status of society in the form of regu- lation and order. " All animals living in a body which defend each other or attack their enemies in concert, must be in some degree faithful to each other; and those that follow a leader must be in some degree obedient." — (Darwin.) The valiant bulls or baboons which come to the defense of the weaker mem- bers of the herd or troop, perform an action at their individual risk, which redounds to the good of the society ; and among mankind such actions are called moral. If through the coward- ice of some of those natural defenders of the troop or herd, the defense had proved too weak and let in the ravages of the enemy, that dastardliness of behavior would be clearly immoral. The good to the community from a general line of conduct on the part of individuals, establishes that conduct as commendable and meritorious ; and in any instance the lapse of such conduct would be moral recreancy resulting in injury to the community. The impulses which cause animals to stand at bay are simply those of self-defense, which have arisen out of individualism and the conflict which attends it. If, in the case of any troop or herd, the battle-givers were always overcome, they would cease to offer resistance, and would always run, leaving the less fleet to be taken. Whatever the habits of living things in this respect, whether of flight or battle, utility determines the habit. A very little intellectual endowment enables creatures to deter- mine the situation, and to adopt such course as is best for the community. Birds on solitary islands, unused to sportsmen, are not afraid of them, but they would very soon learn to be. A Sec. <%".] ORDER AMONG ANIMALS. 137 flock of domestic fowls are not afraid of a man with a gun if he never shoots any of them \ but if he fires two or three times and kills, the survivors will always take to flight whenever they spy him gun in hand. Among all gregarious animals, the notice of danger, whether by noise or action, or both, is that upon which the good of the community largely depends, and which has to such community a moral value. And all these mutual relations concerning safety and well-being, whether we call them moral or not, grow out of the conditions of conflict in which the species is placed. Section 84. — Within their own communities without regard to external friends or enemies, social animals have their social order largely determined by contests of strength and cunning. The males determine by battle which are to be masters, and the strongest and most alert thereby largely secure a monopoly of the parental function. After defeat the weaker usually accept the situation, and with all proper deference concede the assumed rights of their superiors. Even the females have their battles to determine which shall have precedence at the watering trough or common rack. And once conflict has settled the question of precedence, the terror of the law secures its own observance. Out of all this grows a certain degree of order in gregarious communities by the deference of the inferior to the superior. It is a consequence of experience. Not to observe it brings pain ; obedience to the law avoids pain. Thus the most incipient form of order in community, of which we know anything, grows out of various forms of conflict, and is simply action in the direction of least resistance. Section 85. — When animals become domesticated and have to do with man, their relations become very much more com- plicated, thereby adding to the rules which govern conduct. If an ox attempts to gore his master or his master's horse, a cow to kick the milkmaid, a dog to snap at the children or worry the sheep, a goat to butt the passer-by, a horse to kick, bite, or balk, or any animal to jump over or break through fences, so 138 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XI L far they are all wanting in the proper orderly or moral quality, and there is discord in their relations with one another and with man. How is it that animals inclined to be unruly are made sufficiently orderly to behave in a becoming manner ? First of all it should be shown by kind treatment that we are their friends, to disarm hostility and awaken sympathy. An animal is precisely like a man in this respect. Convince him that we mean well toward him, and we shall get along with him better than if we treat him in an ungentlemanly way. But some animals like some men do not fully appreciate kindness. Some savages interpret kind treatment as evidence of fear ; some horses take very much the same view of it. I have heard a farmer say to illustrate the human frailty, " they are like some critters ; they don't know when they are well off." In such instances then, what is to be done? Very often the only method is to make disorder or immorality painful. Morality is established by the fact that " the way of the transgressor is hard." Allow me to illustrate: " Uncle Sam " had seen service in the army, and bore upon his shoulder the honorable "U. S." After the war he took to farming like many another of his kind. Just lately he had been shifted from his usual stall to another, next which stood a cow with only a short partition between. Sam may have taken umbrage at this as an indignity; anyway, he backed down on his stable companion, and compelled her to keep close in the corner of her stall for safety. "One morning," said his keeper, "as I stepped up behind bossy, Sam let his heels fly, and they just reached my left shoulder. If I had been two feet closer, the blow would have sent me whirling — may be into eternity. I suddenly reached for a piece of board, and now it was Sam's turn to shrink himself into the smallest possible compass and hunt a corner. He was so conscious of deserving all he got that he made no resistance, and I shortly brought the chastise- ment to an end. Sam had kicked at me supposing it was his neighbor, and I now expected him to look out for me, but still to keep up his persecution against her. But in a day or two, I Sec. £5.] RUDIMENTAL MORALITY. 1 39 observed that she would back across his stall and almost rest against his heels with safety." Sam was wise in his way, and of general good moral character, and this one experience of suffer- ing for misdemeanor had sufficed to bring him back to his former course of general good behavior. The following from "3758" (Atlantic Monthly, January, 1880), further illustrates this principle: Caleb is made to say, "There's that Zeke; he's as hefty a beast to manage as I ever laid eyes on. But Thomas has the right kind o' notion; as long as a creatur's green and blunders from not knowin' any better, he is as gentle as a girl. But if they are ugly and chock full of malice, then he shows 'em who is master. But it is merciful in the long run ; " and he goes on to give details wherein it is shown that the animal behaves better because he finds out that good behavior saves painful experi- ence. And further, "Caleb had occasion to chuckle more than once at the clever way in which Thomas led a refractory steer or colt in the paths of wisdom, until he became a gentle and well-trained animal." And then Thomas is made to tell his betrothed how he managed a yoke of balky steers on the con- flict principle, and he declares "it had the desired effect in ton- ing up their morals, so that they did not soger [balk] any more." The training of pointer dogs illustrates the same view. If the novice violate the code pointer, he is made to suffer till he learns that the breaking of rules always fetches up in disappoint- ment and pain, and that self-restaint and obedience bring the greater balance of pleasure in the long run. This affords a very apt illustration of the conflict which the maintenance of good morals always implies. It is always a victory, and often a vic- tory after a hard fought battle with the passions. It is the re- straint of an immediate impulse for a remote gratification. The young pointer is burning with eagerness to break for the game, but if he does he spoils the work, and is made to suffer for it ; if he exercises the necessary self-restraint, and the game is 140 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. secured, a burst of happiness unalloyed with pain is the full reward of his virtue. The intelligent watch-dog will not touch his master's stores, but bide his time for his proper share and reward. It comes of experience which finds treachery and theft painful, and faithful- ness and honesty pleasurable in the end, — not the experience of one animal only, but of his ancestors of many generations. Self-restraint is less painful than the penalty of violated law; the cost of right-doing is less than the cost of wrong-doing; and intelligent animals very soon learn this ; and such use of intelli- gence is one of the necessary elements of virtue in its simpler and more common forms. There is a subtlety of inference in the intellects of many species of animals, which is little sus- pected by those who are not familiar with their ways, or who are prevented from understanding them by a prejudice which assumes a necessary qualitative difference between brute and human intelligence. This subtlety of inference reaches to some- what remote as well as to present consequences. The rooks which banish or kill one of their number that persists in stealing after the infliction of lighter punishments; the birds which dis- tinguish between an armed and an unarmed man, and also between the bow and the rifle in the hands of enemies (Living- ston); the arctic foxes which cut the twine (and then take the bait) which else would fire the gun and kill (Ray); the terrier which called his mistress' attention to the cat's theft in another room, restraining meanwhile his own impulses to take the beef- steak from the offender for his own use; — these and previous examples of this section go to show the subtlety of inference and the rudiments of self-control in birds and animals which are by no means highest in the scale of intelligence. A writer in the Quarterly Journal of Science says concerning the behavior of the terrier in the last example given : " It is as clear a case of self-determination — of appetite and passion governed by the will — as any which human biography can show." That animals may hold their immediate impulses in abeyance in view of remoter ends, no one acquainted with their actions can, for a Sec 86.] AUTHORITATIVENESS IN MORALS. 141 moment, doubt; and this control of immediate impulses for remoter ends is, in man, one of the essential conditions of morality, without which human society would not be possible. Section 86. — Illustrations of the influence of painful and pleasurable feeling in determining the behavior of animals might be given almost without limit, and I may not have selected the best; but those given will be sufficient to show the play of antag- onism in bringing about orderly or moral conduct in the lowest forms of society. What is true in this respect of animals, is true in a much more complicated way of mankind. There are different and conflicting classes of feeling, and in the determi- nation of conduct, one class or the other must prevail. " We have seen," observes Herbert Spencer, " that during the progress of animate existence, the later-evolved, more compound, and more representative feelings, serving to adjust the conduct to more distant and general needs, have all along had an authority as guides superior to that of the earlier and simpler feelings — excluding cases in which these last are intense. This superior authority, unrecognizable by lower types of creatures which can- not generalize and little recognized by primitive men, who have but feeble powers of generalization, has become distinctly recog- nized as civilization and accompanying mental development have gone on. Accumulated experiences have produced the con- ciousness that guidance by feelings which refer to remote and general results, is usually more conducive to welfare than guid- ance by feelings to be immediately gratified. For what is the common character of the feelings that prompt honesty, truthful- ness, diligence, providence, etc., which men habitually find to be better prompters than the appetites and simple impulses ? They are all complex, re-representative feelings, occupied with the future rather than with the present. The idea of authoritative- ness has therefore come to be connected with feelings having these traits; the implication being that the lower simpler feelings are without authority. And this idea of authoritativeness is one element in the abstract consciousness of duty." — (Data of Ethics). 142 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \Chap. XII. This recognizes the conflict between two classes of feelings, and defines which class should direct conduct. The more com- plex feelings having reference to future gratification should pre- vail over the simpler feelings which are concerned only with the present; that is, regulated conduct is preferable to random con- duct. The guiding principle of well regulated life was finely stated in a somewhat old-fashioned way, about a century and a half ago, by Francis Hutcheson : " The chief happiness of any being must consist in the full enjoyment of all the gratifications its nature desires and is capable of; or if its nature admits of a variety of pleasures of different and sometimes inconsistent kinds, some of them also higher and more durable than others, its supreme happiness must consist in the most constant enjoy- ment of the more intense and durable pleasures, with as much of the lower gratifications as consists with the full enjoyment of the higher. In like manner, if we cannot ward off all pain, and if there be different kinds and degrees of it, we must secure ourselves against the more intense and durable kinds, and the highest degrees of them; and that sometimes by bearing the lower kinds or degrees, or by sacrificing some smaller pleasures, when 'tis necessary for this end." — (Moral Philosophy, Vol. I., ioo). This recognizes the highest happiness principle and states the ground of its application. Further on he insists on the mani- fest inconsistencies among even the higher pleasures, and their incompatibility in the fruition; and affirms that some of them are much increased by the consciousness of having sacrificed the lower to the higher. Earlier in the volume (pp. 12, 13), he presents an array of conflicting tendencies in human conduct : " The difference between the calm motions of the will and pas- sionate, whether of the selfish or benevolent kinds, must be obvious to any one who considers how often we find them acting in direct opposition." Anger and lust, he continues, draw one way, and a calm regard for some interest or our own good will draw the opposite way. A passion may conquer a calm princi- ple, or be conquered by it. Some motive will prompt to spend- Sec. 86.] MORAL BALANCE. 1 43 thrift expenses, while another will protest against the extravagance. In sending off a child or friend at some risk for improvement, one class of faculties is gratified and another made uneasy. In correcting children, putting restraints upon them, or setting them uneasy tasks, the parent is actuated by conflicting feelings. The love of life overcomes our repugnance to abstinence, pain- ful cures, nauseous potions. A passage from Shaftesbury, who is utilitarian in his views of morality, is fairly modern in its method of pointing out the need of restraint to secure the proper balance of the passions: "Whoever is the least versed in this moral kind of architecture, will find the inward fabric so adjusted, and the whole so nicely built, that the barely extending of a single passion a little too far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring irrecover- able ruin and misery. He will find this experienced in the ordinary case of phrensy and distraction ; when the mind dwell- ing too long upon one subject (whether prosperous or calamitous) sinks under the weight of it, and proves what the necessity is, of a due balance and counterpoise in the affections. He will find that in every different creature and distinct sex, there is a differ- ent and distinct order, set, or suit of passions; proportionable to the different order of life, the different functions and capacities assigned to each. As the operations and effects are different, so are the springs and causes in each system. The inside work is fitted to the outward action and performance." — (Characteristics, II., 135.) This, in the moral sphere, we think must be accepted as a clear anticipation of the modern doctrine in the organic sphere that life, feeling, intelligence are the adjustment of one set of relations to another, the inner to the outer. Professor Archibald Campbell, of Edinburgh, who early in the last century took Hobbes and Mandeville to task, hitting aside of the one and yielding to the other more than he imagined, reduced the several affections of the mind to either hatred or love, and affirmed " that all our actions, of whatever sort, do originally spring from one or other of these two principles." He settles the strife between self-love and other-love as follows: 144 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \CllCLp. XII. " And therefore matters thus far do by no means depend upon arbitrary will or humor, but are fixed, eternal, unchangeable: which gives us plainly to understand, that if ever we expect to have the favor and commendation of those beings with whom we are joined in society, we must necessarily adapt our behavior to the gratification of their self-love, or their natural desire of well-being. This is the method we must needs take ; and there is manifestly no other course whatsoever, that can at all serve our purpose." — (Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue, 103, 104). The author then goes on to state his scheme of moral duties, which is throughout utilitarian and altruistic. This virtue of the renunication of self in the interest of self is more artist- ically presented by a modern writer on Moral Science, Dr. L. P. Hickok, already quoted on Cosmology. "The animal [in man] is impelled by a craving, the rational is inspired by a claim. The difference between these two is very broad. A craving is always going out towards something it can get, a claim is always going out towards something it can give, or can be. A craving seeks a self-gratification ; a claim requires a self-surrender, per- haps a self-sacrifice. The self which the craving seeks, is not found, but is lost in the very process of its seeking; while the self which the claim surrenders, is not lost, but is found in its very surrender." G. H. Lewes : "No one supposes that our desires are free. Such freedom as there is consists in the conflict of desires, and the choice is determined by the predominance of the most urgent; and this predominance is partly due to the strength of the immediate stimulus, and partly to the vision of possibilities and consequences which the desire awakens. It is here that desire passes into volition ; so that, however powerful a stimulus may be in exciting a desire, if it be connected in experience with painful consequences, we are thereby educated to resist the desire, or to avoid incurring the stimulus which awakens it. Because the will is thus the abstract expression of the product of experience, it is educable, and becomes amenable to the moral law, as architecture is amenable to mechanical laws, and $&£ £6.] PHYSIOLOGY OF CONFLICTING IMPULSES. 1 45 as thinking is amenable to knowledge." — (The Study of Psy- chology, 109). This is bringing the subject largely into the domain of physiology, and it is possible to go still further in this direction. A writer in the London Times speaks of a true volition which is " capable of great development in two different directions — first, as an inhibitory power, to restrain either reflex or sensorial or ideo-motor impulses from going out into action — to hold the machine of the body still in spite of them ; secondly, as a selecting power, to retain certain ideas before the consciousness to the exclusion of others, to 'dwell' upon them by deliberate choice, and thus to derange the balance of mere experience, and to give to the selected ideas an increased weight in determining the conduct." "With regard to the first of these points, it is necessary to revert to the account already given of the difference between sensori-motor and ideo-motor action, and to show that, as it is the natural tendency of an undeveloped nervous system to perform the humbler rather than the higher function, to allow impressions made upon the sensorium to expend themselves in sensori-motor action rather than to pass on through the sensorium and to excite ideas, it should be the constant endeavor of the educator to overcome this tendency, and so to direct and reiter- ate the impressions made by teaching that ideas should in time become their habitual results." George Pouchet in the Revue des Deux Mondes : "Between the currents ascending the spinal cord and those going out from the brain the conflict may be said to be permanent. There is an antagonism, an almost constant struggle for influence, between the two centres, the one the seat of the higher faculties characterizing animal life, the other ruling the functions of vege- tative life. It is this which moralists have called, in reasonable enough terms in this case, the spirit and the flesh. The only inquiries of philosophers into the mechanism of our passions which have any importance belong to the account very often given already, of these relations between the moral and the physical. Physiologists in their turn study and verify that antagonism, without, however, explaining it any better than 146 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII. moralists or philosophers have done, while still seeking for the precise seat. Sometimes it occurs that currents coming from the spinal cord conceal, thwart, or destroy those that flow down from the brain, and sometimes the reverse happens." These several views from writers of the last two hundred years go to show how varied the views of thinking men may be in regard to the conflict of higher and lower feelings in deter- mining conduct, and yet, how all agree substantially concerning what feelings should obtain and hold the mastery. Whether the method of looking at the subject be metaphysical, psycho- logical, or psycho-physical, it has essentially the same result. The living of a worthful life assumes the form of a triumph after conflict between two classes of faculties which are liable to antagonize each other. A member of society who yields to unrestrained impulses is regarded as a character that is "un- balanced." Virtue implies the constant maintenance of the required balance, and consists in the regulation of conduct on principle. Life is exalted when it secures self-interest through justice to others and promotes the interest of others through justice to self. In all cases of conflict between the selfish interests of the individual and the general interests of society, the former is by a natural law of force subordinated to the latter, and for this reason that it secures a larger balance of happiness in the aggre- gate ; and herein obtains the paradox, that, in waiving" personal considerations, the individual is most surely subserving personal interests. A part of the Commandments are founded on this principle. The coveting of whatever is rightfully another's serves the individual's pursuit of happiness far better in the renunciation than in the gratification. The existence of society is incompatible with the unrestrained gratification of the desires. Hence, the good of the individual as of society is best found in the rigid observance of the moral law. It is the balancing of motives and acts, in which the more remote and greater out- weighs the more immediate and less. That is the greater because it involves only self-denial which is itself a form of vie- SeC. 8/.] THE LEADING ELEMENT OF MORALS. 147 tory imparting pleasure ; while this is the less because it pro- vokes hostility and brings pain equal to and often greater than the gratification. The one leaves a margin in favor of the indi- vidual, the other does not. Section 87. — A great many attempts have been made from ancient times till the present to find the leading element, of morals, that which comprehends all the rest and reduces them to order. Propriety, prudence, benevolence, or altruism, sym- pathy, balance of the passions, the due medium, the golden mean — all have at one time or other, or place, been pushed to the front, and all have a certain truth in them, but it is not till we reach the conception of utility as measured by the outcome of the greatest happiness that we have in hand a principle which assumes the mastery and co-ordinates all the rest into a well- balanced system. But utility derives its importance from the conflict among impulses, passions, faculties, which it is the func- tion of the guiding principle to adjust. In all times, whatever gave offense to society and created pain was placed under ban as immoral ; that which brought good and gave pleasure was commended and retained as a component part of the moral sys- tem. In this way, through the play of good and evil, pleasure and pain, has been determined the proper balance of conduct, the due medium, the mutual adjustment of egoism and altruism — that coming to be regarded as meritorious which usually pro- motes the interest of the greatest number or those having the greatest power. Every writer on morals recognizes the doctrine of utility, even when he disavows it. Curious examples might be given of this. It is Hume who says that, whatever the prin- ciples writers set out with, they are sure "to assign as the ulti- mate reason for every rule which they establish, the convenience and necessities of mankind;" and that, "a concession thus extorted, in opposition to systems, has more authority than if it had been made in prosecution of them." — (General Principles of Morality). The greatest happiness principle necessarily concerns the individual as well as society, and utility actually determines the I48 CONFLICT IN MORALS. \CJiap. XI L conflict of jurisdiction between the two. And in general it may be said truly that there is nothing adjusted in society any more than in the physical world, but through stress — the action of one thing upon another. The physical forces, the written laws of the state, and the unwritten laws of society act and counter-act to shape the life of man. J. Fitzjames Stephen called it "compul- sion, '' and puts the case heroically and soundly: "It seems, then, that compulsion in its most formidable shape and on the most extensive scale — the compulsion of war — is one of the principles which lie at the root of national existence. It deter- mines whether they are to be and what they are to be. It decides what men shall believe, and how they shall live, in what mould their religion, law, morals, and the whole tone of their lives shall be cast. It is the ratio ultima not only of kings, but of human society in all its shapes. It determines precisely, for one thing, how much and how little individual liberty is to be left to exist at any specified time and place."— (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 169). Whatever the outcome, it is a case of stress in the dynamics of society. The universe is sustained by a constant stress. or opposing strain— this is the doctrine of physics; so morality is sustained by a like tension or pressure. When- ever order exists, whether among atoms or molecules, or among the lower orders of living things, or among men, there is a balancing of opposing tendencies, and order is the result of compulsion. Section 88. — We do not, of course, positively know what the original condition of human beings was. That they were social in simple fashion is no doubt true. Little groups—- gens, clans, or households — appear soon to have sprung up and to have become closely united in a common interest. This was made necessary by the hostile attitude they were compelled to assume for self-preservation. Some of the beasts were much stronger than themselves and by nature better armed; while other groups with the idea uppermost of serving their own ends would not stop to weigh questions of right. Might and cun- ning were the available means of success, and success made Sec. Sp.] COURAGE AND LOYALTY. 1 49 right. These primitive groups would very early develop the germs of moral qualities which would easily and naturally enough be advanced by primitive reflection to the requirements of primitive life. "Any animal whatever endowed with well- marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man." — (Dar- win, Descent of Man, Vol. I.). Section 89. — Courage and loyalty would be the first virtues to be universally honored, and cowardice and treachery the first crimes to be universally execrated. It is obvious enough why this should be so. If a group of hunters get into a dispute with another group for the possession of certain game, the group whose members should stand best by each other, would be most likely to get the prize. Any cowardice, any treachery would put in jeopardy not only the prize contended for, but the very lives of comrades. Precisely the like might befall in a contest with a ferocious beast The virtues of courage, of fealty to friends, would give the advantage to the group in general, and it would not only hold its own, but would gain strength by the successes of life, and exterminate, drive away, or swallow up such as were wanting in these virtues. The approval and praise of the brave and faithful and the condemnation of the cowardly and treach- erous would fix these moral impressions on the minds of the young, so that there would come at length to be no deviation from them under any circumstances, either in thought, feeling, or action. Hence, in battle death would be preferable to run- ning away. Prisoners would lose their lives, as they have often chosen to do, rather than betray their people. Those writers who find in such examples of heroism unanswerable proof of a mysterious moral instinct divinely implanted in the human heart, have taken only a superficial view of the genesis of this instinct. History shows how it was implanted and reinforced by. utilitarian methods. Among the Romans it was death for a soldier to desert his post or to lose his arms in battle. It was an 8 T50 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII, early custom to decimate commands which fled from the enemy. One out of every ten determined by lot had to die. Even in later times this penalty was sometimes in- flicted. The immediate advantages of cowardice were thus fatally cut off. The individual was submerged; it was the utter despotism of corporate opinion and corporate interest. Such moral and physical discipline had a psychological result in building up the heroic frame of mind in masses of men, who, in consequence, never quailed in the presence of danger. Cicero declares, " Whole legions of our troops have frequently marched with undaunted courage and even alacrity, to attacks, from which they were well persuaded not one of them could live to return." (And the Romans had an uninviting sort of life hereafter to look forward to). In Spain in the time of Sertorius, it was the custom when a chief fell, for his bodyguard to die with him. This was not unusual in early warlike times; it was the custom among our own ancestors. No stronger proof could be afforded of the high value which was attached to fealty of comrades in the midst of mortal combat. If any fell short of the requirement they were made to suffer moral and physical pain, so that the observance of the virtue was pressed by considerations which were mainly utilitarian. In the dilemma of two evils however selfishly viewed, that one was chosen which resulted in the less pain. Such feelings and actions descending from generation to generation became fixed in the mental constitution as a funda- mental element of it, so that in any particular emergency, it becomes unnecessary to weigh considerations in order to deter- mine conduct. It is no longer necessary to use conscious induction from experience to ascertain the principle of right action; the principle is at hand, and the actor carries it with him as a deductive truth which is applicable to every emergency. Savages whom we affect to despise illustrate this for us, when, as prisoners, they will not betray their comrades. Deep down in their instincts gentile or tribal fealty is recognized as the duty paramount to all others, and as a principle worthy to govern conduct, they carry it logically and loyally to death. They could Sec. QO.'] INTUITIVE MORALS. 151 not give an account of its origin, and they could not philoso- phize about its use; it often seems adverse to the immediate interest of the individual, but it is so fixed in the mental consti- tution by the force of education and heredity, that the alterna- tive of disobedience comes not into consciousness. Thus were duty and obligation established in the human constitution long before men were able to philosophize, even falsely, about their origin. Section 90. — There is need that this view be made as emphatic as possible, it is so generally ignored. Our first wit- ness shall be Herbert Spencer, who has conceived the principle with clearness and presented it with force: "To make my posi- tion fully understood, it seems needful to add that, correspond- ing to the fundamental propositions of a developed moral sci- ence, there have been and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experiences of utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organizations — just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and com- plete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been pro- ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which by contin- ued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition — certain emotions corresponding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility." — (Letter to Mill, Data of Eth- ics, 123.) The following from G. H. Lewes, while less abstract than the preceding, brings out distinctively the conflict element which is 152 CONFLICT IN MORALS. [Chap. XII concerned in the genesis of this "form of thought" in the sphere of morals: "We train our domestic animals as we train our children, to do this and avoid that, by expressions of approbation and disapprobation, which represent caresses and blows; and so far we find them impressible and educable by the moral instrumen- tality which, in its gradual action on man, has incorporated itself as custom, law, and public opinion. . . But in less endowed specimens of our race, even within the reach of culture, the response to the moral demands of society, whether in the shape of doctrine or of institutions, is little more than the conflict of opposing appetites, the check imposed by egoistic dread on egois- tic de'sire. It is a great progress beyond this brute dread of the stick when the love of approbation attains the ideal force which renders social rule or custom and the respect of fellow men an habitually felt restraint and guidance." — (Study of Psychology, 145.) "And this observation leads us to the striking antithesis presented in the progress of mankind; namely, that the moral sense, which, in the first instance, was molded under the influ- ence of an external approbation and disapprobation, comes at last in the select members of a given generation, to incorporate itself as protest and resistance, as the renunciation of immedi- ate sympathy for the sake of a foreseen general good, as moral defiance of material force, and every form of martyrdom." — (146-7.) This doctrine of the formation of moral intuition through the discipline afforded by pleasure and pain in the experiences of life, appears to be distinctly recognized by Shaftes- bury in the following passage: "Yet the same master of the family using proper rewards and gentle punishments, rewards his children, teaches them goodness, and by this help instructs them in a virtue, which afterwards they practice upon other grounds, and without thinking of a penalty or bribe." — (Charac- teristics, II., 65.) Like every conception of value, this also has had its origin and development, and it has its history. Faint glimpses of it were seen by Aristotle and the Epicureans. Locke's association of ideas suggested the association of feeling, through which vir- Sec. 357> 17 366 SANITARY CONDITIONS. \Chap. XXX, 65,283." — (Brassey, Foreign Work and English Wages). Doctors Farr and Lankester, and others, by means of carefully collected statistics, have shown such an intimate relation between the rate of mortality and the density of population, that the one becomes a very accurate measure of the other. And this is a cause of human suffering not easy to remedy. While better homes for the poor may be provided, and greater general intelligence may care more effectually for the health of the people, it is scarcely possible to avoid even greater concentration of population in the future than that which now exists. Much, no doubt, may be done for the health of cities, but people cannot be prevented from flocking to them; and the puzzle of philanthropy to get rid of the accompanying evils, or even to palliate them, is likely to become even more perplexing than at present. Section 198. — But even the sanitary work done through all the appliances of medicine and hygiene, though on the whole a good, which we are glad to accept, is nevertheless alloyed with its inevitable taint of evil. There is a good and a not-good bound up together in the results of the skill which conserves the feeble. In the rough life of former times, the principle of phys- ical selection had fuller sway than at present, and through its action, only the physically vigorous were able to survive. This maintained the vigor of peoples, and even made those races as "hard and tough as steel," which now hold the front rank of civilization. Under the incoming system of things, the tendency appears to be to conserve the intellectually, rather than the physically, favored. Those may survive who know how to avoid the breakers, and not those merely who have strength to buffet them. But there is complication, even here, with the fact that those who are willing to avail themselves of the requisite sani- tary knowledge, are not always able to do as they wish, while many who know better will persist in following the vicious fash- ions which set such knowledge at defiance. Still, an effect of improved medicine and hygiene is to preserve the feeble. 11 There is little doubt that the survival of the weak and help- less, and the sustentation of the unfit and the vicious, are begin- Sec ip&] CONSERVING THE WEAK. 367 ning to poison the blood and paralyze the energy of the race." (Prof. J. LeConte, in Popular Science Monthly). " During the more primitive phazes of civilization, those of weak and defect- ive blood were more liable to be swept into an untimely grave than they are to-day. Now all such are skilfully nursed up to the fertile period, to the multiplication and perpetuation of their kind." — (Dr. J. R. Black, Popular Science Monthly). Following Greg, Wallace, and Galton, Darwin says: "With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that sur- vive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has pre- served thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civ- ilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degenera- tion of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man him- self, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." — (Descent of Man L, 161-2). It is not a good thus to reduce the average physical vigor of civilized peoples. There is, then, an additional need in this direction, which is that the feeble thus preserved shall be made by similar means to leave successors who have greater physical stamina than themselves. The course of civilization as yet shows no sign of a general movement in this direction. It points rather to the decline, on the whole, of those who have the best opportunity thus to con- serve the feeble, and the taking of their places through the more rapid multiplication of the sturdy lower classes, where physical selection still has a considerable part to play. The immunity from labor, which the possession of wealth brings, is favoring the increase of an indolent class of people 368 SANITARY CONDITIONS. \Chap. XXX. who grow weak in body, and, eventually, weak in mind. It threatens to bring upon us a train of evils which have always followed, sooner or later, in the wake of slavery. It is debauch- ing its victims mentally, morally, and physically. The extrava- gance of fashion in dress which wealth displays, is often directly unfavorable to health, while extravagance in this and all the other vanities of life becomes the envy of people with less means for gratification, and their life is a continual worry, depressing the mind, and exhausting the body, in a mad struggle for means to ape their superiors in the ranks of fashion. We have reformers, of course, who are laboring against these tendencies, but so far their efforts appear to have no favorable result, and an idle and fashion-nursing aristocracy on the one hand, and their slavish imitators on the other, with deterioration in both, are everywhere noticeable features of our progressive civilization. When we compare the physical frailty of women who can afford to live fine with the robustness of women in the lower classes who live plain and work in the field, there is little encouragement for the optimistic fancy that the means of conserving the feeble are also imparting vigor of constitution. Frances Power Cobbe (in Contemporary Review) observes: "One of the exasperating things about this evil of female valetudinarianism is, that the women who are its victims, are precisely the human beings who, of our whole mortal race, seem naturally most exempt from physical want or danger, and ought to have enjoyed immunity from disease or pain of any kind. Such ladies have probably never, from their birth, been exposed to hardship, or toil, or ill- ventilation, or bad or scanty food, fuel, or raiment. They have fed on the fatness of the earth, and been clothed in purple and fine linen." There is nothing effectually to counteract the deleterious effects of dress, fashion, and dissipation. There is reason to apprehend that increasing intelligence and opportunity are adding to the aggregate of physical debility, with little pros- pect of adequate compensation in kind, unless, indeed, this is to be found in the mere extension of an enfeebled existence. Sec. 1P9-] DEBILITATING INDUSTRIES. 369 Section 199. — But while the hygiene of advanced civilization is impotent to invigorate the feeble whom it conserves, the very tenor and tendency of civilized life and industry are still further to enfeeble. While, in the early periods of human existence, hunting and war, pastoral life and agriculture, were full of hard- ship and exposure, which cut down the feeble, they were, never- theless, healthy, and promoted the vigor of the survivors. In modern life the hardship is only partially got rid of, while new forms of repulsive occupation have been added to the list of industries. Mining in the dark, damp caverns of the earth is an ever enlarging example of the kind. Still more than in Sen- aca's time do men dig mid "hideous caves, hollow and hanging rocks, horrid rivers, dead and perpetual darkness, and not with- out the apprehension of hell itself." Hell itself truly in a sense! An occupation like this may overcome the feeble, but there is little in it to impart robustness of constitution to survivors. The breathing of air heavy with carbonic acid poisons the blood; and without the invigorating influence of the direct rays of the sun, physical vigor could hardly, under, any circumstances, be main- tained from generation to generation. To this must be added a long list of occupations growing out of the use of machinery, which are vitiating both to body and mind. In the manufactur- ing districts of France and England there is falling off in stature as well as in constitutional vigor. The effect of machinery is to lighten labor, but, at the same time, to make it more unhealthy. The division of labor, so necessary a part of advanced industry, in confining the mind of the operative to but one thing, never diversifies his inventive resources, but habituates his industrial life and mental operations to monotony, and makes of the indi- vidual an automatic machine, without incentive or help to the symmetrical development of body and mind. Industrial monot- ony may, indeed, favor insanity, as has been alleged (Griesinger quoted by Royce); but, however this may be, it certainly does favor stupidity, and tends in the direction of dwarfed mentality and drivelling idiocy. Add to this the heated and close atmos- phere necessary in some occupations, and the dust and effluvia 37° SANITARY CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXX. which cannot be avoided in others, and we readily perceive that civilization is not contributing in all directions to an equilibrium between man and his environment on the basis of a sound mind and a sound body. , Under the influence of education and the use of machinery, the tendency from occupations requiring both mental and muscu- lar exertion to those which become either physically automatic, without mental activity, or purely mental, without muscular activ- ity, is attended in the different classes with a complication of undesirable results. That form of the division of labor which is divorcing the two activities of mind and body, is doing injury in defiance of the increase of general intelligence and of special knowledge, to the integrality of the individual constitution. While the routine work of the mill allows the mind to become listless and inert, only a small part of the muscles are called into action, and the rest become dwarfed by disuse, the general health suffering for the want ot general activity and interest. And while the brain-labor which pertains to numerous branches of commercial and intellectual life, permits the muscles to become dwarfed, it at the same time worries and overtaxes the brain. The greater strain upon the nervous system is a prevail- ing feature of the tendency of occupation from a lower to a higher form of civilization; and with it the types of disease are undergoing change. Cerebral and nervous diseases are on the increase. Among civilized peoples there is more sensibility, more suppressed emotion, more mental suffering, more hysteria, more hypochondria, more insanity, more self-destruction. Insanity is not known among primitive people; it is a disease of civilization, and is one of the most fearful, and, so far from any abatement under the progress of science, the percentage of insanity might be used as a gauge of civilization, the one increas- ing with the other. Notwithstanding the progress of medical science, it fails to overtake disease of the human brain. " We seem to do less for the chronic insane now than fifty years ago, and diseases of the mind seem more and more relapsable; hid- den, treacherous, recurring forms of disease are springing up Sec. ipp.] suicide. 371 everwyhere, to the confounding both of science and law." — (Dr. George M. Beard, N. A. Review, Sep., 1880.) Suicide is also becoming more common. Professor Morselli, of Milan, who has studied this subject more profoundly, per- haps, than any living man, presents statistics showing that for the current century the increase of suicides in Europe has been greater than the increase of population. It prevails most in the most civilized countries, and is usually most prevalent in cities, the centers of civilization; but it is extending over the country like a contagion. Paris, long regarded as the center of refined civilization, suffers most from the suicidal propensity, and its neighborhood partakes of its own bad eminence. Wherever education is carried highest, there is the most self-destruction, so that the number and efficiency of the great schools and the abundance of periodical literature, correspond with the preva- lence of suicide. Prussia in general, and Saxony in particular, are eminent in this respect among the countries of Europe; and everywhere the educated classes suffer more than the rude and uncultured. It is painful to be compelled to face the sad show- ing that culture and suicide are correlative facts in the progress of civilization. It was so in ancient Greece and Rome. Suicide was most prevalent when these civilizations were at their best. The inequality of classes, the struggle to rise, the failures, the pressure of want or some deprivation of what is dearly coveted, together with undue sensitiveness, all lead to despair, to the unbalancing of the mind, to self-destruction. Even the terrors of the prevailing dogmas in the church appear to exercise no more restraint over the suicidal propensity in the Christian world, than did the license of the pagan creed in the old Greek and Roman worlds. A religious authority refers the annual thou- sands of suicides in Europe to the general decline of faith. If this were so, the Jewish faith would be more desirable than the Catholic, and the Catholic more desirable than the Protestant, for Jews commit suicide less than Catholics, and Catholics less than Protestants. Rather is the growth of suicide due to the 372 SANITARY CONDITIONS. [Chap. XXX. instability of social conditions, the opportunity for change, and the intense competition in the struggles of life. The more complicated a machine is the more liable is it to get out of order; the same is true of mind; and the human mind has become more complicated in structure and sensitive in action under the educational influences of modern civiliza- tion. It is the result of multiplied activity in all the spheres of life; and then the continued intensification of this same activity often proves to be too heavy a tax, and the mind succumbs in mania or suicide, or both. The evils grow out of the intense and diversified struggle between competitors in all the functions of industrial, social, and political life. Then what is the remedy ? Nothing short of the removal of the cause. There may be some palliation, but no radical cure except by the still- ing of these activities; but this would defeat the glorious ends of civilization; hence, while these activities continue, there will be struggle, exhaustion, and defeat, and the path of our tri- umphant progress will "be inundated with the tears and blood of mankind." Nothing, perhaps, so luridly pictures the dark side of civilization as this increasing army of self-destroyers. It is not simply the fact that thousands every year make away with themselves that alone counts. This is only the index to misery truly beyond the reach of estimate. The suicide must feel that life embodies for him more of pain than of happiness, and that the overbalance on the side of misery is large enough to warrant the painful undertaking of self-destruction. And then, for every one that reaches this crisis how many must there be, who, in moments of despair and outrage, think of suicide as an alternative which might tell for happiness by closing up once for all the fountains of pain, — and yet of which gloomy deliberations, for stopping short of the fatal act, the world never hears? But, does this condemn civilization? By no means. The hights are forever equal to the depths. Even when so many sink to the very depths of sorrow, a still larger proportion may rise to corre- sponding elevation of enjoyment. The anguish of the defeated Sec. 200.] HUMAN SACRIFICE THE PRICE OF PLENTY. 373 in life may be more than compensated by the joyfulness of the victors. It is the richness of the opportunity that develops the extremes. It is the peculiar province of civilization to lengthen out the emotional scale; and we may be sure that the readings of this scale can not fall further below the zero of happiness than they rise above it. The point we make is that, if they rise higher above this zero, they must fall farther below. Section 200.- — If it were only the fathers who suffer from the general causes of weakness and degradation, there would be less to deplore, but the mothers are becoming deeply involved. And this is so, not only in the manufacturing districts where girls form a large part of the operatives, but it is only too prevalent in agricultural districts ; and the mothers in most classes of society have become thus entangled in the meshes of a deterioration which threatens to become constitutional and hereditary. Gal- ton observes that, "Our race is overweighted, and likely to be drudged into degeneracy, by demands that exceed its powers." It is bad enough now, as we might give page after page of testimony to prove, but with greater intelligence and opportunity as the stimulus of greater competition under greater industrial pressure, it is likely to become still worse with the progress of civilization. The idle on the one hand, indulging in vicious fashions and the dissipation of high life, and the overworked on the other, afford little ground, indeed, for great expectations of the future. Sufficient has been stated to indicate that, so far as health of mind and body is concerned, while civilized peoples are gaining on one side, they are losing on the other. But these unhealthy and exhausting occupations bring us more of civilized plenty, so much our boast; and they are likely to be increased rather than diminished. If we get more in the aggregate at the cost of life, life itself must be given up. From the healthy hills of the country come annually hecatombs to be sacrificed on the altars of civilization. This is costly ; but still we pay the price. As the blessings of the gods were once to be had only by lavish 374 PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. sacrifices on their altars, so, now, are the boasted blessings of civilization to be secured only by the sacrifice of human beings on the altars of industry and plenty. CHAPTER XXXI. PROSPECTS OF THE COMMON, WORKING PEOPLE. Section 201. — While machinery greatly increases the quan- tity of production, it fails to reduce the amount of labor. The limits of the demand appear to be determined for the most part by the extent of the supply. A greater abundance of products from the same amount of labor means more generous living for a larger proportion of the people, usually with reduction of the death-rate among the laboring classes, and consequent encour- agement to their rapid increase of numbers. And if population should not in every instance keep pace with production, the in- crease and diversification of human wants will. In all the changes which civilization has effected, there has been so far no general and permanent relaxation in the demand for products, and the laborer is driven as remorselessly as he ever was. The continued complication of industries starts new occupations into existence, some of which are not only unhealthy, but repulsive. But even if there were no additions to the repugnant character of labor in general, the fact of ineradicable repugnance in certain industries, is a difficult one to deal with in Utopian speculations. The difficulty still holds, whether the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" shall always be a class, or whether it shall be- come the duty of all to take part in such necessary labor as is intrinsically repulsive. This alternative is so little probable that it may be dismissed without further consideration. Whatever Sec. 20I.] EDUCATION AND DISCONTENT. 375 the form of human society on earth, it is not likely that every one will be called on to take a hand in the most repulsive of necessary industries. In what form, then, is relief to come to that great class of our fellows who do the hard and disagreeable labor of life? "Pay them better in the first place." Very well; admit the feasibility of this, and that society will see justice done to the poor worker. Let us double his wages. As it is now, we will admit, he can get but a bare subsistence, not the best food, or the best clothing, with only a small jug of whiskey on pay days and holidays — such jug being the symbol of dissipation. With twice as much to do with he may live bet- ter and go better clothed: so far good; but he will be more like- ly to indulge in idle days, days of dissipation; that is, he will have a bigger jug for whiskey. "But, you talk nonsense; edu- cate him, educate him above such dissipation and selfishness." Very well, let him be educated. We hope it may be his good fortune to be educated above the follies now so common in his class. If this were possible would it be an unalloyed good ? Just as soon as we educate these workers of civilization, we make them more dissatisfied ihan ever with their condition, even with all the ameliorations of which that condition is sus- ceptible. You cannot educate and refine the worker without making him feel more exquisitely the repulsiveness of his coarse and uncouth occupation. Even if civilization does nothing to make certain labors per se more repulsive, it makes them rela- tively so by refining the tastes of the laborer. The good can- not be had without the evil. The working people of the world have appeared to be in the happiest frame of mind, when they had good health and steady occupation as the condition of a fair supply of the necessaries of life, and little or no surplus to stimulate dissipation. The need of working steadily for ends which are directly perceived and warmly appreciated, without the thoughts of an alternative that would be easier, establishes individual habit and the common sentiment of a class, with per- haps the greatest possible contentment in life. These people can only better their condition through the power which education may 376 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. give; but with education come new wants, and with new wants, a discontent which was unknown before. This fact was clearly per- ceived by that audacious writer, Mandeville, and stated in his blunt way as follows: "To make the society and people easy under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant as well as poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied. The wel- fare and felicity, therefore, of every State and kingdom, require that the knowledge of the working poor should be confined within the verge of their occupations, and never extended (as to things visible) beyond what relates to their calling. The more a shepherd, a ploughman, or any other peasant, knows of the world, and the things that are foreign to his labor or employment, the less fit he will be to go through the fatigues and hardships of it with cheerfulness and content." — (Fable of the Bees, 179). It does not follow from this view that it is not best to educate the worker as far as possible ; but it does follow that we cannot bring him knowledge without bringing him pain. Contentment may not, indeed, be the greatest of blessings. It is a paradox in favor with agitators that contentment may be the basis on which misery rests. Lassalle found the working classes in gen- eral so insensible to their indigence, that he said the first thing to be done was to teach them their misery (Rae). - Section 202. — Laborers are, of course, not all alike in respect to saving wages. There is a great difference, for example, in this country between Celts and Teutons in their mode of apply- ing economic principles to practical life; and American employes have been, and for a good reason continue to be, largely Celtic. Much the same may be said of the African element in our pop- ulation; while the laborer with more Teuton blood in his veins, whether from Germany, Scotland, or the north of Ireland, is more given to save his earnings, and as soon as he can to become his own employer, and by and by the employer of others. Very promptly and steadily the Germans and Scotch- Irish take their place in the ranks of the much abused "oppres- SeC. 202. \ THRIFT AS A PERSONAL QUALITY. 377 sors of labor." It is rarely so with the purer Celt, who begins a laborer and ends a laborer, and transmits the habit to his children. It makes all the difference in the world whether people save or not. Neither are employers or laborers a fixed caste. They often exchange places, employers becoming laborers, and labor- ers becoming employers. By what process does this take place ? The laborer ' who saves may become an employer, and the employer who spends more than he gets may become a laborer. And whether a man shall be one or the other depends largely on his industry, his prudence, his saving, his careful investment. The strong push their way upward, the weak are crowded down- ward; and there may be faults in the system under which this takes place, but with freedom of opportunity and fair competi- tion, there will be inequality of condition ; such is the difference in people. This appears to be the result of conditions which cannot be set aside. Economists tell us that the liberal reward of labor encourages and stimulates thrift. That depends altogether on who the laborer is. A surplus of earnings stimulates extravagance and dissipation as well. This was very noticeable in the "good times" after our great war. The readiness with which laborers found employment at high wages afforded a great opportunity for them to get a good start in the world, but only a small per- centage of them improved it. Instead of thrift, fast living became the fashion of all classes; and if the means were not at command to-day, to-morrow was confidently drawn upon, for the gratification must be had, and self-denial was rapidly passing out of the category of virtues. Only the discipline of "hard times" with its limitations, could arrest this reckless spendthrift tendency. In i860 Irish laborers in American mines received &7}4 cents a day; in 1872, $2; 1873, $ 2 - 2 5; y et "it was believed that the men saved more when paid at the rate of 87*^ cents a day than they did when the great rise in their wages had taken place." — (Brassey). The like held true in England. Mundella, quoted 378 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. by Brassey, says: "While expressing my belief that much that has been said has been unnecessarily severe, and, in some instances, grossly unjust, it is impossible to deny that the high wages earned in the coal and iron trades, during the late period of inflation, have added little to the material or moral well- being of many of the workers in these branches of industry." And Greg observes : " Nor are the artisans and operatives to be condemned because in such a time of glowing sunshine they insisted on sharing in the warmth, and forced up their wages to perhaps an extravagant degree. Where both parties were alike, if not equally, to blame was, not that they made hay while the sun was shining, but that the hay, instead of being laid up for winter seasons, was consumed as fast as it was harvested." — (Nineteenth Century, May, 1879). Florence Nightingale, too, affirms : " I could point to a town in England where men can earn wages of ten shillings a day, and drink it all away. Aye, and the women, too. A woman said, ' I think no more of my money than of a flea in a churchyard.' They are not a penny the better for it, either in clothes, lodging, bedding, or any of the decencies, comforts, or true interests of life." — (Nineteenth Century). Higher wages alone will not lift the laborer up ; nor will reduced hours, nor both together. The leisure secured by reduced labor-time may be misused precisely as the surplus of earnings is misused. The one may be expended on the vani- ties of life for low forms of gratification ; the other may be mis- used just so, and generally is so misused whenever the laborer has been blessed with such leisure. The wise will use such advantages for the promotion of their well-being; the unwise will misuse them for the aggravation of their ill-being. Indi- vidual character will tell, whatever the conditions of life. The very conditions of short hours and surplus earnings but help more rapidly to divide the two great classes of working people, — those who help themselves upward, and those who stay where they are or drift still lower. So far from education proving to be a remedy here, it appears to be the reverse. The educated Sec. 20J.] DRIFTING INTO FINE OCCUPATIONS. 379 city clerk has not necessarily learned to economize, and usually the higher his salary the more he spends. Liberal pay does not of itself encourage saving, either with or without education. It but serves, as among the lower orders of workers, to divide them into the two classes, one of which saves, while the other lives up all from day to day. This view of the facts does not favor long hours and low wages by any means ; it only shows that short hours and high wages are not sufficient to help those who will not help themselves, and something else is required to save the improvident, both educated and uneducated, from their own follies. Section 203. — While education, so generally looked to as the savior of the civilized world, may do good in the long run, it is liable at the same time to bring evils in its train, for which it is not easy in turn to find a remedy. The general drifting of population toward cities and towns already crowded, is not wholly due to the springing up of commerce and the mechanical industries. No sooner does the son of a farmer or mechanic get a little education beyond the simplest branches, than he thirsts for some occupation requiring less physical labor than he has been accustomed to. If he can only get a clerk- ship in village or city, he is happy. He now enjoys the com- fort of that fine aristocratic feeling to be found only among people who do not work for a living. This is, of course, a vicious state of things, but how is it to be helped ? If you educate the farmer's son, the carpenter's son, the miner's son, the scavenger's son, the operative's son, you must not expect them to stand the sun and the storm, the dingy cavern, the filth of the street, the dust of the mill, and the heat of the furnace, with the complacency of their parents and without an effort to escape. One of the evident results of current education is to throng the occupations which require little muscular and more mental labor with subjects who are too generally destitute of the qualifications necessary to success. The disappointment which springs from this excessive competition affords the incen- tive and opens the way to the finer sorts of crime against prop- 380 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. erty. Thus, if education should go to the diminution of the more violent forms of crime in the "lower walks " of life, its tendency is toward the increase of "gentlemen's crimes" in the higher walks of life. The impotency of our much vaunted edu- cation to fit youths for success and happiness in the necessary avocations of life, is coming to be acknowledged more and more. The schools deliver their wards to society malcultured for the duties which await them. This drifting through the halls of education from the manly industries to fancy occupations, which are hardly industries at all, is a symptom of this wrong tendency, so palpable that none can fail to see. Attention has been frequently called to the deleterious influ- ence of our book education in unfitting youth for the sterner duties of life. It is not in this country only that it obtains ; it is wherever the system of education is in vogue. We quote from an English writer, Professor Sylvanus P. Thompson : " And ought we then to be surprised if, in pursuance of the sys- tem we have deliberately marked out for the rising generation, we keep our future artisans, till they are fifteen or sixteen, employed in no other work than sitting at a desk to follow, pen in hand, the literary course of studies of our educational code, we discover that on arriving at that age they have lost the taste for manual work, and prefer to starve on a threadbare pittance, as clerks or book-keepers, rather than by the less exacting and more remunerative labor of their hands. At the present moment, this tendency to despise a life of honorable manual toil, in straining after a supposed gentility, would be truly pitia- ble, if the proportions it has attained did not awaken more serious apprehension." Of the children who leave the elemen- tary schools of Paris, M. Salacis (quoted by Thompson) says : " These little bureaucrats, boys and girls, outlaws from real labor by no fault of their own, come naturally to the end of their school course with one fear before them — that of being forced to become workmen and workwomen ; but with one wash also, the boys to become clerks, the girls shopwomen." Sincere efforts are not wanting to counteract this tendency, Sec. 20J .] RACE-EDUCATION. 38 1 but they appear to have little result. This apparently irrational drift of a gregarious feeling, which sets the fashion of escaping industry and the severer virtues with the progress of culture, has a cause for being so deep in human nature, that it seems to be quite beyond the reach of any corrective. But education we must have, and some kinds of education are better than others. We have plenty of educational doctors, with nostrums which are reputed to be infallible. Take, for example, the author of Race Education. He is an earnest writer and means well in every line of his book. More than that, his views of education are doubtless a great improvement on the usual methods. But while his educational regimen might prove fruitful of good results, it would fail utterly to accomplish all that he expects of it. At best it could only palliate. His potencies are imagina- tive and could not be brought down to the real. We can no more induce water to run up hill of its own accord in the moral, than in the physical, world. To accomplish any end there must be an efficient motive, and this cannot be supplied by theoretical means, but must come from out the actual attributes of human nature as it is. This adequate motive is the ful- crum of the Archimedean lever, and without it, it is not possible to move the world. Let us illustrate: Mr. Royce's 'scheme of race education is to be made efficacious mainly by home influences; but how are these to be given the proper character and direction ? It is the rule that as soon as a mother discovers that the family is well-to- do, she inculcates into her children's minds, by the subtlest of means, the prejudice that real industry is not high-toned, and they very soon learn to look down on labor. Others, not so well off, must needs follow this example in high life, and their chil- dren, too, must dawdle in order to be thoroughly respectable. The highest aim in life is that of conformity and display. Thus is established the spirit of a coterie, set, or caste, than which there is nothing mightier in society to coerce the lives of its members. The "higher" the education and the greater the civilization, the more vanity dominates; it dominates in the most 382 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. secret recesses of society, in the homes of the people and in the public places, in all the forces which mold the young spirit in all fields of youthful culture whence spring many of the bitter fruits of life. This home education cannot rise higher than its source; and as the brain of civilized woman appears to be growing smaller under some physiological necessity, rather than larger, as civilization advances (section 216), are we not met on the threshold of "race education" with impotencies which threaten forever to prevent its actualization? This is no groundless apprehension; every civilization of the world, so far, has con- firmed it. A picture of the women of society might be given from Ouida, but we forbear. It is no doubt overdrawn, and Ouida is reputed by some to be a "diseased author/' But at any rate the picture lies in the direction of the tendencies of high life, and it is likely to become in the future even nearer the truth than at present. It might be a source of consolation to reflect that the jaded creatures of fashionable life do not make up the great body of women in the civilized world, if it were not that the absolute, if not the relative, number of this class is on the increase. The forces which are operating to this end are becom- ing constantly stronger and more wide spread with the extension of wealth and the leisure and display it supports. A lady witness may be quoted as follows: "In view of our yearly increasing wealth, and the perpetual additions which are thereby made to the idle and luxurious classes, every counter-check to corrupting frivolity is to be hailed as an element of salvation. It is this large amount of female energy run wild, disfranchized of the little active cares which formerly employed it, and having found no substitute for them but the daily round in the tread- mill of pleasure, that is spreading a pernicious example at home, and lowering the character of our countrywomen abroad." — (Emily Pfeiffer, Contemporary Review, February, 1881). The pictures given by Tacitus and Suetonius of society in high life among the Romans, in the earlier days of the empire, when Rome was in the zenith of her power, ought to have great sug- Sec, 20J.] DEGENERACY OF HIGH LIFE. 383 gestive value for us. No doubt the social degeneracy of our times is more covert and more polished — it is not so violently bad, but it is similar. It is a disease of civilization taking its modifications of type mainly from the idiosyncracies of patients. People cannot have over-plenty for a long time without running into those follies which eventually damn, and damn effectually. Evil will attend the coveted and secured good; and no system of morality or religion can prevent it. It does not matter how voluntarily the disease may seem to be brought on; it is none the less a fatality, coming by impulse and ending in ruin. In view of the tendency of all high civilizations to develop social degeneracy in the leading classes, what is to be expected of home education directed by the mothers belonging to those classes ? And this we must remember, that, even if these classes are comparatively small in numbers, they are yet weighty in influence, and are replenished continually from the ranks below, and kept more than full from this source. More than this, they are, the fashion-lights set to be seen of all women. They get into the newspapers, reporters doing them in their garish best. The silk rustles, the gold glitters, the diamonds sparkle. The wearers become the envy of almost all their sex, in the ranks of the common, poorer, and better people; and if these had but one choice of a destiny to make in the world, they would choose to be like them. This is shown every day and almost everywhere, by the straining to ape the ways of people in "high social position." This is where the danger most lurks, and it is this, more than anything else, that shows the amiable folly of looking to home influences for the higher education that is to exalt above the follies of life, and secure justice to those by whose labor the world subsists. The women who are really exemplary as women and mothers are comparatively so few, and their position in life so humble and obscure by the very necessity of their exalted character, that society does not look up to them, but rather affects to look down upon them. "Society" only "looks up" under the stimulus of the vanities, and this is fatal to the prevalence in society of a nobler type of womanhood as 384 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE [Chap. XXXI. the fountain of education; and there appears to be no remedy for this but through a revolution in human nature, for which there is no provision within the bounds of the possible. The Greeks and Romans had education; but it is a plain fact of history that the educated sank deepest into the sloughs of social degeneracy. "But they had slavery." Certainly, and we have its equivalent — profits to the few from the labor of the many. Slavery pampered a class that could afford to be idle, and become degenerate; we have classes — leading classes, as of old — who can afford to do precisely the same thing, and they are doing it. But there is, of course, another side to this; our own civilization rests on its wealth, and it was the independence of the few, secured by the slavery of the many, that enabled the Greeks to build up the most brilliant civilization of antiquity. But it is neither the slavery that did, nor the thrift of freedom that is doing, the mischief, but the misuse that is made of the independence and leisure thus secured. What lies at the basis of culture and refinement, lies equally at the basis of luxury and degradation; and the opposing couples are locked together in the decline of every civilization. It does not matter whether the means for idleness and degeneracy come from the direct or indirect appropriation of the wealth created by human hands; as long as we indulge in the idleness and vanity, the luxurious living and pleasure-seeking of the "best society" of civilization, we shall go the road which others have gone, and no device of education will save us. Nevertheless are great changes in education now pending ; changes, however, which must be gradual, but which are at the same time inevitable. Let us hope that they will bring some improvement. It is the logical result o,f scientific methods to bring education up to the solid basis of the actual and the prac- tical. For a part, at least, of mankind, it must recognize all truth and not merely a part of it; when it will be its aim to show things as they really are, and not as some interested party may wish them to be. It should tear the mask off the pretenses, set aside the obsolete, and adapt the teaching of the day to the Sec. 204.] IMPROVEMENT FOSTERS DISCONTENT. 385 exigency of the times. Not the least of its merits should be the recognition of the fact that there are some things which education itself cannot do. It cannot accomplish a result with- out the means of accomplishing it. The teacher cannot impart to his pupil anything more than or different from what is in himself. Consequently, it is not possible to revolutionize human nature by any form of voluntary education. No effectual sys- tem of education can transcend the limitations of human nature as bound up inevitably with the order of nature at large; it can only adapt itself thereto. It cannot lift its wards above the fatalities of existence, but can only strengthen them by clearness of insight, discipline of faculty, and singleness of purpose to find the most of good amid the conflicts of the inevitable. Section 204. — We cannot deal with the problem of elevat- ing the great working classes without perceiving, in connection with human progress, the emergence of a principle which does not tell directly for harmony and happiness. It has often been repeated that discontent is a necessary condition of progress and development. Discontent will not down. The very means we use to allay it only opens new fields for its activity. An attempt to satisfy the "thirst for knowledge " only increases its uneasi- ness and intensity. The ameliorations of any situation in life bring some comfort, but at the same time may occasion greater discontent than ever. This is aptly shown by De Tocqueville's researches into the causes of the French revolution. The author believes that France had never been so prosperous as for the twenty years immediately preceding the revolution, and that restlessness and discontent sprung up under the stimulus of pros- perity. As administrative abuses were gradually removed, the people became more dissatisfied with their situation. " So it would appear that the French found their condition the more insupportable in proportion to its improvement." And in gen- eral, " Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inev- itable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested. The very redress of grievances throws new light on those which are left untouched, and adds fresh poig- 386 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chcip. XXXI. nancy to their smart : if the pain be less, the patients' sensibility is greater." — (The Old Regime and the Revolution, Chap. XVL). The greater the number of our acquisitions, the more manifold become the sources of discontent. The historian Lecky observes : " The eager and restless ambitions which political liberty, intellectual activity, and manufacturing enter- prise, all in their different ways, conspire to foster, while they are the very principles and conditions of the progress of our age, render the virtue of content in all its forms extremely rare, and are peculiarly unpropitious to the formation of that spirit of humble and submissive resignation which alone can mitigate the agony of hopeless suffering. " — (Hist. Morals, IL, 65). With us all in a general way, it is not a question whether we shall be satisfied and stand still, or feel dissatisfied and advance ; discon- tent we shall feel, and advance we must. The question more particularly throughout this inquiry concerns the preponderance of gain in good, all things considered, in our progress from the lower to the higher stages of civilization. Two hundred years ago laboring people were not so well off as at present, but they were far more content with their situation in life. It is a peculiarity in human nature "that men can become accustomed to servitude beyond even the wish for change." — (Bain). People become most dissatisfied where freest with the largest opportunity. Some will rise out of others' reach, and the display of their means and habits of life are a source of irritation and discontent to those who have been less fortunate. In old times with less freedom, an impassable gulf separated the poor from the rich, and the former were usually content with their lot. What they lacked in goods they made up in stolid indifference or in religion and hope. While this resource of comfort is waning, the inability to reach what appears to be only a little way beyond their grasp, is endangering the happi- ness of a great many. Fashion and the selfish display of wealth aggravate this evil. And this bad example extends its influence down the social scale into the middle and even the lower classes, as it never did before in the history of the world. It does so SeC. 204.] EMULATION IN THE VANITIES. 387 because of the cheaper, more rapid, and widespread diffusion of news, and the greater freedom and opportunity which is now guaranteed to most. People in the middle walks of life are driven to desperation by the mad struggle thus engendered. Not always the poorest people commit depredations on property, take to drunkenness, or end a disappointed career, may be, with suicide. This struggle under the lash of the vanities is a feature of psychological degeneracy in modern life which is worse than peculation and malfeasance in office, worse than alcoholic drunk- enness, because it lies at the basis of these evils, and is largely the soil in which they strike root and grow. As a cardinal psychologic force, it is by its own inherent demerit doing more than any one thing to debase the tone of modern character, and especially is it doing this in America. It fairly burns and shrivels up the nerves and very souls of millions who are engaged in the mad struggle for wealth to assume such position in society as this vanity craves. Mr. Royce, who indulges the optimistic dream that women will one day be the educators and saviors of the race, yet admits that "To-day, show, pride, and vanity make them its destroyers, leading on men by their extravagance to corruption in private as well as public business, until confidence in men and institutions is to-day fairly gone, and the downfall of the nation almost inevitable." — (Race Education, 113). What, then, is the remedy? There is none. Were you ever so eager to work, there is no assured resting place for your lever. The eager emulations of vanity burrow in every direction, and there is no solid ground. There might be an efficient remedy, if — but the base gives way, and the difficulty involved in the "if" is apparently absolute and insurmountable. If all mankind could become scientific and rational, this formidable "if" would be readily flanked, but the mass of mankind are predominantly emotional, and are quite likely forever to remain so. Erasmus was not greatly wrong in his reflection when they handed him Becket's holy handkerchief to kiss. The wiser wits may jeer, moralists may scold, and scientists may teach, but the human nature of a million years cannot be changed in its cardinal 388 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Chap. XXXI. elements at this late day. If all were rational in the conduct of life, the principal causes of corruption and decline might be greatly or wholly avoided; but vanity as a motive of conduct is far stronger than reason; and after a certain stage in society is reached, vanity it is mainly that pilots the way to ruin, both indi- vidual and national. I cannot believe with Larned that the frivolities of vanity can be put out of countenance by setting up rationality against them. This has been often tried and always found wanting. There may be palliatives for this great disease of civilization, but no radical cure. It is fatal to a favorable prognosis of the case that the greatest votaries at the shrine of fashion are the most influential in the land. Those who rebel against the tyranny of fashion and vain display are jeered out of countenance by the officious people who mold public opinion. The evil is worst in the very centers of civilization, which boast of the greatest wealth and culture; there is least of it in primitive places. It is actually a develop- ment subject to the laws of evolution. The Methodist church for a long time in this country stood out against the vanity of display in dress and equipage, but it has been swept into the gay current along with most others. It had to consult the con- ditions of its own preservation in order to continue the instrument of grace to the unregenerate for their salvation. Clergymen generally do not dare to attack the vanities with any well-tempered weapon. It would be out of place and an offense against good manners to do so. For obvious reasons it would endanger their popularity and their places. They may preach to the people, but they must not preach "at" them. The vanities have a conventional sacredness which places them beyond the reach of reason and religion, and they are not slow to assert their supremacy. The " sword of the spirit " as wielded by modern hands is powerless against them. Church societies have in most places become the leaders and exemplars of fashion, and the churches so far head-centers of costly display, that the poor cannot afford to attend them. What they have lost in religion they have gained in folly. In former times SeC. 204.] OMNIPOTENCE OF THE VANITIES. 389 the church administered to the peace and contentment of the laboring people, but the time when it would discharge the office of comforter to the lowly seems to have passed forever by, — so far at any rate, as the main body of the Protestant church is con- cerned, — and it now whisks before them with its tinsel of vanities and inflames their discontent. We are often assured that Christianity will purify our civiliza- tion and make it more lasting than those of the past. Indeed! Christians for the most part overran the Roman empire, and reduced it to comparative barbarism. Authoritative Christianity took possession of the empire before its course was run, but it had no power to stay the final catastrophe — it hastened it. Mod- ern civilization has sprung up under the teachings of professed Christianity, and it is becoming degenerate like the old. Verily, the agencies of evil which spring up under civilization and need most to be counteracted and subordinated, become the very masters. Somehow or other they get the upper hand, reduce the moral and religious forces to subordinate places, and direct the course of events as the very executors of destiny. It is but natural for clergymen, being especially in charge, to urge the importance of religion to the individual and to nations as well, and they should do so; but when, in order to retain their hold on the people and on society, they surrender to the irre- ligious vanities of life, they lose their grip on the very religion that is so much needed, and do absolutely nothing to arrest the downward tendency. If education but stimulates the discontent of the working classes, and if the ministrations of religion are losing their power to comfort the lowly, where are we to look for relief? There is no relief. By the very improvement of the laborer's condition of life, the extension of his freedom, the promotion of his culture, the enlargement of his opportunites, and the tantalizing display of the vanities, together with the weakening of religious conso- lations, is the lot of the laboring poor ever harder to bear. Harder to bear, fraught with more discontent, and still it is better than ever before, — such is the paradox. But we have a 18 39° PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. \Ckdp. XXXI. logical right to this consoling reflection, that discontent which comes with improvement of condition and the spread of intelli- gence is not so deplorable a thing as, without reflection, we might assume it to be. Discontent and unhappiness are by no means synonymous. There is a sort of pleasure bound up with discontent, as there is pleasure bound up with the uncertainty of entering upon a doubtful conflict or the dread of playing one's part in battle. Of choice we go into the doubtful conflicts and into the battles. Restlessness and discontent by virtue of some quality in the human constitution, do not militate against the choice of what only adds to their intensity. We prefer civiliza- tion, and glory in its developments, whatever its drawbacks. A colored man once illustrated this principle in his statement to some northerners who were studying the southern situation: When a slave, his master was a preacher who treated him well. He was in all worldly ways better off as a slave than as a freedman, by his own admission; but he declared with ani- mation and emphasis, " I tell you, gemmen, a man's freedom is de best thing in all dis world ! " Thus we rejoice in civiliza- tion with all its drawbacks. Section 205. — While the resources of a country are being developed and its industries ever on the increase, the capital invested in business fares well, and the laborer is sure of a fair reward. This is due to the cheapness and abundance of the natural resources. We may conceive it possible that a stationary condition might be reached, when supply and demand should be so adjusted to each other, and the distribution of proceeds so arranged that the laborer would not suffer. But there never has been such stationary state under the limitations and enlargements of modern invention, and no such industrial adjustment in the aggregate at any time. The industries are constantly changing. For a while the demand for a particular product rapidly increases, and then, in complication with commercial crises, or changes of fashion, it suddenly abates. Numerous examples of the kind are to be found in industrial history. A few years since thou- sands were employed in the manufacture of hoop-skirts, an ScC. 20J).] THE SHIFTING OF INDUSTRIES. 39 1 industry which is now dead, and with its death came the loss of employment, with embarrassment and want, to many a family (Rogers). The iron business is undergoing great revolutions. The Bessemer process has left many thousands of puddlers with- out occupation (Brassey). Only seven short years ago the iron trade of England was greatly stimulated by the "good times" and the building of railroads everywhere; but it no longer sup- plies the railroads of the world, and if it did, its market would be weakened, as there are fewer railroads building than formerly. At this moment (December, 1878) the cotton and iron interest of England is paralyzed, the manufacturer is suffering an abate- ment if not a cessation of profits, and the workmen in these industries are on the point of starvation. The invention and multiplication of machinery, in the ability it confers to do more work with the same number of hands, are constantly operating in the same direction; for, even if most kinds of machinery may benefit the laborer in the end, it always requires time for the adjustment, and the inventor does not wait for the completion of adjustments till he and his coadjutor, the capitalist, set up another dumb multiplier of the working hand, to the consternation of the hungry man seeking employ- ment. Still other causes of disturbance, by no means neces- sary and inevitable, may from time to time be stealthily sprung into existence by powerful classes for the still further increase of their power, to the injury of others; such, for example, as the creation by law of special privileges for capital, or as tampering with the standard of commercial values necessitating re-adjust- ments which cannot take place without suffering. But even if there should be no perverse interference like this, there will be constant disturbances, requiring constant readjustment as long as inventions continue to be made, as long as the industries change from one locality to another, as long as the fashions con- tinue to be fickle, as long, in short, as the industries are vari- able, — retrograde here, stationary there, and elsewhere advanc- ing with greater or less rapidity. These changes cannot be prevented, and the millions of laborers cannot be brought into 392 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. {Chap. XXXI. harmony with the demand for their labor by any scheme of adjustment. No intelligence short of omniscience could adjust labor to this capricious mutability. The changes cannot be foreseen, and the laborers are locally tied down by forces of inertia which only a small percentage of them can readily over- come. Poor men with families and unmarried women cannot shift from place to place with the demands of labor. Accord- ing to Adam Smith, the human is " of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to be transported." It is still so, and from the nature of the case, must always be so. Perfect justice to the laborer requires that he shall be present at the precise point where his services are most needed; but such perfect mobility of labor does not and cannot obtain. Only the wildest vague- thinking visionary could speculate on the basis of such an assumption. No one who has thought out the subject in detail, with a chart of human nature and of the industries in his mind, can be sanguine of any near approach to the economical har- mony which presumes that laborers may always be where they are most wanted. But this is not merely a question of local adjustment. Jus- tice to the laborer requires not only that he shall be at the right place, but that he shall be able to turn his hand to the kind of work which needs to be done. His case requires not only mobility, but mechanical versatility. But in this he is the vic- tim of the division of labor. All his life he has been tied down to one simple mechanical act till he has no aptness for anything else. He has been drilled by his industrial education to a stiff, narrow uniformity, which is the very opposite of versatility. The laborer is barred, by the modern conditions of his craft, from entering into the economical harmonies which presume ever speedy and perpetual adjustments between the worker and his work. It is true that reformers have panaceas for all of these ills. They have clearly seen the detriment to skilled industry growing out of mere bookish education, and have endeavored in the way of remedy to associate labor with study. There are many schools Sec. 205.] industrial schools. 393 of this character in Germany, France, Switzerland, and some in this country. They are doing good in their way and supplying a need which is every day becoming greater. As the industries are becoming constantly more complicated, trained minds with trained hands become more and more necessary for their direc- tion; and such schools will accomplish much if they prevent a falling off in the needed supply of skilled artisans. But it is extravagant to expect them, as some do, to transform the field of labor into an Eden of fitness and harmony. The various forms of industrial education through schools of design, trade schools, professional schools, commercial schools, developing schools, in which practice is united with study, are expected not only to secure the doing of work in the right way and at the right time, and far more rapidly than at present,but they are to transform the workers of the world into willing creatures — and all are to be workers then — who "will labor for pleasure and not for gain or from interest." — (Royce). But admitting that these schools would have this magical power, are we to take it for granted that all the inhabitants of the civilized world will be able to secure their advantages? What are these schools doing now? Mainly training men and women in fine work for fine people, or training them for foremen and not for plebeian workers. This of itself is very well, good as far as it goes, and worthy of all encouragement, but it does not touch the great mass of in- dustries which are hard, repulsive, and usually ill-paid. Just where the greatest need is, this remedy has no virtue. These schools have little relation to the indispensable labors of civilized life, and can have little, for here human and other machines do the work without the need of education. This fine training in the schools, be it ever so industrial, only co-operates with education in general to create distaste for all the coarser and rougher forms of industry, and it leaves the discordances as great as ever between the worker and his work. Will these fluctuations in the industries ever cease? Will not the great centers of commerce and industry, in the future as in the past, keep on shifting from one country to another? Or 394 PROSPECTS OF WORKING people. [Chap. XXXI. will invention come to an end, and all the countries of the earth become thoroughly settled up and improved without the wearing out of lands, so that the centers of commerce and of the industries, and the kinds of industry, and the proportion they bear to one another shall become fixed, with the popula- tions of countries adjusted thereto for any great length of time together? Under the fluctuating climates, deteriorating soils, and exhausting mines of the earth, this can hardly ever be. Even communistic despotism could not establish and maintain any such fixed condition of things; and we are not called on to discuss the fate of the laborer under circumstances so utterly improbable. Section 206. — The reward of the laborer must depend largely on the numbers of those who are competing for employment. The rate of increase, therefore, among laboring people becomes a powerful factor in determining the ability of laborers to com- mand the situation, and no one who is interested in the well- being of the working people can afford to overlook it. Certain economists have been so thoroughly dominated by the concep- tion of the "economical harmonies" as to slur over the question of population as a matter of little significance. One of the most marvelous "demonstrations" to be found in treatises on eco- nomical subjects is that by which Carey and Perry prove to their own satisfaction that, with the improvement of a country and its accumulation of capital, the laborers must fare better and better. Perry thus sums it up: "This demonstration is extremely impor- tant; for it proves beyond a cavil, that the value of labor tends constantly to rise, not only as compared with the value of the material commodities which, by the aid of capital, it helps to create, a truth we have seen before, but also as compared with the value of the use of its co-partner capital itself; and there- fore, that there is inwrought in the very nature of things a ten- dency towards equality of condition among men. God has ordered it so." — (Polit. Econ., 230). This is, indeed, the acme of economical optimism — pity it Sec. 206.I THE laborer's improvement conditional. 395 were not true; but we fear that God does not ordain Utopias for mankind in any such absolute way. God's bounties are only offered on conditions which involve more or less self-sacrifice; and the conditions must be observed and the sacrifices made or the bounties are not bestowed. Laborers cannot reap the benefits of increased capital unless they strictly observe the con- ditions on which such benefits accrue. The "demonstration" here referred to (p. 229) takes no account of conditional factors in the problem. It ignores the fact that capital itself sets up dumb competitors of the very laborers who are looking to cap- ital for employment. But admitting that this machine-competi- tion is neutralized in the end by increased demand for products, still the "demonstration" totally ignores the competition of laborers among themselves, which, without prudence in the multiplication of their class, might become even more intense, notwithstanding the increase of capital. It ignores furthermore the law of diminishing returns when through over-population the soil is pressed for greater production, which is only to be had by a greater proportional outlay. If this demonstration were true, in all old countries where capital is plenty and interest low, wages would be high; but the reverse is true. In old coun- tries where interest is low, wages are low; and in new countries where interest is high, wages are high, and there is far more equality among the people : and where wages are high, none need be very poor though none may yet have become rich. Time is required for the inequalities of civilization to develop. It may be laid down as an axiom that the lowest breeds of civilized peoples evince a recklessness in multiplying which is only equalled by their shiftlessness in providing; and it is to be feared that, in the future as in the past, only the mortality from overcrowding, mal-nutrition, vice, and disease will keep this class from gaining on others. But let us take a more cheerful view of it. Let us suppose that population will be kept within limits by voluntary effort. Does this involve no cross? Restraint on population involves self-denial, emotional repres- sion, defective life, suffering. Not marrying till late, or not 396 PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. marrying at all, is to stifle hereditary impulse of the strongest character ; and this with most natures involves serious discord- ance, physical as well as mental. It is only possible to avoid the one evil by suffering another; and this will be found true, whatever the means used to keep population within bounds. Section 207. — Since this was writtten, a speculative romance on the subject has been published — Progress and Poverty, by Henry George. It recognizes to the full extent the inequality and injustice which are becoming intensified under civilization; but it has a panacea, an elixir of life, a world-cure, which will destroy the seeds of all social disease, and restore a perfectly healthy circulation among all the members of society. It reminds one of Godwin's Political Justice and Condorcet's Tableau Historique; but, unlike them, it does not begin by changing man through educational means as a necessary step to the changing of society; it begins and ends by a single act of the State, whereby humanity and society are to be revolutionized and exalted. It is in the genuine vein of the world-mender: "What I, therefore, propose, as the simple yet sovereign remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals, and taste, and intelligence, purify govern- ment, and carry civilization to yet nobler hights, is — to appro- priate rent by taxation.''' — (Progress and Poverty, 364). That is it — simple and definite. Like all the infallible remedies, it cures all the diseases. There are to be no other taxes; the entire virtue of social regeneration lies in the "confiscation of rent." The great body of our yeomen owning their little farms, and consti- tuting the best element in society, yet bearing the brunt of extortion by monopoly and discriminations against them by "protection," are now to be finished at one swoop, in the name of justice, by the government pouncing upon them and confis- cating their capital in land, while all other capital great and small is left untouched, except to be relieved of all further taxa- SeC. 20?.] MATHUSIANISM. 397 tion. And this measure is to regenerate society. The case is made out as certain railroad maps are made — by distortion, contraction, and omission, with a broad line for the road and its branches, till it appears to be the only considerable railway in the whole country. What with undue emphasis and elaboration, bare mention and slurring over, occasional vagueness, and total omission, with outright sophistry, confident assertion, and auda- cious paradox, the treatise is a brilliant one, and has had a selling success in different senses, being well calculated to mislead people who read hastily, and are without a sufficient knowledge of political economy. We refer to the book in this connection on account of its assumed utter refutation of all Malthusian ideas. It denies the law of diminishing returns, and maintains that the denser popu- lation is, the greater the returns to labor. To this the proper reply is, there might be greater returns up to a certain limit, but less and less from that limit on. A hundred people might live more comfortably from a square mile of land than ten people could ; but it does not follow that one thousand inhabitants to the square mile could subsist better than one hundred to the square mile. But our author gives no hint of any such limit; as much as to say that because an acre of land with forty apple trees will produce ten times as much fruit as an acre with only four trees, therefore, an acre containing four hundred trees will produce ten times as much as an acre with forty trees. But how is it made to appear that the more people there are the greater the amount of production to each one ? The author states a case from California, in which it is fairly shown that it cost more to produce a given .quantity whenever it became necessary to tax the natural resources to any consider- able extent. The statement illustrates the law of diminishing returns; but then he proceeds formally to explain it all away. In showing the greater production of California per head after the population became considerable, he recognizes the assistance given to labor by "roads, wharves, flumes, railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, and machinery of all kinds" — forms of capital; yet 39^ PROSPECTS OF WORKING PEOPLE. [Chap. XXXI. he proceeds with the exposition precisely as if capital played no part in it; and what should be credited to capital (imported or surplus labor saved) is formally credited to the greater popula- tion ! But he not only ignores capital in this disquisition, but after recognizing, in his previous statement, the assistance which capital gives, he then finishes the chapter by formally denying that capital is a factor of any consequence in the problem ! But there is still another argument why the law of diminishing returns is totally at fault — an argument which is at once funda- mental and conclusive ! It cannot be that greater expense is necessary to equal production as countries grow older, because forsooth "man cannot exhaust or lessen the powers of nature" on account of "the indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force " ! Such use of science surpasses even Joseph Cook's. Only think of its relevancy! Man cannot lessen or exhaust the powers of nature in a given territory to subsist its population, because he is not mighty enough to annihilate an atom of matter or a foot-pound of force ! It has been supposed all along that it is not matter and force in general, but in particular forms, which constitute man's subsistence, and that he could, by taxing the soil too heavily, rob it of its power to produce these useful forms; but it seems that this was clearly a mistake, for man can- not bring about diminishing returns to labor for his sustenance, except by absolutely annihilating matter and force ! It is true that man is not so mighty as this, but it is most unfortunately true that he has been mighty enough to desolate great regions of this earth, till "where were once great cities and teeming populations are now squalid villages and barren wastes." These are the author's own words under a different head; but he does not once inquire why it is that bats, and owls, and jackals haunt where once were busy cities, in the midst of fertile plains now barren. It is given as an ultimate fact, without cause, that men will not breed in some places as they used to; consequently ther 1 is no danger of population overtaking subsistence ! Contrast with the above vagary, Roscher's plain common sense, concerning the indestructibilty of matter, and the failure Sec. 207-1 FAMINES — HOW CAUSED. 399 of the soil to produce: "As no matter wholly disappears from the earth, so, in exhaustion of the soil, it is only a question con- cerning the dislocation of its valuable constituents, many of which may be entirely lost to human use." — (Nationalokonomik des Ackerbaues, 72.) The author, in his disproof of Malthusianism, labors to show that density of population in Ireland, India, and China has noth- ing to do with the famines in these countries. He refers them to bad government. We admit the value of this element, but if bad government were the sole, or even the principal, cause of famines, we should certainly look for famines as a common thing the world over. If this author's theory be true, how comes it to pass that famines almost always take place in countries where population is most dense? Famines ought to be worst where government is worst without regard to population, and where the people are thickest they are wealthiest, and ought not to starve at all ! Are we, indeed, to accept the philosophy that a population of one thousand to the square mile, as in parts of India, can subsist as easily from the soil as one-tenth of that number, and that when famines set in, they will be no worse where population is dense than where it is sparse? If the pop- ulation of Ireland had been but four millions instead of eight when the potato rot came, would the famine have raged there as it did? Is it just as easy to feed two mouths as one when rations are scarce? It may be true that, as in Brazil, there may be famines in sparse settlements of indolent people who depend solely on the soil for a living and have little or no commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, but that does not prove that it is just as easy to subsist a large number as a small one from the same territory. The author begins his refutation of Malthus by the assertion that "the power of producing wealth in any form is the power of producing subsistence;" and before the chapter ends he slides into the substitution of the word wealth for subsistence; and because a considerable population may produce more wealth per head than a sparse population, therefore, he con- 400 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. eludes, a dense population can subsist more easily than a sparse one on the products of labor. But we must discriminate between kinds of wealth. Some kinds will keep people alive and some will not. We are liable to bad seasons, sometimes to a succession of them, and through a conspiracy of causes this may sometimes, in the future as in the past, be general. If the soil should not produce for one year, what would all other wealth do to subsist the population of the world? The more people there were and the wealthier they were, the worse off would they be, and the more of them would die of starvation. What would millions of wealth in hardware, building materials, and clothing then do to keep soul and body together? It is true these things can be exchanged for food when there is food; but the question here concerns the quantity of subsistence itself which may be produced from the soil for its population; and no profusion of ingenious paradox can set aside the fact that the greater the number above a certain density of population, to be subsisted (though each were a Rothschild in wealth), the greater the danger of short rations. CHAPTER XXXII. INFLUENCE OF THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY OF CLASSES ON SOCIETY. Section 208. — In order to understand the social and intel- lectual status of vast bodies of mankind, and attempt a forecast of their future, we must consider the relative increase of the various classes in society. Whatever the system of education may be, it is the relative increase of classes which must largely determine from generation to generation the aggregate or average Sec. 20& '.] DIFFICULTIES REGARDING POPULATION. 40I of human elevation. There is no problem with which science and philosophy have to deal more central and all-pervading than this, and none which is more perplexing or apparently more difficult of solution. It is easy to write flippantly about it, and run off with a few isolated facts, or put down flat contradictions on opposite pages without seeming to perceive it. Thus, the working peo- ple, the peasants of France and Switzerland, are increasing none at all or very little. This must prove something. It shows, they say, that the small farm system with the possible thrift thus secured, exercises restraint on population. Very well : but how is it that these people have avoided tenantry and pauperism while others in like situation have not ? The peasantry of Eng- land did not remain master of the situation by virtue of their small holdings, and as a class they have been swept out of exist- ence. There may be, indeed there must be, some deeper cause for the prudence of the French-speaking peoples. Small hold- ings in India are passing into the hands of the usurers from peo- ple who will borrow, or who must, and pay a rate of interest as deadly to their class as an Indian famine. The Irish suffer from a like fatality ; and they marry young and have large families whether living in homes of their own, working the land of other people, or laboring by the day. What glib philosophy will be called in to explain these anomalies ? Until recently in the United States all nationalities had large families. This proved, they said, that people bred rapidly on plenty in connection with a free and easy outlet to virgin lands. But now, we have more wealth than formerly, plenty still, and no lack of lands, and yet the families of native Americans are falling off in size. Those who are best off are usually least prolific. During the last decade — 1870-1880 — Northern whites increased about twelve per cent., Southern whites thirty per cent., and colored people thirty-three per cent. — (Popular Science Monthly, September, 1 881). What law, then, governs the size of American families? And if there be such a law, what light does it throw on the law of population in France and Ireland ? We can only study this question by the light of the past and 402 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII, of what is taking place under our own eyes. We may define, with some degree of precision, certain conditions which affect the rate of multiplication, without pretending to define all of them. While a people is rising into greatness and is energetic and hopeful, it multiplies rapidly. When it becomes powerful and wealthy, and the refined pleasures are emulously cultivated by such as can afford to do so, there is little or no increase of the leading type except by transferrence from foreign countries or from the lower classes. Take Rome as an example. The old Roman stock did not keep good its numbers under the enjoyment of the greatness, which in former ages, the Roman people had won by their hardihood and heroism; and the last defenders of the Roman empire were not Romans. As already stated, the possession of overplenty leads in time to the refine- ments of luxury, while these in turn are sure, through emulation in the vanities, to generate dissipation and debauchery, and appear to be everywhere and at all times incompatible with vigorous reproduction. Associate causes co-operate to this end. Idleness and sump- tuous living are no doubt of themselves unfavorable to that per- fect action of the physical system which is a necessary condition of healthful child-bearing. As a rule, the steady-working, plain- living people have the most and the healthiest children. In the upper ranks of civilization, where the means of enjoyment are abundant, it becomes the fashion to enjoy, and decided repug- nance arises toward the self-denial which continuous child-bear- ing necessitates. The maternal duties are shunned, and to this end every known device is called into requisition. These devices are not a late result of science, as some friends and ene- mies appear to suppose. Even barbarous nations practice some form of them, as did the civilized Greeks; and Roman matrons under the empire did not allow themselves to be greatly troubled with children. That measures were freely used to this end is shown in Euripides, Juvenal, and Plutarch. Rulers and censors endeavored to prevent the falling off of the old Roman families, but there appeared to be no effective remedy. Legislation by ScC. 208.] CULTURE VERSUS REPRODUCTION. 403 premiums and penalties was of no avail. The forfeiture of honors and privileges for childlessness did not overcome the repugnance to parental duties, and the premiums of privilege and inheritance for having children were not sufficient to offset the sacrifice it implied of the dissipations of high life. The leading families of Rome passed away, one after another, under the paralyzing influence of wealth and luxury and their concom- itants, and the legacy of imperial greatness, left to other hands, wasted away. The descendants of foreigners and slaves could not conserve what the old race had won. Of like character had been the fate of Greece. After the Macedonian conquest the Greek race became adulterated with foreign blood. There was no longer "a free State proud of their unmixed race." Accord- ing to Tacitus, the old Athenian race was extinct before his time. The old names eventually disappeared, and a mixture of former slaves and foreigners held the places of the historic Greeks. Herbert Spencer takes the very tenable ground that the more culture and refinement prevail the less will people multiply. Greg and Galton (quoted by Darwin) take substantially the same view, though for reasons, in part, additional to those which are given by Spencer. Professor Bowen has adopted the same view, using it, however, to a different end. Too much drilled brains, like too much wealth, luxury, and indolence, put a stop to healthy and vigorous reproduction. The highest known con- ditions of civilization contribute doubly to this end: by favoring an indolent, dissipating class on one extreme ; and on the other, by driving men and women, under the lash of competition, into nervous exhaustion with all its attendant evils. From the preceding considerations it might hastily be inferred that when civilization covers the whole available earth, if such a thing can be, population will of its own accord become stationary. There are considerations, however, which make difficulty with this view. Some countries have, indeed, become stationary in population, and then declined; but this has usually taken place through change of commercial centers and deterioration of the soil. All highly civilized countries are not now necessarily sta- 404 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII. tionary in population because civilized. Some of the European nations of greatest culture are sending a large surplus of popula- tion eastward and westward every year. For this surplus there is no comfortable and inviting room at home; and while so many are emigrating, there is still, in most of these countries, a constant increase in the home census. There are two grand reasons why civilization does not of itself render the population of a country stationary. One is that the causes of sterility do not affect all classes alike, so that while some become stationary or decline in numbers, others still increase more or less rapidly; and some may increase very rapidly. The other is that new sub-races and mixed breeds appear to be constantly springing up, which have great constitutional vigor, and no insurmountable repugnance to rapid multiplication for considerable periods, till they in turn become debauched. Section 209. — In most European countries there are classes which multiply very rapidly, though there may be other classes which do not. The fruitful families belong mostly to classes which are poor or only moderately well-to-do. The conditions which favor small families never penetrate to all ranks of society, and while this is the case, there is no guaranty that the world will fill up with a high grade of human beings, and then forever maintain a proper balance between want and supply. In England, Sweden (Bowen), and most countries, the laboring people increase much more rapidly than the so-called higher classes. In France there is greater prolificacy among the inhab- itants of the poorer, than among those of the richer, depart- ments. The aristocracies are everywhere running out, as in the Roman empire, and they would become extinct but for constant accessions from the ranks below; and some of these come up from almost the very bottom. Reigning dynasties are not apt to last long; and once a family has reached the pinnacle of human greatness, its doom is written. There are living those from whose loins will spring by direct descent the great historic char- acters of the future. Where are those happy, though uncon- scious, patriarchs now to be found ? Among the distinguished Sec. 209.] HARD-WORKERS MOST PROLIFIC. 405 of earth ? Scarcely one of them. If they could be identified, they would be found in the middle and lower classes in some of the fields of useful industry. [Sir H. S. Maine observes, "that the best securities for a pure pedigree through males are com- parative obscurity and (I might almost say) comparative poverty, if not extreme." — (Fortnightly Review, February, 1882).] What saves the rate of increase in population is that all cannot, or will not, get up into the paradise of wealth and culture — only a comparatively small percentage. The proportion of classes in civilized countries does not depend altogether on the relative increase of such classes; it is deter- mined rather by economical conditions which invite, or rather compel the transferrence of numbers from one class to another, in the equalization of supply and demand. The peasant class in England disappeared through the operation of economical, and not of physiological, causes. The upper class is kept full, or it may be increased, by accessions from the lower classes. But this does not set aside the fact that the hard-working people — those who provide the luxuries for the more favored to enjoy — that such are generally the most prolific, and maintain the high rate of increase in population. If machinery could do all the labor with little wear, all might have plenty, and time to enjoy it, and the causes of relaxed reproduction, resulting from pam- pered leisure, would affect the whole people ; but this condition is not a possible one. If all classes could be affected equally by the enervating conditions of high life in civilization, we might, indeed, expect a general arrest of reproduction. But nothing of the kind ever has existed in any society, and from the nature of the case never can, except by virtue of a mental, social, and physical revolution for which there is at present no warrant. Hard physical labor and the anxieties of business-care antag- onize the enjoyment of the artistic side of life. Necessary care and labor draw on human resources, and what they get, the refinements of feeling cannot have. If the struggle of life brought little care with no anxiety or overwork, we might then 406 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII. calculate on the unobstructed action of all the appliances of culture. We might then count on an indefinite progress in knowledge and refinement among all the people, with such cor- ollaries as properly belong thereto. We should expect the reign of justice, and common sense, and common sympathy, when there would be little need for the force which governments use. Under the sway of science and rationality, passion would be subordinated to thought, and population would be adjusted to the environment. But this would be getting a new world out of moral elements so different from anything known in human nature past or present, that it would be equivalent to a creation de novo. There is no basis for any such dream. While the greater portion of mankind in civilized society have always been drudges, the fact that human wants, mainly of a frivolous character, keep fully up with the increased facilities of production, as civilization advances, points to the indefinite con- tinuance of life for the many heavily weighted with work and care. Dr. George M. Beard truly says: "One cannot imagine a nation in which all should be rich and intelligent; for a people, composed wholly of educated millionaires, intelligence would be a curse, and wealth the worst form of poverty. For Ameri- cans, as for all people, this law is as remorseless as gravity, and will not go out of its way at the beck, either of philanthropy or philosophy." The common school education, which is intended to elevate society in general, can only accomplish this end to a certain extent, and then maintain, without elevating further, the posi- tion thus secured. It lifts a certain proportion within reach of higher education, and these pass on into the higher orders of society, which, being diverted by other motives do not hold their own by natural increase. And just so far as education seizes upon the toiling millions and causes them to exercise restraint, it is families that are affected rather than the masses. The better sort multiply less and lose in relative numbers, while the more animal may remain unaffected to breed as rapidly as ever. Thus, by the very act of lifting a portion of society up, Sec. 20Q.\ EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCE LIMITED. 407 and giving it self-control, may education defeat its aim of gen- eral psychological elevation, by maintaining a larger opening in society to be filled up by the improvident and shiftless who will not exercise such restraint. It thus becomes difficult to push the advantages of general education beyond a certain point. It is even true that, "with all the manifold means and appliances for popular culture that the present age can boast, the ' masses ' are in danger of becoming a less, rather than a more, cultured body." — (Thomas Wright, Contemporary Review, July, 1881). The tables of the ninth census (1870) show that, even in States which, like Massachusetts and Ohio, have given most attention to the education of their children, there was an increase of illiteracy during the decade. And then it is quite possible to be "the most common-schooled, and the least cultivated, people in the world," as Minister Lowell asserts of his fellow country- men. Another consideration respecting the influence of classes on society must not be overlooked in connection with the relative increase of classes. The great middle class is that which, more than any other, conserves the moral and political status of society. And of this class those who are at once owners and cultivators of the soil, contribute to society its most substantial elements. The best men and women are born on the plains and the hills and in the valleys, and for the first few years of their lives breathe the fresh, pure air of the country, and then push their way into larger fields of usefulness. In times past, it has been the fate of this class, in the course of national changes, to become gradually extinguished, leaving the so-called upper and lower classes, with an ill-bridged gulf between, when the national energy waned and at length succumbed to the aggres- sive vigor of ruder races. Rome again affords us a striking illustration; and England is shorn of much of her power among the nations by the loss of her yeomanry. Instead of an intelli- gent, independent, and prolific class on the soil, it becomes, under tenantry, a stolid, eminently bucolic class, going to swell the ranks of the dependent, toiling, hopeless millions. This 408 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXI L tendency cannot operate in our own country as yet to any con- siderable extent; for those who are thrown out of their homes by foreclosure under commereial revulsions, have an outlet still in which to retrieve lost ground. But this will not always be so; and without greater private as well as political wisdom on the part of the people, the time will come when, as a great New York newspaper is reported to have said, "The rich men shall own the soil, and you shall toil." Section 210. — But this is not more a question of classes than of races. Blood tells ; at any rate the fashion does, which is closely allied with blood as well as with condition. Among certain peoples it is the fashion to marry young and have large families; and it matters not what the circumstances of the responsible parties may be, whether of plenty or of want, their descendants are numerous anyway. Some among them might not of their own accord care to marry so young, but the fashion sweeps them into the current along with the rest. We may instance the Celtic Irish as an example, although the race is no doubt mixed with a large infusion of Teutonic blood (Lecky). One and two-thirds centuries ago, these people numbered but eight hundred thousand; now they number many millions, and are helping largely to fill up the new places of the earth. They are never debauched with luxury, and their methods of life are often hardy and rough, and not always orderly and healthy, still they are exuberantly prolific. Further, there is reason to believe that new races are spring- ing into existence, prolific and viable, whose destiny on the planet it is not possible now to forecast. The old notion, mainly propagated in the interest of slavery in this country, that crosses between unlike races are weak and non-prolific, is traversed of late by some of the ethnological masters; and it is shown to be in all probability an error. Some of these crosses, as that between the negro and the white, and that between the Indian and the white, appear to have equal constitutional vigor with either of the crossing races, and with less intellect than the higher, but more than the lower. The crosses are scattered far Sec. 210.] VALUE OF RACE MULTIPLICATION. 409 and wide over the Americas, and whenever their location is somewhat isolated, and their settlements beyond the civilized limits, they may preserve their identity, become fixed as a type, and rise to an historical significance not at present dreamed of. It is to be recollected, however, that the greater mobility of modern individuals and the spread of cosmopolitanism are more unfavorable than anything in times past, to the formation of such distinct types. But even if no distinctive type of man may grow out of such crossing and intermixture, the infusion of the lower blood into the higher must have an influence, not only on prolificacy, but on industrial capacity, educational susceptibility, and psychological elevation. The ancient civilizations were overrun and taken possession of by hordes of barbarians. New races took the place of the old. It has been assumed that the like cannot take place with the nations which are now in, or rising to, their prime. It is true that such races will not emerge from unknown or little known regions in the East or 'North to overturn nationalities, and change the face of the world; but they may arise in our very midst. Out of the numerous mixtures taking place in the United States, some form more hardy, energetic, and industri- ally aggressive than any other may take the lead in multiplica- tion, incorporating into itself minor types, and eventually filling America largely to the exclusion of others. This privilege of destiny appears not to fall to the lot of the Yankee proper, since, under modern influences, he is greatly falling off in pro- lificacy. As he becomes reduced in the relative weight of num- bers, he will fall in ethnological significance, and by absorption into others, disappear as a distinctive moral and physical type. He is yielding to the Irishman and the German. But if these should become too much infected with the debaucheries of civilization, they may eventually succumb to some other, — possi- bly to some type with admixture of blood not by any means the most refined. We must remember that it is not necessarily the highest peoples that come to predominate. It is not the highest but the most fitting that prevail. It is the hardy and energetic 4IO THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chdp. XXX IL rather than the refined. The result must be determined by conflict in some of its forms, and as the arena shifts, new fighting qualities come into play. When it was a trial at arms, the elements of success were quite different from what it will be when the result is determined mainly on an industrial and economical basis. It is the people that breeds and has enterprise and push to make room for its progeny, that gets the most of the earth's surface. It is the people that can stand the drudgeries of life and still multiply, that can live on little and still preserve its constitu- tional vigor — such a people, in the close and desperate compe- tition of civilized life will extend its area, and crowd out those who are wanting in those strong points for the contest. The few wants of simply constituted, industrious people, are light weight in the struggle of life. It is practical superiority. The Anglo-Saxon, who is habituated to abundance, must strain to the utmost to procure it, and his life is attended with more dis- appointment, and is more exhausting because of his more num- erous wants. The more dependents he has the worse this is ; hence, he is best pleased with a small family. The many wants with few children weight a man in the battle of life, as much as few wants with many children. It is well, from this point of view, that our people refuse to the Chinese the privilege of immigration. If they really settled in great numbers among us, no Americans could stand in competition with them, and our industrial classes would be compelled to adopt Chinese habits; and the lowering of economical habits would lower the grade of character. But who knows but we have already among us some type of people who will eventually be our barbarian ? Suppose our higher types are losing in comparative prolificacy — and this is no supposition, but the demonstrated fact— then will the newer types fill up the land, and eventually swallow up the less prolific types, and will thus give cast to the psychology of the people. A diversity of distinct race-types can hardly form in this country, as has been formed in Europe. The facilities for inter- communication and the use of the same language over so large Sec. 2IO.] DRAWBACKS ON PROLIFICACY. 411 a territory will prevent it, and go far to obliterate the effects resulting from differences of climate. Imitation and sympathy, among people who so freely intermingle, will be a powerful factor in producing uniformity of mental type. There is nothing but color to prevent the free interblending of peoples. There will probably always be a colored race and a white race distinct from each other, but neither varying so greatly within itself as to present distinct types. But the blood of some one or more types or crosses will, through energy and prolificacy, have a larger share than others in the formation of the coming man. There are, of course, difficulties in the way of rapid multiplica- tion among inferior peoples in the lower classes. They are often crowded together in unhealthy districts, often filthy and ill- fed, often without medical attendance and intelligent nursing, and in consequence, the rate of mortality is higher than it would otherwise be. But this only obtains to a partial extent. Usually they are tough, and their children surprisingly viable; and earlier marriages and the greater rapidity of child-bearing far more than make amends for the losses from adverse causes. The census returns show this conclusively enough. The negro in the South belongs to this category. The mortality among colored children is often greater than among white children; but in spite of drawbacks, colored families are apt to be large, and the last census (1880) shows that the percentage of gain in the colored population is greater than in the white population, even with the accessions to the latter by immigration. It is true that the battle of life may prove too hard for some of the working classes. Through unhealthy occupation some operatives may be so worsted as to lose the physical vigor necessary to sustain a high rate of increase. Some occupations of civilized life so lower the vital energies and dwarf body and mind, that those engaged in them may not be able to keep their numbers good. But optimists will not insist on this sad feature of the case; and there will always be rough occupations favoring the hardihood of workers who will multiply rapidly. 412 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. Section 211. — The rise and development of human faculties, in the course of evolution, may afford grounds for the belief that the like process is still to continue for an indefinite period in the future ; but this overlooks the great fact that all movement goes in careers, reaching its maximum in ascent, and then descending. Many such careers are shown in the history of mankind. The life of the individual illustrates the law with peculiar emphasis ; and the rise and fall of societies, in the gen- eral course of history, rigidly follow the same law. As one form of institution goes down, another rises ; and the idea that the succeeding is always superior to the preceding is not true. The systems which arose during the Middle Ages were not equal to those which they supplanted. There was nothing in the papal and feudal direction of society which challenges the admiration of mankind like the older Greek and Roman. Mediaeval insti- tutions belonged to lower conditions of humanity. This shows that our own civilization, of which we are so justly proud, though doubtless superior to any which has ever existed, does not establish the rule that improvement necessarily accompanies change. The rule which history establishes is that civilizations reach a maximum, and then become comparatively stationary or decline. It is true that there are now principles of conservation which did not exist in former times, such as science and the printing press. But these are not advantages which are suscepti- ble exclusively of use ; like every good thing, they may be neglected or abused. Man is not in their hands to be molded according to any supposed inherent tendency in them ; they are in man's hands to be dealt with as he wills. The type of peo- ple must be equal to the emergency of conservation and use, else society will decline, whatever its advantages. Everything depends on the moral and intellectual capabilities of the people to continue the proper use of their opportunities. If, through the mixing of peoples, the type of character declines, then will the type of society assuredly deteriorate. Greek civilization unequivocally illustrates this law. Greek civilization was main- tained by the psychological elevation of the Greek type of mind, SeC. 2 1 iJ] COMPARISON WITH GREEK CIVILIZATION. 413 and when, through the mixing in of other stock, this type lost its integrity, Greek civilization came to an end. The monu- ments of Greek genius and the education afforded by established customs had no power to perpetuate Greek activities after other blood had entered into Greek veins. Everything considered, the old Greek civilization is the most wonderful that has ever existed; and it was the work of the descendants of the original Greek gentes which founded little states in a locality which was especially adapted to the focusing of the commercial and intellectual activity of the times. The Roman system was in like manner established by the descen- dants of the gentes in Latium, whose chief characteristics appear to have been austerity of morals, rigid military discipline, and aptness for political organization. But the example of centuries of such morals, discipline, and organization, with the remembrance of their rewards in success, was not sufficient to maintain the grandeur of the Roman system after the pure habits and the pure blood had become corrupted. We do not know but there is a principle of history to be discerned here, which will direct the movement of societies on earth through all time. But while it is true that present civilization is, on the whole, superior to all others, it is not true that it is superior in all ways. Some forms of Greek art reached a development which has never since been equaled. One of the best indications of a high type of mind is, perhaps, its freedom from bias ; and I doubt very much if in our own times, with all our advantages, we are superior to the Greeks in this respect. Many Greek thinkers approached even the delicate subject of religion with a freedom from bias which puts to shame the bigotry still existing in the nineteenth century, and is hardly surpassed by the most judicial temper of modern inquiry. But still there is an advan- tage the modern has, beyond anything known in past history, and that is the rigid system of intellectual guidance which has been developed in connection with scientific work. There is also a body of truths affording a solid basis for the operations of future inquiry, such as has never existed before. Still, when we 19 414 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [Chap. XXXII. consider the great indifference of the mass of the people, and the small percentage who avail themselves of these advantages, we can readily imagine that with a considerable decline of psychological quality, all these advantages might avail but little. Take out one-tenth of one per cent, of modern population, selecting therefor such as are most interested in scientific truth for its own sake, and there would soon be an end to all achieve- ment in this direction. And if, in addition, the psychology of the remainder should be lowered by a little admixture of weak blood, there would be deterioration at once in the tone of society. The tenure by which we hold our present high position is by no means perfectly assured. It hardly seems possible to advance to higher forms of social existence except on the warrant of a corresponding advance in individual development. A given type of mind clothes itself in appropriate social forms, which it has no further power of itself to improve. If the social compound is determined by the qual- ity of the social units, or individuals, which enter into it, then is it important to know whether or not there is a limit to individ- ual development. The human faculties have emerged one after another in the course of human evolution, and no one can say that the process has yet come to an end. We are apt to think that there are individual minds now superior to any in ancient times. This may be a delusion due to natural egotism and to the apparent superiority arising from superior opportunity. Ancient genius had not the same immense field of suggestiveness which is now open to all comers. It is doubtful whether modern genius is superior to the ancient in anything except in what relates to science, and this is rather the accumulation of past experiences than the direct consequence of individual endowment. Galton, in Hereditary Genius, reckons that the Athenians were as much superior to the English, as the English are to the negroes. The estimate, however, so far as relates to the comparison between Greeks and English, has reference to average capacity. The best Greek minds might not have been much if any superior to Sec. 211.] A LIMIT TO DEVELOPMENT. 4 X 5 the best English minds; but the proportion of mediocres was far less in Attica than in England. The pyschology of Athens was an elevated plateau from which genius shot up into peaks piercing the sky. But this is perhaps due to the fact that one class performed the drudgery for another class, which was im- pelled by competition to diversified activities in an exalted sphere, and which thereby secured for Athens its unchallenged superiority. Every form has its degree of perfection, and is consequently not capable of endless improvement. For illustration, take the race horse or greyhound. By breeding and training he can be made to reach a certain boundary of speed, which constitutes the utmost limit of his perfection. This perfection requires a certain collocation of nerve, muscle, and bone, of anatomical parts, and physiological functions, and when the precise balance is reached which produces the highest results, that balance cannot be dis- turbed without deterioration. If the build, for example, is made more slender to favor agility, there is a weakening of endurance for want of sufficient stomach, lungs, and muscle. By proper training, the athlete acquires strength and endur- ance for a certain period and to a certain point, but he at length reaches a score which no training or device will enable him to exceed. It is precisely so with mental training. Man's brain, as lying at the basis of mental power, must have sufficient phys- ical support in the rest of the bodily system, or it will not be equal to the greatest possible results. The exercise of intellect may be carried so far as to weaken the physical functions upon which the brain depends for its supply of nutriment, and too much culture may eventually cut off the capacity for culture. Man's body has long since ceased to develop, having acquired during the historical period no new capabilities which depend on structure outside the brain. On the other hand, the brain doubtless has differentiated new capabilities, and these seem to have reached, on the whole, as high a grade in ancient as in modern times. If this be so, it is not likely that the future man will be endowed with mental gifts greater than he has heretofore 4 1 6 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. \Chap. XXXII, enjoyed. Here, as everywhere, a limit must be reached which it is not possible to pass. The mental faculties, through adapta- tion to changed circumstances, may change in cast, but not in their aggregate of power. Still this is a vague subject, on which we cannot afford to dogmatize. Granting that the human mind reached, or nearly reached, its maximum development in ancient times, that does not necessarily imply permanence of the mental forms which then prevailed. The mental structure changes; but while it gains in particular directions, it necessarily loses in others. What, for example, it has gained in the capacity for thinking, it may have lost in the capacity for art. Now one type of mental execution prevails, then another, and after awhile still another, and it may be an open question which is the greatest. There are two lines imaginable for individual development by breeding and training to take, the one scientific, the other hap- hazard. So far as man is concerned, the former is just barely imaginable; it is not likely ever to be adopted. The latter will prevail in the future as it has in the past; and the dominant want of the times will determine the direction of highest achievement. The intermixing of lower with higher peoples, for which opportunity is greater now than ever before, is more likely to breed downward than upward, resulting in a moderate grade of mediocrity, with occasional instances of spasmodic capacity, such as we now witness. When the blood of lower and higher stocks is thoroughly intermingled, which, of course, requires a long time, it must result in something like an average between the two, as we may any time assure ourselves by examples of crosses between the Caucasian and African races. The optim- istic vagary that crossing necessarily improves, elevating the progeny into a psychological altitude greater than that of the parentage, has no warrant. Races have improved through the stimulus of the environment, and the simplest race-types, like the Jewish, Greek, and Roman, have reared the great monu- ments of history. It is true that the mixing of two equal branches of a great race may so far unsettle fixedness of char- Sec. 212.] RECENT PROGRESS. 417 acter as to increase susceptibility to forces in the environment which cause change and improvement; and the Teutonic tri- umphs of modern history are probably in part due to this cause. But when the intermixing is universal, and inferior blood is creeping in to taint the whole mass in time, it is a condition which tells unfavorably for the cherished dream of man's future exaltation. Section 212. — There is also a great fact of modern history which, it may be thought, invalidates preceding considerations concerning the rapid increase of the hardy rather than the high. No doubt the general psychological level is a good deal higher now than it was two hundred years ago. During the very period when there should be degeneracy from the gain of the lower on the higher, the reverse has proved to be true. There are more sensibility and more intelligence than ever before, in spite of the Cassandras of ethnological speculation concerning the relative increase of classes and races. Very true. These two centuries have been very remarkable. Never before has science so shone with an ever-increasing lustre on all subjects, speculative and practical. The joint action of discovery and invention has armed mankind with many a weapon of high civilization. Science has penetrated the dark places of the human understanding, and literally driven out devils which were torturing mankind. This work has been seconded by many of the appliances of education, and the artisan's child may know more, if he will, than the wisest men knew in times past. We who have lived in the midst of this, vainly imagine it will continue without ceasing. If it should do so, it would falsify all history. We have already intimated how difficult it is to push the good influences of education beyond a certain limit. The antagonizing tendencies bring the progressive to a stand-still, and may for a time, under psycho- logical decline, force them into reaction. And so far as sensibil- ity is concerned, it is just possible that it may advance quite too far, under the nerve-stimulating influences of a tense civilization, for vigor of body or peacefulness of mind. The expensive vanities and unhealthy frivolities, the unsettled state of classes 41 8 THE RELATIVE PROLIFICACY. [C/iap. XXXII. and their discontent, the exhaustion of one class and the besti- ality of another, the unrestrained reproduction of the baser sort, must gather force against the elevating influences, and in time may result in deterioration. It may thus turn out that a future age, though better armed with the weapons of civilization than those which preceded it, is yet fated to be their psychological inferior. Our confident civilization, like that of southern Europe in the classic periods, may in some form, have its periods of reaction, its dark ages. Even with the light of science, the advantages of the printing press, and all the modern appliances for conserving what is gained, it is hardly safe to count on a general advance of the nations and peoples, when all shall stand abreast on the highest known plane of civilization. No doubt, civilization will yet greatly extend itself over the face of the earth, and prevail, perhaps, in all lands ; but while certain bodies of mankind are going up in the scale, others are stationary, or going down. The little territory of Europe has illustrated this fact in modern times, and under modern influences. The balance of population is constantly changing, the channels and centres of commerce as constantly shifting; and they probably always will, whether in the general ascent or decline of humanity on earth ; hence, there is no guaranty that this see-saw of nations and peoples will not continue, in the future as in the past, to char- acterize the history of mankind. We have been looking forward ; let us cast a glance in the opposite direction. The ancestors of the highest peoples now on earth, who are so proud of their exaltation, were, only a few hundred years ago, warriors, pirates, plunderers. From very much the same kind of stock, with so little rational promise in it, came the civilized people of Greece and Rome. They were better at breaking heads and trampling down the weak, than in elevating humanity by intention; but elevation did proceed from these people, neverthless, Precisely the same may be said of the ancient Jews. What kind of people, then, will selection under modern industrial conflict bring into mastery hundreds of years hence ? Will it not be rather a plodding, patient, endur- Sec. 212.] THE FUTURE MAN. 419 ing people, with evenness of character and mediocrity of talent? something like a Caucasianized edition of the Chinese char- acter ? I am aware that I found this subject in a good deal of obscur- ity, and that I have probably done little to place it in clearer light. The attempt has doubtless been more successful in rais- ing difficulties than in settling them. Enough has, perhaps, been presented in definite form to bring in question, at least, the fine optimism of some evolutionists who are looking to the future for a man only a little lower than the angels, and a form of society only a little less seraphic than heaven. The exhaus- tion of the nervous system, through exclusive devotion to mental occupation under intense competition; the worrying of business men, under similar competition by over-anxiety and care; the phys- ical decline of the rich, through pleasure-seeking and dissipation; the dwarfing and weakening of classes of operatives in unhealthy and routine occupations; the tendency of monopoly and commer- cial revulsions to obliterate the sturdy, independent yeoman class; the tendency of refined education to stanch the resources of prolificacy; — all these contribute to throw the function of multi- plying and filling the earth very largely upon inferior strains of mankind, and render it logically unsafe to trust in "the coming millennium." It is just as likely that the coming man, who is to spring up under the forces now controling the prolificacy of peoples, will be personally inferior, as that he will be superior, to the man of to-day. Note. — Some who have been in the habit of contemplating education as a sort of all-potent saviour, may be grieved to find its limitations brought into the foreground, as in this and the preceding chapters; but is it not better to look these limitations squarely in the face, in order to determine the real capabilities of the educational forces, and give them their most efficient direction? CHAPTER XXXIII. THE MARRIAGE RELATION. Section 213. — The love of the sexes for each other has been called the master passion. It is not merely that it carries its ends by vigorous self-assertion ; it throws a glamour over the passions, and largely molds their character and directs their action. The half of civilized peoples give probably ninety per cent, of all their energies, directly or indirectly, to this passion and its concomitants ; and the other half are driven by it as with the lash of a tyrant. Men and women are compelled to acknowledge its supremacy, whether they will or no. It governs with seductive smiles and punishes with remorseless torture. "Ah, tell me what is this which men call love ? The sweetest pleasure and severest pain." When all goes well with this passion and its belongings, the whole passional nature becomes an instrument of music and harmony. When it goes ill with it, the emotional nature suffers revulsion, and there is no longer music but harsh discord. There is no better illustration than this of the dual character of pas- sion : At one pole it is exquisite happiness, at the other pole it is equally exquisite misery; and the one is in a sense the measure of the other. Such is the character of the passion which serves as the basis of marriage, and marriage it is which serves as the basis of society. The relation of the sexes has at different times and places taken every possible form we are able to conceive of. These different forms of the sexual status have been determined by the condition of the peoples and their relations to one another. But whatever the form, it has always been an example Sec. 2I4.~\ CONJUGAL FITNESS IN PRIMITIVE TYPES. 42 1 of motion in the direction of least resistance, or greatest attrac- tion. Among the most primitive peoples the relation of the sexes seems to be promiscuous, very much like that of gregarious animals, among which the relation is determined by impulse with- out sentiment. All the men are after a fashion the husbands of all the women ; and all the women are the wives of all the men. There has been no assorting and little orderly exclusion. In some societies the women have several husbands with a limit ; and the men have several wives, limited in like manner. The assorting and excluding processes have begun. With regard even to monogamy, its laws and obligation are not uniform in countries where it prevails, being far more exclusive and binding in some than in others. But it is not necessary to go into details. All this has been largely treated of by Lub- bock, Tylor, McLennan, Spencer, Morgan, and others. What the inquiry here especially concerns is the hope of getting rid of the discords of marriage in the course of human progress. Section 214. — There is an individual sameness among prim- itive peoples very much in contrast with the diversity among civilized races. Nor are there the same marked differences between the sexes. The men are very much all alike and the women quite alike, with less contrast between the two than pre- vails among higher peoples. Any man may unite in marriage with any woman without danger of incompatibility; for if any such union is harmonious and happy, any other would have been equally so, at least so far as concerns the permanent rela- tions of temper. Ill-assorted marriages would be quite unknown among such peoples, or if they should occur, their divergence from the even tenor of general conjugal fitness, would be slight. It is true that the relations of such people to one another, whether in marriage or in social relations, may be brutal enough; but the point to be noted is, that the difference between the most happy and the least happy in the relations of sex cannot be great. This is, indeed, a corollary from the general uni- formity of temperament and mental cast, the little divergence of 422 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chdp. XXXIII. mental taste, the absence of a diversified education, and the actual simplicity of life among the uncivilized. With progress in civilization all this gradually changes. Peo- ples mix and the types diverge. The variety of temperament and mental cast becomes almost infinite among people in occu- pancy of the same territory. Not only individuals, but the sexes, become more and more unlike. " Now, as we go up in the ani- mal scale, we find, that such differentiation has indeed taken place, and that progressively. The sexual differences — that is, the differences between male and female individuals of the same species — become greater and greater as we rise in the scale. They are also greater, we believe, in the higher as compared with the lower races of man, and in the cultivated classes as compared with the uncultivated classes." — (Prof. J. LeConte, Popular Science Monthly, December, 1879.) Through the mix- ing of types and temperaments, and the complication of educa- tional influences, there arises a veritable maze of conditions under which social attractions and repulsions must act. The basis and scope of the affections are also greatly enlarged. Sen- timent has become developed, with a multiplication of mental qualities as the diversified sources of pleasure made to flow by fitting response. Friendships are warmer and loves more ardent than among primitive peoples. But this basis of gain is at the same time the basis of loss. If friendship and love may afford more happiness, they may also by inversion or defeat generate more pain. Not only is this inversion or defeat attended with greater misery, but it is more likely to take place among peoples of diversified susceptibility, than among those of simpler consti- tutional mold. Every point of character that attracts may by inversion repel ; the same key may add to the harmony or pro- duce a discord. The more points there are in character, the more complicated is the emotional instrument; the finer the concord when it works in harmony, the greater the discord when not rightly played upon, and the greater the danger of striking the wrong keys. Sec. 215.] DIVERSE CONDITIONS. 423 "If well accorded, the connubial state From all its strings speaks perfect harmony; If ill, at home, abroad the harsh notes jar, And with rude discord wound the ear of peace." — [Orestes, in Euripides. It is plain from such considerations that, with the progress of civilization, the capabilities of affectional discordance keep pace with the capabilities of affectional concordance. Marriage becomes an institution which may give greater joy, or which may inflict deeper misery. We might rest the matter here on general considerations alone, but owing to the large space which marriage fills in life, it is but proper to look at the subject more in detail. Section 215. — The differences of social position interpose an arbitrary obstacle to the natural action of conjugal affinities. It is true that the educational influence of social life goes to mold the same class into the same social type; but if compatibilities exist across the class-lines, the prejudices of class oppose their meeting in recognized legitimacy; and then there is no choice except between illegitimacy and deprivation. Another obstacle in the way, more natural and inevitable, is that with increasing complication of character, the conditions of a conjugal love may obtain where the conditions of friendship do not. This is no doubt a prevalent state of things in modern life. It is to be presumed that conjugal love is largely deter- mined by the fitness of relations for reproduction; and when great diversity exists in the constitution of individuals, there is greater reproductive compatibility between some than between others. This has reference both to mind and body. Extremes of some kinds may be fitting for the physical ends of marriage, and just the reverse for friendship. It may be a function of the conju- gal instinct to discern the fitting for conjugal relations, when in the natural course of things love follows, and marriage. But when the basis of a lasting friendship is absent, incompatibilities of temper and taste are developed in the close proximity of mar- ried life. For these causes of discord — the merely conjugal at- tracting and the want of friendship repelling — there appears to 424 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. be no help under existing conditions ; at least, so far they have not been helped ; and they are rapidly on the increase with the facilities for diversity of culture. Intelligence should of course play the part of guarding against unions without the element of a life-long friendship in them; yet this very same intelligence is contributing to the possibilities of conjugal discordance by mul- tiplying the points on which differences and repulsion may arise. This is to be observed in the many unfortunate marriages of liter- ary and other intellectual people. If they secure in connubial relations intellectual equality and companionship, there is apt to be no issue, in which case marriage fails of its end. It is a matter of common remark, that the distinctively intellectual marry the unintellectual, and fail completely of companionship, and hence the unhappiness of so many of this class in their mar- riage relations. The organic basis of these discordances appears to be great- est in the centers of civilization, greater in the cities than in the country. Even physical divergence between the sexes is increased by the active forces of civilization. While the forms of the two sexes among savages are more alike than among civilized people, they are also more alike among the "lower classes " in civilized countries than among the cultured and well-to-do (Pruner Bey). That is, the head and pelvis approach more nearly to the masculine type. While the aver- age difference in cranial capacity between men and women in the whole of France is one hundred and fifty cubic centimetres, it is two hundred and twenty-one cubic centimetres in Paris alone (Broca). Delauney adds: "The biological considera- tions we have adduced explain to us why the two sexes tend to diverge from each other as we proceed from the lower to the higher classes. Both sexes among peasants and working people having nearly the same moral and intellectual faculties, they can sympathize with each other, and have no reason for becom- ing estranged. It is different among the intelligent classes, where the two sexes, in consequence of the increasing pre- eminence of man, not having the same ideas, the same senti- Sec. 2l6.] AN INSTANCE OF CORRELATION. 425 ments, nor the same tastes, cannot understand each other, and they form separate coteries. Moralists have long taken notice of the separation, which is of force in the family and in the meetings of men and women, and which seems to be increas- ing from year to year."— (Popular Science Monthly, December, 1881.) Section 216. — Reproduction requires physical adaptation. In a large headed race, failure in parturition would necessarily elminate all with inadequate capacity of the pelvic region. And this would be the case whatever the cause of great size of brain. The Eskimo and Lapps have large heads as well as the Teutons, and the pelvic region is also large. But the large pelvis and its corresponding function appropriate a larger share of the vital energies, leaving less for other parts and functions. Develop- ment with the necessary nutrition takes the direction which active demand requires, and if the infant's head be large, the demand for a correspondingly large pelvis is absolute. Less supply of nutrition and less scope of activity would remain for the female brain. Under the influences of civilization the brain of woman appears to be losing in size, — not only relatively to man's, but absolutely. "Very curiously, the cranial capacity of the prehistoric women was greater than that of the women of to-day." — (Delauney). This is the result of the investigations of Broca, Le Bon, and Zametti. But while this is the case, the brain of the civilized man is much larger than the brain of the savage man, having increased in size under the growth of civili- zation while woman's has diminished, thus rendering the disparity between them very great, and affecting their dispositions and tastes in a corresponding degree. MM. Broca and Le Bon refer the diminution of woman's head to the small part she takes in the work of civilization. This is probably a case of mistaking effect for cause. Her activity is of a much more diversified character than the activity of savage women, and her brain is doubtless of a much finer quality though it be smaller. It is smaller mainly, no doubt, because man's brain is larger. Her brain is not only smaller 426 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. than it is among more primitive peoples, not only smaller than man's, but smaller in proportion to her body. While her body is but eight per cent, smaller than man's, her brain is ten per cent, smaller than his. — (Dr. A. Hughes Bennett, P. S. Mo., Feb., 1880). The facts point to a case of correlation in develop- ment, of physiological and anatomical adjustment by means of sexual selection, in which the structure is adapted to relativity of function and the corresponding distribution of energy — the large head of the male fetus necessitating development of the pelvic region, and this in turn necessitating the diminution of the cerebral structure in woman. This is a matter which can- not be decided on the basis of sentimentalism ; it must be brought to the solid ground of fact. And so far as the facts enable us to understand it at present, it points to growing incon- gruity in the mental relations of men and women. If it be true that, under the necessities of sexual adjustment to the increase of man's brain, woman's brain is diminishing, or even remaining the same, or not increasing in size as rapidly as his, then does it follow quite conclusively, that this particular form of evolution is increasing the points on which intellectual companionship between men and women, husbands and wives, cannot find place. Among the great mass of civilized people, sociability between the sexes is mainly emotional and frivolous. To this there is only a small percentage of exceptions. We confess that even now with his larger head, the average man is not so many-sided in his social and intellectual tastes and cravings, but that he is easily met and satisfied. It is also true that there is exquisite sympathy and communion between men and women in which soul very fully and honestly speaks to soul. True friendships obtain between the sexes; but the point I wish to make is that the mere test of sex applied to an individual for determining the bent of character is not an accurate one. We may regard phys- ical sex as necessarily incisive and distinct ; but the sexual char- acteristics of mind, and the secondary sexual characteristics of the body, show no such definite outline of distinctness. In SeC. 2l6.] SEX IN TYPES OF MIND. 427 some instances women have larger heads, broader shoulders, and narrower pelvis than is normal for the sex, thus approach- ing the masculine form. There are all grades of masculinity in mind, from the distinctively masculine to that which is barely masculine, or mainly feminine ; there are likewise all grades of the feminine qualities of character. There is a prevailing type of mind in men which is of course known as masculine; there is a prevailing type in women which is known as feminine ; but our point is, that, while physical sex is distinct, the mental charac- teristics of each run together and overlap with an indistinctness of outline which often renders it difficult to determine whether in a given case the mind is more of the masculine or feminine type. A considerable part, no doubt, of those ladies who aspire to the usual masculine course of education and sphere of life, and who acquit themselves creditably in the same, have a marked degree of the masculine in their mental constitution. Such are not so apt to marry as the average girl, nor to have families when they do marry. They are not apt to choose intellectual men of positive character for husbands, and consequently, if they have children, are not likely to transmit their own mental peculiarities unimpaired. But whatever tends to eliminate these sexual inter- mediates, they will no doubt always obtain, in the future as in the present, or even more so, for they seem to be a product of civilized conditions; but their existence does not invalidate the obvious premise of sexual distinctness in mind, which is co-ordi- nate with the difference in volume between the male and female brain. And if this difference has not already reached its acme, but is becoming greater, there is a mental basis for the growing disparity between the sexes, and consequent increase of points on which the responses of companionship cannot be made. The existence of incompatibility of temper along with repro- ductive compatibility is distinctively a phenomenon of civiliza- tion, and comes with the great diversity and contrast and conse- quent extremes which the forces of history have developed in indi- vidual character. These contrasts have led to, and are ever lead- ing to, the union of persons of unlike character, even sometimes 428 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXIII. to the union of an angel with a brute. We do not insist on the illustrative value of such extreme cases; but even when the incompatibility is not so great, it is a necessary consequence that the close union of marriage usually multiplies the occasions of discord; and married pairs cease to be friendly, who, if they had never married, would never have been unfriendly. I aim in this to state simply a current fact, and no more. The close ; relations of married life give opportunity for the incompatible to torture each other in manifold and exquisite ways, often without relief — so intractable is human nature under the feeling or fancy of being wronged. Plutarch speaks of the little differences between man and wife which breed aversion; and yet in Greece there was no pretension to companionship between husband and wife. It seems to be the fatality of certain temperaments allied in marriage constantly to "misunderstand" each other. There is an infinity of divergences in taste and temper, for whose liabil- ity to discordance there seems to be no efficient remedy. There are stern moralists who have no sympathy for such as are conjugally unhappy, but only censure, since they hold that mutual adaptation in marriage is purely a voluntary matter. It is true that the obtrusion of infelicities on public attention is a thing to be deprecated; while it is equally true that the will intelligently directed may do much to secure conjugal sympathy and co-operation, but yet more to endure with resignation the absence of them; but the will has its limits, with little power to overcome those little intractabilities of temper which all experi- ence proves to be deeply imbedded in human nature. But even in cases where, under self-control, there is no open bicker- ing, there may be such a want of sympathy in taste and turn as to make life lonesome and dissatisfied. With peace without, there may be an "aching void" within, which, negative though it be, gives positive testimony to the development of the unfitting along with the progress of civilization. Only among couples in the higher planes of society is there unmet craving for sympathy in a multiplicity of tastes, craving for appreciation in the con- sciousness of worthful aspiration, craving for encouragement and Sec. 21/.] CONFLICTING VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. 429 support in the endeavor which may rise above the beaten paths of mediocrity; and it is futile and foolish to expect to remedy, by a battle with fate, what properly admits only of calm and decent resignation. Section 217. — There are three general methods of looking at the marriage relation : First, the business method, as mar- riage for property and family considerations; secondly, the deliberative method, as marriage for friendship and companion- ship; thirdly, the sentimental method, as marriage for love. The morality of the relation is very different as it is looked at from these different points of view. According to the first, the legality of the relation constitutes the essence of its morality. The marriage relation is pure if .legally sanctioned, although the parties bound by it have neither love nor friendship for each other. This is the legal view of purity in marriage; and it is so necessarily, since the legal tribunals have neither power nor right to go behind the forms • of law. The second view could not regard the legal form as a sufficient warrant for the purity of the relation in the absence of mutual confidence and compan- ionship. The third theoretically regards legal forms as wholly without value to sanctify the relation which love only can sanc- tify. According to this view, in its extreme form, affection alone justifies the union, and when the affection ceases, the marriage is at an end. This view, however, as exacting as it is, is withal very indefinite, since the term love is generic rather than specific, and love between the sexes is a compound feeling admitting of infinite variations, as one ingredient or another enters into it in larger or smaller proportions. It is also indefi- nite, owing to the part which interest and the will-power may play, or not play, in giving direction to the affections. Mrs. Favicett (in Nineteenth Century) says: "I can only speak for myself, but 1 believe I represent the vast majority of women who have worked in this movement, when I say that I believe that the emotional element in the marriage contract is of overwhelming importance; and that anything which puts forward the commercial view of marriage and sinks the spiritual and emotional view is 43© THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXIII. degrading both to men and women." Very true; but so promi- nent is the commercial element as the basis and measure of posi- tion in society that it has a magical power in determining love. As much as women profess to " marry for love," they usually pass judgment on one another's luck in marriage by its commercial element. And, however much stress is laid on the affection and the affinities of the relation, as elements which alone warrant its purity; yet it is, at the same time, regarded as impure if not formed in accordance with the legal requirements. This is brought out very distinctly in Jane Eyre's personal solution of the problem. These different views are implicated with a good deal of essential contradiction, and involve the issues on which a long- continued battle will probably yet be fought. The question is not altogether how to get rid of the evils connected with marriage, taking it for granted that marriage is a definite and fixed thing; but the question is really turning upon what constitutes marriage. Society recognizes as the only legitimate object of marriage, the orderly continuation of the species. Healthy and well-organized children, properly disciplined for their places in life, seem fully to answer the end and aim of marriage, so far as society has anything to do with it. But this form of achievement requires several conditions not fully guaranteed by the legal conception of purity in marriage: First, physical and psychological adaptation on the part of the parents for reproduction; secondly, companion- ship as the necessary basis of co-operation in the proper educa- tion of their children ; and thirdly, a sufficiency of income for family needs. An incongruity here is that, while society may be exacting as to the form of marriage, and is deeply interested in the results of the marriage, it has no voice in the matters of fitness and companionship which are the chief agencies in shaping said results. Another incongruity is the natural and fundamental difficulty of securing the union of companionship and reproduc- tive affinity in the same relation. When parents are quite unlike in physical and mental characteristics, their children, if inter- Sec. 2l8.1 MORALITY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN CONFLICT. 43 1 mediate, are like neither. The offspring may be up to the required standard of physical and mental symmetry, but must, nevertheless, suffer from the perversion and misdirection of home influences. The want of mutual good understanding between parents, not only prevents the reinforcement of each other's influence on their children, but actually renders it antagonistic and discordant, to the lasting detriment of those for whose right education they are chiefly responsible. This is one of the sad- dest things in modern life, and far more frequent than it appears to be, from the discretion with which it is properly concealed from public view, seldom appearing but in the unavoidable results. Sad as this is, it is an incidental product of mental and social development, wholly unknown in primitive life. Section 218. — There is a form in which culture may compli- cate the difficulties of social life. Along with the strengthening of the spiritual and artistic faculties is strengthened the repug- nance to whatever is merely animal in its nature. The animal and spiritual tendencies in man may be affirmed to be directly opposite in character. The spiritual or refined is upward and expansive in its tendencies ; the animal is downward and con- centrative. This was the character of the animal in man, when he had little in his nature of the artistic and refined ; it is the character of the animal in man still, when he has become a highly intellectual and cultured being. The animal instinct may demand what revolts the higher instincts ; and these instincts may enforce a system of repression against the animal in viola- tion of its healthy and normal action. Hence, there is current a phenomenon which pertains solely to the higher forms of social existence. It is the conflict of requirement between morality and physiology concerning quite a large class of invalids. Morality rigidly exacts what physiology condemns ; and the former admits of no compromise. Where marriage fails, there must in honor be celibacy ; and perpetual celibacy is a violation of organic law ; but the physician must recognize the supremacy of the moral precepts which society enforces. Sex is a physical function which has its physical laws. Life- 43 2 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \_Chap. XXXIII. long celibacy involves a violation of these laws, which is often attended with unhealthy action and physical and mental pain. But such celibacy is compulsory with very many, and made so by the moral system on which society is based, and without which order in society could not exist. The physical law is ovetridden by the socio-moral law. Or, it may be put in this way : The performance of every function in accordance with its laws is a moral requirement. The non-performance, there- fore, is a breach of morality on that plane in which the function lies; and yet, in society in certain fields of action, such per- formance of function under conditions possible to the party, would be the hight of immorality. The exercise of the maternal function is an obligation demanded by its laws, but morality for- bids such exercise of function except on terms with which very many are unable to comply. Thus, morality in the physio- logical sphere and morality in the sociological sphere may fall into direct antagonism. This is a clear case in which one law is crossed or thwarted by another law, as Paley instances in a general way. And there is no redress for the outrage done to the lower law. Judgment is given against it in the highest known court, and no appeal can be granted. What is fatal is that the lower or physical law cannot be changed in the way of adaptation. Celibacy cannot perpetuate itself by natural selec- tion, or by any other possible process. By its nature celibacy has no part either in inheritance or in transmission. Every ancestor of every person living fulfilled the function in question, and this tendency to fulfillment is one of the organic properties transmitted to offspring. It is one which cannot fall off or abate, for those in whom it is strong more surely fulfill it and transmit it. No matter how imperious the self-control, the ten- dency still exists, and its perpetual suppression is a sacrifice made by the individual, on the basis of conflict in the constitution of things, to the supremacy of a higher law. Connected with the refinement and elevation of taste is the great strength of the sexual impulse. It is greater among civil- ized than among uncivilized peoples. This is no doubt a case Sec. 2ig.] prostitution. 433 of natural selection. With the development of civilized condi- tions, the care of a family becomes more of a burthen in which the seeking of pleasures must yield to the discharge of duties, and many would shrink from it if not impelled by an irresistible impulse which sets the fashion. With this greater strength of sexual attraction among civilized people, there is this to be noted, that, with enough there is necessarily too much. This is nature's way of working, because she works by general laws, and the paradox could only be escaped by special interference. The impulse becomes active before the physical system is mature, when its gratification would be an improper thing. And then at maturity and under the sanctions of marriage, its surplusage is very great. And still another incongruity is to be noted. Before marriage there is the necessary effort of constraint and pain of deprivation ; after marriage the restraint reacts into license by a natural law, and the longing of deprivation is followed only too generally by the lassitude of satiety. A cloak of sacredness is thrown over marriage, and it is well; but marriage is not a sure guaranty of the virtue that shuns excess. Section 219. — No doubt, all things considered in the history of civilization and the play of its current forces, the exclusive union of one man with one woman is the best possible form of the relation in the highest form of society of which we yet know anything. Yet it appears that this exclusive form of marriage cannot be had without necessitating prostitution in its regular and irregular forms. It prevails alarmingly in the centres of civilization, — in the very shadows of the great churches and schools, where civilization is most concentrated. It accom- panies civilization and monogamy everywhere; it has struck its roots down deep into the civilized structure, and it persistently defies every effort to exterminate it, or even to palliate it. Indeed, it is held to be a sort of safety valve for the social sys- tem, without which the integrity of society would be in perpetual danger. This assumes that if it were not for legalized and sys- tematic prostitution, the police could hardly be made sufficiently omnipresent in certain localities to afford the needed protection. 434 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \_Chap. XXXIII. It thus comes about that "the supreme type of vice" is at the same time "the most efficient guardian of virtue." — (Lecky). Harlotry is recognized very early in Jewish history. Solon is reported to have established brothels in Athens, for the protec- tion of virtuous women. Cities like Venice, Naples, and Amster- dam, when in the hight of their commercial prosperity, seem to have encouraged rather than repressed this vice. Venice even imported courtezans from foreign ports. And in modern times, by municipal action which speaks louder than words, systematic prostitution seems to be regarded as necessary to the orderly maintenance of civilized society, or at least, as an irrepressible part of such society. Mandeville observes : "From what has been said, it is manifest that there is a necessity of sacrificing one part of womankind to preserve the other, and prevent a filthiness of a more heinous nature. From whence I think I may justly conclude (what was the seeming paradox I went about to prove) that chastity may be supported by incontinence, and the best of virtues want the assistance of the worst of vices." Society itself may contribute to this result .by a sort of automatic action, as exquisitely shown on philosophical grounds by Dr. Woolsey, who only recognizes the legal as the sanctifying element of marriage, and maintains that divorce should only be granted on scriptural grounds. He believes that wives thus offending and divorced should not be permitted to marry again, even if the inhibition should confirm them in sin: "The question recurs whether it is worth while to save them at the expense of public virtue. Is it not better for society that such a woman lose her ordinary right by way of penalty — -even as a citizen sometimes loses his right of office or of suffrage by fighting a duel, or by bribery — than that the honorable state of the matron be degraded by her participation in its privileges." — (Essay on Divorce). In this way, society, in the defense of matronly purity, may legally and formally occasion harlotry; and the justification therefor is clearly the recognized fact that the devil is bound to have a share any way, and that this method would put him off with the least. Sec. 220.] SUPPRESSION OF MATERNITY. 435 It is not to be set down in disparagement of monogamy that prostitution is more conspicuous under it than under polygamy, if, indeed, such be the fact. It may still prevail in polygamy, only in a different form, with a far less average of what is desir- able in the relations of men and women. It is not a question of getting rid of evils, but of choosing that form which is attended with the least aggregate of human degradation and misery. Even if acknowledged prostitution be more distinc- tively bound up with monogamy, still may the advantages of this form of marriage be on the whole so great as to compensate society in general for the curse of prostitution ; and this appears to be the prevailing instinct concerning it, judging by the com- placence with which the civil and religious authorities regard the systematic degradation to pariahs of a part of womankind. It is surely a reflection to humble human pride, that the dreary, hopeless life thus led, is a necessary concomitant, if not indeed a necessary condition, of the highest known practical form of the marriage relation. Section 220. — Another wrong, if not evil, is indissolubly bound up with the necessary exclusiveness of monogamic mar- riage. Reference is made to the suppression of the maternal function by the inexorable decree of society for all women, how- ever well qualified for its discharge, except within the pale of wedlock. This condition many cannot comply with in the lot- tery of marriage, without debasing themselves in unequal union ; and in localities where women are greatly in the majority, as in most old countries, the deprivation must fall absolutely on the number in excess, embracing some of the most worthy. It is her fitness for the fulfilling of this function that makes woman specifically what she is, and although it is necessary for many to set their houses in order to go through life without fulfilling it, such ordering is suggestively asexual. So manifest is the "inten- tion of nature," so inevitable are the workings of woman's emo- tional nature trained around this function as its centre, that there is no mistaking its importance in her being. An able woman, speaking cf the suppression of women's maternal instincts, says 43 6 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. that they are deprived of that for which " every fibre of their physical and moral being is yearning." — (Mrs. Mary Putnam- Jacobi). This injustice-has been the occasion of a good deal of sentimental rant against the despotism of society, and the cruelty of woman to woman, as if every form of injustice in the world could be righted. But in the social system the laws are just as necessary and imperious as elsewhere. There are social neces- sities involving social wrongs, which are just as inexorable as certain physical necessities which involve physical violence. To permit a woman outside of wedlock to become a mother with approval, or even with toleration, because it is her natural right, would be to unsettle the basis on which monogamy rests. This kind of latitude, in deference to a natural right, could only be allowed with safety, through a total revolution in human nature. The natural right of maternity in a certain class is crushed like a fragile shell under the weight of what society everywhere regards a higher law. The social instincts strike straight to the mark, that the good to be gained by such concession to natural right, would be greatly overbalanced, in the end, by the evil which would grow out of it. That is, the matter resolves itself into a choice of evils, one class or other of which is necessary and inevitable ; and society chooses what it believes, or more prop- erly feels, to be the least In an institution like marriage, which is so delicate a poise between conflicting impulses, it becomes the instinctive solici- tude of society to fix it in the very grain of the moral constitu- tion by the weightiest sanctions of conventionality and education; and no exceptions can be permitted. And in this, society is no doubt unequivocally right; but no matter whether right or wrong in this regard, its course is determined by the nature of the case, and is as inevitable as a decree of fate. Given the raono- gamic family as the corner stone of the social structure, and there is no redress for this form of injustice ; and we must not forget that it pertains to the highest social system of which we have any historical or practical knowledge. Sec. 221.'] NECESSARY ORIGIN OF MONOGAMY. 437 Section 221. — How is it that marriage has come to crystallize into the monogamic form with its concomitants of good and evil? By the conjugal instinct threading its way among resist- ing forces to find the track of least resistance. It is the play of the counter forces affecting the relation that holds marriage pre- cisely where it is. The sexual impulse, the desire for offspring, the sense of possession which arises from them, the physical limitations of both the sexual impulse and the provision for children defining the boundaries of sexual privilege, the histor- ical antecedents of civilized peoples, and the conditions of exist- ing social life, may be named as a somewhat vague indication of the forces which, by their interaction, have adjusted marriage into its present form. It is a case of natural selection. The mono- gamic peoples held better together; and whether due to monog- amy or not, they were stronger in the conflicts of races and nations, and in this way came to be the leading and dominant peoples of the earth. Given the physical conditions of modern civilization and the character which civilized peoples have acquired through historical development, and monogamy is one of the most natural of institutions. What, then, is the remedy for the evils which accompany it? There is no remedy. They are part of the system, irrevocably bound up with it, and could only be extinguished by revolutionizing the system, and this could only be done through revolution in human nature and its environment. I repeat, there is no remedy. Education and philosophy may refine the sensibilities and teach resignation, but they can do little more. The great difficulty lies in this, that while we adopt measures for individual relief, we are doing what will reduce the tonicity of social life in general and lower the standard of moral heroism, without which no people can be great. The apparent arbitrariness of the marriage bond has been inveighed against as that which stands in the way of rem- edying mistakes here as elsewhere. But the assumption here is at fault. There is a difference in the spheres of human life in which blunders may be made; but wherever made, the fitting penalty is quite sure to follow. And in the matter of marriage, 20 43 8 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXXI II. experience could not be trusted to teach a great deal ; second, third, and fourth marriages are not as likely to be. happy as the first. And in this weighty affair of life, one generation appears to learn nothing of another. Section 222. — A class of reformers suppose that harmony and right can be secured in the affectional sphere by means of freedom. On general principles, "freedom" is accepted as the panacea for all the ills which are in any way bound up with des_ potism. Within limits, freedom is a very desirable thing, but it has limits which must be scrupulously observed, because free- dom has reference only to motion under resistance, and diver- gence to either side fetches up against obstructions, with result- ing violence, discord, and pain. So-called freedom would only escape the usual besetments by meeting with others equally for- midable. Take down the barriers which social opinion now inter- poses, as unjust and tyrannical as these barriers often are in their effects, and others equally tyrannical must be established, or dis- cord and deprivation would arise even worse than any which now exist. This is proved by the experiments in freedom which have nominally succeeded, as well as by those which have speedily failed. The Perfectionists have only succeeded in mak- ing a change without securing freedom, since the new order is maintained only by exclusion from "the world" under a spirit- ual despotism made operative through open criticism, which coerces the life of the people. [Since this was written, the Oneida Community has abandoned complex marriage, and adopted marriage and celibacy as they prevail in the Christian world at large.] Hardly any word is so vague as that of freedom; and its application to the affectional sphere is very limited. If love alone sanctifies the conjugal relation, who shall decide on the right measure and mixture of this feeling, so varied as it is in the elements of sentiment and passion which compose it? "The parties concerned." Very well; but they may to-morrow reverse the decision of to-day; and they are not isolated, self-sovereign creatures, but are bound up with others in the same society, Sec. 222.'] WISDOM IN LOVE. 439 which is compelled in behalf of its own integrity to make note of their example and their relations to others. And then there are two of them; and though they agree to-day, they may differ to-morrow, one to maintain the union, the other to sever it. Which decision shall prevail ? Unlike a temporary co-part- nership, the nature of the conjugal relation is so bound up with engrossing affection and permanence in results, that it does not admit of any approach to caprice or vacillation, and society pro- vides against it, by recognizing the business and practical side of marriage. "But the cold and rigid ruling of society causes suffering." Doubtless ; but it is the only way to prevent still greater suffering. In matters of the heart, the idea of the indi- vidual being legitimately sovereign to have his own way at his own cost, is absurd. Conjugal separation at the instance of but one of the parties cannot take place at his or her own cost, any more than the union can be maintained by one of the parties at his or her own cost, when the other wishes it broken. There is despotism on either horn of the dilemma, and the precious bit of freedom there is in it, is in deciding which shall be taken. Loving freely according to wisdom is common ground on which all meet; but there is a very great difference of opinion as to what constitutes the wisdom thus summoned to limit free- dom. It is upon this the entire question turns. We believe that the system which has grown up out of experience is prac- tically the wisest. This may change and does change, but rarely by conscious intention. Changes in the system which governs the affectional relations come about gradually, in conse- quence of changes in the conditions which necessitate readjust- ment. With the progress of civilizations change is almost sure to take place in the conjugal relations. And the slight shades of difference in the civilizations of different nationali- ties are accompanied with shades of difference in the affectional relation of the sexes. Marriage is not just the same as conven- tionally determined in Italy, France, England, and America. The social status of the maid before marriage, and that of the wife 440 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. \Chap. XXX II L after marriage, vary greatly. The species monogamy has dif- ferentiated into distinct varieties. Every people must, from the nature of the case, decide on the wisdom of the relation for itself; and it will do it by instinct growing out of practice rather than by discursive methods. All the changes which the relation of the sexes has undergone, have come through experience; and whatever the changes of the future, they must pass this ordeal. Theory will not affect it; society, whether in the sphere of free- dom or morals, admits of nothing absolute. Wisdom consists simply in finding the most peaceful balancing of the discordant or opposing forces in the sphere of passion and interest. Thus far the term freedom applies, but no farther. As well talk of the freedom of the planets to move in their orbits as to talk of freedom of the affections in actual life. The planet might like to fly off into space, because it would be so nice to abandon the old commonplace orbit and travel into new celestial regions, but the attraction of gravitation will not permit it. Passions which readily invest themselves with the seeming of sentimental sanctity, may want to set at defiance the conventionalities of sexual regulation, but they are curbed in lawlessness by the co-operative action of stronger social forces. But however high and holy the aims which are pursued in the name of affectional freedom, they must prove to be abortions, since despotism is every whit as true of the affections as freedom; and no passion or sentiment can be understood by looking only at one side of it, when it has two sides as unlike as the terms of any antithesis. Life is but the picking of one's way through the tangled mazes of contradiction. How almost every act of life, except the mer- est commonplace and routine, involves the balancing of consid- erations ! Wisdom consists in finding the line, however devious or however straight and narrow, of least conflict with the inevit- able. For, whoever loses this line fetches up against some obstruction — he literally bumps his head and suffers for his folly. The limitations so hedge in conduct on every side that penalty always follows excess of momentum in any direction. Whenever we have found out what wisdom requires, in order to make the SeC. 222.] PERFECT FREEDOM A DREAM. 44I most of life for all, we have found out precisely what morality is, and vice versa; and therein is accurately defined the range and sweep of social freedom. Morality itself, as we have seen (Chapter XII.), is but the resultant of conflicting social forces. We often allow ourselves to be deluded with specious names. The doctrine of affectional freedom would never be pressed as a remedy for the evils associated with marriage, but for the glamour of theory and the mental habit of looking too intensely at certain phases of the subject, to the exclusion by inattention of other phases equally important. When the mind becomes steadily engrossed with the wrongs which seem to be so indisso- lubly bound up with what appears to be social despotism and cruelty, it is natural enough to infer that freedom must be the means of redressing the wrong. Such logic may be perfectly unexceptionable, admitting its premises; but its premises are at fault. It totally mistakes the possibilities of human nature, and is never the method of balanced minds thoroughly disciplined. It may be, and usually is, the method of people of generous sympathies, who are evidently sincere and thoroughly in earnest; but this does not sanctify the character of the method. It was the doctrine of the French Revolution that freedom was the panacea for all social and political wrongs; and the delusion has not yet passed away. On the contrary, like many another mis- taken view, it appears, under the stimulus of goading wrongs, to have undergone a sort of development, having reached the stages at present known as Anarchism and Nihilism. The doctrine of " individual sovereignty" is a one-sided dream, and " affectional freedom " is but a corollary of that dream. They are part of the general effort to escape corporate control under the acute consciousness of individual suffering which is developed under every high civilization. There is irresistible fascination in the idea that the "perfect liberty of each is compat- ible with the perfect liberty of all." — (Fichte.) But it is only true by construing the word " perfect " to mean qualified. It is, on the contrary, the fact that, " perfect freedom obtains in nothing human; there are obstructions on every hand, not phys- 44 2 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXIII. ical only, but also intellectual and moral." — (Walker.) It is a profound view of the subject, which no uncompromising advo- cate of social freedom and sexual equality has yet mastered, that " no political [or social] right is absolute and of universal appli- cation, — each having its conditions, qualifications, and limita- tions." — (Parkman.) We must not lose sight of the opposing necessities in human nature, through which life must needs thread its way with the least friction and contact. How completely these opposing forces exert a strain directly against each other, is seen in marriage itself. One set impels the individual toward marriage, the other holds him back. The satisfaction which marriage promises can only be had at certain cost. Marriage involves self-denial as the condition of its favors. The privileges and gains of married life can only be enjoyed by the sacrifice of certain privileges and immunities of single life. And then, within the bond, there are counter sets of forces constantly in action; the one to maintain the integrity of the union, the other to disrupt it. Social position, the sexual impulses, the philoprogenitive instincts, children, bind together; difference of tastes, divergence of personal interests, rebellion against the subordination of one to the other in so close a union, rend asunder. In the greater number of cases, the disrupting forces may be so slight as scarcely to come into consciousness; in many, the two oppos- ing sets are quite equally balanced, and life is distracted with the cruel contest ; in others the explosive forces prevail, and the bond is broken. The increase of candidates for divorce bears testimony to the increasing dissatisfaction in marriage. It is here as among laborers, discontent grows with general intelli- gence, and the consciousness of possible change. Under this increase of dissatisfaction, the divorce laws are being gradually made more liberal. And all this is the outcome of what ? Of the continual diversification of temperament and taste through the mixing of peoples, the spread of general intelligence, and the multiplication of human interests. Here we find marriage undergoing a gradual change, slow though it be. With the con- Sec. 22J.] MONOGAMY AS A FINALITY. 443 tinual mulplication of the causes of this change, it is likely still to go on; and by the accumulation of these small modifications, the adjustment of relations between men and women in the future may be different from what it is at present. Section 223. — Quotations might be given from numerous authors and journals to the effect that the existing form of mono- gamic marriage is the relic of a different order of things from that which is now coming into existence, and that the form of the family it involves is not to be accepted as a finality. These are not fanatical writers but, for the most part, thinking men and women who have endeavored to weigh the difficulties of the subject and estimate the drift of social movement; and who have not committed themselves to premature or visionary reforms. They regard the present constitution of the family as patriarchal or feudal, with conventional bonds resting on mere relationship, while the higher constitution would be that which should rest on friendship and congeniality of tastes. It is anticipated that the relations of men and women will undergo change and assume a higher form as the necessary requisite of the more exalted form of society which is confidently expected. "This theory is that we are substituting for the old involuntary family affections of our forefathers, voluntary affections based on the infinite veraci- ties, in whose precise language, people will, in the future, care for one another, not according to the fortuitous connection of a common ancestry, but will love or hate one another as they find one another amiable or detestable; that parents will care for their children as they are to their taste or not, and children will ground their feelings toward their parents on the same cir- cumstance. We shall no more see the disgusting complications which now arise in families from incompatibility of temper, but the most frank relations in the world will take the place of the false and hypocritical ones established by tradition." — (The Nation, April 15, 1869). But these writers have no doubt contemplated the subject under the bias of the optimism which has been so long the fashion, and have in consequence assumed possibilities which do 444 THE MARRIAGE RELATION. [Chap. XXXI II. not exist. This is shown by the naive remark of one of them that, "Mankind will be happy, and if that is not possible with marriage as it is, then must the form of marriage be changed." — (Die Neue Zeit, January 22, 1870). The following appears to be a careful statement which is given by one who has studied this subject deeply : " When the fact is accepted that the family has passed through four successive forms, and is now in a fifth, the question at once arises whether this form can be permanent in the future. The only answer that can be given is, that it must advance as society advances, and change as society changes, even as it has done in the past. It is the creature of the social system, and will reflect its culture. As the monogamian family has improved greatly since the com- mencement of civilization, and very sensibly in modern times, it is at least supposable that it is capable of still further improve- ment until the equality of the sexes is attained. Should the monogamian family, in the distant future, fail to answer the requirements of society, assuming the continuous progress of civilization, it is impossible to predict the nature of its successor." — (L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 491-2). No doubt marriage will change, to adapt itself to the conditions of society ; and this will take place whether society progress, or whether it " develop in the wrong direction," as the Duke of Argyll expresses it. Morgan's anticipation of future improvement in society is not quite unqualified ; but all are not so careful. The unreserved anticipation of future improvement in society as the basis of improvement in marriage, may be at fault in various ways. It assumes a general psychological elevation of the race which is not to be counted on, as we think has been sufficiently shown in the last two chapters. It appears furthermore to over- look the fact that the changes now taking place in marriage quite resemble the changes it underwent in Roman society, dur- ing the latter part of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. Marriage there differentiated into different forms, from the most rigid possible to the most lax ; that is, within the pale of wedlock, there was great progress in the direction of freedom. Sec. 223.] PERFECTION IN MARRIAGE IMPOSSIBLE. 445 But these changes in marriage corresponded with the decline of Roman society ; and it may be a question whether any such advance towards freedom in the marriage relation is compatible with that moral strength which preserves a people and makes it great. It is more apt to be allied with the intoxication of super- abundance and high life, with luxury, pleasure-seeking, degen- eracy. It is incompatible with the severer virtues, which deny the individual self for corporate good ; and it is not, perhaps, to be welcomed as an omen of unexceptionable improvement. It led to the depravation and extinction of the old Greek and Roman stock ; and this should be a warning to us that the pres- ent tendencies toward social freedom are not so much an earnest of coming elevation as of coming degeneracy. What the future relations of men and women will be, it is not possible now to forecast; but one thing is sure, be they what they may, there will still be occasions of injustice and discord, and still many a heart will ache. There will always be competi- tion for the affections of the other sex, under whatever form of marriage, and winners and losers as now; and when, frequently, the winners will be the greater losers, and the losers really the winners, with suffering whether they lose or win. It would not be warrantable to infer from the fact — if fact it be — that discord and unhappiness in marriage are greater now than in the earlier stages of our civilization, that, therefore, they are to become still greater, whatever the form of the relation; but I hold it to be impossible to conceive of any adjustment of these relations on the basis of human nature, without opening the door on one side or other to the entry of disturbing elements. There are constitutional antitheses and contradictions in the emotional nature, which will forever prevent the affectional harmony which visionaries hope for. Sexual love is a compound of physical and spiritual elements, which, as we have seen, involves the paradox that a sufficiency for the end necessarily implies a redundance. The quite inexhaustible resources of the spiritual are necessarily stanched in large measure by the stringent limi- tations and exacting nature of the physical, and the two cannot 44^ THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. [Chap. XXXIV. be divorced from each other. Add to this the increasing size of the male head, if continued evolution in this direction is to be admitted, involving by correlation a change in the physical build and mental constitution of woman (section 216), thus ever making the difference wider between the sexes, and ever pre- serving the conditions of reproduction at the expense of the common basis of companionship. Still add that with the refine- ment and culture of peoples, the pain of childbirth (unless miti- gated by anaesthetics) and the frailty of infancy increase; and if there be greater joy in welcome births, it comes with greater solicitude and pain. Regard it as we may, we cannot elevate the crests of the waves without deepening the hollows between; and wherever the field of sensibility is exquisite, we may be sure that the ecstasy of enjoyment and the despair of suffering are very near to each other. However much our optimistic bent may incline us to envelop the future in an effulgence of bliss, we must, nevertheless, come in our cooler moments to the facts of recorded and present experience, and these compel us to reject the notion of perfect harmony in the affectional relations at any time or under any circumstances, as a Utopian dream. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. Section 224. — Another field in which feeling has played a large part in relation to happiness, is that of religion. The point with which we are here concerned is, whether religion becomes the source of a greater or less average of happiness as the world grows older. It has always had its two sides. Religious feel- See. 22J.] DEITIES OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. 447 ing and religious rites, no doubt, had their origin in fear and dread, in the interests of hope and confidence. The one per- vading feature of primitive religions, whether revealed in history or observed by modern travelers, is that the rites and observances thereof are deprecatory. The peoples fear their gods. Their notion of the beings, whom they imagine controlling the ele- ments, and appointing the events of human life, is that they are inclined to malignancy, and looking out for chances and pretexts to do harm. Hence, the great object of primitive religious rites is to please and appease these divinities. In primitive religions, the positive element appears to be dread of divine malice; and the negative element the assurance of divine favor. But, while there is a considerable degree of apprehension, fear, and terror associated with primitive religion, which it is difficult for the civilized mind to measure, it is probably not so great as is some- times supposed. The devotees cringe to their deities, but not without believing that their deities may also cringe to them. If the required good is not forthcoming, they chastize their gods by inflicting indignity upon them, or upon their images. But, as among primitive peoples there is so little assurance of regularity, and life so completely at the mercy of the elements and the caprices of fortune, over all of which their religion broods, it has to be admitted that it is almost, or quite wholly, made up of the conflicting emotions of hope and fear, with the joy of success and the gloom of disappointment. But the primitive man is not so sensitive as the civilized man, and the contrast in these emo- tions is not so sharply drawn as further on in the scale of mental development. He neither enjoys so much, nor suffers so much, whether it be of the religious or any other emotion. Section 225. — When the conception of continued existence after death came to be added to the stock of religious ideas, there appears to have been a clear gain to the side of happiness. Still, in early times, the notion of the future life does not appear to have been a flattering one. The departed were only shades — such beings as the living saw in their dreams no doubt — and not capable of a full measure of enjoyment, such as was experi- 448 THE RELIGIOUS consolations. \Chap. XXXIV, enced in real life. They would no doubt have made the future life an elysiumof bliss, if they had had their own unrestrained way with it, but they were hedged in by the limits of their expe- rience; and they peopled the nether world only with the shades of human beings. This, however, changed in time, and the future life came to be looked forward to for greater happiness than is possible on earth. The admission of the natural body, improved and glorified, into the future state of existence pre- sented something tangible, around which the fondness of antici- pation might cluster its creations. But, unfortunately, the nerves of sense may suffer as well as enjoy; — and still religion kept up its duality of balances. Even in the realm of faith the gain must be offset with an equal loss — such is the perversity of human nature. Along with the heaven of bliss was conceived the hell of infinite and everlasting torture; and along with angels and ministering spirits came demons and devils, and the religious mind was an arena of perpetual warfare. Those who held these views were, doubtless, more sensitive than primitive people, without being remarkable for tenderness of sympathy, else such dogmas must have ensured for them the dread presence of mental agony all through life. It is no doubt a principle of compensation to be thankful for, that the mind which suffers greatly from faith in the dreary dogmas, is almost certain in the end to reject them. We live in a period when the weird and lugubrious are departing. Witches and malignant spirits are not much abroad now; the devil is well nigh chained; hell is subjected to the modern improvements, and it is no longer the terrible place it was. But alas, with the abatement of hell comes also an abatement of heaven ! The life hereafter is conceived in the midst of civilization, as among less cultured peoples, to be only a continuation of this life with little change in any way; and following fast upon the heels of this is the growing suspicion that there is no hereafter at all. So that in getting rid of the terrible, its antithesis seems equally ready to depart. "Heaven and hell are corollaries which rise and fall together." — (Leslie Stephen). I aim but to state a fact as per- Sec. 2 2 J.] COMPENSATING EXTREMES. 449 ceived by accurate observers, and which almost any one may verify for himself. Those who are most advanced in intelligence indulge little in the ecstasies of religion. No one can shout glory in the sure consciousness of the remission of his sins, unless he first believes that his soul is in danger of being lost on account of sin. With the dread of the devil and of hell goes the inexpres- sible joy of the soul's consciousness of salvation. Without first the agony there is no basis for the rapture; and the two very well illustrate the equal and opposite poles of the emotional magnet. During the ages which may be regarded as theological, when there was the greatest intensity of religious feelings, religious disputes assumed their bitterest form, and led not only to alien- ation of feeling and social hostility, but to the most cruel and desolating of wars. With the increase of secular feeling, and the decrease of intensity in religious, or rather theological, feeling, hostility is much less likely to break out and lead to dire results. The leveling down in the sway and intensity of the theological animus is accompanied with the equal leveling down of its ecstasies and its discordances. The hollows of the waves are not so deep because the crests do not rise so high. In times past the consolations of religion have been effective to brace up the broken spirit of oppressed creatures whose life was one continued scene of cheerless reality. If life was poor Heaven was made rich. The crushed on earth would be the strong in Heaven, and the bond would be the free. But the invasion of the theological frame of mind by the secular is dry- ing up this fountain of human happiness. This would be a loss not so much to be regretted, if we were sure that there is less need for such comfort now than in former times. Heaven need not be so rich, if life on earth has become richer, and still the average of happiness in life would be maintained. Man's mas- tery through discovery and invention of the forces of nature redounds to his good in many ways, but it is nevertheless narrow- ing the field for providential interference, changing the character 45° THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. \Chap. XXXIV, of religious expectancy, and depriving it of many of its old forms of consolation. But while the earthly life is in many respects improved by the appliances of civilization in the bene- fits of which all share, there are yet other respects in which there is as much need as ever for the consolation which religion can scarcely longer give, and which, being constantly sought, as constantly eludes the pursuer. But we may easily estimate too highly the consolations afforded by religion in the past Hell and purgatory and the displeasure of avenging deities acted on the fears of believers, and their influence was depressing. The decay of the terrible dogmas may appear to be a great gain, and yet, although they were conceived in gloom, and in gloom held sway, we are quite inclined to overrate the unhappiness they caused. The mind that could entertain such dogmas in full consciousness, was not a mind to take great trouble from the contemplation of their consequences. Doubtless with many the fate of the damned was felt to be a satisfactory result of persistent refusal of the means of grace, and the thought of the torments of the wicked may have given pleasure rather than pain. This was probably the prevailing feeling in Christendom for centuries. Only on this supposition can we understand the genesis and acceptance of such beliefs. But it is to be noted that however terrible the dogmas of purgatory and hell may have been pictured for the alarm of wicked people, there was always provided a ready means of escape, which did not necessarily require the self- denial which practical virtue implies; and those whom such dog- mas really affected could easily secure their escape from eternal misery. And since those ages were theological, quite all had such connection with the church as secured their own salvation; and then if the thought of the sufferings of the unredeemed was to increase the happiness of the redeemed, it would be waste sympathy on our part to regret the effect of the terrible dogmas on human happiness. The little sensibility of those times may have required a stimulus of this sort ; and the pleasure derived therefrom, even if coarse, like that of the gladiatorial shows Sec. 226.'] PRIVATE JUDGMENT AND THE CONVERSE. 45 1 and the burning of heretics, may even have overbalanced any misery they may have caused. Peter. Lombard taught that the contemplation of the sufferings of the damned would enhance the joy of the redeemed. Very near our own times, Jonathan Edwards said : "The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardor of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven." And "the sight of hell-torments will incite the happi- ness of the saints forever; and it will make them more sensible of their own happiness ; it will give them a more lively relish of it ! Oh, it will make them sensible how happy they are!" This view does not assume that the saints will have much tenderness of sympathy — not so much as people in the flesh are usually supposed to have. Under the prevalence of greater sympathy, and sensibility, and instinctive rationality in our own times, the retention of such dogmas would indeed be terrible; and their decline is becoming a necessity to prevent the absolute augmen- tation of human misery through their direct agency. In estimating the drift of what is popularly understood as religion, faith, worship, we may safely say that while the dogmas have less power to alarm than in times past, they have also less power to console, and that this tendency is still in progress. The loss of the power to curse in the name of dogmatic religion goes with the loss of power to bless; and the end is not yet. Section 226. — The professed religious people of the civilized world are at present somewhat indistinctly divided into two great parties, the one asserting the right of private judgment, the other denying it. It may be a question whether Protestantism, in stimulating the exercise of this cardinal principle of freedom, is doing more for the happiness of the people than the papal system in seeking to allay it. Of course, the conditions of hap- piness are not the same for all. Granted the intelligence which led to Protestantism, then is the more liberal system a necessary one in the interest of happiness. But a Roman Catholic will tell us that the faith, and confidence, and peace which his church cherishes in its people, are better than the wrangle of a thou- 45 2 THE RELIGIOUS CONSOLATIONS. [Chap. XXXIV. sand Protestant sects and the comfortless doubts to which Protestantism leads. The cultured, intelligent, truth-seeking bent of mind has its joys, but therefor it must suffer the pain of doubt, and very often the pain of unsettling and casting off old and cherished beliefs. It suffers ills which the mind clothed in perpetual faith knows nothing of. But on the other hand, the penalty of peace to the model papist is mental stupor so far as the highest functions of our intellectual nature are concerned. So that while the one retains, he cannot gain; and while the other gains, he must lose. But this is not a question of what we will, or will not. We might demonstrate that the filial trust which the Catholic rou- tine secures is superior, and above all things desirable; yet there would be no possible way of making it universal. We are driven by an inexorable fatality along the pathway of evolution, and we must travel it whether we will or not. Admit that Protestantism will be resolved eventually into Romanism on the one side and into the religion of science on the other, and that in the end the religion of science will prevail ; — what is to be hoped from the consolations of such religion as science shall embody? It would be premature to attempt to point out its gains and losses; but both there certainly will be. With progress in science, faith in immortality is evidently weakening, while the religious interests being weaned from the next world are turning with wiser con- cern to this. There is apparently less theology and more catho- lic fellow feeling among mankind. If the faith in immortality should be lost, it will be a loss which in the present state of the human mind, nothing can fully repair. But the intense egotism of individuality may abate somewhat with the progress of knowl- edge, and there may be compensation for loss in the ideal by ameliorations in the actual. The energy now given to the theo- retical and practical branches of the theological system, may then be given to ascertaining the laws of existence and adopt- ing practical measures in accordance therewith to promote the welfare of man individually and collectively. But while some- thing, perhaps much, is to be hoped for from this diversion of Sec. 226.] DOUBTFUL COMPENSATION. 453 human energy from the interests of a class to the interests of men in general, it will no doubt have more than it can do to maintain the social status unimpaired against the moral cankers of an advancing civilization. Should there ever be a reign of science over mankind in gen- eral, religion will no doubt be less individual and egoistic than in the past, and at the same time more sympathetic and fraternal. But even here is a loss for which it will be difficult to find full compensation. The law-deity of science is a cold abstraction compared with the anthropomorphic deity of theology. The former can be looked to for none of that sweet comfort which comes of the consciousness that Providence has a personal inter- est in us as individuals and cares for us as a parent cares for his children. All that science can promise in doubtful compensa- tion, is that, for the loss of this ideal personal sympathy from above, there shall be more real working sympathy between man and man, with improvement in the conditions of his life, afford- ing more diversity of opportunity for happy exertion and war- ranting life actually better. If our view be correct, that the future man is not to be a philosopher, but only a being of mediocrity, it might be inferred that he will cling to some form of dogma throughout all the future as throughout all the past. But we cannot be at all sure of this. Not the philosophical and cultured only become skep- tical of the prevailing theological systems ; the working people of many countries, England, France, Germany, and this country, are becoming quite extensively afflicted with the leaven of skepti- cism. It seems to spring largely out of the modern control of the forces of nature in subjecting them to human uses quite independent of any direct assistance from the gods. It is in the air, and like a contagion seizes on the minds of common people. And so far as the theological bias of such long stand- ing permits, the ready common sense of the plain, practical? uncultured classes draws inferences unfriendly to priestly pre- tensions. Now, if all mankind could become highly artistic, sympa- 454 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \C1ldp. XXXV. thetic, and philosophical, with an abundance of means for the realization of ideals., we might imagine them forming a society so exalted that they could get along very well without the religious consolations of which there has heretofore been such great need. But no such society is possible \ and even if scientific in form, it must be composed mainly of mediocre peo- ple; and if these may lose their religion, as they are losing it under the adverse education of industrial life itself, the loss is a real one, for which it is difficult to conceive an adequate com- pensation. CHAPTER XXXV. PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. Section 227. — Without a complete change in the constitution of our emotional nature, pleasure and happiness unmixed with pain are not possible. The Utopia of which optimists dream — ■ a state of unalloyed bliss — finds no warrant in any rational inter- pretation of human experience. Without experience of pain we should have no conception of pleasure. "II y a une con- nexion necessaire entre le plaisir et la douleur ; il est impossible de concevoir que la douleur ne soit pas la 011 est le plaisir." — (Bouillier). Voysey, quoted by Dr. Yeo, says : " To enjoy pleasure at all there must be alternation with sensations more or less painful." Hinton observes : " Whether it may seem para- doxical or not, it is a fact in our nature that, without endurance, life ceases to be enjoyable ; without pains accepted, pleasure will not be permanent." — (Mystery of Pain). Paley puts the idea quaintly ; after speaking of the pain as the price of the pleasure which follows its cessation, he says : . " I am far from Sec. 228.1 RELATIVITY OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 455 being sure, that a man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four- and-twenty." We are only conscious at all by transition from one state of mind to another. — (Section 77). Consciousness owes its exis- tence to the differences of feeling which accompany the succes- sion of mental changes. Without unlikeness between one men- tal action and another, there would be but one thought, and consequently no thought at all, for want of the differences which give definition. With only one idea, if it were possible, we should be worse off than driveling idiots. " To be always sensi- ble of the same thing is not to be sensible of anything." — (Hobbes). This difference between thoughts runs through all grades from the merest difference to perfect contrast or opposi- tion. Hence, the axiom in logic that we do not know what any given thought is until we know what it is not. " We only know anything by knowing it as distinguished from something else ; all consciousness is of difference ; two objects are the smallest number required to constitute consciousness ; a thing is only seen to be what it is by contrast with what it is not." — ■ (J. S. Mill). This is the law of every form of conscious feeling ; and as we have already seen, in listing the emotional opposites of the human mind (Section 80), every feeling has its antithesis. Section 228. — The relativity of pleasure and pain is proved by the commonest experiences of life. The youth who is in possession of perfect health and has never been sick, does not realize the wealth of his possession. There is a scale of health measured by degrees, and one who has not had experience on a long range of the scale is not capable of estimating the meas- ure of such health experiences as differ only by small degrees. While a slight indisposition may make a usually well person miserable, the bed-ridden subject is happy only to be able to look out of the window and see the sunshine and the fields; and if barely able to walk about and enjoy these luxuries, he is in an ecstasy of delight. The strong one is miserable and the feeble one is happy because the feelings of each are determined 456 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. by comparison with previous experiences. Dr. George M. Beard observes: "Perfect health of itself is not a condition of positive happiness, and is not at all essential to happiness. The happiest persons I have seen, or expect to see, were partial invalids." And further on: "The mystery, long noted by physicians, that patients who are half cured of a severe malady are more grateful than even those fully cured, is explained by the fact that we need a certain degree of debility, a limited and bearable amount of pain or discomfort, to keep us constantly mindful, by contrast, of the pleasantness of our present state as compared with what it has been or might be." — (American Nerv- ousness, 277-8). Feeling in general, like the sense of temperature, is relative, and is aptly paralleled by the well-known experiment which is used to illustrate the relativity of the sense of tempera- ture. The water in the intermediate basin is either warm or cold to the touch as determined by the relative condition of the nerves that test it; just as in life, the same experiences may give either pleasure or pain, owing to the condition in which the receptivity of the subject may be. The relativity of our estimate of pleasure and pain is brought into definite shape, and given even mathematical expression by Fechner, and is thus summarized by Henry Farquhar (Popular Science Monthly, August, 1879: "Sensibility to grief and joy, as the experience of every one will attest, becomes feebler with an increase of the amount sustained. So, a faint sound can be heard only in comparative silence, and our footsteps surprise us by their resounding din on the floor of an empty hall, though no louder, as reflection easily assures, than when the hall is filled with a bustling multitude. So, though the stars give us their whole light in the daytime, our eye, with the stimulus of an illuminated atmosphere, fails to discover them. This law, as stated by Fechner, is, in mathematical language, the excitement of a nerve varies in arithmetical progression as the exciting cause varies in geometrical progression, or degrees of sensation correspond to logarithms of the quantities perceived." A like formula of the law is that, sensation is the logarithm of stimu- Sec. 22$.] CONTRAST NECESSARY TO APPRECIATION. 457 his; but it is not at all in the nature of the emotional sphere, owing to individual idiosyncrasy and variability of mood, to admit of any such mathematical precision, and we can only accept Fechner's law as indicating, in a general way, the relative proportion of stimulus to feeling. It is on a principle nearly related to this, that people may become so used to painful experiences as to be comparatively little affected by them; while on the other hand, when not so used to them, a little adverse experience may cause pain appar- ently out of all proportion to its cause. The same is to an equal extent true of pleasurable experiences. Even pessimists must admit of pleasures which have little or no direct connec- tion with pain, as, a ramble in the groves, a walk by the sea, viewing a beautiful landscape. But those who are in the pres- ence of such scenes every day of their lives become indifferent to them. The impression cannot retain its freshness under frequent repetition. Should these same people be confined in prison or among the dingy walls of the city, they would come suddenly to an appreciation of rural beauty. So, thousands enjoy civil liberty and never think of the boon; but three years service under military law has brought many a one to a sense of the value of civil freedom. Thus, what seems to be unmixed good may not be appreciated until it appears in the light of a contrast, and by such contrast is it intensified even when appre- ciated. Those who are born rich cannot thoroughly appreciate the value of having the means wherewith to do. Only those can who have suffered from limitation in this respect. To a person in want, a hundred dollars may be a godsend, giving inexpres- sible joy; to the wealthy man it is only a bagatelle which stirs not the smallest ripple of emotion. There is not the same difference in the happiness of the different orders of society as the difference in their outward condition would indicate. It is relative with classes, as it often is with individuals. Many a one will "fly to pieces" at some trivial mishap, who would meet a great calamity with the bearing of a hero. Members of the 45 8 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \Chap. XXXV. humble classes have their moderate aims in life, and success brings pleasure and disappointment pain, just as in the higher ranks where the stake appears to be much greater. The wealthy are greatly envied, and often by those who are better off than themselves in the real enjoyments of life. It is quite true "that luxury adds less to the ordinary enjoyment of life than most men struggling with penury suppose : there are special delights attending the hard-earned meal, and the eagerly expected amusement, which must be weighed against the profuser pleas- ures that the rich can command; so that we may fairly conclude that increase of happiness is very far from keeping pace with increase of wealth." — (Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 144). Great wealth performs the double function of bringing anxiety and perplexity on the one hand, and frivolity, indolence, and ennui on the other. Usually one member of the family cares for the estate, and the rest have nothing to do but to ape the prevalent ways of enjoying it. And the trouble with this class in finding enjoyment is, that constant satiety is not compatible with the zest of enjoyment which flows from the gratification of sharpened appetite. There is no jubilant feeling, for want of the subjective contrast from which such feeling springs. The lady who puts on a fine dress but once a week enjoys it more, feels finer, than if she went sumptuously clothed every day. The torture of the luxurious is to find contrast, not only in the style of life, but in the feeling which accompanies it. Fear and apprehension lend greater distinctiveness to hope. There is no rest for those who never get tired. And for the weariness and disgust of satiety there is absolutely no remedy but the diver- sion to honest occupation, — and this rests under the inevitable ban of genteel scorn. The holidays of the working people, by virtue of their contrast with the every day experiences of life, have for them a freshness and buoyancy which the wealthy idle and the sated pleasure-hunters seldom enjoy. It is the "rare- ness gives leisure half its charm." A gambol on the lawn or a stroll by the lakeside rests and refreshes the children of honest toil, who can afford, indeed, to be little envious of the dead Sec. 22(?.] PLEASURE PREDOMINATES OVER PAIN. 459 level in high life so at variance with the conditions of a high order of enjoyment. The exclusive pursuit of pleasure itself proves that it is no absolute thing to be had without price. I say no new thing; the law is understood even by those who set it at defiance. Seneca is thus on record concerning pleasures: "The more in number and the greater they are, the more general and absolute a slave is the servant of them. Let the common people pronounce him as happy as they please, he pays his lib- erty for his delights, and sells himself for what he buys." Section 229. — The pain accompanying desire is attended with anticipation, which renders desire of mixed character, containing both pleasure and pain, — the measure of intensity and of hope connected therewith determining whether pleasure or pain shall predominate. While the earliest experience associated with motion of the muscles teaches to avoid pain and seek pleasure, this is what every one does all through life with more or less wis- dom. In simple forms of life it is easy enough, but more diffi- cult in complicated forms placed within a complicated environ- ment, to find the pleasurable and avoid the painful. Add to this, that we are formed under the exercise of choice, getting our physical and mental constitution from development under the action of seeking the pleasurable and avoiding the painful, and surely we have warrantable ground for the doctrine that the pleasures of existence far outweigh its pains. It is an example of motion in the direction of least resistance. This might not, however, decide whether or not the environment is calculated to give pleasure rather than pain ; but when we reflect that the environment itself is the product of motion in the direction of least resistance, there is some warrant for the assumption of a necessary prevalence of harmonious over discordant action. Mr. Sully rejects the pleasurability of function as an element which tells for the prevalence of pleasure over pain in existence, because of the great amount of pain which is compatible with the necessary discharge of function and with continued exist- ence. But this seems to overlook the large part which the voluntary element in function plays in connection with life and 460 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. development. In the higher spheres of life, however, he fully recognizes the weight of this voluntary element. "As soon as intelligence discovers that there are fixed objects, per- manent sources of pleasure, and large groups of enduring inter- ests, which yield a variety of such recurring enjoyments, the rational will preferring the greater to the less, will unfailingly devote its energies to the pursuit of these." — (Pessimism.) All through life we are constantly choosing the agreeable and avoiding the painful, just as the child learning to use its hands, only in a higher and more complex way. "In this way the wise man seeks to keep his desires within the boundaries of possibil- ity. He learns to abandon the wild, foolish, unguided longings of youth, and endeavors to satisfy himself, in a sense, with hopes and aims which rest on the basis of fact." And further: "To gain this command over one's life, to rise to the calm view of the larger collective ends, and to subordinate all particular impulses to a general dominant plan of felicity — this it may be said, means harsh self-discipline and fatiguing effort. I do not deny the fact. Yet reasonable persons will hardly imagine that such pain really renders doubtful the clear remainder of pleasur- able conditions which is secured by these operations." — (Sully). Self-restraint is unfailingly necessary to the largest measure of happiness. Without such restraint, we are tortured with futile desire, and in order to avoid the pain attending such desire, we voluntarily incur the milder pain of self-restraint. It is from such consideration the fact comes clearly into consciousness, that the moral life is the adjustment of conflict in such way as to avoid the greater evil and secure the greater good. The greater balance of happiness can only be had by paying its price. Making up the mind, or forming a resolution amidst conflict- ing considerations is a mental phenomenon which is familiar to every deliberative person, and it illustrates the conflict which concerns the adjustment of conduct to the situations of life. Franklin's "moral algebra," by means of which he determined the right thing to do, affords a graphic representation of the sphere of antagonism. Setting down his reasons pro and con on Sec. 2JO.] OVERCOMING OPPOSITION. 46 1 the two sides of the equation, he then compared them together, estimating their values as accurately as possible, and cancelling the positive and negative equivalents, the remainder showed on which side the greater weight of reason lay, and determined the character of the resolution. All seemingly desirable things can- not be had, for they are in conflict, and one part excludes the other, till only a residue may be utilized on the side of enjoy- ment. Section 230. — One of the most exquistite of pleasures is that of overcoming opposition and compassing an end in spite of its difficulties. This " contumacy in man," as Seneca calls it, is an inheritance we should not think lightly of. Without struggle there can be no victory and none of the joy which comes of victory. But much depends on the prize for which the contest is had. The devouring passion among the votaries of fashion to excel in the trivial vanities of life, is never fully compensated by the vulgar feeling of such a triumph, even when it crowns the struggle. And in the lower ranks of society the disadvantages of position are such that the contestants are weighted with the enervating conviction that at best they can do little more than hold their own. The position and prospects of the intermediate classes have more to encourage. Here effort may win, and the winnings give pleasure, When persistence and endurance are summoned by the effort, its successful results are anticipated with keener relish than if it was made with little sacrifice. The apparent impossibility of doing a thing is sometimes the stimu- lus to undertaking it and the support of a long-continued struggle for its accomplishment. A small prize may in this way bring greater happiness than a much larger one which is backed by no heroism in the winning. The greater the pain of procur- ing, the greater the zest of enjoying. Within certain limits it is the contrast that tells. The race only gets the means of enjoy- ing life by a struggle, by labor, by self-denial; and that every indi- vidual does not take his share of this self-denial is because of the incongruities of life, for which he and all others must suffer in some form ; — and all this in accordance with the principles which 21 462 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \CJlCtp. XXXV. these chapters aim to elucidate, — that every good thing has its price. The law of success in every field of endeavor is that, it is the reward of a certain sum of repugnance overcome. Be it some field of learning, some branch of science, some department of. philosophy, some speciality in the arts or in the professions, dis- tinction implies assiduous labor, attention to dry details, per- sistent bent of mind to the object in view. No man ever became an authority but through a deal of irksome labor, which no lover of ease would think of doing. Fame is the reward of toil now as well as in the heroic age, when Hercules said to his son Philoctetes : "Thou knowest what toils, what labors I endured, Ere I by virtue gained immortal fame; Thou too, like me, by toils must rise to glory; Thou too must suffer ere thou canst be happy." — \_Sophocles. Section 231. — Much quiet may come to the perturbed mind from the reflection that it might have been worse with us than it is. By contrast with lower conditions, we should be more content with our own. Set all on the same dead level, and we should lose both the example of the poorer, which reproaches us for whining, and the example of the better, which stimulates us to hopeful exertion. But if contrast with the lower favors content, contrast with the higher favors discontent ; and the two are interblended along the entire social scale. In regard to the acquisition of wealth, it is a common remark that success never brings contentment, but ever whets the desire for more. It is so in relation to knowledge, in relation to social and political rank. Those below are striving to enter the class next above, or so far as possible to ape it ; and while success in this direction gives pleasure, it is but the renewal of the stimulus to discontent and to further effort. Those who are at the very " top " are not satisfied, but are straining still further to surpass those below. Such as are in high official position are no more happy than those who have great wealth. The salary is not great enough to keep up the desired display — and it would not be enough if ever Sec. 2JI.] HAPPINESS IN HIGH PLACES. 463 so great — and many are tempted into questionable devices for relief. There is always something beyond them which they are striving to reach, and if not successful they are unhappy, and generally unhappy even if successful. There is no more wretched class of people than our political aspirants. " Ambi- tion puffs up with vanity and wind ; and we are equally troubled either to see anybody before us, or nobody behind us." — (Seneca). It is a fine thing to get to Congress, or to be the governor of a State ; but those who have mounted these rounds of the political ladder, want to go still higher. The most ambi- tious are desperate to get into the Senate, the Cabinet, the White House. To this end many are ready to lay aside their manli- ness, and become the tools of powerful classes who are able to reward them through the manipulation of public sentiment. Many are they who indulge the hope of one day being President of the United States, most of whom must be disappointed. But the attainment of this end does not satisfy. Few but want a second term after having tasted of the first ; and then even it goes hard to lay down power. The third term may be more des- perately and persistently sought after than the first ; and this achieved, it may be thought of as a life tenure, and finally as a family possession to be transmitted to a royal line. When men have given way all life long to the ambition of place, this desire of occupying the highest may become an infatuation. Some of the aspirants suppress the manifestation of it better than others. It may be that disappointment in this direction has almost broken the hearts and shortened the lives of several prominent Americans ; yet, how many below them had envied them their happiness, illustrating well the mistaken identity of the phantoms we pursue. Of course the pleasure derived from the possession cf place is an exquisite one, but it costs all it is worth, in the anxiety of mind in the struggle to reach it. And then to this we must add the dissatisfaction with it when had, and the dis- appointment of those who fail. Those with less ambition do not, indeed, enjoy the pleasure of position, but they escape on the other hand " the penalties of greatness." 464 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. [Chap. XXXV. "I envy all who pass their lives, secure From danger, to the world, to fame unknown, But those to greatness raised I envy not. " — Euripides' Agamemnon. In this field as in so many others, — pleasure gained, price paid. Section 232.— To a certain degree the pain is the measure of the enjoyment. The pleasure of taking food is in proportion to the pain of hunger. Yielding to slumber is sweeter for pro- longed vigils. Rest is most welcome when we are really tired. The sense of chilliness adds to the gratefulness of warmth. As a rule the greater the pain of deprivation, the greater the pleas- ure of gratification. "Ainsi, tout de meme qu'il n'est pas possible de separer la douleur du plaisir, tout de meme il n'est pas possible qu'ils ne soient pas en proportion Tun avec l'autre. Les grandes joies ne sont qu'a, la condition des grandes doulers." — (Bouillier). "Surely a truer knowledge lays its fullest and intensest grasp upon the painful elements of life, and holds them as the fundamental conditions of its joys." — (Hinton). This law holds among the higher sentiments. The pain which is suffered in the contemplation of misery, is the precise measure of the gratification which is felt in the contemplation of happi- ness. With an acute sense of justice, satisfaction with the pre- valence of right is only equaled by outrage with the prevalence of wrong. The more the truth is loved, the greater the detesta- tion of falsehood. The artistic sense more than another enjoys the beautiful and fitting, but at the same time suffers more from the presence of the incongruous and uncouth. The musical capacity of the ear is measured as well by its offense with discord as by its delight with concord. Symmetry is made more apparent by contrast with deformity. We judge of quality altogether by comparison, a principle which tricky dealers sometimes make use of to deceive their customers. The pleasure anticipated in the possession of an object is only equaled by the pain of missing it. The alternation of opposites in the emotions referred to in a previous chapter (Section 78), is to the point here, as when love turns into hate: "No hate so strong as what from dead love springs." — (Plato). Sec. 2 J 2J\ HIGHEST TASTES DISSATISFIED. 465 That pain and pleasure should be, to a certain extent, the measure of each other is to be expected from the fact that both depend on the same system of nerves; and that they should advance together in the career of development is also to be expected for the same reason. If the nerves are fine and sensitive, the pleasure is exquisite, and so also is the pain. In the lower animals there is a smaller range between the extreme of pain and the extreme of pleasure than in man; and in savages the range is less than in people of culture. It is true of compound as well as of simple feeling, that if the nervous seat of emotion favors a high degree of enjoyment, it favors equally a high degree of suffering. The more devoted the friendship, the greater the suffering when friends are torn asunder by any fatality. The greater the mother's love for her infant, the greater her anxiety when its life is in danger. And there is no escape from this dual action on the nerves of sensibility. The joy is sure to meet with its com- pensating sorrow. Members of the family, of the group of friends, must be surrendered one by one; and then the feeling of loss is commensurate with the remembrance of possession. And there is not a joy in all life, but has this poison in it, that it must come to an end at last. " The flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay- Tempts and then flies." And especially is this the penalty of living to be old. Without a revolution in the environment, it would be cruelty to supersede the human, with a higher race of beings — cruelty to the higher race; for, even if it were vouchsafed exemption from the fatuities of human frailty, it could not escape the inev- itable limitations of the physical conditions of life. "It is indis- putable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect." Thus J. S. Mill. Wollaston declared that brutes are better off than 466 PAIN AND PLEASURE INSEPARABLE. \Chap. XXXV. men, if there is no compensation in a life hereafter for human suffering here. But while it is no doubt true that mankind may, and in all probability do, enjoy more than they suffer, yet if all mankind were organized with fine nerves, gifted with high aspi- rations, and endowed with the skill and taste for highly artistic execution, then indeed would Wollaston's view of the situation be true. Section 233. — If it be true that pleasure and pain are rela- tive experiences, and that we enjoy and suffer to a large extent by comparison — and it is true — then the Utopians, who would establish a condition of society in which there would be nothing disagreeable, nothing repugnant, nothing painful, with no vic- tories to win, and thus annihilate emotional contrasts to secure perfect happiness, would thereby destroy the very conditions of happiness. We can readily imagine a state of uninterrupted enjoyment; but we forget that we are looking at the matter from present experiences in which the sense of pain enlivens our con- ception of its opposite ; and it is a trick of the emotions we cherish to assert their own eternity. Without its opposite to give the sense of enjoyment, it could not come into conscious- ness; or having once come into consciousness on its legitimate conditions, without alternation with contrast of feeling, it would very soon pall on the nerves of sensibility. Not only is the sensation something like the logarithm of stimulus, but if the stimulus be too long continued without variation, the nerves require something else for relief, and to break the monotony, even welcome a disagreeable sensation otherwise caused. Hence the mistake of Mohammedans regarding an exclusively sensual paradise, and of sensational Christians who think they will enjoy the rapture of a whole eternity shouting around the throne. It is a far more sensible rendering of common experience that " we can only get to heaven by going through hell": "No cross, no crown." The idea of making existence exclusively happy is like that of creating something out of nothing, or of getting a working power without an adequate source. In the utilization of steam as power there must be a long thermomet- Sec 2JJ.] LAW OF DIFFERENCES. 467 ric scale between the temperature of the vapor and that of sur- rounding space (section 54). Contrast in temperature is abso- lutely necessary to the existence of the working power; no more can there be pleasure and happiness without emotional contrast The molecules of nearly all the chemical elements are dual or polar (section 47), the presence of one half of the unit always implying the presence of the other. It is so with pleasure and pain as elements of consciousness; therefore, does the moral outlook of life necessarily exclude the perfection of unalloyed bliss, or any near approach to it The forms and degrees of pleasure and pain will change in the future as they have in the past, but they will always go hand in hand. Note. — The views stated in this chapter have been familiar to the writer's mind for many years, but they were not written out till some months after having read in the Popular Science Monthly (November, 1877} an articb on the Law of. Differences, by John W. Saxon. On referring to the article, I find I have used some of the same illustrations, in my own way, however, and have been, per- haps, in other respects, influenced by it. As to that matter, however, Plato has somewhat the advantage of either of us in priority, both as to the doctrine and its illustrations (section 2). "Sad havoc makes he with our originalities." Mr. Saxon's article skilfully molds the old doctrine into forms of modern thought. The following are extracts from it: "Keep in mind that, as all knowledge comes to us as the result of the different,, so do all emotions of pain or of pleasure. Every quality that is thinkable implies its opposite, or at least its different in degree. Happiness and misery are only relative terms. Absolute happiness cannot exist any more than a magnetic needle with only one pole." "Take the happiness that comes from social position in life. It arises from the fact that we are higher up than some one else. Bring all to the same level, and it would be enough to make an angel weep to see how much happiness some people would lose. Many would be bankrupt. Take the tramps and vagabonds out of society, and the whole fabric would be cut down one story; for, to change the figure, they put one more round into the ladder — it matters not that it is at the bottom — and give the climber a chance to go one round higher. It is the length of the ladder that counts, no matter where the bottom is placed. What are wealth and poverty ? Only relative terms. There is none so rich as the poor boy who has just received his first dollar for a week of hard work. We waste a great deal of pity on those who are born in the humbler ranks of life." The following passage from George J. Romanes is valuable for its philosophy, as well as its moral, bringing out as it does that pleasure cannot be had without paying its price, and that the refusal of the price is nothing saved, since, if not paid, it must be made good in the form of penalty : " There is not much to be said on the recreation of men belonging to the upper classes. That most objec- 468 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. tionable of creatures, the gentleman at large without occupation, has a free choice before him of every amusement that the world has to give ; but one thing he is hopelessly denied — the keen enjoyment of recreation. Living from year to year in a round of varied pastimes, he becomes slowly incapacitated for form- ing habits of work, while at the same time he is slowly sapping all the enjoyment from play. For, although variety of amusement may please for a time, it is notorious that it cannot do so indefinitely. The intellectual changes which are involved in the changes of amusement are not sufficiently pronounced to recreate even the faculties on which the sense of amusement depends ; the mind, there- fore, becomes surfeited with a tune too constantly played — even though the tune be played in frequently changing keys. For such men, if passed middle life, I have no advice to give. They have placed themselves beyond the possibility of finding recreation, and their only use in the world is to show the doom of idle- ness. They, more than even paupers, are the parasites of the social organism; and we can scarcely regret that their lumpish life, being one of stagnation self- induced, should be one of miserable failure, to the wretchedness of which we can extend no hope." — (Popular Science Monthly). I conclude with the testimony in brief of still another witness: "A life from which everything that has in it the element of pain is banished, becomes a life not worth having; or worse, of intolerable tedium and disgust. There is ample proof in the experience of the foolish among the rich, that no course is more fatal to pleasure than to succeed in putting aside everything that can call for endurance. The stronger and more generous faculties of our nature, debarred from their true exercise, avenge themselves by poisoning and embittering all that remains." — (Hinton, Mystery of Pain, 47). CHAPTER XXXVI. USES IN GENERAL, SUMMARY, AND CONCLUSION. [On the original plan of this volume, the following chapter, with four others which preceded it, constituted Part VII., with the general title: Practical Illustrations of the Principle. The four chapters have been left out, mainly because they would make the volume too large. A reason, also, for their omission is that they discuss practical questions which interest a far larger Sec. 2J4.] FORMS OF ANTAGONISM. 469 class of readers than could any theoretical discussion of the philosophy of conflict. They are reserved for publication in a separate small volume with the title — The Reforms: Their Diffi- culties and Possibilities. Two of them discuss the question of Labor and Capital, one that of Finance, the other Various Reforms, — all practical questions of the day. The manner of statement adopted therein, it is believed, is within the easy comprehension of the people whose interests the discussions most concern. Whatever may be thought of the views therein given, they have been conceived in a spirit of sincere sympathy with "the people" as distinct from privileged classes. The lacuna caused by the omission in question necessarily detracts somewhat from fullness of statement, and narrows the basis on which the following summary rests.] Section 234. — The form of optimism which we have had particularly in view, is that which regards nature and life as essentially harmonious, the discord and pain which prevail being incidental or negative, and due mainly to the contumacy of man himself in not submitting to the order of nature, or in setting up his will against God's will. It is this view, we think, which is answerable for so much misconception in the problems of life, leading to extravagant expectation and misdirected effort to do away with the inevitable. If there is general antagonism in the constitution and action of matter and the forces, it cannot be without result to know it. If the constitution of things be dual and antagonistic, action must take place under resistance, and out of this resistance in relation to sentient being must arise discord and evil. If man is a part of the universe, this ineradicable antagonism must be incorporated into his own constitution; and hence antagonism must necessarily enter into society and be inseparable from life. It is direct and indirect, appearing for the most part, in practical life, in veiled and modified forms, in such way that one good cannot be had without the loss of another, or there cannot be gain on one side without loss on the other. And this being 47° USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. deep-seated in the nature of things only admits of direction in a certain sense, when it comes within the sphere of the intellect and will, and then only through adequate motive. Wise men would use the appliances of education and statesmanship to develop and strengthen such motive. And this is the more necessary because there are times and stages in movement, when the better is only to be conserved by struggle. If these propositions be true, then can there be no compre- hensive philosophy of life without giving them due weight. If life cannot be noble without self-denial, if society cannot be great without the rigid observance of the sterner virtues, then should these principles be inculcated in relation to duty and organized as far as possible into practical life, as necessary means to the greatest good. From the very beginning mankind have no doubt found a large proportion of the general sum of happiness in the glamour of delusions, which they had themselves wrought into existence under the pressure of emotional need. If delusion in its gen- eral form of optimism had no foibles with stings, it would be cruel to uncover its logical weaknesses. But human nature is such that every untruth will be probed to the bottom, and its character exposed, whether a practical, good can be shown to grow out of the process or not. But optimism has foibles with stings. Optimism is not merely untrue; it is largely the occa- sion of wasted endeavor and of blasted hopes. If there be evils which are not incidental, and which the world cannot outgrow, then is it futile to labor for their extermination. The endeavor may be ever so well meant, but this would not justify it, if it is misdirected. It is not always the case that the most enthusiasm is shown where the labor tells most for good; very often the endeavor becomes fanatical and self-sacrificing when there is no possibility of accomplishing the end aimed at. It is precisely when moral labor is the most futile that it is apt to be the most unselfish and devoted. It is not usually the happy, cheerful natures that make this mistake, but the more sensitive and despondent. A cheer- SeC. 2J4-~\ INFLUENCE OF TEMPERAMENT. 47 1 ful person does not take so gloomy a view of existing conditions, as does one of the opposite temperament; bad does not seem so bad as to such as see through feelings of sympathy and despondency. He is pretty well satisfied with things as they are; while one of sensitive and sympathetic temperament dwells on the pain in the world till his feelings concerning it become morbid; and then if he believes that all this evil is unnecessary, that by effort and right-doing it may be greatly palliated, or wholly eradicated, he throws himself with all his might into the endeavor, be it wise or unwise, to bring about this end. This is very laudable in all that concerns the motive of the work, but not always so laudable in what concerns its fitness and efficiency. On the contrary, there is no warrant for the defense of pessim- ism on the ground of amiable weaknesses. It is not, like optim- ism, apparently calculated to give pleasure by its very delusions. It affords no encouragement for trying to make the world better by active means. Its panacea is inaction. It would palliate the evils of existence by cultivating quietism, and end them through the extinction of existence by the stilling of the will. If it is a result of optimism to undertake too much, it is a result of pessimism to undertake too little. The error, as usual, lies in the extremes. In tracing optimism and pessimism to differences of temper- ament as their respective sources, Mr. Sully doubtless overlooks a psychological pecularity which complicates the subject. Very often persons of melancholy temperament are the most pro- nounced optimists, manifesting a zeal for the furtherance of per- fection which is every way creditable to their goodness if not to their discernment. This is probably the artistic temperament, which will be satisfied with nothing short of perfection. And then, we must not forget the tendency of extremes to react into each other. The monk dreams of love, the starving castaway feasts on sumptuous viands, the Arctic explorer basks in sunny fields. In a different connection, however, Mr. Sully states this emotional tendency : "It is to be remarked that this idea of human improvement frequently takes the vaguer shape of the 472 USES IN general. \Chap. XXXVI, formation of an ideal life, individual and social, which is regarded as possible and realizable. It would be found that writers who are disposed to be pessimists in relation to obvious facts fre- quently fall back on such an ideal conception. For example, ethical writers who are ready to take a very humble estimate of the average moral condition of mankind, as it actually presents itself now, find a solvent for this depressing view of things in the idea of a moral regeneration and elevation which clearly lie within human reach." — (Pes. 35). There are many such among earnest people; the authors of Political Justice and of Race Education are striking examples. Section 235. — There are minds of a certain temper which will not resolve to do, unless the method is radical and heroic, and the end to be attained well nigh perfect. Is it temperance reform they want? Nothing but the universal and clean sweep of prohibition and total abstinence will answer the end. Is there injustice in the distribution of wealth? Let it be taken in hand for regulation by the State. Are there crying abuses in the exercise of political power ? The remedy — abolish the State. Does remorseless monopoly crush ? Confiscate rent. Is busi- ness dull ? Issue more greenbacks, or increase the tariff. Are there religious abuses and degeneracy in the church ? Abolish God. Are production and the support of life expensive? Invent the perpetual motion: and so on to the end of an almost endless list ; and the last may be taken as the type of all of them. The perpetual motion runs perfectly in the inventor's head; but when he gets it into actual wheels, cogs, shafts, and levers, he is the most astonished man in the world to see it stand still. But he is almost certain to try again ; and he may die at last in the futile attempt. Is such a one wasting life ? The remedy would be a little knowledge of physics. It is quite so with the reform- ers who have perfect remedies for the cure of social and political evils. If they could set up the machinery of their invention for a little while, they would be driven by the result to the invention of reasons for its failure to run ; and while the schemes had not cured the ills of life, they would often fail to cure their invent- Sec. 2JS-1 PRACTICAL NEED OF WISER DIRECTION. 473 ors of their mania for perfection in human affairs. Some, how- ever, would become wiser, and would be willing to accept of mitigation wherever it is to be had; and some might come to perceive that so far from its being a question of perfection, it is often a question of greater imperfection, and would even be wil- ling to assist in arresting, if possible, certain tendencies in the direction of greater wrong. Society-curing practice, like some diseases, breaks out from time to time with a sort of periodicity. It is the outcome of a peculiar, sympathetic, and sanguine temperament ill-disciplined for the kind of work it takes in hand. Its arguments are often specious, and its sophisms not easy to detect; but with sufficient knowledge of fundamental principles, it may be safely pro- nounced erroneous without the laborious examination of details. A motor of mysterious power, or a perpetual motion, is at once condemned by its pretensions, and no physicist inquires into its claims. If sociology, or even political economy, were as well understood as physics, no claim of a discovery of simple remedy for the evils of society would gain credence. We may go back to still more fundamental principles. If the doctrine of Con- flict and its corollaries be true, all claims for social cure-alls may be set down at sight as extravagances. There is no catholicon for society any more than an elixir of life for perpetual youth, or a philosopher's stone for the transmutation of dross into gold. They are all dreams. To some it may appear quite uncalled for, this protest against the impulsive character of reform movements, because the peo- ple so generally show little interest in them, being too busy with their own individual interests. It may be said that, while there is so much indifference, such movements can do no harm. But this would overlook the important fact that this very indifference is largely due to the wildness and impracticability, if not injustice, of certain attempted "reforms." If the measures of reform were generally more comprehensive and practical, and less one-sided and sensational, they would suffer fewer abortions to drive off practical people; and their steady growth in efficiency would 474 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. secure constantly greater co-operation, and the greatest good possible would be done. The difference between a practical measure for good and a measure for impracticable perfection is very well illustrated by the anti-corn-law and chartist agitations which were both raging in England at the same time. The chartists believed that the free trade agitation, even if successful, would only tickle the sur- face a little, while theirs was the cause that would go to the root of things and cure all the evils. Just extend the suffrage and the people would combine on peoples' measures by unerring instinct, and justice and prosperity would forever reign in Great Britain. This form of delusion is generic and chronic; it has many species still undergoing development, rather than extinc- tion. It is forgotten, or not known, that it is easy to deceive, corrupt, and mislead the rabble, and that such opportunities are always improved. The chartist petition with three million sig- natures, requiring sixteen men to carry it into the House of Commons, only shows how easy it is to be carried away with the delusive glamour of some measure that promises to be thorough and complete in its operations ; while less pretentious measures are almost sure to accomplish more good. Chartism failed, but corn came in tariff free, and cheap bread greatly advanced the prosperity of England. While it is quite likely that the general class of artistic imprac- ticables is multiplying under the influences of existing civiliza- tion, there are, of course, many fields in which it finds ample occasion for the exercise of its peculiar powers. Especially is this the case in America, which is likely to become the nursery of an immense brood of vagaries; for even when they do not spring up in our own free soil, but originate in Europe, the system of espionage and repression in vogue there, sends them across to this country, where they take root and fail not to grow in our susceptible soil. It becomes us, therefore, in behalf of our own National interests, as well as on the more disinterested considerations of altruism, to anticipate these evils by all the fitting appliances which science, philosophy, and education SeC. 236.] GREATEST BALANCE OF GOOD. 475 place in our hands. It has been a purpose of the present vol- ume, whether successful or not, to assist in this work. The husbandry of effort would be greatly promoted by a just con- ception of what may or may not be accomplished; but if this, in the present state of our knowledge, cannot be had, as in many instances it cannot, the acknowledgment to ourselves of the well grounded distinction between eradicable and ineradi- cable evil is a primary condition of deliberate and well directed endeavor. We would be better satisfied with the palliation and mitigation of certain evils, if we were able to see that their complete extirpation is impossible. With such views to guide we should quit the fanatical waste of endeavor for "perfection," and aim rather to choose the less evil and the greater good, or more accurately, in all pairs of good and evil — for they mostly go in pairs — we would endeavor to choose such as have the greatest balance of good in them. This, is, indeed, precisely what mankind have been all along unconsciously doing, by rough experience and the inst'nct growing out of it, rather than by conscious deliberation. While many practical matters are so complicated, and their elements still so obscure, that it is impossible to say how far they are manageable, or how far they are intractable, it is still to be kept in mind that the hopeful view should have the benefit of the doubt, and work should be done where the promise seems best for a happy result. Owing to the advance of science and the increasing knowledge of environment, it is but reasonable to expect that hereafter there will be more intelligent deliberation in human affairs; but we are not to be sanguine in this direction, owing to the tyranny of feeling and the power over human conduct of immediate and individual, rather than of remote and general, interests. Section 236. — When not dominated by a corporate or con- ventional power, each individual acts for individual ends; and the action thus taking place and the ends thus accomplished make up the activities of the aggregate of society. What is best for society, taking long stretches of time into view, is not the aim of such action. It may contribute to this end, or it may not. 476 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. This can only be told by the result. Men act from immediate interest both when they clear off the timber from the rich plains and from the steep hillsides; but the one act makes the coun- try richer for a long time, and the other, after a brief period, makes it poorer. When a people is rising, then must the concurrence of individual action promote the good in a gen- eral way; but when a people is declining in prosperity, then must the aggregate of individual action be the cause and measure of such decline. Civilizations rise and fall; and for both tendencies there must be adequate cause in individual action. Long continued prosperity, through the operation on individuals and communities of emulation in the vanities of life, leads to effeminacy, weakness, and decay. Individ- uals may see and lament this general tendency, but they will not forego conventional gratifications, for the sake of resist- ing it. In a high civilization the leading classes in society will not cultivate large families, though they plainly see that in not doing so there may soon be none of their blood to inherit their virtues. More immediate considerations determine the result. People will dissipate because it is the fashion, though they know it will ultimate in degeneracy. Thus it is that the very causes of prosperity operate till they bring about adversity; and where there is a curve of ascent there must be one of descent. During the historical period nations and peoples have risen and fallen, with the attainment, at present, of greater general elevation than ever before. But even this general advance must reach its maximum — and in the quite near future, for anything we know to the contrary. We have emerged from the long period of semi-barbarism into which the Greek and Roman civilizations declined, and we may advance a good deal further by diversification rather than by elevation. As all movement goes in careers and not by continuous progress, every advance has its limit. If it proceeds further, the loss offsets the gain. This, of course, holds in every possible form of development. Many appear to believe that our civilization will be an exception. We are somewhat in the forenoon of its glorious day, and it is Sec. 2j6.] CAREERS OF MOVEMENT. 477 easy to make the mistake of assuming that there will be no afternoon — its career is so long compared with the brief span of any one's conscious experience. It would have been very natural for the followers of Alexander, at one time, to • believe that they should indeed conquer the whole world ; but the progress of victory came to an end, and the empire of Alexander was soon broken to pieces. So the Romans might well have thought that universal empire would some day be theirs; but the extension of the empire was arrested, and at length enemies broke through its defences, loyalty to Rome declined, and the promises of a more flourish- ing time were answered at last by the overthrow and extinction of Roman power. For ages it seemed but reasonable to believe that Christianity would take posession of all the earth, so greatly had it extended through the world ; but Mohammedanism appeared and made more rapid progress than even Christianity had made. It drove in the Christian outposts, and contracted the Christian territory by establishing Mohammedanism where Christianity had been. Then, indeed, Islam may have imagined itself destined to universal dominion. Having superseded Christianity on the east and south of Europe, and having actu- ally planted itself on European territory on the west, surely it would eventually overwhelm all Christian Europe. But this dream was never fulfilled. If there is one power on earth which more than another has believed itself to be eternal, it is that of the pope. Its conceded divine origin and sanctions, and its absolute sovereignty over soul and body in Christendom, richly fed this confidence of expectation ; but this power, like every other, became tainted with the infirmities of its own greatness, and having reached its zenith, it began the long period of its decline. And then when Protestantism arose and spread like a consuming fire over central and western Europe, who could have foreseen that it would so soon find its balance, and there remain for ages, even while the forces, under whose auspices it had arisen, continued to progress ? Not one movement since history began has been continuous ; not one ever will be. 478 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. Section 237. — It may be objected that, if this doctrine be true, it disarms effort for a better future. It does nothing of the kind. The better, the possible good is only secured by eternal vigilance, by persistent struggle. There are periods, indeed — we may be entering upon one of them — when, without such labor systematically and steadily persevered in, the tending of certain lines of movement toward degeneracy may rapidly gain in strength; and there are times when, even with such labor as wisely directed as possible, the downward tendency may only be somewhat retarded. We may further illustrate by a conditional example: Admitting that the day will come when our great x\merican Republic will be transformed into an empire, and that there are causes now at work to bring about this result, what is our duty? To resist these tendencies to the utmost. It is only by so doing that we can preserve our self respect and prolong the era of freedom by staving off to a more distant time the fatal consummation. To allow the drift in this direction to go on without resistance, would be to show ourselves unworthy of our inheritance of liberty ; it would be to permit ourselves to degenerate into the status of subjects, and to deserve by inglorious indolence and truculence the fate of a ser- vile subordination to absolute masters. Even such as pursue phantoms are more to be commended than those who fall into habits of indifference and refuse to do anything. The practical and efficient mind is neither of them. It is said of a great his- torical character that he never left the possible good undone to waste effort on the impossible better. He endeavored to miti- gate the evils he could not cure; and this states very precisely what practical people may at any time consistently undertake to do. We have mainly to do with the present and the immediate future. There are here two phases — what shall we do, and what shall we not do. The principles herein advocated give sufficient encouragement in the direction of doing and efficient caution in the direction of not doing; and define that in the doing there is good to promote and evil to abate. It is only through per- Sec. 23 7. ,] WORK NEEDED. 479 sistent endeavor that progress is made, and man and society elevated to higher planes. Not only is activity inculcated, but its direction in a general way indicated, in order to be most effective. Manliness, all heroic endeavor, most that is admirable in the world, come of the seeking to make things better, or to pre- vent them from becoming worse. "When shall love and sym- pathy and beneficence find ampler training, or patience, courage, dauntless devotion, nobler opportunities of exercise than in the war with evil ?" — (Caird). Let no one imagine that the writer would discourage considerate effort for the retardation or arrest of wrong tendencies. Whoever so construes this book mistakes its spirit and the import of its doctrines. An error of this kind would be like that of confounding the law-government of the universe with fatalism. No principle of nature properly under- stood can in the least weaken the motives to well-doing; it should assist in giving them proper direction. There is no rational warrant for insensibility, indifference, or misanthropy among the consequences of the doctrine of ineradicable evil. Rather should it chasten the tone cf charac- ter and quicken the sensibilities to know that the universe is not built up on principles of perpetual joy. The poet Bryant has said: "In short, the melancholy feelings, when called up by their proper and natural causes, and confined to their proper limits, are the sources of almost all our virtues. The tempera- ment of unbroken cheerfulness is the temperament of insensibil- ity." Section 238. — Nothing herein stated conflicts with the doc- trine of Evolution properly understood. Evolution does not cover all phenomena; it has its limitations; at a certain stage of the movement it passes into degradation and dissolution. If, in their present condition, the higher races of mankind on earth were at the very apex of all possible attainment in civilization, the doctrine of Evolution would be just as true as if mankind were to go on progressing for untold ages. Antagonism or con- flict is more fundamental than evolution (section 159). It 4^o USES IN general. [Chap. XXX VI. reaches the entire distance of the career of movement while evolution stops where degradation sets in. Antagonism is more wide spread and sends its roots down deeper, though, it may be, it does not carry so many branches laden with fruitful results as the tree of Evolution. Antagonism is an indispens- able factor of Evolution (Chapter XXIL), and Evolution is one of the consequences of Antagonism, and they co-operate to the same ends so far as Evolution goes. They are names for differ- ent congeries of actions in the totality of phenomena. There is no quarrel between Evolution and Conflict. Section 239. — The universe, viewed as a system of adjustments under the play of antagonistic forces, presents marvelous examples of harmony and adaptation, whence the good flows, but never unmixed, being always accom- panied with its shadow of evil. Let us recapitulate a few instances which are open to the inspection of all. Thus, education cultivates sensibility and makes the necessary drudgeries of life more repulsive than before. Intelligence has its sources of enjoyment and improvement, but it often necessitates painful changes of opinion and of institutions which break up the intellectual and emotional habits of ages. The division of labor greatly facilitates production, but it makes automatons of laborers and is unfavorable both to intellectual and moral development. Invention in the application of the natural forces to the industries greatly increases man's power of production ; and while the wealth thus made possible is every- where regarded as a great good, if not the summum bonum itself, it secures the facilities for luxurious indulgence and sensual dis- sipation. It is doing for us what conquest did for the Romans ; and in the midst of education, political corruption is on the increase. With the progress of civilization numerous evils are springing into existence, which must be dealt with, to retard, palliate, or when possible, to exterminate them. In view of these tendencies and counter tendencies emerges the obvious moral that we should be fairly content with the opportunities and pos- sibilities of our own times. In some things they are better than Sec. 24O.] EXTREMES. 48 1 times past, in other things, worse. The average of any age to come may not be a great deal better than the average of the present. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the future will ever bring an age more buoyant and hopeful than that in which we live (section 189). The lurid glare of its evils is quite dimmed in the blaze of the lights which its conquests for good have everywhere kindled. Section 240. — Attention has already been called to the pen- chant of the human mind first to seek rest in extremes. When the mind sets out it is apt to swing far in a particular direction before it stops. It is an example of motion in the direction of least resistance; it is easier thus to do than to keep on weighing opposing considerations, and meantime hold the judgment in suspense under the influence of all the apparent contradiction of reasons. The holding of the judgment in abeyance is not a satisfactory process to most minds. It is felt to be characterless, and neither one thing nor the other, totally without those strong and striking features with which decisive opinions flatter human egotism. The elaborators of science have partaken quite fully with others in this weakness of our common nature. In most instances in which the evidence has been slow in accumulating, there have been usually two or more parties advocating con- flicting theories, till at last it had to be admitted that all were in error in being extreme and exclusive, but each, perhaps, in the right, in elaborating a component element of the integral truth. Geology had its Neptunian and Plutonian schools, whose hostility was completely disarmed under more comprehensive views which utilized the truth in both. Even the doctrine of development has crept along from one extreme to another. First, its principal factor was held to be that of use or appe- tency (Lamark); secondly, the direct action of the environment, together with migration, and isolation from the parent stock (St. Hilaire, BurTon, Wagner, Spencer) ; thirdly, natural selec- tion (Darwin and Wallace). But maturer consideration is show- ing how these causes are related to one another, and even 482 USES IN GENERAL. \Chap. XXXVI. blended with still others, in the production of the phenomena in question. The natural methods are not so poverty-stricken as the resources of the human mind appear usually to be; and further examples of extremism would only be tedious. Per- haps the writer has given a practical illustration of it in his treat- ment of Conflict; the reader must judge. These considerations bear on the present subject in this, that the same tendency to the exclusiveness of extreme opinions characterizes human effort for the correction of abuses, even more than in the prosecution of science. It is easy to imagine a remedy on the warrant of a partial and fragmentary view of what is for the most part exceedingly complicated. It is the cheap and easy method. It is a far higher exercise of human power to take a comprehensive grasp of all the considerations, and find their logical balance, than to deal with them in the usual summary and extreme method. Unfortunately the results of wholeness of conception are apparently so tame as to attract little notice and obtain little credit. The moderate but compre- hensive measures which are most practical and efficient, are not apt to take the fancy of dashing and impetuous reformers; nevertheless they stand wear and tear and can afford to bide their time. Optimism and pessimism, with all the brood of vain speculations and practical foibles to which they have given rise, are forms of ultraism which must share the common fate of perishable things. In a better philosophy, the optimism of .God- win and the pessimism of Schopenhauer must give way to the meliorism of Sully and others. Section 241. — Possibly it may be in the nature of the view of life, which it has been the object of these chapters to define, to inculcate humility, and teach discretion in the presence of any evil of life with which we propose to deal. It should mod- erate expectancy, temper enthusiasm, and repress vagary. We are not, however, to be too sanguine of such results. There will be fanatics probably while the world lasts. But there is always a borderland where means avail. People who do not think need no guidance in this respect; they are always on the Sec. 242.] RESIGNATION. 4^3 safe side, believing with the many who take their opinions from "the air." It is the more intellectually active, without sufficient guidance or a sufficient basis of intellectual material to work on, that are most apt to run into the excesses of extreme opinions. Some generous natures might fall into extravagances, who, with a better philosophy as a chart for guidance, would not commit this error. Section 242. — This view of nature and of life should teach resignation. If certain forms of evil are inevitable, and to be looked for, we shall not be taken by surprise when they come, and we shall deal with them as with any intractable thing. We are compelled every day of our lives to recognize certain neces- sities, and to adapt ourselves to them; and when these necessi- ties involve suffering, we summon the necessary hardihood to meet them all the better for recognizing the fact that they are necessities. Happily there is a law of our nature by which we become "reconciled to inevitable destiny." Although not quite so true now as when Spinoza wrote, it is nevertheless still true, and always will be, that "human power is greatly limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; and thus it is that we have no absolute power of adapting to our use things external to ourselves. Still, all that befalls us contrary to what reason requires for our use and convenience, we bear with equanimity, if we do but know that we have fairly done our duty, that the power we possess does not extend so far as would have enabled us to escape the evil that has happened, and that we are a pait of nature at large, whose orders we obey." And this is but a return, with some improvement, to the good old doctrine of the Stoics, which Seneca thus states: "There is not in the scale of nature a more inseparable connection of cause and effect than in the case of happiness and virtue; nor anything that more naturally produces the one, or more neces- sarily presupposes the other. For what is it to be happy, but for a man to content himself with his lot, in a cheerful and quiet resignation to the appointments of God ? " A writer in the Fortnightly casts it in the forms of modern thought as follows : 484 " USES IN GENERAL. [Chap. XXXVI. "Whether life be worth having or not, whether a wise man ought or ought not to have chosen it, had he had the choice, life at all events we have, the choice has not been given us, and the only right thing for each of us to do, our bounden duty, to ourselves and to humanity, is, here and, now, wisely and man- fully, to make the best of it."— (T. W. Rhys Davids). Another : " The true philosophy on this as on all themes is neither optim- ism nor pessimism, but omm'sm, which sees both the good and the evil in nature, and aims to make the best of both." — (Dr. G. M. Beard). Even when we are sure that the cloud threatens it is well not wholly to overlook its "silver lining." At any rate if the storm must come, breast it. This is illustrated, in a grim way, it is true, by what a surgeon told of "after the battle" during our late war. Several officers were in the extemporized hospital, the worse for the battle. Two colonels were mortally wounded and knew they must die. One of them gave up to lamentation and despair; the other so far maintained his forti- tude as not only to command himself, but to exhort his comrade to "die like a man." It was not long till both were silent in "the sleep that knows no waking" even amid the tumults of war. And our surgeon remembered the better example of the stoic soldier in "the hour and article of death," when in the more trying, because more self-conscious, times of the unbroken stillness of peace, it came his turn to lie down and die. Meet the inevitable we must, whether manfully or like poltroons. Section 243. — The morality of this philosophy is founded on a very different basis from that of Stoicism or Puritanism, and yet like them, it inculcates the value of self-denial. It was in this interest Stoicism had such wide-spread influence, affecting even Christianity itself. Between judicious self-denial and fanat- ical self-mortification, there is a wide difference which has often been disregarded; hence, the harsh and dreary extremes of the puritan and the monk, and the often revolting devoutness of the hermit and recluse. Extremes always pass into error, and if the philosophy herein stated has any value, it is to show the Se£. 243.] THE MIDDLE WAY. 485 importance of finding the line of least discordance among the opposing forces in conduct. In the Chinese philosophy the Mean is the method of virtue. On Buddhist authority it is thus stated: "But the Tathagata had discovered a Middle Path, which avoids these two extremi- ties, a path which opens the eyes and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full en- lightenment — in a word, to the Nirvana. And this path is the Noble Eightfold Path of right views, high aims, kindly speech, upright conduct, a harmless livelihood, perseverance in well- doing, intellectual activity, and earnest thought" — (From the Pali text of the Buddhist Pitakas in the so-called Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness.) The "extremi- ties " here referred to are sensual gratification and asceticism. The Nirvana is the peace which comes by the middle way through the eightfold path. According to Aristotle, "the Mean is as the right reason determines." Seneca says : • " He has reached the supreme good who is never sad, or excited by hope, but keeps an even and happy frame of mind by day and night." This oriental and classic doctrine of the Mean, or Mid- dle Way in morals, accepted by such great bodies of mankind and for such long periods, shows how surely the great moral systems of the world have been derived from large experience amid the conflicting impulses of human nature. The delusive and disappointing character of the prevalent optimistic idea that happiness and pleasure are to be had with- out a compensating sacrifice, is well shown by the fact that many who have tested it to its utmost, have been overtaken with incurable discontent. We must again repeat, what has been so often repeated and illustrated, that pleasure and happiness can only be had by paying their price; and that price consists in the judicious exercise of self-denial and self-restraint, and in the ply- ing of worthful industry as a condition of all the nobler forms of enjoyment. This is the Middle Way. In the aggregate, no work no life; in regard to the individual, no employment no con- tentment. The way of the hero is to stand to his post in the 22 486 USES IN general. [Chap. XXXVI. discharge of duty; and, not pursuing happiness as an end, he will achieve the most of it possible as the reward of right doing. There is nothing new in this; but the doctrine of Conflict shows how and why it is so, being part of the universal system in which there is contrast in the constitution of things and Conflict in the action of forces. Section 244. — If this be true, the principle has a logical value in assisting to determine what the true course is in rela- tion to the conduct of life. Any deep underlying principle, however, has this value. Evolution has it, and has exercised a powerful influence on the methods of regarding the course of history and of life. If the doctrine of Conflict be true — and it is — it has a similar logical value, and must co-operate with the doctrine of Evolution to shape the views of thinking people concerning the possibilities of life and destiny. Section 245. — Industrial and social changes are mainly dependent on the capabilities of knowledge. Civilization owes all its advantages over savagery to discovery and invention, together with the accumulation of wealth and population. The moral frame-work of civilized society would fall to pieces, but for the physico-mental basis on which it rests. There is no doubt an immense field for further amplification in this direction. As one century since no one could have had the remotest idea of what would be done in a hundred years, so now, we can have no conception of the changes which the next century will bring. The great achievements in discovery and invention so rapidly made within our own recollection, are calculated unduly to inflate our expectations. But even while science, art, education, and invention are not without difficulties and drawbacks, we, nevertheless, regard the aggregate of their results as greatly pre- ponderating in good; and out of this complication of causes springs an element from which there is much to hope. We refer to the mental discipline in consequence of which men hold their impulses in abeyance and do homage to the truth because it is the truth. It is the waiving of all bias in the inter- est of right thinking. So far as men are logical on the broadest Sec. 245.] EDUCATION. 487 basis of fact, they may be just, for without being right in judg- ment it is impossible to be just in action. The very appliances of industry have become potential edu- cators for good or evil, and this unintentional, practical sort of education becomes contagious and spreads through the civilized world. In consequence of the multiplied uses of the natural forces, people are coming to lean less on providential inter- ference and more on the inexorable laws of those forces. What shall be taught and how, for the best result under the complica- tion of modern tendencies, — this may be the question of the times. Doubtless education must be adapted to the changing condition of things, and become associated with integral indus- try for the discipline of the body as well as of the mind, and though it may make little headway against the effects of the machine-industries, which are crushing the vitality and character out of a portion of the people, still it may play the part of a savior, be it ever so partial It may make little headway against the mighty vanities, which are more and more absorbing the energies of life, and which it nurses while it aims to cripple, nevertheless will it have value, even far short of accomplishing in full the herculean task before it, if in some gratifying measure, it shall cause common sense to take the place of common folly. But the good to be expected will not come so much through the influence of general education on the masses, as through the higher education which can only reach the comparatively few. If the directive agency of those most competent could be divorced from reckless ambition and class interests, and placed in situations where it would tell most for good, the world would soon be better off than it is. If this could be, the world's great- est benefactors would be those who prosecute research with the greatest acuteness, and the least warp of bias, and also such as, with true practical instincts, make the body of truth at hand most available for human well-being. We may picture Evolu- tion to be advancing in three different lines. One is character- ized by happiness, another by suffering, and the third by the directive agency growing out of science. It has been taken for 488 conclusion. [Chap. XXXVI. granted throughout this work that pleasure predominates over pain in existence. We have attempted to show that with the multiplication of results which we call progress, the conditions of happiness increase, and that in a similar way the conditions of misery increase. The directive agencies in life will make mistakes in the future as they have in the past, no doubt, but notwithstanding the ever increasing complexity of the problems of life, the errors should be greatly eliminated, and a clear mar- gin of good results accrue to the credit of wiser direction in human affairs. And to this end it is believed that there are logical and moral uses for the principle of Conflict as an inex- pugnable factor of nature and life. Section 246. — But it is not so much what we suppose to be the utility of any doctrine that should recommend it to our acceptance. That may be a delusion and snare in the failure of accurate prevision, as a thousand examples in history prove. Is it founded in fact? Has it logical warrant? Is it true? This should be the direction of inquiry concerning any point of doc- trine under examination, whatever may seem to be its uses or abuses. It is quite the fashion among reviewers to commend a work for presenting the sunny side of life. That is indeed very well. If it be the object of a book merely to administer to the emotions, then should it stimulate those which are pleasurable rather than such as are painful. But when it concerns history, science, or the philosophy of science, the case is different. It would hardly do then to suppress truth for the sake of sunshine; and the author should be most commendable who, with the greatest vigor and least bias, sets forth the truth as it is. A LIBRARY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT STANDARD WORKS ON EVOLUTION. Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preser- vation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. By Charles Dar- win, LL. D., F. R. S. New and revised edition, with Additions. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. 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Such is the character of the present volume."— From the deface to the American edition. V. Darwiniana. Essays and Reviews pertaining to Darwinism. By Asa Gray, Fisher Professor of Natural History (Botany) in Harvard Uni- versity. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. " Although Professor Gray is widely known in the world of science for ins botanical researches, but few are aware that he is a pronounced and un- A STANDARD EVOLUTION LIBRARY. flinching Darwinian. His contributions to the discussion are varied and valuable, and as collected in the present volume they will be seen to estab- lish a claim upon the thinking world, which will be extensively felt and cordially acknowledged. These papers not only illustrate the history of the controversy, and the progress of the discussion, but they form perhaps the fullest and most trustworthy exposition of what is to be properly under- stood by ' Darwinism ' that is to be found in our language. To all those timid souls who are worried about the progress of science, and the danger that it will subvert the foundations of their faith, we recommend the dis- passionate perusal of this volume." — The Popular Science Monthly. VI. Heredity : A Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes, and Consequences. From the French of Th. Ribot. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. " Heredity is that biological law by which all beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants : it is for the species what Eersonal identity is for the individual. The physiological side of this subject as been diligently studied, but not so its psychological side. We propose to supply this deficiency in the present work." — From the Introduction. VII. Hereditary Genius : An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. By Francis Galton, F. R. S., etc. New and revised edition, with an American Preface. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. " The following pages embody the result of the first vigorous and me- thodical effort to treat the question in the true scientific spirit, and place it upon the proper inductive basis. Mr. Gal ton proves, by overwhelming evidence, that genius, talent, or whatever we term great mental capacity, follows the law of organic transmission — runs in families, and is an affair of blood and breed ; and that a sphere of phenomena hitherto deemed capri- cious and defiant of rule is, nevertheless, within the operation of ascertain- able law." — From the American Preface. VIII. The Evolution of Man. A Popular Exposition of the Principal Points of Human Ontogeny and Phylogeny. From the German of Ernst Haeckel, Professor in the University of Jena. With numer- ous Illustrations. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth, $5.00. u In this excellent translation of Professor Haeckel' s work, the English reader has access to the latest doctrines of the Continental school of evolu- tion, in its application to the history of man." IX, The History of Creation ; or, the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goe- the, and Lamarck in Particular. By Ernst Haeckel, Professor in the University of Jena. The translation revised by Professor E. Ray Lankester. Illustrated with Lithographic Plates. 2 vols., 12mo. Cloth, $5.00. "The book has been translated into several languages. I hope that it may also find sympathy in the fatherland of Darwin, the more so since it contains special morphological evidence in favor of many of the most impor- tant doctrines with which'this greatest naturalist of our century has enriched seience." — From the Preface. A STANDARD EVOLUTION LIBRARY. x. Religion and Science. A Series of Sunday Lectures on the Klatione of Natural and Revealed Religion, or the Truths revealed in Nature and Scripture. By Joseph Le Conte, LL. D. 12rno. Cloth, $1.50. XI. Prehistoric Times, as illustrated by Ancient Eemains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. By Sir John Lubbock, Bart. Illustrated. Entirely new revised edition. 8vo. Cloth, $5.00. The hook ranks among the noblest works of the interesting and impor- tant class to which it belongs. As a resume of our present knowledge of prehistoric man, it leaves nothing to be desired. It is not only a good book of reference, hut the best on the subject. XII. Winners in Life's Race ; or, The Great Backboned Family. By Ara- bella B. Buckxey, author of "The Fairy-Land of Science" and "Life and her Children." With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, gilt side and back, $1.50. XIII. PhysiC3 and Politics ; or, Thoughts on the Application of the Prin- ciples of "Natural Selection" and " Inheritance " to Political Society. By Walter Bagehot. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. XIV. The Theory of Descent and Darwinism. By Professor Oscar Schmidt. With 26 Woodcuts. 12mo. $1.50. " The facts upon which the Darwinian theory is based are presented in an effective manner, conclusions are ably defended, and the question is treated in more compact and available style than in any other work on the same topic that has yet appeared. It is a valuable addition to the ' Interna- tional Scientific Series.' " — Boston Post. XV. Outline of the Evolution Philosophy. By Dr. M. E. Cazelles. Translated from the French, by the Rev. O. B. Frothingham ; with an Appendix, by E. L. Youmans, *M. D. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00. " This unpretentious little work will, no doubt, be used by thousands to whom the publications of Mr. Herbert Spencer are inaccessible and those of Auguste Comte repellent, by reason of their prolixity and vagueness. In a short space Dr. Cazelles has managed to compress the whole outhne and scope of Mr. Spencer's system, with his views of the doctrine of progress and law of evolution, and a clear view of the principles of positivism." — Nature (London). XVI. Principles of Geology ; or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, considered as illustrative of Geology. By Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. Illustrated with Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. A new and entirely revised edition. 2 vols. Royal Svo. Cloth, $8.00. The " Principles of Geology" may be looked upon with pride, not only as a representative of English science, but as without a rival of its kind anywhere. Growing in fullness and accuracy with the growth of expert- A STANDARD EVOLUTION LIBRARY. ence and observation in every region of the world, the work has incorporated with itself each established discovery, and has been modified by every hy- pothesis of value which has ' been brought to bear upon, or been evolved from, the most recent body of facts. XVII. Elements of Geology. A Text-Book for Colleges and for the General Header. By Joseph Le Conte, LL. D., Professor of Geology and Natural History in the University of California. Revised and en- larged edition. 12mo. With upward of 900 Illustrations. Cloth, $4.00. xvin. Animal Life, as affected by the Natural Conditions of Exist- ence. By Karl Semper, Professor of the University of Wiirzburg. With Maps and 100 Woodcuts. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. XIX. Crayfish : An Introduction to the Study of Zoology. By Professor T. H. Huxley, F. R. S. With 82 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. XX. Anthropology : An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization. By Edward B. Tylor, F. R. S. With 18 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. " The students who read Mr. Tylor's book may congratulate themselves upon having obtained so easy, pleasant, and workman-like an introduction to a fascinating and delightful science." — London Athenceum. XXI. First Principles. By Herbert Spencer. Part I. The Unknowable. Part II. The Knowable. 1 vol., 12mo. $2.00. XXII. The Principles of Biology. By Herbert Spencer. 2 vols., 12mo. $4.00. XXIII. The Principles of Psychology. By Herbert Spencer. 2 vols., 12mo. $4.00. XXIT. The Principles of Sociology. By Herbert Spencer. 12mo. 2 vols. $4.00. XXV. The Data of Ethics. By Herbert Spencer. Being Part I, Vol. I, of " The Principles of Morality." 12mo. Cloth, $1.25. XXVI. Illustrations of Universal Progress. By Herbert Spencer, 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. For sale by all booksellers ; or, sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1. 3, & 5 Bond Street. Animal Intelligence. By GEORGE J. ROMANES, E.R.S., Zoological Secretary of the Linnaean Society, etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.75. " My object in the work as a whole is twofold : First, I have thought it de- sirable that there should be something resembling a text-book of the facts of Comparative Psychology, to which men of science, and also metaphysicians, may turn whenever they have occasion to acquaint themselves with the particular level of intelligence to which this or that species of animal attains. My second and much more important object is that of considering the facts of animal intel- ligence in their relation to the theory of descent." — From the Preface. " Unless we are greatly mistaken, Mr. Romanes's work will take its place as one of the most attractive volumes of the International Scientific Series. Some persons may, indeed, be disposed to say that it is too attractive, that it feeds the popular taste for the curious and marvelous without supplying any commensurate discipline in exact scientific reflection ; but the author has, we think, fully justified himself in his modest preface. The result is the appearance of a collection of facts which will be a real boon to the student of Comparative Psychology, for this is the first attempt to present systematically well-assured observations on the mental life of animals." — Saturday Review. "The author believes himself, not without ample cause, to have completely bridged the supposed gap between instinct and reason by the authentic proofs here mar-haled of remarkable intelligence in some of the higher animals. It is the seemingly conclusive evidence of reasoniug powers furnished by the adapta- tion of means to ends in cases which can not be explained on the theory of inher- ited aptitude or habit."— New York Sun. " The high standing of the author as an original investigator is a sufficient guarantee that his task has been conscientiously carried out. His subject is one of absorbing interest. He has collected and classified an enormous amount of information concerning the mental attributes of the animal world. The result is astonishing. We find marvelous intelligence exhibited not only by animals which are known to be clever, but by others seemingly without a glimmer of light, like the snail, for instance. Some animals display imagination, others affection, and so on. The psychological portion of the discussion is deeply in- teresting."-— New York Herald. " The chapter on monkeys closes this excellent work, and perhaps the most instructive portion of it is that devoted to the life-history of a monkey."— New York Times. " Mr. Eomanes brings to his work a wide information and the best of scientific methods. He has carefully culled and selected an immense mass of data, choos- ing with admirable skill those facts which are really significant, and rejecting those which lacked sustaining evidence or relevancy. The contents of the volume are arranged with reference to the principles which they seem to him to estab- lish. The volume is rich and suggestive, and a model in its way.' 1 ''— Boston Courier. " It presents the facts of animal intelligence in relation to the theory of de- scent, supplementing Darwin and Spencer in tracing the principles which are concerned in the genesis of mind."— Boston Commonwealth. " One of the most interesting volumes of the series."— New York Christian at Work. "Few subjects have a greater fascination for the general reader than that with which this book is occupied."— Good Literature, New York. For sale by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, and 5 Bond Street. The Science of Politics. By SHELDON AMOS, M. A., Author of "The Science of Law, 1 ' etc. 12mo. ----_. Cloth, $1.75. CONTENTS: Chapter I. Nature and Limits of the Science of Politics; II. Political Terms; III. Political Reasoning; IV. The Geographical Area of Mod- ern Politics ; V. The Primary Elements of Political Life and Action ; VI. Con- stitutions; VII. Local Government; VIII. The Government of Dependencies; IX. Foreign Relations; X. The Province of Government; XI. Revolutions in States ; XII. Right and Wrong in Politics. "It is an ahle and exhaustive treatise, within a reasonable compass. Some of its conclusions will be disputed, although sterling common sense is a char- acteristic of the book. To the political student and the practical statesman it ought to be of great value." — New York Herald. "The author traces the subject from Plato and Aristotle in Greece, and Cicero in Rome, to the modern schools in the English field, not slighting the teachings of the American Revolution or the lessons of the French Revolution of 1793. Forms of government, political terms, the relation of law written and unwritten to the subject, a codification from Justinian to Napoleon in France and Field in America, are treated as parts of the subject in hand. Necessarily the subjects of executive and legislative authority, police, liquor, and land laws are con- sidered, and the question ever growing in importance in all countries, the rela- tions of corporations to the State." — New York Observer. "The preface is dated at Alexandria, and the author says in it that a two years' journey round the world— in the course of which he visited the chief centers of political life, ancient and modern, in Europe, America, Australasia, Polynesia, and North Africa— not only helped him with illustrations, but was of no small use to him in stimulating thought. Mr. Amos treats his subject broad« ly, and with the air of having studied it exhaustively. The work will be of real assistance to the student of political economy, and even to the reader who wishes to extend his general knowledge of politics without a regular course of reading." — Boston Transcript. " The work is one of the most valuable of its series, discussing its subject in all its phases as illustrated in the world's history. The chapters on Constitu- tions, on Foreign Relations, on the Province of Government, and on Right and Wrong in Politics, are particularly able and thoughtful. In that on Revolu- tions in States, the unreasonableness of the attempted revolution of the South- ern States in this country is disposed of in a few incisive sentences."— Boston Gazette. For sale by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. New York : D. APPLETON & CO. DISEASES OF MEMORY AN ESSAY IN THE POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By TH. RIBOT, Author of "Heredity," etc. Translated prom the French bx WILLIAM HUNTINGTON SMITH. 12mo. Cloth, $l.SO. "Not merely to scientific, but to all thinking men, this volume will prove intensely interesting."— New York Observer. "M. Ribot has bestowed the most painstaking attention upon his theme, and numerous examples of the conditions considered greatly increase the value and interest of the volume."— Philadelphia North American. " 'Memory,' says M. Kihot, ' is a general function of the nervous system. It is based upon the faculty possessed by the nervous elements of conserving a received modification and of forming associations.' And again : ' Memory is a biological fact. A rich and extensive memory is not a collection of impressions, but an accumulation of dynamical associations, very stable and very responsive to proper stimuli. . . . The brain is like a laboratory full of movement where thousands of operations are going on all at once. Unconscious cerebration, not being subject to restrictions of time, operating, so to speak, only in space, may act in several directions at the same moment. Consciousness is the narrow gate through which a very small part of all this work is able to reach us.' M. Ribot thus reduces diseases of memory to law, and his treatise is of extraordinary interest."— Philadelphia Press. " The general deductions reached by M. Ribot from the data here collected are summed up in the formulation of a law of regression, based upon the physio- logical principle that ' degeneration first affects what has been most recently formed,' and upon the psychological principle that 'the complex disappears before the simple because it has not been repeated so often in experience.' According to this law of regression, the loss of recollection in cases of general dissolution of the memory follows an invariable path, proceeding from recent events to ideas in general, then to feelings, and lastly to acts. In the best- known cases of partial dissolution or aphasia, forgetfulness follows the same course, beginning with proper names, passing to common nouns, then to ad- jectives and verbs, then to interjections, and lastly to gestures. M. Ribot sub- mits that the exactitude of his laws of regression is verified in those rare cases where progressive dissolution of the memory is followed by recovery, recollec- tions being observed to return in an inverse order to that in which they dis- appeared."— New York Sun. "To the general reader the work is made entertaining by many illustrations connected with such names as Linnaeus, Newton, Sir Walter Scott, Horace Ver- net, Gustave Dore, and many others." — Harrisburg Telegraph. "The whole subject is presented with a Frenchman's vivacity of style."— Providence Journal. "It is not too much to say that in no single work have so many curious esses been brought together and interpreted in a scientific manner." — Boston Evening Traveller. " Specially interesting to the general reader."— Chicago Interior. For sale by all booksellers; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. MYTH AND SCIENCE By TITO VIGNOLI. 12mo. Cloth, $l.SO. Contents : The Ideas and Sources of Myth ; Animal Sensation and Perception ; Human Sensation and Perception ; Statement of the Prob- lem ; The Animal and Human Exercise of the Intellect in the Perception of Things ; The Intrinsic Law of the Faculty of Apprehension ; The His- torical Evolution of Myth and Science ; Of Dreams, Illusions, Normal and Abnormal Hallucinations, Delirium, and Madness. " His book is ingenious ; . . . his theory of how science gradually dif- ferentiated from and conquered myth is extremely well wrought out, and is probably in essentials correct." — Saturday Review. " Tito Vignoli's treatise is a valuable contribution to the public book- table at the present moment, when the issues between faith and fact are so much discussed. The author holds that the myth-making' faculty is a con- stant attendant of human progress, and that its action is manifest to-day in the most highly cultivated peoples as well as in the most undeveloped. The diiference is, that its activity in the former case is limited, or rather neutralized, by the scientific faculties, and consequently is no longer allowed to grow into legends and mythologies of the primitive pattern. The author traces both myth and science to their common source in sensation and per- ception, which he treats under the separate titles of ' animal ' and ' human.' He makes clear the distinctive operations of perception and apprehension, and traces, in a wide survey of history and human life, a most interesting array of examples illustrating the evolution of myth and science." — New York Home Journal. " The book is a strong one, and far more interesting to the general reader than its title would indicate. The learning, the acuteness, the strong reasoning power, and the scientific spirit of the author, command admira- tion." — New York Christian Advocate. " An essay of such length as to merit a different title, and of sufficient originality to merit more than common attention." — Chicago Times. " An attempt made, with much ability and no small measure of success, to trace the origin and development of the myth. The author has pursued his inquiry with much patience and ingenuity, and has produced a very readable and luminous treatise." — Philadelphia North American. " A very interesting work, which, first published in Italy, created a great deal of interest there, and will scarcely do less in this country." — Boston Post. "This intensely interesting volume." — Albany (New York) Press. " It is a curious if not startling contribution both to psychology and to the early history of man's development." — Neio York Worl For sale by all booksellers ; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. \Vi ^- * O k *> <" V 5* c ^oo 1 A %v A A . 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