THE VALUE OF LIFE
Changes of life—Aim of life—Progress of life—Historic aims—Historic waves—Value of life in classes and races of men—Psychology of uncivilized races—Savages—Barbarians—Civilized nations—Educated nations—Three stages of development (lower, middle, and higher) in each of the four classes—Individual and social value of civilized life in the five sections of nutrition, reproduction, movement, sensation, and mental life—Estimate of human life.
The value of human life is seen by us to-day, now that evolution is established, in quite a different light from fifty years ago. We are now accustomed to regard man as a natural being, the most highly developed natural being that we know. The same "eternal iron laws" that rule the evolution of the whole cosmos control our own life. Monism teaches that the universe really deserves its name, and is an all-embracing unified whole—whether we call it God or Nature. Monistic anthropology has now established the fact that man is but a tiny part of this vast whole, a placental mammal, developed from a branch of the order of primates in the later Tertiary Period. Hence, before we seek to estimate the value of man's life, we will cast a glance at the significance of organic life generally.
An impartial survey of the history of organic life on our planet teaches, first of all, that it is a process of constant change. Millions of animals and plants die every second, while other millions replace them; every individual has his definite period of life, whether it lives only a few hours, like the one-day fly or the infusorium, or, like the Wellingtonia, the dragon-tree of Orotava, and many other giant trees, lives for thousands of years. Even the species, the collection of like individuals, is just as transitory, and so are the orders and classes that embrace numbers of species of animals and plants. Most species are confined to a single period of the organic history of the earth; few species or genera pass unchanged through several periods, and not a single one has lived in all the periods. Phylogeny, taking its stand on the facts of paleontology, teaches unequivocally that every specific living form has only existed a longer or shorter period in the course of the many (more than a hundred) million years which make up the history of organic life.
Every living being is an end to itself. On this point all unprejudiced thinkers are agreed, whether, like the teleologist, they believe in an entelechy or dominant as regulator of the vital mechanism, or whether they explain the origin of each special living form mechanically by selection and epigenesis. The older anthropistic idea, that animals and plants were created for man's use, and that the relations of organisms to each other were generally regulated by creative design, is no longer accepted in scientific circles. But it is just as true of the species as of the individual that it lives for itself, and looks above all to self-maintenance. Its existence and "end" are transitory. The progressive development of classes and stems leads slowly but surely to the formation of new species. Every special form of life—the individual as well as the species—is therefore merely a biological episode, a passing phenomenal form in the constant change of life. Man is no exception. "Nothing is constant but change," said the old maxim.
The historical succession of species and classes is, both in the animal and the plant kingdom, accompanied by a slow and steady progress in organization. This is directly and positively taught by paleontology; its creation-medals, the fossils, are unequivocal and irrefutable witnesses to this phylogenetic advance. I have dealt with the subject in my History of Creation, and at the same time shown that both the progressive improvement and the increasing variety of the species can be explained mechanically as necessary consequences of selection. There was no need of a conscious Creator or a transcendental purposiveness to effect this. Scientific and thorough proof of this will be found in the three volumes of my Systematic Phylogeny (1894). I need only refer briefly to the two conspicuous examples we have in the stem-history of the tissue-plants and that of the vertebrates. Of the metaphyta the ferns are the chief groups in the Paleozoic, the gymnosperms in the Mesozoic, and the angiosperms in the Cenozoic age. Of the vertebrates only fishes are found in the Silurian age, dipneusta only begin in the Devonian, and the first mammals are in the Triassic.
A number of false teleological conclusions have been drawn from these facts of progressive modification of forms, as they are given in paleontology. The latest and most developed form of each stem was taken to be the preconceived aim of the series, and its imperfect predecessors were conceived as preparatory stages to the attainment of this aim. It was like the conduct of many historians, who, when a particular race or state has reached a high rank in civilization as a result of its natural endowments and favorable conditions of development, hail it as a "chosen people," and regard its imperfect earlier condition as a deliberately conceived preparatory stage. In point of fact, these evolutionary stages were bound to proceed according as the internal structure (given by heredity) and the outer conditions (provoking adaptation) determined. We cannot admit any conscious direction to a certain end, either in the form of theistic predestination or pantheistic finality. For this we must substitute a simple mechanical causality in the sense of psycho-mechanical monism or hylozoism.
Although the stem-history of plants and animals, like the history of humanity, shows a progressive advance taken as a whole, we find a good deal of vacillation in detail. These historical waves are wholly irregular; in periods of decay the hollows of the waves often persist for a long time, and are then succeeded by a fresh rise to the crest of another wave. New and rapidly advancing groups come to take the place of the old decaying groups, bringing with them a higher stage of organization. Thus, for instance, the ferns of to-day are only a feeble survival of the huge and varied pteridophyta that formed the most conspicuous part of the paleozoic forests in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods; they were ousted in the Secondary Period by their gymnosperm descendants (cycadea and conifers), and these, again, in the Tertiary Period by the angiosperm flowering plants. So among the terrestrial reptiles the modern tortoises, serpents, crocodiles, and lizards are only a feeble remnant of the enormous reptile-fauna that dominated the Secondary Period, the colossal dinosauri, pterosauri, ichtyosauri, and plesiosauri. They were replaced in the Tertiary Period by the smaller but more powerful mammals. In the history of civilization the Middle Ages form a deep valley between the crests of the waves of classical antiquity and modern culture.
These few examples suffice to show that the various classes and orders of living things have a very different value when compared with each other. In regard to their intrinsic aim, self-maintenance, it is true that all organisms are on a level, but in their relations to other living things and to nature as a whole they are of very unequal value. Not only may larger animals and plants retain domination for a long time in virtue of their special use or superior force and mass, but small ones may prevail owing to their power of inflicting injury (bacteria, fungi, parasites, etc.). In the same way the value of the various races and nations is very unequal in human history. A small country like Greece has almost dominated the mental life of Europe for more than two thousand years in virtue of its superior culture. On the other hand, the various tribes of American Indians have, it is true, developed a partial civilization in some parts (Peru and Central America); but, on the whole, they have proved incapable of advancing.
Though the great differences in the mental life and the civilization of the higher and lower races are generally known, they are, as a rule, undervalued, and so the value of life at the different levels is falsely estimated. It is civilization and the fuller development of the mind that makes civilization possible, that raise man so much above the other animals, even his nearest animal relatives, the mammals. But this is, as a rule, peculiar to the higher races, and is found only in a very imperfect form or not at all among the lower. These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Australian negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilized Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives. The views on the subject of European nations which have large colonies in the tropics, and have been in touch with the natives for centuries, are very realistic, and quite different from the ideas that prevail in Germany. Our idealistic notions, strictly regulated by our academic wisdom and forced by our metaphysicians into the system of their abstract ideal-man, do not at all tally with the facts. Hence we can explain many of the errors of the idealistic philosophy and many of the practical mistakes that have been made in the recently acquired German colonies; these would have been avoided if we had had a better knowledge of the low psychic life of the natives (cf. the writings of Gobineau and Lubbock).
The grave errors that have been maintained in psychology for centuries are mostly due to a neglect of the comparative and genetic methods and the narrow employment of self-observation, or the introspective method; they are also partly due to the fact that metaphysicians generally make their own highly developed mind—a scientifically trained reason—the starting-point of their inquiry, and regard this as representative of the human mind in general, and thus build up their ideal scheme. The gulf between this thoughtful mind of civilized man and the thoughtless animal soul of the savage is enormous—greater than the gulf that separates the latter from the soul of the dog. Kant would have avoided many of the defects of his critical philosophy, and would not have formulated some of his powerful dogmas (such as the immortality of the soul, or the categorical imperative) if he had made a thorough and comparative study of the lower soul of the savage, and phylogenetically deduced the soul of civilized man therefrom.
The extreme importance of this comparison has only been fully appreciated of late years (by Lubbock, Romanes, etc.). Fritz Schultze (of Dresden) made the first valuable attempt in his interesting Psychology of the Savage (1900) to give us an "evolutionary psychological description of the savage in respect of intelligence, æsthetics, ethics, and religion." At the same time, he gives us "a history of the natural creation of the human imagination, will, and faith." The first book of this important work deals with thought, the second with will, and the third with the religious ideas of the savage, or "the story of the natural evolution of religion" (fetichism, animism, worship of the heavenly bodies). In an appendix to the second book the author deals with the difficult problems of evolutionary ethics, supporting himself by the authority of the great work of Alexander Sutherland, The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct (1898). Sutherland divides humanity, in regard to the various stages of civilization and mental development (not according to racial affinity), into four great classes: 1, Savages; 2, barbarians; 3, civilized races; 4, educated races. As this classification of Sutherland's not only enables us to take a good survey of the various forms of mental development, but is also very useful in connection with the question of the value of life at the different stages, I will briefly reproduce the chief points of his characterization of the four classes.
I. Savages.—Their food consists of wild natural products (the fruits and roots of plants, and wild animals of all kinds). Most of them are, therefore, fishers or hunters. They are ignorant of agriculture and the breeding of cattle. They live isolated lives in families or scattered in small groups, and have no fixed home. The lowest and oldest savages come very close to the anthropoid apes from which they have descended, in bodily structure and habits. We may distinguish three orders in this class—the lower, middle, and higher savages.
A. Lower savages, approaching nearest to the ape, pygmies of small stature, four to four and a half feet high (rarely four and three-quarters); the women sometimes only three to three and a half feet. They are woolly haired and flat-nosed, of a black or dark brown color, with pointed belly, thin and short legs. They have no homes, and live in forests and caverns, and partly on trees; wander about in small families of ten to forty persons; quite naked, or with just a trace of some primitive garment. Of the lower races now living we must put in this class the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula, the Negritos of the Philippines, the Andaman Islanders, the Kimos of Madagascar, the Akkas of Guinea, and the Bushmen of South Africa. Other scattered remnants of these ancient negroid dwarfs, which approach closely to the anthropoid apes, still live in various parts of the primitive forests of the Sunda Islands (Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes).
The value of the life of these lower savages is like that of the anthropoid apes, or very little higher. All recent travellers who have carefully observed them in their native lands, and studied their bodily structure and psychic life, agree in this opinion. Compare the thorough treatment of the Veddahs of Ceylon in the work of the brothers Sarasin (of which I have given a summary in my Travels in Ceylon). Their only interests are food and reproduction, in the same simple form in which we find these among the anthropoid apes (cf. chapters xv. and xxiii. of my Anthropogeny). Our own ancestors were probably much the same ten thousand or more years ago. On the strength of fossil remains of Pleistocene men Julius Kollmann has shown it to be very probable that similar dwarf races (with an average height of four and a half feet) inhabited Europe at that time.
B. Middle savages, somewhat larger and less apelike than the preceding, averaging five to five and a half feet in height. Their homes are rock caverns and shelters from the wind and rain. Though they have shirts and other rudiments of clothing, both sexes generally go naked; they have primitive weapons of wood and stone and rudely fashioned boats, wander in troops of fifty to two hundred, and have no social organization; certain races, however, have laws. To this group belong the Australian negroes and Tasmanians, the Ainos of Japan, the Hottentots, Fuegians, Macas, and some of the forest races of Brazil. The value of their life is very little superior to that of the preceding order.
C. Higher savages, mostly of average human height (smaller in colder regions), having always simple dwellings (generally of skins or the bark of trees). They have always primitive clothing, and good weapons of stone, bronze, or copper. They wander in troops of one hundred to five hundred, led by prominent but not ruling princes, and exhibiting rudimentary differences of rank. The method of life is determined by hereditary customs. To this group belong many of the primitive inhabitants of India (Todas, Nagas, Curumbas, etc.), the Nicobar Islanders, the Samoyeds, and Kamtschadals; in Africa, the negroes of Damara; and most of the Indian tribes of North and South America. Their life is higher than that of the pithecoid lower and middle savages, but less than that of the barbarians.
II. Barbarians or Semi-savages.—The greater part of their food consists of natural products, which they secure with some foresight; hence they have developed agriculture and pasture to a greater or less extent. The division of labor is slight, each family supplying its own wants. As a rule, a stock of food is provided for the whole year. As a result of this, art begins to develop. They have generally fixed dwellings.
A. Lower Barbarians. Dwellings: Simple huts, generally grouped into villages and surrounded with plantations. Clothing worn regularly, but very simple: the men often naked in hot climates or with shirt. Pottery and cooking utensils, tools of stone, wood, or bone. Rudiments of commerce by exchange. Groups of one thousand to five thousand persons able to form larger communities; distinctions of rank and warfare. Princes rule according to traditional laws. Of this group we have in Asia many of the aboriginal inhabitants of India (Mundas, Khonds, Paharias, Bheels, etc.), the Dyaks of Borneo, the Battaks of Sumatra, Tunguses, Kirgises, etc.; in Africa the Kaffirs, Bechuanas, and Basutos; in Australasia the aborigines of New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Zealand, etc.; and in America the Iroquois and Thlinkets, and the inhabitants of Nicaragua and Guatemala.
B. Middle barbarians. Dwellings good and durable, generally of wood, roofed with cane or straw, forming fine towns. Clothing general, though nudity is not considered immoral. Pottery, weaving, and metal-work pretty well developed. Commerce in regular markets, with the use of money. States ruled by kings in accordance with traditional laws, fixed distinctions of rank, communities up to one hundred thousand persons. To these belong in Asia the Calmucks; in Africa many negro races (Ashantis, Fantis, Fellahs, Shilluks, Mombuttus, Owampos, etc.); in Polynesia the inhabitants of the Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Markesas islands. In Europe the Lapps belonged to this class two hundred years ago, the ancient Germans two thousand years ago, the Romans before Numa, and the Greeks of the Homeric period.
C. Higher barbarians. Dwellings, usually solid stone buildings. Clothing obligatory, weaving habitual occupation of the women, metal-work far advanced, tools generally of iron. Restricted commerce, with minted money, no rudder-ships. Crude judicature in fixed courts; rudimentary writing. Masses of people, with progressive division of labor and hereditary distinctions of rank, sometimes reaching half a million souls, under an autonomous ruler. To this class belong in Asia most of the Malays (in the large Sunda Islands and the peninsula of Malacca), and the nomadic races of Tartars, Arabs, etc.; in Polynesia the islanders of Tahiti and Hawaii; in Africa the Somalis and Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of Zanzibar and Madagascar. Of the historic peoples of antiquity we have the Greeks of the time of Solon, the Romans at the beginning of the republic, the Jews under the Judges, the Anglo-Saxons of the Heptarchy, and the Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of the Spanish invasion.
III. Civilized Races.—Food and complex vital needs are easily satisfied on account of the advanced division of labor and improvement of instruments. Art and science are consequently developed more and more. The increasing specialization brings about a great elaboration of individual functions, and at the same time a great strengthening of the whole body politic, as there is complete mutual dependence. The citizens see that they must submit to the laws of the state.
A. Lower civilized races. Towns with stone walls; vast architectural works in stone; use of the plough in agriculture. War is intrusted to a particular class. Writing firmly established, primitive law-books, fixed courts. Literature begins to develop. To this group belong in Asia the inhabitants of Thibet, Bhutan, Nepaul, Laos, Annam, Korea, Manchuria, and the settled Arabs and Turcomans; in Africa the Algerians, Tunisians, Moors, Kabyles, Tuaregs, etc. Of historical races we have the ancient Egyptians, Phœnicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Carthaginians, the Greeks after Marathon, the Romans of the time of Hannibal, and the English under the Norman kings.
B. Middle civilized races. Beautiful temples and palaces, built of stone and brick. Windows come into use, and sailing-ships. Commerce expands. Writing and written books are general; the literary instruction of the young is attended to. Militarism is further developed; so are legislation and advocacy. Of these we have in Asia the Persians, Afghans, Birmans, and Siamese; in Europe the Finns and Magyars of the eighteenth century. Of historical peoples we must count among them the Greeks of the age of Pericles, the Romans of the later republic, the Jews under the Macedonian rule, France under the first Capets, and England under the Plantagenets.
C. Higher civilized races. Stone houses general; streets paved; chimneys, canals, water and wind mills. Beginnings of scientific navigation and warfare. Writing general, written books widely distributed, literature esteemed. The highly centralized state embraces communities of ten millions or more. Fixed and written codes of law are officially promulgated and applied by courts to particular cases. Numbers of government officials have settled rank. To this group belong in Asia the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos; also the Turks and the various republics of South America, etc. In history we have the Romans of the empire, and the Italians, French, English, and Germans of the fifteenth century.
IV. Cultivated Races.—Food and other needs are artificially supplied with the greatest ease and in abundance, human labor being replaced by natural forces. The social organization grows and facilitates the play of all the social forces, and man obtains a great freedom to cultivate his mental and æsthetic qualities. Printing is in general use, the education of the young one of the first duties. War becomes less important; rank and fame depend less on military bravery than on mental superiority. Legislation is influenced by representatives of the people. Art and science are increasingly promoted by state aid.
Alexander Sutherland distinguishes three stages of development—the lower, middle, and higher—in the fourth as well as in the preceding classes. To the first stage he assigns "the leading nations of Europe and their offshoots, such as the United States of North America." For the second stage—middle cultured races—he gives a programme that may be carried out in three or four hundred years' time, with this definition: "All men are well fed and housed; war is universally condemned, but breaks out now and again. Small armies and fleets of all the nations co-operate as a sort of international police; commercial and industrial life are directed according to the moral precepts of sympathy; culture is general; crime and punishment rare." Of the third and highest stage Sutherland merely says, "Too bold a subject for prophecy, that may not come for one thousand to two thousand years yet." This division seems to me too vague and unsatisfactory, in the sense that it does not properly emphasize the civilization of the nineteenth century in contrast with all preceding stages. It would be better to distinguish provisionally the following stages in modern civilization: first, sixteenth to eighteenth century; second, nineteenth century; and third, twentieth century and the future.
A. Lower cultured races (Europe, sixteenth to eighteenth century). At the commencement of this period, the first half of the sixteenth century, we notice the preparatory movements to the full growth of mental life which was to achieve such great results in the following periods: 1. The cosmic system of Copernicus (1543) maintained by Galileo (1592). 2. The discovery of America by Columbus (1492) and of the East Indies by Vasco da Gama (1498), the first circumnavigation of the earth by Magellan (1520) and the evidence it afforded of the rotundity of the earth. 3. The liberation of the mind of Europe from the papal yoke by Martin Luther (1517) and the repulse of the prevailing superstition by the spread of the Reformation. 4. The new impulse to scientific investigation independently of scholasticism and the Church and of the philosophy of Aristotle; the founding of empirical science by Francis Bacon (1620). 5. The spread of scientific knowledge by the press (Gutenberg, 1450) and wood-engraving. The way was prepared for modern civilization by these and other advances in the sixteenth century, and it quickly arose above the barbaric level of the Middle Ages. However, it was confined at first within narrow limits, as the reactionary civilization of the Middle Ages was still powerful in political and social life, and the struggle against superstition and unreason made slow progress. The French Revolution (1792) at last gave a great impetus in practical directions.
B. Middle cultured races. This name may be given to the leading nations of Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. We may illustrate in the following achievements the great advance which this "century of science" made as compared with all preceding ages: 1. Deepening, experimental grounding, and general spread of a knowledge of nature; independent establishment of many new branches of science; founding of the cell-theory (1838), the law of energy (1845), and the theory of evolution (1859). 2. Practical and comprehensive application of this theoretical science to all branches of art and industry. Especially 3. The overcoming of time and space by the extraordinary speed of transit (steamboats, railways, telegraphs, electrotechnics). 4. Construction of the monistic and realistic philosophy, in opposition to the prevailing dualistic and mystical views. 5. Increasing influence of rational scientific instruction and abandonment of the religious fiction of the Churches. 6. Increasing self-consciousness of the nations on account of having a share in government and legislation; extinction of the belief in the divine right of rulers. New distinction of classes. However, these great advances, to which we children of the nineteenth century may point with pride, are far from being universal; they are struggling daily with reactionary views and powers in Church and state, with militarism, and with ancient and venerable immorality of every kind.
C. The higher culture which we are just beginning to glimpse will set itself the task of creating as happy and contented a life as possible for all men. A perfect ethic, free from all religious dogma and based on a clear knowledge of natural law, will be found in the golden rule, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Reason tells us that a perfect state must provide the greatest possible happiness for every individual that belongs to it. The adjustment of a rational balance between egoism and altruism is the aim of our monistic ethics. Many barbaric customs that are still regarded as necessary—war, duelling, ecclesiastical power, etc.—will be abolished. Legal decisions will suffice to settle the quarrels of nations, as they now do of individuals. The chief interest of the state will be, not the formation of as strong a military force as possible, but the best possible instruction of its young, with special attention to art and science. The improvement of technical methods, owing to new discoveries in physics and chemistry, will bring greater satisfaction of our needs of life. The artificial production of albumin will provide plenty of food for all. A rational reform of the marriage relations will increase the happiness of family life.
The darker sides of modern life, of which we are all more or less sensitive, have been laid bare by Max Nordau in his Conventional Lies of Civilization. They will be greatly altered if reason is permitted to have its way in practical life, and the present evil customs, based on antiquated dogmas, are suppressed. But, in spite of all these shades, the luminous features of modern civilization are so great that we look to the future with hope and confidence. We need only glance back half a century, and compare life to-day with what it was then, in order to realize the progress made. If we regard the modern state as an elaborate organism (a "social individual of the first order"), and compare its citizens to the cells of a higher tissue-animal, the difference between the state of to-day and the crudest family groups of savages is not less than that between a higher metazoon (such as a vertebrate) and a cœnobium of protozoa. The progressive division of labor, on the one hand, and the centralization of society, on the other, prepare the social body for higher functions than in isolation, and proportionately increase the worth of its life. To see this more clearly, let us compare the personal and the social value of life in the five chief fields of vital activity—nutrition, reproduction, movement, sensation, and mental life.
The first need of the individual organism, self-maintenance, is met in a much more perfect manner in the modern state than it was formerly. The savage is satisfied with the raw products of nature—with hunting, fishing, and the gathering of roots and fruits. Agriculture and pasturage come later. Many stages of barbarism and lower civilization must be passed before the conditions of feeding, housing, and clothing provide a secure and comfortable existence for man, and permit the addition of æsthetic and intellectual interests to the indispensable search for food.
The feeding and condition of the social body as a whole have been improved by modern civilization, just as in the case of the individual. The progress of chemistry and agriculture has enabled us to produce food in larger quantities. The ease and rapidity of transfer allow it to be distributed over the whole earth. Scientific medicine and hygiene have discovered many means of diminishing the dangers of disease and preventing its occurrence. By means of public baths, gymnasiums, popular restaurants, public gardens, etc., greater care is taken of the health of the community. The arrangement of modern houses and their heating and lighting have been immensely improved. Modern social politics strives more and more to extend these benefits of civilization to the lower classes. Philanthropic societies are busy supplying the material and spiritual wants of various classes of sufferers. It is true there is still a broad margin for the improvement of the national well-being. But, on the whole, it cannot be denied that the provision of food in the modern state is an immense advance upon that of the Middle Ages and of the barbaric period.
The great value of modern civilization and its vast progress beyond the condition of the savage is seen in no branch of physiology so conspicuously as in the wonderful process of reproduction and the maintenance of the species. In most savages and barbarians the satisfaction of their powerful sexual impulse is at the same low stage as in the ape and other mammals. The woman is merely an object of lust to the man, or even a slave without rights, bought and exchanged like all other property. Improvement is slow and gradual in the value of this property, until it reaches a high guarantee of permanency in the formal marriage. The family life proves a source of higher and finer enjoyment for both parties. The position of woman advances with civilization; her rights obtain further recognition, and in addition to sensual love the psychic relation of man and wife begins to develop. The common concern for the proper care and education of the children, which we find to an extent even in the case of many animals, leads to the further development of family life and the founding of the school. With the advent of a higher stage of civilization begins the refinement of sexual love, which finds its highest satisfaction, not in the momentary gratification of the sex-impulse, but in the spiritual relation of the sexes and their constant and intimate intercourse. The beautiful then unites with the good and the true to form a harmonious trinity. Hence love has been for thousands of years the chief source of the æsthetic uplifting of man in every respect; the arts—poetry, music, painting, and sculpture—have drawn inexhaustively from this source. However, for the individual civilized human being this higher love is of value, not only because it satisfies the natural and irresistible sex-impulse in its noblest form, but also because the mutual influence of the sexes, their complementary qualities and their common enjoyment of the highest ideal good, has a great effect upon individual character. A good and happy marriage—which is not very common to-day—ought to be regarded, both psychologically and physiologically, as one of the most important ends of life by every individual of the higher nations.
As a pure marriage is the best form of family life and the most solid foundation of the state, its high social value is at once evident. The attraction and mutual devotion of the sexes fulfils in the highest degree the ethical golden rule—the balance of egoism and altruism. As Fritz Schultze very truly says in his Comparative Psychology
We must not seek the causes of this altruism in the transcendental region of the supernatural, or in any metaphysical abstraction, but must go back to the very real and natural qualities of the organic being—and then there can be no question that the organic sex-impulse, at once physical and psychical is the first and enduring source of all love, however spiritual, and of all real ethical and sympathetic feelings and the morality founded thereon. There are two primitive instincts in all organisms: that of self-maintenance and that of the maintenance of the species. The one is the strong impulse of egoism, the other the spring of altruism: from the one come all unfriendly and from the other all friendly feelings. Every being seeks first to nourish and protect itself in virtue of its instinct of self-maintenance. But soon the magic of the instinct for the maintenance of the species works in it; it feels the sex-impulse, and thinks it is only satisfying its egoistic lust in yielding to it. In this it is wrong; it is not really serving itself, but the whole, the species, the genus. The ardor of love burns in it; and however sensual this love is at first, the new feeling is undeniably a feeling of belonging to another and of mutual consideration, looking not only to itself, but to another; not only to its own good, but to that of another, and finding its own good only in that of the other. And though this feeling at first only unites the two parents, it enlarges when children enter into life, and is extended to them in the form of parental love. Thus, out of the sex-impulse of the maintenance of the species, with its strong physical and psychic roots, is developed the love of spouses, of parents, of children, and of neighbor. Disinterested egoism goes even to the extent of sacrificing its own life for its young; in this organic and natural family love, and in the sense of the family that comes of it, we find the roots of all sympathetic and really ethical altruistic feelings; from this it widens out to larger spheres. Hence, the family is rightly held to be the chief source of all real moral feeling and life, not only in the human, but also in the animal world.
The further ennoblement of family life in the advance of civilization will give fresh proofs of the truth of this appreciation.
We now turn to consider the advantages that modern civilization offers in the way of movement in contrast to the simple methods of locomotion of the savage. We may point out first that the earliest men, like their ancestors, the anthropoid apes, lived in trees, and only gradually began to run on the ground. Some of the higher savages began to use the horse for riding and to tame it. Many inhabitants of the coast or islands began at an early period to make boats. Later the barbaric tribes invented the wagon, and much later again streets were paved and vehicles improved by civilized races. But the nineteenth century brought the invaluable means of rapid and convenient travelling by means of steamboats and railways. The whole problem of transit was revolutionized, and in the last few decades further vast changes have been made owing to the advance of electricity. Modern ideas of time and space are quite different from those of our parents sixty years ago, or our grandparents ninety years ago. In our expresses we cover in an hour a stretch of country that the mail-coach took five times and the foot-passenger ten times as long to cover. As the experiments with the Berlin electric railway have lately shown, we can now travel two hundred kilometres in an hour. The journey from Europe to India now takes three weeks, whereas the earlier sailing-vessel took as many months. The immense saving of time that we make is equivalent to a lengthening of our own life. This applies also to the more rapid transit provided by balloons, automobiles, bicycles, etc. It is easy to estimate the value of these improvements; but it is only fully appreciated by those who have lived long in an uncivilized country without roads or among savages whose legs are their only means of locomotion.
This progress in the means of transit is not less valuable socially than personally. If we conceive the state as a unified organism of the higher order, the development of its means of transit corresponds in many ways to that of the circulation of the blood in the vertebrate frame. The easy, rapid, and convenient transport of the means of life from the centre to the most distant parts of the land, and the corresponding development of the net-work of railways and steamboat routes, are to a certain extent direct tests of the degree of civilization. To this we must add the creation of a large number of offices which provide steady employment and means of subsistence for many thousands.
To compare the complex sensations of civilized man with the much simpler ones of the savage we must consider first the functions of the outer organs of sense and then the internal sense-processes in the cortex of the brain. Fritz Schultze has pointed out in his Psychology of the Savage, in regard to both sets of organs, that the savage is a man of sense-life, the civilized human being a man of mind-life. When we remember that our higher psychic functions (sensation, will, presentation, and thought) are anatomically connected with the phronema (the thought-organ in the cortex), and the inner sense-perception with the central sensorium (in the sense-centres of the cortex), we shall expect to find the latter more developed in the savage and the former in civilized man. The external sense-action is more intense in quantity, but weaker in quality, in the savage than in civilized man; this is especially true of the finer and more complex sense-functions which we call æsthetic sensations and regard as the source of art and poetry. Most strongly developed of all in the savage is the power of perceiving distant objects (sight, hearing, smell), as they warn him of the dangers about him. It is just the reverse with the subjective and proximate feelings that are excited by the immediate touch of objects and are the special instruments of sensual enjoyment—taste, sex-sense, touch, and feeling of temperature. But in both kinds of sense-action the civilized man is far ahead of the savage in respect of the finer shades of feeling and æsthetic education. Moreover, modern civilization has provided man with various means of vastly increasing and improving the natural power of his senses. We need only mention the fields of knowledge that have been opened to us by the microscope and telescope, the refined chemical methods of modern cooking, etc. The finer æsthetic enjoyment which our advanced art affords—plastic art for the eye, music for the ear, perfumery for the nose, cuisine for the tongue—is generally unintelligible to the savage, although he can see much farther, and hear and smell much more acutely, than civilized man. And in the senses of near objects (taste, touch, temperature) the senses of the savages are more coarse, and incapable of the fine gradations of civilized man.
This more refined sense-life and the accompanying æsthetic enjoyment have no less social than personal value. We have, in the first place, the incalculable treasure of modern art and science, their promotion by the state, and their embodiment in the training of the young. In the future the higher races are likely to give more attention to this, training the senses of children as well as their intelligence from the earliest years, leading them to a closer observation of nature and reproduction of its forms by drawing and painting. The art-sense must also be fostered by the exhibition of models and by æsthetic exercises, a larger place must be given to artistic education along with the acquisition of real knowledge, and an appreciation of the beauties of nature must be created by means of walks and travels. Then the children of civilized races will have the inexhaustible sources of the finest and noblest pleasures in life opened to them in good time.
The higher psychic activity that civilized man calls his "mental life," and that is so often regarded as a kind of miracle, is merely a higher development of the psychic function we find at a lower level in the savage, and is shared by him with the higher vertebrates. Comparative psychology shows us, as I have explained in the seventh chapter of the Riddle, the long scale of development, which leads from the simple cell-soul of the protist up to the intelligence of man. I have already dealt in various chapters with this point, and need not enlarge on it any further to estimate the high personal value of mental life in every civilized human being. It is enough to remind the reader of the vast treasures of knowledge that lie open to every one of us at the commencement of the twentieth century—treasures of which our grandparents at the beginning of the last century had not the slightest presentiment.
Just as the individual has experienced a great advance in the value of his personal life by the higher culture of the nineteenth century, so the modern state itself has benefited by it in many ways. The many discoveries made in every branch of science and technical industry, the great advance in commerce and industrial life, in art and science, were bound to bring about a higher development of the whole mind of a modern community. Never, in the whole of history, has true science risen to such an astounding height as it has at the beginning of the twentieth century. Never before did the human mind penetrate so deeply into the darkest mysteries of nature, never did it rise so high to a sense of the unity of nature and make such practical use of its knowledge. These brilliant triumphs of modern civilization have, however, only been made possible by the various forces co-operating in a vast division of labor, and by the great nations utilizing their resources zealously for the attainment of the common end.
But we are still far from the attainment of the ideal. The social organization of our states is advanced only on one side; it is very reactionary on other sides. Unfortunately, the words of Wallace which I quoted in the Riddle remain as true as ever. Our modern states will only pass beyond this condition in the course of the twentieth century if they adopt pure reason as their guide instead of faith and traditional authority, and if they come at length to understand aright "man's place in nature."
If we take a summary view of all that I have said on the increase in the value of human life by the progress of civilization, there can be no doubt that both the personal and the social value of life are now far higher than they were in the days of our savage ancestors. Modern life is infinitely rich in the high spiritual interests that attach to the possession of advanced art and science. We live in peace and comfort in orderly social and civic communities, which have every care of person and property. Our personal life is a hundred times finer, longer, and more valuable than that of the savage, because it is a hundred times richer in interests, experiences, and pleasures. It is true that within the limits of civilization the differences in the value of life are enormous. The greater the differentiation of conditions and classes in consequence of division of labor, the greater become the differences between the educated and uneducated sections of the community, and between their interests and needs, and, therefore, the value of their lives. This difference is naturally most conspicuous if we consider the leading minds and the greatest heights of the culture of the century, and compare these with the average man and the masses, which wander far below in the valley, treading their monotonous and weary way in a more or less stupid condition.
The state thinks quite otherwise than the individual man does of the personal worth of his life and that of his fellows. The modern state often demands for its protection the military service of all its citizens. In the eyes of our ministers of justice the value of life is the same whether there be question of an embryo of seven months or a new-born child (still without consciousness), an idiot or a genius. This difference between the personal and the social estimate of life runs through the whole of our moral principles. War is still believed by highly civilized nations to be an unavoidable evil, just as barbarians think of individual murder or blood-revenge; yet the murder of masses for which the modern state uses its greatest resources is in flagrant contradiction to the gentle doctrine of Christian charity which it employs its priests to preach every Sunday with all solemnity.
The chief task of the modern state is to bring about a natural harmony between the social and the personal estimate of human life. For this purpose we need, above all, a thorough reform of education, the administration of justice, and the social organization. Only then can we get rid of that mediæval barbarism of which Wallace speaks; to-day it finds expression triumphantly in our penal laws, our caste-privileges, the scholastic nature of our education, and the despotism of the Church.
For each individual organism the life of the individual is the first aim and the standard of value. On this rests the universal struggle for self-maintenance, which can be reduced in the inorganic world to the physical law of inertia. To this subjective estimate of life is opposed the objective, which proceeds on the value of the individual to the outer world. This objective value increases as the organism develops and presses into the general stream of life. The chief of these relations are those that come of the division of labor among individuals and their association in higher groups. This is equally true of the cell-states which we call tissues and persons, of the higher stocks of plants and animals, and of the herds and communities of the higher animals and men. The more these develop by progressive division of labor and the greater the mutual need of the differentiated individuals, so much the higher rises the objective value of the life of the latter for the whole, and so much the lower sinks the subjective value of the individual. Hence arises a constant struggle between the interests of individuals who follow their special life-aim and those of the state, for which they have no value except as parts of the whole.
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