CONFORMITY TO ENVIRONMENT
We are too prone to think that soil and climate, hill-side or plain, mountain and shore, temperature and rainfall, constitute the sole or the most important elements in human environment. Every one of these elements is doubtless important. Frost, drought, or barrenness of soil may make a region a desert, or dwarf the development of its inhabitants. Mountaineer, and the dweller on the plain, and the fisherman on the shore of the ocean develop different traits through the influence of their surroundings. In too warm a climate the human race loses its mental and moral vigor and degenerates. This is undeniable.
But, though one soil and climate and set of physical surroundings may be more conducive than another to the development of heroism, truthfulness, unselfishness, and righteousness, no one is essential to their production or sure to give rise to them. Moral and religious character is a feature of man's personality, and our personality is moulded mainly by the men and women with whom we associate. A man is not only "known by the company which he keeps;" he is usually fashioned by and conforms to it. As President Seelye has well said, "The only motive which can move a will is either a will itself, or something into which a will enters. It is not a thought, but only a sentiment, a deed, or a person, by which we become truly inspired. It is not the intellect, but the heart and will, through which and by which we are controlled. It is not the precepts of life, but life itself, by which alone we are begotten and born unto life.
"Now, there are two ways in which living power, personal power, the power of a will, may enter a soul and give it life; the one is when God's will works upon us, and the other when our wills work upon one another. God's will may directly penetrate ours, enabling us to will and to do of his good pleasure; and our own wills, thus inspired, may be the torch to kindle other wills with the same inspiration. It is in only one of these two ways that a human soul can be truly inspired; and, without a true inspiration, no amount of instruction, whether in duty, or life, or anything else, will change a single moral propensity."[9]
Even though a Lincoln may rise above his hereditary position or his surroundings, they are the school in which he is trained; the gymnasium in which his mental and moral fibre is strengthened. Family and social life form thus the element of man's environment by which he is mostly moulded, and to which he most naturally and completely conforms. Let us therefore briefly trace the origin of this new element of man's environment, and then notice the effect upon him of conformity to its laws, and see whither these would lead him.
We have already seen that intra-uterine development of the young was being carried ever farther by mammals, and we found one explanation of this in the fact that each mammalian egg represented a large amount of nutriment, and that the mammal had very little material to spare for reproduction. Very possibly, too, the newly hatched mammals were exposed to even more numerous and greater dangers than the young of birds. Even among lower mammals the young is feeble at birth. But the human infant is absolutely helpless. And the centre of its helplessness is its brain. Its eyes and ears are comparatively perfect, but its perceptions are very dim. Its muscles are all present, but it must very slowly and gradually learn to use them. Its language is but a cry, its few actions reflex. The new-born kitten may be just as helpless, but in a few weeks it will run and play and hunt, and after a few months can care for itself. Not so the child. It must be cared for during months and years before it can be given independence. Its brain is so marvellously complex that it is finished as a thinking and willing and muscle-controlling mechanism only long after birth. This means a period of infancy during which the young clings helplessly to the mother, who is its natural protector. And during this period the mother and young have to be cared for and protected by the male. And the period of infancy and the protection of the female and young are just as truly, though in far less degree, characteristic of the highest apes as of man.
I can give you only this very condensed and incomplete abstract of Mr. John Fiske's argument; you must read it for yourself in his "Destiny of Man." And as he has there shown, this can have but one result, and that is the family life of man. And we may yet very possibly have to acknowledge that family life of a very low grade is just as truly characteristic of the higher apes as of lower man. And thus the family life of man is the physiological result of, and rooted in, mammalian structure.
And the benefits of family life are too great and numerous to even enumerate. First of all the family is the school of unselfishness. All the love of the parent is drawn out for the helpless and dependent child, and grows as the parent works and thinks for it. And the child returns a fraction of his parents' love. Within the close bond of the family the struggle for place and opportunity is replaced by mutual helpfulness; and this doing and burden-bearing with and for each other is a constant exercise in the practice of love. And with out this mutual love and helpfulness the family cannot exist.
And slowly man begins to apply the lessons learned in the family to other relations with partners, neighbors, and friends. Slowly he discovers that an entirely selfish life defeats its own ends. A voice within him tells him continually that love is better than selfishness and ministering better than being ministered unto. It dawns upon him that it is against the nature of things that other people should be so selfish and grasping; a few begin to apply the moral to themselves, and a few of these to act accordingly.
And what a change the few steps which man has taken in this direction have wrought in his life. Says Professor Huxley: "In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint, in place of thrusting aside or treading down all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed not so much to the survival of the fittest as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatoral theory of existence."
It is a vast change from the "gladiatorial theory" to that of "mutual helpfulness." Call it a revolution, if you will. Revolutions are not unheard of in the history of the animal kingdom any more than in human history. We have seen, first, digestion and reproduction on the throne of animal organization, then muscle, and finally brain. Each of these changes is in one sense a revolution.
A little before the summer solstice the earth is whizzing away from the sun; a few weeks later it is whizzing with equal rapidity in almost the opposite direction. In the very nature of things it could not be otherwise. But so silently and gradually does it come about that we never feel the reversal of the engine; indeed the engine has not been reversed at all. Very similar is the change of the struggle of brute against brute to that of man for man. Indeed human development seems now to be almost at such a solstice where the power that makes for love is almost exhausted in opposing the tendency toward selfishness. We shall not always stay at the solstice; soon we shall make more rapid progress. And unselfishness like the family relation is firmly rooted in mammalian structure.
And man owes almost everything to family life. First the child gains the advantage of the parent's experience. He is educated by the parent. In a few formative and receptive years he gains from the parent the results of centuries of human experience. The process is thus cumulative, the investment bears compound interest. And yet this is peculiar to man only in degree. Have you never watched a cat train her kittens? And the education of the child in the savage family is very incomplete.
The family is the first and fundamental of all higher social and political unities. And without the persistence of the family the larger social unit would become an inert mass. All the individual ambition, all desire for family advancement, must be retained as still a motive for energetic advance. And all the training which social life can give reaches the individual most effectively, or solely, through the family. Society without the family would be like an army without company or regimental organization. Thus the very existence, not only of training in love and mutual helpfulness, but even of society itself as a mere organization, depends upon the existence and improvement of family life. And as so much depended upon and resulted from it, it could not but be fostered and improved by natural selection. The tribe or race with the best family life has apparently survived. But all social animals have some means of communicating very simple thoughts or perceptions. The simplest illustrations of this are the calls and warning cries of mammals and birds. It is not impossible that the higher mammals have something worthy of the name of language. But man alone, with his better brain and better anatomical structure of throat and mouth, and the closer interdependence with his fellows, has attained to articulate speech. And this again has become the bond to a still closer union.
Now our only question is, How does social life enable and aid man to conform to environment? We are interested not so much in his happiness as in his progress. It helps and improves the body by giving him a better and more constant supply of more suitable food, and better protection from inclemency of the weather, and in many other ways. Baths and gymnasia are built, and medical science prolongs life. Yet make the items as many as you can, and what a long list of disadvantages to man physically you must set over against these. Many of these evils will doubtless disappear as society becomes better organized, but some will always remain to plague us. We pamper or abuse our stomachs, and dyspepsia results. We live in hot-houses, and a host of diseases are fostered by them. Indeed it would be hard to count up the diseases for which social life is directly or indirectly responsible. Social life becomes more and more complicated, and our nervous systems cannot bear the strain. Medical science saves alive thousands who would otherwise die, and these grow up to bear children as weak as themselves. We are looking now at the physical side alone; and from this standpoint the survival of the invalid is a sore evil. Now society will and must become healthier; we shall not always abuse our bodies as sinfully as we now do. Still, viewed from the standpoint of the body alone, the best, as it seems to me, which we can claim, is that social life does no more harm than good.
What has social life done for man intellectually? Much. It gives him schools and colleges. But are our systems of education an unmixed good? How many of our schools and colleges are places where men are stuffed with facts until they have no time nor inclination to think? They may turn out learned men; do they produce thinkers? And how about the spread of knowledge? Is it not a spread of information? And most of what goes forth from the press is not worthy of even that name, or is information which a man had better be without. We are proud of being a nation of readers. And reading is good, if a man thinks about what he reads; otherwise it is like undigested food in the stomach, an injury and a curse. A dyspeptic gourmand is helped by "cutting down his rations." In our mental disease we need the same course of treatment. Let us read fewer books and papers and think more about what we do read.
Society may foster original thinking; it is none the less opposed to it.
"Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
This is the motto of all great parties in Church and State. Still social life has undoubtedly fostered thought. We think vastly more and better than primitive man; still we have much to learn. Society puts the experience of centuries at the service of every individual. Poor and unsatisfactory as are our modes of education, they are a great blessing intellectually and will become more helpful. And, after all, the friction of mind against mind in social life—provided social intercourse is this, and not the commingling of two vacua—is a continual education of inestimable advantage. And all these advantages would without language have been absolutely impossible. Intellectually our debt to society is inestimable.
And how does social life aid man morally? I cannot help believing that primitive society was the first school of the human conscience. It was a rude school, but it taught man some grand lessons.
The primitive clan would seem to have existed as a rude army for the defence of its members and for offensive operations against enemies. Individual responsibility on the part of its members was slight for offences against individuals of other clans, or against the gods. For any such offence of one of its members the whole clan was held, or held itself, largely responsible. If one man sinned, the clan suffered. It could not therefore afford to pardon wilful disobedience to regulations made by it or its leaders. Its very existence depended on this strict discipline. And much the same stern discipline has to be maintained in our modern armies or they become utterly worthless.
Furthermore, man, as a social being, is very ready to accept the estimate of his actions placed upon them by his fellows. It is not easy to resist public opinion now. The tie of class or professional feeling is a tremendous power for good and evil. It must have been almost irresistible in that primitive army, which summarily outlawed or killed the obstinately disobedient. But all obedience was lauded and rewarded. It had to be so. And if the tribe was worthy to survive, because its regulations were better than those of its rivals, or perhaps as nearly just and right as were well possible, it was altogether best and right it should be so. The voice of the people was, in a very rude, stammering way, the voice of God. And those who survived became more and more obedient, and found themselves, when disobedient, feeling debased, and mean, and unworthy, as their fellows considered them. And all this feeling tended to develop a conscience in the individual answering to the estimates and regulations of the community.
And remember that the primitive religion is a tribal religion. The gods felt toward a man just as his neighbors did. A public opinion of this sort is irresistible, and a man's conscience and estimate of himself and his actions must conform to it. But you may say a man may grant that this opinion is in a sense irresistible, and find himself very miserable and unhappy under its condemnation. But he would not feel remorse; this is a very different feeling. Possibly it may be. I am not so sure. But what I am interested in maintaining is that the condemnation of one's fellow-men puts more vividly before one's eyes, and emphasizes, the condemnation of one's own self. It may often be a necessary step in self-conviction. And what is most important, even in our own case, the condemnation of our fellows often brings with it self-condemnation.
Try the experiment, as you will some day, of following a course of action which you feel fairly confident is right, but which all your neighbors think is foolish and wrong. See if you do not feel twinges within you which you must examine very closely to distinguish from twinges of conscience. If you do not, I see but one explanation—you are conscious that God is with you, and content with this majority. But in the case of primitive man God was always on the side of one's tribe.
Now this does not explain the origin of man's conception of right; it presupposes such a conception in some dim form. I do not now know why right is right or beauty beautiful. I only know they are so. Where or when either of these perceptions dawned I do not know. But, given some such dim perception, I believe that primitive human society gave it its iron grip on every fibre of man's nature.
Before the animal could safely be allowed to govern itself intelligently it had to serve a long apprenticeship to reflex action and instinct. And man's moral nature had to undergo a similar apprenticeship to tribal regulation and tribal conscience. Only slowly was instinct modified and replaced by intelligent action. And how this old tribal conscience persists. Often for good, although there it were better replaced by an individual conscience working for right. But how slowly you and I learn that there is a higher responsibility than to party or class. How often my vote and action are controlled, not by my own conscience, but by the opinion of my fellows, or the feeling that, if my party suffers defeat, God's work will suffer at the hands of my opponents. And what is all this but the survival in a very degenerate form of the old tribal conscience of primitive man? And he knew, and could know, nothing better: I can and do.
But society slowly works for unselfishness. The love learned in the family manifests itself in ever-widening circles; it must do so if it is the genuine article. It works for neighbors and friends, then for the poor and helpless of the community. Then it spreads to other communities and nations. For genuine love recognizes no bounds of time or place. Slowly we learn that we are our brother's keepers, and that the brotherhood cannot stop short of the human race. Goodness and kindness radiate from one, perhaps unknown, member of the community to his fellows, and thence all over the world. And the world is the better for his one action.
Primitive society was thus the best possible school of conscience; and the family and it are the great school of unselfishness. But society is even more and better than this. It is the medium through which thought, power, and moral and religious life can spring from man to man. This is its last and culminating advantage: it is that for which society really exists.
For, in the close bonds of family and social life, a new possibility of development has arisen based upon articulate speech. We might almost call it a new form of heredity, independent of all blood-relationship. Progress in anatomical structure in the animal kingdom was slow, because any improvement could be transmitted only to the direct descendants of its original possessor. But in all matters pertaining to or based upon mind, a new invention, or idea, or system becomes the property of him who can best appreciate it. The torch is always handed on to the swiftest runner. Thus Socrates is the true father of Plato, and Plato of Aristotle. Whoever can best understand and appreciate and enter into the spirit of Socrates and Plato becomes heir to their thoughts and interprets them to us. And the thought of one man enriches all races and times.
But a great teacher like Socrates is not merely an intellectual power. "Probe a little deeper, surgeon," said the French soldier, "and you'll find the emperor." Napoleon may have impressed himself on the soldier's intellect; he had enthroned himself in his heart. "Slave," said the old Roman, Marius, to the barbarian who had been sent into the dungeon to despatch him, "slave, wouldst thou kill Cains Marius?" And the barbarian, though backed by all the power of Rome, is said to have fled in dismay. Why did he run away? I do not know. I only know that I should have done the same. One more instance. Some thirty years ago the northern army was fleeing, a disorganized mob, toward Winchester. Early had fallen upon them suddenly in the gray of the morning, and, while one corps still held its ground, the rest of the army was melting away in panic. Then a little red-faced trooper came tearing down the line shouting, "Face the other way boys; face the other way." And those panic-stricken men turned and rolled an irresistible avalanche of heroes upon the Confederate lines. What made them turn about? It was something which I can neither define nor analyze—the personal power of Sheridan. It is the secret of every great leader of men. Now Sheridan had imparted more than information to these men. Is it too much to say that he put himself into them? From such men power streams out like electricity from a huge dynamo.
Now society furnishes the medium through which such a man can act. You have all met such men, though probably not more than one or two of them. But one such man is a host. They may be men of few words. But their very presence and look calls out all that is good in you; and while you are with them evil loses its power. Says the gay and licentious Alcibiades, in Plato's "Banquet" concerning Socrates:
"When I heard Pericles or any other great orator, I was entertained and delighted, and I felt that he had spoken well. But no mortal speech has ever excited in my mind such emotions as are excited by this magician. Whenever I hear him, I am, as it were, charmed and fettered. My heart leaps like an inspired Corybant. My inmost soul is stung by his words as by the bite of a serpent. It is indignant at its own rude and ignoble character. I often weep tears of regret and think how vain and inglorious is the life I lead. Nor am I the only one that weeps like a child and despairs of himself. Many others are affected in the same way."
These men are the real kings. Their power for good, and sometimes for evil, is inestimable. And the great advantage of social life, as a means of conforming to environment, is the medium which it furnishes to conduct the power of such men. Man's last effort toward conformity to environment, the struggle for existence in its last most real form, is the life and death grapple between good and evil. For here good and evil, righteousness and sin, come face to face in spiritual form; "we wrestle not with flesh and blood." Life is more than a game of chess or whist; it is a great battle; every man must, and does, take sides; he must fight or die. And the real kings of society are, as a rule, on the side of truth, and aid its triumph. For one essential condition of such leadership is the power to inspire confidence in the love of the king for his willing subject. A suspicion of selfish aims in the leader breaks this bond. The hero must be self-forgetful. This is one reason for man's hero-worship, and the magnetic, dominant power of the hero. But evil is essentially selfish and can gain and hold this kingship only as long as it can deceive. And these kings "live forever." Dynasties and empires disappear, but Socrates and Plato, Luther and Huss, Cromwell and Lincoln, rule an ever-widening kingdom of ever more loyal subjects.
And society will have leaders; men may set up whatever form of government they will, they are always searching for a king. And this is no sign of weakness or credulity. Man's desire for leadership is only another proof of the vast future which he knows is before him, and into which he longs to be guided. The wiser a man is, the more he desires to be taught; the nobler he becomes, the more whole-souled is the homage which he pays to the noblest. Is it a sign of weakness or ignorance in students, of adult age and ripe manhood, to flock to some great university to hear the wisdom and catch the inspiration of some great master? When Jackson fell Lee exclaimed, "I have lost my right arm." Was Jackson any the less for being the right arm to deal, as only he could, the crushing blows planned by the great strategist?
But is not man to be independent and free? Certainly. But he gains freedom from the petty tyranny of robber-baron or boss, and from the very pettiest tyranny of all, the service of self, only as he finds and enlists under the king. Serve self and it will plunge you in, and drag you through, the ditch, till your own clothes abhor you. You are free to choose your teacher and guide and example. But choose you will and must. I am not propounding theories; I am telling you facts. Whether for better or worse man always does and will choose because he must. Look about you, look into yourselves. Have you no hero whom you admire and strive to resemble? no teacher to whom you listen? You must and do have your example and teacher. Is he teaching you to conform to environment, or leading you to be ground in pieces by its forces all arrayed against you?
The Carpenter of Nazareth stood before Pilate. "And Pilate said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice." And Pilate would not wait for the answer to his question, What is truth? and the Jews chose Barabbas. Would you and I have acted differently? The answer of our Lord to Pilate contains the essence of Christianity. "You a king," says Pilate in astonishment; "where is your power to enforce your authority?" And our Lord's answer seems to me to mean substantially this: Roman legions shall suffer defeat, rout, and extermination; and Roman power shall cease to terrify. All its might must decay. But "everyone that is of the truth" shall attach himself to me with a love which will brave rack and stake. All your power cannot give a grain of new life. I can and will infuse my own divine life, my own divine self, into men. And this new life is invincible, immortal, all-conquering. I have infused myself into a few fishermen, and they will infuse me into a host of other men. Thus I will transfigure into my own character every man in the world, who is of the truth, and therefore will hear my voice. All the power of Rome cannot prevent it, and whatever opposes it must go down before it.
Christianity is the contagion of a divine life. Society is the medium through which it could and was to work. Greece had prepared the language necessary for its spread. Roman power had built its highways and levelled all obstructions.
"A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."
But, you will object, the grandest kings have had, as a rule, the fewest loyal subjects. The prophets and seers are stoned. Elijah stands alone on Carmel and opposed to him are more than a thousand prophets of Baal, with court and king at their head. Heroism does not pay, and heroes are few. Right is always in a hopeless minority. Let us look into this matter carefully, for the objection, even if overstated, certainly contains a large amount of truth.
Let us go back to two forms having much the same grade of organization: both worms. One of them sets out to become a vertebrate, building an internal skeleton. The other forms an external skeleton and becomes a crab. To form its skeleton the crab had only to thicken the cuticle already present in the annelid. It had to modify the already existing parapodia and their muscles, changing them to legs. The external skeleton gave from the start a double advantage—protection and better locomotion. Every grain of thickening aided the animal in the struggle for existence in both these ways. The very fact that the skeleton was external may have rendered it more liable to variation, because it was thus exposed to continual stimuli. And the best were rapidly sifted out by Natural Selection. The change and development went on with comparative rapidity. In the mollusk the change was apparently still more easy and the development still more rapid.
But the development of an internal skeleton was more difficult and slower. It was of no use for the protection of the animal, and only gradually did it become of much service in locomotion. Being deep-seated it very possibly changed all the more slowly. Furthermore, a cartilaginous rod, like the notochord, even fully developed, hardly enabled the animal to fight directly with the mail-clad crab. The internal skeleton had to become far more highly developed before its great advantages, and freedom from disadvantages, became apparent. The mollusk and crab were working a mine rich in surface deposits although soon exhausted. The vertebrate lead was poor at the surface, and only later showed its inexhaustible richness. It looked as if the vertebrate were making a very poor speculation.
Whether this explanation be true or not, a glance at a chart, showing the geological succession of occurrence of the different kingdoms, proves that in the oldest palæozoic periods there were well-developed cuttlefish and crabs before there were any vertebrates worthy of the name. If any were present, their skeleton was purely cartilaginous and not preserved.
I think we may go farther, although in this latter consideration we may very possibly be mistaken. We have already seen that the progress made by any animal may be measured more or less accurately by the length of time during which its ancestors maintained a swimming life. The ancestors of the cœlenterates settled to the bottom first. Then successively those of flatworms, mollusks, annelids, and crabs. All this time the ancestors of vertebrates were swimming in the water above. Food was probably more abundant, certainly more easily and economically obtained by a creeping life, on the bottom. But thither the vertebrate could not go. There his mail-clad competitors were too strong for him. Those which settled and tried to compete in this sort of life perished. We may have to except the ascidia, but they paid for their success by the loss of nearly all their vertebrate characteristics. The future progress of vertebrates depended upon their continual activity in the swimming life. And they were forced by their environment to maintain this. Otherwise they might, probably would, never have attained their present height of organization. Certainly at this time you would have found it hard to believe that the victory was to fall to these weaker and smaller vertebrates.
Let us come down to a later period. Reptiles, mammals, and birds are struggling for supremacy. Of the power and diversity of form of these old reptiles we have generally no adequate conception. The forms now living are but feeble remnants. There were huge sea-serpents, and forms like our present crocodiles, but far more powerful. Others apparently resembled in form and habit the herbivorous and carnivorous mammals of to-day. Others strode or leaped on two legs. And still others flew like bats or birds. They were terrible forms, with coats of mail and powerful jaws and teeth. And they were active and swift. When we look at them we see that the vertebrate, though slow in gaining the lead, is sure to hold it. The internal skeleton gave fewer advantages at the start; its greatest superiority had lain in future possibilities.
But which vertebrate is heir to the future? It would have been a hard choice between reptile and bird. I feel sure that I, for one, should not have selected the mammal, a small, feeble being, hiding in holes and ledges, and continually hard put to it to escape becoming a mouthful for some huge reptile. And yet the persecution, the impossibility of contending by brute strength, may have forced the mammal into the line of brain-building and placental development. The early development of mammals appears to have been slow. Palæontology proves that they were long surpassed by reptiles and birds. But the little mammal had the future. The battle was to go against the strong.
Once again. The arboreal life of higher mammals would seem to be most easily explained by the view that they were driven to it by stronger carnivorous mammals having possession of the ground. Brain was good, for it planned escape from enemies. But it did not give its possessor immediate victory over muscle, tooth, and claw in the tiger. That was to come far later with the invention of traps and guns. Brain gave its possessor a sure hold of the future, and just enough of the present to enable it to survive by a hard struggle. And the same appears to have been true of primitive man.
Thus all man's ancestors have had to lead a life of continual struggle against overwhelming odds and of seeming defeat. It was a life of hardship, if not of positive suffering. The organ which was to give them future supremacy, whether it was backbone, placenta, or brain, could in its earlier stages aid them only to a hardly won survival. The present apparently, and really as far as freedom from discomfort and danger is concerned, always belongs to forms hopelessly doomed to degeneration or stagnation. Crabs, not primitive vertebrates, were masters of the good things of the sea; and, in later times, reptiles, not mammals, of those of the land. Any progressive form has to choose between the present and the future. It cannot grasp both. I am not propounding to you any metaphysical theories, but plain, dry, hard facts of palæontology; explain them as you will.
And here we must add our last word about conformity to environment; and it is a most important consideration. Conformity to environment is not such an adaptation as will confer upon an animal the greatest immunity from discomfort or danger, or will enable it to gain the greatest amount of food and place, and produce the largest number of offspring. Indeed, if you will add one element to those mentioned above, namely, that all these shall be attained with the least amount of effort, they insure degeneration beyond a doubt. This is the conformity of the bivalve mollusk. The clam has abundance of food, enormous powers of reproduction, almost perfect protection against enemies, and lives a life of almost absolute freedom from discomfort, and the clam is really lower than most worms.
If an animal is to progress, it must keep such a conformity ever secondary to a still more important element, namely, conformity or obedience to the laws of its own structure and being. This second element the mollusk and every creeping stage neglected, and the result of this neglect was stagnation or degeneration. Activity was essential to progress from the very structure and laws of development of the animal, while a great abundance of food was not. A life of ease, for the same reason, necessarily results in degeneration.
But you will ask, What becomes of Mr. Darwin's theory of evolution, if obedience to the laws of individual being is more important than conformity to external conditions? Both are evidently necessary, and they are not so different as they may seem at first sight. They are really one and the same. Bringing out the best and highest there is in us, is the only true conformity to that which is deepest and surest and most enduring in our environment. That in environment which makes for digestion is almost palpable and tangible, that which makes for activity less so perhaps; but that which makes for brain and truth and right is intangible and invisible. We easily fail to notice it; and, unless we take a careful view of the course of development in the highest forms of life, we may be inclined to deny its existence. But it is surely there, if man is a product of evolution.
Each successive stage of animal life is not the preceding stage on a higher plane, but the preceding stage modified in conformity to the environment of that from which it has just arisen. Says Professor Hertwig[10]: "During the process of organic development the external is continually becoming an integral part of the individual. The germ is continually growing and changing at the expense of surrounding conditions." Every stage thus contains the result of a host of reactions to a ruder and older portion of environment. And the higher we go the more has the original protoplasm and structure been modified as the result of these reactions.
We have seen clearly that environment must be studied through its effect upon living beings. Viewed from any other standpoint it appears to be a myriad, almost a chaos, of interacting, apparently conflicting, forces. The resultant of some of these is shown by the animal at any stage of its development. And as the animal advances, the resultant determining its new line, or stage, of advance, includes new forces, to which it has only lately become sensitive. And thus the human mind, as the last and highest product of evolution, mirrors most adequately the resultant of all its forces. If we would know environment we must study ourselves, not atoms alone, nor rocks, nor worms.
Extremely sensitive photographic plates, after long exposure, have proven the existence of stars so dim and far-off as to be invisible to the best telescopes. Man's mind is just such a sensitive plate; it is the only valid representation of environment.
The truth would appear to be that the law is present in environment, but hard to read; but it is stamped upon our structure and being so deeply and plainly that the dullest of us cannot fail to read it. We learned the fact of gravitation the first time that we fell down in learning to walk, long afterward we learned that its law guided earth and moon. And it is the presence of this law within us, and our own knowledge that we are conscious of it, that makes man without excuse. But conformity to that which is deepest in environment often, always, demands non-conformity to some of the most palpable of surrounding conditions.
There is no better statement of the ultimate law of conformity than the words of Paul: "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
And this difference is exactly what I have been trying to put before you. The mollusk conformed, but the vertebrate conformed in a very different way, and was transformed, "metamorphosed," to translate the Greek word literally, into something higher. And let us not forget that man conforms consciously and voluntarily, if at all; he is able to read in himself and environment the law to which lower forms have been compelled unconsciously to conform.
These facts merely illustrate a great law of life. No man's eye, much less hand, can grasp the whole of the present and at the same time the future. Rather what we usually call present advantage is not advantage at all, but the first step in degeneration. If one will be rich in old age he must deny himself some gratifications in youth; his present reward is his self-control. If a man will climb higher than his fellows he must expect to be sometimes solitary; his reward is the ever-widening view, though the path be rougher and the air more biting than in their lower altitude. If he point to heights yet to attain, the majority will disbelieve him or say, "Our present height was good enough for our ancestors, it is good enough for us. Why sacrifice a good thing and make yourself ridiculous scrambling after what in the end may prove unattainable?" If you discover new truths you will certainly be called a subverter of old ones. And this is entirely natural. The upward path was never intended to be easy.
Read the "Gorgias" of Plato, and let us listen to the closing words of Socrates in that dialogue: "And so, bidding farewell to those things which most men account honors, and looking onward to the truth, I shall earnestly endeavor to grow, so far as may be, in goodness, and thus live, and thus, when the time comes, die. And, to the best of my power, I exhort all other men also; and you especially, in my turn, I exhort to this life and contest, which is, I protest, far above all contests here." You must remember that Callicles has been taunting Socrates with his lack of worldly wisdom and the certainty that in any court of justice he would be absolutely helpless because of his lack of knowledge of the rhetorician's art: "This way then we will follow, and we will call upon all other men to do the same, not that which you believe in and call upon me to follow; for that way, Callicles, is worth nothing."
And Socrates met the end which he expected: death at the hands of his fellow-citizens.
And here perhaps a little glimmer of light is thrown into one of the darkest corners of human experience. The wise old author of Ecclesiastes writes: "There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness; and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity." "I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all" (Eccles. viii. 14; ix. 11). It is this element of chance that threatens to make a mockery of effort, and sometimes seems to make life but a travesty. The terrible feature of Tennyson's description of Arthur's last, dim battle in the west is not the "crash of battle-axe on shattered helm," but the all-engulfing mist.
Perhaps this is all intended to teach us that riches and favor, and even bread, are not the essentials of life, and that failure to attain these is not such ruin as we often think. But no man ever struggled for wisdom, righteousness, unselfishness, and heroism without attaining them; even though the more he attained the more dissatisfied he became with all previous attainment. And if our slight attainments in wisdom and knowledge always brought wealth and favor, we might rest satisfied with the latter, instead of clearly recognizing that wisdom must be its own reward. Uncertainty and deprivation are the best and only training for a hero, not sure reward paid in popular plaudits.
Political economists speak of the productiveness and prospectiveness of capital. We may well borrow these terms, using them in a somewhat modified sense. In our sense capital is productive in so far as it gives an immediate return; it is prospective in proportion as the return is expected largely in the future. A "pocket" may yield an immediate very large return of gold nuggets at a very slight expense of labor and appliances, but it is soon exhausted. In a mine the ore may be poor near the surface, but grow richer as the shaft deepens; the vein is narrow above, but widens below. The returns are at first small, its inexhaustible richness becomes apparent only after considerable time and labor. The value of the "pocket" is purely productive, that of the mine largely or purely prospective. Indeed it may be opened at a loss. But even a rich mine may be worked purely for its productive value; it may be "skinned."
Let us apply this thought to the development of a species; although what is true of the species will generally be true of the individual also, for the development of the two is, in the main, parallel. In the animal all functions are to a certain extent productive, and all directly or indirectly prospective. When we examine the sequence of functions we cannot but notice how largely their value is prospective. As long as a lower function is rising to supremacy in the animal, it appears to be retained purely for its productive value; thus digestion in hydra or gastræa. But after a time animals appeared which had some muscle and nerve. And, by the process of natural selection, those animals which used digestion as an end for its productive value became food for, and gave place to, those using it as a means of supporting muscle and nerve of greater prospective value. And similarly, those animals which used muscle, or even mind, productively gave place to others using these prospectively.
In other words, the functions and capacities of any animal, the extent of its conformity to environment, may be regarded as its capital. The animal may use this capital productively or prospectively. It may spend its income, and more too; it may increase its capital. Now social capital will always fall sooner or later to those communities whose members use it most prospectively, who are willing to forego, to quite an extent, present enjoyment, and look for future return. The same is true of all development. Sessile forms and mollusks, and, in a less degree, crabs and reptiles, worked for immediate return. They are like extravagant heirs who draw on their capital and sooner or later come to poverty. The primitive vertebrate, the mammal, and the other ancestors of man used their capital prospectively, and it increased, as if at compound interest.
The spendthrift appears at first sight to have the greatest enjoyment in life, the rising business man works hard and foregoes much. I believe that the latter is really by far the happier of the two. But, if you can spend only a day or two in a city, and your examination is superficial, you may easily make the mistake of considering the spendthrift as the most successful man in the community. So, in our brief visit to the world in times past, we picked out the crab, the reptile, and the carnivore as its rising members.
Once more, capital can be spent very quickly; to use it prospectively requires time. This is a truism; but it does no harm to call attention to truisms which have been neglected. Organs and powers of great prospective value are slow and difficult of development. If their increase is to be at all rapid, they must start early. If their development and culture is deferred, there will be little or no advance, but probably degeneration. Extravagance grows rapidly and soon becomes irresistible; habits of saving must be formed early. The same is true of the development of all other virtues.
There is in the child an orderly sequence of development of mental traits. While these powers are in their earlier, so to speak embryonic, stages of development, they can be fostered and increased or retarded. They are still plastic. Very early in a child's life acquisitiveness shows itself; he begins to say "I," and "mine," and desires things to be his "very own." And this can be fostered so that the child will grow up a "covetous machine." Or he may be taught to share with others.
Not so much later, while the child is still in the lower grades of his school life, comes the period of moral development. If, during this period, these powers are fostered and cultivated, they may, and probably will, be dominant throughout his life. And herein lies the dignity and glory of the unappreciated, underpaid, and overworked teachers of our "lower" schools, that they have the opportunity to cultivate these moral powers of the child during these most critical years of his life. Repression or neglect here works life-long and irreparable harm. The young man goes out into the world. Here "practical" men continually instruct him by precept upon precept, line upon line, that he cannot afford to be generous until he has acquired wealth; that he must first win success for himself, and that he can then help others. And, unless his character is like pasture-grown oak, he follows and improves upon their teachings. He reverses the sequence of functions. He puts acquisitiveness first and right and sterling honesty and unselfishness second. For a score or more of years he labors. At first he honestly intends to build up a strong character and a generous nature just as soon as he can afford to; but for the present he cannot afford it. If he is to succeed, he must do as others do and walk in the beaten track. He wins wealth and position, or learning and fame. He now has the ability and means to help others, but he no longer cares to do so. Loyalty to truth, sterling honesty—the genuine, not the conventional counterfeit—unselfishness, in one word, character, these are plants of slow growth. They require cultivation by habit through long years. In his case they have become aborted and incapable of rejuvenescence. But his rudiment of a moral nature feels twinges of remorse. He ought not to have reversed the sequence of functions, and he knows it. But he cannot retrace his steps. He made the development of character impossible when he made wealth his first and chief aim. If he has a million dollars he tries to insure his soul by leaving in his will one-tenth to build a church, or, possibly, one-half for foreign missions. In the latter case he will be held up as a shining example to all the youth of the land, and the churches will ring with his praises. But what has been the effect of his life on the moral, social capital of the community? Is the world better or worse for his life? He has all his life been disseminating the germs of a soul-blight more infectious and deadly than any bodily disease.
If he has made learning or fame his chief aim, he probably has not the money to buy soul-insurance. He takes refuge in agnosticism, like an ostrich in a bush. His agnosticism is in his will; he does not wish to see. Or its cause is atrophy, through disuse, of moral vision. He cannot see. There are agnostics of quite another stamp, whom we must respect and honor for their sterling honesty and high character, though we may have little respect for their philosophical tenets. But how much has our scholar advanced the morality of the community? He has probably done even more harm than the business man, who is a mere "covetous machine."
The "practical" man has reversed the sequence of functions. Character is, and must be, first; and wealth, learning, power, and fame are the materials, often exceedingly refractory, which it must subjugate to its growth and use. And this subjugation is anything but easy. The reversal of the sequence results in a moral degradation and poverty indefinitely more dangerous to the community than the slums of our great cities. For these may be controlled and cleansed; but the moral slum floods our legislatures and positions of honor and trust, and invades the churches. The mental and moral water-supply of the community is loaded with disease-germs.
The social wealth of a community is the sum total of the wealth of its individual members. And a community is truly wealthy only when this wealth is, to a certain extent, diffused. If there is any truth in our argument that the sequence of functions culminates in righteousness and unselfishness, the real social wealth of a community consists in its moral character, not in its money, or even in its intelligence. We may rest assured that character, resulting in industry and economy, will bring sufficient means of subsistence, so that all its members will be fed and housed and clothed. And art and culture, of the most ennobling and inspiring sort, will surely follow. And even if such literature failed as largely composes our present fin-de-siècle garbage-heap, we would not regret its absence. That community will and must survive in which the largest proportion of members make the accumulation of character their chief and first aim. And to this community every rival must in time yield its place and power, and all its acquisitions. And in every advancing community the position of any class or profession will in time be determined by its moral wealth.
But this moral wealth is intangible. The rewards and penalties of moral law easily escape notice in our hasty and superficial study of life. The God immanent in our environment often seems to hide himself. The altar of Jehovah is fallen down, and Baal's temples are crowded with loud-mouthed worshippers. The bribes of present enjoyment and of immediate success loom up before us, and we doubt if any other success is possible.
But the law of progress, even now so dimly discernible in environment, is written in our minds in letters of fire. For we have already seen that environment can be understood only by tracing its effects in the development of life. What is best and highest in us is the record of the working of what is best and highest in environment. And the personal God so dimly seen in environment is revealed in man's soul. Man must study himself, if he is to know what environment requires of him. And if the knowledge of himself and of the laws of his being is the highest knowledge, is not the vision of, and struggle toward, higher attainments, not yet realized and hence necessarily foreseen, the only mode of farther progress? And what is this pursuit of, and devotion to, ideals not yet realized and but dimly foreseen, if it is not Faith, "the substance of things hoped for, and evidence of things not seen?" By it alone can man "obtain a good report." Man must "walk by faith, not by sight." "For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Seelye: Christian Missions, p. 154.
[10] Hertwig: Zeit- und Streitfragen, p. 82.