Life and death

by A. Dastre

§ 3. Disharmonies in Human Nature.

Another misery in the condition of man is due to the dissidencies of his nature—that is to say, to his physical imperfections and the discordancies which exist between the physiological functions and the instincts which should regulate them.

This discordance reigns throughout the physical organism. The body of man is not the perfect masterpiece it was once supposed to be. It is encumbered with annoying inutilities, with rudimentary organs that have neither rôle nor function, unfinished sketches which nature has left in the different parts of his body. Such are the lachrymal caruncle, a vestige of the third eyebrow in mammals; the extrinsic muscles of the ear; the pineal gland of the brain, which is only the rudiment of an ancestral organ; the third eye, or the Cyclopean eye of the saurians. The list is interminable. Wiedersheim has counted in man 107 of these abortive hereditary organs, the useless vestiges of organs useful to our remote animal ancestors, atrophied in the course of ages in consequence of modifications that have taken place in the external medium.

These rudimentary organs are not only useless; they are often positively harmful.

But the most serious discordance is that which exists between the physiological functions and the instincts which regulate them. In a well-regulated organism slowly developed by adaptation the instincts and the organs alike should be in relation with the functions. All really natural acts are solicited by an instinct, the satisfaction of which is at once a need and a pleasure. The maternal instinct is awakened at the proper moment in animals, and it disappears as soon as the offspring requires no more assistance. A craving for milk is shown in all newborn children, and often disappears at an early age.

Nature has endowed man as well as the other animals with peculiar instincts, destined to preside over the different functions and to ensure their accomplishment. And, at the same time, it has enabled him in a measure to deceive those instincts and to satisfy them by other means than the execution of the physiological acts with a view to which they exist. Love and the instinct of reproduction exist in man before the age of puberty. Canova felt the spur of love at the age of five. Dante was in love with Beatrice at nine; and Byron, then scarcely seven, was already in love with Maria Duff. On the other hand, puberty has no necessary relation to the general maturity of the organism.

The family instinct is subject to the same aberrations. Man limits the number of his children. The Turks of to-day follow the ancient Greeks in the practice of abortion. Plato approved of the custom, and Aristotle sanctioned its general prevalence. In the province of Canton the Chinese of the agricultural classes kill two-thirds of their girl children, and the same is done at Tahiti. All these customs co-exist with the perfect love and tender care of the living children.

Because of these different discordancies the physical life of man is insufficiently regulated by nature. Neither the physiological instinct, nor the family instinct, nor the social instinct is, in general, sufficiently imperative and precise. Hence, since the internal impulse has not sufficient power, the necessity arises for a rule of conduct exercising its influence from without. Philosophies, religions, and legislation have provided for this. They have regulated man’s hygiene and the carrying out of his different physiological functions. Their control has, moreover, had its hygienic side. The scientific hygiene of to-day has inherited their rôle.

The idea of the fundamental perversity of human nature is born of our cognizance of its discordancies, unduly amplified and exaggerated. Soul and body have been considered as distinctly discordant and hostile elements. The body, the shroud of the soul, the temporary host, the prison, the present source of miseries, has been subjected to every kind of mortification. Asceticism has treated the body and all the innate instincts as our mortal foes.

This suspicion, this depreciation of human nature was the great error of the mystics. This view was as fatal as the inverse view of pagan antiquity. The model of the perfect life according to Greek philosophy is a life in conformity with nature. To aim at the harmonious development of man was the precept of the ancient Academy, formulated by Plato. The Stoics and the Epicureans had adopted the same principle. Physical nature is considered as good. It gives us the type, the rule, and the measure. The moral rule itself is exactly appropriate to the physical nature. We may say that pagan morality was hygiene, the hygiene of the soul and the body alike; the mens sana in corpore sano gave individual and social direction. The Rationalists, the philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Baron d’Holbach and later W. Von Humboldt, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, have adopted analogous views. If these views have been contested, it is because of the imperfections or aberrations of the natural instincts of man. Also, if we wish to base individual family or social morality on the natural instincts of man, it must be specified that these instincts are to be regularized. We must necessarily appeal from the imperfect instincts of the present to the perfected instincts of the future. Their perfection, moreover, will only be a more exact approximation to the real nature of man, and he, having avoided by the aid of science the accidents which cause disease and senile decrepitude, will enjoy a healthy youth and an ideal old age.