Lysistrata

by Anthony M. Ludovici

In this way, values direct science. If we altered our ruling values, we should find that the direction of science was also altered, because the desiderata always implicit in ruling values would then have changed.

“But,” cry the modernists à outrance, “if science is ever ready, and will continue to be ever ready, with artificial aids to make good the losses in our corporeal equipment and efficiency, why all this fuss and pother? Why worry?”

Now this view, tacitly held or openly professed by the bulk of modern mankind to-day, would be all very well, and would justify a certain modicum of optimistic contentment, if we could act and think, and continue to reproduce our kind in a desirable form, independently of our bodies. But, unfortunately for the modern man, this is impossible. Not only that, but a good many of life’s joys—some of its greatest and most lasting—are connected precisely with the reproduction of our kind, with the maintenance of our bodily efficiency, and with happy functioning. The moment physiological serenity goes, the moment a function ceases to be a pleasure, the body becomes the most tyrannical and insistent pleader against Life. It constantly sets the most formidable question-mark against the value of Life.

The pleasures of the healthily functioning body are very real pleasures. They constitute a very large proportion of the sum of joy on earth. And nothing can be more obvious than that Nature means them to contribute largely to this sum of joy. To eat with false teeth is not as pleasant as to eat with natural teeth. Artificially to promote either appetite or digestion soon proves but a poor and delusive imitation of Nature’s way. To wear glasses is not as good as to be without them. Neither is the face or the expression of one who always wears glasses as attractive as the face and the expression of one who does not. To a mother, the hand-feeding of her infant child is not the unforgettable experience that breast-feeding is. And, in the deepest and most rapturous transports of love, where a large proportion of the ecstasy depends upon the bodily savouriness and sweetness of the couple involved, natural and normal physiological equipment is of paramount importance. A clean mouth, full of natural teeth, firmly set in unimpaired gums; a clean fresh tongue, not even slightly furred by incipient chronic indigestion; a sweet breath, and the natural fragrance of a healthily functioning body!—who knows love as Nature intended him to know it if he has not known these things?

And yet, how many modern men and women ever can know love in this form? How is it possible?

Can it be wondered at, therefore, that modern mankind as a whole are beginning to suspect that the joie de vivre is grossly over-rated? Can it be wondered at that the bulk of mankind are beginning to feel that life can well be lived without love?

This, then, is the disillusionment that follows on the heels of the values directing our scientific progress. While, through them, we are content to exist despite our defective bodily equipment, we are gradually weaned from our love of life and from our deepest convictions concerning the value of life. For not only does our debilitated or incomplete body itself give us but second-rate joys, but the science that comes to our aid offers us only substitutes, and we are apt to measure the value of life according to those second-rate joys, and according also to the level of happiness attained by means of these substitutes.

Thus the values that revile both life and the body in the end succeed in making both life and the body vile.

So much for the æsthetic side, which is important, because life is very largely an æsthetic phenomenon. But there are even more serious consequences than these. For instance, it is highly improbable that our vitality and intellectuality can fail to suffer depreciation when once normal functioning has been interfered with. So intricate and inter-dependent are the various parts and functions of the superior mammal’s body, that it is hardly possible to disturb the balance of one part or one function without impairing the whole. Thus it is not unlikely, in these latter days when ninety-nine per cent. of the population of highly civilized countries is suffering from some kind of defective function or bodily part, that all of us are sub-human in spirit as well as in body. It is even conceivable that the hopeless pass at which we are arriving in Western civilization is but the inevitable outcome of our chronic sub-normality or sub-humanity, and that nothing but a reform of our bodies can possibly help us out.

Nor is it any longer valid to argue that this view is materialistic. We thank Dean Inge en passant for his able reply to those who, objecting to the standpoint that has just been advanced, are ready to accuse those who hold it of materialism.