Human Work

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Even in the most rigidly repressed of all lines of growth, the moral perceptions, we can see how social evolution has developed the soul of man in direct opposition to religious traditions. A given stage of brain development is capable of formulating only such and such moral concepts—of postulating only such and such a perception of God.

The current apprehension of God in a given age is accepted as final and forced upon the consciousness of each succeeding age, thus tending to preserve a necessarily inferior standard, and, in preserving it, to check any brain growth tending to its contradiction. This is one of the most conspicuous and persistent of man’s efforts to modify conduct. Faithfully and conscientiously he had striven to maintain the innocent errors of his racial youth as guides to succeeding ages. With every gathered force of established religion, with the growing pressure of education, with the tremendous sanction of parental government, man has always striven to preserve the religious limits of his remote ancestors.

And yet, in spite of all the allied forces of conscious humanity, the evolution of brain tissue went on; the new brains saw larger glimpses of truth and transmitted what they saw to others; those who had ears to hear heard, and the world’s religions have grown and spread under genetic forces, in the face of opposition, persecution, and execution based on telic forces. A clearer and sadder illustration of the attitude of man as a factor in social evolution need not be asked. All that he could do he has done to throttle progress and stop the growth of his own soul; and this under a sublime conviction of virtue.

In scientific progress, in artistic development, along all the lines of human growth, we find the majority acting as obstructionists; always valiantly upholding that which has been, and maintaining, as respectable pterodactyls, that mud of a proper consistency is far superior as a vehicle of life to the untried vicissitudes of air. Is it then to be supposed that social evolution would have got along faster without our conscious cerebration? That we might have slid peacefully up the ladder with our eyes shut, instead of struggling on in our toad-in-the-well fashion—up three steps and down two? Surely not. The very fact that this power to alter conduct marks the highest stage of animal evolution proves its value. Nature does not make such huge mistakes as to introduce and maintain an injurious function.

We must remember, too, as against the deterrent drag of the majority, the grand uplift of the few; the power never yet measured by which the conscious life of one man can inspire and lift and stimulate the others. Again and again we see the whole race seized and pushed on by some dominant individual life, the currents of whose action vibrate unceasingly through the mass, and stir it to better growth.

When man does by some blessed chance go with the forces of evolution, and uses his conscious power to resist the downpull of old habit, and the opposition of his past-ridden fellows, he becomes an immense accelerating power. By the aid of his racial memory he can see where a new age brings us to the same danger-signals that we ignored in the past, and learn to avoid them. Man’s vast stretch of consciousness, made permanent and accessible to all by the arts, especially the art of literature, gives him the advantage of well-nigh limitless experience.

Our irrevocable past, exposed before us all in the increasing light of knowledge, is not a thing to worship and to follow, but a record of splendour and of warning, of deep humility, of patience, and of hope. Our power to postulate a future, to erect hypotheses on which to work, gives us another advantage over the unconscious products of evolution. We have yesterday to learn from, and to-morrow to plan for, and these two give a far broader basis of action than the passing experience of to-day. Our ability to modify conduct, so painfully proven by our successful repressive measures, will have even greater effect when we work with the upward tendencies, instead of against them.

So far the attitude of the race towards its own vanguard—the young—has been that of a heavy old gentleman throwing himself solidly down on an active child, and seeking to smother him and pin him to the earth. Being larger and heavier than the child, he seriously interfered with his normal activity. But when this size and weight is turned to account to help and not hinder, when, instead of piling the dead years on the quivering young brain of the child, we set ourselves as a bulwark to keep the past off him—then we shall see surprising progress. We have but to gain a clear idea of what the natural lines of social evolution are, and cease our opposition, to make large and healthy increase in our growth.

Nowhere is this better shown than in the rapid improvement of education to-day. Instead of a mere transmission of what people used to believe, the young mind is set to find out what is to be known, helped by a large array of carefully tested facts, and the best machinery of latest inventors. The laboratory method, to learn by experiment, to test by proof—this is the modern system; as against the blind belief in changeless traditions that held us back so long. The educator of to-day seeks to develop the brain by exercising all its powers—not to fill and seal it like a preserve jar.

That superstitious respect for the aged which distinguishes China is giving way to a respect for wisdom, for knowledge, for judgment, and ability wherever manifested; and if we swing too far toward honour for the young, it is a healthy extreme to counterbalance the huge and heavy back action of the past. The mind of man is now being opened to perceptions of facts as he finds them, rather than the retention of old stories, and is exercised more in free, responsible action during its early years.