Morals and the Evolution of Man

by Max Simon Nordau

That under the present conditions obtaining on our planet the human individual can only live in society demands no proof. And as he can only live in society if he submits to its rules of good and bad, Morality, which urges him to this submission, aids and even preserves his life. We shall now show that inhibition, of which Morality is a differentiation making it easier for the individual to adapt himself to the conditions of social life, is of the greatest value to the individual from the biological point of view.

The lowest forms of life it is possible for us to observe show nothing which can be interpreted as inhibition. All external influences to which they are not indifferent invariably produce the same effects. They respond to every stimulus with a reflex action which reveals nothing that we should be justified in describing as an activity of the will. The reaction follows with strictly automatic regularity upon the stimulus, and nothing intervenes between the two which would permit the conclusion that in the simple organism there is any faculty that could delay, modify or change the reaction to the external stimulus.

Just as iron filings always respond to the attraction of a magnet in the same way, just as certain combinations of mercury at the impact of a blow flare up with an explosion, just as ice when warmed melts and becomes water, and water when cooled to a definite point freezes into ice, so do the simplest living things seek out certain rays in the spectrum, certain temperatures, certain chemical conditions and avoid others. Not only unicellular organisms do this, but also comparatively highly developed animals, such as the daphniæ, for if light is sent through a prism into a vessel containing water, these little creatures collect at the violet end of the spectrum; such as the wood-lice, which hate the light and creep into dark crevices; such as gnats, which are attracted by the sun and dance in their hundreds in its rays. Moreover, we meet with a similar phenomenon in man. We, too, in winter and spring seek the sun and in summer the shade; in the cold season the warm stove attracts us; bad smells put us to flight, sweet scents of flowers allure us. The simplest automatic reflex actions are at the root of these attractions and repulsions, exactly the same as with the daphniæ, wood-lice and gnats. Only we are able to control and suppress these reflex actions which the lower animals apparently cannot.

Anthropomorphic modes of thought easily mislead us into thinking that the processes we observe in lower animals are due to an exercise of will power. We draw near to the fire in winter because it is pleasant, but we can quit it if duty calls us into the cold streets. One is apt to imagine that the simple organisms also experience pleasant and unpleasant feelings, that they try and avoid the latter, that the daphnia seeks the violet rays because it likes them, that the wood-louse flees the light because it dislikes it; in fact, that these creatures possess a consciousness which becomes aware of and distinguishes between pleasing and displeasing impressions, and that they possess a will which responds to these impressions with suitable reactions. Very distinguished scientists have been unable to resist the temptation to assume in the lower animals, even in unicellular organisms, the existence of processes with which we are familiar in the human consciousness. William Roux introduces us to a "psychology of protista," and W. Kleinsorge goes so far as to maintain the existence of "cellular ethics," and to devote himself to research into its laws. The work of both these biologists is as fascinating as the most beautiful fairy-tale, but it is probably the creation of a lively and fertile imagination, just as the fairy story is.

More prosaic and less imaginative scientists do not see evidences of psychology in the signs of life in the protista, or ethics in the movements of a cell, but merely the effects of universal chemical and physical laws which also control lifeless inorganic matter. To these laws they trace the tropisms of simple organisms which tempt the imagination, prone as it is to anthropomorphism, into errors; such tropisms, that is to say, as their tendency to seek moderate warmth, certain rays of light and weak alkaline solutions, or to avoid acids, heat and ultra-violet rays. The little organisms probably do not obey these impulses for reasons of pleasure or pain any more than the iron filings obey the attraction of a magnet for such reasons. They do not fly to it because it gives them pleasure; the little metal leaves of an electroscope do not move apart because contact with each other displeases them. All forms of tropism, chemicotropic, thermotropic, phototropic manifestations, active and passive tropisms clearly show that minute organisms involuntarily and unresistingly respond to the influence of natural forces, just as if they were inanimate particles.

Microscopic investigations reveal many phenomena which one is tempted to consider signs of life, but which cannot be such, as they occur in connexion with inanimate matter. The Brownian movements are rhythmical molecular changes of position, not due to any mechanical impulse emanating from the surroundings, nor to a current in the fluid in which the object of investigation is immersed, but arising from the object itself, mostly very finely divided, tiny balls of mercury. A very small drop of chloroform introduced into a fluid of different density behaves exactly like a unicellular organism. It sends out pseudopods, wriggles and draws them in again. The pseudopods seem to feel and examine particles of matter with which they come in contact, and then either to withdraw quickly from them or to surround and incorporate them in the drop. This is deceptively similar to the behaviour of a living cell absorbing food, though there can be no question of this in the case of the drop of chloroform. In the latter it is merely a question of the effects of surface tension, that is, of the normal behaviour of matter in accordance with the laws governing the forces of nature, the investigation of which lies in the domain of chemistry and physics.

Impartial thought comes to a conclusion about these phenomena different from that derived from anthropomorphic delusions. It does not try to smuggle dim, dark life into the collections of mercury molecules apparently obeying some inner impulse, or into the seeking or feeling about of a pseudopod of chloroform. On the contrary, it understands life as the play of natural forces under the conditions supplied by a living organism, as the automatic working of a machine-like apparatus to which natural forces supply the motive power. Similar manifestations in inanimate matter and in elementary organisms seem to justify the conclusion that the distinction between living and non-living matter is arbitrary, that there are only forces, or perhaps one single force, that is to say, one movement, in the universe, whose activity is manifested in the most manifold forms, of which life is one. Modern Monism has come to this conclusion, but it is not alone in so doing. Long before Monism there was a philosophy which conceived all cosmic energies to form a unity; and really it is only an obstinate quarrel about words, for the Hylozoists regard the universe as something living and ascribe life to all matter and all atoms of which matter is made up, while the Materialists regard life as a play of forces in matter. Fundamentally the Hylozoists and Materialists hold the same views, only that the former call force life and the latter call life force; just as the only point of difference between them and the Pantheists is that these have given the majestic title of God to the universal life they assume—as Spinoza has it, "Omnia quamvis diversis gradibus animata sunt."

The question, what is life? is the greatest that the human understanding can ask of itself. For thousands of years man has cudgelled his brain over this, and is as far from finding an answer to-day as he was on the first day. The definition most often repeated runs thus: Life is the ability possessed by certain bodies to react to stimuli, to absorb nourishment and to reproduce themselves. That is a statement of observed facts, but it is no explanation. It informs us that we are familiar with bodies which behave in a way distinguishing them from other bodies; but why they conduct themselves differently from others, what the particular thing is which is present in certain combinations of matter and absent in others—that is an impenetrable secret.

Science has tried by the most varied methods to solve the problem. It seemed a triumph of research that Woehler produced urea, that chemists later on manufactured carbohydrates, that Fischer is on the high road to the production of synthetic albumen. What is gained by these discoveries? We bring about the same combinations as the living cell does. That is, no doubt, an interesting achievement, but its value as an addition to our knowledge on this point is infinitesimal. For we accomplish the production of sugar, urea and amine in a manner very different to that of the living cell, and he who copies the things turned out in a workshop has contributed nothing to our knowledge of the workman who plies his trade in the workshop. The dividing line between life and lifelessness was supposed to have been obliterated when elementary manifestations of life were proved to exist in inanimate matter; the Brownian movements in the smallest particles; the growth of crystals immersed in a solution of the same chemical composition as themselves; crystallization itself which represents a kind of very simple organization of matter, and at any rate proves the sway of a regulating and directive force; the tendency of certain elements to combine, which has been called their affinity. But this name is only a poetical metaphor which no one will take literally. The growth of crystals in their mother liquor is merely mechanical precipitation on their surface, an external addition of layers of the same material; but not growth by the incorporation of such matter, that is, through the absorption of nourishment.

These and similar results of observation do not suffice absolutely to justify the assumption, seductive though it be, that life is a fundamental attribute of matter, that it is present everywhere though graduated in intensity, that therefore apparently inanimate matter differs not qualitatively, but only quantitatively from living beings, that life stretches in an unbroken line from the block of metal or rock, in which it is completely obscured, to man, the most highly developed organism we know of; and that at a certain point in its range it reveals itself in a form which permits no distinction between organic and inorganic matter.