THE ADVENTURE OF LIFE
 
 THE 
 
 ADVENTURE OF LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT W. MACKENNA, M.A., M.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH" 
 
 " Grow old along with me 
 
 The hest is yet to be, 
 
 The last of life, for which the first was made ; 
 Our times are in His hand. 
 Who saith, ' A whole I planned, 
 Youth shows but half; trust God : see all, nor be afraid ! ' " 
 
 BROWNING: RabliBen Ezra. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 1919
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 " What I do 
 
 And what I dream include thee, as the wine 
 Must taste of its own grapes." 
 
 E. B. BROWNING. 
 
 2021368
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE life of every one who will read these words has 
 been influenced in some way by the war. It has 
 rudely broken many old and sacred ties ; it has 
 touched with calamitous finger innumerable homes ; 
 it has altered life-long habits, and shattered many 
 a fondly cherished belief. It has introduced a 
 ferment into human thought, and men who had 
 accepted without questioning and with little under- 
 standing the mysteries of existence are finding their 
 beliefs challenged and their faith shaken by the 
 iron discipline of events. They are asking, as they 
 watch civilisation ablaze in the furnace, if there 
 is any answer to the riddle of the Universe ; if 
 there is any righteousness in the scheme of things ; 
 if there is any purpose in life, or if it is all nothing 
 but an ugly delusion or a hideous dream. 
 
 There is a danger that some will find in a crude 
 doctrine of materialism the sole resting-place for 
 their feet ; but the materialistic creed is a creed of 
 pessimism a foundation from which no useful and 
 enduring edifice of belief can ever arise. That 
 humanity may spring from the ashes of civilisation 
 with vigour renewed and vision purified, we must 
 cultivate an invincible spirit of optimism. For 
 such an attitude of mind we have good grounds ; we 
 have none for the sterilising dogmas of materialism.
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 It is given to the physician to see much of human 
 life. He has many opportunities of beholding its 
 sordidness. He is the daily witness of its high 
 heroism. He is constantly faced by its problems ; 
 he can never get away from its mysteries ; his 
 knowledge of its adaptations is intimate, and though 
 there is still much about it that is hidden from his 
 inquiring eyes, he is aware of some of its potenti- 
 alities. 
 
 Personally, I cannot bring myself to believe that 
 life can ever be explained in the terms of sheer 
 materialism, and reduced to mere chemical equa- 
 tions, or expressed entirely in the language of the 
 physical or physiological laboratory. The indomit- 
 able logic of facts has driven me to the conclusion 
 that behind all and above all there is an intelligent 
 and beneficent Mind, immanent in nature and in 
 the life of man. If this is true we have good reason 
 to hail the future with a glad confidence. 
 
 The chapters which follow have been written in 
 the hope that they may help to illumine with a 
 ray of light, however feeble, the clouds of perplexity 
 with which many an earnest seeker after the truth 
 finds himself surrounded. 
 
 The book is neither a scientific monograph nor 
 a philosophical treatise, and will be easily compre- 
 hended by all. As far as possible I have endea- 
 voured to avoid the use of technical terms. My 
 aim has been to impress upon all who care to read 
 the wonder and the harmony of life, and the com- 
 plete interdependence that subsists between all 
 forms of life. I believe that the goal of Nature is 
 Life ; the aim of Life is the development of In-
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 telligence, and the object of Intelligence is a know- 
 ledge of God. 
 
 It is not my desire to disarm criticism, but some 
 of the defects in the chapters which follow of 
 whose existence I am fully conscious are due to 
 the conditions under which the book has been 
 composed. It was begun on a winter night in a 
 little bell-tent in the North of France, within 
 sight of a horizon lit by the flash of heavy guns. 
 More than once the hurricane-lamp had to be ex- 
 tinguished lest its faint light, illuminating the 
 canvas walls, should attract the eye of some quest- 
 ing enemy aviator and tempt him to hurl his bombs 
 upon the sleeping hospital. It was completed in 
 a tent still within the zone of war, but somewhat 
 more remote from actual hostilities. Libraries are 
 no part of the equipment of a war hospital, and I 
 have had no books of reference to fall back upon 
 except a few smuggled over in my kit-bag. Napoleon 
 is said to have carried a library through all his 
 campaigns. An officer of the R.A."M.C. who would 
 dare to attempt to emulate that great example 
 would have his plans rudely frustrated by the 
 Embarkation Officer. But the circumstances which 
 made the task difficult in one direction made it 
 easier in another, for the facts of war have supplied 
 me with an unfailing source of illustration. 
 
 ROBERT W. MACKENNA. 
 
 B.E.F. FRANCE, 
 March 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 MM 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE ... 3 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ..... 15 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN . . . 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DOMINANT R$LE OF INTELLIGENCE IN THE 
 
 EVOLUTION OF MAN . . . -51 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE . . . 71 
 
 xi
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 97 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL . . . 125 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 WHAT IS LIFE ? ..... 143 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN . . . .167 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN .... 187 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING . 197 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS . . . 223
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PAOB 
 
 LQVE AND MARRIAGE . .239 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WORK 255 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN . . 275 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH . . . 2Q3 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE . . . 2QQ
 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE
 
 O mickle is the powerful grace that lies 
 In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities : 
 For naught so vile that on the earth doth live, 
 But to the earth some special good doth give. 
 
 Shakespeare, " Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 Nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 
 That not one life shall be destroyed 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void 
 When God hath made the pile complete. 
 
 Tennyson, " In Memoriam."
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE 
 
 LIFE is the most wonderful thing in the world. We 
 find it everywhere, abundant, prodigal, and luxuriant. 
 Earth, sea, and sky teem with it. The grass in the 
 fields, the flowers on the hillside, the trees in the 
 forest, the birds in the air, the fish in the water, 
 and all things that creep or walk are quick with 
 life. We turn over a stone with our stick and sack 
 a city, for underneath it is a seething colony of ants, 
 which scurry hither and thither in no purposeless 
 panic, but intent on saving themselves, their young, 
 and their hoarded food from destruction by the 
 invader. 
 
 We look abroad and discover that wherever life 
 could find a foothold it has established itself. There 
 is living lichen on the rocks, and even on some 
 bluff crag thrust up from the earth like the shoulder 
 of a sleeping giant we find that life has seized on 
 every little shelf and slope where a handful of 
 earth has lodged. Not far from where I write 
 there is a great range of limestone hills. Their 
 summits are crowned by vegetation of many kinds, 
 and pine-trees stand defiant in the blast ; but all 
 along the precipitous sides, wherever niche or 
 cranny has afforded a lodgment, some tree has
 
 4 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE 
 
 grown, and, hanging between the earth and the sky, 
 where no cragsman would ever venture to tread, it 
 proclaims the triumph of life over death, and the 
 urgency of Nature's demand for life, and yet more 
 life. 
 
 Life is such an urgent thing that it hastens to 
 repair the devastation and havoc wrought by man. 
 In the fields of Flanders and the fertile land of 
 France the grass and the flowers are constantly 
 seeking to hide the desolation which man has pro- 
 duced with his devilish engines of war. It is as 
 though Nature shuddered at the defilement of 
 mother Earth and sought to cover her bruised body 
 with pitying and flower-laden hands. 
 
 Much of the beauty of the earth is due to the life 
 upon it. Take away all the vegetation, roll up the 
 green carpet of the grass, throw down the awe- 
 inspiring aisles of forest trees, and earth would 
 become a desolate and unlovely place. 
 
 We live in a world of life. Much of it we can 
 see with the unaided eye, but beyond the range of 
 our natural vision there is a realm of nature in 
 which life still fulfils itself. In a drop of river-water 
 or a speck of road-dust the microscope reveals to 
 us life in a myriad forms, each distinct, but sharing 
 in the one great principle which animates all living 
 things. Every one of these infinitesimal creatures 
 fills a niche of its own in the Universe. One may 
 sit for hours at a time with an eye riveted to the 
 tube of an ultramicroscope in a maze of wonder, 
 watching the dapce of life performed by the teem- 
 ing bacteria present in a minute drop of water 
 from a stagnant pool. The field of vision is thronged
 
 MICROSCOPIC LIFE 5 
 
 by an innumerable multitude of actively moving, 
 infinitely little living things. Some are engaged in 
 a rhythmic dance, scarcely moving from their posi- 
 tion. Others dart like some torpedo-craft across 
 the field of vision, and pass out of sight. Others 
 move with more leisurely progression like some 
 sight-seer in an historic town ; others again, with 
 sinuous movement, ominous of evil purpose, bore 
 their slow way across the visual field ; and now 
 and then, lit up by the reflected light, and all aglow 
 like some barbaric princess loaded with precious 
 stones, there swims into our ken a veritable queen 
 of bacterial life. Royally she moves ; and, as one 
 wonders, she is gone. 
 
 All life is bound together in a community of 
 mutual service. The master-chemist, the sun, at 
 work in his laboratory in every blade of grass, is 
 elaborating nourishment for all the cattle of the 
 fields. The whole of the animal kingdom depends 
 for its sustenance upon the green things of the 
 earth. But the green things owe a debt to the 
 animal kingdom in turn. The flower that pours 
 its perfumed chalice into the ocean of the air de- 
 pends upon the questing bee or other insect for 
 that little speck of magic pollen-dust that will 
 enable it to continue its life in another generation. 
 The bird that tears a berry from a tree bears the 
 seed off, and drops it perhaps many miles away, 
 where Jiaply it may find a resting-place and con- 
 tinue its kind. 
 
 All life in Nature is directed to high service, and 
 even death helps Nature to win fresh fields for life. 
 Much of the surface of the earth, as we now know
 
 6 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE 
 
 it, once lay at the bottom of the sea. Of itself sand 
 offers but a poor and precarious sustenance for 
 vegetable life ; but the first lowly plant that estab- 
 lished itself upon the sand made the conquest of 
 the desert an easier thing for the plants that fol- 
 lowed it. It lived a difficult existence, then it 
 died, and its leaves and stern drooped and fell upon 
 ,its inhospitable bed. But in making its sacrifice 
 it won an empire. It imparted to the sand all the 
 riches it had won from its life in the atmosphere, 
 and the sterile shore was gradually converted into 
 -hospitable earth. The fertility of the earth is a 
 perpetual witness to the rejuvenating power of death. 
 ''Life feeds on death ; and out of death new life for 
 j fever rises. Nothing in Nature lives for its own 
 ' (ends alone ; nothing in Nature dies without be- 
 queathing a heritage of some sort to other things 
 that live. Even the bacillus, man's constant and 
 deadly foe, when vanquished by him, renders up to 
 him spoils of war that may help him to win in 
 another fight. For every micro-organism that is 
 destroyed by his mechanism of defence in the body 
 of a human being, confers upon him some fresh 
 power, some increase of immunity that will help to 
 protect him against a similar attack. The man 
 who walks scatheless through an epidemic of in- 
 fectious disease does so, in some instances, because 
 there has come to him by heredity a healthy con- 
 stitution ; but part of his immunity is a legacy 
 left to him by those germs of Disease which, in the 
 course of his life, have died within his body. No- 
 thing that lives is valueless, and if only we could 
 see the whole world of Nature spread before us
 
 LIFE DIFFERS IN DEGREE 7 
 
 like a picture and could understand all that there 
 is to decipher, we should discover that it constitutes 
 a great and beautiful whole in which, in spite of 
 apparent universal struggle, there is a deep under- 
 lying concord whose aim and purpose is life life 
 more adaptable and more capable of progress. 
 
 All forms of life have the same physical basis, a 
 highly complex substance compounded from simple 
 elements, known as protoplasm. This identity of 
 the physical basis of life necessarily implies that 
 life differs more in degree than in kind. We and 
 the higher animals have more activities, more 
 potentialities than the lower forms of life, but, being 
 built up from protoplasm, we are cousins-germane 
 to every roadside weed, or every flower in the field. 
 And for this, if for no other reason, we should 
 walk humbly. 
 
 In one of his essays Huxley pointed out a fact 
 which must have struck any one who has ever sat 
 on a hillside and contemplated the life around him. 
 All the essential processes of life are carried on in 
 silence. The cataract of the sap rising in some 
 giant tree sends no ripple of sound into the atmo- 
 sphere to call our attention to it. The branches 
 orientate themselves so that the leaves may catch 
 the sunlight, and the leaves carry on their won- 
 derful work of chemical disintegration and chemical 
 synthesis in absolute silence. The boom of the 
 bursting bud is a poetic fancy, divorced from reality. 
 The fruit ripens, and falls mellow to the earth, but 
 no murmur is wrung from the parent tree. The 
 bleat of a straying sheep, the hum of a bee, the 
 rasping crescendo of the grasshopper, the bark of a
 
 8 THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE 
 
 distant dog, all come to us vibrant and keen in the 
 stillness of nature. But they are not essential 
 processes of the life of the creatures that produce 
 them. They are the witnesses to the joy of life, 
 or its perplexity. 
 
 Our muscles contract noiselessly ; in the river of 
 our blood millions of little cargo-boats collide and 
 move on again without a sound. Organs like the 
 liver perform marvellous functions of chemical 
 conversion in absolute silence A stethoscope ap- 
 plied to the chest enables us to hear the rhythmic 
 thud of the .closure of the valves in the heart, and 
 we may hear also the rustle of the air as it is sucked 
 into the ramifying passages through the lurgs. 
 But we can detect no sound from the processes of 
 assimilation which are occurring so constantly in 
 the heart muscle, to keep it in repair ; nor do we 
 hear any noise and clamour that would tell us that 
 the cells of the lungs are the busiest wharves in the 
 world, where countless millions of cargo-boats are 
 unloading carbonic-acid gas, and taking in a freight 
 of oxygen every moment of the day and night. 
 
 Even thought, the highest function of which any 
 living thing is capable, is a silent process. 
 
 The question as to whether life exists on any 
 other planet than our own is one of constant 
 allurement, and as yet science has no definite and 
 authoritative declaration to make. It has been 
 pointed out that certain very special conditions are 
 necessary for the maintenance of life, such as an 
 atmosphere of a certain density, containing at least 
 oxygen and carbonic-acid gas, nitrogen and mois- 
 ture ; regularity, within certain limits, of tempera-
 
 LIFE IN OTHER WORLDS? 9 
 
 ture ; an adequate amount of solar energy in the 
 form of light and heat ; and an abundance of water. 
 These things are necessary for life as we know it. 
 But there may be other forms of life of which we 
 have neither knowledge nor the power to conceive. 
 To man, to all animals, and to all vegetable life 
 oxygen is essential. But there is a class of micro- 
 organisms, of which the tetanus bacillus is one, to 
 which oxygen is a deadly poison. They cannot live 
 in its presence. They flourish in its absence. So 
 it is obvious that the conditions which we know to 
 be essential for the maintenance of human life 
 upon the earth may not be necessary for other 
 forms of life on other planets. It would indeed be 
 strange if the infinite immensity of space, sprinkled 
 over as it is by an incalculable number of worlds 
 greater than our own, should offer no habitation 
 to life but the surface of our minor planet, the earth. 
 
 Flammarion, the distinguished French astronomer, 
 was convinced that life exists on other planets 
 than our own, and many think with him. But 
 when we remember the remarkable way in which 
 life is affected by environment, we must be pre- 
 pared to admit that any form of life met with 
 among the stars, being subject to other influences, 
 will probably differ in a marked degree from life 
 as we know it. 
 
 The simplest form of life is the unicellular organ- 
 ism the protozoon. Man is built up from a 
 multitude of such cells, many millions going to 
 make up his body. But he does not consist of a 
 coherent mass of protozoa welded together. His 
 cells are specialised. Some are set aside in one
 
 io THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIFE 
 
 organ to discharge certain functions ; others, in 
 other organs, are devoted to still different ends. 
 Complexity of organisation has led to specialisation 
 of function, and the complex organism and the 
 specialised function are integrated and controlled 
 by the marvellously developed nervous system of 
 which he is possessed. He is no mere collection of 
 cells. He is a self-determined individual, sharing 
 in common with the lowlier forms of life the power 
 of growth, the functions of assimilation and nutri- 
 tion, the power of reproduction, and participating 
 with them in the inevitable experience of death. 
 /But he has an experience which is his and his alone. 
 I Endowed with the golden gift of reason, he is, to 
 I some extent, the master of his own destiny. For 
 ihim life need not be a meaningless repetition of 
 Jelementary and almost automatic functions. He 
 / may scale the dizzy heights of joy, or plumb the 
 / depths of sorrow. Made for action, eager for life, 
 / capable of self-sacrifice and of worship, ever hun- 
 \ gering insatiably for new knowledge, man may 
 \ make of life no meaningless adventure, but a glorious 
 Vopportunity. 
 
 Though a great chasm divides the inanimate 
 things in nature from the things that have life, 
 life is perpetually making use of the inanimate, 
 quickening it to new activities. The iron of the 
 earth, and the limestone rock broken up by atmo- 
 spheric influences, are absorbed and modified by the 
 plant life of the fields, and become incorporate in 
 the bodies of animals, and may ascend through bird 
 or sheep or oxen to a place in the body of man. 
 Life spins fresh matter into her ever-growing web,
 
 THE WEB OF LIFE n 
 
 and when the web crumbles into dust, Life picks 
 up the separated atoms once again and weaves 
 other and possibly still more beautiful webs. Matter, 
 which some hold to be the only reality, is little 
 more than a delusion : it becomes real only when 
 it subserves the purposes of life. 
 
 All the forces of Nature are leagued in a great 
 conspiracy. The sunbeam which trips daintily over 
 a field of ripening corn, sprinkling the last flecks 
 of gold on the tumid ears, is completing with its 
 living touch the work made possible by myriads of 
 dead and lowly things. Many generations of plant 
 life perished to prepare the soil ; worms and insects 
 and bacteria have laboured and died to enrich it. 
 Winter has crumbled it in her ice-cold fingers ; 
 Spring has warmed it with her breath ; Summer 
 has sounded her reveille and marshalled the serried 
 ranks of standing corn, teaching them to forage in 
 the limitless acres of the atmosphere ; the rain 
 has poured out its libation, and the wind is come 
 with a promise that the time of harvest shall not 
 fail, and that there will be food for man and beast. 
 For the whole Universe works together in the ser- 
 vice of life, which is the goal of Nature and her 
 crown.
 
 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE
 
 " I call the effects of Nature the works of God, whose hand 
 and instrument she only is ; and therefore to ascribe His actions 
 unto her is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon 
 the instrument, which if with reason we may do, then let our 
 hammers rise up and boast that they have built our houses, 
 and our pen receive the honour of our writings." Sir Thomas 
 Browne, " Religio Medici."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 IN all ages the question of the origin of life has 
 allured and perplexed the thinking man. Unable 
 to fathom the mystery, he has either folded his hands 
 and abandoned his search for a solution, or he has 
 fallen back upon his imagination, and some of the 
 most beautiful legends of mythology were the 
 offerings made by fancy to the clamant appeal of 
 the hungering mind for a knowledge of the truth. 
 
 From the days of Aristotle down to our own time 
 the idea of the possibility of spontaneous genera- 
 tion has had its supporters. They hold that the 
 line between the non-living and the living, which 
 is passed in the reverse direction by everything 
 that breathes at death, is largely an artificial 
 barrier, and they believe that animate things may 
 rise spontaneously from the inanimate. The care- 
 ful experiments of Pasteur did much to disprove the 
 doctrine, but of recent years it has received a fresh 
 impetus from the researches of Leduc, and from 
 the observations of Burke of Cambridge, who 
 studied the effects produced by radium emanations 
 upon solutions of gelatine. A great body of scien- 
 tific opinion is, however, opposed to the possi- 
 bility of spontaneous generation occurring. It is
 
 16 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 worthy of note that whenever living things are 
 said to have appeared spontaneously they have 
 been found to belong to animal or vegetable species 
 which are already known. This is in itself a power- 
 ful argument against their authenticity. If spon- 
 taneous generation ever occurs, either in nature or 
 under laboratory conditions, it would probably 
 present us with entirely new forms of life. This 
 would mean the constant appearance of new species, 
 and we know that the number of species increases 
 only by age-long variations. 
 
 Aristotle, no mean scientific observer, who 
 studied the manifestations of life carefully k and 
 recognised the unbroken chain which links the 
 lowest plant with the higher animals, believed that 
 certain fishes were produced spontaneously, and 
 Virgil, naturalist and poet, tells in his Georgics how 
 a goddess taught the shepherd to cause living bees 
 to rise from the flanks of a dead bullock. In the 
 De rerum Natura Lucretius expressed the opinion 
 that animals might develop from the action of the 
 sun upon the vapours and moisture of the earth. 
 
 At a much later date Van Helmont, who lived 
 in the sixteenth century, stated that living mice 
 and scorpions could be produced at will, like the 
 live rabbit from the conjurer's hat, by mixing 
 together certain ingredients. His recipe for the 
 spontaneous generation of mice consisted of a mix- 
 ture of dirty linen with wheat, or a piece of cheese, 
 while scorpions could be produced by exposing 
 sweet basil to the heat of the sun in the hollow of 
 a scooped-out brick. These interesting conclusions 
 were the outcome either of inaccurate observation,
 
 SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 17 
 
 or of faulty method which left a loop-hole for error 
 to creep in in one case a vagrant mother-mouse, 
 in the other a scorpion. Holinshed, in whose his- 
 torical works Shakespeare dug deep for the ground- 
 work of some of his plays, said in his Description of 
 England, " A horse-hair laid in a pailful of turbid 
 water will in a short time stir and become a living 
 creature." This erroneous idea still persists in 
 some country districts. 
 
 In approaching the study of the origin of life 
 we must not forget that the earth existed as a glow- 
 ing ball of fire for many aeons before it cooled down 
 sufficiently to give to life a fit nidus in which to 
 develop. Though some forms of life are marvel- 
 lously tolerant of extremes either of heat or cold, 
 life as a rule requires for its maintenance and pro- 
 pagation certain somewhat specialised conditions, 
 and until such conditions were attainable upon our 
 globe there was no life upon it. The late Lord 
 Kelvin calculated that some time between twenty 
 and forty million years ago the conditions upon the 
 earth began to be compatible with the development 
 of life. The margin of twenty million years be- 
 tween the two dates seems a generous and ample 
 concession, though it is only a moment relatively 
 to the immense and incalculable period since the 
 gaseous particles or atoms of meteoric dust that 
 were the prototype of our planet rushed to each 
 other in the cosmic dance, and, blazing through 
 space, Earth started on her pilgrimage along the 
 unbeaten track of her orbit. 
 
 Before we proceed to consider how life may have 
 come to earth we must recognise two facts. First,
 
 18 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 that life on this planet probably began in the sea, 
 and, second, that vegetable life was, almost cer- 
 tainly, the precursor of animal life. The former of 
 these postulates is founded on the knowledge that 
 moisture is necessary for the continuance of life 
 in its full activity, and that the sea would offer a 
 medium whose temperature was less variable than 
 that of the adjacent land. Further, it should not 
 be forgotten that in the water of the sea are found 
 dissolved most of those inorganic or mineral sub- 
 stances that are requisite for the support of plant 
 life, and the constant motion of the sea would 
 bring the necessary pabulum to the growing plant. 
 Vegetable life must have preceded animal life, for 
 not even yet, after these millions of years during 
 which it has succeeded in accommodating itself to 
 many changes of environment, has the animal 
 economy found a way of supporting itself directly 
 from inorganic materials. Plant life is the jackal, 
 it is the lion's provider: it caters for animal life, 
 and without vegetable life, unless it suddenly 
 acquired new powers, animal life would speedily 
 and inevitably die out. 
 
 Probably life appeared in the sea in a form even 
 more elementary than those simple unicellular 
 formations such as the protozoa and the various 
 forms o-f bacterial life which we know to-day. Some 
 biologists believe that by the time the protozoon 
 was reached, evolution had already many years 
 behind it. 
 
 There are several theories as to the origin of life, 
 each of which has its advocates. There is the 
 theory that life is the result of a definite creative
 
 WHENCE CAME LIFE? 19 
 
 act of the great First Cause that lies behind the 
 Universe. Another opinion is that life did not 
 originate on our planet, but came to it as a rich 
 bequest from some other world that perished years 
 ago. In the collision or cataclysm which shattered 
 that planet some particle of living matter, it is 
 suggested, found refuge in a cleft in a piece of rock, 
 and the fragment of rock, rushing through space 
 as a meteorite, fell upon the earth and surrendered 
 its precious burden to the waves of the sea. Both 
 Lord Kelvin and von Helmholtz accepted this 
 hypothesis as a feasible explanation of the manner 
 in which life may have come to earth ; but it has 
 been opposed by other authorities on the ground 
 that in its passage through our atmosphere a 
 meteorite glows with intense heat, and consequently 
 its temperature is raised to a degree that is in- 
 compatible with life. On the other hand it has 
 been urged that, if the cleft in the meteorite were 
 sufficiently deep, its little germinal burden might 
 find adequate protection even though the surface 
 of the meteorite were hotter than Nebuchadnezzar's 
 furnace. It has also been suggested that life may 
 have come to earth from some other planet with- 
 out the intervention of a meteorite to carry it. 
 Cohn put forward the suggestion that, in the cosmic 
 dust which floats through space and falls gently as 
 the dew upon the expectant bosom of the earth, 
 there might be mingled living cells that had wan- 
 dered or been hurled into space from some other 
 planet. Falling gradually through our atmosphere, 
 these living cells would not attain such a velocity 
 that their temperature would be raised to a degree
 
 20 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 incompatible with their continued vitality. Svante 
 Arrhenius has suggested that living matter may 
 travel from star to star, impelled by the pressure of 
 the waves of light. But both theories have had 
 their opponents, who believe that the actinic rays 
 of the sun would destroy these elementary living 
 cells in their long passage through the vastnesses 
 of interplanetary space. 
 
 In 1872 \V. Preyer made a novel suggestion con- 
 cerning the origin of life upon the earth. He was 
 of opinion that life was present in the midst oi the 
 glowing mass of incandescent matter of which the 
 earth consisted before it began to cool. According 
 to his view the molten ball teemed with low forms 
 of life which he called pyrozoa. These life-forms 
 differed radically from any type of living thing 
 that we know to-day in their extraordinary capacity 
 for resisting heat. As the earth cooled the pyrozoa 
 adapted themselves to the new conditions, and 
 became the remote predecessors of those forms of 
 life with which we are acquainted. Preyer's theory 
 did not receive much support, and to-day it is 
 almost forgotten. 
 
 Of recent years an attempt has been made to 
 prove that life arose spontaneously when the surface 
 of the cooling earth was covered by chemical sub- 
 stances in a condition of nascent activity. Accord- 
 ing to this theory creation has not yet ceased. It 
 is still in operation, and life continues to be engen- 
 dered afresh from non-living materials. 
 
 The chemist has divided matter into two great 
 classes organic substances and inorganic sub- 
 stances. An organic substance is one which contains
 
 ORGANIC INORGANIC COLLOIDS 21 
 
 carbon, while an inorganic substance, such for 
 example as sulphate of iron, oxide of lead, or bi- 
 chloride of mercury, is carbon-free. For a long 
 period it was believed that the line separating the 
 organic from the inorganic was sharp and well- 
 defined, and that at no point did the substances in 
 the two classes approximate to each other in com- 
 position or character. But about the middle of 
 last century Thomas Graham began to investigate 
 the properties of a series of bodies which he called 
 colloids (from colla glue) an example of which is 
 gelatine, and he enunciated the opinion that in 
 the colloids we have a large group of substances that 
 come near to bridging the chasm between the 
 organic and the inorganic. As sometimes happens 
 with an epoch-making discovery, his work was 
 neglected and almost forgotten, until about the 
 beginning of the present century, when its impor- 
 tance dawned upon the chemist and physiologist, 
 and the chemistry of the colloids has become one 
 of the most fertile territories for research that the 
 scientific mind has yet discovered. With singular 
 clarity of vision Graham recognised the close rela- 
 tionship subsisting between the character of the 
 colloids and the phenomena of life, and later ob- 
 servers have not hesitated to suggest that through 
 the colloids one may pick one's way from the in- 
 organic to the organic, and from the inanimate to 
 the living. 
 
 If, in imagination, equipped with all the resources 
 of modern chemical knowledge, we could throw 
 ourselves back through the ages to that primeval 
 time when the earth had cooled just to that degree
 
 22 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 of temperature compatible with life, we should find 
 ourselves contemplating a sphere bubbling with 
 energy and instinct with chemical change. Earth 
 would still be warm to the touch. It would be 
 enveloped in a thick cloud of vapour, an atmosphere 
 saturated with moisture. As the land cooled the 
 saturated atmosphere above it would give up some 
 of its vapour, in huge quantities of dew or rain, as 
 though some giant hand were squeezing the mois- 
 ture from a colossal sponge. The falling water 
 would plough channels for itself over the surface of 
 the cooling globe, and, flowing down to the valleys, 
 would make the lakes and the oceans, dividing peak 
 from peak, island from island, and continent from 
 continent. Besides carrying an excess of moisture, 
 the atmosphere would almost certainly contain a 
 higher percentage of carbonic acid gas than it does 
 to-day, and be more highly charged with electrical 
 energy. Huge volcanoes would be in active erup- 
 tion, filling the atmosphere with fine dust brought 
 from the bowels of the earth dust charged with 
 strange radio-active properties. The surface of 
 the globe would be a vast chemical laboratory, 
 where atoms were groping after atoms, finding 
 each day new affinities stable or unstable, breaking 
 away from old combinations at the lure of new 
 and more efficient ones ; where every gas and 
 every element was in a nascent state, that condition 
 in which its energy is most potent. It was an hour 
 pregnant with tremendous possibilities. We have 
 called it an hour ; it may have been an aeon, for 
 we have no means of measuring the duration of the 
 epoch during which earth was approaching that
 
 PROTOPLASM 23 
 
 degree of temperature compatible with the recep- 
 tion or development of the first living cell. 
 
 Protoplasm, the physical basis of all life, whether 
 vegetable or animal, consists of carbon, oxygen, 
 hydrogen, nitrogen, with traces of phosphorus and 
 possibly sulphur. Science knows no living thing 
 which does not consist of protoplasm. 
 
 It has been suggested that life originated on the 
 earth in the following manner. In the primeval 
 dawn when, as we have seen, earth was a great 
 chemical laboratory, certain molecules of those 
 elements we have stated to be the constituents of 
 protoplasm united in the waters of some quiet 
 lagoon or peaceful bay of the sea. The union 
 would be more or less stable, and the protoplasmic 
 jelly would tend to increase in size. Occasionally 
 fragments of the jelly would be broken off by 
 mechanical means, and they in turn would con- 
 tinue to combine with other elements and increase 
 in size by accretion. As molecule united with 
 molecule, it has been suggested that various un- 
 stable compounds uniting with this primitive but 
 still lifeless protoplasm would supply it with stores 
 of energy, the liberation of which would produce 
 automatic movement and possibly bring about the 
 subdivision of the formless mass. That this is 
 no fantastic dream has been demonstrated by 
 the fascinating experiments of Professor Stephane 
 Leduc, who, under suitable conditions, has suc- 
 ceeded in producing in solutions of inorganic salts 
 figures of growth which closely resemble plant life, 
 and processes of cellular division that reproduce 
 exactly the nuclear and cellular division of a living
 
 24 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 cell with all the complicated figures of mitosis. 
 But Leduc's beautiful figments are, after all, only 
 phantasms of life ; they are not living entities. 
 
 Similarly the carbon-containing protoplasmic jelly 
 which we have imagined growing in some silent 
 mist-shadowed lagoon was not a living thing. It 
 lacked the subtle touch of the vitalising wand of 
 life. Whence could that come ? To this the 
 science of chemistry makes a ready answer. There 
 are substances known as catalysers, which have the 
 power of producing chemical changes and chemical 
 combinations between other substances while they 
 themselves remain unaffected. The class-room ex- 
 periment with spongy platinum is well known. If 
 hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in the proper pro- 
 portion in a closed vessel they may be kept indefin- 
 itely at ordinary temperatures without any com- 
 bination taking place between them. But if a 
 fragment of spongy platinum be dropped into the 
 mixture the two gases combine instantaneously 
 with a loud explosion, and water is produced. The 
 spongy platinum remains unaltered, and may be 
 used over and over again for a similar experi- 
 ment. It has acted simply as a catalyser. It has 
 been the finger that has pulled the trigger of the 
 gun. 
 
 Chemists have discovered several catalysing 
 agents, and it is possible that when the world was 
 young many substances existed with this property. 
 So it has been suggested that one of these agents 
 came into contact with a mass of lifeless proto- 
 plasmic jelly, containing the elements we have 
 mentioned, and caused them to combine, linking
 
 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 25 
 
 up the molecules in such a way that they became 
 possessed of that new, extraordinary, and unfathom- 
 able property that we know as life. 
 
 To explain the continuance of life upon the earth 
 and its further development from the primordial 
 mass of vitalised protoplasm we must postulate 
 that it did not appear till the nidus or nest was 
 ready for it. If this first union of the 'elements into 
 living protoplasm had occurred, as it might have 
 done, at a time when the surrounding conditions 
 were incompatible with its continuance and deve- 
 lopment the living mass would have relapsed again 
 into an inert and lifeless condition. The fact that 
 a specific point in time and a special concatenation 
 of antecedent conditions was a necessary precursor 
 of the appearance of life upon the earth should be 
 emphasised. Its importance will become apparent 
 later. 
 
 We have seen that the origin of life upon the 
 earth has been explained in four ways : 
 
 (1) As the result of a definite creative act. 
 
 (2) By the transference of living cells from some 
 
 other planet. 
 
 (3) By the existence of life in a low and peculiar 
 
 form (pyrozoa) in the substance of the earth 
 while it was still a blazing cloud of gas. 
 
 (4) By the union of certain elements, under 
 
 suitable conditions, by natural processes, 
 without the intervention of any outside 
 intelligent guidance. 
 
 The first theory is the only one which insists 
 upon the necessity of a causative and intelligent 
 agent operating from without. It is the theory
 
 26 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 held by the Christian Church, and it has withstood 
 a multitude of attacks from many quarters. The 
 second theory does no more than push the difficulty 
 a little further back. It does not pretend to ex- 
 plain the origin of life, but simply suggests a means 
 whereby life came to the planet. It is not, there- 
 fore, an adequate solution of the problem with 
 which we are confronted. If life, as we know it, 
 came to earth from some other planet, we have a 
 natural desire to know how it originated there. 
 What causes operated to bring it into being ? Was 
 it created, or did it arise spontaneously there ? 
 We find ourselves in the orbit of a vicious circle, 
 and we have not ' succeeded in doing more than 
 transferring our difficulty to another sphere, where 
 its solution is beyond our reach. 
 
 All that need be said of the third theory is that 
 if the pyrozoa, as Preyer suggested, were coeval 
 with the matter out of which the earth is formed, 
 whence did they come, and why were they endowed 
 with life ? Were they simply fragments of matter 
 raised to the nth degree ? 
 
 The last theory really amounts to the statement 
 that, given the conditions presupposed, life had 
 inevitably to follow. It is, in some sort, a modern 
 elaboration of a conception already formulated by 
 Lucretius : 
 
 " Multaque mine etiam exsistunt animalia terris, 
 Imbribus et calido soils concreta vapore." l 
 
 It has received a great impetus from the discoveries 
 
 * " And now there arise from the earth many living creatures 
 produced by the rain and the warm vapour of the sun."
 
 SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 27 
 
 relating to radio-active substances, and is now held 
 in some form or other by many scientists as offer- 
 ing a feasible explanation of the origin of life. 
 But when we come to examine it critically we find 
 that it does not carry us far enough. It deals only 
 with secondary causes. It explains a possible 
 method. It takes no cognisance of what lies 
 behind the method. To reach a satisfactory con- 
 clusion we must come to closer grips % with the 
 problem. We must look deeper. 
 
 The ancient conception of matter was that it 
 consisted of an aggregation of atoms, an atom 
 being a particle so small that it could not be divided 
 or cut. Two atoms unite to form a molecule ; 
 molecules unite and form an appreciable mass. For 
 many long years this theory of the atom held the 
 field. It fitted the known facts regarding matter. 
 It " worked " and was therefore regarded as valid. 
 But science is never content with her conquests, and 
 however severely she may have handled the specula- 
 tions of the philosophers or the conceptions of the 
 theologians, she has never hesitated to scrutinise 
 with equal impartiality the theories which have 
 been stepping-stones in her own progress. So she 
 has cast the theory of the atom into her crucibles 
 and remoulded it anew. Led by Svante Arrhenius, 
 a distinguished chemist and physicist, she has begun 
 to wonder if matter is really the " solid " thing she 
 imagined it to be, and is not, rather, simply a con- 
 dition of motion. Bishop Berkeley long ago sug- 
 gested that, apart from the percipient mind, matter 
 had no existence. Modern science stretches out a 
 hand to him across the centuries and agrees that
 
 28 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 matter may be nothing more than a condition of 
 motion affecting our senses. Arrhenius' concep- 
 tion of the atom is that, tiny and invisible though 
 it be, it is really akin to a planetary system. In 
 the centre is a positively charged electron ; round 
 it spin an innumerable multitude of negatively 
 charged electrons, and the relative distance between 
 the centrally placed electron and its negatively 
 charged satellites, and their relative distance from 
 each other, is as great as the gulf that separates 
 the sun from the planets and the planets from one 
 another. It is a bold conception, with a tinge of 
 poetic inspiration, and it has served to explain cer- 
 tain physical phenomena that were difficult to 
 understand on the older theory, such as radio- 
 activity and the emission of the cathode rays from 
 an X-ray tube. Whether or not it will stand the 
 acid test of time, or the scrutinising eye which 
 science has already turned upon it, is as yet im- 
 possible to say. But some, who are willing to 
 take the theory as it stands and apply it fully, have 
 not hesitated to suggest that the whole mystery of 
 the existence of the Universe, and the coming of 
 life itself, may be explained by the application of 
 this conception. 
 
 They imagine that, in the beginning, infinite 
 space was filled by the infinite ether, still, silent, 
 immovable. A little stress or strain appeared in 
 the ether ; it was thrown into motion ; the first 
 " atom " was formed ; it became as " the little 
 leaven which leaveneth the whole lump." And 
 from this atomic dance in the ether " matter " as 
 we know it was formed, and the sun, the moon, the
 
 THE STRESS IN THE ETHER 29 
 
 myriad stars, and our own earth, which is, after all, 
 only a third-rate orb in the Milky Way, came pro- 
 gressively into being. 
 
 The conception is a bold one, bold to the verge 
 of unreason, but it does not explain all. It is an 
 axiom accepted alike by the scientist and the philo- 
 sopher that every change in anything previously 
 existing must have had an adequate and pre-exist- 
 ing cause. Or, to express it baldly, cause must 
 precede effect. If we are honest with ourselves 
 we are brought face to face with the question 
 What started this stress in the ether ? and we 
 stand mute and perplexed till we are thrown back 
 upon a First Cause. Both science and philosophy 
 have an evil and inveterate tendency to rest con- 
 tent, when driven to the extremes of thought, with 
 attaching a label to a difficulty and imagining that 
 such a ritual explains it. To attribute the stress 
 to a First Cause is to fall short of satisfying the 
 human heart that hungers after knowledge. What 
 is this First Cause ? Is it a blind force ; or some 
 cold, aloof, impersonal abstraction like the Abso- 
 lute of the Philosopher ; or a living, vivid, omni- 
 scient intelligence eternal, omnipotent God ? Blind 
 forces, acting at hazard, do not usually produce 
 results which are orderly and well-regulated, and 
 which can be expressed in mathematical formulae. 
 The Universe is a highly complex fabric, but that 
 part of it which comes within our ken is controlled 
 by the operation of certain laws, some of which 
 Kepler and Newton have discovered for us. And 
 when our knowledge is sufficiently advanced we 
 shall probably find that other phenomena besides
 
 30 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 those of the inter-attraction of bodies in space, and 
 the procession of the planets, are subject to law. 
 The Universe presents a daily and nightly demon- 
 stration of beauty, of harmony, and of law, and to 
 imagine a blind force to be capable of acting as a 
 cause and producing such effects is to tax the 
 credulity of the most ignorant. No blind force 
 agitating in a tray the fragments of a jig-saw puzzle 
 will ever succeed in putting it together. No little 
 child, given a box of colours and the necessary 
 brushes, could blindly splash them on canvas till 
 a Corot stood revealed ; no cascade of water, drawn 
 by the " natural force " of gravity over a precipice, 
 and falling through ages on a block of marble 
 would wear it down till out of its stony hardness 
 " The Winged Victory of Samothrace " or two 
 tender, palpitating figures, aglow with love, like 
 Sinding's " Two Human Beings," burst on the 
 ravished eye. We do not expect such things to 
 happen. From experience we know that they are 
 unattainable by such means. But still, in the face 
 of all reason, there are some who cannot find a 
 more satisfactory explanation for the wonders re- 
 vealed to us in the Universe, and the culminating 
 wonder of human life than the operation of a 
 blind force. 
 
 There are many who are prepared to go so far 
 as to admit that, to use a figure of speech, God 
 started the machine, but they are unwilling to 
 accept the idea that He is immanent in the Uni- 
 verse, and still guides and controls its every opera- 
 tion. According to their belief the original stress 
 in the ether was produced by God ; the after con-
 
 BLIND FORCE OR CREATIVE MIND? 31 
 
 sequences came as an unavoidable sequence. 
 Speaking anthropomorphically, the finger of God 
 disturbed the ether : the rest followed without any 
 further guidance or control. To suggest this is 
 to reduce the Creator to the level of a meddlesome 
 boy who relaxes the brake on a chain of railway 
 wagons at the top of a colliery bank, and, startled, 
 sees them race down the incline, beyond control,- 
 with consequences that he can neither foresee nor 
 direct. 
 
 If we are prepared to admit the idea of an intel- 
 ligent Creator we ought to be prepared to go 
 further, and allow that He foreknew all that would 
 follow His first energising touch. He saw the 
 end from the beginning : He planned it should 
 be so. 
 
 All this is, apparently, an unwarrantable digres- 
 sion from the matter in question viz. the origin 
 of life. But the practical application of the digres- 
 sion will emerge shortly. There are some who are 
 willing to accept the idea of God as a Creator of 
 the material non-living Universe, but who hesitate 
 to attribute to Him, except very indirectly, the 
 origin of life. They hold that life would come as a 
 consequence of the inter-actions of matter. 
 
 A distinguished scientific investigator of reverent 
 mind and profound knowledge Professor Benjamin 
 Moore has said : " Given the presence of matter 
 and energy forms under the proper conditions, life 
 must come, inevitably; " and he is of opinion that 
 " If all intelligent creatures were by some holocaust 
 destroyed, up out of the depths in process of millions 
 of years intelligent beings would once more emerge."
 
 32 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 
 
 He bases his conclusions on his vast knowledge of 
 chemistry and the properties of matter. But we 
 must not forget that the Creative Mind which con- 
 structed the Universe endowed the atoms with 
 whatever qualities they possess ; gave to the light 
 of the sun those marvellous powers upon which all 
 living things depend ; ruled that atom should com- 
 bine with atom in certain ways ; and that, if cer- 
 tain conditions were fulfilled, certain results would 
 follow. If we look at things in this way and it 
 seems rational to do so we are forced to the con- 
 clusion that wherever or in whatever fashion life 
 originated, it did so with the foreknowledge, and 
 at the behest of the Mind that moulded the firma- 
 ment, and at the point in time when the surrounding 
 conditions were compatible with its continuance. 
 If we accept this we are admitting that the origin 
 of life was a definite creative act. 
 
 Philosophy and science may spin their webs 
 of theory 
 
 " Fine as ice-ferns on January panes 
 Made by a breath," 
 
 but the theories may serve only to obscure the 
 truth they seek to make plain. Even knowledge may 
 darken counsel with words ; but when all the 
 mighty tomes which men have written to explain 
 the mystery of the Universe and the fact of human 
 life have crumbled into dust there will still remain, 
 embroidered on the garment of Nature and picked 
 out in starry points across the vastness of the sky, 
 the message which all may read whose vision is un- 
 clouded : "In the beginning, God."
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 33
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, 
 
 A crystal and a cell, 
 
 A jellyfish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where the cavemen dwell ; 
 
 Then a sense of law and beauty, 
 
 And a face turned from the clod 
 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 And others calls it God." 
 
 Carruth. 
 
 34
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 WE have already pointed out that a characteristic 
 of life is its urgency, its tendency to increase, and 
 once it appeared on earth, or rather in the water 
 of the earth, and found the conditions there favour- 
 able for its continuance, it began to expand. In 
 all likelihood the first cell that vibrated with being 
 was a lowlier form than any we know to-day, but 
 it must have had some, if not all, of the properties 
 which we find in the modern unicellular organisms. 
 For instance, it must have had the power of growth. 
 Now growth, if we distinguish it from simple accre- 
 tion, necessarily presupposes the power of assimila- 
 tion, which is the property possessed by a living 
 cell of taking into its interior substances that differ 
 from it in chemical composition, and, after modifying 
 them, incorporating them in its structure. It must 
 also have had a capacity for renewing itself and 
 repairing any damage which it might sustain, and, 
 from what we know of the progress of life, we may 
 conclude that it had the power of responding in 
 some measure to changes in its environment. Eaily 
 in the life of the cell it must have acquired. the 
 power of multiplication, probably by simple divi- 
 
 4 35
 
 3 6 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 sion. The reason is fairly clear. A small cell 
 absorbs nutriment from without. Unless the amount 
 of material excreted is in equilibrium with and 
 exactly balances the amount taken in, the original 
 cell must increase in size. The larger the cell the 
 more nutriment will be required for its support. It 
 absorbs through its surface. A point is at last 
 reached when the single surface of the cell begins 
 to be insufficient to absorb enough nourishment 
 to support the organism. Either of two things 
 may then happen : the cell may die, or it may 
 divide into two. If the first living cell on earth 
 had died instead of dividing, earth would, once 
 again, have been untenanted. But we believe 
 and here we are not speculating, since such division 
 has been observed over and over again that the 
 primordial cell divided. In this way the size of 
 the individual was lessened, since what was one 
 became two. When we divide an apple with a 
 knife we increase its superficies by adding to it 
 twice the total area of the cut surface. The result 
 of the division of a unicellular protozoon does 
 not give so large an increase in superficial area, but 
 it does add considerably to the extent of the surface 
 through which nourishment can be obtained. Life 
 therefore becomes a simpler problem in economics 
 for the two daughter cells than it had been for the 
 single mother-cell. Division was to the advantage 
 of the economy, so multiplication by simple fission 
 became the rule for all simple forms of cell-life. In 
 this way life increased. 
 
 The first living cell was a vegetable or plant cell, 
 and probably it appeared in the sea. Plant life
 
 LIFE DEPENDENT ON SUN 37 
 
 can support itself on almost any form of nourish- 
 ment. Animal life is more specialised ; it requires 
 the intervention of plant life to make much of the 
 material upon which it feeds assimilable. Plant 
 life performs this function for animal life because 
 it is a great chemist, or rather, it is a great chemical 
 laboratory in which the presiding chemist is the 
 sun. It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that life 
 as we know it is dependent upon the sun. The 
 hand that with a stroke could blot out the sun, 
 would with the same stroke extinguish all life on 
 the earth. How much life may owe to the other 
 planets we cannot as yet tell ; but we are aware 
 that it owes not a little to the moon, for it was that 
 beacon which lured life out of the sea. Some 
 moon-drawn wave, straying high upon the beach, 
 left behind it upon the tawny sand a nucleus of 
 plant life, and the miracle spread from the waters 
 to the dry land. Ancient mythology tells us that 
 Venus in all her beauty rose from the sea-foam. 
 But the whole pageant of nature, constantly chang- 
 ing and constantly renewed in fresh loveliness, was 
 also a gift from the ocean to the earth. If life had 
 remained always and solely in the sea it would not 
 have made the progress of which we are at once 
 the goal and the witnesses. The simpler forms of 
 life have remained in the sea, and most of the cold- 
 blooded animals are found there to-day. But on 
 the larfd, after the first struggle for adaptation, 
 new conditions and new stimulants of growth were 
 accessible in ample measure. Oxygen was procur- 
 able in sufficient quantity, and it was more easily 
 obtainable than in the water. But life has never
 
 38 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 forgotten that the sea was its first habitat, for it 
 cannot continue to exist without water, and all 
 mankind, as well as all plants and animals, are still 
 living in an ocean the saline fluid which permeates 
 all our tissues, and without which we should all die. 
 
 Out of the protoplasm contained in the first living 
 cell that was stranded on the shore the sun elabor- 
 ated a remarkable chemical compound known as 
 chlorophyll. A plant grown in the dark is pale, 
 anaemic-looking, and delicate. Its leaves are white. 
 But if such a plant be brought from its unwholesome 
 surroundings into the gracious presence of diffused 
 sunlight, in a few days a remarkable change will 
 take place. Gradually the leaves become green, 
 and the plant loses its wilted appearance. The 
 green colouring matter is chlorophyll. It is the 
 handmaiden of the sun, and it is able, under the 
 influence of sunlight, to break up the carbonic acid 
 of the atmosphere into its constituents of carbon 
 and oxygen, rendering the carbon easily assimilable 
 by the plant. It is upon the carbon thus absorbed 
 that plant life largely depends for its sustenance. 
 It derives moisture and certain salts from the 
 earth in which it is rooted, but the chief source of 
 its food is the carbon of the air. 
 
 The first form of plant life that appeared on the 
 land was probably one of the mushroom-like fungi. 
 We speak of a " mushroom family " when we desire 
 to indicate that the family is of recent origin and 
 rapid social advancement. But we should not 
 forget that the mushroom is of very ancient and 
 honourable lineage, as one of its congeners is the 
 oldest stock on the earth. 

 
 THE UBIQUITOUS MICROBE 39 
 
 Long after the fungi appeared upon land there 
 came the flowering plants'. They represent a step 
 much higher up the evolutionary ladder. They 
 are vegetable life specialised for reproduction. They 
 are more adaptable to various environments, and 
 are endowed with properties which permit of their 
 spreading everywhere. 
 
 But before the flowering plants came it is pro- 
 bable that animal life had begun to appear. The 
 ubiquitous microbe represents a stage somewhere 
 between vegetable and animal life. It has not yet 
 been decided whether microbes should be regarded 
 as belonging to the animal or vegetable kingdom, 
 though the weight of opinion tends to consign them 
 to the latter. They contain no chlorophyll, and 
 therefore are unable to derive the nourishment 
 they require from the air. If the conditions under 
 which they are placed are satisfactory they have 
 a capacity for extremely rapid multiplication. It 
 has been calculated that if a cholera bacillus is 
 supplied with a suitable pabulum and kept at a suit- 
 able temperature it will, in the course of twenty- four 
 hours, have over fifteen hundred trillion descend- 
 ants. The figure is a staggering one, and helps to 
 show that, if man had not the means of destroying 
 such a menace, the micro-organism, and not the 
 human being, would be master in the world. 
 
 Long after the earliest forms of bacterial life 
 appeared the first protozoon came into being. It 
 was a gelatinous mass of protoplasm, probably 
 without any enveloping membrane. It was some- 
 thing more than a plant : it was ^something less 
 than an animal. Slowly, by gradual changes, the
 
 4 o THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 line of demarcation between plant and animal 
 forms was determined, and the sea began to have 
 two varieties of inhabitants resembling each other, 
 but far from identical. As the years rolled on there 
 appeared creatures of the jelly-fish type, sponges, 
 sea-anemones, sea-bears, star-fish, Nature early show- 
 ing ( her love for opulent and progressive variety. 
 Later still came the molluscs, creatures that could 
 accommodate themselves to conditions either within 
 the water, their natural habitat, or upon the grey 
 and gnarled surface of the rocks when the waves 
 temporarily receded. Then came the sea-creatures 
 with jointed limbs, the crabs, the lobsters, and the 
 sea-insects. It has been calculated that, about the 
 time when the marine animals had reached this 
 stage, vegetable life had established its first footing 
 upon the land. After the lobster class came the 
 fishes, at first with incomplete skeletons, and later, 
 after the lapse of many centuries, more perfect 
 fishes with a complete osseous framework. Then 
 came the amphibians, creatures at home alike in 
 the water and out of it, and animal life stepped 
 ashore. About this time, it is estimated, the 
 flowering plants had been differentiated a graceful 
 coincidence which enabled Nature to deck herself 
 with flowers to welcome the new-coming guest. 
 These primitive amphibians were the advance-guard 
 of animal life upon the earth. Ungainly creatures 
 with four limbs adapted cither for swimming or 
 for walking, they spent their early life in the water 
 breathing through their gills, and lived in their 
 adult stage upon the land, making use of specially 
 developed lungs for the purposes of respiration.
 
 THE ADVENTUROUS AMPHIBIAN 41 
 
 Once established upon the earth, the amphibia rapidly 
 increased in variety, diverging in various directions. 
 At one time they constituted a very large class : 
 now, their position in the animal kingdom is a 
 subordinate one. One may well imagine that the 
 raucous clamour of frogs in the night is their age- 
 long protest against the forgetfulness of man, who 
 rarely remembers that it was one of their ancestors 
 who boldly set his life upon a hazard and ventured 
 to come ashore. 
 
 After the amphibians came the reptiles, and it 
 is singular that the birds, which every one loves, 
 are descended from the reptiles towards which 
 every one feels a constitutional repulsion. The 
 mammalia, the great class to which all human beings 
 belong, probably appeared about the same time 
 as the birds from some reptilian stem. The mam- 
 mals multiplied rapidly, became differentiated into 
 many groups, and at last the summit of the long 
 ascent was reached in the development of man. 
 
 Such is, in brief, a cursory account of the genesis 
 of man according to the evolutionary doctrine. 
 Long ago Aristotle pointed out how very closely all 
 forms of plant and animal life were related to each 
 other. In the eighteenth century Bonnet added 
 to . our knowledge of the relationship of animals 
 one to another and tried to trace an unbroken 
 sequence of development from the lower animals to 
 man. Lamarck, perplexed by the difficulty in 
 differentiating species, called attention to the pos- 
 sibility of variation impressed upon the individual 
 being the determining factor in producing new 
 species from a common stem ; but it was left to the
 
 42 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 genius of Charles Darwin to point out that in natural 
 selection lay the key to variation, and the solution 
 of the problem of the origin of species. With 
 infinite patience, touched with the spirit of genius, 
 and with that reverence which is almost invariably 
 a characteristic of the truly great mind, Darwin 
 worked out his theory carefully, showing that be- 
 hind the principle of selection lay another principle, 
 the survival of the fittest. Capacity for adapta- 
 tion to the requirements of new environment, and 
 the relentless extermination of individuals and 
 species that lacked this faculty, had led to the con- 
 tinued existence of certain varieties of animal and 
 plant life, and the extinction of others. If Darwin 
 had been left to champion his theory alone it is 
 unlikely that it would have provoked as much 
 hostility as it *did ; but he was badly served by 
 some of those who seized upon his hypothesis and 
 flung it rudely in the teeth of many a fondly 
 cherished belief. 
 
 Haeckel, with prodigious energy ajid Teutonic 
 thoroughness, has traced with care all the evolu- 
 tionary steps from the lowest form of life up to man, 
 
 , illustrating his narrative by constant reference to 
 members of the various groups that still survive 
 as inhabitants of the earth, the air, and the sea. 
 
 He has laid special emphasis upon the fact that 
 ontogeny, which is the science of the development 
 of the individual, is a condensed epitome of phyto- 
 geny, or the history of the development of the 
 species, and he has applied this doctrine to the 
 life-history of man. It cannot be denied that 
 much evidence may be adduced in support of this
 
 ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY 43 
 
 opinion. Starting from the embryonic primordial 
 cell, which resembles a protozoon, the human off- 
 spring, in the course of its antenatal growth, passes 
 through many stages which closely approximate 
 to various lowly forms of animal life. At one time 
 it is more like a multicellular protozoon a mere 
 ball of cells than a human being ; at another it 
 suggests a worm-like creature ; later it has many 
 points in common with the fish ; and later still it 
 is more like an anthropoid ape than a child of man. 
 So that, apparently, every child climbs its own 
 evolutionary ladder in the space of a few months, 
 covering the ground in its brief antenatal existence 
 which it took its ancestor, the first man, many 
 million years to traverse. But it must be clearly 
 understood that at no point, were the development 
 of the human embryo arrested, could it be deflected 
 into a worm, a fish, or an ape. Humanity is im- 
 pressed upon it from the beginning. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the doctrine of 
 evolution is still a hypothesis, but it is a hypo- 
 thesis so well supported by accumulated evidence 
 as to have become to all intents an established fact, 
 and only a very few now question its validity. One 
 of its most characteristic features is its fairness. 
 It offers a logical explanation, not only of progress 
 and survival, but also of failure and extermination 
 among the various species of living things. One 
 may attempt to draw a picture to illustrate the 
 evolutionary principle in action ; but no scheme 
 mapped out with ordinary lines can give a correct 
 idea of how progress has been achieved, not con- 
 stantly and rapidly, but little by little, by a hard-
 
 44 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 won step forward here, a retrogression there, the 
 possible blotting out of a promising line at one 
 place, and the coming into prominence of another 
 elsewhere. The spectacle is a dramatic one, and 
 only a genius could have recognised ft. 
 
 Emphasis is too often laid upon a wrong view of 
 the struggle for existence. The battle has not 
 always been to the strong. Species of animals 
 that, in virtue of their weapons of offence and de- 
 fence, and their gigantic muscular development, 
 ought to have survived if the struggle had been 
 one of brute force and brute force alone, are alto- 
 gether extinct. When one studies the matter 
 closely, one is led to the conclusion that it is not 
 brute strength which is the aim of life, but the 
 development of mind. Most, if not all, of the crea- 
 tures that have survived to our day have won 
 through because of some little advantage in instinct 
 or intelligence. If we give due weight to this aspect 
 of the matter we shall, I think, be able to overcome 
 one of the chief practical objections that has been 
 advanced against the doctrine of evolution, namely, 
 the almost incalculable length of time which 1 the 
 process of evolution requires. Morphological and 
 structural changes brought about by environment 
 are very slow to appear and to become established 
 in the stem of the species. But instinctive or in- 
 telligent adaptations would beget new functions ; 
 and function can rapidly alter pre-existing struc- 
 tures for its own ends. 
 
 A widespread misconception regarding evolution 
 is that it claims to prove that man is descended 
 directly from some living form of ape. This idea
 
 THE STREAM OF LIFE 45 
 
 has produced a sense of revulsion in many minds ; 
 but it is quite erroneous. Certainly man is derived 
 from a common stem with some of the apes, but in 
 the remote antiquity of prehistoric ages ; and since 
 he left the stem he has developed steadily along 
 his own specialised line, while his ape relations 
 have lagged behind. If one may be allowed to make 
 a comparison, one might say that the common fount 
 of life is like an immense lake high up between 
 two guardian hills. From one end of the lake two 
 streams escape, which represent the plant stem 
 and the animal stem. If we follow the animal 
 stream we discover ere long that it is giving off 
 little branches. There are branches to represent 
 the jelly-fish, the vertebrate fishes, the amphibia, 
 and so on. After travelling for a short distance a 
 very large daughter stream breaks away, and when 
 it has flowed for a little space it is divided into 
 two rivers by some intervening rock upon the hill- 
 side. One of these rivers represents the ape stem ; 
 the other is the stream of the human race. Though 
 now separated from each other, they travel on side 
 by side through many an unmeasured aeon, parallel 
 but divided, taking up from their environment this 
 and that quality, deflected here, steadily progress- 
 ing there, and always moving onward. As they 
 flow on they begin to diverge, and the human 
 stream gradually acquires a greater velocity than 
 the ape stream and passes on far ahead of it into 
 the limitless valley of opportunity, while the ape 
 stream lags behind, held in the tangle of a morass. 
 This is a truer and a less repulsive picture of the 
 evolution of man than that disordered dream which
 
 46 THE ORIGIN OF MAN 
 
 imagines that he has sprung straight from the loins 
 of an ape, and, taking to the trees to ensure his safety 
 against some rapacious beast, has sat in the atti- 
 tude of Rodin's " Thinker " until his caudal appen- 
 dage atrophied from disuse, and the hair fell from 
 his body through much cogitation. 
 
 Modern opinion has modified somewhat the views 
 held as to the factors which produce evolutionary 
 changes. At one time it was believed that the 
 chief variations were due to external causes such 
 as environment. Now, many hold that besides the 
 influence of environment we must take account of 
 influences working from within the organism out- 
 wards. In his Last Words on Great Issues, Dr. 
 Beattie Crozier says : " Whatever subsidiary in- 
 fluence the environment may have had on the 
 evolution of the forms of plant and animal life, an 
 inner organising principle which keeps possible 
 variations within strict and definite limits, not to 
 be overborne, must be assumed as primary and 
 fundamental." 
 
 It is altogether wrong to imagine that the in- 
 fluence of the directing Mind behind the Universe 
 is ruled out by the evolutionary theory. To dis- 
 cover the plan on which a great cathedral has been 
 constructed is not to dispense with the architect 
 and the builder. The Mind responsible for those 
 chemical affinities and molecular combinations which 
 resulted in the appearance of the first living proto- 
 plasmic cell was also responsible for endowing the 
 protoplasm with the power of adapting itself to its 
 environment. So far as we can judge of any of 
 His operations in nature, the Creator invariably^.
 
 THE MIND BEHIND THE METHOD 47 
 
 makes use of what we call secondary causes. He 
 is throughout self-consistent, and Darwin's demon- 
 stration of man's evolutionary ascension should not 
 shake the belief of any one in the overruling and 
 controlling influence of the Mind which fore-ordained 
 and foreknew that out of the speck of protoplasm 
 in the lagoon at the foot of the hill creature after 
 creature should evolve, and, moulded by environ- 
 ment, struggle on, until at last man should stand 
 erect upon the summit.
 
 THE DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLI- 
 GENCE IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 
 
 49
 
 Mind is not matter nor from matter, but 
 Above, leave matter then, proceed with mind I 
 Man's^e the mind recognised at the height ; 
 Leave the inferior minds and look at man." 
 
 Robert Browning, " The Ring and the Book.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE IN THE 
 EVOLUTION OF MAN 
 
 WHEN one surveys the geological records of the 
 history of life upon the earth one discovers that 
 many animals and many complete species are now 
 extinct. Some of these animals were gigantic crea- 
 tures, like the iguanodon. Others, like the sabre- 
 toothed tiger, possessed weapons that should have 
 served them well in the struggle for life. But the 
 ichthyosaurus, the diplodocus, the dinotherium, 
 and the mastodon have all vanished, leaving no 
 record except a heap of bones, or the impress of 
 their skeleton in a rock that was once clay, from 
 which the scientist has been able to reconstruct 
 models bearing some resemblance to their ancient 
 prototypes. Those species which have survived 
 owe their survival to peculiar faculties of adapta- 
 tion to changing circumstances, to the possibility 
 of acquiring adequate food, and to the possession 
 of one or other characteristic that enabled them to 
 defend themselves. The tortoise has survived 
 probably because it was provided with a carapace, 
 a shell-like osseous roof under which it could hide 
 itself ; the elephant owes its survival to its strength,
 
 52 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 its swiftness, its intelligence, and the fact that, 
 unlike the mammoth, its body was not out of 
 proportion to the amount of food it could acquire ; 
 the lion and the tiger owe their survival to their 
 strength, agility, claws and teeth, and to their 
 courage and cunning, which are mental qualities ; 
 while the venomous reptiles survived because of 
 their poison-glands. 
 
 In the whole history of mankind there is no 
 moment more dramatic than that in which man 
 first found himself alone in a world of monsters. 
 Naked and unarmed, physically inferior to many 
 of the animals around him, with neither rending 
 tooth nor tearing claw, he was to all outward appear- 
 ance at a tremendous disadvantage. But he was, 
 even in those primeval days, a creature of immense 
 potentialities. He did not skulk and hide like 
 some craven afraid to face his destiny ; but he 
 raised himself on his feet, stood splendid in his 
 manhood, and dared to look with undaunted eye 
 on the world before him, with some faint glimmer- 
 ing in his mind of the consciousness that to him it 
 was given to be a king. 
 
 Structurally he was intimately connected with the 
 whole vertebrate kingdom around him. He had 
 not a bone or a muscle, an organ or a sense which 
 was not already typified and existing in some of 
 the animals amongst which he found himself. In 
 the mammalian kingdom the resemblance between 
 himself and the other members became closer and 
 closer. Bone for bone, organ for organ, sense for 
 sense, he resembled them so closely that among the 
 higher apes creatures were to be found that anato-
 
 THE INSUPERABLE GAP 53 
 
 mically and morphologically could hardly be dis- 
 tinguished from him. As has already been pointed 
 out, when one reviews the whole panorama of 
 living things one finds that through it all runs a 
 great and almost uninterrupted principle of con- 
 tinuity. It is a far cry from the unicellular proto- 
 zoa to man ; but right up, through the long ladder, 
 there is a series of intermediate steps which proves 
 his intimate relationship with the whole world of 
 living things. Then near the top of the ladder there 
 comes a long and impassable gap. Anatomically the 
 gap is negligible ; but mentally it is insuperable. 
 
 The central nervous system of man resembles 
 closely that found in the higher animals. They 
 have the same senses, often better developed than 
 his own. He has not the vision of the eagle or the 
 hawk, nor are his senses of smell and hearing deve- 
 loped so highly as they are in the dog. But the 
 functions of his brain are of an infinitely higher 
 order than those possessed by any other animal, 
 and it is in the domain of function rather than in 
 that of morphology that the chief differences be- 
 tween man and the animals are to be found. Haeckel, 
 in reviewing the results of anthropogeny, said : 
 " Within the limits of this small group of animals 
 [the apes of the old world] we found the structural 
 differences between the lower and higher catarrhine 
 apes for instance, the baboon and the gorilla to 
 be much greater than the difference between the 
 anthropoid apes and man." 1 But we must be 
 careful to note that this statement only holds good 
 if it is limited to anatomical details. It has nothing 
 
 1 The Evolution of Man, chap. xxx.
 
 54 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 to do with the matter of intelligence. There is a 
 huge gulf between the intelligence of the highest 
 anthropoid ape and the lowest type of the human 
 species. At its worst, provided the underlying brain 
 is sound, the latter is progressively improvable ; 
 the former remains stagnant. In man something 
 has been superadded. He is become a living soul, 
 quickened to a larger mental and spiritual life by 
 the breath of God. 
 
 Some physiologists are prepared to go the length 
 of saying that there is an unbroken continuity of 
 nervous function which links the lowest living 
 creature with man, the highest. They suggest that 
 the chain begins in simple reflex actions, such as 
 the protrusion or withdrawal of a protoplasmic 
 offshoot from the amoeba under the influence of a 
 stimulus, and proceeds gradually up to the higher 
 psychic operations of the human mind ; and in 
 recent years an attempt has been made to discover 
 in the tropisms of plants and animals the roots of 
 the instincts, habits, and conduct of all living crea- 
 tures, including man. A tropism may be denned 
 as a simple response to an external stimulus. Most 
 flowers turn to the light : they are helio- or photo- 
 tropic. Moths and flies are phototropic ; a worm, 
 on the other hand, shrinks from the light : it is 
 negatively phototropic. Lowly organised animals 
 are led by a chemical impulse to their food. They 
 are chemo tropic. The branches of a banyan-tree 
 turn to the earth : they are geotropic. The ex- 
 planation of these phenomena has been found in 
 chemical activity. When light falls on a moth it is 
 said that certain changes occur in its body. These
 
 BRAIN NOT MIND 55 
 
 chemical changes stimulate muscular movement. 
 Without any will of its own, the moth is driven by 
 the reflex beating of its wings straight to the source 
 of light, and perishes in the flames. 
 
 These are interesting and seductive theories, and 
 from them has been built an elaborate superstruc- 
 ture of hypothesis that would gladly claim as its 
 coping-stone the complex manifestations of the 
 intelligence of man. But, in man, thought and 
 conduct cannot be reduced to purely physico-chemi- 
 cal changes in nerve-cells. As the physiologist 
 advances his claims the psychologist seems some- 
 times to abandon his positions with undue haste. 
 Even when the physiologist has been able to see 
 and determine the precise chemical changes which 
 occur in the cells of the brain during an act ot 
 thought, he will not be any nearer the solution of 
 the matter. Brain changes probably do accom- 
 pany every act of thought, for the brain is the 
 physical organ of the mind. But the mind is not 
 the brain, and no physico-chemical account of the 
 metabolism or katabolism of nerve tissue will ever 
 explain the genesis of an abstract idea, or account 
 for a conception of moral right or moral wrong. 
 One must ever guard against confusing a psychic 
 act with its physiological concomitants. 
 
 It has long been the custom to deny intelligence 
 to the lower animals, and to confine any mental 
 life of which they are capable to the domain of 
 instinct. I do not feel we are justified in thus 
 restricting their mental activities. Any one who 
 has read Fabre's marvellous records of his studies 
 of insects must for ever feel a difficulty in drawing
 
 56 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 a hard and fast line between the manifestations of 
 instinct and the operations of intelligence. And 
 we cannot fairly deny to some of the higher animals 
 a few of those qualities of mind that are often re- 
 garded as the prerogative of man. For instance, 
 who will deny that a fox-terrier or a collie is capable 
 of showing affection, fear, and memory, or that a 
 sheep cannot express in its agonised bleatirg some 
 shadow of the emotion of love for its offspring. I 
 remember, as a little child, hearing all day long 
 the plaintive bleating of the lambs that had been 
 separated from their mothers and driven up to the 
 high pastures in the late .days of July, and the 
 responsive, deeper-toned calling of the ewes in the 
 lowlands, as they wandered nervously and per- 
 turbed about the field in a vain endeavour to get 
 back to their young. There was some other note 
 in the crying of the lambs than a mere desire for 
 food, and there was more in the mothers' tremulous 
 response than the pain of an overfilled udder. It 
 was the oldest and biggest emotion in the world ; 
 and, with the clear intuition of a little child, I heard 
 and understood. 
 
 We cannot by an arbitrary and hard and fast 
 decision deny intelligence to all the lower animals. 
 The greater part of their lives is, certainly, con- 
 trolled by instinct, or unreflecting impulse to 
 action. But man also lives much of his life instinc- 
 tively : he, too, acts upon impulses which he does 
 not weigh or analyse, so that, at certain points, the 
 mental life of animals and the mental life of man 
 come into close touch. But there is a great differ- 
 ence. A fundamental distinction between instinct
 
 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 57 
 
 and intelligence is that the former does not enable 
 those creatures whose sole guiding light it is to 
 adjust their conduct in such a way as to deal with 
 unexpected and unwonted experiences, while the 
 latter helps those that possess it to do so. 
 
 Not long ago I had the opportunity of observing 
 this difference in operation. I saw a long line of 
 caterpillars, which had just emerged from the nest 
 in which they had been hatched, crawling down the 
 trunk of a tall pine-tree. There were 156 cater- 
 pillars in the procession, and they were progressing 
 in single file, each head in contact with the posterior 
 extremity of the one immediately in front. The 
 long row of caterpillars suggested a line of railway 
 carriages coupled together. By way of experiment 
 I removed two caterpillars from the chain, and 
 watched to see what would happen. Obviously 
 this was an experience which must have been met 
 with by many generations of their ancestors, for 
 their instinct, which is automatic habit ingrained 
 in the species through custom, taught them how 
 to deal with this emergency. The last caterpillar 
 at the upper end of the lower half of the broken 
 line ceased moving. Apparently it knew that the 
 caterpillar which had been clinging to its tail had 
 lost its hold. Rapidly a message passed along the 
 line, and soon the lower half was stationary through- 
 out its whole length. The leader of the upper half, 
 robbed of his guide, instinctively moved his head 
 from side to side, making the arc of a small circle 
 as, he continued to crawl down the tree-trunk. In 
 this way he made sure of not missing the tail of 
 t|ie rearguard in the lower half of the procession
 
 58 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 if it should come anywhere within the arc of the 
 circle. In a moment or two, during which time the 
 lower column remained at a halt, the upper and 
 the lower line succeeded in getting into touch, and 
 the whole procession at once began to move again. 
 Instinct had enabled the creatures to overcome 
 this difficulty, which must many a time have called 
 for a solution from their ancestors. When the 
 leader of the reformed train reached the ground 
 he set off boldly, with his followers in single file 
 behind him. Near the tree there was a small slope, 
 about four inches high. Down this he moved, and 
 then, making a detoui, proceeded to describe the arc 
 of a circle in his progress. Unfortunately the rate 
 at which he was leading the van brought him back 
 close to the tree just as the last caterpillar was 
 crawling from it, and the head of the leader came 
 into contact with the body of the last of the line. 
 Originally, as the ribbon of creatures came down 
 the tree, these two were some twelve feet apart. 
 Now they were touching each other, and by that 
 instinct which apparently drives a migrating cater- 
 pillar to attach itself to the terminal extremity of 
 any other caterpillar it comes across, the first laid 
 hold of the hinder end of the last, and a rough 
 circle, was completed. This is probably a rare and 
 unusual experience in the life-history of a nest of 
 caterpillars, and ancestral tradition had not supplied 
 them with any means of recognising that something 
 was wrong, nor endowed them with the instinct 
 necessary to deal with such a contingency. Intelli- 
 gence would have supplied a solution : for instinct, 
 there was none ; and tHe tortuous circle continued
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF INSTINCT 59 
 
 to move round aryi round, making no progress, for 
 nearly two hours. At the end of that time exhaus- 
 tion, and possibly the cold wind which had sprung 
 up, brought the circling ribbon to a halt. Then one 
 caterpillar rolled over. This was an accident, and 
 not an instinctive act, as it happened to have 
 halted on the slope already mentioned. As it 
 rolled over, the pull of its separation caused several 
 more to lose their balance, and they tumbled 
 over as well. It is said that the occasion frequently 
 makes the man, but this time it did not make the 
 caterpillar, for, though the circle was now broken, 
 the caterpillar at the head of the line did not rise 
 to the height of his opportunity and assume the 
 role of leader. Instead, he remained still. After 
 a time other breaks occurred in the line, but not 
 one of the creatures assumed any directive powers. 
 Instead of being a communal society with a definite 
 end in view this collection of caterpillars became an 
 impotent crowd. As they crawled about, apparently 
 without any determined aim, singly or in couples, 
 they met other members of their family; but 
 no attempt was made to reform the line, and 
 when they came in contact they remained huddled 
 together in a confused heap, perplexed, baffled, and 
 beaten by the first problem in their adventure of 
 life. They presented a singular and instructive 
 example of the limitations and insufficiency of un- 
 aided instinct. Next morning many lay dead. A 
 few robust survivors had succeeded in taking to 
 earth under some loose sand. The dead lay there 
 as a witness to that provision of nature by which 
 those creatures endowed only with instinct are
 
 60 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 produced in enormous numbers so that the inevit- 
 able casualties which must come to them through 
 their lack of intelligence may not lead to their 
 total extirpation. 
 
 Intellectually the lowest member of the human 
 species is infinitely superior to the highest animal, 
 ' and it is to his intelligence that man owes his sur- 
 vival. Though he was not provided by nature 
 with weapons of defence other than his hands, he 
 had the intellect which enabled him to fabricate 
 weapons and tools. He was sufficiently intelligent 
 to plan and carry into effect a combined offensive 
 with bow and arrow, club and spear and catapult, 
 against those animals that lay in wait to destroy 
 him. There is no exact parallel to this in animal 
 life. A tiger may lie in wait for its victim, or a 
 pack of hungry wolves may band themselves to- 
 gether to pursue a fleeing horseman ; but no 
 animals have ever taken counsel together to plan a 
 campaign against the human species, to arm 
 themselves with special weapons, to devise strategy, 
 and so to arrange their tactics as to meet possible 
 contingencies. It was man's intelligence, and not his 
 brute strength, which made him a doughty opponent. 
 It taught him not only how to slay those wild 
 beasts that would have slain him, but also how to 
 establish a growing ascendancy over the less 
 ferocious creatures. Those that could be of use to 
 him he captured and trained. He made beasts of 
 burden of the horse, the mule, the ass, the darnel, 
 the elephant, and the ox. Then he learned what 
 vegetable foods were necessary to sustain life, and 
 he found, that it was easier to transplant and culti-
 
 MAN'S RESTLESS INTELLIGENCE 61 
 
 vate them than go to seek them far afield when he 
 required them. No animal has ever shown exactly 
 this kind of provision, even though the ants keep 
 dairy farms of aphides to supply their young with 
 " milk," and some wasps keep a larder filled with 
 insects which they paralyse, but do not kill, with 
 their stings. But no animal has ever cultivated a 
 garden to give itself sustenance. 
 
 Over all animals man has a great advantage. 
 He is able to make use of the accumulated experi- 
 ence of his predecessors. The comb of the bee and 
 the social life of the ant are, so far as we can tell, 
 the same now as they were a million years ago. 
 Certainly they have not altered within the memory 
 of man. It may be that the hexagonal formation 
 of each cell in the comb, and the communal laws 
 that regulate the life of the ant are, for their pur- 
 pose, perfect and require no alteration. But such 
 permanence and unchangeability would not suit 
 the restless intelligence of man, who is ever seeking 
 to alter, adapt, and improve. Generations of 
 animals come and go, and, except in so far as it 
 becomes ingrained in the stem of the species, leave 
 no record of experience from which their successors 
 may win profit. But no generation of men vanishes 
 from the earth without leaving some tradition, 
 either oral or written, which may be of service to 
 those who come after. Thus it is that man's pro- 
 *gress has been rapid. Each successive generation 
 has laid up for it a well-stored depository of experi- 
 ences which enables it to begin where its predecessor 
 left off, and it is man's intellectual capacity for 
 making use. ol these hoarded experiences which has,
 
 62 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 helped to lift him to the position in the animal 
 kingdom which he occupies to-day. All this would 
 have been impossible if man had not had the gift 
 of speech. " To this gift of speech Max Miiller attri- 
 buted the highest importance. According to him, 
 " The one great barrier between the brute and man 
 is language. Man speaks ; and no brute has ever 
 uttered a word. Language is our Rubicon, and 
 no brute has ever crossed it." This is, perhaps, a 
 somewhat strong declaration . We may not be able 
 to write down and classify the calls of the birds, 
 and the different tones in the bark of a dog. But 
 any attentive student of nature will at once admit 
 that there is a difference, appreciable by their kind, 
 in the quality of the love-call of a bird, and the 
 plaintive note of one whose nest has been robbed ; 
 and there is a lively distinction between the bark 
 of a dog which is angry and that of one which is 
 barking from the sheer joy of life. But, be that 
 as it may, speech, which is a gift of the intellect, 
 has been of incalculable value to man. It has 
 enabled him to express himself, to communicate 
 his experiences, to cultivate social intercourse, to 
 guide and instruct those who follow him. And 
 though, undoubtedly, example is better than pre- 
 cept, a little precept is sometimes needed to call 
 attention to the example. The power of speech 
 was, probably, in some sort, man's from the begin- 
 ning. At first it would be little more than a medley 
 of imitative sounds ; but from that point the 
 human vocabulary would rapidly grow by diurnal 
 accretions, by the addition of names applicable to 
 articles of food, and the thousand and one things
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF FIRE 63 
 
 with which man came into contact in his daily life. 
 Later, it would be enriched by terms applicable to 
 abstract qualities, until the mouthful of onoma- 
 topoeic words with which he began to express him- 
 self had grown into an opulent medium through 
 which a Shakespeare could express all human 
 laughter, all human aspiration, and all human tears. 
 In virtue of his intelligence man's conquests con- 
 tinued to extend. Some of the forces of nature he 
 made his vassals. He captured the wind in the 
 sails of his boats, and he made it turn his millstone. 
 He also made use of the power of running water, 
 harnessing it to his own ends ; and he discovered 
 how to light a fire and keep it burning. An ancient 
 fable of mythology tells how Prometheus stole fire 
 from the gods, and as a punishment was condemned 
 to a cruel and enduring torture. The fable had its 
 roots in the wonder of primitive man at the miracle 
 of fire. A power so strange must originally have 
 come from the gods ; it could not have been born 
 on earth ! It would be interesting to know how 
 man first discovered fire ; whether it came from the 
 lightning and set some primeval forest ablaze, 
 whether it poured in burning lava from some vol- 
 cano, or whether, like so many other revolutionary 
 discoveries, it came by what we call accident. But, 
 however it came, the man who first recognised even 
 in a remote way its value and its infinite possi- 
 bilities was a genius the lineal ancestor of Galileo, 
 Newton, Kepler, Kelvin, Madame Curie, and Mar- 
 coni. The first man who rubbed two sticks together 
 till one of them glowed made possible the railway 
 train and the Atlantic liner. It was a great feat of
 
 64 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 intelligence to recognise the potentialities of fire. 
 No animal, below the level of man, has ever done 
 that. Many animals will warm themselves before 
 a fire, and appreciate the benefits that flow from 
 it ; but no animal, less than man, has ever succeeded, 
 by taking thought, in producing a fire, or even in 
 keeping a fire burning once it has been lit. The 
 early date at which the value of fire was recognised 
 by man proves that, even in primeval times, there 
 were men of genius. Man's intellectual capacity 
 has changed but little in the ages. The quality of 
 mind was there from the beginning. Much of our 
 recent progress in the field of intellectual accom- 
 plishment is due, not to any modern superiority in 
 mental equipment, but to the fact that nowadays 
 the mind has more to work upon. It has more 
 accumulated observations from which to start ; 
 more accessories to help towards fresh conquests. 
 In these days we can call to our service invisible 
 forces such as electricity, or the emanations of 
 radium, and we flatter ourselves that our intellects 
 have enabled us to secure great triumphs over the 
 secret forces of nature. And we are right to do so ; 
 but, in taking credit for our age as a golden era 
 of discovery, We owe a grateful and appreciative 
 thought to the genius of the cave-dweller who first 
 taught his fellows the secret of fire. 
 
 Mind has always been true to itself. As far back 
 as we have any record we find that man was direct- 
 ing his intellectual powers to the study of the Uni- 
 verse. He was groping through the mysteries 
 toward the light. Much of the work of the Chaldean 
 astronomers, and the science of the Chinese, Indians,
 
 QUESTIONING THE INFINITE 65 
 
 and Egyptians is lost in the mist of unchronicled 
 antiquity. But enough has come down to us to 
 show that, even in those remote ages, man was 
 using his intelligence to question the ir finite. He 
 was seeking to understand ; and though many of 
 the ideas formulated by those early scientists seem 
 to us, in a more enlightened age, absurd and fan- 
 tastic, they were, in some sort, the foundations of 
 that edifice of knowledge in whose shadow we live 
 to-day. 
 
 His intellectual superiority is the great factor 
 which differentiates man from other animals, and 
 it is the chief cause of his evolutionary progress. 
 We cannot deny a measure of intelligence to some 
 animals, but there is a profound difference in 
 degree, and an immense and almost incalculable 
 difference in quality. Whatever mental life the 
 brutes possess tends to remain stereotyped. Their 
 intellectual development soon touches its zenith, 
 and remains fixed. In man the intellectual powers, 
 great though they were in the beginning, are im- 
 provable as well as progressive. There is no 
 standing still. The individual mind improves, the 
 intellectual life of the race progresses. The intelli- 
 gence of the brute and the intellect of man are both 
 stable, but in a different sense. The former is 
 stable like a rock set in the mountain side ; the 
 latter is stable like a swiftly moving aeroplane. One 
 is stagnant and uniform ; the other is in a condition 
 of progressive movement. This gives to the mental 
 life of man an indefinite potentiality. All his 
 abiding triumphs are due to his intelligence. It 
 has taught him to cultivate the earth ; to win
 
 66 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 from its heart metals with which to fashion weapons 
 and tools ; to make implements ; to invent 
 machines ; to employ the forces of nature for 
 his own purposes ; to defend himself against the 
 attacks of animals larger and stronger than himself. 
 It is strange that the only beasts of prey against 
 which civilised man now requires to guard himself 
 are the infinitely little ones the microbes of disease. 
 But by the application of his intelligence he is daily 
 making further conquests over their domain, and 
 in the fulness of time he will doubtless succeed in 
 protecting himself against their attacks, however 
 subtle. 
 
 To the intelligence of man we owe all we know 
 of science, and all the arts we practise. It has 
 helped him to read some of the laws by which our 
 little corner of the Universe is governed ; and it 
 has enabled him to conceive of infinity in time 
 and space, that colossal mystery of unbeginning and 
 unending duration and immensity that he can 
 guess at but cannot understand. And because he 
 is gifted with intelligence he has been able to 
 speculate on the past and the future of his kind. 
 He can appreciate the ideal, and has elaborated 
 social and moral schemes whereby to increase his 
 own happiness, establish his security, and help 
 himself and those who follow him along the path 
 of progress. It is not alone through the treasures 
 of inventive genius which one generation bequeaths 
 to another that man progresses. His most rapid 
 progress is attributable to the fact that the mind- 
 culture of one era passes on to the next. Anatomical 
 and morphological changes may require a million
 
 A GERMAN ERROR 67 
 
 years for their development ; social and cultural 
 changes may be impressed upon the individual and 
 established in the race within a life- time. And it 
 is this adaptability, this acquisitiveness of new 
 culture and new ideals which confers on the human 
 mind one of its most infinite potentialities. 
 
 His mental faculties have enabled man to evolve 
 a philosophy to explain existence ; to recognise 
 moral duties and to appreciate moral values. In- 
 telligence has been the chief factor in hastening his 
 development, and it is only when he is false to the 
 light of intelligence that man sinks to the level of 
 the brutes. Long ago, if he had followed the guid- 
 ance of intelligence, he would have learned that war 
 is a hideous wrong, morally as well as from the 
 point of view of evolution. In these civilised days 
 it is an offence to God, and its continued existence 
 depends on a crude misinterpretation of one of the 
 doctrines of developmental progress. There is 
 little doubt that when Germany, for more than 
 forty years, was steeling herself and preparing for 
 the great conflict in which we are now engaged, she 
 was basing her policy upon a wrong idea of the 
 " survival of the fittest." Although one of the 
 most intellectual nations in the world, she failed 
 to recognise that the doctrine of the survival of 
 the fittest does not mean that in days past one 
 species set itself against another to conquer or to 
 exterminate. Such are the bald terms of her 
 interpretation. Rightly understood, and as Darwin 
 understood it, the principle means, simply, that 
 those species survived which were most capable of 
 adapting themselves to their circumstances. It 
 
 6
 
 68 DOMINANT ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 never meant internecine and bloody warfare between 
 species and species. War is retrogressive and 
 anti-evolutionary because it brings premature death 
 to many of the finest of a race, and tends to leave 
 to the weaklings tfie continuation of their kind. As 
 waged now, with long-distance artillery, machine- 
 guns and rifles, it is more opposed than ever to the 
 principles of evolution. Evolution has worked by 
 and towards intelligence. But a shell fired by a 
 stupid soldier whose only knowledge is the art of 
 war, or a bullet from the rifle of a simple village lad 
 may kill a potential Shakespeare, a Newton, or a 
 Darwin. In so far as it makes brute force rather 
 than intelligence the chief weapon in its offensive, 
 it is false to all ideals of national progress. In days 
 past, one race of men established its ascendancy 
 over another by virtue of its higher brain power. It 
 was brain power, and not brute force, that was 
 intended to be the discriminating factor between 
 the different races of mankind. And there is little 
 doubt that if Germany had relied solely upon the 
 intellectual activities of her people, devoted to the 
 study of science, the application of scientific methods 
 to manufacture, and the intelligent fostering of 
 commerce, she would in a generation have estab- 
 lished for herself that ascendancy among the nations 
 that has been her ambition. Instead of this peace- 
 ful conquest, which was within her grasp, she has 
 put back possibly for centuries the hope of realising 
 her dream.
 
 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE
 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 
 
 Shakespeare, " Hamlet.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 Iv a poetic hyperbole Tennyson spoke of Nature as 
 " red in tooth and claw with ravine." She is, how- 
 ever, the universal mother, and within her domain 
 the balance between life and death is held firmly, 
 with a bias toward the side of life. 
 
 To ensure the continuation and increase of their 
 kind, many animals are endowed with the most 
 extraordinary fertility. This is more particularly 
 true of the fishes. Every female herring is poten- 
 tially the mother of an incalculable number of off- 
 spring, and it has been estimated that a couple of 
 cod-fish allowed to breed perfectly freely would, if 
 all their progeny came to maturity and multiplied 
 at the same rate, fill the sea in less than ten years 
 with a solid mass of fish. The more highly specialised 
 an animal becomes the less is its fertility. The 
 horse is much less prolific than the rat, and the cow 
 than the rabbit ; and the fecundity of human beings, 
 which is potentially very considerable, is compara- 
 tively limited. Two principles seem to underlie 
 the law that controls fertility. Animals whose off- 
 spring are subjected to great risks are very fertile, 
 so that, in spite of all accidents, a sufficient number 
 
 71
 
 72 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 of young may survive to ensure the continuance of 
 the species. 
 
 When the dependence of the offspring upon the 
 parents is prolonged, as is the case in the human 
 species, fertility is sharply controlled. Once life 
 has been achieved it is protected, and the devices 
 whereby this protection is ensured are among the 
 most beautiful and remarkable features of nature. 
 Frequently the protection begins while life is still in 
 the potential stage. We find an example of this 
 in the protective colouring of the plovers' eggs, 
 which are hardly distinguishable from the shallow 
 bed of soil and debris on which they are deposited. 
 A casual wanderer through an April field may pass 
 many a clutch of plovers' eggs without detecting 
 them. 
 
 The young of many sea-birds resemble their sur- 
 roundings so closely in colour as easily to escape the 
 eye of the fowler or the marauding bird of prey. 
 Many insects, too, have the advantage of protective 
 colouring, so that they seem to be a part of the 
 plant upon which they rest or feed. Some butter- 
 flies have wings so perfectly tinged and so exquisitely 
 veined that they are distinguished with the utmost 
 difficulty from leaves. Certain insects, perfectly 
 innocuous and not provided with any weapons either 
 of offence or defence, escape destruction because 
 they resemble closely insects armed with powerful 
 and painful stings. The principle of protective 
 colouring is also met with among the higher animals. 
 The mice of the Sinai peninsula are fawn-coloured ; 
 the fur of the hares on the granite hills of Galloway 
 turns to a silver grey in winter time ; and the
 
 NATURE'S CAMOUFLAGE 73 
 
 striped markings of the zebra enable it to escape 
 detection among the long grasses of its natural 
 haunts. Protective colouring is only one of the 
 many artifices employed in nature for the preserva- 
 tion of life. The offensive odours of the skunk and 
 the musk-rat are protective devices. The exigencies 
 of modern warfare have compelled our Navy to 
 take a lesson in protection from the well-known 
 artifice of the cuttle-fish. This creature, when 
 pursued by some carnivorous monster of the sea, 
 endeavours to elude its enemy by discharging an 
 inky fluid which acts much in the same way as 
 the smoke-screen with which a merchant-vessel or 
 even a torpedo-boat envelops itself in the endeavour 
 to ward off the attack of a submarine or other 
 hostile craft. The whole science of " camouflage " 
 is a war-time elaboration of observations derived 
 from the study of protection in nature. 
 
 But, interesting as are the protective devices met 
 with in the lower realms of nature, it is when we 
 approach the study of defence in the human economy 
 that we discover phenomena of singular complexity 
 and extraordinary efficiency. 
 
 The whole mechanism of the human body seems 
 to have been elaborated with a special view to the 
 protection of the life which animates it. 
 
 The chief organs necessary for the maintenance 
 of life are protected by walls of bone. The brain, 
 the most important organ, is walled in by the 
 skull ; but, in addition, it is covered by three mem- 
 branes of varying thickness, the outer of which is 
 distinctly protective in function, and it is, further, 
 surrounded by a thin layer of fluid, which, in addi-
 
 74 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 tion to other functions, acts as a cushion that not 
 only absorbs the violence of any blow applied to 
 the skull, but also distributes it so that the force 
 of the impact is not localised. 
 
 The spinal cord, the great distributing tract for 
 nerve energy and the channel by which nerve 
 messages from without reach the central nervous 
 system, is also protected by bone, as it runs down 
 from the posterior part of the brain through a 
 tunnel formed by the bodies and arches of the 
 vertebrae. In front it is guarded by thick and 
 strong masses of bone the vertebral bodies ; 
 laterally and posteriorly it is protected by the 
 neural arches, reinforced by tough ligaments and 
 massive muscles. Between each vertebral body is 
 a cartilaginous buffer, the inter-vertebral disc, which 
 absorbs shock, and prevents the base of the skull 
 from being shattered by the impact of the verte- 
 bral column when a man falls from a height upon 
 his feet. 
 
 The heart and lungs, which are organs essential 
 for life, are also protected by bony and muscular 
 walls ; and most of the great blood-vessels are well 
 concealed. 
 
 Highly developed organs of special sense like the 
 eye and the internal ear are also well protected by 
 bone. In addition, the eye is guarded by moving 
 curtains of skin, the eyelids, which are quick to close 
 automatically when any foreign body approaches 
 them ; and the secretions of the lachrymal, or tear 
 glands, make a valiant endeavour to wash from the 
 eyeball any deleterious foreign agent that may 
 have lodged there.
 
 THE PROTECTING SKIN 75 
 
 The nasal cavities are supplied with fleshy cushions, 
 richly perfused with blood which warms the inhaled 
 air before it passes on into the lungs, and in addi- 
 tion the vibrissse or hairs in the nostrils act as a 
 kind of coarse filter and remove from the air some 
 of the dust and germs which it contains. 
 
 The whole outer surface of the body is covered 
 by a highly organised integument, the skin, which 
 consists of several layers, and which performs many 
 functions necessary for the proper continuance of 
 life. One of its chief functions is to act as a first 
 line of defence against the invasion of germs from 
 without. The skin is to the body what the sea 
 is to Britain. The best protection a surgeon or 
 pathologist can have against blood-poisoning is a 
 sound integument. No germ of disease can find its 
 way through an intact skin, but a small and in- 
 visible abrasion may throw open the portal to 
 death. The war has increased our appreciation of 
 this fact. In the first winter of the campaign it 
 was found that a number of soldiers who were ad- 
 mitted to hospital suffering from " trench foot," 
 developed tetanus or "lockjaw," and died. In 
 some cases no break in 'the skin was discoverable ; 
 or, at most, there may have been a small blister or 
 a crack between the toes. Now it is the custom 
 to administer anti-tetanus serum to all soldiers 
 with " trench foot " in whom there is reason to 
 believe that the skin is not intact, and, as a result, 
 tetanus as a complication of " trench foot " has 
 almost completely disappeared. 
 
 The mechanism by which the temperature of a 
 normal healthy adult is kept constant, within cer-
 
 76 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 tain well-defined limits, is also a provision for pro- 
 tection. The normal temperature of an adult is 
 98-4 Fahrenheit, and the balance is very finely 
 adjusted. Violent muscular exercise tends to raise 
 the temperature, and if there were no temperature- 
 regulating or compensating system violent exercise 
 would produce pyrexia or fever. But the stimulus 
 of exercise increases the rapidity of the heart's 
 action, and consequently the blood is driven more 
 rapidly through the blood-vessels. In this way, in 
 a given time, a larger quantity of blood passes 
 through the capillary vessels in the skin. The skin 
 is a great radiator of heat ; the sweat-glands in 
 the skin secrete copiously ; the evaporation of the 
 perspiration tends to cool the skin ; and a cooled 
 skin helps to keep the temperature of the blood 
 which is circulating through it at or near the normal. 
 In addition, there is in the brain what is known as 
 the temperature-regulating centre, which is to the 
 temperature of the body what a " governor " is to 
 a steam-engine. Any lesion in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of this centre throws it out of gear, and 
 the temperature runs amok. When functioning 
 properly it helps to keep the temperature at the 
 normal. 
 
 The statement that the blood is the life is suffi- 
 ciently ancient to be entitled to respect, even 
 though physiologically it is not quite true. The 
 blood is of prime importance to the economy, and 
 in health it is kept at a standard which is recognised 
 as the normal. The blood consists of two elements : 
 one fluid the serum the other solid, and consist- 
 ing of the blood corpuscles of various kinds. The
 
 ADAPTIVE BLOOD CHANGES 77 
 
 concentration of the serum and the quantity of 
 salt it contains is practically constant, and the 
 balance is so delicately held that if, by artificial 
 means, any alteration is produced it is speedily 
 rectified by the bodily mechanism, provided 
 that, in the meantime, the patient does not 
 succumb. 
 
 In health the solid constituents of the blood vary 
 within strictly narrow limits ; but they have the 
 power of adjusting themselves to new conditions. 
 For instance, if a person who lives habitually at the 
 sea-level is transported to the summit of a lofty 
 mountain and lives there for some time, certain 
 changes occur in his blood which enable him to 
 adapt himself to his new surroundings. 
 
 On a mountain-top the atmosphere is more 
 rarefied than at the sea-level, and consequently it 
 is necessary to breathe more rapidly to obtain the 
 same amount of oxygen in a given time. The oxygen 
 is conveyed from the lungs through the central and 
 peripheral circulation by the red blood-corpuscles, 
 or erythrocytes, each of which acts as a sort of 
 cargo-boat, taking up in the lungs a load of oxygen, 
 conveying it through the body, unloading it where 
 it is required, and bringing back to the lungs a 
 freight of carbonic-acid-gas, one of the by-products 
 of the activities of life. The whole process is a 
 beautiful and fascinating piece of physiological 
 adjustment. If we examine with the microscope 
 a drop of blood taken from a healthy person living 
 at sea-level, we shall find that each cubic millimetre 
 of blood contains approximately 5,000,000 red 
 corpuscles. If, after he has resided for several days
 
 78 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 on a mountain-top we again examine his blood, we 
 shall find that there has been a striking increase in 
 the number of red cells. A moment's thought will 
 give a clue to the reason for this adjustment. The 
 oxygen of the air has to be conveyed rapidly from 
 the lungs to those parts of the body which are 
 crying for it. As, at each inspiration, the moun- 
 tain-dweller can obtain only a proportion of the 
 oxygen accessible to the dweller at sea-level, it is 
 necessary that the transport of the precious cargo 
 from the lungs to the other organs and the peri- 
 phery should be hastened, and the method adopted 
 in the human economy to secure this end is to 
 increase the number of cargo-boats. When the 
 temporary mountain-dweller returns to the plains his 
 superfluous cargo-boats v of which he has no longer 
 any need, are scrapped in the ship-breaking yards 
 of the liver. 
 
 Again, when a person or animal is bled, a very 
 large number of blood-corpuscles are, naturally, 
 lost. The economy would suffer and suffer seri- 
 ously if provision had not been made to deal with 
 such a contingency. Special glands in the body 
 known as the blood-forming glands and the red 
 bone-marrow, are thrown into activity. They ela- 
 borate new red cells rapidly, and it is possible, by 
 examining the blood from day to day, to estimate 
 the rate at which the damage is being repaired, until 
 the normal is "once again reached. If the same 
 person or animal is bled on repeated occasions, and 
 the blood is examined with the microscope at 
 regular intervals, it will be found that there is a 
 considerable speeding-up^in the rate at which the
 
 VESTIGIAL REMNANTS 79 
 
 loss of red cells is made good. We find an inter- 
 esting parallel in our efforts to combat the submarine 
 menace which has produced such havoc among our 
 merchant fleet. At first we repaired our losses 
 slowly ; now there is a great speeding-up in our 
 shipbuilding yards, and loss and replacement 
 are rapidly being brought into a condition of 
 balance. 
 
 These phenomena, and many others which might 
 be instanced, serve to show how carefully the bodily 
 economy has been adjusted to cope with conditions 
 that might be deleterious to it, and that possibly 
 would extinguish the little spark of life that ani- 
 mates the whole. 
 
 Confirmed supporters of the evolutionary hypo- 
 thesis used to point to certain structures in the 
 human body which they regarded as functionless 
 remnants of organs that had subserved important 
 functions in animals below the human level, but 
 which in the human being were nothing more 
 than vestiges, useless except in so far as they 
 indicated the road by which man had climbed in 
 his struggle upward to the top of the evolutionary 
 tree. 
 
 Haeckel laid great stress on the presence in the 
 human body of these so-called vestigial parts. He 
 said : " They are some of the weightiest proofs of 
 the truth of the mechanical conception and the 
 strongest disproofs of the teleological view. If, as 
 the latter demands, man or any other organism had 
 been designed and fitted for his life-purposes from 
 the start and brought into being by a creative act, 
 the existence of these rudimentary organs would
 
 8o THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 be an insoluble enigma ; it would be impossible to 
 understand why the Creator had put this useless 
 burden on His creatures to walk a path that is in 
 iisslf by no means easy. But the theory of evolu- 
 tion gives the simplest possible explanation of them. 
 It says : The rudimentary organs are parts of the 
 body that have fallen into disuse in the course of 
 centuries ; they had definite functions in our animal 
 ancestors, but have lost their physiological signifi- 
 cance. On account of fresh adaptations they have 
 become superfluous, but are transmitted from genera- 
 tion to generation by heredity, and gradually 
 atrophy." x 
 
 In making such a sweeping generalisation Haeckel 
 stumbled into the pit that lies in the way of all 
 " scientific " partisans, who are tempted to regard 
 the sum-total of knowledge accessible at the time 
 they commit themselves as the whole truth. If he 
 were alive to-day he would be compelled to modify 
 much and retract a great deal of what he wrote 
 as to vestigial organs, or be laughed out of court. 
 Since he wrote the chapter from which the above 
 quotation is taken some of the organs which he 
 instances there as beig nothing more than vesti- 
 gial encumbrances have been found to discharge 
 functions of the highest importance in the human 
 economy. He would be a rash man who to-day 
 would venture to assert that any organ in the 
 human body, however vestigial it may seem, is of 
 no use. 
 
 In the abdominal cavity, hung like an apron 
 
 in front of the intestinal coils is a structure known 
 
 1 The Evolution of Man, by Ernst Haeckel, vol. ii. chap. xxx.
 
 THE PERITONEAL POLICEMAN 81 
 
 as the great omentum. Haeckel did not include it 
 in his list oi vestigial remnants ; but others have 
 regarded it as a functionless structure. It consists 
 of layers of fat, and of several layers of peritoneum 
 the delicate serous membrane which is to the 
 contents of the abdominal cavity what the pleural 
 membrane is to the lungs. 
 
 For very many years the function of the omentum 
 was quite unknown to physiologists and to sur- 
 geons ; but within the last decade it has been 
 discovered that this unimportant-looking structure, 
 which is in some people very rudimentary and 
 might be regarded solely as a vestige, can and does 
 perform services of great importance in the pro- 
 tection of the life of the individual. It has been 
 taken out of the list of functionless structures, and 
 has attained the dignity of a sobriquet all its own 
 an American surgeon having honoured it with the 
 title of " The policeman of the peritoneal cavity." 
 Before the Listerian era major operations on ab- 
 dominal organs were attended by grave risk for the 
 patient. Since the introduction of antiseptics into 
 surgical practice, and to a much greater degree 
 since the aseptic technic grew out of the anti- 
 septic method, the surgeon has ceased to regard 
 the abdominal cavity as a sphere of operation 
 beyond his reach. As the frequency and scope 
 of abdominal operations have increased the 
 functions of the omentum have gradually come 
 to light. 
 
 Inflammatory mischief affecting any organ in the 
 abdominal cavity may rapidly proceed to a fatal 
 issue if it can break through into the general peri-
 
 82 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 toneal cavity and set up peritonitis or inflammation 
 there. 
 
 Whenever this dread complication threatens, the 
 omentum endeavours to avert it. If an inflamed 
 appendix is threatening to perforate, or an ulcer 
 of the stomach is tending to break through the 
 stomach-wall, and so flood the peritoneal cavity 
 with dangerous micro-organisms, it is found that 
 the omentum endeavours, in a fashion that almost 
 suggests intelligence, to ward off this catastrophe. 
 It orientates itself towards the inflamed part ; it 
 may actually succeed in applying itself to it, and 
 attaching itself to the weak and inflamed part with 
 a kind of natural glue. It thus acts as a buttress, 
 and lends support to the weakened part at the 
 critical moment ; and if it is not able to prevent 
 the mischief breaking through the wall of the 
 organ in which it has begun, it spreads itself out, 
 and, as far as it can, shuts out the morbific matter 
 from areas where it might exert a more baneful 
 influence. It acts like a policeman who hears 
 burglars in a house. He approaches the house, and 
 sets a guard over it lest the burglars should escape ; 
 and, if they break out, he tries to surround them 
 and hem them in lest they be guilty of further 
 mischief, and do robbery with violence on the 
 highway. 
 
 Far from being a vestigial remnant with no 
 function, the omentum is now regarded as the 
 abdominal surgeon's best friend ; an assistant 
 upon whose co-operation he can almost invariably 
 depend. 
 
 The late Professor Elie Metchnikoff has great
 
 PHAGOCYTOSIS 83 
 
 claims to the respect and honour of mankind, for 
 he enriched our knowledge by many valuable dis- 
 coveries. But probably the work by which he will 
 be remembered when most of his other discoveries 
 have been forgotten, or attributed to other men, 
 is his long and illuminating series of observations 
 on Phagocytosis. From a study of comparative 
 anatomy, he observed that certain cells throughout 
 the animal kingdom have the power of ingesting or 
 devouring other cells or small foreign bodies, and, 
 after ingesting them, in many cases they destroy 
 them. He extended his investigations to the con- 
 ditions met with in disease, and he discovered that 
 the successful resistance of an animal to a bacterial 
 infection was in large measure brought about 
 through the activity of certain cells which he called 
 phagocytes. 
 
 Most of the phagocytic cells are blood-cells ; but 
 Metchnikoff discovered that other cells of the body, 
 such as the lining cells of blood-vessels or organs, 
 and connective tissue-cells, frequently aid in the 
 process. 
 
 When a micro-organism finds its way through the 
 skin into the subjacent tissues it tends to multiply 
 rapidly if the conditions are at all favourable. It 
 is like an enemy soldier who has broken into a 
 valuable position. If he cannot be dealt with he 
 becomes the precursor of a multitude. Let us 
 imagine that the micro-organism finds the new 
 conditions favourable to its growth. It begins to 
 increase in number, and in doing so sets up a local 
 disturbance. But before long the protective mechan- 
 ism of the body comes into play. The precise chan-
 
 84 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 nels through which the alarm is passed on to the 
 controlling centres of the body have not been accu- 
 rately determined ; but probably it is through the 
 nervous system that the counter-attack is planned. 
 The essential point, however, is that volition on 
 the part of the individual has nothing whatever to 
 do with the extraordinary series of phenomena 
 which follows. The blood-vessels in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the affected part dilate, and the 
 blood pours along them rapidly. It is this which 
 causes a poisoned ringer to throb. Then the blood- 
 stream in the dilated vessels slows down, and from 
 among the blood-corpuscles those known as the 
 leucocytes, or white cells, begin to separate them- 
 selves and flow slowly along the inner wall of the 
 blood-vessels at the margin of the blood-stream. 
 If the germs break through the vessel-wall and 
 find their way into the blood-stream they are im- 
 mediately attacked by the leucocytes, which sur- 
 round them, endeavour to engorge them, and, 
 having engorged them, destroy them by digesting 
 them. 
 
 If, however, the germs do not find their way into 
 the blood-stream, but remain outside in the adjacent 
 tissues, the leucocytes, not to be baulked of their 
 prey, will insinuate themselves through the blood- 
 vessel wall and attack them where they lie. 
 
 They put into practice the doctrine that attack 
 is the surest method of defence. A leucocyte, on 
 battle intent, will push out a little prolongation 
 from its body, insert this between the cells that 
 form the wall of the blood-vessel, and gradually 
 work its way through without leaving any dis-
 
 THE BATTLE WITH THE GERMS 85 
 
 coverable aperture, and proceed to attack the 
 germs in the open. Leucocyte after leucocyte will 
 perform this feat, which is known as diapedesis, 
 and hurry to the fray to wage a mighty battle with 
 the enemy. If the leucocytes are overcome by the 
 invading organisms a very serious illness, which 
 may prove fatal to the patient whose body has 
 become a battle-ground for enemy and defenders, 
 may ensue. If the battle is localised and the in- 
 vading enemy is defeated, an abscess may result. 
 If its contents are evacuated by the knife of the 
 surgeon, and examined with a microscope, they will 
 be found to consist of dead leucocytes containing in 
 their substance the organisms they had succeeded 
 in killing before they were themselves overpowered : 
 micro-organisms living and dead, and broken-down 
 tissue cells, the debris of houses and homes, 
 shattered as in the brave land of France by the 
 intensity of the conflict that has been waged in 
 their midst. 
 
 This account is no fairy tale of science, but 
 solid fact which has been verified over and over 
 again. 
 
 Cast into a more picturesque narrative, which 
 will easily be remembered, we may present the 
 above facts in this way. Just as every country 
 with a large merchant fleet requires to maintain a 
 navy for its protection, the body, which has many 
 cargo-boats (the red blood-corpuscles), has also a 
 battle-fleet the white blood-corpuscles, or leuco- 
 cytes. Of these there are no less than 7,500 in 
 every cubic millimetre of blood. When war breaks 
 out the navy is mobilised, and there is a con centra-
 
 86 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 tion of vessels of war at the place where they may 
 best deal with the enemy. They endeavour to 
 blockade him ; and, if he will not come out into 
 the open sea the channels of the circulation 
 they will attack him, if possible, in his lairs ; just 
 as our navy has sought to destroy by bombarding 
 or by bombing from naval hydroplanes the haunts 
 of the submarine along the Belgian coast. During 
 a war there is, of necessity, great activity in all our 
 naval yards in order that the fleet may be increased. 
 Old cruisers are taken out of the yards and sent 
 to sea again, and the building of new ones is speeded 
 up. In the same way there is an enormous increase 
 in the number of white corpuscles met with in the 
 circulating blood. Leucocytes that had been rest- 
 ing are poured into the circulation, and new ones 
 are produced in the blood-forming glands and 
 hurried into the circulation to take part in the 
 conflict. The call for help may come from the 
 remotest part of the Empire : from the Falkland 
 Islands (or from the tip of a poisoned finger) : but 
 wherever it comes from, the Navy, or the leucocytes, 
 are ever ready to seek the enemy out and give him 
 battle wherever he may be found. 
 
 The activity of the leucocytes and their capacity 
 for waging war successfully upon the invading enemy 
 vary in different individuals, and in the same 
 individual at different times. This is one of the 
 reasons why a poisoned wound in one person 
 may have much more serious consequences than 
 in another. 
 
 Not every fleet that sails the seas is ready at 
 any moment to give battle to the foe ; but the
 
 THE BATTLE-FLEET OF THE BLOOD- 87 
 
 country whose navy is always prepared, or the 
 individual whose white blood-corpuscles are always 
 in fighting trim is little likely to succumb to a 
 sudden attack of the enemy. A navy that is kept 
 in fighting condition by frequent manoeuvres and 
 by constant gun-practice is likely to give a better 
 account of itself when the hour comes than one 
 which never has the opportunity of testing its own 
 capacity. It has been ascertained by experiment 
 that the phagocytic properties of the leucocytes 
 may be greatly increased by artificial means. Sir 
 Almroth Wright has made many valuable deduc- 
 tions from this observation, and vaccine therapy, 
 of which he is the foster-father, is a practical 
 application springing from it. If a quantity of 
 dead micro-organisms of any kind be injected under 
 the skin of a patient it is found that, in a few days, 
 his leucocytes have developed the power of en- 
 gorging, on an average, more micro-organisms of 
 that particular variety than they had before. 
 Their phagocytic power has been increased, not 
 toward all organisms, but for germs of that special 
 kind. If, therefore, a vaccine be made ^rom the 
 bacteria found in a boil and injected into a patient 
 suffering from that painful affection it is found 
 that not only do the phagocytes seize on and 
 devour the dead organisms in the vaccine, but, 
 like Oliver Twist, they ask for more, and attack 
 with avidity the germs responsible for the patient's 
 condition. 
 
 Vaccine therapy is still in its early youth ; but 
 it has secured undying laurels in the present war, 
 for, largely owing to its application, the incidence
 
 88 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 of typhoid fever, which in all previous campaigns 
 was a pestilence to be dreaded, has been reduced 
 almost to the vanishing point. 
 
 But the body has other protective mechanisms 
 besides phagocytosis, which are called into play 
 when the need arises. It is a well-established fact 
 that some animals and individuals are much less 
 susceptible to certain disease's than others. It is 
 also well known that an attack of a disease such as 
 small-pox or scarlet fever will protect a person 
 ^against another attack for a considerable number 
 of years or for a life-time. 
 
 Once it was believed that an infectious disease 
 used up some pabulum or food which it found in 
 the patient's system ; and, as it was supposed to 
 destroy this pabulum, there was none left for a 
 second attack of the disease to feed on. But now 
 it is recognised that this idea was erroneous, and 
 that, whatever substances a disease may destroy 
 in our blood, it enriches the blood by causing the 
 prophylactic mechanisms of the body to elaborate 
 protective agents. 
 
 When a micro-organism invades the human body, 
 pari passu with the production of poisons or toxins 
 whose effect may be lethal, there are produced sub- 
 stances that are inimical to the growth of the germ. 
 A well-known parallel to this is met with in the 
 case of the yeast fungus. If this organism is grown 
 in a solution of sugar it vegetates luxuriantly, and 
 converts part of the sugar into alcohol. This is a 
 poison for young cell-lite, and when the alcohol 
 reaches a certain degree of concentration the yeast 
 fungus is destroyed by it.
 
 PROTECTION IN ACTION 89 
 
 If a person become infected with pneumonia we 
 have a striking example of how the protective 
 mechanism in the body operates'. Pneumonia is 
 an acute inflammation of the lungs, and it is now 
 known to be due to a micro-organism. The germ 
 invades the lungs, and begins to multiply there. 
 The earliest symptom of which the patient is con- 
 scious is usually a sensation of chilliness, followed 
 by violent shivering. This is the first manifesta- 
 tion of the protective mechanism in action The 
 sensation of chilliness is due to a contraction of the 
 blood-vessels in the skin whereby as much blood as 
 possible, and therefore all the available leucocytes, 
 may be hurried to the invaded part. The violent 
 shivering, which is due to rapid and repeated con- 
 tractions of muscle fibres throughout the body, is 
 involuntary, but purposeful and protective, for 
 active muscular exercise is the speediest means of 
 increasing bodily heat. A temperature of 102 F., 
 and over, is inimical to the growth of micro-organ- 
 isms, and the patient's temperature is rapidly 
 elevated above that degree as the first step in the 
 protective scheme. As the organisms grow they 
 produce poisons or toxins which are thrown into 
 the circulation, and which may have a deleterious 
 effect on the muscle-fibres of the heart, and the 
 nerve-ganglia which control its action. The heart; 
 already has a sufficient mechanical strain, thrown 
 upon it, as it requires extra power to maintain the 
 circulation in a lung which is rapidly undergoing 
 consolidation. But the protective functions of the 
 body are at work, and are rapidly producing sub- 
 stances which are antagonistic to the toxins, and
 
 90 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 to the micro-organisms which are the cause of the 
 disease. These substances are known as anti- 
 toxins, and they unite chemically with the poisonous 
 products of the organismal growth, and render 
 them inert to the living tissues. What part of the 
 anti-toxin is not required to neutralise the toxin 
 remains over to exert its effect on the germs an 
 effect prejudicial to their further development, and 
 therefore beneficial for the patient. The occur- 
 rence of what is known as the " crisis " in pneumonia, 
 when the temperature rapidly falls, the rapidity 
 of the heart-beats and the respiratory rate come 
 down to something like normal, and the patient in 
 the course of a few hours undergoes a marked 
 change for the better, indicates the point at 
 which the amount of anti-toxin elaborated in the 
 body exceeds the amount of toxin, and so can 
 neutralise it. 
 
 In pneumonia we are therefore the witnesses of 
 a race between the production of toxin and anti- 
 toxin ; and if the heart can hold out while the 
 contest is at its hottest, a point will be reached 
 when the anti-toxin will overpass the toxin, and 
 the patient will recover. Observations of this 
 kind and practical deductions made from them 
 have opened up an immense field for curative 
 endeavour. 
 
 It has long been known that the animal economy 
 could accustom itself to small repeated doses of 
 certain poisons, until a stage of tolerance is reached 
 at which an enormous amount of these poisons 
 may be administered without much effect. Every 
 smoker has more or less poignant memories of his
 
 TOLERANCE 91 
 
 first pipe. Tobacco is a poison, and for the neo- 
 phyte a first small indulgence often produces un- 
 comfortable results. But, if he try again, his system 
 gradually becomes accustomed to the poison, so 
 that a smoker of some years' experience can consume 
 in the space (5f a few hours an amount of tobacco 
 which might kill a boy were he to indulge in the 
 same quantity on the day of his first surreptitious 
 pipe. A like truth holds good with regard to 
 alcohol, and De Quincey affords a classical exam- 
 ple of the tolerance which the human system may 
 develop towards opium. Abrin and ricin are two 
 highly poisonous vegetable substances ; but Ehrlich 
 found that by small successive doses of these sub- 
 stances a condition of tolerance towards them could 
 be established among animals. Armed with this 
 knowledge, he carried his experiments a step further. 
 He fed mice on abrin and ricin, and, when they 
 had developed a high degree of resistance to the 
 poisons so that they were able to consume without 
 prejudicial effects a much larger dose than that 
 which, originally, would have killed them, he drew 
 blood from them and injected the fluid part of the 
 blood into other mice. At the same time he ad- 
 ministered to this second group of mice large doses 
 of the vegetable poisons, and he made the impor- 
 tant discovery that a mouse treated with serum 
 from an animal highly immunised against abrin or 
 ricin by progressive feeding was able to consume 
 no less than forty times as much of the original 
 poison without disaster as it could do before it was 
 treated in this way. 
 The practical applications of this experiment
 
 92 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 have been far-reaching, and the ultimate goal is not 
 yet in sight. One of the most fruitful develop- 
 ments issuing from this observation was the pre- 
 paration of diphtheria anti-toxin. Roux and 
 Yersin made a careful study of the toxins of 
 diphtheria, and their work, supplemented by that 
 of Behring, resulted in the discovery of a new 
 and highly successful treatment for that dread 
 disease. 
 
 If small and repeated doses of diphtheria toxin, 
 procured from the cultivation of the bacillus diph- 
 theria in a suitable broth, are injected into a horse 
 it is found that the horse is not rendered ill thereby, 
 but there is gradually produced in its blood an 
 enormous quantity of a substance that can not 
 only kill the Diphtheria germ, but also neutralise 
 the diphtheria toxin. This is diphtheritic anti- 
 toxin ; and the modern treatment of diphtheria 
 consists in injecting under the skin of the affected 
 person, as soon as the diagnosis is made, a large 
 quantity of serum drawn from a horse which has 
 been rendered immune, in the manner described, 
 towards the bacilli and toxins of diphtheiia. In a 
 case of diphtheria which recovers without the 
 administration of anti-toxin the patient has had to 
 rely on the efforts of his own protective mechanism 
 for the elaboration of this substance, and there has 
 been a heated race between the production of toxin 
 . and anti-toxin. To administer anti- toxin in the 
 earliest stages of the disease is to confer upon the 
 patient a very great advantage, for he thus enters 
 the race with an enormous quantity of ready 
 prepared, highly potent anti-serum with which to
 
 TOXIN AND ANTI-TOXIN 93 
 
 neutralise the poison that the germ will produce as 
 it .grows in his throat. Thanks to Behring and 
 Roux, the word '' diphtheria/' which at one time 
 was pregnant of ill omen and bore a particularly 
 sinister meaning for all parents of young children 
 and for all physicians who devoted themselves 
 specially to work among children, has lost much 
 of its dread significance. 
 
 All modern treatment founded on the adminis- 
 tration of vaccines, anti-toxins and anti-sera has 
 been built up from the recognition of the protective 
 mechanism existing latent in the body. There is 
 little doubt that all dwellers in cities are daily being 
 immunised against various diseases by the con- 
 tinual ingestion or inhalation of disease germs. 
 Where the initial dose is too large, or the resistance 
 of the individual too low, a serious illness with, 
 possibly, a fatal issue may result. 
 
 Civilisation and acquired tolerance of the germs 
 of disease proceed hand in hand. On a virgin soil, 
 such as the New Hebrides, an epidemic of measles 
 may rage like a plague and destroy a large portion 
 of the population. We and our children are daily 
 breathing or swallowing morbid germs in small 
 quantities, and these stimulate our protective 
 mechanism so that one day when we engorge a 
 larger quantity of germs than usual our immunised 
 constitutions are able to repel the assault. 
 
 Those who find in physics and chemistry an ex- 
 planation of all the phenomena of life are ready to 
 explain all these facts in terms of their two pet 
 sciences, and they have invented a terminology to 
 designate every stags and event in the phenomena
 
 94 THE PROTECTION OF LIFE 
 
 of protection. They are satisfied with secondary 
 causes ; they regard any first cause as unknow- 
 able. However that may be, there is surely ground 
 for the belief that such beautiful and co-ordinated 
 devices as we have indicated, coming into play 
 for the protection of life, must have had their origin 
 in no haphazard chance, but in a great and intelli 
 gent Mind.
 
 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
 
 " La petite cellule initiate d'ou derive chaque 6tre vivant 
 et qui, developpee dans un sens determine, deviendra oiseau, 
 homme ou chene, contient un long passe et un immense avenir. 
 Ce minuscule element charge d'un entassement de siecles revele 
 un monde de forces, oriente par un mecanisme dont la compre- 
 hension reste tres au-dessus de notre intelligence. Dr. Gustave 
 If Bon, " Hier et Demain."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 WE have seen how the life of the individual is 
 protected by delicate and complex mechanisms of 
 defence. The power of reproduction, which is given 
 to the individual, and the principles which underlie 
 heredity, are the chief agents for protecting the 
 life of the species. 
 
 That like begets like is a fact of common know- 
 ledge, but why it should be so is an unfathomable 
 mystery. Among the bacteria and the protozoa, 
 where multiplication takes place by a simple pro- 
 cess of division, there is nothing strange or puzzling. 
 But in the higher realms of nature, where reproduc- 
 tion is complicated by the antecedent necessity of 
 a union between the male and female primordial 
 elements, the problem widens and becomes more 
 and more obscure. 
 
 If we take the fertilised eggs of a fly, a frog, and 
 a fish we may be able to distinguish between them 
 by their shape and size ; but, so far as test-tube 
 and microscope can tell us, the protoplasm of which 
 they consist is identical. And yet, even if they 
 are allowed to develop in the same pond under 
 conditions that, as far as possible," are identical, 
 
 97
 
 98 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 they will ultimately become fly, frog, and fish, 
 separated from each other by the whole diameter 
 of genus. Nor is this all. Like begets like with 
 extraordinary faithfulness. A child resembles closely 
 one of its parents, or both. In build and general 
 appearance, shape of features and limbs, colour of 
 eyes and hair, texture of skin, disposition, and other 
 mental qualities every child is a pocket-edition of 
 its parents. But it is more than that. It exhibits 
 qualities or features that have come to it from 
 ancestors more remote, so that Emerson was 
 justified in saying : " Every man is a quotation 
 from all his ancestors." 
 
 With quaint fancy Robert Louis Stevenson l en- 
 larged on this idea when he wrote : " Our con- 
 scious years are but a moment in the history of 
 the elements that build us. ... And though to-day 
 I am only a man of letters, either tradition errs or 
 I was present when there landed at St. Andrews a 
 French barber-surgeon to tend the health and the 
 beard of the great Cardinal Beaton ; I have shaken 
 a spear in the Debateable Land and shouted the 
 slogan of the Elliots ; I was present when a skipper, 
 plying from Dundee, smuggled Jacobites to France 
 after the '15. . . . Yes, parts of me have seen life, 
 and met adventures, and sometimes met them well. 
 And, away in the still cloudier past, the threads 
 that make me up can be traced by fancy into the 
 bosoms of thousands and millions of ascendants : 
 Picts who rallied round Macbeth and the old (and 
 highly preferable) system of descent by females, 
 fliers from before the legions of Agricola, marchers 
 
 1 Memories and Portraits f The Manse.
 
 PANGENESIS 99 
 
 in Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on Chaldean 
 plateaus." 
 
 It is not my intention to encumber these pages 
 with the fascinating details of embryological deve- 
 lopment which have been studied so caiefully, and 
 mapped out with such minuteness that they are 
 now as plain as a mariner's chart. But, though this 
 gigantic work has been accomplished with infinite 
 labour, we are still entangled in mystery, for we 
 cannot discover whence it comes that in the in- 
 finitely small speck of protoplasm which is the 
 arena of all these changes such potentialities of 
 growth and change, such undeviating loyalty to 
 the traditions of the species are already inherent. 
 
 Long ago, before anything was known of the 
 mechanical changes attending embryological deve- 
 lopment for we had to wait for the microscope 
 to reveal them various shrewd guesses were made 
 to explain the mysteries of heredity. But none of 
 them appeared to satisfy the facts so adequately as 
 the theory of pangenesis enunciated by Charles 
 Darwin. According to Darwin, every part of the 
 body and every organ in the body of an individual 
 gives off tiny buds, or "pangenes," which are con- 
 veyed by the blood to the organs of reproduction. 
 Each germinal cell, both of the male and female, in 
 this way becomes possessed of a complete set of these 
 buds, representing not only every organ, but every 
 cell in every organ, every cell in every bone, and 
 every cell in the skin, and all its appendages, such 
 as the hair and nails. In the process of develop- 
 ment, on this theory, there is simply a progressive 
 unfolding and growth of all these pangenes enclosed 
 8
 
 ioo HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 in the male and female primordial germs, and, 
 consequently, the offspring resembles its parents. 
 
 This theory was a brilliant one, but it lacked pro- 
 bability, and the practical difficulties associated with 
 it seemed insuperable. For instance, a cod-fish can 
 lay some 9,000,000 eggs in a season, and if every 
 cell in the fish's body were to be represented by a 
 pan gene in each of the 9,000,000 eggs, the whole 
 bodily activity of the fish would be occupied in the 
 budding off and transport through the blood of 
 this incalculable number of pangenes. Darwin him- 
 self, one of the clearest thinkers of his own or any 
 other age, saw the difficulties that beset his theory, 
 to which he had been driven in his endeavour to 
 account for the transmission of acquired characters, 
 such as modifications in bodily structure produced 
 by disease, by mutilations, accidental or due to 
 operative interference, or through the use or disuse 
 of special organs. In Darwin's time a belief in 
 the transmission of such acquired characters was 
 generally accepted, but now it is only adhered to 
 by a small number of biologists. 
 
 The theory of heredity which receives the greatest 
 support to-day is that put forward by Weismann. 
 It is a theory that may be said to be pragmatic ; 
 it serves, and enables us to understand, in a reason- 
 able way, some of the facts of heredity. The 
 essential principle of the theory has been expressed 
 as " the continuity of the germ-plasm." By this 
 is meant that a certain part of the germ-plasm, or 
 primordial protoplasmic material contained in the 
 parent egg, is not used up in the structural elabora- 
 tion of the body of the new embryo, but is set
 
 CONTINUITY OF GERM-PLASM 101 
 
 aside, and kept for the formation of the germ-cells 
 of the new generation. In confirmation of the 
 soundness of this theory it may be mentioned that, 
 in several cases, the setting apart of the germ- 
 plasm has been observed with , the microscope at 
 the commencement of the development of a new 
 embryo. Thus the germ-cells are said to pass on 
 in the direct line from generation to generation, 
 while in each generation the cells which go to form 
 the body and the organs it contains are simply 
 off-shoots from the genn-cells. The body is a kind 
 of protecting covering thrown out to ensure pro- 
 tection for, and to acquire the nourishment needed 
 by, the germ-plasm. On a theory such as this we 
 begin to understand how it is that like begets like, 
 and why children resemble their parents or im- 
 mediate ancestors more than they resemble the 
 children of other people. It gives us a groundwork 
 of understanding whereby we may comprehend 
 why A.'s children resemble A. rather than B. For 
 the germ-plasm from which they have originated 
 has passed down to A. through many generations, 
 and is continued in his children for transmission 
 to the next. It is the old poetical idea of the torch 
 of life lampada vitai translated into a physio- 
 logical fact. This theory of the continuity of the 
 germ-plasm enables us, further, to understand why 
 it is that acquired characters that is, characters 
 that have been assumed during the life-time of the 
 individual are not handed on. An " acquired 
 character," as that phrase is or ought to be under- 
 stood, means a change in the body of the individual 
 or organism under consideration, and not, except
 
 102 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 secondarily, in its germ-plasm. As the germ-plasm 
 remains unchanged throughout any modification 
 in bodily structure acquired during the life of the 
 individual, the modification is not transmitted. 
 
 At various times and from various sources in- 
 stances have been derived which would appear to 
 suggest that acquired characters are transmitted. 
 But we must guard against accepting a principle 
 from an isolated handful of instances. There is, 
 certainly, ground for the presumption that acquired 
 characters may be passed on : but, on the other 
 hand, exact experiments carried out with a view 
 to ascertain the truth have yielded at most results 
 that were inconclusive. There is the fundamental 
 difficulty of conceiving any mechanism by which 
 such variations could be transmitted ; but that 
 difficulty is no greater than others which confront 
 us in any attempt to study the mysteries of life, 
 and, to be fair, we are not entitled to rule out the 
 possibility because our knowledge, as yet very im- 
 perfect, has not given us a clue as to how this might 
 be possible. There may be a process or mechanism 
 that we know nothing of. The biologists are 
 divided in their opinions on the matter. At present 
 the verdict is, " Not proven." It would be in the 
 highest degree unscientific to say dogmatically that 
 such hereditary transmission is impossible and 
 never occurs. Many of us may live to see the 
 results of a great natural experiment which is at 
 present in operation. At the present moment a 
 large proportion of our young men are suffering 
 from " acquired " characters the result of wounds. 
 Many of them have lost a limb. These mutilations
 
 MENDELISM 103 
 
 will not prevent them from marrying and becoming 
 the fathers of children. It is, however, in the 
 highest degree unlikely that any of their children 
 will be born structurally defective lacking an arm, 
 or a foot, an eye or an ear, because their father had 
 lost one or other of these parts in battle. Life is 
 too jealous of her own perfection to suffer that. 
 
 The most recent contribution of value to the 
 study of heredity is that made by Mendel. A little 
 more than half a century ago, Gregor Mendel, a 
 Silesian monk, was quietly carrying out observa- 
 tions and experiments on the crossing of common 
 peas. He classified his results with care, and 
 made certain important deductions from them ; 
 but, strange to say, when he published a paper 
 detailing his experiments and embodying his con- 
 clusions, it received no public scientific welcome, 
 but was allowed to lie buried in the archives of the 
 society to which he had communicated it, for thirty- 
 five years. It was not until the law which Mendel 
 had discovered by his patient researches was re- 
 discovered in 1900 by three separate botanical 
 investigators that the neglected paper of the for- 
 gotten monk was dug out of its grave and his title 
 to the name of a great scientific investigator 
 established. Correns, Tschermak, and De Vries 
 were the first to confirm Mendel's law ; and his 
 observations and conclusions have been substantiated 
 and received further demonstration from the work 
 of Punnet, Bateson, and Drinkwater. 
 
 It is outside the scope of this chapter to describe 
 in detail the experiments upon which the doctrines 
 of Mendelism are founded. Those who are in-
 
 104 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 terested may pursue the study further in one or 
 other of the monographs which are devoted to the 
 subject. Mendel's great contribution to the science 
 of heredity is that he proved that the transmission 
 of certain factors from one generation to another 
 is no haphazard occurrence, but is definitely con- 
 trolled by laws which may be reduced to mathe- 
 matical formulae. He ascertained two great facts, 
 and established two great principles. He showed 
 that in the first hybrid generation there manifests 
 itself, at the first crossing, a complete triumph of 
 the characteristics of one parent, the characteristics 
 of the second parent being suppressed. This he 
 called " dominance." In the second generation he 
 pointed out that what he called " segregation " 
 occurs. By this he meant the appearance in 
 definite proportions in the second generation of 
 the characters which were combined in the cross. 
 
 His experiments have been studied, verified, 
 imitated, and extended, and the following are some 
 of the conclusions which have been gathered from 
 the accumulated facts. It is now believed that in 
 any living organism there are certain qualities or 
 characteristics that are capable of varying inde- 
 pendently, and which may depend on some quality 
 or factor in the germ-plasm, and are therefore 
 transmissible. They can be separated out, identified, 
 and followed through a series of breeding experi- 
 ments. They are called " unit " characters, and 
 the principles which govern their appearance are 
 known as " unit " factors. Complete heredity 
 from one parent to his offspring would mean the 
 handing on of the sum- total of these " unit " factors.
 
 MENDELISM 105 
 
 No character reveals itself in an individual unless 
 the corresponding factor has been handed down 
 to it. Factors may be handed on and remain un- 
 developed ; but they may suddenly thrust them- 
 selves into prominence in a subsequent generation. 
 This explains why a characteristic belonging to one 
 or other of its grand-parents may appear in a child 
 whose parents lack this quality. Mendelism is not 
 difficult to understand when it is applied to the 
 crossing of pea-plants. But its problems become 
 infinitely more complex when the facts of human 
 heredity are closely studied. Many disturbing 
 factors come into play, so that, except for special 
 features, such as the colour of the eyes, the colour 
 of the hair, the shape of the hands, and other more 
 or less minor details, Mendelism as applied to man 
 has so far had only minor successes. Human 
 heredity is a much too complex thing to be capable 
 of reduction, as yet, to mathematical formulae. 
 Heredity, with all that it connotes, still remains a 
 profound mystery, and is, I believe, inexplicable 
 unless we are prepared to admit some mysterious 
 controlling and guiding principle which science has 
 so far failed to recognise. 
 
 Important as the heredity which has stamped 
 its hall-mark upon an organism or an individual 
 may be, there is another factor constantly at work 
 in moulding it, namely, its environment. The 
 finished article, be it vegetable-marrow or man, is 
 the resultant in a parallelogram of forces, the factors 
 of which are heredity, or what it brings with it 
 into the world, and environment, or the play of 
 world forces upon it. So far as it concerns the
 
 'io6 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 individual, heredity stops at his birth, though the 
 burden or the treasure it may have bound upon 
 Jiis shoulder* is sometimes not revealed till after 
 a long period of years. Its greatest influence is 
 ante-natal. The environment of the parents may 
 affect the heredity of the child for good or ill ; but 
 the major part of the effect of environment is a 
 post-natal and personal matter. 
 
 A leek or a lily grown in the open air has green 
 leaves, but if the plant is forced to live in a dark 
 cellar where the sunlight cannot reach it, its leaves 
 are white. It requires the energic touch of the 
 sun to enable it to elaborate the green chlorophyll 
 which gives it its verdure. Or it may be grown in 
 the sunlight, in soil from which all traces of iron 
 have been removed, and its leaves will remain 
 pale. But if a little iron be added to the soil the 
 leaves will quickly assume their natural hue. Here 
 we are dealing with only one factor in the environ- 
 ment ; but in nature, as a rule, the circumstances 
 are more complex. 
 
 The response to the conditions of environment 
 are well shown by the behaviour of certain Alpine 
 plants. If taken from their natural habitat and 
 cultivated in the lowlands, they undergo material 
 alterations in character. They grow to a greater 
 height and their leaves expand in length, and 
 breadth. So long as the plant remains in the low- 
 lands it will exhibit in each successive generation 
 these altered characters. But if one of the plants 
 is transferred once more to its original habitat, 
 high up upon the bleak mountains, it will once more 
 assume the Alpine characteristics, which continue
 
 EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT 107 
 
 to persist so long as the plant or its descendants 
 live under the same conditions. 
 
 E. S. Goodrich 1 quotes an interesting example 
 of the effect of environment. 
 
 A French botanist, Bonnier, divided a common 
 dandelion plant and grew one half in the lowlands 
 and the other at a considerable altitude among thg 
 mountains. The part grown in the lowlands deve- 
 loped into a tall and slender plant, while the part 
 transferred to the heights underwent very con- 
 siderable modifications. It developed longer roots, 
 probably in order to derive adequate nourishment 
 from the sparser soil; its stems were shorter and 
 its leaves smaller, probably because its nourishment 
 was deficient ; its leaves were more abundantly 
 supplied with hairs, and its flowers were larger and 
 brighter. No doubt this latter modification was 
 with a view to attract insects, to ensure its propa- 
 gation. The seeds of the Alpine plant, transferred 
 to the lowlands, reproduced the lowland form. If 
 planted in the mountains, the Alpine type was 
 reproduced ; and seeds of the lowland form culti- 
 vated among the heights developed into the Alpine 
 type ; while, if either form were transplanted bodily 
 to the habitat of the other, it assumed the type 
 common to its new surroundings. Goodrich con- 
 cludes : " This change is accomplished by the new- 
 growing tissues, for the already formed tissues are 
 no longer capable of altering. Once fully differen- 
 tiated they are ' fixed/ So we see that organisms 
 are moulded by their environment ; it is not the 
 developed result which is transmitted, it is not 
 
 1 Evolution, by E S. Goodrich, M.A., F.R.S.
 
 10 8 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 the modification which is inherited, but the capacity 
 for modifications in certain directions, the modifi- 
 ability." 
 
 In the nature of things it is perhaps to be ex- 
 pected that the influence of environment should 
 make itself felt in plant life ; but it plays a great 
 part in producing modifications of animal life as 
 well. 
 
 It has long been known that if a sea-water proto- 
 zoon be transferred suddenly into fresh water it 
 will quickly die, a victim to its unwonted environ- 
 ment. But if, instead of undergoing this brusque 
 and fatal transference, it be placed successively 
 in more and more dilute solutions of sea-water in 
 which the concentration of salt is progressively 
 diminished until pure fresh water is reached it will 
 gradually acquire such powers of tolerance towards 
 its altered environment that it will continue to 
 live. 
 
 Similarly, if we take a protozoon which is nor- 
 mally found in fresh water and suddenly place it 
 in sea-water it will at once die ; but it may, like 
 the salt-water protozoon, develop the power of 
 living in an unaccustomed medium if, instead of a 
 sudden transference from one extreme to another, 
 we allow it time to accustom itself to new condi- 
 tions by carrying it through a series of waters 
 containing more and more salt until we reach sea- 
 water. Physically the two protozoa may resemble 
 each other so closely that it is impossible to tell 
 from a mere inspection whether they belong to the 
 sea-water class or the fresh-water class ; but the 
 point may be settled at once by immersing them
 
 EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT 109 
 
 in sea-water, when the fresh-water protozoon will 
 immediately die. 
 
 Fish, insects, and Crustacea which have lived for 
 generations in the waters of a dark cave gradually 
 lose their eyes, since vision is of no further use to 
 them ; but the fins, tails, antennae, and limbs with 
 which they are provided grow enormously in 
 length, so that they may even exceed the length of 
 the creature's body. These limbs, thus adapted 
 by environment to meet the special requirements 
 of the creatures to which they belong, enable them 
 to recognise obstacles, to feel for food, and to 
 avoid collisions with each other or with the 
 rocks and stones of their habitat. They are to 
 those sightless creatures what his stick is to a 
 blind man. 
 
 Any one who has ever watched a mountain 
 spring bubbling up from between the ribs of Mother 
 Earth has before him, if he will allow his imagina- 
 tion to play upon it, a picture of the whole story 
 of heredity and environment. The water gushes 
 up, fresh, sparkling, and cold, and incorporate with 
 it are some qualities it has gathered from the earth. 
 What history lies behind it we cannot tell, but we 
 know that, long before it was cloistered in the 
 hidden reservoir from which it is now bursting, it 
 fell from the clouds upon the flanks of the surround- 
 ing hills and percolated gently through into some 
 dark and undiscovered recess between the buried 
 rocks. Long b3fore it fell from the clouds it had 
 been lifted up from the smiling surface of the sea 
 by the energy of the sun. But whether in the sea, 
 or in the clouds, or distilling as dew or rain upon
 
 no HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 the hillside, it was water all the while : for the 
 germ-plasm is continuous. 
 
 And now it is coming forth again into the brave 
 light of heaven eager to run its appointed race. 
 It tumbles down the hillside, water still, but as it 
 goes it takes up and carries with it new qualities it 
 has niched from its environment. Here it washes 
 away some earth from an overhanging bank, and 
 is made, for the moment, turbid ; there it dissolves 
 some salts from the rocks against which it frets as 
 it moves onwards, and yonder, where it sweeps 
 into the valley it scoops large debris from a bank 
 of clay. In the valley its course is stayed for a 
 little while, and it drops into the silent depths of 
 its stagnant pools some of the earthy debris with 
 which it has become burdened. Then it flows 
 gently on, past farm and croft, broadening and 
 deepening as it is fed by tributary streams, mirroring 
 the overhanging trees, catching the shadows of 
 every fleecy cloud, ploughing its way by the easiest 
 path, deflected here by a barrier of rock and 
 there by a promontory of beaten earth that it 
 cannot wash away. Or it enters a defile between 
 buttresses of rock which narrow it down so that 
 it races in a wild tumult between its precipitous 
 banks. 
 
 It is perpetually yet never the same ; and one 
 may stand beside it in one's childhood, and after 
 the long lapse of years again in one's old age and 
 say, " This is Avon, or Nith, or Thames." For a 
 stream of running water is indeed a true picture of 
 personality of continuity amid and in spite of 
 perpetual change.
 
 CONTINUITY AMID CHANGE ~ in 
 
 The sun kisses it at noon-day, and lifts up from 
 it an armful of vapour to repair some exhausted 
 cloud ; the frosts of winter touch it with iron hand, 
 and it is fettered with ice ; but, cloud or ice, it is 
 the same water still, the impotent creature of 
 environment. It flows on, past hamlet and through 
 town, and its fair beauty is sullied by contact with 
 human kind. It has lost its pristine beauty, but 
 it is the same water still. And so, on it goes, 
 through the sunlight and under the star-encrusted 
 sky, till it pours into the cleansing bosom of ocean, 
 where all the adventitious qualities it has gathered 
 up from its environment are lost in the immensity 
 of the sea. It was water when it burst from the 
 hillside ; it is water when it reaches the ocean ; it 
 has preserved its identity, though its identity has 
 been influenced over and over again by its environ- 
 ment. Like the germ-plasm, it has held on in an 
 unbroken and continuous line : and environment 
 has been able to do no more than mould its character 
 for a little while. 
 
 Applied to human life the influences of heredity 
 and environment have large and broad results. 
 Primarily it is heredity which has -most to do with 
 the physical side of a child's life ; but, in so far 
 as mind is rooted in brain, heredity plays a part 
 in endowing the psychical side of life with certain 
 tendencies or aptitudes, by giving the child a brain 
 of a certain texture, with nerve-cells sluggish or 
 active, slow to respond to stimuli, or alert and 
 alive. The child of healthy, vigorous parents is 
 much more likely to start life with a good physique 
 than the child of delicate parents. If a child comes
 
 112 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 of a long line of healthy ancestors it is much more 
 likely to be born a splendid specimen of infant life 
 than if it had behind it nothing better than a family 
 tree with withered and delicate branches and an 
 unsound stem. 
 
 With very few exceptions, diseases are not trans- 
 mitted directly, at birth, from parents to children. 
 For instance, tubercular parents, who are prover- 
 bially fertile, very frequently have fine children ; but 
 these children start life handicapped in so far as 
 they inherit, through the continuity of tiie germ- 
 plasm, a textural quality of the bodily organs 
 which is frequently unable successfully to resist 
 infection by the organisms of tuberculosis which 
 we breathe daily. Tuberculosis may be actually 
 transmitted from parent to child, but this is ex- 
 tremely rare. Bring the child of tubercular parents 
 up in an unsuitable environment, expose it to the 
 infection of tuberculosis by allowirg it constantly to 
 associate, at close quarters, in all the little intimacies 
 of affectionate home-life, with its tubercular parent, 
 and it is almost certain to contract the disease. 
 Here we have an example of the effect of environ- 
 ment upon a child predisposed by heredity to a 
 specific malady. But if, at a very early period of 
 its life, that child were taken to the country, 
 brought up in healthy surroundings, in a house 
 where no tubercular person has previously lived, 
 allowed to bathe in the glories of the sunshine, and 
 to take largesse from the clean ocean of the country 
 air, well fed, well clad, and well cared for, it is 
 more than likely, indeed it is practically certain, 
 that it would through its favourable environment
 
 EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT 113 
 
 be able to overcome the inborn tendency with which 
 it came into the world, and grow up to be a healthy 
 man or woman, whose children would start the 
 race of life without the initial handicap which 
 weighed upon their parents. 
 
 Any one who has studied with an observant and 
 sympathetic eye the child-life in the slums of a 
 great city must have been touched often to sorrow, 
 and not infrequently to anger. Many children 
 born in the slums are magnificent samples of human 
 babyhood. This is particularly the case in a city 
 like Liverpool, where many of the unskilled labourers 
 are young Irishmen who have been brought up in 
 the country, but who, through the allurement of 
 more work and better wages, have been attracted 
 to the town. Some of them marry girls of their 
 own class with a country heredity behind them, 
 and the children born of such a union are infants 
 of which any mother might be proud. But watch 
 these children grow up in the body-warping, soul- 
 destroying environment of the slums. Instead of 
 the green fields where their father and mother 
 scampered barefooted as children, they have the 
 gutter for a playground ; for the pure air of heaven 
 which blew round the little thatched cottages where 
 their parents were born, they have the exhausted, 
 fetid, disease-laden atmosphere of a great city ; for 
 the blue expanse of the open sky, they have a few 
 adventurous but anaemic rays of the sun, which 
 filter with difficulty into the narrow courts where 
 they dwell ; for the wholesome potatoes, porridge, 
 and buttermilk of their parents' country, they have 
 , food of a dubious nutritive value packed in a tin
 
 U4 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 in some trans-Atlantic slaughter-house ; for the 
 song of the birds, they have the unmelodious clatter 
 of an Italian piano-organ ; and, for the benediction 
 of the stars, the uncertain light of the street lamps. 
 It is therefore little wonder that the splendid start 
 with which they began life is rapidly stolen from 
 them by their environment, and that, from the 
 time they are weaned, they begin to deteriorate. 
 They betome stunted, rickety, emaciated, and 
 prematurely old. They are the victims of diseases 
 of the eyes, the ears, the throat, the skin, the bones. 
 They are adults before they have had any child- 
 hood, and old men and women when they ought 
 to be in their prime. The tragedy of all great cities 
 is the tragedy of the child-life of the slums, and I 
 have often wondered if at an early age a large ex- 
 periment in the transference of child-life were 
 performed, and the children of the rich were trans- 
 ported to the slums and brought up in that environ- 
 ment, whether they would do half as well as the 
 children they have displaced. Few things, if any, 
 can be more soul-destroying and body-killing than 
 life in the rookeries of slumdom, and I have some- 
 times wondered whether, if it had been my fate to 
 be born and brought up in a slum, my soul would 
 ever have risen above the level of a pot of beer. 
 The marvel is that the children of the slums do so 
 well as they succeed in doing. Not once, but many 
 times, in the crucible of the war, where the souls 
 of men have been tested, the boy from the slum 
 has stood in the same line face to face with the 
 same danger, and confronted with the same oppor- 
 tunity of sacrifice as the lad from the home of
 
 EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENT 115 
 
 broad acres with the traditions of his class and 
 school behind him. And the lad from the slums 
 has shown himself as brave a man, and as generous 
 a man, with instincts of altruism as fine as his more 
 favoured brother. He has had no advantages of 
 birth ; his environment has been of the worst ; 
 but he has learned how to die like " a very gallant 
 gentleman." For a man's soul is a big thing, and 
 no circumstances can triumph over it. 
 
 And when the drum-fire of the heavy guns is 
 silenced and we return to the longed-for, happy 
 days of peace, I imagine that the understanding 
 come to in the face of death between the favoured 
 of fortune and their humble brothers will not readily 
 be broken. To face danger together, to bleed 
 together, and, if need be, to die together, breaks 
 down the artificial barrier of class ; and the lad 
 from the slums, companying with him in the inferno, 
 has learned to trust and honour the lad from the 
 broad acres ; and the boy from the mansion has 
 learned to understand and respect the boy from 
 the city court. In so far as they were artificial, 
 the war has smashed up class distinctions, and 
 what Burns long ago tried to teach has to-day a 
 wider acceptation : 
 
 " The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man's the gowd, for a' that." 
 
 Environment, though it may neutralise much of 
 the good with which a child is endowed by heredity, 
 may act in the other direction, and exert a bene- 
 ficial effect upon a child which has started life 
 handicapped by a bad ancestral taint. Good food 
 
 9
 
 H6 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 and warm clothing, which are physical conditions 
 of life, and wise education and careful discipline, 
 which are mental conditions of life, may convert 
 a poor, wretched child of the gutter into a respect- 
 able man or woman. Barnardo's Homes in Eng- 
 land, Quarrier's Homes in Scotland, and every 
 industrial school and training-ship in the country, 
 are standing witnesses to the saving grace of pro- 
 pitious environment. 
 
 Environment in nature, with all that it connotes, 
 is one of the regulating factors which helps to 
 ensure the survival of the fittest. But in human 
 life so much of our environment is artificial that it 
 kills many who, by heredity, were well fitted to 
 survive, and protects and shields others who, in 
 virtue of their physical handicap at birth, would 
 have little chance of surviving were they not 
 specially nurtured and surrounded with all the 
 comforts that wealth and devotion can procure. 
 Nature is ever seeking to improve life, but some- 
 times man steps in and interferes to protect the 
 weakling which would otherwise succumb. But 
 in the long run Nature wins the day, for ultimately 
 a weakly family dies out : or the weakness, if it 
 be due to a transmissible disease such as syphilis, 
 ceases to be operative after a generation or two. 
 Though people of unsound mind may beget children, 
 they are often sterile ; and if they do become 
 parents the family either tends to become extinct 
 or the mental weakness to be eradicated. 
 
 Fortunately, also, the chronic alcoholic is often 
 childless, for Nature is jealous of the purity of her 
 stock.
 
 NATURE'S EQUILIBRIUM 117 
 
 Where the laws of nature are allowed to operate 
 freely the results tend to maintain a satisfactory 
 equilibrium. But man can and does upset the 
 balance occasionally. 
 
 Science, with groping finger and inquiring eye, 
 has discovered for us some of the secrets that lie 
 behind heredity and the influence of environment ; 
 but we have been very slow to apply them. Most 
 often the application of a principle precedes the 
 discovery of the scientific facts upon which it 
 depends. The richness of Tyrian purple was 
 admired and used before the science of chemistry 
 had cracked its shell, and men made melody before 
 there was any science of acoustics or laws of har- 
 mony ; but in this great sphere where the applica- 
 tion of principles, established by science, might 
 have done so much, practically nothing has been 
 attempted except in so far as animals are con- 
 cerned. The breed of horses, of dogs, of cows, 
 and of sheep has been improved for the sake of 
 paltry prizes on the race-course or at the cattle- 
 show, or for the enrichment of a few enlightened 
 agriculturists; but, so far as the human race is 
 concerned, practically nothing has been done on 
 any large scale either to improve the breed or to 
 protect it from the deleterious effects of a bad 
 environment. To think of the matter seriously is 
 to be staggered by our own ineptitude. Man, who 
 has discovered whatever is known about heredity and 
 environment, is the last to profit by his knowledge. 
 
 If we are to recover in a reasonable time from 
 the desolating havoc which the carnage of war has 
 wrought amoitg the flower of our manhood we must
 
 H8 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 set about applying our knowledge at once. Any 
 effective scheme will entail a vast expenditure, but 
 a country that can pour out close on 7,000,000 a 
 day for the protection of its frontiers, and, inci- 
 dentally, for the destruction of the lives of its 
 enemies, should be'able and willing to spend lavishly 
 of its substance in protecting and saving the lives 
 of its own people. The expenditure of a sum 
 equal to our share of the cost of the war for one 
 month would be sufficient, I imagine, to tear down 
 and rebuild, as wholesome dwelling-places, prac- 
 tically all the slums in the country. And if this 
 estimate is too low for I am only a physician and 
 no financial expert surely the result could be 
 obtained by devoting to this end a sum equal to 
 one week's war expenditure every year for ten or 
 twenty years. Hitherto we have reared an Im- 
 perial race in slums ; but it is our bounden duty 
 to see that we make the Britain our men have bled 
 and died for a country worthy of their great sacri- 
 fice, where life can be lived under wholesome and 
 healthy conditions. To abolish the slums would 
 be to lessen enormously the incidence of disease. 
 Many infectious diseases find hot-beds for their 
 propagation in the slums, and the mischief spreads 
 from the rookeries where it has developed to the 
 better- class dwelling-houses : for thus are we 
 punished for the neglect of our poorer brethren 
 within our gates. Better housing conditions, more 
 space, more light, more air, would speedily reduce 
 infantile mortality. And if, side by side with a 
 sane policy of housing reform, we had temperance 
 reform as well, and such economic reforms as would
 
 IMPERATIVE REFORMS 119 
 
 abolish sweating that inhuman system whereby 
 the vampire middleman grows fat on the blood and 
 tears of women and little children we should have 
 done much to improve the environment of the 
 young life of our country, and given it a chance to 
 grow and develop as God meant it to do. And, side 
 by side with these reforms, we require educational 
 reform. More attention should be paid in schools 
 to instruction in the elements of hygiene, and all 
 senior girls should receive lessons in mother-craft. 
 No scientist would hand over to an uninstructed 
 girl a delicate piece of scientific apparatus, and 
 expect her, by some natural gift of intuition, to 
 know how to handle it, control it, and use it. But, 
 by habit, that is what we are daily allowing to 
 occur. Girls of all classes marry without the 
 haziest ideas as to child-nurture and child- welfare. 
 It is therefore little to be wondered at that the 
 proportion of babies which die in the first year of 
 life is enormously high, especially in our great cities. 
 A considerable number of these unfortunate infants 
 are first babies. They die that through their un- 
 availing tears their inexperienced mothers may 
 acquire some slight knowledge of how to rear 
 children. They are vicarious sufferers, sacrificed that 
 the conditions of life may be more tolerable and less 
 lethal for the brothers and sisters who may follow 
 them. But what a wastage ! In these late days, and 
 in spite of our civilisation, we out-Herod Herod. 
 
 Surely there is a better way of teaching mother- 
 craft than in such a stern and spendthrift school, 
 and, in an age when such stress is laid upon the 
 rights of the community, let us not forget that the
 
 120 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 
 individual has rights, even though it is only a slum- 
 baby who has " no language but a cry." Every 
 child born into the world, legitimate or illegitimate, 
 has the right to live. The law recognises this by* 
 laying punitive hands upon any one who by violence 
 robs the youngest infant of life. But a thousand 
 times more children are done to death through 
 ignorance than by homicidal violence, and the law, 
 or the law-makers, stand by and do nothing. 
 
 In paying due deference to the rights of the 
 individual we are sometimes in danger of forgetting 
 the rights of the race, which are infinitely greater. 
 Hitherto human mating has been too much a hap- 
 hazard matter. Love is not always wise. But a 
 time is coming when no man or woman will be per- 
 mitted to marry unless they can produce a certificate 
 of health. The requirements need not be pitched 
 too high ; but they should consist of at least 
 moderately good physique, soundness of mind, and 
 freedomfrom any disease capable of being transmitted 
 to the children, or, as in the case of tuberculosis, 
 likely to hand on a specially susceptible constitution. 
 It will be a good day for England when "every 
 father asks the suitor for his daughter's hand not 
 what his bank balance is, but whether his blood 
 is clean : for more women have been ruined in 
 health and more children doomed to a heritage of 
 suffering through the neglect of this pertinent but 
 not impertinent question than Nero ever butchered 
 or Herod's soldiers slew. Of old it was said, " The 
 fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of 
 the children are set on edge," and the proverb still 
 holds true,
 
 HEALTH BETTER THAN RICHES 121 
 
 With the advance of education and the dis- 
 semination of some knowledge of the laws of here- 
 dity public opinion is gradually becoming leavened 
 by more sensible views about marriage ; and in due 
 time the possession of a certificate of health by 
 both parties to the contract will be as necessary a 
 preliminary as the proclamation of banns. 
 
 Though we have learned much about heredity 
 there are still many things about it that are ob- 
 scured by impenetrable darkness, and its mysteries 
 are so great that, were there no God, we should 
 almost require to postulate one to explain them.
 
 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL
 
 " Man's Free-will is but a bird in a cage ; he can stop at the 
 lower perch, or he can mount to a higher. Then that which is 
 and knows will enlarge his cage, give him a higher and a higher 
 perch, and at last break off the top of his cage, and let him out 
 to be one with the Free-will of the Universe." Tennyson, "Lift 
 of Lord Tennyson," vol. i. p. 318 
 
 " The thrall in person may be free in soul." 
 
 Tennyson, " Gareih and Lynette."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 THE one fact of which we are certain is our own 
 existence. We believe that other things exist 
 besides ourselves. We see the sun, the moon, the 
 stars ; we are stirred to delight by the beautiful 
 panorama of nature ; we are jostled in the streets 
 by other creatures like ourselves ; but we can 
 never feel perfectly assured that these things have 
 a real existence of their own, independent of our 
 consciousness of them. We know them only 
 through the impressions they make upon our 
 senses. But we are conscious of our own identity ; 
 we recognise that this identity is independent of 
 time and change ; we can control the movements 
 of our limbs ; we are free to choose one course and 
 reject another; we can think in abstract terms, 
 reason within ourselves, regulate our conduct 
 according to the experience of the past, and formu- 
 late decisions upon moral issues. 
 
 There is an almost insuperable temptation to re- 
 gard the body as nothing more than a great and 
 delicately adjusted machine in which is at work a 
 vast and complicated system of wheels and springs, 
 pumps and levers, pipes and valves, and wherein 
 123
 
 126 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 as in a chemist's test-tube, marvellous chemical 
 unions and dissolutions are perpetually taking 
 place. Many of the processes of life may be ex- 
 pressed in mechanical and chemical terms ; but, 
 much as we may marvel at the wonders and poten- 
 tialities of modern chemistry, we must pause before 
 we can accept the idea that thought, volition, 
 consciousness, are nothing more than the product 
 of chemical changes. We cannot reduce to atomic 
 equations and express in chemical formulae the will 
 to be ready to lay our lives down for a just cause ; 
 or all the mysterious beauty of maternal love. 
 Nor can we reasonably imagine that the choice 
 between moral right and moral wrong is to be 
 determined by the combination of chemical mole- 
 cules, or that hope is a nascent chemical product, 
 and despair a chemical experiment gone wrong. 
 Test-tubes and reagents do not supply us with an 
 adequate explanation of the mental life of the 
 individual : and, although one dare not affirm, 
 since the opposite has been proved, that thought, 
 emotion, and action are not attended by chemical 
 changes in the brain-cells, we must guard against 
 the danger of failing to discriminate between a 
 phenomenon and its concomitants. The noise of a 
 peal of thunder is a concomitant and consequence 
 of the electric discharge that gives us the lightning ; 
 but the noise does not give birth to the thunder- 
 bolt, nor has it any of its lethal powers. 
 
 Primitive man, pondering on the mystery of his 
 shadow, startled to see his reflection look back at 
 him with frightened eyes_when he stooped to drink 
 from some quiet pool, and amazed when an echoing
 
 THE SOUL 127 
 
 rock flung his voice back out of the distance, early 
 concluded that he had a double. This double was 
 his spirit or his soul. It was immaterial. It left 
 his body at death, casting it aside like some worn- 
 out garment. Without this soul he was a corpse ; 
 with it he was a sentient being. 
 
 The earliest philosophers believed that the soul 
 was responsible for our mental life ; that it gave 
 us our thoughts, and, as thought was the loftiest 
 activity of which the human being was capable, they 
 imagined that the soul must be something of divine 
 origin, some form of celestial fire sent down from 
 heaven and incorporate in man some breath or 
 essence of the gods. Among the pagan philosophers 
 Plato conceived of the soul as a charioteer, free, and 
 capable of free movement, what time he directed 
 and controlled the chariot of the body. 
 
 Some believe that the soul that is in man, or 
 rather that is man, is a part of God Himself, a frag- 
 ment of the Godhead, imprisoned in our earthly 
 clay, limited by its separation from the Divine 
 Being, and shackled to earth by its material habita- 
 tion. Others, who have only a hazy idea of God 
 as a Person, regard the soul as a part of " the all," 
 substituting a mere name of indefinite connotation 
 for a principle that they are unable further to 
 envisage. 
 
 Man shares many qualities in common with 
 inanimate matter. He shares other qualities with 
 the whole animal creation, but he alone, among 
 the things of the earth, has the power of exercising 
 free-will. He can choose between two lines of 
 action ; he can decide abstract problems ; he can
 
 128 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 " eschew evil and do good." If he were matter, 
 and matter only, such things would be an impossi- 
 bility. Some physiologists deny that man has any 
 free-will. They try to convince themselves that 
 all his actions are automatic ; that the central 
 nervous system, the organ through which the mind 
 expresses itself, is little more than a power-house 
 in which afferent impulses, or impulses coming from 
 without through the gateways of the senses and 
 along the conducting paths of the sensory nerves, 
 are converted into efferent impulses which are 
 transmitted through the outgoing nerves of motion 
 and result in action. They do not allow that the 
 individual will comes into operation at all. The 
 efferent impulse which follows the sensory stimulus 
 is conditioned by heredity, by education, by religious 
 bias, by a thousand and one circumstances that 
 may previously have acted upon a man or his 
 ancestors, and made certain nerve-paths or certain 
 nexuses between afferent and efferent impulses 
 more easily bridged. So that, if I decide that I 
 shall have tea for breakfast instead of coffee, I am 
 not exerting any free-will, but my olfactory or 
 gustatory end-organs, for some reason known only 
 to the physiologist, are sending memory-pictures of 
 the flavour of tea up to my central nervous system, 
 and through the nerves that control the muscles of 
 speech, without the exercise of any choice on my 
 part, tea is being ordered. The brain becomes, 
 therefore, little more than a telephone exchange, 
 where the operator is asked through an incoming 
 wire (an afferent nerve) to connect the speaker up 
 with another number (an efferent nerve) and does
 
 A WAR-TIME ANALOGY 129 
 
 so without exercising any discrimination on her 
 own part. To express the problem in such simple 
 terms is to reduce it to an absurdity. 
 
 What actually happens in the human mind when 
 free-will comes into play is fairly well represented 
 by the following illustration. 
 
 When a great battle is raging the general in 
 command is at his headquarters behind the lines 
 anxiously awaiting reports of how the fight is going. 
 With his staff he has probably devoted days and 
 weeks, possibly months, of anxious and particular 
 thought to the planning of his operations. At such 
 and such an hour it has been decided that the 
 artillery bombardment shall begin ; at such a 
 moment it shall enter upon a wild but ordered 
 crescendo ; and at a predetermined hour it shall 
 reach its zenith, and then cease suddenly, and, at 
 that moment, the officers in the trenches have been 
 ordered to launch themselves and their men over 
 the top Instructions have been given down to the 
 minutest detail. The goal aimed at has been de- 
 fined. Certain regiments have been held in reserve, 
 ready to lend help wherever needed. By runner, 
 by despatch-rider, by carrier-pigeon, by telephone 
 and telegram the general and his staff are kept 
 fully informed as to how the day is faring, and as 
 each report comes in a little coloured flag is moved 
 upon the map of the battle-field, so that, moment 
 by moment, the commanding officer has before him 
 a bird's-eye view of the situation. Suddenly a 
 message comes that at a certain part of the line 
 there has been an unusual resistance, the nature of 
 which is tersely described Such contingencies
 
 130 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 have not been unforeseen, and have already been 
 provided for in the detailed plans which the general 
 and his staff had prepared. It had, let us sa^, been 
 already determined in consultation that if the 
 advance were held up at this particular point, the 
 artillery should be commanded to concentrate 
 upon it. If the general were an automaton, hide- 
 bound to principles that he had formulated, he 
 would issue orders for the artillery to open heavy 
 fire upon that place. But he considers for a moment, 
 and then sends out instructions that the situation 
 is to be relieved by bombing from aeroplanes or 
 by whatever other method his experience as a 
 strategist leads him to believe will give the greatest 
 surprise, and have the most telling effect. He is 
 not a mere automatic centre for the conversion of 
 afferent impulses (despatch-riders' messages, etc.), 
 into efferent messages along the path of least re- 
 sistance, viz. according to predetermined plan. 
 He uses his intelligence ; he interprets messages, 
 passes them quickly through the weighing-room 
 of his reason, and decides by a definite act of free- 
 will that he will depart from the plan already 
 formulated. 
 
 The existence or non-existence of free-will in man 
 is a matter of such importance, in the light of what 
 is to follow, that it is entitled to further considera- 
 tion. The problem is age-long, and has been the 
 source of much perplexity, and it is worth noting 
 that the greatest opponents of the idea have be- 
 longed to two opposite camps. The materialist, 
 who explains everything in terms of matter and 
 energy, reduces all human action to nerve reflexes,
 
 PREDESTINATION 131 
 
 and holds that man can have no free-will because 
 such an idea would contradict the doctrine of the 
 conservation of energy. He trips into the pitfall 
 of confusing psychological and physical activity, 
 which belong to different planes. The other body 
 of opponents belong to that school of theological 
 belief which is chained to a crude and barbaric 
 doctrine of predestination. They believe that 
 whatever happens was and is predestined ; they 
 rob man of all freedom and make him the impotent 
 slave of the will of God. For them man's free-will 
 becomes a perilous delusion. But, as Dr. Denney 
 has said : " Absolute predestination is not the 
 explanation of anything in the moral world. The 
 man who asserts predestination thus, without 
 mitigation or remorse, has cancelled the world of 
 history and experience." 1 
 
 Neither the materialist nor the narrow theologian is 
 right. Man has free-will. And, having free-will, he is 
 ipso facto something more than matter ; for mere 
 matter cannot have the power of self-determinism. 
 
 In animals all acts are the direct, immediate, and 
 automatic outcome of stimuli. Where two stimuli 
 act coincidently the animal responds to the stronger. 
 There is no analysis, no reasoning, no delayed 
 judgment. 
 
 The lizard basking on a sunny wall darts off 
 when the shadow of a passer-by falls upon it. Here 
 the impulse of fear has been strong enough to over- 
 come the impulse to enjoyment produced by the 
 warmth of the sun, and fear causes flight. Between 
 
 1 Thi Christian Doctvin* of Rtconciliation, by the late 
 Principal James Denney, D.D 
 
 10
 
 132 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 the lowest forms of animal life and man there is a 
 growing complexity in the response to stimuli, and 
 among the higher animals one might almost imagine 
 that some acts were not automatic and instinctive ; 
 just as, on the other hand, one must admit that 
 human beings tend to become more or less of auto- 
 mata. Habit tends to make us surrender our 
 free-will and to react in precisely the same way to 
 the same or similar stimuli, so that, given certain 
 conditions, our intimate friends can often predict 
 what our conduct will be when faced by an emer- 
 gency. Through the frequent repetition of certain 
 acts, beaten paths of low resistance are driven 
 through the tangled thicket of nerve-cells and 
 nerve-processes in our brain and the connection 
 between afferent and efferent centres is made easy. 
 The impulse flows in, and finds an easy access to 
 the efferent nerve, and passes out in action, without 
 any intervention of the somnolent will. So that 
 by failing to exercise our free-will, we reduce our 
 actions to the level of mere animal automatism. 
 But still we are definitely free, and even the most 
 shackled slave of habit can and does break loose 
 from his traditions, and, to the surprise of his friends, 
 may assert his personality in a new way by the 
 exercise of his free-will. But we are only free when 
 we exercise our freedom. It is a form of wealth 
 which we only possess in the spending of it. We 
 are conscious of it especially when we make a choice 
 which entails a sense of responsibility. In our 
 own minds we distinguish between a free-will act 
 and one in which the obvious exercise of our freedom 
 does not play a part.
 
 FREEDOM OF THE WILL 133 
 
 It must be clearly understood that when we 
 speak of the freedom of the will we are not blotting 
 out all antecedent causes. Schopenhauer fell into 
 this error. Our freedom consists not hv the empty 
 power of exercising a motiveless will, but in the 
 liberty we have of choosing between different or 
 conflicting motives, balancing them one against 
 the other, analysing them, inspecting them from 
 every side, and then acting. Human conduct is 
 the outcome of motives, just as animal action is 
 the product of impulses. The animal acts on the 
 strongest impulse ; we act in response to the 
 strongest motive, but (and this makes the tre- 
 mendous difference), the motive upon which we 
 act does not become the strongest until we have 
 chosen it by the exercise of our will. Free-will 
 enables us to choose the motive upon which we 
 shall act ; and when we will to act we do not do 
 so, as it were, through the empty air. Once having 
 willed, which is a purely psychological process, we 
 must conform to biological and physico-chemical 
 laws to translate our will into effect. We are con- 
 ditioned by matter ; we act through brain and 
 nerve tissue. 
 
 There is a further great difference between the 
 actions of animals, and the free-will activities of 
 man. In the animal kingdom the response to the 
 stimulus is immediate, but in man an impulse may 
 be supplied, or a motive furnished, and action need 
 not follow for days or weeks. Judgment, reason, 
 anti-impulsive effort have come into play. The 
 matter is being considered. There is no parallel 
 phenomenon met with in creatures lower than man.
 
 134 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 It is a phenomenon which is only possible among 
 free agents. However many opponents the doctrine 
 of free-will may have we must recognise that the 
 whole fabric of society has been built up on the tacit 
 assumption that man is a free agent. They reap 
 the benefits which flow from a doctrine, translated 
 into practice, in which they do not believe. Their 
 position is somewhat untenable. If man has no 
 free-will all punitive or repressive legislation directed 
 against the wrongdoer is an insult and an in- 
 justice. 
 
 Though it is often difficult to tell where automatic 
 action ends and free-will comes into play, it is 
 more difficult to determine where man's freedom of 
 will ends and the will of God comes into operation. 
 We are face to face with a hard problem. If God 
 is omnipotent and omniscient, and rules and con- 
 trols everything, seeing the end from the beginning 
 and antecedently determining all events, how can 
 man have any scope for the exercise of his freedom ? 
 The difficulty seems insoluble, but there is a way 
 out. It is to be found in the recognition of the 
 fact, which experience and history both confirm, 
 that God has delegated to man some part of His 
 work in the world. He has made His creature in 
 some sense a co-creator. He has not kept him as 
 a puppet on a string, but has given him the golden 
 gift of reason, with which to use his freedom and 
 work out his destiny ; and in working it out he 
 influences his fellow-men, he fashions history. But 
 the omnipotence of God is not ruled out in this, nor 
 is His foreknowledge. Like a careful teacher who 
 runs a rapid eye over the long calculation which has
 
 CORRECTION BY CATASTROPHE 135 
 
 puzzled and distressed a child, He sees where the 
 error has crept in which might interfere with the 
 correct result, and with a touch of the finger it 
 is put right. Man's free-will used wrongly has 
 sometimes introduced chaos into order, and 
 almost ruined the world. And when this has 
 happened God has frequently restored order by 
 catastrophe. 
 
 We are so accustomed to admire the harmonious 
 working of natural laws that we have become blind 
 to the possibility of catastrophe being an instru- 
 ment of God. Those who live on the edge of 
 catastrophe, who witness it in operation, are too 
 close to see it in correct perspective. It is only 
 when such an upheaval is regarded down the long 
 vista of the years that the control of the directing 
 Mind behind it becomes apparent. All the witness 
 of history testifies to the cleansing, revivifying, and 
 correcting power of events which their immediate 
 spectators considered to be world disasters. When 
 God gave man free-will He embarked upon a great 
 experiment; but He knew all the factors in the 
 experiment, and saw how the misuse of the gift 
 might lead to human pain and human suffering, 
 and seeing, knew that now and then man's error 
 would need to be corrected by upheaval and 
 explosion. 
 
 Free-will is a function of the soul, for it is inde- 
 pendent of those laws which govern matter, animate 
 or inanimate. And what is the soul ? It is that 
 directive factor and controlling principle which is 
 responsible for our personal identity, our expres- 
 sion of ourselves, our personality. Linked to tfce
 
 I 3 6 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 body through the mind and brain, it is the energic 
 factor responsible for the weaving or development 
 of the body along the lines set by species and 
 heredity. That is on its lower side. It reaches 
 down to the body, but it also reaches up with ex- 
 pectant hands into the vastness of the Infinite, if 
 haply it may touch the feet of God. It embraces 
 the intelligence, the will and the emotions, and it 
 is the great reservoir in which we keep stored our 
 mental experiences. And with and through it we 
 worship. 
 
 The body, and, especially, the brain, are the 
 physical organs through which it gets into touch 
 with the material world. Through them it is 
 brought into practical relations with the great 
 physical realms of matter and energy. It can, 
 though it is an immaterial and non-spatial entity, 
 through using the body, itself a material thing, 
 subordinate matter and energy to its own ends. 
 But conversely it may be acted upon by material 
 things as every one must admit who has felt his 
 emotions stirred by a beautiful sunset, by such a 
 piece of art as the Gothic facade of the Church of 
 St. Ouen, or by the appeal of an exquisite harmony. 
 The beauty of a sunset is a material thing in so far 
 as it consists of waves of light, refracted, reflected, 
 interfered with and commingled, and an exquisite 
 harmony reaches our ears as rhythmic vibrations in 
 the material fabric of the atmosphere. These 
 sensory impressions conveyed through material 
 channels, and consisting of energy expressing itself 
 through matter, enter our .brains as stimuli of sen- 
 sation ; but it is the soul, and not the brain, that
 
 SOUL AND BODY 137 
 
 interprets them and responds to their message in 
 the up-welling of emotion. So it is apparent that 
 the nexus and interaction between the soul and the 
 body is an intimate one. 
 
 A soul of a kind may be incorporate in animals 
 lower than man. Possibly a bird may praise God 
 in its song, and may even worship Him, and a 
 flower may pour its perfumed chalice at His feet ; 
 but creatures lower than man cannot distinguish 
 between moral evil and moral good. They can 
 have no moral life, and it is in the moral realm that 
 the soul becomes spiritually directed and can lay 
 hold on God. 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge has said : " Soul appears to be 
 the link between ' spirit ' and ' matter/ and ac- 
 cording to its grade it may be chiefly associated with 
 one or with the other of these two great aspects of 
 the universe." 
 
 That the soul is a real entity, and not a mere 
 imagination of the philosophers and theologians has 
 been proved a thousand times for those who have 
 eyes to see it in the trenches of Flanders and France. 
 Over and over again the conditions there have been 
 so appalling that if man were only flesh and blood 
 he would long since have given up the fight. But 
 his " spirit " the soul in him has steadied his 
 body when the temptation was strong in him to 
 turn and flee, and because he is a spiritual being 
 and not a mere machine of flesh, his soul has tri- 
 umphed and he has " stuck it " to the end. His 
 whole physical being may have revolted, but the 
 little spark of divine fire in him has won the day. 
 When the Germans in a whirlwind rush were en-
 
 138 MAN'S FREEDOM, AND MAN'S SOUL 
 
 deavouring to break through to Amiens, and by 
 sheer weight of numbers were pushing back that 
 gallant line which may bend, but never breaks, the 
 great consolation offered by the war correspondents 
 was that, though we were giving ground and losing 
 men and guns, the " morale "of our soldiers was 
 unbroken. Unwittingly they were paying a high 
 tribute to the indomitableness of the soul, of wiiich 
 " morale " may be called an exhalation. 
 
 Among primitive peoples the belief in the soul 
 is surrounded by all manner of superstitions. Any 
 mystery tends to become weed-encumbered with 
 such accretions. But the nucleus of the idea is 
 there, and its distribution is universal. And the 
 idea is not confined to primitive people, but has 
 received in all ages the intellectual assent of the 
 noblest minds the world has ever known. If it 
 were nothing more than a vain imagination it 
 would long since have vanished out of human life. 
 But it persists and has an influence as potent among 
 thinking men to-day as it ever had. It commands 
 their intellectual assent, and, what is more impor- 
 tant, it shapes their lives, which it would never have 
 done had it been a myth invented by some primi- 
 tive thaumaturgist in order to secure ascendancy 
 over his dupes. 
 
 In all ages it has had its critics who, like Voltaire 
 have sought with reason and ridicule to pour con- 
 tempt upon the idea, and shake men's faith in the 
 existence of the soul. But, though the poison of 
 their sophisms may have blighted some lives, they 
 have never been able to kill the universal belief. 
 They have been like a band of blood-thirsty school-
 
 AN ELUSIVE BIRD 139 
 
 boys pursuing with murderous but ineffective pebbles 
 a beautiful and elusive bird. 
 
 We do not discover the soul under the micro- 
 scope, nor in the test-tube - in the physiological 
 laboratory, nor can we with scalpel and forceps lay 
 it bare in the dissecting room ; but we can see it, 
 even though our eyes are veiled, in the illumined 
 lives of men and women, and we are conscious of 
 its presence in our own being.
 
 WHAT IS LIFE?
 
 " Aliving dog is better than a dead lion." Ecclesiastes iv. 12 
 
 " Avec une force quelconque de la nature on peut obtenir 
 toutes les autres, sauf celles qui animent les fitres." Dr. Gus- 
 tave U Bon. " Hier et Demain."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHAT IS LIFE ? 
 
 WHAT is life ? This is a question which has puzzled 
 the physiologist, the psychologist, and the theologian. 
 Each in his own way, using the terms of his own 
 craft, has attempted to define it, but as yet no 
 perfect and universally accepted definition has 
 been reached. Aristotle spoke of it as " The 
 assemblage of the operations of nutrition, growth, 
 and destruction." Bichat called it " The sum total 
 of those functions that resist death," and this 
 definition, through its terseness, attained to a wide 
 celebrity. But it is faulty, in so far as it fails to 
 recognise that death is as much a phenomenon pf 
 life as is birth, Herbert Spencer defined it as : 
 " The continuous adjustment of internal and ex- 
 ternal relations." But this is neither sufficiently 
 distinctive nor precise. It has been said of all 
 definitions of life hitherto suggested that they 
 would apply to crystals as accurately as to living 
 things. 
 
 Let it be at once admitted that neither science 
 nor philosophy can tell what life really is. We 
 know life only through its activities. Has it any 
 real existence, or is it a thing vainly imagined ? 
 
 M3
 
 144 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 Matter we know only through the sensations it pro- 
 duces in us, and our interpretation of them. It 
 may have no objective reality apart from mind. 
 The mind, which we cannot see, may possibly be the 
 only real thing in the Universe ; and our little 
 lives, which to us seem charged with reality, may 
 have no existence outside the mind of God. We, 
 and the whole Universe as we see it, may be no- 
 thing more than thoughts passing through the mind 
 of the Eternal. But can a thought be conscious of 
 its own self ? It seems impossible. 
 
 Life is something whose definition cannot be ex- 
 pressed in words. Words are dead symbols. But 
 though it cannot adequately be defined, very 
 serious endeavours have been made in all ages to 
 explain it. 
 
 One of the earliest doctrines put forward to ex- 
 plain the mystery of life was the doctrine of Animism. 
 Primitive man, as we have already seen, pursued 
 in the sunlight by his shadow, early concluded that 
 he had a double. This double was his soul or spirit, 
 and he regarded life as the expression of the activity 
 of his soul working through and making use of his 
 body. This idea, no unworthy contribution to 
 knowledge, ultimately became extended to all 
 living things, animals as well as plants ; and by a 
 further extension there grew out of it the doctrine 
 of the transmigration of souls, which is still held by 
 many people. Early in the eighteenth century a 
 German physician, philosopher, and chemist, Stahl, 
 enunciated a modernised theory of animism. He 
 restricted the anima, or soul, to the human being, 
 and made of it the governor of all bodily activities,
 
 ANIMISM J45 
 
 from digestion to thought. It was the direct cause, 
 without any intermediary, of all organic functions. 
 Through it, according to Stahl, the muscles contract, 
 the lungs expand, the heart beats. It is at once 
 the captain, the engineers, the crew, the stokers 
 of the ship, as well as being the ship-builder and 
 ship-repairer. The theory exposed itself to much 
 hostile criticism, some of which was little more than 
 ribald mockery; but the most serious criticisms 
 came from the philosophers. They pointed out 
 the extreme difficulty of establishing any direct 
 action of the soul upon the organs of the body, 
 because they belong to different spheres of being. 
 The soul is a spiritual entity ; the body is a material 
 organisation. Being such they cannot, the philo- 
 sophers hold, directly interact upon each other. 
 In their day Descartes and Leibnitz, perplexed by 
 the same problem, had completely separated the 
 soul from the physical body, and denied all direct 
 linking and all interaction between one and the 
 other, reducing their relation entirely to meta- 
 physical conditions. They did much to establish 
 a purely mechanical and materialistic conception of 
 the nature of life. 
 
 Some forty years ago a serious attempt was made 
 by a French physician, Chauffard, to work out a 
 new, logical, and acceptable theory of animism. 
 He regarded the soul as having dual functions. He 
 attributed to it a mental, and a somatic or bodily 
 side. Its mental side is involved in the conscious- 
 ness of man, in his acts of thought, in the exercise 
 of his will. Its somatic or bodily side influences 
 the bodily processes not, as in the case of the animism
 
 146 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 of Stahl, by direct interference, but by unconscious 
 impressions or influences exerted along the line of 
 primordial laws: The distinction between Stahl's 
 animism and that of Chauffard is perhaps a little 
 difficult to comprehend. By Stahl's theory, the 
 soul was the ship's captain ; but he was the whole 
 crew as well, doing everything himself. If he 
 wished the ship to go faster he with his own hands 
 stoked the furnace. According to Chauffard, the 
 ship's captain, engaged in none of these menial but 
 necessary activities in person. He lived on the 
 bridge. He stoked the fire only indirectly by 
 sending messages through the ship's telephone for 
 " full steam ahead." The distinction is rather fine, 
 regarded even in this material way. But this two- 
 fold aspect or modality of the soul is capable of 
 explaining the manifestations of all forms of lif, 
 in so far as it enables us to imagine vital activities 
 carried on without consciousness, as, for example, 
 in the lower forms of animal and plant life. It 
 establishes between the soul and all life a possible 
 continuity. 
 
 Opposed to animism was the doctrine of vitalism 
 Vitalism made of the fact of life a phenomenon 
 apart. It separated it from the soul and from all 
 non-living matter. It made of life something which 
 could not be explained in terms either of the laws 
 of physics or the laws of thought. The modern 
 conception of vitalism still erects a strong barrier 
 between itself and the psychical side, but the 
 barrier between life and inanimate matter is lowered 
 if not broken, and the vitalists of to-day see that 
 physics and chemistry operate within the living
 
 VITALISM 147 
 
 body just as they do in the world outside. Accord- 
 ing to the modern advocates of vitalism, the vital 
 principle watches over and directs the physico- 
 chemical phenomena incidental to and necessary 
 for life, but does not produce them. The early 
 supporters of vitalism were apparently uncertain of 
 what they intended their doctrine to mean. At 
 first their " vital principle " bore a striking resem- 
 blance to the anima of the animists. When time 
 and criticism had gnawed at the theory, the prin- 
 ciple became something less easily comprehensible, 
 and ultimately, instead of being a principle, it was 
 reduced to a direction or plan according to which 
 life conformed itself. Though reduced to these 
 emaciated proportions, vitalism has never com- 
 pletely lost hold, and to-day it has many adherents 
 The third theory for the explanation of life is a 
 purely materialistic one. Materialism holds that 
 matter is the one and only ultimate reality. Let it 
 be said, once again, that even a materialist would 
 have no knowledge of this only ultimate reality 
 without mind, which reveals it to him. According 
 to the materialistic doctrine life is the sum total ot 
 all the physical and chemical operations taking 
 place in a living body, be it a blade of grass or an 
 intelligent, reasoning human being. From the re- 
 markable phenomena of disintegration and inte- 
 gration constantly in progress in the leaves of a 
 tree, right up to the highest mental functions of the 
 philosopher, speculating on lofty moral problems, 
 judging between right and wrong, passing his con- 
 duct through the crucible of conscience, all can be 
 reduced to purely material terms, and explained as 
 
 II
 
 148 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 the outcome of the interaction of material atoms. 
 Crude and repulsive as such a conception must seem 
 to any one who has lived even for a moment in the 
 vibrant atmosphere of an altruistic emotion, it 
 cannot be denied that there is much about life 
 which lends buttresses to the doctrine. But let us 
 examine carefully what it means, and realise clearly 
 what our adherence entails before we subscribe to 
 it. If we accept the materialistic doctrine of life 
 we automatically bind ourselves to the belief that 
 the human body is nothing more than a machine, 
 and that all its activities, from the lowest to the 
 highest, can be written down in terms ef physics 
 and chemistry. Let it at once be admitted that 
 many of the functions of life are purely mechanical, 
 and that the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry 
 are constantly in operation in a living being. But 
 a living being is not a machine. For what machine, 
 in process of operation, not only performs the work 
 set it to accomplish, but at the same time keeps 
 itself in repair, controls its own activities, adjusts 
 itself to new conditions, and, instead of dissipating 
 energy as it functions, can actually accumulate 
 energy ? And what machine can build and assemble 
 itself ? The primitive cell from which a human 
 being originates grows and divides, grows and 
 divides again, and after a long series of operations 
 ultimately appears as a beautiful child, perfect in 
 limb and body. The materialist would have us 
 believe that all this complicated series of wonderful 
 and purposive phenomena was brought about by 
 the action of the ambient media, or, in other words, 
 the appropriate environment upon the inherent
 
 IS THE BODY A MACHINE? 149 
 
 physico-chemical properties of specialised proto 
 plasm. Even in the world-famous works of Mr 
 Ford no motor-car has yet built itself up from a 
 single nut, without the intervention of an intelligent 
 mind working from without. But, it may be said, 
 such a comparison is unfair. A nut or bolt from 
 a motor-car is a lifeless thing ; a speck of proto- 
 plasm has life, and it is that which makes the 
 difference. That is sufficiently obvious to every 
 one. What one should like the materialist to ex- 
 plain is by what interaction of matter, by what 
 physico-chemical changes within its substance, by 
 what influence of its ambient medium did the proto- 
 plasmic cell become thus endowed ? If he cannot 
 carry his theory back and explain things from the 
 beginning, his idea falls to pieces like a house of 
 cards. 
 
 There is another serious objection which may be 
 urged against this mechanistic idea of life. If the 
 body is a machine, it is the only machine which 
 consists entirely of the agents from which it de- 
 rives its motive power. No motor-car was ever made 
 of petrol ; no steam-engine consists of coal and water 
 Plausible though it be, the theory cannot stand 
 as it is at present held by the majority of material- 
 ists. There is still something lacking. 
 
 As has already been said, many of the phenomena 
 of life, if not all, are accompanied by physico-chemi- 
 cal changes. Some of the physico-chemical changes 
 are well recognised, and may be carried out^in a 
 test-tube. But, though physics and chemistry cer- 
 tainly play a great part in the economy of the 
 body, they do not explain life, and a living being
 
 150 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 in virtue of the life that is in him, can do things 
 in direct opposition to the recognised laws of both 
 these sciences. Kill a man, and unless his body is 
 supported, it will fall to the ground. Gravity, a 
 physical principle, has pulled his body down. But 
 a living man is able to some extent to oppose him- 
 self to the force of gravity. He can raise himself, 
 and stand erect. Or fill a test-tube with boiling 
 water and keep it in a room where the temperature 
 of the atmosphere is only 40 Fahrenheit. In pro- 
 cess of time, if one immerse a thermometer in the 
 water, it will give a reading which corresponds 
 exactly with the temperature of the surrounding 
 atmosphere. But place a healthy man anywhere 
 on the face of the globe in the Arctic circle, or on 
 the equator and with a carefully tested ther- 
 mometer take his temperature under the tongue. 
 The reading will be constant, viz. 98-4 Fahrenheit, 
 or, if it vary at all, it will only be by a fraction of 
 a degree, for the chemistry of living things enables 
 the qualities of the living thing to remain identical 
 even in conditions of change. So that chemical and 
 physical processes, conditioned by the activities o* 
 life, differ from similar processes met with in things 
 inanimate. An undiluted mechanistic, physico- 
 chemical, or materialistic conception of life, call it 
 what you will, seems to present us with ever fresh 
 difficulties. 
 
 When the microscope was first developed to that 
 height of excellence with which we are familiar 
 to-day, there were some who thought that the 
 secret of life would be deciphered in the minute 
 structure of the cell. But, marvellous though the
 
 WHERE THE MICROSCOPE FAILS 151 
 
 results of microscopical investigation have been, 
 arid interesting as are the facts concerning the minute 
 structure of the cell-nucleus, the spongioplasm and 
 the hyaloplasm which patient, disciplined, and 
 keen-eyed scientists have discovered, the secret of 
 life has proved to be out of the range of the most 
 powerful lens. From the point of view of the 
 functional activity of the cell, microscopical research 
 has been almost sterile. The microscopist has suc- 
 ceeded in examining the bricks and moitar, the 
 rooms of the house, the furniture with which they 
 are plenished, but he has not discovered the hidden 
 inhabitant. So, in despair, he has been thrown 
 back on the conception of ultra-microscopic cor- 
 puscles, such as plastids,- idioblasts, plasomes, 
 biophores satisfying himself by coining Greek 
 names to give a special dignity to hypothetical 
 entities he cannot see, but must imagine, if the 
 mechanical theory of life is to hold. It is not alone 
 in the realm of metaphysics that the imagination is 
 sometimes allowed to run riot. 
 
 It is interesting to remember that all the func- 
 tions of the body which are absolutely essential for 
 the maintenance of our life are, so to speak, auto- 
 matic and outside our control. We cannot at will 
 suspend or cause to cease the beating of our heart 
 We are unable, except for a brief period, to stop 
 the function of respiration. We can exercise no 
 voluntary control over the activities of organs like 
 the liver or the kidneys which are essential to rid 
 the body of the poisons which it evolves by every 
 act of life. Life is something elusive ; it is meant 
 to be outside our control ; and though a man may,
 
 152 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 by laying violent hands upon himself, work such 
 destruction upon his vital organs that the delicate 
 mechanism is thrown out of action, and life can no 
 longer go on, he requires to make use of some 
 adventitious weapon 1 -; he cannot, by merely willing 
 it, extinguish the vital spark within him. 
 
 From very early times it has been held that the 
 controlling principle was situated in some particular 
 organ or structure of the body. The Jews believed 
 that it resided in the blood a not unreasonable 
 idea when we remember to what an extent animal 
 sacrifice was an essential part of their religion. The 
 animal whose throat was cut by the priest's knife 
 rendered up its life as its blood flowed over the 
 floor of the outer court of the tabernacle ; and the 
 worshippers came to identify the blood with the life. 
 
 At the end of the sixteenth century Van Helmont 
 suggested that life resided in one of the orifices of 
 the stomach. About a century and a half later, 
 Dr. Lorry discovered that a very small wound in- 
 flicted at a certain point in the brain of an animal 
 caused immediate death. This discovery provoked 
 considerable interest, and the point in question 
 became recognised as " the vital knot." The pre- 
 cise situation of this important spot was accurately 
 described by Flourens in 1827. It is a small area 
 in the floor of the fourth ventricle of the brain, 
 close. to the place where the eighth or auditory pair 
 of nerves enters it. The point is very small, but its 
 destruction brings about the speedy death of the 
 animal. As, however, physiological research ad- 
 vanced it was discovered that this point was not 
 in reality the seat of life, but was only the area of
 
 LIFE DECENTRALISED 153 
 
 brain-substance responsible for the automatic per- 
 formance of the act of respiration ; and it was 
 found that this point might be destroyed, but the 
 animal would continue to live so long as respiration 
 was carried on by artificial means. One of the chief 
 discoveries about life, which the research of the 
 nineteenth century gave us, was the recognition of 
 the fact that the vital principle is not located at 
 any special point, but is distributed all through 
 the body. Each organ lives its own life, and each 
 cell in every part of the body lives its own life too. 
 All these separate lives are individual but yet 
 communal, and in a normal individual work together 
 in perfect harmony. Life has been decentralised ; 
 it sits in no special throne, and though three organs, 
 the brain, the lungs, and the heart, are of para- 
 mount importance to the bodily economy, not one 
 of them can be said to be the home of life. Recent 
 research has presented us with extraordinary 
 results, and it has been found that, when the neces- 
 sary conditions are fulfilled, body-cells and even 
 whole organs will continue; to live and perform 
 their functions for prolonged periods after their 
 detachment from the body proper. We are there- 
 fore forced to conclude that every organ and every 
 cell in the body has an individual life of its own. 
 The sum total of these individual lives, blended into 
 harmony, makes the harmonious physical life of 
 the individual. Life is not the unique possession 
 of any one organ ; it belongs to the whole. 
 
 This enables us to understand why life is so 
 difficult to destroy. One may pound a clump of 
 yeast-cells with a Nasmyth hammer, and yet they
 
 154 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 will remain capable of producing fermentati<5D7 
 which is one way in which their vital activity ex- 
 presses itself. And one may subject a human 
 body to almost inconceivable mutilations, and yet 
 life will continue. A very little thing may pro- 
 duce death : a crumb of bread in the larynx, a drop 
 or two of blood oozing from a fragile vessel in the 
 brain, a little clot from an inflamed vein, trapped 
 in the meshwork of the lungs ; but, on the other 
 hand, very formidable wounds and very extensive 
 injuries may be sustained, and still life may go on. 
 Long before the world- war there was on record the 
 case of a man through whose brain a crow-bar 
 passed, and yet he continued to live ; and to-day 
 there are men moving about among us, apparently 
 in perfect health, with bullets or fragments of shell 
 in their brains, in their lungs, and in their hearts, 
 and in every situation in the body where a wound 
 was at one time regarded as necessarily fatal. For 
 life can withstand many assaults, and accommodate 
 itself to many strange conditions. 
 
 Can we get any nearer to understanding what 
 life may be ? The key is somewhere in the Uni- 
 verse. Let us look abroad. 
 
 The forms of energy met with in nature are 
 many, and at first man was very slow to learn 
 anything about them. Even now, though science 
 has deciphered much, there are many of the pages 
 in the book still unread. From the moment when 
 the first man opened his eyes he became aware of 
 the existence of light. But to discover what light 
 really consists of was left to the scientists of the 
 seventeenth century. Euclid, the mathematician,
 
 WHAT IS LIGHT? 155 
 
 as was perhaps natural, was the first to point out 
 that light travels in straight lines. Newton, be- 
 tween the years of 1666 and 1671, while his ideas 
 on gravitation were maturing, turned his attention 
 seriously to the study of light, and greatly increased 
 our knowledge of it. Descartes had broken up a 
 ray of light by passing it through a prism into the 
 primary colours of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, 
 indigo and violet, and had pointed out that these 
 were the colours of the rainbow. But it was left 
 to Newton to explain the cause of the appearance 
 of these different tints. He succeeded in demon- 
 strating that so-called white light really consists of 
 differently coloured rays, which are refracted at 
 different angles when they pass through a prism. 
 At the same time Roemer, a Danish astronomer, 
 was measuring the velocity of light, and succeeded 
 in determining that it travels at the rate of 190,000 
 miles per second. More modern investigation has 
 established the rate as being 186,000 miles per 
 second ; but, considering the quality of his instru- 
 ments, Roemer 's calculation was wonderfully accur- 
 ate. These discoveries were made before the 
 nature of light was known. Newton suggested that 
 light was composed of innumerable infinitesimal 
 and invisible particles, emitted by luminous bodies ; 
 a hypothesis that satisfied some of the facts. But 
 Huyghens enunciated his undulatory theory, which 
 teaches that light consists of vibrations or waves 
 in the ether, started by all luminous bodies. This 
 theory, now well established and elaborated by the 
 work of Young, is still the accepted one. 
 
 Heat was another phenomenon of energy, and
 
 156 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 although men were making daily use of it, their 
 ideas of what it was were for long confused and 
 perplexing. Bacon had suggested that it was a 
 movement of some kind, but until 1798 it was 
 generally regarded as an invisible fluid, which 
 overflowed from hot substances, and could mix it- 
 self with the mercury in a thermometer, causing it 
 to swell and therefore rise in the tube. That heat 
 is really motion was proved by Count Rumford, 
 largely in consequence of an accidental observation 
 which he was quick-witted enough to pursue. In 
 a cannon factory in Munich he noticed that the 
 metal-borer as well as the cannon became very hot 
 as the grinding proceeded. Many men must have 
 noticed this before. It was left to the genius of 
 Rumford to explain it. He made a detailed and 
 careful series of experiments, as the result of 
 which he determined once and for all time that 
 motion can be converted into heat. It was left 
 for Sir Humphrey Davy to make the deduction, 
 verified by experiment, that heat is motion. He 
 described it as " a peculiar motion, probably of the 
 corpuscles of bodies, tending to separate them." 
 
 To some inquiring Greek, whose name is lost to 
 us, we owe the first discovery of electricity. He 
 found that if he rubbed a piece of amber (electron) 
 it would attract little pieces of straw and odds 
 and ends of dry and light debris. It was apparently 
 a very little discovery, something that any child 
 might have noticed and laughed at ; but it laid the 
 foundation of all that has come or is yet to come 
 for the benefit of humanity out of that strange form 
 of energy we call electricity. In the first year of 

 
 ELECTRICITY 157 
 
 the seventeenth century Dr. Gilbert, an English 
 physician, published his book on Magnetism. He 
 had carried the work of the early Greek observer a 
 little further, and his work was extended, widened 
 and applied by Guericke, Du Faye, Franklin, Gal- 
 vani, Volta, and many others, until in our own day 
 there is hardly a field of human enterprise in which 
 electricity is not impressed into service. We propel 
 our trains and tramcars by it, we light and heat 
 our houses with its aid, we may cook our food and 
 drive our machinery by it, we can communicate 
 with others in our own voice through miles of wire 
 with its help, and we can transmit messages with 
 the tap of a key from one end of the earth to 
 another. It is one of the most potent and useful 
 forms of energy known, the applications of which 
 we do not fully appreciate, and the possibilities of 
 which we have hardly begun to guess at. And 
 yet, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 we knew practically nothing about it. 
 
 The last quarter of a century has enriched us 
 with three particularly valuable discoveries : viz. 
 the X-rays, the Hertzian waves by which the mes- 
 sages of wireless telegraphy are transmitted, and 
 the radio-active properties of radium and kindred 
 substances. What benefits to humanity may yet 
 come from these sources no one can tell. 
 
 This long digression, with its recapitulation of 
 sc>me of the elementary facts of physical science 
 relating to energy in various forms, has been in- 
 dulged in to show how very slow we have been to 
 find out anything about the wonderful and mys- 
 terious forces with which we are surrounded. Much
 
 158 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 has been learned, but there is still much more to 
 learn, and science may yet discover that there are 
 powers and forces in the Universe which act upon 
 this world and everything in it that are yet un- 
 dreamed of. Since the days of Newton the study 
 of the solar spectrum has had perpetual interest for 
 the physicist and the chemist, and their studies 
 have given to the world much rich information. 
 But beyond the violet rays in the spectrum there is 
 a long series of rays about which, as yet, science 
 has little to tell us. They may be rays with in- 
 finite potentialities. Some of them, we know, have 
 powers of heating. The others, though this is un- 
 likely, may be inert and valueless. But it is known 
 they are there, although their function is as yet 
 unguessed. And there is presumptive reason for 
 believing that there come to our little corner of 
 the Universe, out of the vastnesses of space, other 
 rays than those of the solar spectrum, to which as 
 yet we are completely blind. 
 
 I believe that, sooner or later, life will be found 
 to depend on one or other of these unrecognised 
 rays ; some form of energy, unique in character, 
 which expresses itself through protoplasm and 
 through protoplasm alone. As Huxley pointed 
 out, protoplasm is the physical basis of all life, 
 whether it be vegetable or animal. Protoplasm 
 without this energising ray is not life ; nor is this 
 ray, until it acts upon and through protoplasm, 
 life as we know it. Within certain restricted limits, 
 the chemical nature of protoplasm varies. All dead 
 protoplasm, which is the only variety that we are 
 able to subject to chemical tests, seems to be, so
 
 THE LIFE RAY 15$ 
 
 far as our knowledge will take us, identical in com- 
 position ; but there are refinements which our 
 crude methods do not allow us to determine. It 
 is, however, generally believed that there must be 
 as yet undiscovered distinctions between the proto- 
 plasm of, let us say, a fish, a snake, a bird, a horse, 
 and a human being, and, further, there are possibly 
 minute differences between the protoplasm found 
 in the bodies of any two men. Only on such an 
 assumption can the facts of heredity and the main- 
 tenance of characteristic differences between species 
 and species be explained. But the differences are 
 beyond the ken of present-day chemical methods. 
 Now, I suggest that protoplasm, wherever found, 
 becomes the receiver of the energising activity of 
 this special ray, and the manifestations of life 
 appear. It will at once be urged that, if this be so, 
 death either of plant or animal becomes an impossi- 
 bility. Protoplasm is an essential part of the 
 structure of both, and if this special ray auto- 
 matically seizes upon protoplasm wherever found 
 and charges it with life, how can anything die ? 
 The objection is a perfectly fair one, and it is well 
 it should be advanced ; but it is far from present- 
 ing an insoluble difficulty, and in its solution we 
 may discover why it is that disease can destroy life. 
 Probably this life-ray only incorporates itself with 
 and manifests itself through protoplasm with a 
 certain very definite molecular composition. If 
 this molecular composition is disturbed, if the 
 chemical linking of any of the atoms is interfered 
 with, it ceases to be protoplasm such as the life- 
 wave can act through, and becomes the protoplasm
 
 160 * WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 of the chemical laboratory, which is dead. This 
 opens up for us a new conception of how a lethal 
 disease may act. All diseases due to micro- 
 organisms, as has already been pointed out, are 
 accompanied by the formation in the body of 
 toxins or poisons. If these poisons can produce 
 combinations with the protoplasm either of the 
 whole body or of any organ that is essential to 
 life, they may so alter the chemical composition of 
 the protoplasm that the life-ray can no longer 
 combine with and energise it. That the poisons of 
 disease may link themselves in a very intimate and 
 special way with protoplasm, we know from the 
 study of diphtheria. 
 
 But, it may be asked, how is death from a me- 
 chanical condition such as is met with in a broken- 
 down heart, or a ruptured blood-vessel in the brain, 
 to be accounted for on this theory ? The hypothesis 
 still holds good. When the heart breaks down, 
 what is known as back-pressure occurs, and the 
 tissues become water-logged and dropsical. All 
 the protoplasm in the body is then under abnormal 
 conditions ; it is bathed by abnormal fluids, which 
 may interfere with that fine molecular adjustment 
 of the protoplasm which is a necessary condition 
 before the life-force will act through it, and so 
 death supervenes. 
 
 The rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain will 
 act, though more locally, in much the same way. 
 The whole condition of the intracranial circulation 
 is upset by such an occurrence. Fine chemical 
 changes may take place in some of the centres 
 necessary for the maintenance of life ; the proto-
 
 THE LIFE RAY 161 
 
 plasm then degenerates and the life-ray can make 
 no further use of it. Every case of death depends 
 upon the involvement, primarily or secondarily, of 
 one or other of the organs which are essential to 
 life ; and, on this hypothesis, all cases of death may 
 be explained. 
 
 The theory also enables us to understand the 
 decentralisation of life, which has already been 
 dealt with. 
 
 Further, it gives us a possible clue to some of the 
 phenomena of consciousness. When an electric 
 current is passed through a thick bar of copper the 
 resistance offered to its passage is very low, and 
 only a small amount of heat is generated in the 
 process. But pass the same current through a 
 very fine wire of copper or of platinum. Great heat 
 is generated as the current endeavours to force 
 itself through the resisting channel, and the copper 
 wire may fuse, while the platinum glows with light. 
 Consciousness has been described as " nerve glow." 
 The limitations of language are such, and we are so 
 bound, owing to our physical nature, to the material 
 side of things, that we are driven to use the terms 
 of the known for the unknown. We have no con- 
 ception of what " nerve glow " is except by the use 
 of a crude material analogy as above. But let us 
 try to imagine, without pressing the analogy too 
 closely, what differences might result from passing 
 the life current through highly organised, possibly 
 resistant protoplasm in the brain-cells, as compared 
 with passing the same current through vegetable 
 protoplasm. The conception opens up a vista of 
 tremendous possibilities. Mind is rooted in brain.
 
 162 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 No one will deny that. A tree is rooted in the 
 earth ; but its leaves, its blossom, and its fruit owe 
 but a little to their connection with the soil. They 
 derive far more from the limitless field of the atmo- 
 sphere, and from the sun. Here, again, the necessity 
 of using material analogies cribs and hampers the 
 idea. If only we could divest ourselves of the neces- 
 sity of speaking of things in terms of matter, it 
 would be much more easy to make the meaning clear. 
 It is not hard to imagine that to many this theory 
 of life may prove startling, and appear to be no- 
 thing more than sheer, stark, and naked material- 
 ism, flaunting itself unashamed. They have been 
 brought up to believe, and they feel, with that un- 
 conscious discernment that knows more than science 
 can ever teach, that life comes from the Creator, 
 and that He holds in His hand the life of every one 
 of His creatures. Let us at once agree upon the 
 issue. The theory of a life-ray, or a life-giving 
 wave or force, is far from being inconsistent with 
 any ideas of the immanence of God in nature and 
 in human life. Indeed, it is nothing more than an 
 elaboration of that doctrine, and a further evidence 
 of the fact that, in His dealings with the Universe, 
 the Omnipotent works by secondary causes, and 
 conditions His activities according to principles 
 and laws. For the materialist, there are only two 
 real things in the Universe matter and energy. 
 But, so far as he has been able to examine them, 
 these two realities are under the influence of cer- 
 tain laws. Where the materialist fails is in an 
 inherent or assumed incompetence to see beyond 
 the law to the law-giver. Matter, energy, and laws
 
 THE LIFE RAY 163 
 
 relating to both are the only alphabet in his book 
 of nature. Rays from the sun, rays from the 
 fathomless depths of the infinite, forces of attrac- 
 tion between planet and planet, star and star, as 
 they roll on in the immensity of space, waves in 
 the ether, rhythmic vibrations in the atmosphere, 
 atom leaping to atom, leaves turning to the light, 
 all prove that God is immanent in nature, and for 
 this immanence He employs what we call natural 
 forces. Is it an impious assumption to imagine 
 that when we come to consider life we shall find 
 that the Creator is true to His own methods and 
 uses a form of energy which we may call the life- 
 force or life- wave to quicken protoplasm to activity ? 
 And this life-force or life-ray, call it what you will, 
 remains in His own hands. As yet, science has 
 not been able to detect it, or find means of measur- 
 ing it, or reducing its operations to a written law 
 It is a special form of energy, and when man has 
 combed the beach of that sea of infinite space which 
 encircles the earth, and has found many more rich 
 and amazing treasures than his intelligence has yet 
 led him to discover, I imagine that the life-ray 
 will still elude him. For it is a spiritual force, and 
 with material instruments and material vision we 
 cannot envisage the immaterial. Encumbered as 
 we are by a physical body, our faculties of perception 
 are limited by the crude agents which we must 
 make use of to know anything ; and there are many 
 honest and anxious people who, try as they will, 
 cannot comprehend the spiritual. They associate 
 it with chicanery, with seances in mephitic rooms, 
 with ghostly apparitions in haunted houses, and 
 
 12
 
 164 WHAT IS LIFE? 
 
 their reason rebels. But we must admit the possi- 
 bility of there being in the Universe other things 
 than matter as we know it, and energy as we con- 
 ceive of it. Remember that light is said to consist 
 of undulatory vibrations in the ether. Huyghens 
 and the scientists of his day, and those scientists 
 who have since investigated the marvellous pro- 
 perties of light, could not imagine undulation or 
 wave motion occurring except in a medium of some 
 sort, so they were compelled to postulate the ether. 
 The only proof we have that light consists of 
 undulations in the ether is that it behaves as 
 though it were. Take away the ether from the 
 conception, and we are left with light an undula- 
 tion in nothing. The idea is inconceivable, because 
 here again the limitations of language and the need 
 of material concepts make it impossible for us either 
 to comprehend or explain such a phenomenon. 
 But light may be a form of spiritual energy which 
 we, being linked to matter, cannot comprehend 
 until we have linked it to matter as well. 
 
 We see the life-ray or the life-force in operation 
 when we study living protoplasm. It is only when 
 it has joined itself to the protoplasmic sponge-work 
 of matter that our material vision can give us any 
 knowledge of it ; and the physico-chemical changes 
 which we can observe all through living nature, 
 from the unicellular monad up to man, are not life, 
 but the functional concomitants of the life-ray as 
 it expresses itself through its physical substratum. 
 This shuttle of God darts through the weft and 
 woof of protoplasm, weaving the fabric of life in 
 ever-fresh beauty and variety
 
 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 165
 
 ' Pain 
 
 Clings cruelly to us, like the gnawing sloth 
 On the deer's tender haunches." 
 
 Keats, " Endymion. 
 
 1 66
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PHENOMENON OF' PAIN 
 
 LIFE, itself a mystery, is lived in a thicket of 
 mysteries, one of the greatest of which is the problem 
 of pain. This mystery is of universal and perennial 
 interest. It has been the subject of much thought, 
 more writing, and endless philosophical discussion, 
 but we are still very far from an adequate compre- 
 hension of its purpose. Some men have devoted 
 years of patient inquiry and experimental research 
 to the end that they might discover means of 
 alleviating pain, while others, too often under the 
 cloak of religion, have prostituted their intelligence 
 to the invention of fresh and diabolical methods of 
 inflicting suffering. Let the records of the Holy 
 Inquisition and the Star Chamber, or the hoary 
 dungeons of the Max Tower at Nuremberg, bear 
 witness. 
 
 We shall see later that much of the pain and 
 suffering that afflicts humanity is avoidable, for it 
 comes as a natural consequence of the non-observ- 
 ance of certain well-defined and elementary laws 
 of life. 
 
 Between the cradle and the grave most of us 
 pass along some avenue of pain. For many, much 
 167
 
 168 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 of the way is darkened by mental or physical suffer- 
 ing ; but for most of us the greater part of the 
 way is travelled in comparative comfort, so that 
 if, at the end of our journey, we could cast up a 
 balance between the pleasure and pain we had 
 experienced the former would be found to prepon- 
 derate. Between pleasure and pain there is a 
 neutral state, namely, that of indifference. Pleasure 
 and mere freedom from pain are by no means co- 
 extensive. The neutral state intervenes, and in 
 most lives bulks largely, shot through here and 
 there by pain or illumined with the glow of pleasure. 
 
 At what precise level in the animal kingdom the 
 capacity for pain-sensation first appears is uncertain 
 We have, however, good grounds for the belief that 
 pain-sensation is a quality of feeling reserved for 
 the animal kingdom, and does not appertain to 
 any member of the plant kingdom. The strange 
 and fascinating phenomenon exhibited by the 
 leaves of the sensitive plant, which shrink from the 
 touch, is not an evidence of pain, but is simply a 
 reflex contraction due to a gross stimulation. For 
 the registering and interpretation of a painful 
 sensation a complex nerve mechanism which is not 
 found among the members of the vegetable king- 
 dom is necessary. 
 
 In the lower reaches of the animal kingdom this 
 nerve mechanism is not highly elaborated, and 
 there is evidence to show that the capacity for feel- 
 ing pain is much lower among the invertebrates, or 
 backboneless creatures, like the leech, the lobster, 
 and the star-fish, than among the vertebrates. The 
 capacity for feeling pain probably reaches its
 
 INVERTEBRATES AND PAIN 169 
 
 highest expression in the animal kingdom among 
 the mammals, and touches its zenith in the case of a 
 gently nurtured, intelligent, and delicate woman. 
 Most women bear pain with considerable fortitude, 
 and it has been suggested that their stoicism is due 
 to a lessened perceptive power. This explanation 
 of their courage is based upon an unchivalrous and 
 unproved assumption, made by man. 
 
 Any one who has ever handled a spade has at 
 some time or other divided an earth-worm in two. 
 The worm cannot, unfortunately, express in articu- 
 late speech its opinion of this experience, but the 
 two halves of the sundered creature do not behave 
 in a way that suggests acute pain. They wriggle 
 off, usually in different directions, apparently little 
 disturbed by this cataclysmic interference with 
 their anatomy. Probably, since nerves and nerve 
 ganglia have been discovered in the worm, this 
 severance provoked an unpleasant sensation that 
 may have amounted to pain ; but we cannot 
 imagine that the reluctant worm tugged from the 
 wet earth in mid-April by some questing bird 
 suffers, even in a minor degree, the physical agony 
 experienced by some mediaeval martyr on the rack, 
 or that the snail, whose house of shell is dashed to 
 pieces against a stone by a hungry thrush, suffers as 
 much as some victim hurled down the Tarpeian Rock. 
 Nor is it at all likely that Izaak Walton's frog, for 
 whose welfare he showed such tender solicitude, 
 enjoining all his disciples to " use him as though you 
 loved him," suffered as much, when baited alive 
 upon the hook, as does a man whose finger is caught 
 in a suddenly closed carriage-door,
 
 l;o THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 Warm-blooded animals suffer more acutely than 
 cold-blooded ones, and the higher the development 
 of the nervous system and the more cultivated the 
 intellect the greater is the capacity for feeling pain. 
 
 The perception and interpretation of painful 
 stimuli may be interfered with by certain mental 
 or physical conditions. It is wrong to suppose 
 that the stoicism of the early Christian martyrs was 
 in any way due to their lack of a capacity for feel- 
 ing pain. They were probably as capable t>f feeling 
 pain, under ordinary circumstances, as are the men 
 and women of to-day ; but the intensity of their 
 faith and their condition of religious exaltation were 
 such that, by what is called a "blocking" process, 
 the painful stimuli were shut out of their conscious- 
 ness, which was wholly occupied with the rapture 
 of devotion by which they were consumed. By a 
 curious perversion of sensation, some of them are 
 said to have declared that their torture gave them 
 pleasure rather than pain. We read of men and 
 women falling asleep while on the rack. This has 
 been regarded as a singular proof of the triumph 
 of human faith over suffering ; but I am inclined 
 to believe that the so-called sleep was in reality 
 an attack of syncope, which mercifully descended 
 upon the victim to protect him from his torturers 
 for a little while. But, be that as it may, there is 
 no doubt that religious exaltation may become a 
 very powerful anodyne. In his picture of the 
 martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Guido Rerri gave per- 
 manent and beautiful expression to this fact. The 
 somewhat girlish figure of the youthful martyr is 
 pierced by arrows, but there is no look of anguish
 
 PREOCCUPATION AND PAIN 171 
 
 in the eyes, no graven line of suffering on the face, 
 no tight-drawn stoical lips, no clenched and knotted 
 hands. Instead, we see a smile of seraphic con- 
 fidence, the light of an unconquerable faith in the 
 upturned eyes, and benediction flowing from the 
 bound but open hands. 
 
 Most of us know from our own experience that 
 concentration of the mind upon some engrossing 
 occupation may render us temporarily insensitive 
 to pain. Many a man has found relief from an 
 attack of toothache or neuralgia in the pages of 
 a good novel, and Dr. Robert Hall is said to have 
 preached some of his most eloquent sermons while 
 in the throes of renal colic a particularly exquisite 
 form of suffering. 
 
 We have it on the authority of John Ballantyne, 
 who acted as his amanuensis, that Sir Walter Scott 
 on many occasions was suffering acutely, probably 
 from biliary colic, while he dictated the enthralling 
 romances of Ivanhoe, The Bride of Lammermoor, 
 and The Legend of Montrose. But, when carried 
 away by his subject, he would rise from his couch, 
 and, utterly oblivious of pain, walk up and down 
 the room pouring forth his flowing sentences and 
 living in person the parts of his creatures. 
 
 These facts help us to understand why it is that 
 in the heat of battle a soldier may receive a for- 
 midable wound, and, at the moment, feel no pain. 
 I have asked many of the wounded, both officers 
 and men, to tell me as accurately as they can recall 
 them, what their sensations were when they were 
 hit. Almost invariably the answer has been the 
 same, expressed, curiously enough, in practically
 
 i;2 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 identical language. Whatever the missile has been 
 shrapnel, shell-case fragments, rifle or machine- 
 gun bullets it did not at the moment of impact 
 .produce any sensation of pain. When the wound 
 was felt at all it seems usually to have been as a 
 dull, heavy sensation of weight or pressure, and 
 many times I have been told that the feeling sug- 
 gested a violent blow with the flat of a shovel. 
 The sensation of pain did not arise till later, the 
 length of the interval depending upon several con- 
 ditions such as the nature and situation of the 
 wound, and whether or not it permitted its victim 
 to " carry on " or rendered him at once hors de 
 combat. If he were able to carry on, and the 
 fighting was stern, the development of the pain- 
 sensation might be delayed for a prolonged period. 
 If he were knocked out by the wound and com- 
 pelled to lie still waiting for succour, the sensation 
 of pain appeared fairly rapidly. In two classes of 
 wounds, however, the sensation of pain was prac- 
 tically coincident with the reception of the injury. 
 Men who have been wounded by a bayonet-thrust, 
 or by the explosion of a hand-grenade thrown 
 directly at them, felt pain immediately they were 
 struck. This fact may be explained as follows. 
 In almost every case in which a man is wounded 
 by a bayonet or a hand-grenade he sees what is 
 about to happen, and his mind is already on the 
 alert for the sensation of pain, which travels un- 
 hindered along the nerve track to the sensorium 
 in the brain, and is at once perceived. Vision and 
 anticipation have cleared the nerve paths so that 
 the message of pain gets free access to the brain
 
 WOUNDS AND PAIN 173 
 
 at once. In a battle a man does not see the machine- 
 gun bullet or fragment of shrapnel that is whizzing 
 towards him, so that his brain, engrossed with 
 other things, is not watching for the sensation of 
 pain. So when the blow comes it is a sensation of 
 heaviness, and not of pain, that first reaches his 
 consciousness. 
 
 In the course of my inquiries into this matter I 
 received from a young officer a testimony so re- 
 markable as to be almost unbelievable. In fairness 
 it should be stated that when he volunteered a 
 description of his experiences he had not the slightest 
 idea that I was specially interested in the question 
 of pain, and therefore his statement was not coloured 
 by any desire to give me the answer I expected. 
 
 He was hurrying back from the fighting-line to 
 bring up reinforcements to a hardly pressed post, 
 when he was hit by fragments of one of our own 
 high-explosive shells which had exploded prema- 
 turely. He sustained very formidable injuries to 
 the lower jaw and also to the chest, his jaw being 
 shattered and his chest and right lung penetrated 
 by a " through-and-through " wound. He says : 
 " I felt no pain. I felt that I had received a dull, 
 heavy blow on the face, and I dropped forward on 
 my knees and collapsed like a burst motor-tyre. I 
 was quite unaware that I had been wounded in the 
 chest, and during the half-hour that elapsed before 
 I lost consciousness I felt absolutely no pain. Then 
 I forgot everything, and remember nothing more 
 till I woke five days later to find myself in a com- 
 fortable hospital bed. Until I lost consciousness I 
 was quite aware of my surroundings, and remember
 
 I 7 4 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 distinctly having my gas-mask removed for me, 
 and finding my mouth full of blood. I was alert 
 enough to have felt any pain if there had been any 
 to feel. The truth is, there was none." 
 
 This statement is all the more remarkable be- 
 cause of the situation of one of the wounds. The 
 wound of the face and jaw was in the area from 
 which the fifth cranial nerve collects its stimuli, 
 and any one who has had toothache, or has had a 
 sensitive tooth in the lower jaw prepared for filling, 
 knows in what sharp accents of pain that nerve 
 can express itself. On a priori grounds one might 
 think that such a wound in the collecting zone of 
 this nerve must of necessity be exquisitely painful. 
 But it was not so. His loss of consciousness was 
 not due to pain, nor was it, I think, altogether due 
 to concussion of the brain, or it would have followed 
 immediately on the reception of the injury, but 
 from loss of blood, and interference with his re- 
 spiratory functions through the temporary disable- 
 ment of his penetrated lung. It may be that the 
 absence of immediate pain in such formidable 
 wounds is due to the fact that the blow sustained 
 is so severe that the nerve-endings, which are the 
 chief collectors of pain-stimuli, are completely 
 stunned, and that, if one may so phrase it, a loss 
 of local consciousness is produced. But, whatever 
 the explanation, it is a remarkable and beneficial 
 provision, for, at the moment, the presence of pain 
 would have neither a remedial nor a diagnostic 
 value. 
 
 Profound fear may modify the perception of 
 pain either by heightening it through apprehension,
 
 EMOTIONAL STATES AND PAIN 175 
 
 or lowering it through the preoccupation with which 
 it fills the horizon of the mind. A thoroughly 
 frightened child has been known to run with bare 
 feet along a road strewn with sharp-edged broken 
 stones, till its feet were torn and bleeding without 
 feeling pain in the slightest degree ; and which of 
 us has not discovered that the speediest cure for 
 toothache is to ring the dentist's bell? Intense 
 emotion of any kind, such as great joy or wild 
 anger, may act as an anodyne to pain, and diseases 
 accompanied by profound toxaemia or blood-poison- 
 ing may so dull the Consciousness that it remains 
 unaware of painful stimuli. 
 
 Hysteria, neurasthenia, and that peculiarly dis- 
 tressing variety of nervous disorganisation known 
 as " shell- shock " may give rise to anomalies of 
 sensation. In some hysterical people large areas 
 of their skin become quite insensitive, and may be 
 rudely stimulated in various ways without any 
 pain resulting, and I have seen a soldier suffering 
 from " shell-shock " whose capacity for feeling 
 pain was so interfered with that the skin of his legs 
 might be pricked in a hundred places with a needle 
 and yet he declared that he felt no pain. 
 
 Just as the capacity for pain-sensation may be 
 diminished by certain mental states, so also it 
 may be raised, so that a stimulus which at ordinary 
 times would not provoke any discomfort is regis- 
 tered by the perceptive faculties as highly painful 
 Hysterical and neurasthenic patients, though they 
 may have in some cases a diminished capacity for 
 feeling pain, more often, perhaps, react in the 
 opposite direction and become extremely sensitive
 
 176 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 to stimuli of ordinary intensity, which may be inter- 
 preted when they reach the higher centres as acute 
 agony. Patients falling into this category suffer 
 from what is called subjective pains, or pains for 
 which no external cause is discoverable. These 
 pains are a product of disordered mental action, 
 and play a great part in the life of the unfortunate 
 victim of hysteria, in whom they are constantly 
 changing their situation, their intensity, and their 
 kind. Behind them there is some deviation from 
 normal mental equilibrium, whereby minor impulses 
 are misinterpreted, and what would in a normal 
 individual be regarded as nothing more than a 
 slight irritation is magnified into excruciating tor- 
 ment. These subjective impressions of pain are 
 due to faulty associative memory. The stimulus 
 reaches the brain, but the associative centre makes 
 the wrong response ; just as the operator at a 
 lantern may receive the signal from the lecturer 
 and throw the wrong picture on the screen. This 
 may seem a little obscure, but will be explained 
 more fully in what is to follow. 
 
 The apprehension of pain, reinforced by the 
 memory of previous experiences tends, as every 
 school-boy knows, to heighten pain. A certain 
 eminent judge, long since gone to his own Great 
 Assize, who was a firm believer in the salutary 
 effect of corporal punishment for a certain class of 
 crime accompanied by violence, made great use 
 of this psychological fact. He was accustomed to 
 sentence criminals to be flogged, but, with a refine- 
 ment of cruelty which one hopes, for the honour 
 of the English Bench, was not intentional, he used
 
 PHYSICAL CONDITIONS AND PAIN 177 
 
 to divide the administration of the lash into two 
 or more doses, to be given at intervals during the 
 culprit's incarceration. So that, to the physical 
 pain of the flogging, was added the mental torture 
 of the apprehension which preceded the second or 
 third administration, such apprehension being heigh- 
 tened by the poignant memory of the previous 
 experience. 
 
 Physical conditions, almost as much as mental 
 conditions, may increase the capacity for feeling 
 pain, and a person reduced in health by a wasting 
 disease, by anaemia or debility is much more in- 
 tolerant of pain than one in the enjoyment of robust 
 health. 
 
 Painful impressions linger for a time in the mind, 
 but a merciful forgetfulness tends to sponge them 
 off the tablets of the memory, and recollection is 
 unable to recreate them again. This is peculiarly 
 true of the pains of child-birth. Usually severe and 
 sometimes intensified to the limit of human endur- 
 ance, the memory of them is, in most cases, short- 
 lived, and the evangelist exhibited a shrewd know- 
 ledge of life and psychology when he wrote : " She 
 remembereth no more the anguish, for joy. . . ." 
 
 As the mediaeval torturers well knew, repeated 
 stimuli, not one of which in itself is sufficiently 
 powerful to provoke pain, may by their constant 
 repercussion give rise to acute suffering. This 
 physiological fact lay behind that cruel device 
 whereby a drop of water was made to fall from a 
 height at short but regular intervals either upon the 
 same spot on the victim's forehead, or between his 
 shoulders. One drop had no effect ; a hundred
 
 178 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 successive drops could be borne without the least 
 discomfort ; but when the tale ran into tens of 
 thousands, each limpid bead struck the shrinking 
 skin like a lash of wire, and the torture, if continued 
 long enough could break the spirit of the strongest. 
 Here practice, as so often happens, was preceding 
 scientific knowledge, for it was not till long after- 
 wards that the physiologists enunciated and were 
 able to explain the principle of what they call 
 " summation of stimuli." The explanation of the 
 phenomenon is that the receptive centres in the 
 cerebral cortex, or outer layer of the brain, have 
 not recovered from the previous stimulation before 
 the next arrives. There is a residual stimulation 
 still in action when the next sensation arrives, and 
 the effect on the brain-cells is cumulative. Conse- 
 quently severe and progressively increasing pain is 
 felt. 
 
 One may explain this by a simple illustration. 
 Let us imagine that the cell or group of cells in the 
 brain which is receiving the repeated stimuli is a 
 cistern fed by a pipe which delivers a somewhat 
 larger quantity of water than is able to escape in 
 the same time through an outflow pipe. If we 
 imagine that the cistern holds forty gallons, and 
 that the inflow per minute exceeds the outflow by 
 half a pint, a time will come when the cistern is 
 filled to overflowing. It contains as much as it can 
 hold. It has been filled gradually by the accumu- 
 lation of the differences between intake and outflow. 
 Similarly, a point is reached in the case of the group 
 of sensory cells in the brain when they become 
 " filled " with the accumulated residues of repeated
 
 REFERRED PAIN 179 
 
 stimuli, and react violently by overflowing in a 
 sensation of severe pain. 
 
 The interpretation put upon painful stimuli by 
 the brain differs in kind, and, consequently, several 
 varieties of pain are described. Thus, we speak of 
 a burning pain, and a pressure or tension pain. 
 These qualifying adjectives give us a clue to the 
 origin of the sense of pain, which is largely a matter 
 of the interpretation put upon a stimulus by the 
 centres of association and memory. 
 
 The locality in which a pain is felt is usually the 
 seat of the mischief which is giving rise to it, and 
 a person in normal health, whose nervous system 
 is sound, has no difficulty, even when blind- folded, 
 in locating the spot at which the pain arises. But 
 this is not the invariable rule, and sometimes the 
 situation at which pain is felt is a long way from the 
 site of the disease responsible for its production. 
 For example, many a child whose gastric organs are 
 in a condition of sound health complains of a 
 frequent and severe stomach-ache. In reality he 
 is suffering from disease of the bones of his spine, 
 and the sensory nerves which are entering the spinal 
 canal from both sides of his body are being irritated, 
 either jointly or singly by pressure or by inflam- 
 matory products. Sensory nerves tend to refer 
 all sensation to their extreme periphery, and the 
 pain which in such a case really originates in the 
 back, is referred to the nerve- endings over the 
 anterior abdominal wall. In like manner, a child 
 who complains of a chronic pain in the knee may 
 really be suffering from disease in the hip- joint. 
 It is a matter of common knowledge that men who 
 
 13
 
 i8o THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 have lost a limb will sometimes complain of pain 
 in the foot or toes that have long been separated 
 from the body. I have recently come across several 
 instances of the kind among wounded soldiers, 
 one, who had suffered amputation above the knee, 
 assuring me with many protestations that he had 
 been unable to sleep because of acute rheumatic 
 pains in the ankle-joint and foot of the absent 
 limb. He suggested, with that humour charac- 
 teristic of the British soldier, that the leg which he 
 had lost on the Gallipoli peninsula must have been 
 laid to rest in a damp grave, and was lodging its 
 complaint in this practical but unpleasant fashion 
 with its former owner. Cases of this kind are 
 capable of a simple explanation. Some slender fila- 
 ment of the nerve that once acted as the conductor 
 of sensory impressions from the foot to the spinal 
 cord, and so onward to the brain, has become 
 imbedded in or adherent to the scar-tissue in the 
 amputation-stump. Slight variations in the con- 
 dition of the scar-tissue may stimulate the adherent 
 nerve-filament, and cause it to send a protest of 
 pain to the terminal sense-organ in the brain. But 
 this organ has all through the person's life been 
 accustomed to docket every message coming along 
 that nerve as a message from the foot, and a life- 
 long habit is not easily broken. So, though the 
 foot is no longer there, the brain cells which receive 
 the message report to the consciousness that a 
 pain signal has come in from the foot, and unless 
 the mind bestirs itself to verify the message and 
 its source, the point of origin and the seat of the 
 pain are not accurately identified.
 
 OVERFLOW OF STIMULI 181 
 
 Another anomaly of sensation is explained by the 
 overflow of excessive stimulation from one cell to 
 another. Toothache sometimes affords us an ex- 
 ample of this phenomenon. If a tooth is decayed, 
 and the sensitive pulp is exposed, any irritation 
 applied to it is conveyed to the brain, and recognised 
 as dentalgia. If the irritation is very severe or 
 prolonged the pain which at fjrst was localised to 
 the offending molar may spread to adjacent teeth, 
 or even to the whole of one side of the face. This 
 condition has been brought about by the overflow 
 of excessive stimuli from one group of cells in the 
 brain to another group of adjacent cells which are 
 the terminal receptors of sensory stimuli from other 
 branches of the nerve. These freshly involved 
 receptors refer the commotion which is disturbing 
 them to the terminal ends of the nerves which 
 usually supply them with sensory impressions, and 
 consequently all the teeth on one side may appear 
 to ache. 
 
 For purposes of diagnosis and description it is 
 the custom to regard the spinal cord, that great 
 main route of communication along which motor 
 impulses descend from the brain to the muscles of 
 the trunk and limbs, and up which pass all the 
 sensory messages sent from the periphery to the 
 brain, as consisting of a series of super- imposed 
 segments which are numbered according to the 
 particular bone in the vertebral column behind which 
 they lie. This segmental division is artificial, be- 
 cause no segment is self-contained ; but it serves 
 a useful purpose for the localisation of the processes 
 of disease in the cord. It has been observed that
 
 i82 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 if a sensory nerve which enters the cord at a certain 
 level is inflamed, or under the influence of a disease 
 which produces pain, those areas of the skin which 
 derive their nerve supply from the same segment 
 of the cord are liable to become sensitive to the 
 touch. Of this fact we have a striking proof in 
 the condition known as angina pectoris. The sym- 
 pathetic nerves which supply the heart arise from 
 the segment of the spinal cord which innervates 
 the upper part of the chest wall and the inner side 
 of the arm with nerves of sensation. An attack 
 of angina gives rise to stimuli which pass from the 
 heart through the sympathetic nerves to the spinal 
 cord, and the sensory nerves associated with the 
 same segment of the cord react to the stimulation 
 and the patient is conscious of acute pain in the 
 chest-wall over and above the heart, and along the 
 inner side of the left arm. It is a little difficult to 
 present these facts in such a way that they can at 
 once be' apprehended by those who have noV an 
 elementary knowledge of physiology, but an illus- 
 tration may serve to illuminate the matter. When 
 a large stone is dropped into the still water of a 
 well its impact produces a splash, and from the 
 point at which it breaks the surface an eddying series 
 of concentric waves ripple to the margin. These 
 are visible to the eye, but in its downward passage 
 through the column of water to the bottom of the 
 well the stone produces an invisible but none the less 
 real disturbance in the hidden depths. This troubling 
 of the waters is analogous to the effect produced by 
 the sudden impact of a violent sensory stimulus 
 impinging upon a segment of the spinal cord. The
 
 THE DEFINITION OF PAIN 183 
 
 water of the well down in its depths is driven into 
 the crevices between the stones, and the nerve 
 impulse in a somewhat similar way produces a dis- 
 turbance some of which flows out through the 
 channel of other nerves attached to the same spinal 
 segment. 
 
 So far we have not attempted to define what 
 pain is. Like life itself, like death, like matter and 
 mind, and time, and many other of the commonest 
 attributes of existence, it is extremely difficult to 
 enclose within the terms of a definition. 
 
 Cicero described it as an unpleasant movement 
 within the body, confusing the resultant motion 
 which often follows pain with the sensation itself. 
 Schopenhauer believed it to be a " negative experi- 
 ence " that is, negative in contrast to an ante- 
 cedent " positive experience " of pleasure ; and 
 Spinoza regarded it as " an emotion whereby the 
 body's power of activity is diminished or checked." 
 None of these definitions, however, is satisfactory. 
 We must recognise that in pain there are two con- 
 ditions ; one physical, the impact of the stimulus 
 upon the sensory cells in the brain, and the other 
 metaphysical, the perception of the stimulus and 
 the interpretation and classification of the sensation 
 with the aid of memory and the association centres 
 which communicate it to the mind. It is not in 
 itself a definite entity. It may be called " feeling- 
 tone." It is the mental interpretation of a sensa- 
 tion provoked by a peculiar quality or intensity of 
 stimulation. There can, therefore, be no pain with- 
 out consciousness. 
 
 But, difficult though it be to define pain, no
 
 184 THE PHENOMENON OF PAIN 
 
 definition is necessary, since its distribution is 
 universal, and we have all experienced it. We 
 may not know how to imprison it in a phrase, but 
 we all know what it feels like, and it is infinitely 
 easier to philosophise about than to bear.
 
 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 185
 
 " What a piece of work is man ! " 
 
 Shakespeare, " Hamlet. 
 
 186
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 PRIMITIVE man regarded pain as the work of evil 
 spirits, and prehistoric skulls have been found 
 bearing the marks of trepanning, an operation that 
 probably had been performed to allow the spirit 
 of headache to escape from the skull of its victim. 
 At the present day the Andamanese attribute all 
 their pains to the activity of spirits, and in Malaysia 
 there is a special spirit of stomach-ache. 
 
 Physiology, however, has taught us that pain 
 depends on something else than demonic interfer- 
 ence, and has worked out the mechanism through 
 which we feel pain. 
 
 When we prick ourselves with a needle or acci- 
 dentally burn a finger with a match we experience 
 a highly disagreeable sensation, but underneath 
 that sensation there lies a whole series of physio- 
 logical processes which must be explained one by 
 one before we can understand the mechanism by 
 which we are made conscious of pain. 
 
 The skin is our chief organ for collecting sensory 
 
 stimuli, and in this connection it is interesting to 
 
 remember that the brain and the spinal cord are 
 
 developed from the same layer of the embryo as 
 
 i8 7
 
 188 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 is the integument. This ante-natal embryological 
 connection explains much. Immediately under- 
 neath the superficial layer of the skin lie the ter- 
 minal branchings of the sensory nerves. These 
 end-organs of sensation are widely distributed, for 
 all parts of the skin are more or less sensitive ; but, 
 as every school- boy knows from practical experi- 
 ence, there are variations in their distribution, and 
 underneath a square inch of skin from the tips 
 of the fingers or the back of the hands more of 
 them are to be found than under a similar area of 
 skin taken from between the shoulders. 
 
 When one of these end-organs is violently stimu- 
 lated by any noxious agent a message is sent along 
 the afferent or sensory nerve to which it is attached. 
 This nerve, gathering tributaries as it goes, passes 
 along the limb, and ultimately merges either 
 directly or indirectly with one of the posterior 
 spinal nerve-roots. The stimulus is thus conveyed 
 to the spinal cord, up which it travels until it reaches 
 the cerebral cortex or surface of the brain. Here 
 it sets up a disturbance of a mechanical or chemical 
 nature, but we are not aware of pain until the 
 higher or mental centres direct their attention to 
 the disturbance in the cortical cells and interpret 
 it. It has now been definitely proved that mole- 
 cular changes of a well- recognised kind are produced 
 in the brain-cells of the cortex by the stimulus of 
 pain. But these molecular changes are not pain, 
 just as the tracing on the wax-cylinder of a phono- 
 graph is not music until it has been converted into 
 vibration once again by the travelling style or 
 needle and the sensitive tambour. The impression
 
 THE TRANSLATION OF IMPULSES 189 
 
 made upon the cortical cell is only a register : the 
 registered impulse must be interpreted. It is 
 translated by the higher centres of association and 
 memory, and, after it has been examined, identified, 
 and classified it is revealed to the consciousness of the 
 individual. Let us personify the centres involved. 
 The association centre is suddenly awakened by 
 a call from the brain-cell which the nerve impulse 
 has disturbed. It says to itself : " There is a nasty 
 commotion going on in the sensory cells that re- 
 ceive their messages from the right hand. I wonder 
 what it is : I seem to remember a commotion of 
 this kind before. What was it then ? Let me ask 
 my sister Memory." Memory responds : "I know. 
 That particular kind of commotion is only produced 
 by burning. Don't you remember ? " At once 
 the association centre and memory working together 
 shout to the consciousness : " The fingers of the 
 right hand are being burned," and consciousness 
 commands the will to make the muscles of the arm 
 contract, so that the hand is instantly drawn away 
 from the flame. This series of operations, the 
 examination of the effects of the stimulus, the 
 calling in of memory, the joint arrival at a conclu- 
 sion, the reporting to consciousness, and all the 
 minute and undetected phenomena that go to make 
 up a complex mental act takes place within the 
 confines of the infinitesimal space of time that 
 elapses between the application of the flame and 
 the withdrawal of the finger. It is almost incon- 
 ceivable that this should be so, and in dividing up 
 and separating for purposes of greater clearness the 
 various cerebral and psychic phenomena that occur,
 
 190 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 one artificially increases the difficulty of compre- 
 hending how so much can happen in such a little 
 time. In actual practice the various stages in the 
 process seem to run into each other instantaneously. 
 
 Sometimes, and possibly most often, the with- 
 drawal of the finger is a pure sensori-motor reflex, 
 which occurs while the message of pain is still on 
 its way to the brain. Here the action is even more 
 speedy than in the previous case. The sensory 
 impulse from the nerve-ending in the finger runs 
 up the nerve and enters the spinal cord ; there, 
 part of it runs round a nerve-arc to the mo tor- cells 
 in the cord, and without the intervention of con- 
 sciousness a motor impulse is sent from the cord 
 which causes the fingers to be withdrawn. But 
 part of the sensory impulse continues its passage 
 up to the brain, where it is recognised for what 
 it is, viz. a sensation of burning, and revealed to 
 the consciousness as such. In actual operation 
 the spinal reflex discharges itself, and the sensory 
 impulse is interpreted by the intellect almost 
 coincidentally. 
 
 A wonderfully exact parallel exists between the 
 mechanism of pain-sensation and the operation of 
 a telephone. 
 
 When we speak into the transmitter of a tele- 
 phone the column of air vibrating from our throat 
 and lips communicates its movements, with all their 
 nuances of accent, to a delicately poised membrane. 
 The vibrations collected by this disc or membrane 
 are conducted in the form of an electrical current 
 along the intervening telephone wire to their des- 
 tination. At the end of the journey the electrical
 
 AN ANALOGY 191 
 
 s 
 
 current communicates to a disc in the receiver the 
 impulses it has carried along the wire. The disc 
 vibrates, and communicates its movements to a 
 column of air which, striking on the drum of a 
 healthy ear, delivers to the listener the message 
 which may have been transmitted from a distance 
 of many miles. 
 
 As is the case with the pain- stimulus impinging 
 upon the brain-cells, the electrical stimulus striking 
 upon the disc in the receiver and causing it to 
 vibrate requires an intelligent and conscious mind 
 to interpret it. 
 
 We all know at how many points the telephone 
 may break down. The transmitter may be out of 
 order, and cannot take the message ; the wire may 
 be down and the impulse cannot pass ; the receiver 
 may be damaged and fail to respond to the stimulus 
 of the electrical current ; or the listener may have 
 a defect of his hearing apparatus, and be unable to 
 catch and interpret the message we are eager to 
 give. The possible interferences with the propa- 
 gation of the sensation of pain are analogous and 
 equally numerous. The capacity of the end-organ 
 in the skin for receiving stimuli may be reduced, 
 e.g. by cold, by chemical agents such as cocaine, or 
 by the processes of disease. The conveying sen- 
 sory nerve our telephone wire may be cut in 
 two, or its function may be interfered with by pres- 
 sure either from a growth or from a tight ligature 
 intercepting its course, or there may be gross 
 changes wrought by disease in the spinal cord which 
 interfere with its further progress. Or, finally, the 
 receptive cells in the brain may be diseased or
 
 192 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 drugged and fail to respond by registering the im- 
 pression, while at the same time the link between 
 the cells of the cerebral cortex and the higher 
 mental centres may be interfered with by disease, 
 or by drugs such as alcohol, chloroform, or ether. 
 The point to recognise and remember is that pain 
 is not pain until it is perceived by the consciousness. 
 All the physical phenomena by which it is brought 
 about are purely mechanical interferences. At no 
 stage are they pain until the consciousness has them 
 revealed to it as such. If we could isolate the ter- 
 minal end-organ of a sensory nerve and detach it 
 from its connection with the sensory filament that 
 conveys impulses from it we might subject it to all 
 manner of noxious stimuli and no pain would be 
 felt. Or if we could sever a sensory nerve from all 
 communication with the brain we might pinch it 
 with forceps, irritate it with chemicals, and sear it 
 with the cautery, and no sensation of pain would 
 follow. Similar assaults made upon an isolated 
 segment of the spinal cord would also fail to elicit 
 the response of pain, for the sensation of pain re- 
 quires for its manifestation an intact nerve-arc 
 with no break or interruption between the terminal 
 sensory organ, or the nerve of sensation, and the 
 higher centres in the brain. 
 
 On the occasion of a recent visit to my dental 
 surgeon I was able to study in my own person the 
 artificial interference with the mechanism of pain- 
 perception produced by partial anaesthesia. He 
 wished to drill a very sensitive tooth, and adminis- 
 tered to me by the continuous method a mixture of 
 nitrous-oxide-gas and oxygen. He had no desire
 
 THE BROKEN NEXUS 193 
 
 to produce a condition of complete anaesthesia or 
 unconsciousness ; he wished to establish analgesia 
 or a loss of the power of perceiving pain. During 
 the whole operation I was conscious of my surround- 
 ings. I could see, I could think and talk, I could 
 hear the grating whirr of the burr and feel the 
 touch of the operator's fingers. I could also feel a 
 continuous sensation of commotion at the point 
 where the burr was applied. I was conscious enough 
 to be capable of analysing my sensations, and the 
 conclusion I came to while the operation was still 
 in progress was that painful stimuli were reaching 
 my brain, but owing to a breakdown, produced by 
 the gas, of the nexus between the receptive cells in 
 my cerebral cortex and my higher centres of asso- 
 ciation I was unable to recognise the nature of the 
 stimuli, and consequently felt no pain. The higher 
 centres are always the first to be put out of action, 
 whether the narcotic be alcohol, ether, chloroform 
 or gas. The same is true in hysterical conditions 
 attended by abnormalities of pain sensation. 
 
 Every nerve speaks to the sensorium in its own 
 language. Ordinary nerves of sensation speak in 
 the language of touch, of temperature-sense, or of 
 pain. The nerves of special sense are monoglot. 
 If one stimulate mechanically the second cranial 
 nerve, the nerve of sight, it responds in the only 
 language known to it, the language of light. That 
 is why a sudden blow upon the eyeball causes one 
 to see stars. There may be pain as well from such 
 a blow, but that is due to the coincident stimula- 
 tion of some of the ordinary sensory nerves which 
 supply the cutaneous structures adjacent to the
 
 194 THE MECHANISM OF PAIN 
 
 eyeball. In the same way a violent stimulation of 
 the eighth cranial nerve, the nerve of hearing, 
 results in the production of a loud and unbearable 
 noise. 
 
 One might reasonably expect that, as the brain 
 is the central and necessary organ of sensation, any 
 stimulus applied to it directly will provoke acute 
 pain. But it is a fact well known to surgeons that 
 the cerebral cortex may be touched, or cut, or 
 seared in a conscious patient and practically no pain 
 result. I have seen a surgeon pass a probe for two 
 and a half inches into the brain of a semi-conscious 
 soldier, without producing the slightest pain, while 
 a stimulus of moderate degree applied immediately 
 afterwards to the patient's skin provoked an imme- 
 diate response of pain. 
 
 The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon 
 is that those parts of the body most exposed to 
 injury are the most abundantly supplied with those 
 end-organs of sensation which Sherrington has called 
 noci-ceptors. These noci-ceptors are scattered plen- 
 tifully all over the skin. They are most numer- 
 ous where the body is most vulnerable, for life 
 and function must be protected. They are par 
 ticularly abundant on the surface of such a deli- 
 cate organ as the eye. A speck of dust blown 
 by a March wind on to the conjunctiva the deli- 
 cate membrane which covers the organ of vision 
 brings this physiological truth forcibly home. As 
 the brain is well guarded by the bones of the skull, 
 and by the membranes that enclose it, it does not 
 require so much protection from noci-ceptors. 
 Consequently it is not so well supplied with them.
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND 
 SUFFERING 
 
 14
 
 " Then, welcome each rebuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids not sit nor stand, but go ! 
 Be our joys three parts pain ! 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! ; 
 Robert Browning, " Rabbi Ben Ezra." 
 
 196
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 EVERY ONE who has devoted a moment's thought 
 to the problems of life must have reflected on the 
 purposes of pain. To the superficial it must seem 
 a needless phenomenon, an experience calculated 
 to increase the sum total of human misery, but 
 altogether devoid of any beneficial qualities. To 
 them it appears maleficent ; an evil thing to be 
 avoided at any cost ; an invention of the devil. 
 Such a view is directly opposed to the truth, for, as 
 a matter of fact, the good qualities of pain more 
 than outweigh the evil ones. 
 
 Pain is a sentinel which guards the outposts of 
 life for us, and without it the citadel would be more 
 easily overthrown. It is one of the greatest helps 
 to the physician or surgeon in his work. The 
 presence of pain, indicated by the sufferer, gives 
 an immediate clue to the site of his trouble. The 
 veterinary surgeon whose patients cannot describe 
 in articulate speech the locality or the nature of 
 the distress they suffer works at a disadvantage as 
 compared with the physician whose patients are 
 human beings. The former must rely on the 
 secondary phenomena of pain to guide him to the 
 i 97
 
 198 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 site of the mischief ; the latter, by a few direct 
 questions, can elicit from his patient not only the 
 precise situation of his pain, but also some know- 
 ledge of its character and intensity. One of the 
 most insidious methods of attack used in the pre- 
 sent war' is the gas-attack. Many of the gases 
 employed are invisible, and their presence can only 
 be detected by their smell, or by the effects they 
 produce. Whenever a gas attack is detected an 
 alarm is sounded, and a rapid message passes along 
 the lines and the soldiers put on their ever-ready 
 gas-masks. Some forms of disease are as insidious 
 in their onset as a gas-attack, and pain is the alarm 
 which calls attention to them. 
 
 Let us take as an example appendicitis, a disease 
 that of recent years has become very well known. 
 Appendicitis is an inflammation of the vermiform 
 appendix, a small blind tube attached to the large 
 bowel. Its function is as yet undetermined, though 
 it has been described by a medical student as "A 
 trap for cherry-stones, and a source of income for 
 the aspiring junior surgeon." Most probably it 
 serves in the human economy as a point d'appni 
 from which the contractions of the large bowel 
 may start. In some animals, e.g. the rabbit, the 
 vermiform appendix is of considerable size. In man 
 its average length is 4-5 inches. But insignificant 
 in length though it be, and obscure as its function 
 is, it has a pernicious liability to become the seat 
 of an acute inflammation which, if not dealt with 
 promptly and efficiently, may bring about death. 
 
 The disease is attended by a number of symp- 
 toms, such as elevation of the temperature, quick-
 
 THE FINGER-POST OF PAIN 199 
 
 ening of the pulse, nausea, and possibly vomiting. 
 These symptoms belong also to other diseases, and 
 are not absolutely characteristic of appendicitis. 
 One or more of them may be absent from an 
 attack; but pain of an acute character, concen- 
 trated at a special point, is one of the earliest and 
 most indicative features of a seizure. The pain may 
 radiate all over the abdomen, but there is one spot 
 immediately over the appendix known as Mc- 
 Burney's point, where the pressure of a finger 
 produces an acute and intolerable exacerbation of 
 suffering. The character of the pain, and the 
 definite localisation of its point of maximum in- 
 tensity, act as finger-posts which direct the surgeon 
 to the appendix, and he knows that that vestigial 
 organ is the seat of inflammation. But, in addition 
 to its diagnostic value in appendicitis, pain has a 
 protective purpose. Once the inflammation is 
 established we find that there is a marked rigidity 
 of the muscles of the abdominal wall overlying the 
 appendix. Nature knows that the processes of 
 repair are best carried on under conditions of rest, 
 and the pain in the inflamed organ stirs up a reflex 
 action in the spinal cord which throws the muscles 
 overlying the appendix into a condition of board- 
 like rigidity. ^This rigidity protects the appendix 
 against sudden affronts from without, and also 
 serves to prevent the weight of the bedclothes in- 
 creasing the pain. The pain of appendicitis, so 
 distressing for the patient, is therefore of great 
 diagnostic value, and its presence may be the 
 means of saving his life by calling immediate Atten- 
 tion to the condition.
 
 200 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 Occasionally the surgeon meets with fulminating 
 cases of gangrenous appendicitis which are accom- 
 panied by little or no paiix These are the most 
 formidable cases, and frequently terminate fatally ; 
 and a case of ordinary appendicitis in which there 
 is a sudden and unaccountable subsidence of pain 
 without a retrogression of the other symptoms of 
 the disease is not welcomed by the doctor, though 
 the patient and his friends may rejoice at the dis- 
 appearance of the suffering, and imagine, falsely, 
 that it is of happy augury. Too often it means 
 that, in the local conflict between life and death, 
 death has been the victor, and may yet lay claim 
 to the whole organism. Processes of disease which 
 are normally attended by pain are, in the absence 
 of that symptom, often very serious. 
 
 In diseases like the ordinary fevers, where the 
 whole system is invaded almost at once by the 
 infective agent, pain is reduced to a minimum. 
 The infection, except in the early stages, is not a 
 local one, so it is not necessary for pain to sound 
 a clarion note of alarm, as the mischief has spread 
 beyond the stage at which local treatment would 
 be of much avail before the disease has declared 
 itself. A moment's thought will explain why this 
 should be. If systemic fevers were attended by 
 severe generalised pain, the vital powers of the 
 body would be lowered by suffering, and, conse- 
 quently, the protective mechanisms which were 
 described in a preceding chapter would not have 
 a free and unhindered opportunity of playing their 
 part. To take another illustration from the war : 
 if England should, by an unhappy chance, be
 
 PAIN THE TEACHER 201 
 
 invaded, our defenders would not be helped but 
 most seriously interfered with if any panic arose 
 among the civil population. The invasion would 
 best be dealt with if the whole nation kept calm, 
 and directed all its energies to devising means of 
 routing the enemy. Clamour and rioting in the 
 streets, and craven fear in our homes, would be a 
 poor backing for the soldiers who were rushing to 
 the breach. 
 
 The records of the first case of a broken limb 
 are lost for ever, but it was pain which first taught 
 primitive man the elements of a crude surgical 
 practice. When some daring huntsman, in the 
 childhood of the world, fell from a rock and frac- 
 tured his thigh-bone, he very soon discovered that 
 any movement of the affected limb caused him to 
 suffer acutely. At rest, the limb was fairly com- 
 fortable, a fact that he no doubt communicated 
 to his solicitous friends who crowded round him 
 awestruck by the disaster that had befallen him. 
 It was but a short step from this discovery to the 
 deduction that for him at least the best policy was 
 one of masterly inactivity ; and we can imagine 
 that the women of his tribe, then, as now, instant 
 to relieve suffering, would gather brushwood, or 
 ferns or leaves and make a comfortable bed for 
 the injured limb. As the days passed by the 
 healing powers of nature would assert themselves, 
 and a time would come when the limb could be 
 moved gently without pain, and ultimately the 
 sufferer would discover that he could use his limb 
 once more. Like Jacob, he would probably halt 
 upon his thigh for all the days of his life ; but in
 
 202 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 his wrestling with God his combat with pain 
 he had discovered that the best treatment for a 
 broken bone is to immobilise it. The elaboration 
 of a general principle from an isolated experience 
 was probably beyond the wit of primitive man, but 
 he had won from pain the nucleus of a great idea, 
 which in the evolution of the centuries has fructified 
 into that huge armamentarium of splints and 
 cradles and pulleys that is the stand-by of the 
 modern orthopaedic surgeon. 
 
 The existence of pain has been a goad to urge 
 men in all ages to seek for anodynes with which 
 to alleviate it, and now, thanks to ether and chloro- 
 form, the most formidable operations may be per- 
 formed while the patient is completely unconscious. 
 The search for anodynes has been a very fruitful 
 one, and the number of such remedies is year by 
 year increasing. Some of the by-products derived 
 from the distillation of coal-tar have been found 
 to possess pain-subduing properties in a high degree. 
 This increases still further our debt to the sun. 
 
 The present war has confronted the surgeon with 
 much more formidable wounds than any of which 
 he had previous experience, and the change of the 
 dressings required by these wounds has frequently 
 been a very distressing experience for the unfor- 
 tunate patient. But methods of dressing have been 
 devised whereby the sensitive nerve-endings in the 
 granulating flesh have been covered over with thin 
 sheets of celluloid before the main dressings are 
 applied ; and, as a consequence, the patient is saved 
 much suffering when the dressing is renewed. In 
 this fact we see an example of the pain of the indi-
 
 PAIN NOT MALEVOLENT 203 
 
 vidual bearing fruit for the benefit of others. The 
 first surgeon whose heart was large enough and 
 whose mind was sufficiently alert to see in the 
 anguish of his patient a call for him to turn his 
 intelligence towards devising some means of sparing 
 pain to others in like case was instrumental in 
 converting vicarious suffering into a blessing. The 
 history of the healing art supplies us with many 
 instances of the suffering of individuals leading to 
 discoveries rich in beneficence for trie race. When 
 Morton discovered the anaesthetic properties of ether 
 he conferred an inestimable boon upon humanity, 
 and it was his recognition of the importance of this 
 discovery, and his large-hearted compassion for 
 the individual sufferer under the so-called " primal 
 curse " which led Simpson to embark upon that 
 course of perilous and self-sacrificing research which 
 culminated in the discovery of the anaesthetic 
 properties of chloroform. 
 
 Pain, it is therefore seen, is something finer than 
 a form of malevolent torture. It is diagnostic, it 
 is remedial, and it is frequently life-saving. It 
 confers benefits upon the individual, and his suffer- 
 ings, rightly read, may confer benefit upon a multi- 
 tude. It is stimulative, disciplinary, and educational. 
 The first child that scorched its finger in the fire 
 has passed into a proverb, and so achieved immor- 
 tality. In the history of man pain has been a 
 touchstone which has enabled him to tell those 
 things that are inimical to his well-being, and that 
 might destroy his life ; and through pain he has 
 learned to avoid them. 
 
 To many, the reconciliation of the idea of an
 
 204 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 omniscient, omnipotent, and just Providence with 
 the existence of pain seems an impossibility. They 
 believe ; with the old Greek philosopher, that, if there 
 is a God who knows of human suffering and who 
 cannot remove it, He is impotent. Or, if He knows, 
 and can, but will not remove it, He is malevolent, 
 or, what is almost as bad, does not care. It is an 
 old, heart-torturing problem, but its solution cannot 
 be reduced to such simple terms. 
 
 I am firmly convinced that, except in so far as 
 it is beneficent, pain, either physical or mental, 
 has no place in the scheme of things. 
 
 We must enlarge our horizon, and look at life 
 as a whole ; not the little life of the individual, 
 which is a transient thing, but the life of humanity, 
 which is continuous and of indefinite duration. 
 That crude system of hedonistic philosophy which 
 holds that pleasure is what gives value to life has 
 failed because it is out of touch with reality. It 
 is moral worth, moral progress, and, in the indi- 
 vidual, moral character that give to life all that is 
 best, and it is from the furnace of pain that some 
 of those qualities have been won for mankind. 
 
 That the Creator has not willed, out of sheer 
 malevolence, that man or any of His creatures should 
 suffer hardly requires demonstration. For if this 
 had been His purpose He would have put out of 
 human reach those many agents through which 
 pain may be alleviated, and would not have per- 
 mitted the curtain of a merciful oblivion to descend 
 between a man and his most cruel pain. When 
 pain passes the limits of human endurance the 
 sufferer becomes unconscious : he faints. Man,
 
 IS NATURE CRUEL? 205 
 
 looking at nature with a compassionate heart, but 
 with somewhat distorted vision, is sometimes 
 tempted to regard it as a huge arena that is the 
 scene of unmitigated and constant suffering. And 
 he cannot reconcile what he regards as the cruelty 
 of nature with the thought of God. But is nature 
 cruel ? The belief awaits proof. The bird or 
 beast of prey kills quickly, inflicting a minimum 
 of suffering on its victim. The hawk and the lion 
 usually strike but once. It is only when beasts of 
 prey degenerate in character from their contact 
 with man that they absorb some of his cruelty. 
 The cat playing with the mouse is an abnormal 
 example of how beasts of prey treat their victims. 
 The domestic cat is well fed ; its hunting has 
 degenerated from a noble necessity of its life into 
 a pastime, and it plays with the mouse because it 
 is satiated and indolent. And we are not justified 
 in imagining that the mouse really suffers during 
 the time that its feline captor makes sport with it. 
 The testimony of Livingstone and others who have 
 been mauled by a lion is to the opposite effect. 
 Always, in trying to estimate the sufferings of the 
 lower creatures, we must guard against reading 
 into their experience those mental or physical pains 
 which we imagine we should feel in like case. Few 
 animals have any apprehension of pain, while man 
 increases his sufferings by dreading them. 
 
 The memory of the fear that has lent speed to a 
 hare or a fawn pursued by dogs does not seem to be 
 of long duration. A hare or a deer will stop to 
 feed, and a rabbit resume its gambols on the sand 
 in front of its warren very soon after the danger
 
 206 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 has passed away. So, neither by anticipation or 
 through retrospection do the lower animals in- 
 crease the volume or intensity of their sufferings. 
 
 Much of human suffering is the direct result of 
 the neglect to obey certain well-recognised or easily 
 discovered natural laws. So far as one is able to 
 observe it, the Universe is a great system controlled 
 by law, which begets order and harmony. Even 
 when the order is apparently broken by some 
 chaotic upheaval we may find, if we look closely 
 enough, that the upheaval is itself only a further 
 demonstration of law in operation. If we will 
 only bear this fact in mind we shall hold a clue to 
 the explanation of much human suffering brought 
 upon mankind by cataclysms or disasters. 
 
 After the great and historic earthquake at Lisbon, 
 and the similar disturbances in Jamaica, at San 
 Francisco, and in Sicily, within the memory of the 
 present generation, men bitterly questioned the 
 beneficence of Providence for permitting such loss 
 of human life, and such distress and pain. They 
 could not reconcile the idea of a God who cared, 
 with such happenings. But they failed to realise 
 the world-order. 
 
 The ultimate shape and form of the earth is not 
 yet reached. Other mountain-peaks may yet arise 
 from lowly valleys, and high hills may yet become 
 the bed of unborn oceans. These cataclysmic con- 
 vulsions of nature are as much part of the plan of 
 the Universe in the making as is the life of man. 
 But man has been endowed with reason, the gift 
 of intelligence, the capacity for making observations 
 and deducing from them some knowledge of the
 
 THE LAWS OF NATURE 207 
 
 laws of nature. The knowledge of the laws of 
 nature which man already possesses has enabled 
 him many times, both in an individual and com- 
 munal capacity, to avoid exposing himself unpro- 
 tectedly to the full violence of certain natural laws 
 in operation. For instance, no modern city in 
 England would consent to draw its water-supply 
 from a sewage-tainted source, for the connection 
 between impure water, ill-health, suffering, and 
 possibly death is well established. Nor would any 
 man wittingly build himself a hut on an Alpine 
 slope where avalanches are of frequent occurrence. 
 If he did so he would have no just cause for upbraid- 
 ing Providence for any disaster that might engulf 
 him. So far as he is aware of them, civilised man 
 does try to avoid coming into conflict with the 
 larger laws of nature ; but to expect that natural 
 laws in operation, or upheavals that occur in conse- 
 quence of natural laws, are to be suspended because 
 man's knowledge has not yet advanced far enough 
 to enable him to foretell where, when, arid how 
 every natural law will operate, is tantamount to 
 asking that the Universe should stand still till man 
 has learned the whole of its mystery. 
 
 In days before the war, which has to some extent 
 given us new values and new visions^whenever the 
 world was shocked by some great shipwreck, or 
 by some stupendous conflagration attended with 
 much loss of life, the sorrow of bereavement, and 
 mental and physical pain, there was always, after 
 the first stupor had passed, some raising of querulous 
 voices, which asked, " Is there a God : and does 
 He care ? " As in most popular outcries, the
 
 208 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 feeling that prompted these outpourings was better 
 than the logic behind them. To transfer to Pro- 
 vidence the blame for human errors in judgment 
 and in action, is to use a very weak argument 
 against His immanence and beneficence. A ship- 
 wreck may occur because a ship was not built 
 strongly enough to weather the storm a purely 
 human miscalculation or because it ran aground, 
 or upon an uncharted reef where, again, the human 
 factor is in error or because it was caught in such 
 a storm that the officer in charge could not navigate 
 it. If we are going to throw back on God the 
 responsibility for these disasters we must, at the 
 same time, be prepared to surrender all freedom of 
 action, and consent to be reduced to the level of 
 marionettes on a string. As we are reasonable 
 beings, endowed with free-will, we are at liberty to 
 place ourselves in positions where we may become 
 the victims of natural forces, or of human errors 
 in judgment. But it would be absurd to expect 
 to be cf eatures with free-will so long as our freedom 
 of choice operates only along the lines of safety, 
 and at the same time look to have our freedom of 
 choice forcibly suspended, or natural laws abro- 
 gated, whenever, in its exercise, we should unwit- 
 tingly stray into the danger of incurring death or 
 experiencing pain. 
 
 In small doses, that potent poison hydrocyanic 
 acid will relieve an irritable cough ; but if a patient, 
 ignorant of the toxic nature of the remedy, should 
 proceed on the assumption that, as a teaspoonful 
 of a mixture containing this drug gives him a 
 certain degree of relief, sixty teaspoonsful, taken
 
 HUMAN FOLLY 209. 
 
 at a draught, will give him sixty times as much 
 relief, we should not be justified in expecting that, 
 by a miraculous intervention, the drug will sud- 
 denly be robbed of its poisonous properties to 
 protect the venturesome but unwise person from 
 the consequences-of his own misguided free-will. 
 To look for anything of the kind would be to pre- 
 suppose that God has nothing else to do than 
 stand between man and the results that flow from 
 his folly. But, it may be suggested, if the patient 
 was unaware of the poisonous nature of the mix- 
 ture, surely his ignorance, blossoming into rashness, 
 should not lead to his undoing if God really cared. 
 The answer is not far to seek. The knowledge 
 that hydrocyanic acid is a poison had already been 
 acquired ; that knowledge was accessible to the 
 individual in question ; that he erred through 
 failure to inquire was his own fault, and not the 
 fault of God. 
 
 The same line of argument may be applied to 
 many of the events which have perplexed man- 
 kind. Larger, deeper, and better-used knowledge 
 of natural laws, discovered or yet to be discovered, 
 would in many a case have turned the sword of 
 suffering from the bent neck of humanity. It is 
 a poor appeal to make, that, until all the laws 
 that govern human life have been reduced to 
 writing plain enough for the blind to read, the pains 
 and penalties that follow any breach of these laws 
 should be suspended. Indeed, the existence of 
 these penalties, the invariable linking of pain or 
 suffering with a breach of these as yet undeciphered 
 laws, is a goad to stimulate us to seek for the
 
 210 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 principle behind the process. In England great 
 stress is laid upon the value of a public school 
 education. The public schools of our country may 
 not turn out many scholars, though it is 'possible 
 for a bright and intelligent boy to pass through 
 one of them and emerge with a heavy and partially 
 assimilated load of educational lore. But in spite 
 of their scholastic defects the education inculcated 
 within their boundaries is the finest in the world, 
 for it produces a splendid type of young manhood. 
 To a very large degree this type of young manhood 
 is the product of the unwritten code of laws made 
 by the boys and handed on as a tradition from one 
 generation to another. The laws of the Medes 
 and Persians were unalterable. Neither these laws, 
 nor the irrefragable laws that rule the Universe, are 
 so adamantine as the boy laws of a public school. 
 A newcomer may have some knowledge of these 
 unwritten laws inculcated into him by parents, by 
 elder brothers, or by friends ; but he best acquires 
 a knowledge of them by breaking them unwittingly, 
 and, though he may and probably does suffer in 
 the process, it is all part of the discipline which, 
 acting on his plastic character, moulds it into the 
 accepted type. 
 
 In the larger school of life the same process is 
 at work if we would only recognise it. 
 
 Much of the pain in the world is Attributable to 
 man's misdirected ingenuity. He has always been 
 prone to devise instruments of torture and methods 
 of punishment that involve suffering. The rack, 
 the wheel on which criminals were broken, the 
 scourge, the martyr's pyre, the tread-mill, to say
 
 THE CRUELTY OF MAN 211 
 
 nothing of the thousand and one devilish devices of 
 the Chinese torturers, were all man-made ; and 
 there is little doubt that the suffering inflicted by 
 man upon man far exceeds in amount as well as in 
 severity all the pain that has come to mankind from 
 the operation of natural laws. As a nation we are 
 accustomed to take pride in our civilisation, but 
 the student of our social history knows that our 
 civilisation was very slow to rid itself of studied 
 cruelty. No one can read of the appallingly brutal 
 punishments inflicted upon our sailors a century 
 ago, or upon the soldiers who fought for us at 
 Waterloo or in the Crimea, without his blood being 
 chilled with horror. Man, who is sometimes tempted 
 to think that God is malevolent, can be, and often 
 has shown himself to be, more cruel than the arch- 
 fiend. 
 
 We are slow pupils, and learn the lessons that 
 are prepared for us haltingly and incompletely. 
 This is true of the laws of health as well as of the 
 larger laws of nature. But when we have learned, 
 and care to follow with scrupulous observance, the 
 proper conduct of life, and regulate our hours of 
 work, our hours of recreation, the nature and 
 frequency of our meals, and those many activities 
 that are part and parcel of our daily lives, our pain 
 or suffering will be reduced to a minimum. 
 
 A difficulty that invariably confronts any one who 
 directs his attention to the problem of pain is the 
 suffering of little children. They are so helpless, 
 so irresponsible for the ordering of their lives, and 
 so very sensitive, that the pain they may be called 
 upon to bear seems inexplicable on any basis of the 
 
 15
 
 212 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 right government of the world. It is little conso- 
 lation to a child to suggest that it is suffering in 
 order that the sympathies of older people may 
 be quickened. I do not put it forward as the 
 supreme reason for the sufferings of the young, 
 but we must realise that through the pain of some 
 children the sufferings of others have been assuaged. 
 Any parent who has watched his own child tossing 
 with fever- lit eyes in the throes of 'lome painful and 
 serious illness will for ever after feel the claim of 
 hospitals for poor children. If there had been no 
 suffering among the children of the rich there 
 would have been many fewer institutions for the 
 relief of the pain of the poor. 
 
 We must not forget that much of the pain of 
 children is brought about by wrong methods of 
 nurture, or through carelessness, stupidity, and 
 unnecessary exposure to infection by their elders. 
 It is the old sequence once more : the broken law 
 the inevitable consequence. And, though it may 
 be urged that the law is broken by the child's 
 guardians, and the child suffers, while the guardian 
 escapes, we must not forget ihat the mental pain, 
 and the anxiety, amounting almost to torture, which 
 any one feels when a child they love is seriously ill 
 redeems the suffering from being altogether vicarious. 
 With our present limited knowledge the problem is 
 insoluble, but we may rest assured that the pain 
 of little children is no empty demonstration of 
 vindictive power, but is something with a purpose 
 behind it. 
 
 Most of the natural processes of life are unaccom- 
 panied by pain. A healthy individual should be 

 
 NATURAL FUNCTIONS AND PAIN 213 
 
 quite unaware of the activities of his digestive 
 organs, the expansion and contraction of his lungs, 
 and the many other physiological activities of his 
 economy. Pain, appearing as a feature of what are 
 normal functional processes, is a sign that all is not 
 well. But there is one great exception, so striking 
 that, in the dawn of civilisation, it was explained 
 as an evidence of divine displeasure. Why should 
 a mother suffer so intensely in the performance of 
 what, after all, is a natural function, the bearing 
 of children ? This is a mystery as old as the human 
 race, and its answer is not an easy one. Maternal 
 love is a thing deep-rooted in primitive instincts ; 
 but there is little doubt that we hold dearest those 
 things we have suffered to win, and if child-bearing 
 were as simple a thing as growing flowers in a 
 garden it is possible that maternal love, which is 
 the prototype on earth of the high love of God, would 
 not be an emotion so rich and beautiful. It receives 
 a sacramental grace from suffering. 
 
 In some women the experience of motherhood 
 awakens a compassion that embraces all suffering 
 humanity. Let us hear a woman speak. I quote 
 from Robert Elsmere. Catherine is slowly groping 
 her way back to health after the birth of her little 
 daughter. Her husband is sitting by her in the 
 September twilight. She says : " Robert, I cannot 
 put it out of my head. I cannot forget it, the pain 
 of the world ! " 
 
 " It seems," she went on, with that difficulty 
 which a strong nature always feels in self-revela- 
 tion, " to take the joy even out of our love and 
 the child. I feel ashamed that mere physical pain
 
 214 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 should have laid such hold on me and yet I can't 
 get away from it. It's not for myself ; " and she 
 smiled faintly at him. " Comparatively I had so 
 little to bear ! But I know now for the first time what 
 physical pain may mean and I never knew before ! 
 I lie thinking, Robert, about all creatures in pain 
 workmen crushed by machinery, or soldiers' or 
 poor things in hospital above all, of women ! Oh, 
 when I get well, how I will take care of the women 
 here ! . . . Oh, to give all one is, or ever can be, 
 to comforting ! And yet the great seat of it one 
 can never touch. It is a nightmare I am weak 
 still, I suppose ; I don't know myself ; but I can 
 see nothing but jarred, tortured creatures every- 
 where. All my own joys and comforts seem to lift 
 me selfishly above the common lot." 
 
 As with so many, her personal share in common 
 suffering had taught her to see the universal need. 
 She was bound more closely to her fellows in affec- 
 tion and sympathy by this common bond. She 
 was beginning to interpret the eternal lesson of pain. 
 
 But some part of the suffering of motherhood is 
 not an inseparable concomitant of that natural 
 function. The more artificial the life a woman leads, 
 and the further she departs from nature in her 
 manner of living, the more painful and perilous 
 becomes the pilgrimage to the goal of her desire. 
 It is rare for a primitive woman to suffer in any- 
 thing like the same degree as a woman brought up 
 in the hot-house atmosphere of an artificial civilisa- 
 tion. For the primitive woman, too, motherhood 
 has its pangs, but they are rarely intolerable ; and 
 when woman discovers and practises the proper
 
 MENTAL ANGUISH 215 
 
 rules of life, the sufferings of maternity will be 
 materially reduced. Pain is a consequence of the 
 endeavour of life to adapt itself to its surroundings. 
 When the adaptation is perfect there is no pain. 
 This general principle is well exemplified in the 
 sufferings of maternity. The child of highly civilised 
 parents is likely to be born with a head somewhat 
 out of proportion to the diameters of those bony 
 channels through which it must pass ; and this 
 disproportion entails longer and more intense suffer- 
 ing for the mother. So long as women are content 
 to develop their brains, and leave the physical 
 development of their bodies to chance, their suffer- 
 ings are likely to continue. But, let it be set down 
 in all gratitude to those who have shown us the 
 way, the more intolerable pains of motherhood 
 may be assuaged and indeed lulled into absolute 
 quietness by such a drug as chloroform. It is not 
 the only anodyne that may be used for this pur- 
 pose, but probably it is the safest and best alike 
 for mother and child, and it has been an inestimable 
 boon to suffering womankind. 
 
 So far I have said nothing of that other kind of 
 suffering, as widely distributed and as poignant as 
 physical pain, namely, mental anguish. Recent 
 research has proved that mental pain is as real a 
 thing as physical pain, for both are associated with 
 precisely the same structural alterations in the 
 cells of the cerebral cortex. But mental pain is a 
 subtler thing than physical pain, and it may have 
 disastrous consequences from which, as a rule, 
 physical pain is free. Few cases, even of acute and 
 prolonged physical pain, result in serious deteriora-
 
 216 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 tion of health, or end by unseating the reason. 
 Indeed, it has frequently been remarked that severe 
 neuralgia may continue for a long period without 
 any marked loss of physical condition on the part 
 of the patient. But mental pain the agony of 
 torn and tortured affections, the acid-bite of re- 
 morse of conscience, the day-long, night-long 
 hunger of love unrequited, the hideous uncertainty 
 as to the fate of some loved one, the shattering of 
 hopes, the blind despair of unfulfilled desire, the 
 darkening of the horizon through the loss of one's 
 faith may have profound effects, and produce 
 such changes in the brain that for a time the higher 
 functions of the mind are seriously interfered with, 
 and the reason reels. 
 
 Except in such cases as its function is essentially 
 diagnostic or remedial, physical pain is more bene- 
 ficial to the community than to the sufferer ; while 
 mental pain is beneficial unless it is so severe as 
 to upset the balance of the mind primarily to the 
 individual, and secondarily through the effect it 
 has upon his character, to those with whom he is 
 brought into contact. Physical pain in another 
 stimulates the sympathy of those around him, and 
 quickens their intelligence to devise means of 
 alleviating his suffering or discovering means 
 whereby others may be saved from a like experience. 
 It acts upon the sufferer in the way of making him 
 more sympathetic to others in like circumstances 
 with himself. He does not forget his own hour of 
 trial, and, as George Eliot has said : " Pain must 
 enter into its glorified life of memory before it can 
 turn into compassion."
 
 THE FRUITS OF PAIN 217 
 
 Mental pain is often a secret thing."" It' does not 
 make the same clamant appeal to those around 
 the sufferer, who hides " the pageant of a bleeding 
 heart " within his breast. But out of it he may 
 win two things. He may either emerge from the 
 fire warped and embittered in character ; or, as 
 more often happens, he comes out as pure gold. 
 Everything in life that is worth possession has 
 come to us through pain. Life itself was won for 
 us through pain, and for all the things that hallow 
 life men have suffered and died. Liberty, freedom 
 of thought, all that is best in literature, art, and song 
 is stained with the blood and tears of souls that knew 
 suffering, and filched from it those treasures they 
 have given us to enjoy. Man's pain has meant his 
 progress. Through it he has learned more than 
 pleasure could ever teach him. The existence of 
 suffering is a mystery, but without it earth would 
 be a joyless place, and man would be without one 
 of the greatest aids he has towards the perfecting 
 of his character. 
 
 In moments of depression we are apt to imagine 
 that we are like the starling in The Sentimental 
 Journey, whose cry " I can't get out ! " may be 
 regarded as the wail of a soul that has bidden fare- 
 well to hope. But this is the creed of pessimism. 
 As human beings, we must be prepared to shoulder 
 our share of pain until perfect knowledge shall 
 entitle us to lay it down. At this hour of the 
 world's trial human pain and human suffering are 
 more widespread and more urgent than they have 
 ever been since the world began. All Europe is 
 gripped by the hook of agony. Rachel is weeping
 
 2i8 THE MYSTERY OF PAIN AND SUFFERING 
 
 for her children, and fathers who remember the 
 glad and confident smile with which their boy set 
 out to war are repeating in the silent chambers of 
 their heart the psalmist's lament, " Would God I 
 had died for thee : My son ! My son ! " What 
 can it all mean ? How can all this human suffering 
 be transmuted into terms of moral value ? How 
 can it be justified ? How can it be explained ? Is 
 there any light hi the dark heart of the mystery ? 
 There is : and the light comes from those 
 little white crosses which stand sentinel in 
 Flanders' Fields above the dauntless dead. A 
 wooden cross ! To each, that symbol makes its 
 own appeal and carries its own message. For some 
 it is nothing more than a suitable and uniform 
 symbol for marking a soldier's grave. To others 
 it means infinitely more. It commemorates a vic- 
 tory won through suffering and pain. It stands 
 as the eternal witness to a tragedy, but it was no 
 hopeless tragedy, since it bore within it the seeds 
 of a Resurrection and of the grandest human hope. 
 It is and was a symbol of triumph, and a per- 
 petual memorial of the unity in suffering that binds 
 God and His creatures together. The mystery of 
 pain loses its perplexity when we remember that, 
 though man suffers, God has Himself come within 
 the orbit of a like experience. 
 
 " The cry of man's anguish went up unto God ; 
 
 ' Lord, take away pain 
 The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made, 
 
 The close coiling chain 
 That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs 
 
 On the wings that would soar. 
 Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made. 
 
 That it love Thee the more.'
 
 CHRIST AND THE CROSS 219 
 
 " Then answered the Lord to the cry of the world : 
 
 ' Shall I take away pain, 
 And with it the power of the soul to endure, 
 
 Made strong by the strain ? 
 Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart, 
 
 And sacrifice high ? v 
 
 Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire 
 
 White brows to the sky ? 
 Shall I take away love, that redeems with a price 
 
 And smiles r.t its loss ? 
 Can ye spare from your lives, that would climb into Mine, 
 
 The Christ on His Cross ? '"
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 321
 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
 Milton, " Sonnet on his Blindness." 
 
 And not by eastern windows only, 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 
 
 In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly I 
 But westward, look, the land is bright." 
 
 Arthur Hugh Clough.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 GOOD health is a blessing ; ill-health may be a 
 discipline. Few men or women succeed in living 
 their lives from the cradle to the grave without 
 some interlude spent upon a sick-bed. Our infini- 
 tesimal foes, the disease-producing germs, lying 
 await for us everywhere, may succeed in invading 
 the citadel of our bodies at a moment when our 
 natural defences are weakened. Or accident may 
 plunge us from the rose-flushed mountain-top of 
 vigorous health into the abyss and darkness of 
 many a month of weary, couch-chained suffering. 
 When the fight with disease is at its hottest there is 
 little opportunity for cultivating those graces of 
 character and mind that often flourish so beauti- 
 fully in the atmosphere of sickness and personal 
 suffering. But when the battle has begun to turn, 
 when the convalescent awakes each day with a 
 renewed feeling of well-being ; when every sense 
 reawakens tempered to a new keenness ; when 
 every little commonplace and familiar thing in the 
 room is touched with a fresh light ; when the per- 
 fume of flowers is like a eucharistic benediction, 
 and even a drink of cold water reveals a new, 
 unknown, and hitherto unappreciated savour of 
 223*
 
 224 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 pure delight, then the discipline of sickness has 
 begun to blossom into beauty. 
 
 In these days we live at such high pressure 
 that nothing but the seclusion of a sick-room affords 
 us the opportunity of indulging in the almost 
 extinct habit of reflection. It is there that a man 
 can turn his thoughts from the outside world of 
 material things, which, after all, are the lesser 
 things, and, looking into his own soul, see what 
 manner of man he really is. Many a compass has 
 been adjusted in the silent hours of the night in 
 a darkened sick-room, and many a course has been 
 charted that has made for the happiness not only 
 of the individual TDut of humanity. It may be 
 the weakness that so frequently follows an illness, 
 or it may be what the mystics called the purgative 
 effect of suffering, but there is something in convales- 
 cence which makes an individual more susceptible 
 to finer impressions. The spiritual fire flares up 
 when it is least choked by -the dross of the body. 
 We see the beacon-fire more clearly in the darkness 
 than in the full noon. The stars are in the sky 
 all day, but they are invisible to our limited vision, 
 unless we gaze upwards from some dark chasm, 
 deep as a pitshaft. 
 
 - More men than Newman have risen from a sick- 
 bed to follow the gleam. That sweet and gracious 
 personality, perplexed, distraught, entangled in a 
 mesh of doubt, found on a sick-bed the fire of a 
 new zeal. On his way home, after his journey to 
 the Eastern Mediterranean with his friend Hurrell 
 Froude, he was struck down by a violent fever at 
 Leonforte in Sicily. He succeeded in reaching
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SICKNESS 225 
 
 Castra Giovanni, where he was ill for nearly three 
 weeks. On his recovery he set off for Palermo, and 
 he tells how, " Before starting from my inn on the 
 morning of May 26th or 27th I sat down on my 
 bed and began to sob bitterly. My servant, who 
 had acted as my nurse, asked what ailed me. I 
 could only answer, ' I have a work to do for Eng- 
 land ! ' ' His sick- chamber had been a temple of 
 revelation. It had been what the road to Damascus 
 was to St. Paul a meeting-place with God. 
 
 An interesting book might be written to show 
 how sickness, which has left behind it a permanent 
 physical disability of some sort, has influenced the 
 whole subsequent life of some of the world's greatest 
 men. Homer, we are told, was blind. But it is 
 unlikely that this blindness dated from his birth 
 for the exquisite appositeness of the descriptive 
 terms which he applied to the beautiful things of 
 nature cannot have been acquired at second-hand. 
 The "rosy-fingered dawn," the "hoary sea," the 
 " milk-white arms " of Helen, the " ox-eyes " of 
 Athene, and all the natural beauties of the Isle 
 of Calypso, so perfectly depicted, must have been 
 visual memories, stored up, loved : and recalled with 
 a kind of holy joy from the hidden recesses of the 
 mind of one whom sickness or accident had made 
 blind. Such things were not imagined ; they 
 must have been seen, and seen by him who first 
 wove them into the fabric of his spoken verse 
 and seen again in the atmosphere of imagination 
 with the clarified vision of one for whom physical 
 sight was only a memory. 
 
 John Calvin, one of the profoundest thinkers and
 
 226 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 most voluminous writers that ever lived, had his 
 outlook on life much influenced by all that he 
 suffered in his body. He was a martyr to gout, he 
 suffered also from stone and from biliary colic, he 
 had frequent attacks of asthma and eczema, and 
 there is little doubt that his whole theological out- 
 look was tinctured by the influence of his ill-health. 
 It tended to make him despondent. For many 
 generations Calvin's theology completely dominated 
 Protestantism. Until recently it held almost un- 
 disputed sway in the religious life of Scotland, Wales, 
 the evangelical section of the Church of England, 
 the north of Ireland, Holland, and North America. 
 It was founded largely upon the Pauline Epistles, 
 but in his interpretations of the teachings of St. 
 Paul he went farther than his master. It is hardly 
 to be wondered at that a man who was called 
 upon to suffer such constant and intolerable anguish 
 in his frail body should have come to throw more 
 emphasis on the juridical aspect of the divine 
 character than on the divine love. 
 
 There is little doubt that if Calvin's health had 
 been better his outlook on life and his interpreta- 
 tions of the decrees of God would have been brighter. 
 One is shocked to think of the age-long mental 
 suffering that Calvin's doctrines of Predestination 
 and Election riveted upon the minds of the religious 
 who were brought up in the atmosphere of his 
 theology. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was lame, an attack of illness 
 when he was a child, barely two years old, leaving 
 him with a permanently weak ankle. The litera- 
 ture of high romance owes more than is generally
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT 227 
 
 known to that attack of infantile paralysis. When 
 all the vaunted surgical and medical skill of Edin- 
 burgh could do no more for the child he was sent 
 to Sandyknowe, his grandfather's farm, in the hope 
 that the purer air of the country might accomplish 
 what science knew not how to do. 
 
 Nature failed to restore the withered limb. The 
 child, however, improved greatly in health. But 
 for that stricken limb it is almost certain that Scott 
 would have become a soldier, and have fought 
 under Wellington in the Napoleonic wars, when a 
 bullet or a sabre-stroke might have put an end 
 to his career before he had written a line. But his 
 infantile illness did more for literature than merely 
 to save Scott from the hazards of war. 
 
 His grandfather's shepherd, Sandy Ormiston, 
 developed a strong affection for the delicate child, 
 and used to carry him out on to the hills and lay 
 him on his plaid on a sunny slope, where he would 
 lie by the hour with the sheep and the lambs crop- 
 ping the scanty grass round his resting-place. As 
 he lay there this gentle shepherd would croon to 
 him snatches of old Scotch songs, and tell him 
 fragments of oft-told Border tales. 
 
 And in his poetry, his novels, and his Tales of 
 a Grandfather, Scott in after-years was simply giving 
 back to the world the ripened fruit that had sprung 
 from the seeds sown in his receptive and fertile 
 mind by the discerning love of this worthy old 
 shepherd. Scott himself never forgot this indebted- 
 ness, and pays a tribute to it in Marmion : 
 
 Thus while I ape the measures wild 
 Of tales that charmed me as a child, 
 
 16
 
 228 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 Rude though they be, still with the chime 
 Return the thoughts of early time : 
 And feelings, roused in life's first day, 
 Glow in the line, and prompt the lay ; 
 Then rise those crags, that mountain tower 
 Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour." 
 
 The subject is one that might with advantage be 
 pursued further ; but not in this place. 
 
 There are certain characters which are not im- 
 proved by the discipline of sickness, but under it 
 become querulous, self-centred, and morose. Always 
 some porcelain cracks in the furnace. But such 
 people are in a minority, and very few come out of 
 the sick-room with their outlook on life completely 
 unaltered. A man who has never been ill before 
 and who is suddenly caught in the toils tends at 
 first to resent this forcible interruption of his 
 activities ; but gradually he learns to be patient, 
 and his heart is touched with a new sympathy for 
 others less fortunate than himself to whose lot 
 more sickness falls. The understanding begotten 
 of personal experience quickens his mind to pity. 
 The appeal of weakness and helplessness is to him 
 ever afterwards clamant and insistent. He can no 
 longer shut his ears and harden his heart. He, too, 
 has tasted of the waters of Marah, and found them 
 bitter. 
 
 But, however much may be gained by the sufferer 
 from the discipline of a single illness, it is in the grey 
 ranks of that large fraternity who are the victims 
 of chronic or incurable ailments that we best see 
 how good may come of evil. There can be few 
 things harder to bear than the dawning knowledge 
 coming to a man or woman in the mid- time of their
 
 THE HEROISM OF THE SICK-ROOM 229 
 
 activities that, for them, participation in the 
 battle of life is over, and that henceforth they can 
 be nothing more than spectators. When the first 
 storm of rebellion has died down in their hearts they 
 discover that, though they are withdrawn from the 
 general fray, they have a battle all their own to 
 fight. And it is a battle that requires patience as 
 well as fortitude' high spirit and self-sacrifice. 
 
 The world heaps its honours and rewards, and 
 rightly, upon some of those who, amid the clang of 
 arms and the roar of guns, do deeds of superb 
 heroism. But there are no rewards, except the 
 love and admiration of their friends, for those who 
 fight a stern battle with themselves in the arena of 
 their sick-room ; and the heroism needed to brace 
 a man for this silent conflict is often greater than 
 that demanded on the battle-field. At first there 
 may be a tendency to self-pity, but by and by this 
 pity dissolves into a wider compassion that encom- 
 passes all suffering folk. At first the spirit chafes 
 against the enforced inaction of the body and its 
 separation from so many of the things in which 
 it took delight. But soon new avenues of enjoy- 
 ment open before the wondering eyes, and the 
 impotent man discovers that the world in which he 
 had lived was only a small corner of the Universe 
 all of which is ready to minister to his solace. 
 Through his window, in the dark and sleepless 
 nights, he can catch glimpses of the stars those 
 eternal, silent witnesses of man's battle upon the 
 earth. He can watch the diamonded belt of 
 Orion ; see fresh beauties in every wreath of cloud- 
 wrack driven across the sky ; watch, night by
 
 230 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 night, expectantly, the moon grow from a silver 
 sickle to a great and brilliant orb, and find, as many 
 a skin-clad shepherd in Palestine found in the 
 childhood of the world, " The heavens declare the 
 glory of God." 
 
 Then little simple things come to him with a fresh 
 appeal. He watches the birds ; they may become 
 to him, as to St. Francis, his little brothers. He 
 looks eagerly to see the first wave of cherry-blossom 
 break in spray upon the branches, and, having 
 found it, he will point it out delightedly to his next 
 visitor. And when nature fails him he can turn 
 to the world of books. He reads old favourites over 
 again with a new zest, and finds in them subtle 
 beauties hitherto undiscovered. That old ode of 
 Horace, that poem of Browning, that novel 01 Scott, 
 that essay of Ruskin, that letter of Stevenson, all 
 glow with a fresh allurement ; he never found such 
 treasure in them before. And then there are the 
 visits of his friends, each bringing his little trophy 
 of news from the market-place his little shred of 
 kindly gossip his good story, his helpful handgrip. 
 Somehow all has changed. There are delights in 
 life he had never dreamed ot joys, whose full savour 
 he had never before tasted. And yet nothing has 
 changed but the man himself : for, as Thackeray 
 said, ' ' The world is a looking-glass, and gives back 
 to every man the reflection of his own face." 
 
 So, out of the turmoil and fret of his soul, there 
 springs a great contentment, and the courage to 
 look with brave and undaunted eyes forward along 
 the road of life. 
 
 One sometimes hears it said of this or that doctor
 
 HOLY GROUND 231 
 
 that he carries into a sick-room a message of good 
 cheer and hope, and it is given to some men to 
 radiate from their personality an influence which 
 sometimes does more good to the patient than the 
 prescription' of doubtful Latinity that they leave 
 behind them. But we rarely hear of the influence 
 of the patient upon the physician. Yet there are 
 few who will deny that they have sometimes brought 
 more out of a sick-room than they ever took into it. 
 It is a sanctuary wherein they have communed 
 with a great soul, they have been illumined by some 
 of its radiance, they have caught a glimpse of 
 " the light that never was on sea or land." 
 
 There are some sick-rooms that should always be 
 entered with feet unshod. 
 
 That suffering can teach lessons in high altruism 
 is obvious from the records of many a casualty 
 clearing station at no great distance behind the 
 front line. It is there that the terribly wounded 
 first have the opportunity of receiving adequate 
 surgical aid ; and it is there that many a man has 
 had the opportunity, and leaped to meet it, of 
 putting into practice one lesson his own sickness 
 had taught him the lesson of divine compassion. 
 Sometimes when a patient reaches one of these 
 stations he has lost so much blood that there is barely 
 enough in his body to keep the vital spark aflame. 
 In such a case it is the custom to perform an opera- 
 tion called transfusion, and to introduce into his 
 almost empty vessels a quantity of fresh blood 
 from another individual. Sometimes a nurse or a 
 doctor is the giver of blood ; but more often, when 
 the call for a volunteer is made, another soldier,
 
 232 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 now convalescent from his injuries, willingly makes 
 the sacrifice. It is not a specially dangerous thing 
 to do, nor is it, as the Army reckons things, a great 
 thing to do ; but it has in it the elements of nobility, 
 and it is part of the nobility stamped upon the 
 common clay of humanity by the discipline of 
 sickness, and the lesson of compassion for all in like 
 case learned by one who himself has known weak- 
 ness almost unto death. The spirit of Sir Philip 
 Sidney is not yet dead. You may find it in a lad 
 from the slums. 
 
 In the aftermath of war we shall have to reckon 
 with a harvest gathered by the sick and wounded 
 from the discipline of their pain. That the discipline 
 has wrought and is working its effects is sufficiently 
 apparent to any one with the eyes to see who has 
 been privileged, in however small a way, to minister 
 to these stricken men. 
 
 It is unfortunate that none of those statesmen 
 whose policy sometimes precipitates war, and who 
 hold in their hands the destinies of nations and the 
 lives of men, ever visit the wards of a war hospital 
 at night. When they do come, they make their 
 visits by day, and, as a rule, see things under ex- 
 ceptional and to some extent artificial circumstances. 
 They see the wounded and sick smiling, cheerful, and 
 happy. Their one desire, according to the press 
 correspondent who expands upon the visit and, 
 incidentally, upon the glories of war and the heroism 
 of the men, is to get well, in order to have another 
 shot at the enemy. Other things besides gun- 
 positions may be camouflaged. But let them 
 come at night, unexpectedly and unannounced,
 
 THE HIDEOUSNESS OF WAR 233 
 
 and by the light of a hurricane lamp carried by the 
 sister for, thank God, the lady with the lamp is 
 still walking through the aisles of pain pass quietly 
 from bed to bed. Some of the men are asleep. 
 Others are awake, staring with open eyes at the 
 bellying roof of the tent above them. Sometimes 
 they cannot sleep for pain. That can be alleviated. 
 Sometimes, if you ask them, they will say that they 
 are all right, and are only thinking. These eager, 
 wakeful, watching eyes haunt one. What are they 
 thinking of ? I fancy I know. Are they thinking 
 of death ? Not once in a thousand cases. They 
 have looked that grim monarch in the face without 
 flinching ; they have companied with him in the 
 trenches, and have ceased to fear him. Are they 
 thinking of their loved ones ? Yes : very often, 
 and very tenderly. But most frequently, I believe, 
 the burden of their thoughts is the appalling 
 hideousness of war. Through their wounds or their 
 sickness they have escaped for a time from the 
 hell in which they had been living ; but the memory 
 of it its sordidness, its grossness, its brutality is 
 still quivering in their minds. They rarely speak 
 of things, but they often recall them ; they cannot 
 blot them out of their memory, and the thoughts 
 persist in coming back in the still watches. 
 
 While they were living through their experiences 
 they had not the time to reflect. But now they 
 have time and opportunity, and thought will 
 have its way. 
 
 And who are these men? Not uneducated and 
 uncultured denizens of the slums, but the pick and 
 flower of British manhood, representatives of every
 
 234 THE DISCIPLINE OF SICKNESS 
 
 creed and of all classes. The son of the landed 
 proprietor may be in the next bed to the clerk 
 from the city bank ; the university graduate is side 
 by side with the porter from the warehouse ; the 
 poet and visionary is a near neighbour to the 
 casual labourer ; and all, each according to the 
 measure of his capacity, is thinking, thinking, think- 
 ing, and storing up his conclusions to be the fount 
 of action some day in the future. They have seen, 
 they know, they remember the utter hideousness 
 of war, and they recognise its criminal stupidity, 
 its insensate blindness. They recall how, before 
 the cataclysm, the demagogue from his cheap plat- 
 form, the brilliant journalist in his leading articles, 
 aye, even the preacher in his pulpit, could dilate upon 
 the glories of war ; how war was a test of endur- 
 ance, a toughener of moral fibre, a school for heroes, 
 a nursery of self-sacrifice as though these graces 
 of character could not be engendered, could not 
 flourish in some more gentle atmosphere ! 
 
 They are weighing the good against the evil. 
 They are seeing the shattered homes in Flanders 
 and on the plains of Northern Italy ; the pathetic, 
 hopeless retreat of old men and women whose 
 little cottages are in ruins ; they are hearing the 
 cries of ravished women and the forlorn wail of lost 
 and terrified little children. They are remembering 
 the blood and filth, the death, the mutilation, the 
 irreparable destruction of useful human lives ; men 
 blinded, men driven mad, men blown to pieces, men 
 maimed for all the rest of their days. And when, 
 in the dead of night, the stretcher-bearers quietly 
 enter the ward, and from a bed, hidden by the
 
 WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES 235 
 
 kindly shelter of two screens, lift a lifeless burden 
 somebody's boy, some woman's loved one and, 
 covering it reverently with the flag, bear it silently 
 down the alley-way and through the canvas door, 
 they turn their sleepless heads upon their pillows, 
 and in their hearts salute the undying dead. The 
 balance moves, and the scale on the side of evil 
 touches the ground. 
 
 These silent, sleepless, thinking men are the blood- 
 less revolutionaries of to-morrow. It is they who 
 will, when the war is over, establish permanent 
 peace upon the earth. They will see to it that 
 never again in their time or the time of their chil- 
 dren's children shall international quarrels be put 
 to the harsh arbitrament of the sword. It is good 
 to defend a righteous cause, and to die for the 
 right, if need be ; but it ought to be made an im- 
 possibility for any autocrat, or any blood-intoxi- 
 cated nation, sedulously to plot such evil that 
 innocent men must die to re-establish right. 
 Tyrannies and despotisms must cease ; and in days 
 to come these wakeful, silent thinkers will be the 
 chief agents in bringing about those larger concep- 
 tions of humanity and international brotherhood 
 that will make war an impossibility. They will be 
 coadjutors with God in winning out of catastrophe 
 the fruits of moral order and moral progress.
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 237
 
 '"Guess now who holds thee ? ' ' Death,' I said; but there 
 The silver answer rang ' Not Death, but Love.' " 
 
 E. B. Browning, " Sonnets from the Portuguese." 
 
 " The soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless a 
 woman's hand has braced it ; and it is only when she braces it 
 loosely that the honour of manhood fails." Ruskin, " Sesame 
 and Lilies." 
 
 238
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 LET it be said at once, and frankly the basis of all 
 love between a man and a woman is, unless it be filial 
 or parental love, sex-instinct. Fortunately, however, 
 though it is imbedded in this elementary instinct, 
 the passion may be so sublimed by imagination, and 
 by the atmosphere of romance and idealism which it 
 engenders, that its sexual origin is lost sight of. It 
 may be, and often is, the motive power which lifts a 
 man or a woman from baseness to nobility. It is one 
 of the mightiest forces in moulding character, arid 
 without it, and all that it connotes, society would 
 tend to crash headlong into anarchy. Under heaven 
 there is nothing holier or higher than true human 
 love. It illumines the darkest corners of life, and 
 transmutes the commonplace into the divine. 
 
 There is a fundamental difference between the 
 love of a man and the love of a woman. In nature 
 the male is the aggressor, ready to fight and vanquish 
 all rivals. Among primitive men, before civilisation 
 had fashioned their conduct, the same principle 
 held good, and a man fought for or stole his bride. 
 
 The mollifying influence of time and culture has 
 made it unnecessary, except among savage peoples, 
 to have recourse to such brutal expedients ; but, in 
 
 239
 
 *4<> LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 the way of love, a man still shows evidences of 
 traits derived from a long-forgotten and vanished 
 ancestry. Under the influence of the subtle passion 
 his personality becomes more dominant. He lives 
 on the tip-toe of being. His finer qualities surge 
 up from hidden depths. His mind is quickened. 
 Consciously or unconsciously he seeks to make a 
 good impression on the object of his love. He is 
 seized by an intense desire so to impress his per- 
 sonality upon her mind that she may think of no 
 one but himself. He can brook no rival. This is 
 the feverish stage of love in which his remote 
 ancestor, primitive man, would have sharpened 
 his arrows. His modern successor instead takes 
 to writing verses. Later, when he finds that his 
 overtures are not altogether unacceptable, he 
 develops other traits. He begins to deny himself 
 to think out little artifices of kindness that may 
 give pleasure to the woman he loves. He foresees 
 and forestalls her wishes. He tries to alter his 
 habits of life in accordance with her desires, ex- 
 pressed or only guessed at. And all the while he is 
 tortured by a longing to possess her ; to merge his 
 life with hers, to have a common existence. 
 
 By tradition and upbringing the love that first 
 dawns in a young woman's heart is a thing to be 
 kept secret. She must not be so unmaidenly as to 
 seek her loved one. She must wait until he declares 
 himself ; whereon hangs one of the great tragedies 
 of the life of womankind. But there are ways 
 and means, and love is a clever preceptor. At first 
 she tends to become reserved and somewhat self- 
 centred. She is, through atavism, the bride to be,
 
 A WOMAN'S LOVE 241 
 
 waiting for the result of the conflict of which she is 
 at once the prize and the spectator. She nurses 
 her secret thought in her heart, until gradually it 
 asserts itself and vibrates through all her being. 
 Her eyes gleam with a new light. There is a fresh 
 spring in her step, and if she finds as lovers can 
 that she is loved by the man she adores, she enters 
 upon a new cycle of life. Her whole world assumes 
 a new value. She lives in an atmosphere of dreams. 
 She is uplifted with a great pride, shot through 
 with a tender humility, that this miracle of love 
 should have come to her. She is possessed by the 
 image of her beloved. The tones of his voice, his 
 every gesture the visual memory of his features, 
 his personality fills her mind and there is no room 
 for another. She clothes her lover with lofty attri- 
 butes, and it is perhaps well for man that every 
 woman in love is an idealist, for she sees him not 
 as he really is, a very ordinary human creature, at 
 the best made of common clay, but as something 
 a " little lower than the angels/' made beautiful in 
 body and soul by her imagination. 
 
 Now that woman has received her emancipation, 
 and has been made a participator in many of those 
 activities of life that were too long regarded as the 
 prerogative by divine right of man, there is less of 
 the old atavistic relation in the matter of love, of 
 aggressive, combative, and conquering male, and 
 shrinking, captive woman. A woman now meets 
 her lover on more equal terms. He is no longer the 
 potential houselord, and she the subservient kneader 
 of dough. Only a weak man, uncertain of his own 
 authority, wishes to dominate woman. Only a
 
 242 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 soul-less woman places herself under the heel of a 
 man. Men and women of character respect each 
 other, and respect is no hinderer of love. Nowadays 
 a man and woman meet as two human beings, com- 
 plementary to each other, neither of whom can 
 without the other fulfil their destiny. But romance 
 is not yet dead, and love still rules and guides their 
 hearts to seek each other. And, having found each 
 other, a man and woman in love are seized with a 
 great desire ; a longing for the permanent con- 
 tinuance of the wonderful passion that has already 
 drawn them together. They hunger for the blending 
 of therr individual lives into a common whole ; 
 they long for the opportunity of sharing together 
 whatever of good or ill life may have to offer ; they 
 are consumed by a desire to be mutually helpful 
 to each other -he to shelter her, she to succour 
 and solace him when the storms of life buffet him. 
 For, though it is rooted in sex-instinct, love is a thing 
 of high moral value, and teaches lessons of loyalty, 
 of self-sacrifice, and of spiritual fellowship. Where 
 it does not kindle such aspirations it is not the 
 divine flame, but some rushlight imitation which 
 soon dies down. But where it is the fire from 
 heaven it burns through all obstacles, and cannot 
 be beaten back until love consummates itself in 
 union. 
 
 The happiest marriages are those in which there 
 is a slight temperamental difference between the 
 contracting parties, but a strong community of 
 interest. The difference in temperament should 
 not be great enough to be capable of growing into 
 an antagonism, and the community of interest
 
 A HAPPY MARRIAGE 243 
 
 should be one in which there is no identity of 
 achievement, or overlapping of talent, but rather 
 a complementary contribution from the one to the 
 other to make a perfect whole. For an ideal mar- 
 riage a spiritual affinity is a primary necessity ; 
 and that wedded life may be a success a large 
 understanding and an immeasurable sympathy are 
 indispensable. The absence of these qualities in 
 a man or woman who have pledged their troth to 
 each other may lead to disaster. The first year of 
 married life is probably the most difficult. It is 
 like a mine- strewn sea that requires skilful naviga- 
 tion. 
 
 The first shock of wonder at an unexpected 
 revelation of character may lead to a pitiful estrange- 
 ment, unless love is ever ready to forgive. 
 
 At first, in a happy marriage, the lovers are all 
 in all to each other. Their happiness is complete 
 in itself. Their joy is a golden chalice filled with 
 rich wine which they drink together. They live in 
 two worlds : one in which other people are per- 
 mitted to exist, and the other, a little hallowed 
 sanctuary of their own, where none but they can 
 enter. 
 
 But gradually, when the fiercer glow of passion 
 has died down into a steady fire, they begin to 
 recognise that love has large responsibilities. They 
 discover that their common life, which they have 
 looked upon as such a perfect thing, is capable of 
 even loftier perfection. A little dream hand knocks 
 at the door of the woman's heart. It is the hour 
 of her annunciation it is the moment for which 
 the great Giver of Life has prepared her, fashioned 
 
 17
 
 244 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 her as a woman, and dowered her with those 
 qualities of mind and body that attract love, and 
 which have won her a mate. The sex-instinct 
 becomes the mother-instinct, and she is consumed 
 with a great desire to bear a child. This is to be 
 the pledge and token of her love for her husband ; 
 something very precious, the possession of neither, 
 yet belonging to them both. 
 
 The mother-instinct is one of the most beautiful 
 attributes of a woman's character. It is the pos- 
 session of all normally constituted women, though 
 in many cases, except in so far as it exhibits itself 
 in solicitude for her husband, it may lie dormant 
 for a long period after marriage. Behind every- 
 thing, even though a woman may be perfectly un- 
 conscious of it, it is the spiritually directed motive 
 force that has caused her to love. Though it is 
 latent in all women, it is in some keenly alive from 
 the time they grow to maturity. Such women 
 often choose a mate not because they are carried 
 off their feet by love for him, but because they 
 recognise that a husband is an unfortunate necessity 
 to enable them to realise their desires. They are, 
 all the while, looking beyond him to their unborn 
 children. The marriage of a man and woman 
 where this ambition has been the alluring force 
 upon her side is quite capable of being, and fre- 
 quently continues to be, a very happy one. For 
 many a man and woman have been drawn closely 
 together, even when they were beginning to drift 
 apart, by the all- compelling strength of a little 
 child infinitely weak, but invincibly strong. 
 
 Purely from the biological point of view, the goal
 
 PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES 245 
 
 of love and the aim of marriage is the production 
 of children. But, rightly interpreted, the purpose 
 cannot be narrowed into such straitened limits 
 The begetting of children entails other obligations, 
 both to the children and to society. It is the duty 
 of parents to feed, clothe, protect, educate, guide, 
 and instruct their children alike by example and 
 precept in such a way that they may be able to 
 rise to the full heritage of their humanity, and 
 take their part as thinking, capable and reasonable 
 beings in the material and mental life of the world 
 A recognition of these facts is the basis of that 
 social and religious institution, the family. Certain 
 people, who desire to put into practice the principles 
 of a selfish individualism, hold that marriage should 
 be nothing more than a matter of mutual consent 
 between the contracting parties, in which every- 
 thing is to be subordinated to the pleasure or con- 
 venience of themselves ; the union to be broken at 
 will, when the fires of the passion they wrongly call 
 love have burned down. Such a system is anti- 
 social, and is based upon a narrow egoism. To 
 put it into practice would be to degrade human love 
 from a high sacrament to the relations of the 
 beasts in a stable. 
 
 Wholesome family life is a buttress of social 
 morality, and it is well that the appealing helpless- 
 ness of a child at birth, which, unlike so many other 
 young animals, can take no care of itself for many 
 months, makes an irresistible claim on the affec- 
 tion of both its parents. 
 
 The love they had for each other assumes a deeper 
 quality, and is enriched by this new possession in
 
 246 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 which their affections meet and blend. If there 
 were no love of parents for their children, and they 
 neither trained them in the kindly atmosphere of 
 the family, or, through the aid of other people better 
 versed in the education of the young, but cast them 
 out at the earliest possible moment to fend for 
 themselves, each child would be compelled to fight 
 its own battle with nature to live through, once 
 more, the conflicts of primitive man, denied all 
 access to the accumulated experience of the cen- 
 turies driven to climb, with bleeding feet, a few 
 steps up the hill of progress, and, baffled, fall back 
 again. As we have already seen, man is distin- 
 guished from the lower animals by the power of 
 making use of the knowledge gathered by his an- 
 cestors. That is one of the secrets of his progress, 
 and parental. love and the institution of family life 
 ensure that every child born with intelligence shall 
 have the opportunity of benefiting by this great 
 heritage. 
 
 As life moves on, and other children come, the 
 parents find in each succeeding child a fresh stimulus 
 to their mutual affection. They may be unable to 
 catch again the glorious rapture that came to them 
 with their first-born, but the memory of it stirs 
 within them. Love has lost its passion ; that fine 
 flame dies down ultimately, when nature has no 
 longer need of it, but its place is taken by a sense 
 of loyal and dependent companionship, coloured by 
 affection, which lasts till death breaks the union, 
 "and which may, indeed, overstep the grave. As 
 they grow older the love of a man and woman takes 
 on a new quality, and in the case of a woman, if she
 
 THE GOAL OF LOVE 247 
 
 is a mother, partly changes its direction. Her 
 affection for her husband tends to sink a little into 
 the background, though it is ready to leap forward 
 again in the hour of his need. A great share of her 
 love is now concentrated upon her children. They 
 are his as well as hers, and in turning the full blaze 
 of her affection upon them she is unaware that he 
 is now relegated to a subordinate place. She sees 
 him through them. If the matter were submitted 
 to her she would probably deny it with passion 
 and surprise, but the fact is obvious to any careful 
 observer of human nature. 
 
 The goal of love is the continuation of the race. 
 That is the end toward which all human passion 
 was intended to move. It is only when man blinds 
 himself to this elementary fact that the consumma- 
 tion of love is divorced from its legitimate purposes, 
 and made to minister to selfish enjoyment. It is a 
 wonderful provision that the strongest passion 
 that humanity possesses, through which and by 
 which men and women are called upon to fulfil 
 their destiny and hand on the torch of life which 
 has been passed down to them through countless 
 generations, should be associated with all the 
 loftiest attributes of mind and all the finer qualities 
 of emotion. It is thus hedged about in order 
 that its appeal may be universal ; that it may not 
 fail of fulfilment alike among those in whom the 
 carnal appetities are strong, and those of finer 
 fibre in whom the psychic qualities of love burn with 
 a white flame which blinds them to that other side 
 that otherwise might repel them. 
 
 So far we have dealt only with love that has
 
 248 LOVE AND MARRTAGE 
 
 found its fulfilment in union. We must, however, 
 recognise that there are lovers of both sexes to 
 whom, for one reason or another, that consumma- 
 tion is denied. Death may have intervened, or 
 some other insuperable obstacle may have made 
 marriage an impossibility. It is remarkable that, 
 though more male than female children are born, 
 by the tune adolescence is reached the disparity" 
 is on the other side and there are more women than 
 men. It is within the bounds of possibility for 
 every man to find a mate ; but this happiness is 
 denied to many million women, unless they are 
 prepared to share the affection of the same man 
 with some other woman. Polygamy may offer a 
 solution among the semi-civilised, but it will never 
 appeal to an educated and refined woman. 
 
 The disparity in the relative proportion of the 
 sexes, which has always existed, will be sharply 
 accentuated by the war, which has destroyed so 
 many of our finest young men. And it is a pathetic 
 fact, though only a small part of the harvest of 
 suffering which the war has brought to women, 
 that a large number of the girls of this generation, 
 well qualified by health, by character, and by in- 
 stinct to be the mothers of men, will for ever be 
 denied that ineffable joy. I never see a little 
 wooden cross, with its simple inscription, and 
 its heart-piercing " aged 22," without wondering 
 whether beneath it lies a face that to some soli- 
 tary, heart-broken girl was the face of an anger: 
 
 Love unfulfilled, or love incapable of fulfilment, 
 becomes love repressed ; and love repressed may 
 have strange consequences. In the case of a man
 
 LOVE REPRESSED 249 
 
 love repressed may endure for a long time until 
 the obstacles that hindered its fulfilment can be 
 overcome, and love can have its way. But more 
 often it fails to stand the corroding test of time, 
 and declines until it becomes nothing more to him 
 than a pleasant memory to be turned over in his 
 mind now and then, and dismissed with a shrug 
 of the shoulders. It does not usually produce any 
 change in his character except, perhaps, to make 
 him cynical. But, in a woman, love repressed or 
 denied the opportunity of fulfilling itself may have 
 a profound effect upon her character. 
 
 It may cause her to throw her energies into a 
 crusade ; to become the champion of the rights of 
 her sex, and to direct her physical and mental 
 energies into well-intentioned channels, sometimes 
 with misguided zeal. It must be a matter of satis- 
 faction to all right-thinking men that woman has 
 now got the vote. She has earned that privilege 
 nobly. But every physician knows that, to some 
 extent, the rabble of riotous women, clamouring 
 for their rights, which a few years ago made our 
 city streets the by-word and laughing-stock of 
 Europe was recruited from women suffering under 
 the disparity in the relative proportion of the sexes, 
 and the consequent repression of that sex-instinct 
 which underlies human love. And I have some- 
 times thought that the wild displays of unwomanly 
 violence, which stalwart policemen could not 
 control, would have died down at the touch of 
 the clinging arms of a little child, or the pressure of 
 an infant's warm lips upon the breast. 
 
 Be that as it may, the problem of the woman
 
 250 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 doomed to an obligatory spinsterhood is likely to 
 occupy considerable attention after the war. Many 
 of these women, as they have done in times past, 
 will spend themselves nobly in the service of others, 
 and will find in the care and love they can lavish 
 upon sick and crippled children in hospitals, homes, 
 and institutions an outlet for the divine mother- 
 feeling that, under happier circumstances, they 
 would pour out upon their own little ones. Others 
 will find occupation in the arena of business life. 
 The war has opened up many avenues filled with 
 new activities for women, and in these channels 
 they will expend the energies that otherwise might 
 have been employed in the rearing of a family. 
 Some anaemic shadow of the love they could hav 
 bestowed upon a husband they will devote to their- 
 work ; but even the most prosaic among them 
 will sometimes think of what might have been, 
 and occasionally turn over the fragrant rose-leaves 
 of old memories with a sigh that woman's crown 
 of glory has been denied them. 
 
 The opinion has been advanced not boldly and 
 openly as yet, though that may come that it 
 should be regarded as the inalienable right of every 
 woman, married or unmarried, to have one child 
 of her own. This is a plausible but most dangerous 
 doctrine. It is dangerous because it fails to recog- 
 nise the rights of the unborn child. The law might 
 be persuaded to remove its " birth's invidious bar," 
 but the child would be denied what it has the 
 moral right to have, the sacred influence of family 
 life and the possession of two recognised parents 
 equally responsible for its upbringing and guidance.
 
 WOMAN AND THE HOME 351 
 
 If such a proposal is ever made seriously, and 
 is regarded as coming within the sphere of practical 
 politics, it will be met with fierce opposition. The 
 strongest opposition will come, not from men, but 
 from women, married and unmarried. By instinct 
 and heredity women are idealists. They are ruled 
 by the " emotion of the ideal." Their social in- 
 stinct is a surer and a higher thing than man's. 
 The mother-heart in them teaches them to look 
 rather to* the welfare of the race than to their own 
 individual happiness. 
 
 With vision alert and clear they would see the 
 worm in the fruit, and would scornfully reject this 
 proffered boon if it meant that their child was to 
 be denied the privileges and amenities of a home 
 such as children born in wedlock would enjoy. 
 The home is the nursery of moral worth, and a 
 perfect home implies the co-operation of two 
 parents. Woman would see, with her marvellous 
 intuitive gift, that this social experiment would, 
 in its ultimate issue, be anti-social, and, as always, 
 she would decide to sacrifice herself, and her innate 
 desire for motherhood, rather than let the race 
 suffer. It is to woman that we owe the institu- 
 tion of the family. On foundations laid by her the 
 whole superstructure of social life has been estab- 
 lished. She saw the vision, and toiled to make 
 her vision a reality. Not lightly will she raise an 
 impious and destructive hand to tear down the 
 fabric she has striven to build, and has consecrated 
 with her suffering and tears. 
 
 Love is of God. It softens the asperities of life ; 
 it makes life possible, and ensures its continuance
 
 252 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 and protection. And though it is, at bottom, 
 intimately though unrecognised ly bound up with a 
 selfish desire for the physical continuance of one's 
 own being, it is the attribute of life which makes 
 the greatest demand upon the spirit of self-sacrifice 
 and self-abnegation. It is like a lily in the marsh. 
 Its roots are in the mire, its pure face is turned up 
 to heaven. The great Architect of the Universe 
 might have chosen some other means than the 
 fruition of love to ensure the continuance of human 
 life upon the earth. But so it has been decreed ; 
 and we frail creatures of the dust have reason to 
 be thankful that the mystery of life is so bound up 
 with the high sacrament of love. 

 
 WORK
 
 Man hath his daily work of body or mind 
 Appointed, which declares his dignity, 
 And the regard of Heaven on all his ways ; 
 While other animals inactive range." 
 
 Milton, " Paradise Lost. 
 
 3J4
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 WORK 
 
 MAN is by nature a creature of inertia, but of 
 necessity an energetic animal he works. There 
 are advocates of the mechanical theory of life who 
 regard the human body as nothing more than a 
 great and complex power-station for the conversion 
 of one form of energy into another, and for its 
 direction into new channels. Just as a fire cannot 
 burn without fuel, which it reduces to smoke, ashes 
 and heat, so no muscle can contract, no limb 
 move, no organ of the body discharge its function 
 without the coincident destruction of some portion 
 of organic material. 
 
 In its destruction this organic material is reduced 
 from complex to simpler forms, and in its descent 
 liberates the energy which was potential within it. 
 In order that the equilibrium of the organism may 
 be preserved, the material reserve of this potential 
 energy must be restored. It is made up by food, 
 by water, and from the oxygen of the air. Before 
 these constituents can be built up into the reserve- 
 stuff of energy they must undergo modifications in 
 the digestive and circulatory systems. When pro- 
 perly modified they are incorporated in the reserve- 
 
 233
 
 256 WORK 
 
 stuff of the organ which needs them, be it liver, 
 or heart, or muscle. They become an integral part 
 of the living tissue through which ultimately their 
 energy will express itself. The potential chemical 
 energy in the reserve-stuff of the tissues may differ 
 remarkably from that contained in the original 
 food-stuff. This building up and storing of reserves 
 of energy was called by Claude Bernard " Synthetic 
 Organisation." 
 
 " The organising synthesis," he says, " remains 
 internal, silent, hidden in its phenomenal expres- 
 sion, gathering noiselessly together the materials 
 which will be expended." 
 
 The wonderful cycle of phenomena in the genesis 
 of clouds and the fall of rain is a matter of common 
 knowledge. The sequence has already been de- 
 scribed in these pages : from sea to cloud ; from 
 cloud through dew or rain back to the sea once 
 more. But there is another succession of phe- 
 nomena equally wonderful, but much less known, 
 in which the sun also plays the master part. The 
 plant kingdom is the great builder up of energy, 
 which is liberated in the form of work by the 
 members of the animal kingdom. Through the 
 magic influence of the sun the chlorophyll of plants 
 can break up the carbonic-acid present in the 
 atmosphere, and store up the carbon in their 
 tissues. They can convert the inorganic into the 
 organic. No animal is able to do this, and in this 
 respect a man is less highly endowed than a blade 
 of grass. Without the vegetable kingdom animal 
 life would be impossible. All animals, man in- 
 cluded, feed directly or indirectly upon the carbon-
 
 fc SOLAR ENERGY 257 
 
 containing compounds elaborated by the plant 
 kingdom under the influence of the sun. And it is 
 through the animal kingdom that the energy 
 derived from the sun, and stored up by the vege- 
 table kingdom, is returned again to the cosmos. 
 Part of the energy is given back in the heat generated 
 by bodily activity ; part is consumed in work 
 done. All work done can be expressed in terms of 
 motion ; heat is nothing more than a mode of 
 motion ; and we must not forget that solar energy 
 comes to us as an undulatory motion in the ether 
 These facts, which have been determined scientifi- 
 cally, demonstrate the-* intimate harmony and 
 inter-dependence that exist between the different 
 parts of the Universe. When we remember that 
 only an infinitesimal fraction of the total energy 
 of the sun reaches our earth the actual figure is 
 
 jnmrrnn>TO th P art f its Ife^t and neat We mav 
 
 well wonder what undiscovered potentialities lie 
 hidden in the remainder ; and we can understand 
 that it is no mere empty superstition which has 
 made some men, in all ages, worship tfte sun as the 
 giver of life. 
 
 The elementary needs of man were probably 
 the first motives that drove him to work. These 
 elementary needs are still clamant, and with some 
 men are the sole impulses that drive them to exert 
 themselves. Man early discovered that food for 
 himself and his dependents, clothing to protect 
 them from the changes of the weather, and a roof 
 of some sort to cover them, could only be secured 
 by work. When man first appeared upon the earth 
 it is probable that he found ample food within easy
 
 238 WORK 
 
 reach. But later, as the number of men upon the 
 earth increased, the available supplies of food 
 would become less easy of access, and man would 
 become a hunter. Hunting, which is now a sport, 
 was in those days a form of labour, but withal a 
 form of labour rendered attractive by the element 
 of hazard it contained From the beginning man 
 has been a tiller of the ground. He would soon 
 discover that, by cultivation, he could increase the 
 available quantity of the fruits of the earth. Prob- 
 ably, at quite an early stage in his existence, he 
 took steps to grow in a little allotment which he 
 staked out round his dwelling those plants and 
 herbs which he had discovered would sustain him. 
 So by labouring he lessened his labours. He no 
 longer needed to forage far afield for vegetable 
 food. With a little prescient work he could make 
 it spring up at his own door. In exhibiting this 
 quality of careful prevision man distinguishes him- 
 self from other animals. We have already seen that 
 certain members of the animal kingdom lay up 
 stores of food, but no animal other than man by 
 labour prepares the ground, transfers to that ground 
 plants or seeds which he may have found at a dis- 
 tance, and tends, by watering and dressing, his 
 young crops, and waits for the fruits of his labour 
 to supply him with nourishment. Such work dis- 
 plays intelligence. Bees and squirrels are food- 
 hoarders by instinct, which is just a habit repeated 
 through a long series of generations until it becomes 
 transmitted by heredity. Man is a cultivator of 
 the ground, a labourer on the earth, and a hoarder 
 of food, because his intelligence gives him prevision.
 
 THE WONDERFUL NEEDLE 259 
 
 The second demand that drove man to labour 
 was the need of a covering to protect himself. Less 
 well furnished with a hairy covering than his nearest 
 animal relatives, he would be more likely to suffer 
 inconvenience from changes of weather. Leaves 
 and skins fastened loosely round him were probably 
 his earliest protection, and then on a wonderful 
 da either he or the woman who was his mate 
 invented a needle. Probably it was nothing more 
 than a sharpened piece of bone, such as the Esqui- 
 maux use to-day, with which he could pierce the 
 skins and lace them together with strands of vege- 
 table or animal fibre. No animal lower in the scale 
 than man has ever invented a tool so simple. Yet 
 what simple instrument is so pregnant with possi- 
 bilities as the needle ? The first sharpened piece 
 of bone driven through a hide by a primitive cave- 
 dweller made possible the evolution of the whole 
 world of dress, and laid the foundations of the 
 Rue de la Paix. 
 
 The first men probably sheltered in caves of the 
 earth, either found naturally, or excavated arti- 
 ficially "by the labour of their hands. The next 
 stage in the evolution of a dwelling-place was 
 probably the tent, extemporised by stretching be- 
 tween the branches of a tree skins from animals 
 killed in the day's chase by some hunter who, in the 
 pursuit of his quarry, had wandered far afield from 
 his cave and been overtaken by a storm. In pro- 
 cess of time the tent, an easily transportable form 
 of dwelling, would give place to a more elaborate 
 structure of earth and wood and stone, gathered 
 together with much effort, and erected with much 
 
 18
 
 260 WORK 
 
 thought and toil This was the prototype of the 
 modern dwelling. 
 
 At every stage man has made use of the accumu- 
 lated experience derived from his own earlier en- 
 deavours and failures, or from those of others, to 
 improve the work of his hands. In this he shows 
 how the possession of intelligence, memory, and 
 the power to design a plan and to work up to it 
 place him head and shoulders in the field of labour 
 above all other animals. 
 
 The birds, the bees, the mole, the beaver, are all 
 older creatures than man. Yet, so far as is known, 
 every bird builds precisety the same kind of nest 
 as its ancestors did at the beginning or, if there 
 are any changes, they are infinitesimal ; the bee 
 still constructs the same shape of cell; the mole 
 is content with the gallery that satisfied his fore- 
 fathers a million years ago, and the beaver has 
 invented no tool to make his wood-cutting easier, 
 and still builds the same kind of dam as his primeval 
 forebears. But man is never content with the re- 
 sult of his work. He is ever eager to improve 
 upon it ; to discover new methods of performing 
 it ; to invent instruments and tools which will 
 facilitate it. These things he does because his 
 labour is guided by intelligence, and not by instinct. 
 He has this great advantage over the lower crea- 
 tures : his predecessors have put on record, at first 
 by oral tradition, and later in writing, the means 
 they employed to achieve certain ends, and these 
 records are available for his study and instruction. 
 
 Were it not so, every man would, so far as labour 
 is concerned, be compelled to begin his struggle
 
 INVENTION HINDERS EVOLUTION 261 
 
 with the forces of nature at a point somewhat 
 antecedent to the stone age, and start discovering 
 everything for himself again. 
 
 It is a paradox that man, through his labour and 
 inventiveness, has retarded in some measure the 
 progress of his own evolution. The human hand is 
 a very wonderful instrument, capable of remarkable 
 adaptations, and of the finest co-ordinated move- 
 ments, as is demonstrated by any skilful violinist 
 or pianist. But man has hindered the further 
 evolution of the powers of his hands by inventing 
 tools and machinery. In the same way he has 
 hindered or interfered with the higher evolution of 
 the eye by the invention of magnifying glasses and 
 the microscope. He has also limited, except in the 
 case of a few trained athletes who have specially 
 developed their powers of locomotion, his speed of 
 movement by making use of animals such as the 
 horse, or machines such as the bicycle, the train, 
 and the motor-car to convey him from place to 
 place ; and by the building of boats he has limited 
 his capacity as a swimmer. Thus, by the use of 
 his intelligence, and the products of his inventive- 
 ness and toil he has unwittingly put a brake upon 
 his own physical evolution ; but in doing so he has 
 achieved what would have been impossible for 
 him, however highly his structural and functional 
 evolution might have progressed. 
 
 Once man had succeeded in supplying his primi- 
 tive needs for food, shelter, and clothing he advanced 
 a stage, and became more or less of a specialist. 
 As communities grew, certain duties would be 
 delegated to certain individuals. The hewers of
 
 26a WORK 
 
 wood and drawers of water, the cultivators of the 
 soil, and the house-builders would be recruited from 
 among those of the tribe to whom the hazardous 
 adventures of the chase made no appeal. And from 
 these small beginnings there gradually grew up our 
 present system whereby a workman chooses his 
 occupation or his trade and devotes his activity to 
 that, and to that alone. 
 
 When we analyse the work which engages so much 
 of human activities, and push our inquiries down 
 to root-principles, we discover that an enormous 
 proportion of it consists of little more than the 
 removal of matter from one part of the earth's 
 surface, and its transference to another. In the 
 process it may be subjected to the operations of 
 intelligence, as when cotton grown in South America 
 is brought to Lancashire, and woven into fabrics. 
 But in all work, in which our physical rather than 
 our mental functions play the chief part, we are 
 little more than hod-carriers. But when we con- 
 sider the arts we find that in his work man may 
 become a creator. He hews a piece of marble into 
 a beautiful statue, and thereby expresses an idea ; 
 or with brush and colours he paints a vision of his 
 dreams. Or he erects a beautiful building, so 
 exquisitely designed, so well-proportioned, and so 
 perfect in every detail that it is a palace of art. 
 This is creative work ; and we find the same germ 
 of creative activity in every newly- invented machine. 
 So that though man's work begins on the level of 
 the beasts of burden, it ends somewhere in the 
 skies. 
 
 Man and society are so constituted that work is
 
 WORK A DUTY 263 
 
 a duty. It is a duty which man owes to himself 
 and to humanity. To himself because happiness 
 lies in the line of congenial work, and to humanity 
 because it is incumbent upon every one to contri- 
 bute something to the common welfare, and not to 
 be a parasite. 
 
 This is an ugly word, and may have a sinister 
 meaning. It has been applied by red-hot would-be 
 demagogues to all who do not work with their 
 hands. Such orators usually harangue their audi- 
 ences with their own hands concealed behind their 
 backs. 
 
 But the designation of work cannot legitimately 
 be restricted to manual labour alone. The man 
 who works with his brain is not a parasite, nor is 
 the capitalist who imagines, and plans and sinks 
 his wealth in some great enterprise in which the 
 actual labour is performed by other hands than his 
 own. Parasites on human society are not many ; 
 and they are to be pitied, for they never know the 
 joy of work. 
 
 A congenial occupation, in which a man has scope 
 for the exhibition and development of his own 
 character is, however hard the actual work may 
 be, capable of affording him the highest pleasure. 
 But the work must be suited to his capacity and 
 such as he can take a pride in. The tilling of the 
 ground is among the humblest, as it is the most 
 ancient, of occupations. But what joy can be ex- 
 tracted from it by all who love a garden ! It is a 
 lesson in the infinite and soulful possibilities of the 
 lowly task, to be shown round his garden by a 
 gardener who loves every inch o| soil in it ; who
 
 264 WORK 
 
 knows the potentialities of that corner for the 
 growth of roses ; of that patch of light and sandy 
 soil for his geraniums ; and of that furrow for his 
 potatoes. Such a man takes a pride in his task ; 
 he extracts joy from it ; he ceases to be a labourer 
 and becomes an artist, for love sanctifies and 
 ennobles lowly things. 
 
 Any one who is unfortunate enough to be chained 
 to an uncongenial occupation is to be pitied. If 
 he has no love for the work he is engaged upon it 
 becomes an intolerable burden, and, having become 
 a burden, it tends to react upon his character, and 
 make him slack, inattentive and careless. Occa- 
 sionally he may extract some satisfaction from his 
 unloved task if, by chance, one day he has performed 
 it well. For all work, if done well, may produce a 
 feeling akin to joy in the doer of it. 
 
 This is a truism which every school-boy can con- 
 firm. The biographies of eminent men afford us 
 many examples of the torture of the uncongenial 
 task. One need only recall Burns, and his work as 
 a revenue officer. His soul was sometimes in the 
 skies with the singing birds, while his nose and eyes 
 were hunting for smuggled brandy and illicit stills. 
 He was a great lyric poet ; but, because he hated 
 the task, a very indifferent gauger. The psychical 
 distaste to an uncongenial task may react physio- 
 logically, and it has been proved by experimental 
 observation that the same person will perform a 
 greater amount of work in a given time when 
 occupied on a task which may not necessarily be 
 easy, but which is attractive, than upon a task of 
 a similar kind for which he has no liking. Work
 
 REST AND WORK 265 
 
 unloved becomes drudgery, and drudgery is the 
 task of slaves. 
 
 On physiological grounds it is necessary that 
 periods of work should be interrupted by periods 
 of repose. Even machinery, capable as it is of 
 being driven at full pressure almost indefinitely until 
 it wears out, runs better and lasts longer if it is 
 granted occasional seasons of rest. And though the 
 human mechanism is capable of carrying on its 
 work in an emergency for a time much greater 
 than usual, a point comes at which, through exhaus- 
 tion, the tired body is unable to continue discharging 
 energy any longer. The reserve-stuff of energy is 
 almost all used up ; the muscles, and brain and 
 circulating blood are engorged with poisonous by- 
 products, "produced in the body by the consumption 
 of the reserve-stuff, and until rest, and sleep, and 
 food can be obtained the body refuses to do any 
 more work. During rest and sleep the poisonous 
 by-products are collected and eliminated through 
 various channels ; and food supplies the organism 
 with potential energy which, after digestion and 
 assimilation, is stored up as chemical energy ready 
 at need to be converted once more into work. 
 
 Long before the extreme stage of exhaustion 
 above described is reached, fatigue of a lesser degree 
 has existed. Before exhaustion is great enough 
 to be actually felt by the worker it is sufficiently 
 advanced to interfere with his work. Careful ex- 
 periments have been carried out which serve to 
 demonstrate this. It has been found, for instance, 
 that a worker engaged on a purely mechanical and 
 frcqutntly repeated operation can turn out a
 
 266 WORK 
 
 certain number of complete articles, in, let us say, 
 a period of two consecutive hours; but if, at the 
 end of forty-five minutes, he is allowed a rest of a 
 quarter of an hour, he will turn out a larger number 
 of the completed articles in the second forty-five 
 minutes than he did in the second hour, and this, 
 although at the end of the two consecutive hours 
 of work he was unaware of any sensation of fatigue. 
 
 It is therefore evident that fatigue is an insidious 
 thing, and begins much earlier than its sensation 
 appears. But it may be recovered from rapidly if 
 suitable periods of rest are allowed. In many of 
 our munition factories careful studies are being 
 made regarding work and fatigue, and when the 
 observations are duly collated and examined it will 
 be possible to make large deductions, of wide prac- 
 tical import, which, if applied, will make for a 
 revolution in labour conditions, and for the increased 
 efficiency and happiness of the workers. There is 
 a very fine adjustment between the nervous system 
 and the muscular system. It is something more 
 than a mere " afferent stimulus efferent impulse " 
 sequence. There is a psychic element, as that com- 
 manding officer well knew who got the last ounce 
 of effort out of his wearied soldiers by means of a 
 tin whistle. Men or women who sing at their work 
 usually increase rather than diminish their activity, 
 for emotion or memory stirred by song brings the 
 higher psychic realm into more intimate touch 
 with the lower psychic realm, and together they 
 hasten the discharge of nervous energy to the ex- 
 pectant muscles. 
 
 It is frequently said that change of occupation is
 
 CHANGE OF OCCUPATION 267 
 
 rest. The aphorism embodies only a half-truth. 
 Like all general statements of the kind, it requires 
 some qualification. If carried too far it may prove 
 to be a dangerous doctrine. It will at once be under- 
 stood that to change from one form of activity to 
 another, in which the same group of muscles is 
 involved, is not rest. A soldier, who is fatigued 
 by trench- digging, would not look upon a change 
 of occupation, to the somewhat lighter task of a 
 route-march, as much relaxation. Ivfor would it 
 be, as many of the muscles called into play are the 
 same. But a complete change of activity, a change, 
 let us say, from the use of the muscles to the work 
 of the brain, is a rest of a kind. 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone turned, as was his wont, 
 from the political conflicts in which he was em- 
 broiled, to writing articles on theological subjects, 
 or to the study of Homer, he was indulging in a 
 change of occupation. But he was using much the 
 same faculties in both pursuits. When, however, 
 he abandoned his study for the woods and took 
 to felling trees he was giving his intellect a com- 
 plete rest. But, whatever his occupation, he was 
 using up some of the " reserve- stuff " of energy, 
 and in doing so was producing in his system toxic 
 by-products, the smoke and ashes of all work, 
 which required to be eliminated from the system. 
 So that though one set of organs might be given a 
 rest by his employment of another set, those organs 
 of the body which have to do with elimination 
 were kept working at high pressure all the while, 
 In the course of their functional activity these 
 organs also use up the reserve-stuff of energy, and
 
 268 WORK 
 
 consume nervous energy as well, so it is obvious 
 that there are better ways of resting than to change 
 the kind or direction of one's activities. 
 
 Every man should have a hobby, and his hobby 
 should be chosen with care. It should, as far as 
 possible, be some form of activity separated by a 
 wide gap from his ordinary occupation. For in- 
 stance, a clergyman should not choose reading as 
 his hobby ; he would be better occupied with golf. 
 That a hobby may be of greatest value to its devotee 
 it should take him into a new atmosphere, mental, 
 and, if possible, physical as well. It should never 
 exhaust him, nor should it be such as will deflect 
 all his love from his ordinary work. Rath^er should 
 it send him back to his daily occupation with 
 faculties brightened, enthusiasm kindled, and his 
 whole being refreshed. If it does none of these 
 things a hobby becomes a hindrance instead of a 
 help, and should be given up. 
 
 " The dignity of labour " is a catch- word that is 
 frequently employed, and the phrase embodies a 
 great truth which has not yet adequately been 
 appreciated. For what is labour ? It is the ex- 
 penditure of energy. We have already seen that 
 all the energy incorporated in the living organism 
 is derived from the sun. The plant gathers it 
 the animal kingdom expends it. To man is given 
 the right and the power of spending what portion 
 of this wealth comes to him, with intelligence. 
 Through him it returns to the cosmos. It is there- 
 fore his duty to guard against degrading this energy, 
 or dissipating it too prodigally upon unworthy ends. 
 Some degradation and some dissipation of energy
 
 A TRUST FOR THE UNIVERSE 269 
 
 it is impossible to avoid ; but if man will only real- 
 ise that in using energy, which he cannot create, 
 he is holding a trust for the Universe, his work, 
 whatever it may be, will assume a dignity that it 
 lacked before. Looked at in this way, which is 
 physically and physiologically the right way, the 
 humblest task is clothed with new responsibilities. 
 It becomes part of the great world-order, and honest 
 work is sacrosanct. 
 
 This conception of work entails a readjustment 
 of values. We come to recognise that the clergy- 
 man, the teacher, the writer, the poet, the man of 
 law, and the physician are in a true sense as much 
 labourers as the man who earns his living with pick 
 and shovel. The clergyman, the teacher, the 
 writer, and the poet each in his own way repays the 
 world-order for his consumption of energy by his 
 loyalty to the ideal. The loftier the ideals pro- 
 claimed to the world the more earnest becomes the 
 purpose of those who mould their lives by them, 
 and no man of serious purpose willingly shirks his 
 task. Ideals make for the genuineness of work, 
 and genuine work economises the stores of cosmic 
 energy. 
 
 The physician, by his work, justifies his consump- 
 tion of world-energy by protecting and saving the 
 lives of others, by making them efficient, by teach- 
 ing them the way of health and the healthiest 
 man does the best work. The man of law makes 
 conditions of work possible. So it is seen that all 
 humanity is bound up in a great confederation of 
 energy-users, engaged -in the common task of 
 spending to the best advantage the wealth o| solar
 
 270 WORK 
 
 power they have indirectly acquired from the giver 
 of light. Take the labourer, the man at the bottom 
 of the pyramid, out of it, and the structure collapses. 
 Take out any body of men from the higher levels, 
 and the efficiency of the others suffers. All are 
 co-partners in a sacred trust. 
 
 If life did not offer the opportunity of work it 
 would lose half its charm. Men would soon grow 
 tired of sitting with folded hands, and the world 
 would become a place of misery. 
 
 For work is a great source of happiness, and the 
 bringer of measureless solace to mankind. The 
 conditions of it occasionally give rise to sharp 
 dissatisfaction, but congenial work done honestly 
 and to the best of one's ability makes for content- 
 ment. And though a restless ambition is a great 
 asset, a contented mind is immeasurable wealth. 
 This is one of the rewards of him who works Its 
 price is above rubies, and it cannot be purchased 
 with gold. All work has the power of bringing 
 contentment to man ; some work brings him joy. 
 Work through which he can express his spirit is 
 creative, and in so far as a man feels that he is, 
 in the discharge of his task, a co-worker with the 
 Infinite, he tastes of the cup of joy. 
 
 He is a poor creature whose only aim in work is 
 his own sustenance and comfort, or the accumulation 
 of wealth. He is false to the world-trust in which 
 he shares. His work is worthiest who consciously 
 or unconsciously does service to humanity, be he 
 drain-layer, navvy, or lawgiver. The service of 
 humanity should be the goal of all work. The 
 civilisation to which we are heirs is the fruit of age-
 
 HONEST WORK 271 
 
 long effort and much labour consecrated to lofty 
 ideals. It is our duty to improve that heritage for 
 those who are to follow us ; to leave the world a 
 healthier, happier, cleaner, and more wholesome 
 place than we found it a place in which life will 
 have fewer asperities and ampler opportunities. 
 These things may be accomplished by work, if the 
 aim of the worker is high. 
 
 Happy is the man who comes to his task each 
 morning with a singing heart, and who has learned 
 that the humblest worker becomes a mighty crafts- 
 man when his soul speaks through his labour. The 
 honesty of workmanship is an acid-test of character. 
 Alone, amid the eternal flux of things, the honest 
 work endures ; and if man had no other immor- 
 tality to look to he might find one along the line 
 of his daily duties.
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 RELIGION 
 
 273
 
 " There is nothing on earth that does not show either the 
 wretchedness of man, or the mercy of God ; either the weak- 
 ness of man without God, or the strength of man with God." 
 Blaise Pascal, " Penstes." 
 
 " All tended to mankind, 
 And, man produced, all has its end thus far : 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 A tendency to God." 
 
 Browning, " Paracelsus."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN : RELIGION 
 
 LIFE without labour and without love would be 
 incomplete ; without religion it would be hopeless 
 and desolate. Professor Drummond used to say 
 that the special charm of Millet's picture "The 
 Angelus " consisted in its combination and repre- 
 sentation of these three attributes of human life: 
 love, the man and the woman ; labour, the hoe, 
 the barrow, and the cultivated earth ; and religion, 
 the distant village spire, and the attitude of devo- 
 tion of the figures, called into the presence of the 
 Eternal by the sound of the evening bell. Together 
 these things give life beauty, purpose, and solemnity. 
 Rob life of one of them, and it suffers ; rob it of 
 all, and it becomes a pitiable derelict. 
 
 Religion is that part of a man's mental life 
 which tries to envisage God, which stimulates him 
 to seek to know the Power that rules the Universe, 
 and to recognise therein a Spirit to whom he owes 
 fealty and affection, and a Father whom he may 
 dare to trust, to worship and to love. But a pro- 
 perly balanced religion should have another side : 
 it should embrace both God and man. 
 
 A man's faith should teach him to love his fellow- 
 ig 275
 
 276 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 men, and to have confidence in the future of 
 humanity. Religion is the atmosphere of the 
 soul, and the benevolent mother of character. 
 
 For some people the practice of their religion is 
 nothing more than the punctilious observance of a 
 code of good manners. To them duty is an obliga- 
 tion only in so far as it is socially expedient, and 
 ideals mean no more than the society ambitions of 
 their set. They have never felt the flame of a 
 God-directed aspiration burn within them. A social 
 faux pas troubles them more than a breach of the 
 moral law, and the dread of social ostracism is 
 more to them than the fear of eternal punishment. 
 
 Religion being the tie which binds man to the 
 Highest, or the atmosphere of the soul within which 
 he seeks to worship God. it is right that we should 
 inquire how he first acquired his conception of the 
 divine and became a theist. The mystery was 
 revealed to him progressively, and at first along 
 three natural channels. God is invariably Sjlf- 
 consistent, and made use of secondary channels for 
 this revelation as for all other manifestations of His 
 power. He chose to speak through the voices of 
 nature ; to make use of man's affections, operating 
 through his love and veneration for his dead ; to 
 sanctify conscience, converting it from a rudi- 
 mentary tribal instinct into His witness in the 
 soul. 
 
 Man had within him a capacity for understand- 
 ing, and Nature spoke her message into his aston- 
 ished ear. The whisper of the wind in the dark 
 and forlorn aisles of the forest, the uncanny earth- 
 voices audible in lonely places, the roar and thunder
 
 THE MESSAGE OF NATURE 277 
 
 of the sea, the cataclysms of Nature, the earth- 
 quake, the lightning and the thunder spoke with an 
 awe-inspiring message to man. These things must 
 be the manifestations of some Power mightier than 
 himself ; there must be invisible creatures gods ; 
 spirits of evil power, spirits possibly beneficent. 
 Some may be inclined to doubt that any revelation 
 came through this lowly channel, but who among 
 us has not heard the voice of Nature, which is a 
 tone of the voice of God, speaking to us in the beauty 
 of flowers, the lonely grandeur of mountain peaks, 
 or the wizard music of the sea ? We correct our 
 impressions by the experience won from the fuller 
 revelation in our souls. The primitive savage was 
 not ready for that larger revelation, and did not 
 fully understand, so the phenomena which should 
 have taught him to love and worship taught him 
 to fear as well. We cannot lightly dismiss the fact 
 that in all ages the message of Nature has won its 
 way into the heart of man. The philosophers, the 
 theologians, the poets, and the artists consciously 
 and unconsciously have interpreted that message 
 as the voice of God. From the prophet Job and 
 the psalmist David down to the present day men 
 have recognised in the voices and beauty of Nature 
 a witness to the Highest, and there are few to 
 whom its appeal has not come with an insistent 
 force, that was something more awe-compelling 
 than mere emotion stirred by hearing or sight. 
 More than any modern poet Wordsworth had a 
 soul attuned to catch the whisper and the message 
 of Nature's God-revealing harmonies. Who cannot 
 say with him ?
 
 278 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 " I have flt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air. 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
 And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise 
 In nature, and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being." 
 
 Another line along which revelation came was 
 man's veneration for his dead. As early as the 
 neolithic age he had begun to conclude that death 
 did not mean annihilation, but that man after 
 death went on to another existence where he had 
 need of some of the things that had served him on 
 earth. So there arose the custom of burying with 
 the dead food for his journey into the land of the 
 Immortals, and weapons and other objects which 
 might be of use to him there. This was a long step 
 forward, for the belief had in it the nucleus of all 
 subsequent faith in the destiny of man ; and under 
 the influence of the teaching of Christ there evolved 
 from this elementary conception the confident assur- 
 ance that the souls of the righteous go home to 
 God. 
 
 The third agent in this slowly unfolding revela- 
 tion was conscience. Of recent years an attempt
 
 CONSCIENCE 279 
 
 has been made to reduce conscience from its long- 
 recognised position as the voice of the Universal 
 Father within the heart of man, to a mere herd 
 instinct or clan spirit. Possibly it may have arisen 
 in some.such form of loyalty. A man's conscience 
 blamed him when he was guilty of any act that 
 might work disaster upon or be prejudicial to a 
 member of his own tribe, or approved of his action 
 when he had done something from which the tribe 
 or clan might derive advantage. But any one who 
 reads history aright, and observes not only the 
 social but moral development of a people, must 
 admit that the primitive characteristics or faculties 
 of a people are capable of being sublimed into some- 
 thing much loftier than the elementary attributes 
 from which they originated. Among civilised people 
 the narrow clan spirit or tribal instinct has long 
 ago died down. In one direction its place is taken 
 by patriotism, which is a clan spirit that embraces 
 one's own country. In another direction its place 
 is taken by conscience which no one would con- 
 fuse with patriotism, as it operates in a field into 
 which patriotism rarely obtrudes except in time of 
 war. 
 
 Nowadays the promptings of conscience are no 
 longer an atavistic trait, but the response of all 
 that is best in man to the voice of the Eternal. What 
 man is there who has not experienced the remorse 
 of conscience ? and, knowing it, does not recognise 
 in it something infinitely higher and more soul- 
 searching than mere regret for disloyalty to his 
 herd ? &9 
 
 It is a matter of interest to note how Nature,
 
 28o THE REVELATION DF GOD TO MAN 
 
 which, as we have seen, is one of the agents of reve- 
 lation, co-operates with and reinforces conscience, 
 another agent. 
 
 The poets have emphasised this over and over 
 again : 
 
 " The thief doth fear each bush an officer " ; 
 
 and : 
 
 " When the deed was done 
 I heard among the solitary hills 
 Low breathings coming after me, and sounds 
 Of undistinguishable motion, steps 
 Almost as silent as the turf they trod." 
 
 This is the eternal story : the forces of Nature are 
 used to drive home a moral lesson. 
 
 Along these three channels, therefore, there came 
 to man some revelation of God. He was unable 
 to grasp the whole truth and his feet were prone to 
 err, so that he wandered into the by-paths of super- 
 stition and superstitious practice. In this he was 
 aided by the thaumaturgists, or wonder-workers 
 men a little cleverer and a little less scrupulous 
 than their fellows, who saw in man's gropings after 
 God nothing of nobility, but simply an opportunity 
 to establish their own prestige and give them 
 ascendancy over their dupes. But, in spite of all 
 human distortions and all human accretions fas- 
 tened upon it, the stream of revelation held on its 
 way. 
 
 The Jewish race has always been famous for its 
 intellectual gifts, for its imagination, its intuition, 
 and its receptivity. It has a peculiar genius for 
 religion, so it is little to be wondered at that it first
 
 IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE 281 
 
 intercepted the full stream of the revelation and 
 recognised it for what it was. It proclaimed with 
 no uncertain voice that there is one God, and one 
 God only. It brooked no minor deities. This 
 unique people, gifted with extraordinary spiritual 
 insight, had among it certain men of richer intellect 
 and higher spirituality who were absolutely con- 
 vinced that through the voices of Nature and 
 in the secret chambers of their hearts they 
 heard the voice of God speaking to them. They 
 did not hesitate to declare their message, at- 
 tributing it definitely to its source with the words, 
 " And the Lord said." They were men attuned to 
 the Infinite. A piano-wire tuned to the note of 
 " C in alt," or to any other note, and stretched 
 across a room, will vibrate in harmony when that 
 note is struck upon a piano ; and the mind of man 
 in tune with the Divine Mind, will catch the whispers 
 of God's voice to which other men are deaf. 
 
 Among the Jews, for the first time in human 
 history, morality and religion were definitely linked 
 together. In this, Judaism presents a most striking 
 contrast to the pagan religions of ancient Greece 
 and Rome. The Greeks and Romans were poly- 
 theists ; their numerous gods and goddesses were 
 superhuman creatures with human passions and 
 lusts abnormally exaggerated. They were gods 
 without morals as we understand the term, and as 
 a consequence the religion of their followers, except 
 in a few cases, was completely divorced from 
 morality. It is strange that a people so highly 
 cultured as the ancient Greeks could have taken 
 a delight in and worshipped such gods. But with
 
 282 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 some, like Socrates and Plato, the religion they 
 practised was infinitely higher than the gods they 
 worshipped ; and once and again a sculptor with 
 a vision of the divine would try to capture his dream 
 and imprison it in marble or hi bronze, and in 
 Greek art, Greek sculpture, Greek poetry, and Greek 
 philosophy, rather than in Grecian mythology, we 
 catch a glimpse of God. 
 
 Revelation was progressive, but it was infinitely 
 slow ; so slow that even a child might follow it. 
 But even then, man with his inborn, capacity for 
 error was perpetually wandering off, as he still con- 
 tinues to do, into bypaths of unbelief. It is a proof 
 of the confidence of the Eternal in His revelation 
 that He chose to make it through natural channels 
 rather than by the super-normal. He knew that 
 men would come to the truth in time. He had 
 endowed them with intelligence, the weapon which 
 had helped them to establish their ascendancy in 
 the animal world, and He was prepared to wait 
 till, through the proper exercise of that gift in the 
 interpretation of the evidence afforded them, they 
 should at last grasp the secret. He knew His 
 creatures ; knew how they would err and stumble, 
 but knew also that only that is immeasurably 
 precious to man which he has won by struggle. 
 
 The consummation of the revelation to man 
 came in the person of Jesus Christ. In Him we find 
 at their loftiest and best all the highest qualities 
 of humanity, with none of the degrading elements 
 of evil that are a part of the personality of ordinary 
 men. He showed to what a height of perfection 
 human nature might be raised. He was possessed
 
 THE CHRIST 283 
 
 of a dauntless courage, which faltered only once, 
 and then but for a moment. His soul was aflame 
 with a white-hot anger against evil wherever found ; 
 but this was tempered by a large charity that pro- 
 ceeded from a divine understanding and an infinite 
 power of compassion. 
 
 He went about doing good ; lived an absolutely 
 blameless life ; was able to resist the most subtle 
 temptations ; was betrayed by one of His disciples ; 
 was shamefully put to death by the Romans at the 
 instigation of the Jews ; was laid in the tomb, and 
 rose on the third day from the dead, and ascended, 
 as "the beloved physician," St. Luke, has put on 
 record, from the summit of the Mount of Olives 
 in a cloud into the infinite expanse of the heavens. 
 He was born of a simple Syrian maid the wife of 
 a village carpenter ; He claimed to be the Son of 
 God. 
 
 Such, in briefest outline, is the story of the most 
 remarkable Personality the world has ever known. 
 The tale is so wonderful, and the mysteries asso- 
 ciated with it are so great, that in all ages there 
 have been men who have not hesitated to affirm 
 that the whole thing is a myth ; or that, if there 
 ever was a man called Jesus, he was nothing more 
 than a simple village lad suffering from delusions of 
 grandeur. 
 
 A myth ! An idle tradition ! A delusion ! No 
 myth or delusion ever bore such rare fruit ; no idle 
 tradition was ever pregnant with such enduring 
 realities. If the story were not true, or the claim 
 a lie, it would long ago have been cast into the 
 rubbish-heap, and have ceased to influence the
 
 284 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 lives of men. But to-day, after the lapse of nine- 
 teen hundred years, the influence of Christ and 
 His teaching is infinitely greater than it was at the 
 time of His crucifixion. 
 
 He made no attempt to establish a kingdom by 
 might. All He left to the world were a handful 
 of simple doctrines ; a little collection of parables ; 
 a few beatitudes, praising meekness, compassion, 
 purity, and the peaceful spirit, promising comfort 
 to the mourner, and offering hope to those ambitious 
 for the good and the right ; a simple but sacra- 
 mental love-feast, and the priceless example of an 
 immaculate life. He was poor ; of lowly circum- 
 stances ; no seeker after power ; with no reputation 
 in His life-time that extended beyond the confines 
 of a little corner of Palestine ; but He has conquered 
 the world. 
 
 In their day and generation Alexander the Great, 
 Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte were men of 
 wide renown conquerors who, by the might of the 
 sword, trampled the nations underfoot. To their 
 contemporaries they must have seemed individuals 
 of tremendous importance. But what influence 
 has any one of them had upon the lives of the 
 generation now living ? In the 'eternal scale of 
 truth it could be counter-balanced by a hair. But 
 the life of this obscure and " deluded " Nazarene 
 has altered the whole of history. It has done 
 infinitely more than that : it has leavened all 
 human thought, permeated all literature, all philo- 
 sophy, all poetry, and touched with the beauty of 
 holiness innumerable human lives which, but for 
 their devotion to His person, and their conformity
 
 THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY 285 
 
 to His example, would have been sordid and worth- 
 less. It has been the fount of all the loftiest ideals, 
 and the source of an irrefragable hope. Such things 
 do not flow from myths ; they are the offspring of 
 inscrutable mysteries. 
 
 One of the most remarkable features of Chris- 
 tianity is that it creates an atmosphere which influ- 
 ences even those who profess no allegiance to the 
 person of Christ. Every hospital in England, and 
 every institution for the help of the distressed, is 
 a perpetual witness to this fact. 
 
 Many philanthropists who make no profession of 
 Christianity imagine that their charity is a product 
 of civilised humanitarianism. But unconsciously 
 they have been quickened to pity for their fellow- 
 men by the spirit of social service which was first 
 taught by Christ. Nowadays we hear much of the 
 social gospel and the gospel of humanity. These 
 are, in their way, excellent things ; but they owe 
 all that is in them of nobility and any gospel they 
 embody to the life and work of the Crucified. He 
 was the first socialist, and the first positivist. He 
 taught the equality of man, and showed the heights 
 to which human nature could be sublimed. 
 
 There is much in the life of Christ and His Death 
 and Resurrection that is enveloped in mystery. 
 But these are the mysteries of faith, and as we are 
 ready to accept in the ordinary walks of existence 
 so much that we can neither understand nor ex- 
 plain such, for example, as the miracle of our own 
 conscious life it is illogical to reject, or shrink from 
 accepting, because of their incomprehensibility, 
 mysteries which have produced results so real and
 
 286 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 tangible. No ardent and practised climber would 
 think much of a mountain which did not present 
 him with some difficult crags to scale, and some 
 deep and abysmal crevasses to bridge before he 
 could stand in amazed and ravished wonder on its 
 summit. So it would seem that the enigmas of the 
 Christian religion are set there to test our courage 
 and our faith, and to make of life no colourless and 
 uninspiring ramble along a level road, but a high 
 and soul- testing adventure. 
 
 To be of service to a man his religion should be 
 one to which his intellect can give assent. This 
 does not necessarily exclude that mystical quality 
 without which no religion can exist, but it keeps it 
 from drifting into superstition and superstitious 
 practice. Nor does it exclude the miraculous. A 
 miracle is something, surpassing reason, which hap- 
 pens or is wrought in apparent opposition to the 
 recognised laws of nature. We must recognise that 
 the so-called laws of nature are the lines along 
 which God usually acts. The Maker of the law can 
 suspend the operation of the law, and so work a 
 miracle. It is sometimes said that the age of 
 miracles is past. This may be so if we confine the 
 miraculous to phenomena that are purely physical ; 
 but miracles are still being wrought daily in the 
 secrecy of human hearts. 
 
 None but a bigot will deny that religion is a far 
 bigger thing than churches and creeds. Most 
 Churches lay claim to a special vested interest in 
 God. How the Infinite must laugh at the arrogance 
 and effrontery of His children ! Some people 
 imagine, indeed they have been taught, that He
 
 CREEPS AND DOGMAS 287 
 
 can best be worshipped within the confines of some 
 building specially consecrated for the purpose. It 
 is meet and orderly that there should be such 
 places for worship Christ Himself worshipped in 
 the Temple but God does not necessarily dwell 
 there, and He may be approached and found quite 
 as readily under the great vault of the open sky. 
 More men have come face to face with God in the 
 silent cloisters of their own hearts than ever found 
 Him beneath the stone arches of a Gothic cathedral. 
 That a beautiful Gothic cathedral may stir the 
 emotions must be admitted ; but such stirring of 
 the emotions ought not to be interpreted either as 
 religion or worship. It may serve as an acolyte for 
 both. 
 
 Such buildings, with beautiful music and the rare 
 light filtering through stained glass, create an at- 
 mosphere ; and for some people a proper atmosphere 
 is a necessary concomitant of the act of worship. 
 
 Creeds and dogmas are a necessary part of re- 
 ligion ; but we cannot lock the Infinite within the 
 chambers of any creed, however comprehensive. 
 Still, a creed is a necessity to prevent belief trickling 
 away into the morass of loose thinking. Dogmas 
 serve the same purpose. Many of them undergo 
 modification in process of time. Only those endure 
 which embody an element of hope ; the rest tend 
 to slip into desuetude and decay. 
 
 The religion practised by a majority of our 
 soldiers is one in which dogma has little place. 
 They have a simple, rough-hewn creed of their own, 
 which has not yet been reduced to the cold phrase- 
 ology of written language. There are many excep-
 
 288 THE REVELATION OF GOD TO MAN 
 
 tions, but for most soldiers religion consists in doing 
 the straight thing, in never going back on a pal, 
 in being a " white man " ready to deny and sacri- 
 fice oneself, even lay down one's life, for another, 
 with no special thought of God at all. And yet, 
 to limit their religion to these simple but heroic 
 practices is to do them an injustice. Though they 
 may not recognise it, and may not be prepared to 
 acknowledge it, all this self-abnegation and kxfty 
 altruism is a ray caught from the cross. 
 
 Religion is not something to be clutched at with 
 despairing hands, like a piece of flotsam, when the 
 waters of affliction tend to overwhelm one, but an 
 attitude of mind, an orientation of soul to be 
 cultivated sedulously so that a man may walk with 
 unbowed head through all the storms of life stayed 
 by a glad confidence in the eternal justice and 
 enduring love of God. Rightly practised, religion 
 is one of the chief factors in moral development, 
 and without morality social progress becomes an 
 impossibility. It acts upon moral development 
 from without by establishing a standard of conduct 
 that makes for good ; but its chief effects flow from 
 its leavening influence within the heart of the indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Man's spiritual nature is the highest expression 
 of his personality, and his religion is the atmosphere 
 in which it flourishes best. That form of faith which 
 makes a man the best citizen is the religion for 
 him. It should help him to live in the atmosphere 
 of the ideal, quickening him to compassion, filling 
 him with a cheerful godliness and an unflinching 
 faith in the future.
 
 A MAN'S FAITH 289 
 
 It should broaden his outlook and enlarge his 
 horizon. Only when it becomes confused with a 
 warping and rigid sectarianism does a man's faith nar- 
 row him. There is a type of religion which makes a 
 speciality of the morose and impales every simple 
 human pleasure on the spear-point of an isolated 
 text. This is not Christianity, but the base coin 
 of some lesser currency. The religion taught by 
 Christ does not offer us position or wealth, but 
 opportunities of service, and in loyal service no 
 man fails of his reward. It makes a sacrament of 
 the lowly task, it lightens the dark corners of the 
 road, and turns the wayside pools into rich wine. 
 It breathes into the soul the spirit of charity ; and 
 of charity the world has sore need, for every man 
 carries his own load, every woman her own burden, 
 and the road is uphill.
 
 THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH 
 
 20 291
 
 My task accomplished and the long day done 
 My wages taken, and in my heart 
 Some late lark singing, 
 Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 
 The sundown splendid and serene, 
 Death." 
 
 W. E. Henley, " Margarita Sorori. 
 
 29*
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH 
 
 WITH the gift of life there comes to all living crea- 
 tures a desire to continue to live. Among human 
 beings this desire is only lost when they are plunged 
 in the abyss of despair, and can see no gleam of 
 light on their horizon. The desire to live is keenest 
 in the young, old enough to see the panorama of 
 life unfolding before them. Its intensity is the 
 measure of their vitality. But, by a singular para- 
 dox, it is the young who are most ready to risk and, 
 if need be, sacrifice their lives for others. Youth 
 is the age of the generous impulse ; lew men are 
 miserly in the spring-time of their days. That 
 warped trait of character, if it comes at all, develops 
 at a period of life when neither wealth nor length 
 of days can be enjoyed to the full. But youth lives 
 in an atmosphere of high altruism, and is ready 
 to put all it possesses to the hazard if opportunity 
 arises or need ever calls. 
 
 The desire to live is maintained all through life 
 until old age, when in many cases it begins to abate, 
 though some old people cling grudgingly to the 
 last few grains of sand as they trickle through 
 their weakening fingers, and never develop what 
 293
 
 294 THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH 
 
 Metchnikoff called " the instinct for death." It 
 is only when death is recognised as inevitable that 
 the desire to live is taken from most of us. This 
 is a wise provision, for it makes death easier for the 
 dying. 
 
 Life is a school of probation in which character 
 is moulded by experience and put to the test alike 
 by joy and sorrow. But, for each of us, an hour 
 comes in which we pass from the schoolroom of 
 life through the portal of death into the unfathom- 
 able beyond. Death is no untoward accident, but 
 as natural a phenomenon in the process of life as is 
 the transference of a child at school from a lower 
 to a higher class, when it has proved itself ready 
 for the change. 
 
 If we could only bring ourselves to recognise this 
 we should clarify our vision, and dissipate that 
 dolorous fog with which superstition has beclouded 
 the final act of life. 
 
 Death is as much a part of living as life is. 
 
 Elsewhere l I have endeavoured to show that the 
 fear of death is largely artificial ; that the dying do 
 not fear it when their hour comes ; and that the 
 act of death is a painless transition. At the same 
 time I tried to prove that we have reasonable ground 
 for believing that after death we go on. 
 
 It is not my intention to deal at length with these 
 matters once again lest I should involve myself in 
 vain repetitions. But there are two points which 
 may be emphasised. When we have succeeded in 
 reducing the act of death to its true proportions we 
 shall cease to dread it, and shall shrink from it as 
 1 The Adventure of Death, by R. W. Mackenna.
 
 EVOLUTION AND DEATH 295 
 
 little as we do from the duties that lie before us 
 to-morrow. Indeed, we may do more than that. 
 Stayed and armed by our philosophy or our faith, 
 we may look forward to it with intense but reverent 
 expectancy, as the experience which is to usher 
 us on to new and more fruitful opportunities. 
 Many a man and woman has passed on in that glad 
 confidence. 
 
 Many who believe in the doctrine of evolution 
 find a difficulty in imagining that death does not 
 extinguish us. To me this seems an illogical aban- 
 donment of their principles. If the evolutionary 
 hypothesis is true, as we have very cogent reason 
 to believe, man, as we know him, is the coping-stone 
 of creative development in this world, built upon 
 and from a foundation of lower forms of life. Man 
 as a physical organism is a splendid product from 
 such beginnings ; but man as a thinking, conscious, 
 reasonable, and moral being is a more splendid crea- 
 ture still. Character or personality, as met with 
 in man, is a higher evolution even than that degree 
 of physical perfection to which he has attained. 
 It is the coping-stone in human development. But 
 the loftiest human personality falls short of the 
 ideal, and must for ever fall short, and evolution as 
 applied to the psychical side of life be an empty 
 delusion unless personality survives the transition 
 through death to continue further evolution towards 
 the perfect ideal when it is no longer hindered and 
 encumbered by the body. 
 
 However far reason or scientific knowledge may 
 take us along the road of proof there comes a gap 
 at the end which must be bridged over by an act
 
 296 THE ADVENTURE OF DEATH 
 
 of faith. For some the gap is so great as to be 
 almost unbridgeable. For others it is so narrow 
 that they can almost reach a hand across it to their 
 beloved. 
 
 In all ages the seers and the poets, whose vision 
 is clearer than that of ordinary men, have been the 
 apostles of the belief in the immortality of man. It 
 is a far cry from Homer and Hesiod to Tennyson 
 and Robert Browning, but through all the centuries 
 that have intervened the witness of the poets has 
 been a clarion-call summoning men to see and 
 know that they are not creatures of a moment, but 
 immortal souls. 
 
 " Plato, thou reasonest well. 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 This longing after immortality ? 
 Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror 
 Of falling into naught ? Why shrinks the soul 
 Back on herself and startles at destruction ? 
 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us ; 
 Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter. 
 And intimates eternity to man."
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 297
 
 " If I stoop 
 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." 
 
 Browning, " Paracelsus 
 
 298
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 THE world is full of enigmas, and one of the greatest 
 is life. We know neither what it is nor what its 
 purposes may be, and we are perplexed by the 
 mysteries which it enfolds. But the mysteries, 
 and the difficulties, and the hard problems which 
 it presents should impel us to seek earnestly for 
 their solution rather than drive us into a backwater 
 of indolent apathy. Half of life's allurement lies 
 in its mysteries. If all the enigmas were removed 
 it would be no more interesting than would be a 
 game of chess in which every move is mapped out 
 for them before the players sit down at the board. 
 The existence of the human intellect demands the 
 contemporaneous existence of mysteries the knife 
 needs the stone to whet it. Most thinking men 
 will agree with Stopford Brooke, who said : " Few 
 things produce more intellectual scorn in me than 
 the impatience of the human race under enigmas. 
 For my part, if life had no puzzle it would have 
 no pleasure." 1 These are brave words, bravely 
 spoken, but they do not help to elucidate the 
 smallest of life's problems. 
 -In those moments of arrogant impatience that 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, by Lawrence Pearsall 
 Jacks, voli. p. 234. 
 
 299
 
 300 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 come to us all we are apt to imagine that, if the 
 ruling of the world and the destinies of man were 
 committed to our care, we could correct many 
 abuses and set many a wrong thing right. We 
 would be tempted to abolish pain and suffering, to 
 blot out with a stroke all moral evil, to correct 
 everything which in our puny way we think re- 
 quires amendment, to clear away all the mysteries 
 and make life as plain as a simple arithmetical 
 calculation. If such an opportunity were given 
 us our achievement would fall far short of our 
 ambition, and it is likely that our fellow- men would 
 be as little satisfied with our world as we should be 
 with any world controlled by them. It is a mighty 
 task to run a Universe, and something far beyond the 
 power of any man. Most of us find the ordering of our 
 own little portion of life a task more than sufficient 
 for our talents. Let us leave the Universe to God. 
 
 But, dark and obscure though many of the 
 problems which beset us on our journey through 
 life undoubtedly are, they are not incapable of 
 solution. Right at our feet, if we will grope and 
 look, we may find a clue. Sometimes the clue is 
 fine as gossamer, and now and then we lose it in 
 the tangled and intricate maze of circumstances, 
 but if we can grasp it and follow it we shall find 
 that it grows stronger before our eyes until it 
 becomes a cable strong enough to lift us out of the 
 quagmire of doubt tenacious as Flanders' clay 
 and set us with firm feet upon the high road to 
 knowledge. The clue has its origin in Law, it ends 
 in Providence. 
 
 We know how all the operations of nature are
 
 THE CLUE IN THE LAW 301 
 
 conditioned by laws. No dewdrop falls out of the 
 dark hand of night, no wave tramples with snow- 
 white foot upon the shingle, no day breaks roseate 
 upon the eastern horizon, nothing in the whole 
 Universe moves, be it speck of dust or giant ava- 
 lanche, except in obedience to natural laws. And 
 what are natural laws ? If we probe deeply enough 
 we are forced to admit that they can be nothing 
 else than the rules God has laid down for the regula- 
 tion of His own acts. In this we have a demonstra- 
 tion of cosmic harmony. Man is a rational and 
 intelligent being. A world in which caprice ruled 
 instead of order, where season followed season in 
 no regular succession but haphazard, where the 
 sun and the moon and the tides obeyed no dis- 
 coverable laws, but were the shuttlecocks of chance, 
 would offer no field for the intelligent activities of 
 man. Law in the Universe, reason in man : the 
 two things are indissolubly linked together. With- 
 out the one, the other could not exist ; without 
 the latter, the former would be an unnecessary re- 
 finement. Part ef man's life is lived in the physical 
 world, and that part is never separable from the 
 operations of law. And if we were not purblind 
 we ^hould see that all life is under law. The 
 physical laws of nature are immutable ; those 
 other laws, as yet undeciphered and unknown, out 
 of which spring all the enigmas and mysteries that 
 perplex us, are equally unchangeable. The laws we 
 have discovered and obey work to promote our 
 happiness. In making ourselves their slaves we 
 become their masters. Our greatest freedom lies 
 along the line of obedience.
 
 302 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 We suffer from breaches of the laws we already 
 know ; we suffer also for breaches of laws that are 
 plainly written somewhere, but which as yet we 
 have failed to decipher. This is a hard saying ; 
 but we dare not expect that fire should continue to 
 possess its genial, heat-giving properties, without 
 retaining the power of producing serious injury, 
 until every child has learned that a flame will burn 
 an inquisitive finger. 
 
 Some day perhaps, in the dim future, when man 
 has risen to the full height of his destiny, the laws 
 that are at present hidden from us will be found 
 written in letters of blazing gold broad upon 
 the forehead of everything that is at present a 
 mystery. Until that day dawns courage should be 
 the duty of man, and faith his watchword, for 
 no mystery ever yielded up its secret to cowardice, 
 and no obstacle was ever surmounted without 
 hope. 
 
 Though life may be full of enigmas, perplexities, 
 and puzzles, it is worth having in spite of them all. 
 It is one of the tragedies of life, as well as one of 
 its glories, that none of us is asked if he will take 
 it. It is a gift thrust upon us, which we may not 
 bury in a napkin, but which we must use. We 
 may use it selfishly and make of it a desolate thing, 
 or we may spend it in the service of others and 
 cause it to blossom like the rose. But one thing 
 we may not do. We dare not play the coward 
 with it. If it comes to us laden with heavy burdens 
 it is our duty to take it up cheerfully, and with a 
 quiet and confident courage turn our face to the 
 sun and set bravely out upon our way. The best
 
 THE CHALLENGE OF THE HEIGHTS 303 
 
 lives are the burdened lives, if the load is not allowed 
 to crush the spirit. 
 
 The world offers but few smooth roads to the 
 traveller, and the level road is rarely worth while. 
 The joy of overcoming the rough place is more than 
 reward for the struggle. The Son of Man had 
 blood upon His brow, but His feet were bruised as 
 well. Few men are worthy to wear the crown of 
 thorns, but the bleeding feet are a sign that we 
 have not shrunk from the hard path, and along the 
 hard path lie the best vantage points for seeing 
 the City Beautiful. The roads in the valley are easy, 
 and sheltered, and one may travel along them in a 
 bath-chair ; only the rugged heights fling a chal- 
 lenge to man's soul, and only among their peaks 
 floats the atmosphere in which his soul can rise to 
 its true height. For life is no base and despicable 
 thing, to be crawled through on our hands and 
 knees, but a high adventure, to which we must 
 answer on our feet, erect and proud. And if the 
 way takes us over unfathomable gorges of doubt 
 and despair, and leads us along the precipitous 
 cliff-edges of mystery, there is no need for faintness 
 of heart. Press on ! The law of struggle is a law 
 of life, and though struggle may mean pain and 
 conflict, it has within it the seeds of victory. 
 
 What the purpose of life may be we cannot tell, 
 but that it has a purpose we dare not doubt. It 
 is such a little thing, only a span long, a mere 
 atom in the immensities of infinite time and space, 
 that it is hard to believe it can have anything but 
 an infinitesimal significance. Yet without human 
 life, and the mind which finds its vehicle in life,
 
 304 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 much in nature and creation would be ineffectual 
 pomp. Mind is at once the aim and elevator of 
 life, and the goal of mind is God. But the finite 
 cannot comprehend the infinite even though it 
 looks with the eye of faith. 
 
 In the kingdom of the insects there are creatures 
 whose whole life is bounded by the confines of a 
 single day. They are known as the ephemera, 
 and, born with the dawn, they live their little lives 
 in the summer sunlight, hand on the heritage of life 
 to others of their kind, and die when the night 
 falls. One can imagine such an insect, hoary with 
 all the hours of her brief life, gathering her chil- 
 dren and her children's children round her dying 
 bed, some broad-veined leaf, and seeking to make 
 them wise with the fruits of all the philosophy she 
 has gathered in the course of her long pilgrimage. 
 Doubtless she can tell them how, in the remote 
 past, when she was a child, there was a mighty storm 
 of wind and flood some May vesper commingled 
 with a shower of summer rain ; and how, in the 
 days of her youth, she narrowly escaped the voracious 
 beak of some questing bird ; and how, in the first 
 flush of maturity, love came to her ; and so on, 
 through the whole gamut of her life's experiences. 
 And, if she is an insect given to philosophise, we can 
 imagine her pouring forth, for the benefit and 
 guidance of her descendants, the cornucopia of her 
 thoughts upon the world in which she has lived, 
 and all its problems. The picture provokes a 
 smile ; but, in smiling, we are laughing at ourselves. 
 Compared with the few brief hours of the life of 
 an ephemera, our span of threescore years and ten
 
 THE END OF THE MATTER 305 
 
 seems an eternity. But the longest human life, and 
 the most gifted human intellect, measured by the 
 standard of infinite time and the infinite knowledge 
 of the eternal Mind, are less in comparison than 
 the length of life and the intelligence of the garrulous 
 ephemera. So let us walk humbly, holding fast to 
 whatever clues we may discover, straining with 
 eyes of faith into the darkness, confident that 
 some day and somewhere the clouds will be sun- 
 dered by the light-bringing sword of dawn. 
 
 Within sight of the little bell-tent in which these 
 chapters have been written stands a great city. 
 Its streets are thronged by soldiers from all ends 
 of the earth, for the curse of war is upon it. On 
 the wine-dark sea, which washes its feet, war-craft 
 come and go, and the drone of the humming aero- 
 planes fills the blue vault of the sky above it. In 
 its streets vice walks openly and unashamed, and 
 women, in whose eyes the pure light of heaven 
 should gleam, leer evilly at men, at once their 
 betrayers and their victims. Lust and crime, sin 
 and death, lurk in its alleys and by-ways. Nearer 
 at hand, in long and serried rows, stands a tented 
 hospital, where men, young and middle-aged, rich 
 and poor, black and white, are suffering and dying 
 to satisfy the blood-lust of the god of War. But, 
 above all this vice-ridden and tortured city, over 
 all the muddle, the filth, the folly, the baseness 
 and inhumanity of man, there towers a symbol of 
 the Divine. I know not by whose hand, or by 
 what pious inspiration it has 'come to pass, but 
 high on an eminence above the city is a church, 
 and on its loftiest pinnacle there stands a gigantic,
 
 306 THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 golden figure of the Holy Mother and the Divine 
 Child. Far out on the deep the effulgent symbol 
 may be seen by the harassed but home-coming 
 mariner, and out of the mire of the city streets, if 
 one lift one's eyes, it is always visible. This is the 
 vision splendid ; a perpetual witness to remind us 
 that, though man may make a mess of life .and by 
 the misuse of his talents and opportunities bring 
 suffering and evil upon the earth, over all and above 
 all there still reigns triumphant God. 
 
 Printed by Haiell, Watso Vtnty, Ld., London and Aylesbury, Engand.
 
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