^Jm: 
 
■r 
 
THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB 
 
THE 
 
 FORTNIGHTLY 
 CLUB 
 
 BY HORACE HUTCHINSON 
 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1922 
 
15?/ 
 
 \i^ 
 
 10 
 
 D. H. M. 
 
 
 All Rights Ressbvkd 
 
P;RE|FACE 
 
 When I began taking notes of the proceedings of 
 our Fortnightly Club I had no idea of the length — 
 and depth — to which they would lead me. I was 
 in the early stages of learning shorthand, and 
 welcomed the chance of practice. A great deal 
 of what I took down was of very slight interest, 
 and quite disjointed ; but the series of addresses in 
 which Professor Launceston opened several of our 
 debates had a consecutive interest which made 
 them constructive parts of a single whole, working 
 to a conclusion of which I had no glimpse when I 
 began recording them. I do not know how far 
 Launceston foresaw at first. I am sure that he 
 did not start with an idea of giving us, in successive 
 addresses, a thought-out plan of the way and 
 purpose of the evolution of terrestrial life : he 
 would have thrown keen scorn on the idea had it 
 been suggested. But I know that his subject 
 gripped him, as he came to grips with it. He 
 liked putting his thought into words and hearing 
 its sound and seeing how it might be received, and 
 it gave him rest from the experiments with poison 
 gases which was his special war work — for the war 
 was in the third year of its evil life at the time. 
 
 I do not suppose that Launceston's thought 
 actually grew as he went along. I imagine it waa 
 
 495733 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 all there with him from the start. But he certainly 
 revealed a new Launceston to us, a Launceston of 
 whom we had no idea until then. Perhaps it 
 might be so with most men of our casual acquaint- 
 ance if they gave us the thoughts of their hearts. 
 But Launceston, the old Launceston at least, was 
 as much of an enigma to his fellows as a man can 
 be, and so gave the more to be discovered. 
 
 With such slight introduction of our principal 
 debater I may leave him and the rest to explain 
 themselves. 
 
 I have to thank the Editors of the Westminster 
 Gazette and of the Quarterly Review for leave to use 
 pages from articles which I contributed to them. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOl 
 
 I. Introducing One OR Two Members 1 
 
 II. Homo Sapiens, and Others . 12 
 
 III. Launceston's Creed ... 28 
 
 IV. The Great Cook and the Little 
 
 Cook 37 
 
 V. Animal Psychology ... 50 
 
 VI. Animate Matter and Human 
 
 Reason .... 61 
 
 VII. The Critics . . . . 74 
 
 VIII. Man— THE Mistake-maker . . 84 
 
 IX. " There must be Pain " . . 107 
 
 X. " What is Sin ? '^ . . . 132 
 
 XI. Altruism and Egoism . . 162 
 
 XII. Human Spirituality . . .171 
 
 XIII. Man's Age on the Earth . . 205 
 
PIGS 
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 GHIPTIB 
 
 XIV. The Universal Cinematograph . 216 
 
 XV. The Earth's Place in Space . 231 
 
 XVI. The Real Armageddon . . 248 
 
 XVII. A Bomb-shell . . . .278 
 
 XVIII. The Summing-up . . .287 
 
THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCING ONE OR TWO MEMBERS 
 
 " Can you tell me a reason," asked Professor 
 Launceston, " why a man shouldn't commit suicide, 
 if he wants to ? " 
 
 The occasion was a sad one. Edward Thursby, 
 one of the first members of our little Fortnightly 
 Club, had taken his life under very distressing cir- 
 cumstances. We had generally united in the 
 natural expressions of horror and commiseration. 
 Only Launceston had assumed a different view, 
 defending poor Edward Thursby's action, even 
 refusing to allow us to put the conventional 
 "poor" before his name. "Not poor at all, nor 
 to be pitied at all now," he said. " To be pitied 
 in his lifetime — yes. But not to be pitied now. 
 He has freed himself from all that for which he 
 was to be pitied. I think his act a perfectly 
 rational one." 
 
 It was Launceston's way to differ. He was 
 seldom happy except in opposition, especially in 
 opposition to recognised and established opinion. 
 So much did he love opposition that we often did 
 not know — we doubted whether he himself knew 
 
2 INTllODygi.N<i^: ONE on TWO MEMBERS 
 
 now and again — whether it were for the sake of 
 perversity, just in order to oppose, or for the sake 
 of truth, as he conceived it, that he argued. But 
 argue he would — on every topic possible, taking 
 sometimes the most surprising and even the most 
 impossible points of view, but arguing with a 
 whimsical ingenuity, so that many a man came 
 away from one of our meetings saying that Pro- 
 fessor Launceston had talked him into a firm belief 
 in what he knew perfectly well to be untrue. And 
 he was humorous withal, uttering whimsies with a 
 deepening of the melancholy which sat habitually 
 graven on his lantern- jawed face, beside which Don 
 Quixote's would have glowed with the geniality of 
 a Mark Tapley — surely the most rueful-looking 
 Yorick that ever set the table in a roar ! You will 
 not suppose, perhaps, with all this, that Launce- 
 ston was a very popular Club member. He was 
 not ; but most of us admired him, most of us feared 
 him, none of us pretended to understand him, few 
 of us, after a first or second trial, cared for a bout 
 of verbal fence with him, for he fought with the 
 buttons off the foils, and, whatsoever of the Chris- 
 tian virtues he may have practised, assuredly that 
 of suffering fools gladly was not on his list. 
 
 Defences against such rapier thrusts of wit, and 
 even such bludgeoning strokes of heavy and scarcely 
 human rudeness as Launceston would deal, are 
 various, and the most effective in its way was 
 perhaps that of old Sir James Macadam, the 
 geologist, whom we all loved, but who really was 
 typical of that not large class of Scotsmen whom 
 Charles Lamb must imfortunately have studied 
 
rOLJAMBE, OF ST. JAMES'S STREET 3 
 
 before lie uttered Ms notorious libel on the Scottish 
 sense of bumour. Sir James bad an absolute im- 
 penetrability to all fine points, wbicb always par- 
 ticularly exasperated Launceston — tbe more so 
 that tbe other, and older man, seldom so much as 
 noticed his exasperation — and sometimes drove 
 him to say downright rude things to the senior of 
 which, to do him justice, I fancy that Launceston 
 himself was much ashamed in less hasty moments ; 
 though he would have perished rather than confess 
 his shame. 
 
 Another who bore Launceston well, in his fashion, 
 was Foljambe, his Eton friend, whom Launceston 
 himself had introduced into our Club, and if it was 
 as foil to himself that he welcomed him the choice 
 could not have been better, for Foljambe, excellent 
 fellow, though inveterate grumbler, was as good 
 a sportsman and gentleman and as dull a dog 
 withal as a public school education can produce, 
 while Launceston, gentleman perhaps, but sports- 
 man not at all, and not by his worst foe (and he 
 made many) to be charged with dulness, would 
 scarcely be recognised by his Alma Mater as 
 her child. But Foljambe, by old association, 
 was of the few who did not fear Launceston, and 
 Launceston, perhaps for the like reason, and also 
 because Foljambe's comment was so blunt-edged 
 and blundering that it could draw no blood, would 
 take from him without offence words that no other 
 member would dare say to him. 
 
 So now it was Foljambe who took up the argu- 
 ment in his usual tone of testy irritation : "Of 
 course I don't know whether you believe in God — 
 
4 INTRODUCING ONE OR TWO MEMBERS 
 
 don't suppose you do — don't suppose there is any- 
 thing you do believe in — but if you do believe in 
 any Creator you must believe that life's a gift that 
 He's given you and that you're going right against 
 His purpose if you go and destroy it." 
 
 Launceston's face, which did not smile easily, 
 relaxed a little as he saw who the foe was that 
 entered the arena. 
 
 " Do you say that," he asked, '' of the life of 
 man only, or also of the life of the other animals — 
 that it is the Creator's gift ? " 
 
 " I say it of all life, of course." 
 
 " And yet you countenance opposition to the 
 Creator's purpose in giving life to a sheep by 
 eating a mutton-chop ! I saw you do it not half 
 an hour ago." 
 
 ** A man's life is different from a sheep's," was 
 Foljambe's ineffective answer. 
 
 Launceston took the dull thing into the armoury 
 of his mind and immediately turned it out again 
 with an edge to it. '* It is so different," he said, 
 ** that to a sheep life is almost everything, to a 
 man it is almost nothing." 
 
 '' What do you mean by that ? " 
 
 *' I mean, that death is the end of the sheep, 
 but not the end of the man, and for that reason 
 you thwart the * Creator's purpose,' as you please 
 to call it, far more drastically when you kill a sheep 
 than when you kill a man." 
 
 Foljambe growled and grunted, but no coherent 
 words came in reply for a full half-minute, when 
 he burst out : "No doubt you make it look like 
 that when you put it in that way. I don't pre- 
 
THE CLUB-HOUSE 5 
 
 tend to know anything about it, but I^'m sure you're 
 wrong.'' 
 
 *' Quite right, quite right. Never allow a ra- 
 tional argument to upset your belief. We are all 
 much too apt to that. But now, tell me this : 
 The Creator gave you teeth. Occasionally, unless 
 you're luckier than most men, He has given you 
 an aching tooth. Do you think you thwarted the 
 * Creator's purpose ' in having out the tooth ? 
 God gave Edward Thursby a life. He gave him 
 an aching life. Do you think Edward Thursby 
 thwarted His purpose in having out the life ? Are 
 not the cases parallel ? " 
 
 I began to take an interest in this talk, for I was 
 the secretary — very purely honorary — of our Club, 
 and it was no small part of my duties to provide a 
 reader of a paper on alternate Thursday evenings. 
 The origin of the Club was like that of the child 
 Topsy : it grew. Its growth was from the root 
 of a once-a-fortnight meeting of one or two of us, 
 chiefly old University friends — who had formed the 
 pleasant habit of dining together and discussing all 
 things in heaven and earth, and many more. As 
 one or another brought a guest, we found our 
 numbers growing, and more seeking to be added 
 to them, until it became convenient to form our- 
 selves into a Club, and take a house of our own 
 in old-fashioned Bloomsbury. It was a dingy, 
 rambling building, exceedingly ill-planned for the 
 convenience of a family, and it was probably due 
 to this inconvenience that we were able to get it 
 at a very moderate rent. It was roomy enough, 
 with a street at back and in front, between which 
 2 
 
6 INTKODUCING ONE OR TWO MEMBERS 
 
 it occupied the whole ground. Economy of space 
 had evidently not been considered by its architect. 
 Up one little staircase, springing from the hall, 
 were two rooms by themselves, connected in no 
 other way with the rest of the house — a curious 
 arrangement which we were able to turn to good 
 account by letting them on a yearly lease to one 
 of the members. Sir James Macadam, the geologist. 
 It was worth his while to take the rooms at a good 
 rent for the advantage of living in the Club and 
 having the service, such as it was, at his command. 
 
 With the acquirement of this settled domicile it 
 is evident that the chosen name ceased to fit us. 
 From ' fortnightly ' we had transmuted ourselves 
 into * daily." Still we did not change our title, 
 which did its duty well enough, though its original 
 meaning was obsolete. On most evenings we met, 
 as it might be in any smoking-room of any club, 
 and talk went on around all subjects that came 
 uppermost, between such few of us as were there. 
 But every other Thursday we tried to make rather 
 a special meeting day, and it was my secretarial 
 task to provide a lecturer or, at the least, the 
 starter of some hare of debate. Someone — but he 
 was a guest — said of us, with little truth and less 
 originality, that we cultivated " low living and 
 high thinking.'' It was a two-edged compliment 
 which no admitted member would have thought 
 of applying to ourselves in either sense, but I am 
 afraid that the young fellow who paid it had been 
 given some of the Club's cheap wine which, at its 
 worst, is bad. 
 
 I took the hint of the talk I have just been 
 
"LIFE AND DEATH" 7 
 
 relating to ask Launceston if he would throw his 
 ideas on the subject of suicide into form of a paper, 
 and read it to us on one of our Thursdays. 
 He shook his head. '' Oh connu," he said, 
 
 -connu," 
 
 His French accent leaves much to be desired, 
 but I understood him to mean that the theme was 
 not sufficiently fresh. 
 
 ** Hume has done it," he went on, ** De Quincey 
 has done it, Madame de Stael has done it. Dr. 
 Donne has done it. I do not know how many 
 more. Who am I that I should come in with my 
 little candle after those lights ? I know my place. "' 
 
 This last was imtrue, but I knew him too well 
 to try to change his mind. Still, he spoke in a 
 fashion that did not seem quite final and gave 
 me hope, and the result of leaving him unvexed 
 was that he resumed directly : ''I should not 
 mind ; I should rather like to throw together an 
 idea or two under some such heading as * Life and 
 Death.' It seems to me that there is something 
 still to be said about those little words. Most of 
 what is said about them, as about most other 
 things, is wrong, hopelessly wrong, quite obviously 
 and absurdly wrong. In the first place, they are 
 constantly put into an antithesis which in itself 
 is ridiculous." 
 
 "Good," said L "Good. ' Life and Death '- 
 quite sufficiently important subjects both of them — 
 with a little suicide thrown in or not — just as you 
 like. And the earlier the better." 
 
 " Oh, I'm not promising anything," he said 
 quickly : and I saw that I had gone too fast. 
 
8 INTRODUCING ONE OR TWO MEMBERS 
 
 " The infinitely obvious is so dull, and the obviously 
 infinite is so difficult, and there's so little in between 
 the two." 
 
 " Well, think it over, will you ? " I compromised. 
 
 " I'll think it over, yes. But I don't think I'll 
 touch on the question of the ethics of suicide at 
 all. That's a very minor problem at the best, or 
 worst. Perhaps, too, it's a problem that defies 
 argument. I said, and I still maintain, that you 
 can find no rational argument against suicide : 
 your reason can furnish you with no condemnation 
 of it. Nevertheless, I must confess to you that in 
 my own soul somewhere, deep down, so deep that 
 it seems to me to come from sources far transcending 
 any that we can call terrestrial, is a conviction that 
 were I to choose friend Thursby's exit from a life 
 which I feel unbearable I should be doing an act 
 which would condemn me in a Higher Court. 
 Old Foljambe was perfectly right in what he 
 wanted to say, only, of course, he couldn't say it. 
 I often feel like editing that poor Hamlet who 
 lacked the courage of our friend Thursby : 
 
 " For who would fardels bear, 
 To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
 But that the hope of something after death 
 . . . puzzles the will 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 Than risk the blessings that we know not of." 
 
 Thus, I have a conviction that I should, so, be 
 risking them. I can give no more account than 
 Foljambe can of how that conviction comes ; can 
 only say that I find it there, an active and masterful 
 motive, one in which my intellect has no share. 
 
PROTOPLASM AND PROTEID 9 
 
 I can say no more of it than that there it is, a 
 potent reality, one among the many mysteries 
 which are far more real than the things that seem 
 intelligible." 
 
 I gazed at him. This was my first glimpse of 
 the new Launceston of whom I spoke in the Preface. 
 After years of acquaintance, it was the first lift 
 of a corner of the shroud of cynicism in which he 
 chose to drape himself. 
 
 " The worst of it all is," he resumed after a 
 moment's thought, '' it opens up such very big 
 questions : it takes you so very far back. One 
 hardly knows where to begin on it all." 
 
 " Why not at the beginning ? " I hazarded. 
 
 '' I suppose you mean," he replied sourly, *'at 
 the furthest point to which we're able to guess 
 our way back." 
 
 " Something like that." 
 
 ** Of course / think," he went musing on, '* that 
 one might perfectly well begin with life ; begin 
 there, as with' a new chapter, wherein something 
 quite new, something that had not been there 
 before, nor was implied or even hinted by anything 
 that had been before, was added." 
 
 *' You'd come right up against Sir James 
 Macadam there. He says, of course, that there 
 was no new departure when life came in, that it 
 is a perfectly natural development of inorganic 
 matter, and that it is only because we have not 
 yet quite got at the connecting link that we doubt 
 the link's being there. He says that life is purely 
 a question of the right synthesis of proteid. Get 
 that and you'll get protoplasm." 
 
10 INTRODUCING ONE OR TWO MEMBERS 
 
 " Just what an old fossil like Sir James Macadam 
 would say/' Launceston declared irritably. *' I've 
 got a little bit of a surprise in store for him to-night, 
 by the bye," he added. 
 
 I was devoutly glad to hear it. The occasion of 
 our meeting in the Club that Thursday was the 
 reading of a paper by Sir James Macadam on 
 ' Man as a Reasoning Animal ' — a deadly hackneyed 
 theme of which I, as unfortunately responsible 
 for these fortnightly debates, felt much ashamed. 
 Had it not been that in the stress caused by the 
 war the difficulty of getting members to start good 
 subjects was extreme, I should not have tolerated 
 it ; nor, though Macadam was deeply learned, 
 could one expect that he would dredge up from 
 those depths any glittering novelties to illuminate 
 the ancient topic. He had narrowly missed great- 
 ness in the days of the great Darwinians, but his 
 mind had not been readily plastic in the moulds of 
 later science. It worked still in the forms fashioned 
 fifty years before. I hailed,theref ore,Launceston's 
 announcement with a great gladness. 
 
 " What's the surprise ? " I asked. 
 
 " Youll see," he replied mysteriously, and would 
 say no more. I had to possess my soul in patience, 
 but in far more satisfaction than I had dared to 
 hope about the prospects of the night's debate. I 
 even came to it with my note-book, prepared for 
 the taking of shorthand notes, in the expectation, 
 which I had not cherished before, of something 
 worth recording. I was only just painfully ac- 
 quiring the shorthand art. The writing of the 
 short script was not the difficulty — that was as 
 
SHORTHAND WRITING 11 
 
 easy going as the slope to hell — sed revocare gradus, 
 superasque evadere ad litteras — to translate it back 
 into long script again — that really was the deuce 
 and all of a job. Still, I think that in the main 
 I have caught the right gist of most of the debates 
 that I have recorded, and for many I was able to 
 refer to the mover's own manuscript at length or 
 in precis. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 Sir James developed his well-worn theme along 
 lines so easily to be foreseen as to be almost in- 
 evitable. The audience were not greatly surprised 
 when Launceston came into the room bringing 
 with him a large, squarish, baize-covered case. 
 He had rooms just across the street, and it was 
 the frequent custom of the openers of our debates 
 to bring in apparatus of a chemical, a magnetic, 
 or whatever it might be kind to help in illustrating 
 their theses. The case did not appear to be heavy, 
 for he carried it in on his forefinger passed into a 
 loop of cord which came up through a slit in the 
 baize, and set it on the floor beside him. Of 
 course it was all in the tradition that as soon as 
 the opener had finished his discourse a general dis- 
 cussion should take place around it. No one 
 doubted that it was in order to take a hand in the 
 ensuing debate that Launceston had come, nor 
 that the case which he bore with him contained 
 some form of illustration of the views that he 
 would advance. And, since his views were inclined 
 to paradox and heterodoxy, and especially to 
 opposition with those of Sir James Macadam, who 
 was a faithful adherent of the strictest sect of the 
 evolutionists, his entry was noted with satisfaction, 
 
 12 
 
HOMO SAPIENS 13 
 
 The learned old gentleman told us how the human 
 brain had gradually grown from that of the ape, 
 showing diagrams of the skulls of the Caucasian, 
 the Negro, the Chimpanzee, and the Lemur, to 
 demonstrate the constant increase in cranial 
 capacity. He proceeded then to give us various 
 causes for this increase, and for the gradual 
 acquirement by Homo Sapiens of a developed intel- 
 ligence superior to all the rest. He pointed out 
 to us, Alj)ha — for some reason the English alphabet 
 seemed never adequate for Macadam in noting the 
 heads of his arguments — AlfTia, the advantage that 
 man gained from the acquirement of the upright 
 position: (l)in ability to traverse the earth with his 
 head held aloft, so that he could see well ahead of 
 him ; (2) in the freedom which it gave to his hands 
 to bring anything which he wished to examine up 
 to the level of his eye. This power in itself would 
 go far — *' verra far," as the lecturer said, with a 
 rich accent that gave added conviction — towards 
 exciting the inquiring intelligence of the brain. 
 Beta, the advantage that he had over most mammals 
 in his ability to turn the head freely, right and left, 
 owing to the peculiar pose of the skull on the 
 cervical vertebrae. Gamma, the aid to intelligent 
 association between sense and brain afforded by 
 the grasping with the hand, whereby comes the 
 tactile sense to the assistance of the others. Delta, 
 the advantage in the increasing freedom of the 
 tongue, whereby to man alone came at length the 
 faculty of verbal sounds — language, and all that 
 language had meant in the development of thought. 
 *' In fact,'' said the lecturer, *' the evidence of the 
 
14 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 anatomical facts is so strong and cogent that it 
 almost seems as if it would compel us to say, 
 tlLOUgh we had no other evidence before us, ' Such 
 an animal as this, so uniquely gifted, must surely 
 derive some unique advantage, must become 
 uniquely sapient, must reason/ '' On which com- 
 fortable conclusion he resumed his seat. 
 
 Meanwhile, towards the close of the address, 
 some rather curious sounds had been issuing, as it 
 had seemed to us, from that baize-covered case 
 which had been brought in by Launceston. There 
 had been some kind of mysterious scrabblings, and 
 once something very like a human voice and a 
 sound not unlike the word * Damn/ It had caused 
 quite a start to those near it. It is true the word 
 might possibly have emanated from Launceston 
 himself, but it had hardly seemed so. 
 
 As soon as Sir James had finished, by common 
 consent most of us looked towards Launceston. 
 We expected something of him — we knew not what 
 — and he did not disappoint us. He did not at 
 once begin to speak, but leisurely lifted the case 
 from the floor and set it up on the lecturer's table 
 in front of Sir James ; then he drew off the green 
 baize draping and discovered beneath it a very 
 fine grey parrot in a square wire cage. 
 
 The bird appeared slightly dazed a moment, at 
 the light thus let in, then shook itself in a manner 
 that fluffed out its feathers momentarily to twice 
 their normal size, sleeked itself down again to a 
 fine figure, and then began to call out with alarm- 
 ing speed and vehemence, " You're all fools ! 
 You're all fools ! " 
 
PSITTACUS SAPIENS 15 
 
 Launceston patiently set himself to the task of 
 calming the bird. " Of course, Polly, of course, 
 we know that — all of us who know anything. You 
 needn't tell us that. Besides, you've said so more 
 than once. We've all heard you." 
 
 Gradually the bird began to quiet down. Then 
 he opened the cage and let it come out on his 
 wrist. He fondled it, and it put down its head 
 and let him scratch its poll. The understanding 
 between them appeared perfect. Still we did not 
 perceive the exact significance of the comedy, or 
 its bearing on the subject of the debate. Then 
 Launceston, still gently scratching the parrot's 
 poll, began to speak. And he spoke with an imita- 
 tion, a bad imitation, of Macadam's Scottish 
 dialect, which was in the worst possible taste ; and 
 yet I am afraid that we guiltily appreciated every 
 sentence of his argument. 
 
 ** I wish to point out to you," he said, ** how 
 inevitable it was, on anatomical grounds, that 
 reason, that glorious and unique gift, should come 
 the way of the parrot, Psittacus Sapiens. Alfha, 
 it has enjoyed all the advantages, and many more, 
 that man ever acquired from the upright position, 
 for (1) it has no need laboriously to walk, it can 
 fly over the earth and see all before and below and 
 around it as it goes ; (2) it has all the freedom to 
 pick up an object and carry it in its claw to its face, 
 for examination. Have an almond, Polly ? " He 
 ofiered the bird, as he spoke, an almond, which 
 he brought from his waistcoat pocket, and the 
 parrot clutched it in its right claw, and held it up 
 to its eye for close inspection. '* This faculty goes 
 
16 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 far-— verra far — towards exciting the intelligence 
 of the brain. Beta, it has the advantage over 
 most mammals in ability to turn the head easily, 
 from side to side, owing to the pose of the skull on 
 the cervical vertebrae. Gamma, there is all the aid 
 to intelligent association between sense and brain 
 given by the grasp with the talon, whereby comes 
 the tactile sense to the assistance of the others. 
 Delta, it has more than enough freedom of the 
 tongue for the making of verbal sounds — language, 
 which has been so all-important in the develop- 
 ment of thought. What do you think, Polly ? " 
 
 The parrot, as Launceston returned it to its 
 cage, recommenced its vociferation : " You're all 
 fools 1 You're all fools ! " until reduced to silence 
 and darkness by reimposition of the baize cover. 
 Its master lifted it from the table, placed it on the 
 floor again, and sat down with a weary patience 
 to wait for the next contribution to the discussion. 
 
 Launceston was never a very easy man to follow 
 in debate, and the peculiar manner of his inter- 
 polation on this occasion made it especially difficult 
 to take up the subject after him. There was an 
 uncomfortable and, as it were, a stricken silence 
 for several moments, broken only by the scrabblings 
 of the darkling parrot. Then Macadam rose slowly 
 to his feet. 
 
 We had expected, possibly we had hoped, that 
 the old man would respond in anger. There was 
 no note of anger, however, in his voice, as he began 
 — only a strange indecision. " I have to confess 
 that I have been strook," he said, " verra greatly 
 strook, by the manner in which Professor Laun- 
 
THE THEME DEVELOPED 17 
 
 ceston has intervened in this debate. I wouldna 
 
 say that it was a verra courteous manner " 
 
 " No, don't," came as an interposition from 
 Launceston himself. ** Na, I wouldna say that 
 it was courteous ; but I would say that it raises a 
 line o' thocht which has na' occurred to me before — 
 would say, in conclusion, only that I need to give 
 it thocht before I would pronoonce upon it." 
 
 The discussion had been interesting and amusing 
 in the whimsical way that Launceston had con- 
 ducted it, but it appeared in danger of being left 
 in the air, with rather a ragged edge to it, for no 
 one seemed disposed to carry it further. There 
 was a full minute's silence, as I should guess, before 
 Dr. Pershore, who could venture further than most 
 members of the Club with Launceston — probably 
 because he was the doctor who dosed him — said : 
 
 ** That's all good, Launceston. You've given me 
 a new idea to think about, as Sir James Macadam 
 says, and no man deserves better of mankind than 
 one who does that ; but can't you develop it for 
 us a little bit ? " 
 
 ** I did bring some notes along for that very 
 purpose " — he dived into his pocket and produced 
 some loose and fluttering sheets. " But I didn't 
 know, really, if anybody would care to hear them." 
 
 As mere courtesy required, the members mur- 
 mured a desire so to do. 
 
 ** My great contention," he said, " is that there 
 came a real break, a new departure, when the 
 human mind came to take its place and do its work 
 in the world, and one of the very strongest argu- 
 ments, as it strikes me, for this human mind being 
 
18 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 a new thing on the earth, and not a thing which 
 was only an outgrowth from something older, has 
 generally escaped notice because it is purely nega- 
 tive. If, as has been asserted, anything like human 
 reason exists or has existed in the lower animals, 
 how is it that it has not shown itself in one single 
 indubitable instance ? If the germ is there, waiting 
 for expansion, if it has been there through the 
 millions of years — ^literally millions, probably many 
 of them — that the ape has been the ape, how does 
 it happen that not an indication of that expansion 
 is to be traced on any record ? 
 
 " Observe the advantageous circumstances in 
 which that germ, if existent, has been placed during 
 the last million or so of years during which man 
 has been in process of conquering the world by 
 means of his reason. All that while, the ape has 
 been privileged to watch man making his fires, 
 using his bows, his clubs, and so forth. The 
 monkeys, we are told, will come and warm them- 
 selves gratefully at the embers of the fire which 
 man has left glowing in the forest. Not to one 
 single one of them has it occurred to place another 
 branch, from those lying all around them, on the 
 dying fire, though some of them must have seen 
 this done by man a score of times. The stupidity 
 of animals is really infinitely more remarkable 
 than that so-called sagacity, of which we hear 
 so much. 
 
 *' Powerful testimony in support of this that I 
 have called the negative argument for regarding 
 the human intellect as a new introduction into the 
 evolutionary scheme may be drawn from Mr. 
 
ARBOBEAL MAN 19 
 
 Wood Jones's interesting work Arboreal Man. 
 Tracing man's descent from Hs lowly ancestors, 
 he brings out very strikingly tlie value of the 
 arboreal habit, first in permitting and encouraging 
 the development of the grasping hand in preference 
 to such a relatively clumsy organ as the hoof of the 
 horse — to take that organ as typical of the develop- 
 ment of a creature going upon the ground on all 
 fours. Secondly, the arboreal habit, with its im- 
 plied grasping faculty, encouraged and developed 
 in its turn the upright posture of the bipedal 
 mammal, with the two hands and arms freed for a 
 variety of useful purposes likely to stimulate the 
 action of the brain and mind. 
 
 " Very good, so far ; and the argument is both 
 cogent and of interest as it follows the evolution 
 of man. But then, we may observe that this gives 
 us just as precise a narrative of the development 
 of others of the primates as of the branch which 
 has flowered out into man. Why is it then, we 
 may well ask, that the gift of reason is man's only, 
 and that not so much as a crumb from his table 
 has fallen in the way of any of these others ? We 
 ask, but there is no answer vouchsafed to us out 
 of the evolutionary biological camp. 
 
 *' Even the most primitive and elementary use 
 of tools seems to be wholly outside the mental 
 powers of these creatures, in spite of their perfectly 
 adequate endowment of manual power and flexi- 
 bility. They do not even take a stick for offence 
 or defence, though their life is lived where sticks 
 abound. Stories of baboons throwing stones offen- 
 sively have been narrated, have been accepted by 
 
20 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 Darwin,^ but discredited by later and careful 
 observation. Surely it goes for very little that, 
 after laborious training and teacbing, a monkey 
 should have learned how to use a stick as a rake, 
 as recounted by Mr. Hobhouse.^ The throwing of 
 missiles by the trained chimpanzee at the Zoo 
 belongs to the same category of things most easily 
 to be accounted for by a mental faculty certainly 
 lower than reason. The single good instance that 
 I know of an animal in the wild state showing a 
 sign of tool-using is that of the famous Sphex, as 
 narrated by the Peckhams.' It battered down the 
 loose earth on the lid of its burrow with a small 
 stone held in its mandibles. But even this is so 
 slight an advance on thrusting the small stone in, 
 together with the crumbs of earth — which is the 
 common habit of their kind — to form the lid, that 
 it scarcely affects the argument. Thrushes break 
 snail shells by beating them on stones, and will 
 come again and again to the same stone for the 
 purpose. Some gulls and hoodie crows will carry 
 shellfish high into the air and drop them on the 
 rocks, thus breaking them. But nowhere do we 
 find an instance of an animal taking a stick or 
 stone and using it hammer-wise. 
 
 " Man is the sole tool-using animal. 
 
 ** Nowhere do we see an animal with any cog- 
 nisance of the future, laying a plan, choosing an 
 end, and adapting means for their accomplishment. 
 
 ** Of course I know full well that this is a state- 
 
 * Descent of Man, vol. i, p. 124. 
 
 a Mind in Evolution, L. T. Hobhouse, pp. 239 et seq. 
 
 8 Wasps, Social and Solitary, S. 0. and G. G. Peckham, p. 38. 
 
NEST BUILDING 21 
 
 ment which will raise protest. Birds make nests, 
 I shall be told, for their future eggs and young. 
 I know it : I accept the statement wholly, except 
 for the single short word * for," which begs the 
 whole question at issue. The * for," if it means 
 anything, must mean ' because they know that the 
 eggs and young are coming, and therefore make 
 the necessary arrangements.' I maintain, on the 
 contrary, that they have no such prevision at all : 
 that they build their nests in response to an in- 
 stinctive impulse — very occasionally and very 
 slightly modified by perceptual (never by any 
 conceptual) intelligence — with no thought or ink- 
 ling of the future whatever. An evidence that this 
 is so, is the almost exact reproduction of the nest 
 common to the species, and choice of site, made 
 by each individual. 
 
 " Perhaps the objector will prefer to cite the 
 case of the Sphex, the solitary wasp, just mentioned. 
 This creature makes extraordinary provision for 
 its young, conveying into the burrow in which it 
 lays its egg a store of caterpillars, stung to death 
 or insensibility, to be the sustenance of the larva 
 yet unborn. Can there be, we might be asked, a 
 clearer case of prevision and of rational provision 
 for a future need ? If this is not reason, what 
 is it? 
 
 ** Undoubtedly it is instinct. Not only is it in- 
 stinct which impels the insect to make these 
 arrangements, but it should be especially observed 
 that it is an impulse which could not conceivably 
 be the result of any operation of the reason. If 
 we turn to reason for its explanation we are asking 
 3 
 
22 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 of reason a very great deal more tlian that faculty 
 is able to give us. For, notice this — the Sphex in 
 all probability is never to see its offspring, never 
 to see the result of all this care. If these means 
 are taken in order to achieve an end which is fore- 
 seen the foresight must be of the magical character. 
 It is not the prediction of events which can be 
 foreseen or foretold by any effort of finite reason. 
 The Sphex has no experience of the result of its 
 acts : they are prompted by no reasoned motive. 
 Reason, even in its highest human development, is 
 entirely inadequate to supply the motive. It is 
 prompted by instinct alone. 
 
 '' And the same account has to be given of the 
 more or less similar acts of a legion of other species 
 that make provision for babies which the parents 
 are never to see. No inference in support of the 
 thesis that the animals have reason, even of the 
 most rudimentary type, is to be drawn from these 
 instances. 
 
 *' The animal that has been the most intimate 
 friend of man for many thousands of years, and so 
 might be deemed likely to pick up some crumbs 
 of the human mentality is, of course, the dog. The 
 result of the many observations and experiments 
 in the canine intelligence that I have made have 
 impressed me far less with the dog's sagacity than 
 with its narrowly restricted limits. 
 
 " I had a hall in my house, with a gallery running 
 along one side of it. Access to the gallery was by 
 way of a staircase from the hall. I had a house- 
 dog, of ordinary intelligence, who went up that 
 staircase many times daily, for the gallery served 
 
DOG'S RESTRICTED INTELLIGENCE 23 
 
 as a passage to other parts of the house. One day, 
 as I was playing with the dog's toy, and with the 
 dog itself, in the hall, it occurred to me to throw 
 the toy, an indiarubber ring, up into the gallery. 
 Of course I did not doubt that the dog would 
 immediately run up the stairs after it. But not 
 a bit of it. He did but stand below, jumping up 
 to the gallery, barking for the ring. Once I had 
 induced him to come to the stairs, and so to the 
 ring, he was able to follow that same path the next 
 time that I threw the ring into the gallery. It 
 seemed to me that it was necessary, by this first 
 teaching, to establish the relation in his brain 
 between ' up the stairs ' and ' ring,' before he could 
 join them together for himself, although the way 
 up the stairs to the gallery where the ring lay was 
 familiar to him by a hundred goings and comings. 
 Those goings and comings, however, had not 
 hitherto been associated with the ring ; and it 
 seemed to require that that particular association 
 should be formed before the dog could take the 
 course which, humanly speaking, was supremely 
 obvious. 
 
 '' That is only a tjrpical example out of an in- 
 definite number which might be cited to show how 
 narrowly restricted the dog's intelligence is, how 
 far remote from reason. 
 
 *' I would repeat, in order to impress the value 
 of the reflection, that it is absolutely amazing — I 
 would go so far as saying absolutely incredible — 
 that the reasoning faculty, in the sense of a faculty 
 to take means towards a foreseen end, in animals 
 other than man has done so little in the way of 
 
24 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 development that we are unable to find one soli- 
 tary indubitable instance of it — if it really has 
 existed potentially during all the millions of years 
 that these animals have existed. That negative 
 argument appeals to me more strongly than any 
 of the positive ones which people who hold much 
 the same view as mine have adduced in support of 
 our common conclusions. 
 
 ** I am perfectly aware of one answer which will 
 be made to the question why, if they have the 
 potentiality, the animals have not actively deve- 
 loped conceptual thought. It will be said that 
 such thoughts, and the forming of any concepts 
 and general ideas at all, is dependent on the faculty 
 of language, and that the mouth mechanism of the 
 animals does not allow of their use of language. 
 Even the simian jaw and palate, most like our own, 
 we shall be told, are not of the right make for 
 vocal sounds in any sufficient variety. 
 
 " Perhaps not. Doubtless the apparatus is not 
 so favourable to varied sounds even in the apes as 
 in man. Still, they surely might do some little in 
 that way. An American professor was so con- 
 fident of their ability as actually to believe that 
 they had a simple form of language, and set himself 
 assiduously to study it ; but with no success. 
 Moreover there are other modes, other signs, 
 besides the vocal ones, which are easily conceivable 
 vehicles of thought. It is possible, besides, that 
 the value of language has been a little overstated. 
 Though any quick and convenient use of concepts 
 and general terms, even in a man's own mind, still 
 more so in exchange with the mind of another, is 
 
VOCAL ABILITY OF SOME BIRDS 25 
 
 doubtless impossible without language, it is con- 
 ceivable tbat a simple and clumsy mode of con- 
 ceptual thought might be carried on without it. 
 
 ** But the principal counter which I should use 
 to this retort of the objector who takes a stand on 
 the need of language, and the inability of other 
 animals to speak, is that the asserted inability is 
 not common to all. There is a large class, as I 
 tried to show you by an object lesson this evening, 
 including some of the most intelligent animals on 
 earth, the birds, and especially the birds of the 
 clever corvine genus, which can imitate almost 
 every inflection of the human voice, and have a 
 large number of additional vocal sounds of their 
 own. Theirs might be really a richer than human 
 vocabulary if only they had any ideas to express 
 in it. That is their real lack — the ideas, not the 
 sounds. If they, or the parrots, or starlings, or 
 many more, have been hiding a rudiment of reason 
 in their mentality all the millions of years of their 
 existence it is quite sure that no lack of the means 
 of vocal expression has stood in the way of its 
 production. And according to all human means 
 of judgment their intelligence is as high as that of 
 any mammals. To be on safe ground, I will at 
 least say, that in my own humble judgment — and 
 I have kept these corvine and other birds as pets 
 and observed them as closely as I could — they are 
 certainly as clever as any of the rest. Mr. Hob- 
 house goes so far — a long step further than I can 
 follow him — as to say of a parrot that it * un- 
 doubtedly uses words with intention." ^ I have 
 
 1 Mind in Evolution, p. 287. 
 
26 HOMO SAPIENS, AND OTHERS 
 
 mucli more than a doubt about the 'intention/ 
 But there is no doubt whatever of the mechanical 
 ability to make all the sounds necessary for the 
 communication and for formation of concepts. The 
 birds supply us with a perfect answer to those who 
 tell us that it is because animals cannot talk that 
 they cannot think conceptually. 
 
 *' I do not wish to labour the point further. The 
 human mind is, as I believe, a break, a new develop- 
 ment, a new departure. That the hig breaks are 
 rare, that Nature is conservative, is economical 
 with them, is evident, and it is well for us that it 
 should be so. The little breaks, whether mutations 
 or variations, are not so important as to invalidate 
 biological science, a result which Professor Lindsay 
 acutely says would necessarily follow from the full 
 acceptance of Bergson's Creative Evolution. 
 
 ** I do not claim a place among the ' big breaks ' 
 for the creation of the Universe in the first place, 
 for we have no warrant for speaking or of thinking 
 of any first place or beginning for it at all. It is 
 really as impossible for our minds to conceive the 
 idea of the absence, as of the beginning, of a Uni- 
 verse. But if we accept the occurrence, or even 
 the possibility, of the big breaks, it is evident that 
 this is an admission which at once opens out all 
 sorts of possibilities quite beyond conception or 
 forecast, even for terrestrial evolution. It is a 
 startling thought, and one which throws the whole 
 drama once again into something like a new per- 
 spective. Had there been in Mars, at the period 
 before organic life appeared on the earth, a being 
 gifted with a human intellect and a telescope 
 
A NEW FACULTY 27 
 
 capable of observing closely terrestrial things, he 
 would have had no ' earthly ' reason — and probably 
 no ' Martial ' reason, either — to forecast the coming 
 of that organic life. Neither, supposing him still 
 observing the earth many millions of years later, 
 when the human mind first appeared on it, would 
 he have had any more cause to suspect the coming 
 of that new and powerful agent. It is not alto- 
 gether inconceivable that we, now, on the earth 
 itself, may be going about quite unsuspicious of 
 some similar new departure of which we may, for 
 anything we can tell, be on the very verge. If 
 only we can kick our plodding minds out of the 
 ruts along which they crawl there are wonderful 
 horizons possible to them, and above the horizon 
 even now, if we can but realise it, who can say 
 but that there may be coming the dawn of a new 
 faculty, the Creator's last gift to the highest of His 
 terrestrial creatures ? " 
 
 Upon that Launceston folded up his papers. 
 There was little subsequent discussion, and I took 
 no further notes, but I observed that the Club was 
 in an unconamonly thoughtful mood for quite half 
 an hour afterwards. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 launceston's creed 
 
 ** I'm a self-educated man. I was at Eton and 
 Oxford." This scrap of autobiography was 
 Launceston's. When I first began to jot down 
 my shorthand notes of our meetings it was, as I 
 have said, chiefly for the sake of getting facility in 
 that art. Launceston's contributions were gene- 
 rally those which it amused me most to record, but 
 up to now I had never been able to persuade him 
 to read a first paper, as the opener of a debate. 
 He would intervene, often in some striking and 
 original manner — as, for instance, with the parrot 
 which he had used for the confounding of poor old 
 Sir James Macadam ; but to start a subject off his 
 own bat was what he had always firmly declined 
 to do. I was the more interested, therefore, when 
 he consented to read us a paper on the subject which 
 was suggested indirectly by Edward Thursby's 
 tragic end. Yet, even so, it was not until after I 
 had taken down both this and several of the papers 
 with which he followed it, that I had any concep- 
 tion that I was recording more than some scattered, 
 unrelated thoughts. It was by degrees, only, that 
 I realised what was behind it all, that all were 
 parts of a tolerably comprehensive view of most of 
 the psychological and also some of the metaphysical 
 
 28 
 
ONE AND ONE MAKE TWO 29 
 
 and a few of the social problems which beset the 
 world. When I did begin, tardily, to discover his 
 drift I dared so greatly as to tax him with it, and 
 finally drew from him a confession, in a long con- 
 fidential talk which was flattering from a man 
 whose confidences were rare. 
 
 The claim that he made, for the conclusions 
 from his arguments, was large enough. It was no 
 less than a claim to have swept away the difficulties 
 which exist for thinking men in accepting the idea 
 of a transcendent power — let us shortly say a God 
 — intervening, within certain limits, in the afiairs 
 of humanity on the earth. He claimed that a 
 resolute brushing aside of the obstacles which 
 impede thought and vision must in the first place 
 make manifest the obvious limits set on that 
 intervention, and in the second place show that 
 within the limits the intervention was almost 
 obviously certain and as inevitable as the limits 
 themselves. 
 
 ** It seems to me,'' he said, " that a great part 
 of our difficulty has been created by a search for 
 an imagined unity where no unity is. Tilden,'' he 
 said (Tilden was one of our members, a mathe- 
 matician of European repute), '* will check me if 
 my figures are incorrect, but I have always been 
 led to believe that one and one make two. Our 
 trouble, as I think, has arisen very largely from an 
 illusive quest for something under the name of 
 * simplicity,' which would make one and one make 
 one. But is that rightly called * simplicity ' ; as 
 Aristotle might have asked, and should we not 
 better call it by some other name ? And shall we 
 
30 LAUNCESTON'S CREED 
 
 call it * confusion ' ? That is tlie result to wMcli 
 it appears to me that we have been led by the 
 quest for unity in things which are essentially 
 different. It has confounded counsel. So long as 
 we are dealing with inanimate nature, that is to 
 say, matter and energy, good — that is a unity 
 perhaps, though we use two terms to describe the 
 unity. When we deal with living nature we deal, 
 of course, with matter and energy still, but also 
 with something which is superadded — life. From 
 the attempt to find the one in the other and to 
 regard the latter as a product of the former, con- 
 fusion has arisen of the kind that must arise when 
 we try to add one and one and to make one of 
 them. And yet again we have, in my humble 
 opinion [I may observe that, whatever his virtues, 
 humility was conspicuously absent from them] 
 another sum in simple addition wrongly done when 
 we try to make self-conscious life, the life of the 
 reasoning man, one with the life of any other 
 animal, his reason, his aesthetic, ethical, and religious 
 sense a growth from the mentality of the other 
 animals. This is, as I think, yet another error, 
 which has led to incalculable confusion of thought 
 and to difficulty of clear vision and grief of mind. 
 These are three, they are not one — the inanimate 
 matter, the animal life, and the self-conscious life. 
 They are three, and not one.'' 
 
 It was very much against Launceston's natural 
 grain to talk as if he took himself at all seriously, 
 but I do know that he was serious in this, that he 
 regarded it as a serious contribution to thought, if 
 only men would regard it seriously and accept its 
 
THE BOOK OF GENESIS 31 
 
 logical consequences. He considered that lie had 
 made many of the chief problems of life very much 
 more simple for himself by this conclusion which 
 he had reached, and was confident that it would 
 bring equal help to others, if others could make it 
 their own. 
 
 " Of course/' he said, ** we all know that it was 
 a cruel shock for religion when science, about the 
 middle of the last century, finally put the book of 
 Genesis on the shelf, so far as the creation of man's 
 body was concerned, and about the same time the 
 evolutionists piously believed that the discovery 
 of the evolution of life out of inorganic matter was 
 only a matter of a little further search. Since that 
 date we have pushed our inquiries into the ultimate 
 character of matter a good deal further, thanks 
 largely to the radio-active discoveries of the Curies 
 and others. But, while we have pushed these 
 inquiries further back, it is not at all in the direc- 
 tion of the discovery of life in inorganic matter, 
 or of the linking of the two together. On the 
 contrary, the further we push back these inquiries, 
 the further they seem to lead us away from every- 
 thing like life. 
 
 " But at the moment I am speaking of it is easy 
 to see what a deadly significance these conclusions 
 of the evolutionists had. They did grand work, 
 of course, building solid bricks into a structure of 
 truth which was to prove something very different 
 when it was done from what they thought, and is 
 probably nearly as different from what we who 
 have added a brick or two believe it. But certainly 
 their conclusion really did point, for them, to 
 
32 LAUNCESTON'S CREED 
 
 something very like materialism. Certainly (with- 
 out any qualifying ' almost ') those conclusions 
 pointed them right away from the possibility of 
 any special creation, after the first act (if that 
 might be called an act of creation) which set the 
 whole thing going. Organic matter was a develop- 
 ment of inorganic, man's mind a development of 
 beast's mind. 
 
 ** That was their belief, and there was no room 
 in it at all for a God that had any care for His 
 creation. It was rather a deadly creed. And in 
 its deadliness we have been struggling, without 
 much effective getting out, ever since ; for because 
 every rational person must concede that the human 
 body has been evolved from the beast body, that 
 unquestionable fact has given much support to 
 what I believe to be just as unquestionably the 
 fiction that the human mind has been evolved 
 from the beast mind. Science is more and more 
 coming to the conviction that life is an entirely 
 different thing from, is something added, over and 
 above to, inanimate matter. I believe that she 
 will very soon become equally convinced that the 
 human mind and all the qualities in which the man 
 is higher than the beast are entirely different from 
 anything bearing the appearance of mentality 
 which we see in the beast and not by any means 
 a mere growth from it or development of it. I 
 believe it is only, or largely, the cult of that blessed 
 word ' uniformity ' which has nourished the delu- 
 sion that beast mentality and human mentality 
 are allied by an evolutionary link. I do not 
 for a moment believe in the2alliance, and I am 
 
LAUNCESTON'S CREED 33 
 
 prepared to do every kind of battle in opposition 
 to it/' 
 
 That was Launceston's creed, his battle-cry, 
 pronounced in what struck me as tolerably serious 
 words, and of the more gravity as coming from the 
 mouth of a man who commonly saw himself and 
 his thoughts and the whole of life rather in the 
 light of a joke, and not a very good joke at that. 
 
 " Well,'' I said, ** here you are then, right on 
 the track of some excellent stuff for our Thursdays 
 — better than the Life and Death suggestion, as it 
 seems to me." 
 
 " Well," he echoed, " I might try— yes. The 
 only thing is, it is all so long and so deadly dull. 
 And life and Thursday evenings are so short." 
 
 *' It's a good audience," I said. 
 
 '* D'you call old Foljambe good audience ? " 
 
 " Who brought Foljambe into the Club ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 If you go down St. James's Street and look into 
 the bow windows of the Clubs on either side of you, 
 you will see old Foljambes, or young, or middle- 
 aged Foljambes sitting in every one of them. 
 They are all red-faced, shaved in the same fashion 
 and dressed exactly alike, each to other, and like 
 everybody else in St. James's Street ; and what 
 such an one could be doing in such a place as our 
 shabby little Fortnightly Club might very well be 
 wondered. But Launceston had brought him in — 
 you never could tell what Launceston might not 
 do — he had brought him in just as he had brought 
 in his parrot to poor old Macadam's undoing. He 
 had told us, before he brought him : *' I have 
 
34 LAUNCESTON'S CREED 
 
 found a new kind of animal, a native of St. James's 
 Street." ' Foljambe of St. James's Street ' was 
 the title by which Launceston always referred to 
 his friend. The distribution of animals is an affair 
 of habitat which depends on the food-supply and 
 so on, and though this was quite a new animal in 
 our Bloomsbury it was very common, as I have 
 said, in St. James's Street. It was, in fact, a 
 product of Eton and Oxford ; but then so too, 
 extraordinary to say, was Launceston. Only, 
 Foljambe was of the type, as decidedly Launceston 
 — ^untidily dressed, with wisp of iron-grey hair 
 rebelling against restraint and tumbling over his 
 forehead below his hat — was not. It was on his 
 examination as expert witness in a case involving 
 some chemical problem on which he was an 
 authority that Launceston had been asked where 
 he was educated and had replied in the words at 
 the head of this chapter : "I am a self-educated 
 man," adding, as by an afterthought : " I was at 
 Eton and Oxford." 
 
 So, after Launceston had delivered one of his 
 harangues about everything in the world and far 
 beyond it, Foljambe's general comment was an 
 ejaculatory outburst of "I never heard such 
 d — d nonsense in the whole course of my life " — 
 comment received by Launceston with ecstatic 
 enjoyment. It was strange, that even a hint of a 
 doubt or criticism directed on his most extravagant 
 speculations by Macadam could drive him into an 
 almost childish fury, while he would do nothing but 
 laugh at Foljambe. The truth is that Foljambe 
 really was laughable and quite absurd, not for a 
 
ANIMALS AS AUTOMATA 35 
 
 moment to be taken seriously by any sensible 
 person. 
 
 '' I'm not at all prepared to say/' Launceston 
 went on, " that Foljambe's mental processes are 
 very much farther advanced than those of the 
 other animals. By the bye, Huxley has a very 
 good essay on Animals as Automata : I think 
 arising from criticism of Descartes. Descartes 
 would have it that animals — by which he means 
 animals other than man — act in perfect uncon- 
 sciousness, almost as a plant reacts to light, by 
 simple reflex action, without simple sensation. 
 Thus, he denies animals the sense of pain even. 
 Huxley does not go so far as this, though he does 
 go so far as to say that Descartes' view is a tenable 
 one, and a view which is much reinforced by 
 evidence collected since Descartes put it forward. 
 What Huxley seems to hold is that beasts really 
 are automata, and act as such, but that sensation, 
 emotion, and even * ideas as far as they have them ' 
 — I think that is his phrase — accompany their acts. 
 Thus, he would not say that they acted in conse- 
 quence of the sensation, etc., but only that the 
 sensation went with the action. He, with Des- 
 cartes, would have the action to be automatic ; 
 only, he would say that the automata are sensitive. 
 
 ** And so would most of us, surely. Indeed, I 
 could go a good deal farther than Huxley, and 
 still do no damage to my view that the soul, in- 
 cluding the mind, of man is something as different 
 from anything that we find in other animals as 
 life is from inorganic matter. I would even say 
 that animals may act in consequence of their 
 
36 LAUNCESTON'S CREED 
 
 sensations and their emotions ; but, as for their 
 ideas ' as far as they have them/ I would contend 
 that they have them not at all. They form no 
 brain pictures. I see no evidence for it. I see 
 much evidence, both positive and negative, 
 against." 
 
 " Why, d — n it all, I never heard such nonsense 
 in my life. D'you mean to say, that when I've 
 shot a bird and tell my dog to go and fetch it, 
 he's no idea of what I mean him to do ? " 
 
 " Hullo, old man/' said Launceston, with a 
 smile slowly winding about his long face, as he 
 turned to greet Foljambe, who had come in by the 
 door at his back. " Always glad to hear some of 
 your healthy criticism. But yes, that's just what 
 I do mean — that your dog, if he's a well-broken 
 dog, goes and picks up a bird when you tell him 
 to without having an idea in his head." 
 
 " I tell you what it is," Foljambe replied, ex- 
 plosively spluttering in his indignation, " you'd 
 better take care what ideas you're getting into 
 your own head. If you don't take care you'll 
 some day find yourself believing some of the d — d 
 nonsense you talk." 
 
 Launceston's smile broadened yet again. 
 " You'll be very careful you don't believe any of 
 it, old man, won't you ? " he chaffed. 
 
 ** Thank God I've got my head too well screwed 
 on for that," said Foljambe piously. 
 
 " Then mind you don't lose your head, old 
 fellow. Keep it screwed on. If you were to lose 
 it, it would be a terrible affair for anyone who 
 happened to find it." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE GREAT COOK AND THE LITTLE COOK 
 
 After mucli tactful worrying I wound Launceston 
 up to a definite promise and date. He wouldn't 
 tell me anytliing about the mode in which he pro- 
 posed to treat his subject. He turned the point — 
 bluntly or nicely, according to his mood — of all 
 my inquiries. Eventually he said, with an air of 
 concluding the whole matter, " I'm going to give 
 you a culinary lecture : leave it at that." And 
 at that I had perforce to leave it. 
 
 " It was proposed to me,'' he began, at the 
 opening of his address, " that I should try to find 
 a few words to say to you on the subject of life and 
 death : I have tried. I have to confess that I 
 have ignominiously failed. It is not at all in the 
 finding of words that I have failed. They come 
 all too readily. That is, in fact, the trouble — I 
 have found it totally beyond my power to make 
 them few. I shall have to be long, probably I 
 shall be tedious. I see occasions for strenuous 
 debate arising by the way, which might delay us so 
 interminably that we might never reach a terminus 
 unless we can shove them, for the moment, into 
 a side-track as we go. And for the moment I 
 propose to strike out the second term in the subject 
 as suggested to me. Life, surely, for the present 
 
 4 37 
 
38 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 is enough. Let us try to deal with death a little 
 later. 
 
 *' There's no use," he continued, " in talking in 
 long words about the ultimate problems. Either 
 you must leave them alone or you'd better talk 
 
 ^ of them in the simplest language, like a little child. 
 Therefore I want to talk to you in the most childish 
 language possible, because I believe it is the best, 
 the language which goes most near to expressing 
 our understanding (or misunderstanding) of the 
 problem, and therefore the wisest and the deepest 
 language. The word ' creation ' itself is a childish 
 one, begging, so far as we attach any clear meaning 
 to it, the most primal question of all. Indeed, the 
 meaning which it begs is about all the real meaning 
 that does attach to it. And yet it is the simplest 
 word, therefore the best to use, for the ground that 
 it covers in our thought. 
 
 ** The long words, the philosophical language, 
 
 \ are only a camouflage of ignorance, hiding a man's 
 ignorance even from his own sight, and so making 
 it twice as bad as ever. Deep thinking and plain 
 speaking is the ideal, if we could get it. Let us 
 talk about it in cooks' talk for a minute or two — 
 that will do as well as any other. If you are 
 going to be of the school of those who believe that, 
 in creation, all was ' given ' from the first ; that 
 all — even the latest development, which at the 
 present moment of this planet's story happens to 
 be man — was implied, which means folded up, in 
 the ultimate atom, whatever that may be, then 
 you have to regard that atom, or collection of 
 atoms, as something thrown into the universal 
 
THE CAULDRON 39 
 
 ether (query : was there, is there, a universal 
 ether ?) much as a cook throws something into a 
 cauldron and lets it boil. 
 
 ** My way of regarding what has gone on is 
 quite different from the way of those, perhaps the 
 only true and pious evolutionists, who put all 
 their faith in the unfolding, the unrolling of the 
 atom. It looks much more to me then — it does 
 not in the least matter how many, if any, of you 
 will agree with me — that the way the story went 
 is on this wise : Accepting the nebular hypothesis, 
 the nebulous flaming mass was thrown into the 
 cauldron. Good, I'm ready to accept that, though 
 its acceptance leaves me cold, no matter how it 
 flames. It is too remote to affect my pulse. Then 
 it cooled : thence came water and land : so far I 
 go with all the modern editors of books of genesis. 
 But now, here, I make my first departure. I can- 
 not understand — no, that is a foolish word, for of 
 course I cannot understand — what I mean is that 
 I cannot believe that out of the mineral corpse 
 came life by simple process of unrolling. No, my 
 belief rather is that here the Great Cook meddled, 
 chucked a new element into the cauldron, to better 
 season the earth broth, chucked in life. But, 
 mind you, it was only here that He could chuck 
 life, as we know it, in to do any good. The plant 
 needed the chemical mineral ; needed, too, the 
 sun's light piercing the primal fog that must have 
 been worse than any of modern London's smoke 
 over the earth. Life could not sustain itself with- 
 out these constituents. 
 
 *' Of course the other folk, the simple unfolders, 
 
40 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 will say that the potential life was always there, 
 but it was at this point only that it showed itself, 
 because it was only at this point that it could find 
 those needful constituents. Let them say. I am 
 willing to let them, on consideration that they let 
 me have my say. What do you say. Dr. Macadam ? 
 Do you challenge me ? "' 
 
 The old man looked up, astonished at the unex- 
 pected appeal, with two puzzled, wise old eyes 
 under grey shaggy brows, like a Dandie Dinmont 
 terrier of the Pepper colouring. "Maist certainly,'' 
 he said, " I challenge it. There's nae reason to 
 suppose a break between the organised and the 
 inorganic. We have no' found it yet — the con- 
 necting link, the passage frae the inanimate to 
 the animate. But we shall find it. Science shall 
 find it. Natura non fecit saltum. Nature does not 
 jump." 
 
 " Thank you. Dr. Macadam," said Launceston, 
 with a sarcastic politeness in which the irony was 
 far more obvious than the courtesy. " That is 
 precisely the position that I supposed you would 
 take up. You state it perfectly. For the moment 
 I do not propose to deal with it ; but just put it 
 away in your minds, if you please, good people," 
 he said to his audience at large : '' docket it, if you 
 please, as ' Challenge No. 1.' I should like to duel 
 it out with Dr. Macadam at some other time. It 
 does not, however, afiect the main line along which 
 we are going, since it is obvious that in some way 
 or other life, and all that it has meant, did find 
 its way into the soup. Even Dr. Macadam, I sup- 
 pose, will not deny that ? " Launceston paused a 
 
THE LITTLE COOK 41 
 
 moment and looked at the old Scotsman ; but the 
 grey eyebrows made a twitch or two and he gave 
 no other sign of noticing the question. 
 
 " Well, then/' resumed the speaker, '* from that 
 point onward things went quite orderly in that 
 little affair of world cookery which we call evolu- 
 tion ; plant was employed in the service of lower 
 animal life, because plant could take its sustenance 
 from the inorganic, from the mineral and from the 
 sunshine, as animal could not take it directly, and 
 lower animal was cooked up into higher, until 
 suddenly — and here, if I mistake not, we come to 
 * Challenge No. 2 ' which Dr. Macadam will deliver 
 me — suddenly the Great Cook threw an entirely 
 new ingredient into the soup, an ingredient of much 
 more importance, because it made much more 
 difference to all the future boiling than even that 
 other, which I have called life — he threw into the 
 soup nothing less than a Little Cook. He threw 
 in the human reason. And this new ingredient, 
 man with his reason, I call nothing less than a 
 little cook, because it is manifest that man began 
 to deal with the other ingredients in a way that 
 they never, all through the previous boiling, had 
 been treated. Now what do you say to that, Dr. 
 Macadam ? Do you take that up as Challenge 
 No. 2 ? " 
 
 The old man, forewarned, was more ready with 
 his answer this time : "As surely as man's physical 
 structure is developed from that of the lower 
 animals, so surely has his mind developed similarly. 
 Natura, as I observed before, non fecit saltum/' 
 
 " Thanks, Dr. Macadam," Launceston said cour- 
 
42 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 teously. *' That is all that I wished to know. I 
 am inclined to think Nature's agility a little under- 
 rated by some of your school. No matter. 
 
 *' Of course I know that I am, as many people 
 would say, outraging decency by talking of the 
 Great Cook, instead of saying the Absolute, or 
 God, or whatever other name you please to choose 
 to conceal your ignorance. The one is probably 
 just as much like the truth (whatever you mean by 
 truth) as another, except that you really do, I 
 think, get less meaning out of ' the Absolute,' than 
 out of any of the rest, just because you, who use 
 it, are the very opposite of the absolute — that is 
 to say, are relative and finite, so that when you 
 begin to talk of the absolute and of infinity it is 
 very nearly certain, and quite as certain as any- 
 thing except mathematical truth can be, that you 
 are talking nonsense, saying words and phrases that 
 convey no valuable meaning either to yourself or 
 to another finite thing. I daresay a quibbler 
 might tell me that I ought not to use the terms 
 * relative ' and ' finite ' if I deny sense to the terms 
 ' absolute ' and * infinite,' because those latter are 
 really only relative to the former. I know that ; 
 but I do maintain still that it is possible for us to 
 have a better understanding of what we mean by 
 one of the terms of a relative than of the other, 
 and I maintain that we can understand the finite 
 terms very much more clearly than we can the 
 infinite in this life. 
 
 ** But, as I say — the little cook was introduced, 
 and, at once, enormous change in the further 
 cookery of the soup ! Nor does it matter on what 
 
A BAD COOK 43 
 
 hypothesis we realise it, whether on the unfolding 
 or on the new and ever active creation theory. 
 On either hypothesis we have to realise, however 
 he came, that this little cook did come, and to 
 realise the vast differences made by his coming. 
 Perhaps it never has been realised of him sufficiently 
 how immense the difference was, though lack of 
 appreciating his importance is not one of his 
 common faults. 
 
 ** One of the weaknesses — probably it has to be 
 accounted to him as a weakness — of the little cook 
 is that one of his speculations is that it is for his 
 sake that the Great Cook originally made the soup, 
 and has kept it simmering so long ; but his puzzle 
 about it is, so long as he can keep a rational modesty 
 of outlook, how it can be possible that he, such as 
 he is, such a very little and often, as he is obliged 
 to confess, such a very bad cook, is worth it all. 
 Can it be, he asks himself again and again, that he 
 is the final form of the dish, that it is, now that he 
 has been thrown into it, ready, without a great 
 deal more garnishing, to be served up at the table ? 
 It is hardly conceivable to him, in such moments 
 of humility as he happens on when he regards the 
 condition of the soup as the result of the Great 
 War, that it can be so ; and so, of course, he 
 begins to ask ' What then ? ' To what dish of 
 perfection is he to think that the soup-making is 
 tending ? And, especially — for he is nothing if 
 not an egotistic little cook — ^what his place is going 
 to be in the final dishing up. Is it a finality which 
 is to be reached in this present universal plan ; is 
 he to be a party to it ; or is he — this is his fine 
 
44 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 hope — to be taken out, selected as by a special 
 favour of the Great Cook, from this present soup 
 and to be given some exalted place and duty in 
 quite other concoctions ? That is his hope, and 
 now and then comes to him a very blessed sense 
 of assurance that it is so to be with him, for at 
 noble moments he is able to feel himself very 
 sensibly still in the hand of the Great Cook, not 
 altogether thrown from Him and abandoned in the 
 broth. 
 
 '* It is practically sure, at all events, that if it 
 were conceivable (which it is not) that this gift of 
 what we call reason (for that, of course, is what 
 this little cook means) had been bestowed on any 
 other product, at any other date, of evolution — 
 say on the solid mineral thing, or the plant, or the 
 living creature preceding man — that bit of clay or 
 of vegetable or of animate matter, whichever it 
 might have been, would have supposed itself the 
 final act, the denouement to which all the drama 
 tended. At least it would have had just as much, 
 and just the same (slight enough to be sure) warrant 
 for believing it as man, the little cook, has. 
 
 ** And, that being so, it is apparent that we are 
 up against a surprising and even a rather appalling 
 possibility. For the mineral would have supposed 
 itself the final act, just at the moment maybe when 
 the plant, which was about to batten and fatten 
 on the mineral, plus the light, was ushered on to 
 the stage, or thrown into the broth. So again the 
 plant or the lower animal, if reason could have 
 come their way — without an idea of this horrible 
 little cook about to be introduced to play all sorts 
 
NOT AN OLD STORY 45 
 
 of pseudo-creative tricks with them in manipula- 
 tion of the stuff of the broth ! And, that being 
 sOj once again, what warrant have we that even 
 now, on top of us, the cooks, is not about to be 
 introduced something (naturally we cannot imagine 
 of what kind) which will similarly manipulate and 
 batten on us ? I do not say that it is so. I think 
 probably it is not. But who is to deny its possi- 
 bility ? We are in the hands of the Great Cook 
 and we do not in the least know what he has in 
 His store-cupboard, nor what ingredients He may 
 not, even now, quite without our knowledge, be 
 putting in. 
 
 *' There is even a suspicion permeating in the 
 minds of us, the little cooks, that some such new 
 introduction even now is in process of being made. 
 We have an idea of influences from what is rather 
 foolishly called the astral plane (but it is as good 
 a term for our ignorance perhaps as another) pene- 
 trating the terrestrial. It may be coming ; it may 
 be, to some extent, here. At all events do not be 
 put off by the rubbish talked by those of its oppo- 
 nents who write themselves down either as men of 
 sturdy common sense or else as men guided by the 
 pure light (pure ! save the mark !) of reason and 
 point out to us that this idea of communication by 
 channels supra- or subter-sensual with something 
 that neither our senses nor our intellects can reveal 
 to us is a very old story. It is not. It is just as 
 old as men who have been telling any story that 
 has come down to us ; but that means only a very 
 short time indeed as measured by the spaces of 
 time that this earth broth has been cooking. 
 
46 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 Don't make any mistake about that : the Great 
 Cook is in no hurry about his final dishing up, 
 whatever the final dish may be. He doesn't take 
 his time, he takes his eternity, over the job. So 
 when you hear these sturdy common-sense men or 
 those glittering intellectualists talking to you about 
 the ' hoary wisdom of the East,' and pointing out 
 that some of the mystics of to-day are only reviving 
 a story as old as the world, reply to them that all 
 We know traditionally or by written record of the 
 thoughts of men who have gone before us is very 
 very new and recent knowledge. Grant, if you 
 like, that the traditions go back five thousand, even 
 ten thousand, years : what is that ? A nothing, a 
 span scarcely to be considered in the years that 
 even the little cook has been working in and at the 
 broth. Just how long he has been thrown in and 
 has been working we cannot know very exactly, 
 but we can make an approximate guess. What 
 that guess is and the way we arrive at it I must 
 leave over for another opportunity, if another shall 
 come. Unfortunately, we little cooks are not like 
 the Great Cook. It is time, not eternity, we have 
 to take for our jobs, even for our lectures. How 
 does it strike you — is it time I have taken over 
 this, or is it eternity ? 
 
 " And then the question comes finally — I mean, 
 finally so far as this present cooking lesson is con- 
 cerned, not with any absolute finality — if there is 
 any such absolute. Is there really any cauldron at 
 all, that is to say, any form of thought into which 
 the universe is cast, and further, is there, after all, 
 any Great Cook and any soup, the one apart from 
 
AN INSULT 47 
 
 the other, or is it not all just soup and the Great 
 Cook in the soup and of the soup ? — I speak, I 
 hope with reverence — the soup and the Cook just 
 aspects one of the other ? I am posing the ques- 
 tion, as you will observe, which some others have 
 phrased differently — as to whether the Creative 
 Spirit is transcendent or immanent — Vunivers Dieii, 
 My personal preference is for believing Him both/' 
 
 Sir James Macadam had been listening with a 
 deepening expression of disgust on his usually 
 benevolent old face, as Launceston spoke. Though 
 he was not generally at all ready in debate, it was 
 he who now first intervened, asking in his strong 
 Scottish tones : 
 
 " Do I understand that you suppose man is able 
 to thwart the design of the power that you imagine 
 as his Creator ? '' 
 
 Launceston turned upon him with the extra- 
 ordinary irritation which the old gentleman's 
 objections always aroused in him. 
 
 *' Oh come, come, you can't be such a fool as to 
 suppose that I suggested such an idea as that." 
 
 The insult was gross, and the tone in which it 
 was given even aggravated the offence of the 
 words. As a rule Macadam received Launceston's 
 many affronts with a pachydermatous indifference, 
 but this was too crude and rude even for his phi- 
 losophy. He rose slowly from his chair, and, 
 without saying a word, walked out of the room. 
 
 "|I ought not to have said that, I know I ought 
 not," Launceston admitted ; " but I know I shall 
 go mad some day, and I know that Sir James 
 Macadam will be the cause." 
 
48 GREAT COOK AND LITTLE COOK 
 
 Someone took up another point in his address, 
 on whicli he welcomed debate quite reasonably, 
 and so, for the time being, the matter passed. 
 Macadam nevertheless felt so aggrieved, not with- 
 out cause, that he wrote to the Committee sub- 
 mitting that the word 'fool' applied by one member 
 to another transgressed the bounds of offence which 
 could be tolerated, and that he thought the Com- 
 mittee should call upon the offending member 
 to apologise and withdraw. That was also the 
 unanimous opinion of the Committee. I was in- 
 structed to write to Launces ton on the Committee's 
 behalf and tell him so. Which done, there came 
 back an answer in terms of thin courtesy, under 
 which the irony lay very obvious, saying, amongst 
 much else : " I fear that my expression laid me 
 open to misunderstanding. So very far was I from 
 calling our revered fellow-member a fool that I 
 explicitly stated my opinion that it was impossible 
 he could be so foolish as his question to me sug- 
 gested. I would observe that not only did my 
 remark do full justice to his intelligence but that, 
 in the light of further evidence, it would appear 
 that I paid it even too high a compliment, for I 
 have learnt that in subsequent conversation he 
 actually repeated his conviction that I believed it 
 possible for man seriously to thwart the intention 
 of the Creator." 
 
 There was much more, but not very close to the 
 point, and the Committee, in some doubt what to 
 do, instructed me to write to Sir James throwing 
 a pleasant gloss over Launceston's explanation, 
 stating that he affirmed he had been misunderstood 
 
RECONCILIATION 49 
 
 and that lie had no intention of impugning the 
 intelligence of one whom he wrote of as a * revered 
 fellow member/ I composed the letter with some 
 conscience-pricking over its essential insincerity, 
 but it achieved its aim. Sir James, perhaps 
 mollified by the * revered fellow member ' phrase, 
 appeared to accept my varnished version for the 
 true bed-rock, and we heard no more about it. 
 He met Launceston in the Club as if there had 
 been no trouble. Nevertheless, it had the effect 
 on our debates that the 'challenges' proposed and 
 accepted were not brought to an issue. They, 
 together with the ' regrettable incident,' lapsed 
 below the horizon. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 When Launceston consented to give us a lecture, 
 or an * opening ' for a Thursday debate, under the 
 title Animal Psychology, we wondered, because 
 we knew his envenomed hate of sounding phrase. 
 He was accustomed to express fierce contempt of 
 long and fine words such as are used (according to 
 his contention) to obscure understanding and to 
 darken counsel. Why should he entitle his theme 
 Animal Psychology, when he might equally call it 
 The Mind of Beasts ? The latter would have been 
 far more in his mode. With the very first sentence 
 of his lecture we understood, for he began : 
 
 " What I like about this subject title. Animal 
 Psychology, is that it is a title indicating, as I 
 think, logos — that is to say, jaw — about a psyche, 
 which is a Snark, a Boojum, a Mrs. Harris — any- 
 thing that you like that is fictitious and non- 
 existent. 
 
 ** Another way of stating the problem, not quite 
 so foolish, because it doesn't introduce such a great 
 pretentious Greek word is, ' Do Animals reason ? ' 
 In both, the use of the word ' animal ' is foolish, 
 unless explanation is given of the limited sense in 
 which it is used, because, of course, man is an 
 animal. He thinks himself the very last word in 
 
 60 
 
INTELLIGENCE OF DOGS 51 
 
 animal life, the triumph to which all the rest is 
 only prelude. But what * animal/ as used here, 
 means is animals other than man. So let us 
 understand it. The question, then, to pose it in its 
 popular form, is — ' Do these other animals reason ? ' 
 *' I am nearly sure that the answer must be 
 ' No.' And this I say, though I am very well 
 aware that of the many ways — all easy — of achiev- 
 ing unpopularity, none is more sure and swift than 
 maintaining that dogs and the other creatures 
 rather lower in evolution's scale than man are 
 destitute of even the most feeble spark of a faculty 
 deserving the name of reason. You are scouted, 
 not merely as a foolish, but also as a hard and 
 unsympathetic person, on venturing any such 
 assertion. Even I, than whom none possibly can 
 be more fatuous in devotion to a canine friend, 
 have suffered sorely from such accusation. And 
 forthwith the company in which you hazard such 
 an opinion will begin to tell you tales of the wonders 
 of intelligence performed by dogs which they have 
 owned, or with which they have the privilege of 
 acquaintance : as if all of us had not possessed, at 
 one time or other, our canine prodigies, of which 
 we can relate marvels ! Then some intellectual 
 debater, worthily seeking to lift the debate to a 
 higher level, puts in : * But, my dear fellow, you 
 say animals have no reason — let us leave the dogs 
 for a moment, and look at the hymenopterous 
 insects, ants, bees, wasps. Do you mean to say 
 that, with all your reason, you could build a thing 
 so well adapted to its purpose as the comb, with its 
 six-sided cells, of the honey-bee ? Look at the 
 
52 ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 solitary wasps, how they lay up store of cater- 
 pillars, stung to death, or just paralysed, so as to 
 put them into a kind of live storage for their young 
 ones whom they never will see ! Do you mean to 
 say all that does not show reasoning power ? ' 
 
 " That is the kind of argument you are very apt 
 to hear, and if it is delivered with sufficient decision 
 and fluency and in a sufficiently loud voice, it 
 carries an enormous conviction, and is nearly sure 
 to ' put the lid," so to say, on your unpopularity 
 with that audience. The answer to it is, of course, 
 that they — that is to say, the miracles of apparent 
 wisdom performed by the honey-bees and the rest 
 of them — show almost every other kind of miracle 
 except reason ; but, as for reason, that they show 
 none of it at all. It is abundantly evident that 
 their doings are directed by something quite 
 different from reason, something that operates in 
 quite a different way. How could reason possibly 
 direct the solitary wasp to store up caterpillars for 
 the use of a larva that it has never seen, that it 
 never will see ? Eeason, we are told, proceeds 
 from the known to the unknown. The wasp has 
 never had the opportunity, even if it had the 
 faculty, of knowing anything about this larva. 
 How should reason, then, teach it to store food for 
 it ? And, of course, our argumentative friend was 
 quite right in his question about the honey-bee : 
 you might worry your reason till you had brain 
 fever or had written all the plays of Shakespeare, 
 but still you could never have reasoned out the 
 fact which the honey-bee has taught you, that by 
 giving an ordinary worker grub a different class of 
 
MEMORY 53 
 
 food and a rather more palatial liberality of cell- 
 wall within wliich to grow royally fat, you could 
 breed it up into a queen. Wheresoever you are 
 going to rank it in the psychic scale, it is not reason, 
 but some faculty quite different, which teaches the 
 honey-bee this. Rather, let us say, to avoid trouble 
 — which makes the honey-bee behave as if it had 
 this wonderful knowledge, for that is really the 
 phenomenon which we observe — the action of a 
 worker who is totally unconscious of the end which 
 her action serves. 
 
 " If you have succeeded in ' keeping your end 
 up ' in the debate so far as this, and have not been 
 clean given ' out ' by the umpire of public opinion, 
 it is quite probable that some other conscientious 
 objector to your theory of the unreason of the 
 lower animals will try to bowl you out with a new 
 kind of ball : * But surely you don't mean to 
 say that animals have no memory ! And isn't 
 memory a kind of reason ? ' 
 
 " The answer to the latter part of the question is 
 in the negative : memory certainly is no kind of 
 reason, although it is probably true that anyreason- 
 ing process would be impossible without memory in 
 some form as its basis; but as to the first part of the 
 question, of course the other animals have memory. 
 For what, after all, is instinct, except memory ? In- 
 stinct is compact of memory ; memory is the stuff 
 it is made of — memory, not of the individual alone, 
 but of all the generations that have gone before to 
 the making of that individual, and to the making 
 of its habits. For what is habit but memory in 
 action ? And instinct is the stored and inherited 
 5 
 
m ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 memory of the race. That is why it is so extra- 
 ordinarily effective ; in some ways and details so 
 very much more effective than reason. In other 
 ways it fails remarkably, for instinct is so bound 
 in memory's fetters, in the inherited habit, that it 
 cannot stir out of its bonds, but must do its ap- 
 pointed task, even though in circumstances which 
 make the task not only a useless but a fatal one. 
 For example of instinct working uselessly, we may 
 cite these solitary wasps again, which will go to the 
 pains of sealing up the grubs which they have 
 brought for the sustenance of their young, even 
 though they have not laid in the cell the egg from 
 which this young one, so amply provided for, might 
 be hatched. 
 
 *' Yet animals, doubtless, have a manner of acting 
 which looks again and again as if some gleam of 
 reason must be inspiring it. I have a small dog- 
 friend, a Sealyham, by name Joey, by nature a 
 compound of all that is most charming and most 
 knavish in dog kind. He has a rough and tough 
 rag-doll, which he loves to worry. The doll, known 
 as Cousin Susie, lives on a shelf in a cupboard, 
 with closed doors, whence it is now and again taken, 
 and given to Joey to play with. Often Joey, when 
 no one is taking notice of him, is to be found 
 sitting up and begging before the cupboard door, 
 now and then giving a high-pitched, very plaintive 
 whine, asking, as plainly as he knows how, for 
 Cousin Susie. What are we to think about the 
 psychology of that ? It all has a look as if he 
 were representing to himself, in his little mind, 
 Cousin Susie lying there on the shelf, and that he 
 
THE DOG'S PRAYER 56 
 
 knew that if he were to sit up and beg for it like 
 this he would be bound to soften the heart of any- 
 thing but a human stone. The human softening, 
 be it said at once, seldom fails, but as for the canine 
 psychology of the comedy, we may doubt whether 
 that is played out quite as it appears to be. Doubt- 
 less, Joey is aware of Susie's presence there, on the 
 shelf : memory would help him in that, and, 
 besides, he has a nose to which cupboard doors 
 present no bar. Probably he has a simple olfactory 
 sense of Susie in the first place, rather than any 
 mental picture. Then, doubtless, much happy 
 experience has taught him that the act of sitting- 
 up on his hinder end, and begging, is associated 
 with the attainment of some, at least, of his desires. 
 That explains the prayerful pose ; and the whines 
 are no more than the involuntary canine utterances 
 of hope and eagerness. All is explicable by pro- 
 cesses involving no exercise of that great gift of 
 reason which surely is a human faculty. Only, I 
 speak of the creatures of this earth, where we know 
 them. How it may be on other planets we have 
 still to learn. 
 
 ** I generally notice that a low groan, audible to 
 everybody except the narrator, begins to go round 
 the company when a man starts a dog-story. That 
 means that of these we have had enough ; we are 
 as ripe for boredom therein as we are for in- 
 credulity in a fish-story. Yet it is to the dog that 
 man naturally turns for his instance when any 
 question arises about the intelligence of animals 
 of other than his own kind, because the dog is his 
 constant companion, always under his observa- 
 
6« ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 tion, his servant and helper ; and not only is so 
 now, but has so been during all the ages of history, 
 and was so, as the geological record shows, before 
 a page of history was written. Chiefly to his dog, 
 occasionally to his cat, and now and then to his 
 horse, man will turn for his examples, and has 
 even grown so used to turning to them that it 
 comes to him almost as a new idea when it is 
 suggested that these do not have a monopoly of 
 all that approaches the human in mentality. The 
 others, for most debates, simply do not count ; 
 they are a neglected quantity. 
 
 " But really, though neglected, they are far 
 from negligible in this regard. Mr. Hobhouse, who 
 is one of the relatively few who have given close 
 study to the psychology of lower animals, puts 
 some of the higher apes and the elephant above 
 our familiar friends in the mental scale. He even 
 claims for them the possession of a first beginning 
 of conceptual, as opposed to merely perceptual, 
 thought. For my own part, I have never had the 
 privilege of a * higher ape ' or of an elephant as a 
 friend. They are too high for me. But I have 
 observed humbler folk with what attention I 
 might, and also have taken note of the attitude of 
 mind of humankind towards them, and have seen 
 the strongest exhibitions of astonishment on the 
 part of humans when the others have shown any 
 intelligence at all. I remember that almost the 
 first opening of my eyes to the singular point of 
 view of men towards 'these others' was when a 
 relative of my own exclaimed in much surprise, 
 * He seems to know you ! ' The * he ' in question 
 
MY FRIEND THE TORTOISE 57 
 
 was a tortoise. * Well/ I said, ' of course. What 
 would you expect ? ' The beast had been my daily 
 companion and friend. He had his eyes — not 
 large, perhaps, but bright, though they were small 
 — and he had his memory. Of course he knew me. 
 Possibly someone who has no tortoise among his 
 friends may ask how he showed his knowledge. 
 He showed it, as every tortoise does, by keeping 
 his head thrust well out from under his shell and 
 surveying his world confidently. In the presence 
 even of a dog whom he knew well he would do 
 this, but in the presence of the stranger, human or 
 canine, back went his head under the protection 
 of his shell — he * went home/ as a young acquaint- 
 ance of mine says of it. 
 
 *'Once my notice was directed to this queer 
 view which most people take of animal in- 
 telligence I found every instance confirming it. 
 In the case of any of the animals, except of the 
 common domestic kind, they are quite surprised 
 when they see them distinguishing between one 
 human being and another, between a known 
 person and an unknown. It even astonishes 
 them to see the commotion that a stranger's 
 coming makes in the poultry-yard, while the 
 gardener or the cowman can go amongst the fowl 
 without creating any trouble. That a canary or 
 a parrot should know their friends they think 
 something of a marvel. What I should like to 
 find out — and should be grateful for instances in 
 point — is how low in the scale this kind of know- 
 ledge goes. I believe that we should find it begin- 
 ning very early. All of us who have made with 
 
58 ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 the wild things such friendships as they will admit 
 us to must be aware how trustfully birds or squirrels 
 in a garden will come to the very hand of people 
 whom they know and from whom they have learnt 
 that no harm is to be feared. Watch a river- 
 keeper at a fish-hatchery — he will go along the 
 nursery where the young fish are kept, and the 
 whole surface of the water will be a-boil with the 
 fishes struggling up and jostling each other in the 
 expectation of the savoury meat he often doles out 
 to them. And now go along the waterside your- 
 self, and see — every fish has gone to its hiding-place, 
 fleeing from your unfamiliar apparition! Fish, 
 then, know their human friends — sufiiciently at 
 least to discriminate between known and unknown 
 persons. Of mammals we cannot doubt at least 
 an equal intelligence, and no one who has any 
 acquaintance at all with bees can be sceptical 
 about their power of distinguishing. I have experi- 
 mented with ants to see whether they discriminate 
 likewise, but never succeeded in getting any con- 
 clusive result. The mining ants become so per- 
 turbed when you let in on them even the ^minimum 
 of light necessary for seeing what they are doing 
 that it is hardly possible to draw any sound infer- 
 ence from their behaviour, and the wood ants, 
 which are daylight workers, are more difficult to 
 keep in confinement. I have not had them long 
 enough, perhaps, to make friends. But the in- 
 stance of the bees in itself is enough to show that 
 insects are capable of drawing this distinction. I 
 expect that we should find it among the molluscs. 
 ** But, of course, in all this it is most necessary, 
 
MY FRIEND THE TROUT 59 
 
 to a right understanding of the subject, that we 
 accept the word ' know ' with all requisite modifi- 
 cation and reserve. Words are not solid realities : 
 far from it, they are only the signs we use to com- 
 municate with others about phenomena, and we 
 hardly know whether any phenomena are the same 
 for any two persons. At least we think we know 
 this, that if we see a tree in full leaf and say to a 
 person with a certain kind of colour-blindness : 
 * Look — there's a tree,' the thing he will see will 
 give him the impression not of a green thing but 
 of a red thing. Nevertheless, in communications 
 between human beings of normal faculties, when 
 one uses a word he believes that the other will 
 receive from it some impression very like that 
 which it makes on his own mind. But that is not 
 to be said when we use the word in connection with 
 an animal of faculties and organs so unlike our 
 own as a bee or a fish. When we say of the fish 
 that he ' knows Peter ' — the keeper — ' from Paul ' 
 — the angler, what we ought to mean, fishily 
 speaking, is probably something like this — that 
 the dark silhouette against the sky, which is the 
 kind of vision of the terrestrial object that the 
 fish has of Peter, is a familiar object along with 
 the rest of the common objects of the water-side. 
 It is even better than familiar, for it is associated 
 with that nicely piquant dinner of none too fresh 
 horseflesh which is cast upon the waters now and 
 again coincidently with the apparition of Peter's 
 silhouette. The silhouette of Paul, on the other 
 hand, who does not come down the nursery once 
 for fifty times of Peter's coming, is quite unfamiliar. 
 
60 ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 and has no such savoury associations. So away 
 the fish go, scared by the strange sight. And to 
 show that their knowledge of Peter is something 
 quite difierent from the kind of identification by 
 which we know one of our acquaintance from 
 another, it needs only to see the behaviour of these 
 same fish when they are turned out into the river 
 and Peter comes down the bank. In that new 
 environment his is no familiar or friendly appear- 
 ance. They know him no longer. They flee from 
 him as if he were as strange as Paul himself. Fish 
 identify familiar appearances, no doubt, by sight, 
 though with an angle and other details of vision 
 different from ours : so, too, the birds, and so, 
 as it seems, the reptiles — the tortoises and those 
 grass snakes which we used to keep surreptitiously 
 at school. But with the rest it seems as if the 
 ultimate identification sense in almost every case 
 is the olfactory. This is true of the dog, cat, 
 horse, cow — almost certainly it is true of the bee, 
 and probably we should find it so of all the insects. 
 In this short space it is impossible to do more 
 than just touch the edge and indicate the scope 
 of a subject as large as this. Of course, the 
 identification faculty, so to call it, is only one 
 among many modes of their intelligence, but it is 
 one of the most interesting, because it is the 
 possible first stage in that distinction between self 
 and not-self which means so very much." 
 
CHAPTEK VI 
 
 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 From the very beginning of Launceston's remarks 
 Foljambe had quite obviously and even audibly 
 been in something like the condition of a highly 
 pressed boiler with an ill-secured safety-valve. 
 At every other moment there had escaped from 
 him such utterances as * Tchah ' and * Bah/ with 
 other slightly more articulate ejaculations as 
 ' Nonsense ! ' ' What the devil ? ' ' Rot/ and so 
 forth — small sputtering out- jets as it were of the 
 steam that was pent up within him. But as soon 
 as ever Launceston stopped and sat down the 
 safety-valve flew right off and he exploded freely. 
 ** Now what the devil ? " he exclaimed, out of 
 a face empurpled by his inward fury. *' I never 
 heard such a pack of nonsense in the whole course 
 of my life. Can't think what in the world the 
 fellow imagines he's driving at. Instinct, indeed ! 
 Reason ! Let me tell you that I'd far rather have 
 the instinct of a great many dogs that I've known 
 — yes, dash it, if I wouldn't rather have the in- 
 stinct of every dog that ever I have known — than 
 I would have the reason — reason he calls it ! " 
 the speaker repeated on a fine note of sarcasm — 
 " of such a fellow as Launceston. What will a 
 dog not do for a man, I'd like to know ? What 
 
 61 
 
62 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 man, or what woman either, for that matter, can 
 be better friend to a man than a dog ? A dog'll 
 retrieve for a man, a dogll point game for a man, 
 a dog'll fetch and carry for a man, a dog'll die 
 for a man. What man, I'd like to know, would 
 do all that for another man — or woman either 1 
 A horsell gallop himself to death for a man. If 
 there's no reason in all this, if it's all instinct, all 
 I can say is I don't want your reason. Give me 
 instinct." 
 
 Some of us, I imagine, had been a little alarmed 
 at first by the violence of the Foljambe explosion, 
 but we were quite relieved by the effect that it 
 was visibly producing on the victim against whom 
 it was directed. The lines of Launceston's face 
 did not readily fall into the pleasant curves that 
 indicate satisfaction ; but now, as Foljambe spoke, 
 they exhibited all the contentment that it was 
 possible for them to express. The lines about his 
 deep-set eyes, which were always far more respon- 
 sive than those of his grim and closely shut mouth, 
 bent themselves into a smile of benediction on the 
 infuriated orator. 
 
 *' My dear Foljambe," he said genially, as soon 
 as he might be heard through the other's sputter, 
 " thank you so very much for your contribution. 
 There could not possibly be a better instance of 
 the kind of argument by which people try to 
 prove that reason came out of instinct. * Give me 
 instinct ! ' you say. My dear fellow, you are the 
 last man that need utter such a prayer as that. 
 Instinct is exactly what has been given you. You 
 are essentially, almost exclusively, an instinctive 
 
FOLJAMBE INTERVENES 63 
 
 man. You go by habit, wliicli is only another way 
 of saying by instinct. You have not the least 
 cause to fear that you will ever be given reason.'' 
 
 Extraordinarily perplexed, Foljambe had no 
 clear idea whether to accept this soft answer as a 
 compliment or the reverse. After a few further 
 doubtful sputterings it seemed best to him to 
 reassert and strengthen a position which had won 
 him, for what it might be worth, such meed of 
 recognition from the opener of the debate : " Glad 
 to hear," he ejaculated, " that Launceston does 
 see the sense of what I say. Give him plenty more 
 instances, if he likes, where animals show more 
 reason than men. No animal ever gets drunk, 
 gives himself heart disease by smoking too many 
 cigarettes, doesn't throw lighted matches where 
 they'll set a whole county on fire, doesn't brush a 
 wisp of hair over his bald head, doesn't turn up 
 his trousers in dry weather, doesn't sit up all 
 night gambling, doesn't strut round a room to the 
 sound of tin kettles banging and call it dancing — 
 in fact, no animal makes a fool of himself." 
 
 " Thanks again, my dear Foljambe," said 
 Launceston, with appreciation. " I agree with 
 every word of your meaning, though the form in 
 which you have put it — the two negatives — ' no 
 animal doesn't turn up his trousers,' etc. — would 
 have got you into some trouble at Eton when we 
 were there together. I would be almost ready to 
 accept as definition of man — the mistake-making 
 animal. Instinct makes plenty of mistakes " — 
 (" I don't believe it," came in a growl from Fol- 
 jambe. ** A very interesting treatise might be 
 
64 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 written/' retorted Launceston, *' on the rois- 
 leadings of instinct.") — " I was going to say/' lie 
 resumed, as I made a note of this suggestion for a 
 future paper after this parenthetical exchange of 
 thrust and parry, " that instinct makes mistakes, 
 but that reason makes a very great many more/' 
 
 The talk ebbed and flowed. I did not trouble 
 to take any more notes of it. " What is your 
 view of it all ? " I asked Pershore, who was in the 
 arm-chair next my own. He was a doctor — doing 
 a big practice in the Bloomsbury district. He 
 generally came to our fortnightly meetings, but 
 hardly ever spoke at them, saying, truly enough 
 no doubt, that he was far too busy for talking. 
 
 " What I think of it," he said, taking a large 
 meerschaum from his mouth, to answer me, ** is 
 that I want to hear more before I can come to an 
 opinion. All this is mere scratching away at the 
 surface of a big subject, and at a very little bit of 
 the surface." 
 
 ** Well have more," I said, " if I can manage 
 to get it out of Launceston," 
 
 " You can manage it, if anyone can," he replied, 
 and I felt flattered, as a bear- ward might by a 
 compliment on his tact in dealing with a fierce pet. 
 
 ** By the bye," broke in Launceston, who had 
 not been listening to the talk but had been sitting 
 abstracted in his own thoughts since the Foljambe 
 skirmish. ** By the bye, I should just like to add, 
 if you will let me, a postscript to what I was saying 
 when I was interrupted by my friend Mr. Foljambe's 
 genial criticism. You may ask me perhaps * Why 
 make all this pother and talk about all this ? 
 
VALUE OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 65 
 
 What does it matter whether there is such an 
 affair as animal psychology or not, whether the 
 human psyche is, or is not, an outgrowth of the 
 lower animaFs brain or mind ? ' 
 
 ** My answer is, that it really does matter quite 
 enormously. If anything matters, this matters. 
 The frame of man's soul, his body, it is certain 
 that we must allow to have been developed from 
 lower animal forms : we are obliged, since Darwin, 
 to grant that. But are we driven to the same 
 admission in regard to his psyche ? I affirm that 
 we are not and I have given you, and hope to give 
 you a few more, if you will bear with me, reasons 
 for that affirmation. And I say again that, human 
 nature being what it is, it matters enormously for 
 our practical comfort of soul and also for our 
 spiritual advance to be able to make that affirma- 
 tion in confident faith — for this reason : I do not 
 go so far as to say that if we ascribe, as my old 
 enemy Sir James Macadam would have us ascribe, 
 the mind and soul of man to a development out 
 of the kind of intelligence that we see in the other 
 animals — ^if we make this ascription, I do not say 
 that it is impossible for us to believe that the 
 human soul survives the body and has its spiritual 
 communion and intercourse with influences which 
 are not appreciable by our senses — I do not say it 
 is impossible that we may so believe, but I do say 
 that it is an ascription which places far more strain 
 on our power of credence in the immortal and the 
 transcendent quality of the soul than if we are able 
 to regard that soul as something uniquely human, 
 something that belongs to man and belongs to no 
 
66 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 other one of the animals that has preceded him in 
 the story of evolution — something, in fact, that 
 was newly given when man came on the scene and 
 which really makes man what he is, a spiritual 
 being as well as a material being. It is as if the 
 spiritual had been introduced as a new thing into 
 a material frame which had been gradually built 
 up through all the ages. 
 
 " I do not say that it is rational that this should 
 make it easier for us to conceive of the soul of 
 man as being in touch with forces and influences 
 which transcend all that our senses tell us anything 
 about : perhaps it is quite irrational ; but I repeat 
 that, our human nature being so strangely composed 
 as it is, in point of fact, it does make it easier for 
 us, as human beings, to conceive it. 
 
 '' I know it is the kind of position which 
 Victorian science, as represented by Sir James 
 Macadam, hates. It contains an assumption 
 abominable to that science — the assumption, as I 
 said before, that one and one make two. It was 
 always the constant endeavour, I will almost say the 
 frantic endeavour, of that Victorian science to add 
 one and one and bring out the sum as one — to say 
 that spirit and matter were one, not two, that the 
 one was but a mode of the other, or some German 
 jugglery of that sort. Above all, it found comfort 
 in that blessed word 'uniformity' : it recognised no 
 boundary between the living and the dead, it 
 thought to bring life out of its dead rock, to bring 
 spirit out of that inherited habit which is instinct. 
 
 " I'm not asking you to take what I say on my 
 own credit. Most of the scientific people of to-day 
 
SYNTHETIC PROTOPLASM 67 
 
 will back me up in it, I think. That is what makes 
 me so mad with old Macadam, that he talks as if 
 he and his contemporaries had settled all about 
 the heaven and the earth once and for all, and 
 that no later knowledge was knowledge at all. I 
 tried to get him to read a pamphlet which I have 
 here '' — he produced some pages from his tail 
 pocket — " by Soddy of Aberdeen. It is an address 
 he gave to the students there. But of course old 
 Macadam wouldn't read it, or, if he did read it 
 gave it back to me with a benevolent grin of con- 
 tempt on his silly old face which was as much as 
 to say that he had found it not worth the reading. 
 But he's a great man, Soddy. What is it he says ? 
 Here we are : ' In passing from the phenomena of 
 the inanimate world to those of life in general, we 
 have to admit at least one fundamental conception 
 which cannot be connected with the conceptions 
 of the inanimate world, and which it now seems 
 most unlikely ever will be.' " 
 
 '* Knocking out Herr Plliger's synthetic proto- 
 plasm," Pershore commented. 
 
 '* Knocking out everybody's synthetic proto- 
 plasm," Launceston amplified. 
 
 '' What the devil's * synthetic protoplasm ' ? " 
 Foljambe asked wrathfully, as if the phrase gave 
 him personal offence. 
 
 '' This German gentleman," Launceston ex- 
 plained, smilingly, " thought he had invented life, 
 living matter. I don't mean such splendid speci- 
 mens of living matter as you, Foljambe, but living 
 matter in its simplest form. It was a beautiful 
 imitation ; it had all the chemical constituents of 
 
68 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 living protoplasm, showing all the streaming move- 
 ments of living protoplasm — I am right, am I not, 
 Pershore V he inquired of the doctor, who con- 
 firmed him by a nod — *' the only one thing that the 
 imitation lacked was life. Otherwise it was perfect. 
 But it lacked life, and in consequence the streams 
 ceased to flow, it ceased even to look like living 
 protoplasm, for the simple reason that it was not. 
 It was dead. 
 ** Soddy, you see, to go back to him, speaks of 
 
 * at least one fundamental conception which cannot 
 be connected,' etc. That is to say, he recognises 
 one break, but is careful to guard himself against 
 being supposed to assume that it is the only one. 
 In fact, he goes on almost immediately to say, ' I 
 make no pretence of discussing whether the per- 
 sonality, conscience, and soul of a man is, or is not, 
 without any entirely new fundamental conception, 
 capable of being regarded as the further develop- 
 ment of the simple consciousness, or awareness, of 
 its existence as a separate creature, possessed by 
 the lowly organism. I accept the, to my mind, 
 complete break of continuity between the animate 
 and the inanimate worlds, as being all that is really 
 demanded by our present knowledge.' 
 
 " That is what Soddy tells his Aberdeen students. 
 I should like to challenge him on the point of its 
 
 * awareness of its existence as a separate creature 
 of the lowly organism.' I do not for a single instant 
 believe in that awareness. Soddy, however, ex- 
 plicitly says that it is a subject outside his special 
 ken — not his job, in fact. What he is insistent 
 about, and does claim to speak of with knowledge, 
 
BREAKS IN EVOLUTION 69 
 
 is just this uniformity ; and lie chucks the blessed 
 word overboard. He insists on at least one break. 
 He emphasises it again a little further on : * One's 
 scientific sense of direction tells that the further 
 one advances towards the ultimate insoluble pro- 
 blems of physics, the more completely one leaves 
 behind the phenomena of life and all its mysteries.' 
 And, just above : * Though the road to the abso- 
 lute truth stretches, as always, into a distance 
 that may be approached but for ever recedes, we 
 know the direction ' (he italicises those words) * that 
 the road takes. This is the crux of the whole 
 matter. Its direction is definitely away from and 
 not towards the mysteries of life and spirit. The 
 path hewn by knowledge through ignorance points 
 two ways ' (two ways — do you see ?) ' in the direc- 
 tion of the absolute unattainable truth. Man has 
 always tended to confound these two classes of the 
 ultimately unknowable ' (Macadam persists in con- 
 founding them). ' Heaven is at once the abode of 
 the constellations, which obey the laws of mechan- 
 ism with undeviating precision, and where events 
 and consequences are predicted before they occur 
 to the fraction of a second, and also the abode of 
 God and the heavenly host of disembodied spirits." " 
 
 " A Theist, although a chemist,*' Tilden com- 
 mented. 
 
 ** A Theist, because a chemist,'' Launceston 
 corrected. 
 
 " What the devil's a chemist got to do with it ? " 
 Foljambe asked. 
 
 '* A chemist," Launceston explained to him, as 
 one might to a child of five, *' does not only mean 
 6 
 
70 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 a man who makes up medicine in a shop with jars 
 of different coloured water in the window. It may- 
 mean that, but it may mean other things besides/' 
 
 Foljambe muttered sounds like " a fellow ought 
 to use words in their proper meaning/' and grumbled 
 off into silence. 
 
 ** It's a curious view of world-making that this 
 Soddy gives us in this paper," Launceston resumed. 
 " He seems to look on it as if the Creator found 
 Himself with something ready made for Him to 
 work on — that is to say, matter and energy — and 
 then, taking these as data, worked into them life 
 and the human mind and the whole evolutionary 
 coil. He does not explicitly say just that, but 
 that is what it amounts to. Look here " — he 
 read out passages : *' * In modern science, matter 
 and energy are the unchangeable realities that 
 can neither be created nor destroyed.' Do you 
 see that ? Pretty strong, isn't it ? Cannot * be 
 created nor destroyed. ' He quite sees the difficulty 
 of his theory : he faces it, for he says, towards 
 the end of his paper, * I do not expect to escape 
 or shirk the question : Who, then, created all 
 this wonderful and intricate machinery ? Science 
 answers that matter and energy cannot be created 
 or destroyed. The universe is eternal. The very 
 idea of creation and destruction is drawn, not from 
 the inanimate universe, but from the phenomena 
 of life. These ideas cannot be considered apart 
 from life, whereas the inanimate universe can. 
 Just as the man of science is unable to push his 
 mechanical conceptions to explain life and the 
 Deity, so the theist must not push his conception 
 
WHO MADE THE MAKER? 71 
 
 of the Deity and life into the inanimate universe. 
 The Rubicon that cannot be crossed in one direc- 
 tion, obviously must not be crossed in the other/ 
 That's what Soddy says. He says that he does 
 not shirk the question ' Who created it all ? ' 
 Perhaps he doesn't, but do you think he solves it ? '* 
 
 " I don't see," said Pershore, " that he gains 
 much by saying that energy and matter are eternal 
 and what old Milton calls ' uncreate.' It is as 
 impossible for us to conceive them created as it is 
 impossible to conceive them uncreated. If we 
 assume them to be made, we only come back on 
 the weary old puzzle of the Maker, and who made 
 the Maker ? ' Great effluence of great essence 
 uncreate ' is just about as near to it as Soddy or 
 anyone's likely to get, it seems to me, to convey 
 an idea of the hub of our little system." 
 
 " Yes," Launceston agreed, " but you won't get 
 any nearer to * it,' as you call it, by trying to prove 
 that one and one make one, when all the evidence 
 goes to show that they make two. That's Soddy 's 
 point, mainly." 
 
 ** Soddy, then," said Tilden, *' regards matter 
 and energy as the real things, the permanent 
 things : all the rest are impermanent and unreal." 
 
 " Not at all, not at all, he's not such a fool as 
 that," Launceston snapped out. " Didn't I tell 
 you he's a theist ?— Well, perhaps I didn't, but 
 he is : at least I take him so. Look here : ' In 
 modern science,' as I read to you just now, ' matter 
 and energy are the unchangeable realities.' But 
 in the very next passage he says : ' The doctrine 
 of the immortality of the spirit or conservation of 
 
72 ANIMATE MATTER AND HUMAN REASON 
 
 personality may be regarded as the inverse form 
 of the scientific argument above. The real part 
 of a man is not his bodily organism, which is con- 
 tinually wasting away and being as continually 
 renewed, nor the physical energy at its command, 
 which is derived entirely from the inanimate world, 
 but is the personality resident in the body and in 
 control of it/ Again he says this — arguing that 
 once life is introduced the course of evolution may 
 be regarded as smooth travelling — he says : ' In 
 man we get hopelessly beyond the range of physical 
 science. . . . The mechanical and even the vital 
 aspects have been thrust into the background by 
 a developed personality that consistently acts and 
 tries to act — and therefore in the language of 
 science, already explained, is — a distinct being, 
 resident in the body ' (these really are striking 
 words, emphasising the duality), * resident in the 
 body as a man may live in a house, and, if real, 
 then, by the canons of human thought, immortal. 
 Thought, reasoning power, memory, free-will, the 
 aesthetic perceptions of beauty and harmony, the 
 ethical ideas of virtue, justice, duty, and self-sacri- 
 fice, and the spiritual aspirations of holiness and 
 triumph over death, divide him from the simplest 
 form of life.' You see, he is a theist — I remember 
 now I did tell you he is a theist — because he is a 
 chemist, not although ! "" 
 
 ** It's a strong statement, certainly, that of his 
 about matter and energy being eternal and un- 
 created," said Tilden. *' D'you think it means 
 anything ? '' 
 
 *' What do you mean, by ' meaning anything ' ? '' 
 
NO WORLD WITHOUT ENERGY 73 
 
 " I mean this — that I agree with you that as a 
 rule when a man begins to talk to you about 
 eternity and infinity and so on, you had far better 
 not waste your time listening to him ; he is sure 
 to be talking nonsense ; but Soddy is hardly the 
 man to talk nonsense/' 
 
 " No/' said Launceston, who had been hunting 
 in the pages of the paper which he had in his hand 
 while Tilden was speaking. " He has a meaning 
 in it. I was looking for the passage which seems 
 to me to explain it. Here it is : * A world without 
 energy, in the present state of knowledge, implies 
 a world without matter and, therefore, no world 
 at all.' " 
 
 " Well," replied Tilden, '' if you call that an 
 explanation. Is the state of * no- world ' incon- 
 ceivable ? " 
 
 " Just as inconceivable, and just about as con- 
 ceivable, as a world eternal and uncreated. After 
 all, Tilden," Launceston concluded, with a sweet 
 reasonableness that was rare with him, ** I expect 
 you are right, and we had better leave such words 
 as eternity and infinity alone/' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CRITICS 
 
 A DAY or two after his reading of that paper on 
 Animal Psychology, Launceston, meeting me in 
 the Club, transfixed me with a cold grey eye of 
 such a stony gleam that I knew trouble impended. 
 Therefore I said with the more heartiness '* Good- 
 morning/' 
 
 " It's an extraordinary thing," he said, respond- 
 ing not at all to my cheeriness and retaining me as 
 a transfiixed beetle under his arctic eye-gleam, 
 ** that since I read that paper the other night, to 
 a small and private audience, IVe had quite a 
 number of letters about it from people IVe never 
 heard of and who are not members of the Club at 
 all." 
 
 " Naturally," I replied, *' a member of the Club 
 would not write : he would speak to you about it." 
 
 '" Confound you," he exclaimed. '' You know 
 devilish well what I mean. How did anybody 
 outside the Club get to know anything about it ? 
 That's what I want to know." 
 
 " Oh, I daresay I can tell you that," I said, 
 trying to speak with all my natural amiability, 
 though I was quaking with hidden fear. " I took 
 shorthand notes as you went along and had a few 
 copies typed and gave them to one or two of the 
 
 74 
 
SOME CORRESPONDENTS 75 
 
 members who wanted to read over what you had 
 said. No doubt they will have shown them to a 
 few outsiders. That's all there is to it/' 
 
 *' Oh ! Dashed impertinent of you, I call it." 
 He went away with a growl in his throat like an old 
 bear, but in his heart I believe with a gentle sense 
 of flattery — ^no man is more vain than your pro- 
 fessed cynic — at so much attention paid him. 
 
 After application of further judicious compli- 
 ment he consented to give us a continuation of 
 former comments on another Thursday, and again 
 I braved his growlings and took notes. I smiled 
 with an inward glow of satisfaction and amusement 
 when I found that he meant to take some of these 
 much condemned letters as the basis of his talk. 
 
 *' By some means which I have not been able to 
 discover," Launceston began, " but which, never- 
 theless, I strongly suspect, something must have 
 got abroad, beyond our own circle, of what I was 
 saying the other day about the mind of the lower 
 beasts. Consequently, I have received a variety 
 of letters on the subject from people whom I never 
 heard of before : I may add, in regard to most of 
 them, people whom I hope never to hear of again." 
 
 I had not looked up during this exordium, but 
 I felt that his grey eye was on me as the guilty 
 thing of his suspicions. 
 
 " Most of the letters, of course, are quite beneath 
 the worth of notice. Some are would-be funny, 
 some are simply silly. Here is one which at least 
 has the merit of quoting the opinion, or what 
 purports to be the opinion, of an intelligent man. 
 This commentator writes thus : ' I find nowhere 
 
76 THE C5RITICS 
 
 clear definitions of reason and instinct/ The com- 
 ment," the debater admitted, '* is quite just. I 
 have not given him definitions. Where possible I 
 avoid definitions. But, as members of the Club 
 know, I have adumbrated to them the ideas for 
 which I mean these two useful words to stand — 
 reason as the faculty of looking ahead and making 
 a mental picture, leading, on the practical side, to 
 planning : instinct, the inherited habit. 
 
 " It is no use going to dictionaries for definitions, 
 because they give you so many alternative ones that 
 the lines of definition cross and cut one another up 
 so that they cease to be lines or to define at all. 
 But then he goes on, after this tolerable beginning, 
 to deliver himself wholly into my hand — thus. He 
 writes himself large and legibly as typical of the 
 popular delusions. * If he can so define,' he says, 
 * is he not, in making an abrupt cleavage between 
 the two, running counter to what we are all coming 
 to accept in modern thought ? ' Actually he can 
 write that,'' Launceston exclaimed, throwing up 
 his hands in an affectation of holy horror. 
 " * Modern thought ! ' Surely it is Victorian 
 thought, thought of the Macadamite age, that he 
 should have said. He proceeds, then, introducing 
 the respectable name that I have referred to, ' In 
 old Oxford days my tutor, Ingram By^ater, in 
 commenting on an essay which I had to write and 
 read to him on the philosophic axiom " Entia non 
 sunt multiplicanda prseter necessitatem" instanced 
 among its common breaches the popular distinction 
 between instinct and reason.' ' In old Oxford 
 days,' " Launceston repeated. '' Very much so. It 
 
AN OLD OXFORD OPINION 77 
 
 is exactly what Ingram Bywater or another might 
 very intelligently have said in those days. ' Those 
 were early Darwinian times/ he goes on, and I 
 forget his exact exposition : but he would un- 
 doubtedly say now that reason is developed instinct, 
 and that there is no ' solution of continuity ' 
 between them, and that it is impossible to put 
 down a finger and say * this is reason," and * this is 
 instinct.' But whence, I would ask," said Laun- 
 ceston, pausing yet again in his reading of the 
 letter, '' did my kind correspondent get this so 
 useful * undoubtedly ' ? How does he acquire this 
 confidence that Mr. Bywater of the ' old Oxford 
 days ' would * now ' say such a thing as this ? On 
 what grounds does he impute to Mr. Bywater so 
 static and non-progressive a mind as he implies ? 
 He does not tell us. * Science,' my friend goes on, 
 * cannot yet prove, but is every day further from 
 denying, the dictum that '" every material atom 
 contains a bit of mind-stuff." ' 
 
 **Now," said Launceston, "if I were in the 
 position of the Mr. Bywater of the ' old Oxford days' 
 and my correspondent were presenting me this 
 remark for criticism in an essay, I should correct it 
 courteously in this manner, rewriting it ' Science 
 cannot yet prove, and is every day farther from en- 
 dorsing, the dictum that ' — etc. * From that one 
 germ,' he goes on, ' must develop in a progression 
 without hiatus all the mental faculties, including 
 such as introspection and reflection, which you deny 
 to animals.' Whence, I will ask again, does the 
 writer get his ' must ' ? Contrast a moment those 
 words which I quoted on a former Thursday of 
 
78 THE CRITICS 
 
 Professor Soddy, somewhat more modern than the 
 excellent By water who was a don even in my own 
 far-off ' old Oxford days ' : ' One's scientific sense 
 of direction tells one that the further one advances 
 towards the ultimate insoluble problems of physics, 
 the more completely one leaves behind the phe- 
 nomenon of life and all its mysteries. The advance 
 in this direction has been from life and not towards 
 it. . . . Its direction is definitely away from and 
 not towards the mysteries of life and spirit. The 
 path hewn by knowledge through ignorance points 
 two ways in the direction of the absolute unattain- 
 able truth." He also writes, in course of the same 
 address delivered in 1919 to the Aberdeen Univer- 
 sity Christian Union : ' In passing from the 
 phenomena of the inanimate world to those of life 
 in general, we have to admit at least one funda- 
 mental conception which cannot be connected with 
 the conceptions of the inanimate world, and which 
 it now seems unlikely ever will be. ... I accept 
 the, to my mind, complete break of continuity 
 between the animate and inanimate worlds.' 
 
 " I know," saidiLaunceston, " that I have quoted 
 these words in the Club before, and made quotations 
 from the same source at greater length, but not in 
 exactly this connection. At all events it is well 
 that we should realise that we have moved on from 
 those * old Oxford days ' and that the direction, 
 as indicated by Soddy, is the opposite of that 
 which the scientific people of that day expected. 
 So far from there being no * hiatus,' the hiatus 
 compels itself to be realised. No doubt that classic 
 dictum about the * Entia ' and the ' non multipli- 
 
AN EASY DILEMMA 79 
 
 canda ' still stands as true as ever. They are not 
 to be multiplied beyond the necessary number, but 
 still there is no value or profit in applying the 
 process of addition to any two of these ' entia ' and 
 calling them one. ' The path points two ways/ 
 says Soddy. * Man has always tended to confound 
 those two classes of the ultimately unknowable.* 
 It is a confusion which was supreme in those ' old 
 Oxford days.' It is due to the researches mainly 
 of those who have pioneered into the mysteries of 
 the radio-active elements that we are emerging 
 from it, and the greatest of all the blessings of our 
 escape from it is that it makes it easier for us to 
 appreciate and realise the spiritual possibilities in 
 man's nature. My unknown friend who writes to 
 me concludes that by rejection of the theory of the 
 mind germ in the material atom my ' position 
 demands either the spontaneous generation in man 
 of reason or its divine bestowal db extra' He con- 
 ceives that he has me thus in a position of quite 
 untenable difficulty ; and untenable it might have 
 been for the pious disciple of those * early Darwinian 
 times.' In these latter days I find myself able to 
 occupy it with great comfort. I would object only 
 that the phrase ' spontaneous generation ' expresses 
 little to me except a contradiction in terms. He 
 offers me, in his final sentence, an alternative of 
 which, likewise, I do not quite catch the meaning : 
 * Or do you hold that the other animals were 
 marooned, mentally undeveloped, in cul-de-sac 
 branches ? ' 
 
 ** So much for that. I have received other 
 letters — I hardly know in what category to range 
 
80 THE CRITICS 
 
 them. What, for instance, are we to make of this, 
 which the writer says ' seems to me to be a 
 good illustration of the limitations of canine 
 intelligence ' ? 
 
 *' * A friend of mine in Edinburgh is the owner 
 of a Scotch terrier which in its younger days 
 developed the bad habit of stealing away every 
 afternoon to its master's bedroom, there to lie on 
 his bed. When this practice was discovered the 
 dog was chastised, but instead of being broken of 
 the habit it afterwards jumped down from the bed 
 when it heard anyone approaching the door of the 
 room. Its continued visits there, however, again 
 aroused his master's suspicions. He discovered its 
 deceit one day by accidentally putting his hand 
 on the warm place on the bed where it had been, 
 and gave it another beating. When he again came 
 into the room the next afternoon he found the 
 terrier once more on the bed, this time standing 
 up and blowing vigorously on the part where it 
 had just lain, to cool it. To establish a connexion 
 between the original crime of being found on the 
 bed and the apparent later one of leaving a tell- 
 tale warmth behind it, and to arrive in consequence 
 at the advisability of avoiding both, was evidently 
 too complex a process for the dog's brain. I may 
 add, however, that my friend was so touched by 
 this almost pathetic instance of the inadequacy of 
 canine reasoning powers that he forbore to punish 
 the delinquent, and it has since enjoyed its daily 
 siesta undisturbed.' 
 
 ** I do not know what the Club will have to say 
 as to that. Perhaps that what the friend in Edin- 
 
INTELLIGENCE IN MULES 81 
 
 burgli says is not evidence. I agree. Now here 
 is a letter of which I like the military abruptness : 
 
 ** * What about mules ? I had a pair in France 
 which I drove all over the front, and I feel sure 
 they reasoned when they were most unreasonable. 
 Their acumen was almost uncanny at times ; often 
 it was very exasperating, as when in some exciting 
 moment you dropped your stick, and the rascals, 
 seeing your misfortune (they were always watching 
 you), and reckoning they were immune from 
 corporal punishment, for a time at least, took 
 advantage of the situation. But they showed their 
 ability to reason in a more curious way. They 
 were able to tell an enemy from an ally, and by an 
 enemy I mean a Boche. Tom, the older mule, was 
 an out-and-out Him-hater, and whenever a German 
 prisoner was loading my wagon I had to warn him 
 to keep away from Tom or he would do damage. 
 He used to watch out of the corner of his eye, and 
 if an unsuspecting " Jerry '' came within striking 
 reach he got it good and hard from Tom's iron- 
 shod hoofs. He would even stop to kick at a 
 convoy of prisoners who were marching past us 
 on the road. Yet I never knew him lift a leg to a 
 French or American soldier, though he had plenty 
 of chances. His hatred of the Hun was well known 
 in the section, and a standing joke with the drivers. 
 
 ** ' When we were at A a captured German 
 
 horse was brought in. The mules would have 
 kicked it to death if they had had their own way ; 
 yet with French or English horses they were on 
 ordinary terms. 
 
 *' ' Besides, did not Balaam's ass, their great 
 
82 THE CRITICS 
 
 ancestor, reason and get his own way ? Clearly 
 the days of miracles, so far as mules are concerned, 
 are not yet past, but I think that most people who 
 have had anything to do with the army mule will 
 declare it to be like widows, according to the ex- 
 perience of the older Weller, *' an exception to 
 every rule/' ' 
 
 " The last letter that I will bother you with is 
 again from beyond the Tweed. The writer calls 
 it * a classical Scottish story of canine intelligence/ 
 ' The incident," he says, ' was reported some time 
 after the middle of last century. I quote from 
 memory. There was a feud between a cat and a 
 jealous dog, a terrier, of course. One day the 
 terrier chased the cat until pussy was literally up 
 a tree. Then he ran to the house and quickly re- 
 turned, dragging his master's gun, which he propped 
 against the tree trunk. I forget whether he used 
 his teeth or his fore-paw for pulling the trigger, 
 but, anyhow, he shot the cat. This is a fine in- 
 stance of animal reasoning, for the intelligent 
 terrier must have noted previously the ease with 
 which his master '" threw up his gun and, without 
 taking aim, brought down '' — whatever got in the 
 way ! \ 
 
 *' The only question I should like to put to the 
 narrator of this remarkable incident is whether or 
 no the intelligent terrier loaded the gun for itself ? 
 If it did not do so, we are driven to the conclusion 
 that the owner of the gun was guilty of the repre- 
 hensible carelessness of leaving it about loaded 
 (and — query again — at full cock ?) where the 
 terrier was able to get hold of it. In whatever 
 
MAN AND BRUTE 83 
 
 light we may regard the intelligence of the terrier 
 the acceptance of the latter alternative seems to 
 imply great lack of intelligent foresight on its 
 master's part. 
 
 " If you are good enough," he concluded, " to 
 allow me to occupy a little more of your attention 
 on another Thursday, I should like to explain 
 myself further on the clear distinction which I con- 
 ceive that we have to draw between the mind of 
 man and of brute. I feel that I have left so much 
 unsaid and unexplained. And I must ask you to 
 forgive me — or perhaps I should rather say that I 
 do not care whether you forgive me or not — if you 
 find me sometimes repeating what I say to you. 
 Our minds, even the best of them, are not like 
 sensitive plates, which record every impression that 
 comes to them : it would be a terribly bad job for 
 them if they were ; they would soon be over- 
 charged. But there are certain points of import- 
 ance which I wish to make good. I shall try to 
 make good by reiteration, even at the risk of 
 boring you. With that apology, if you are willing 
 to accept it as an apology, I will proceed to bore 
 you further." 
 
 I was delighted, and of course the Club agreed 
 cordially. I was also secretly entertained. The 
 bear from whom I had with difficulty been able to 
 extract much more than a grunt was becoming 
 enamoured of the eloquence of his own growlings. 
 My tasks were beautifully lightened. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 MAN — THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 " Man," said Launceston at the beginning of his 
 further discussion on animal psychology, " might 
 very well be defined as * the mistake-making 
 animal/ Homo is a mistake-maker because he is 
 sapiens, and he is sapiens largely because of his 
 mistakes. 
 
 ** Lately, when you allowed me to make some 
 previous remarks on this subject, I posed the 
 common question, * Do animals reason ? ' and 
 gave it a decided negative. So doing, I was well 
 aware that I was preparing for myself a bed of 
 porcupines. Those fretful creatures, whose other 
 name is critics, have been busy. What I did not 
 expect, however, was that their number would be 
 reinforced by any outside the small circle of our 
 Club. It has so happened, however, by whose 
 indiscretion I do not know "' (as he made this 
 wholly insincere affirmation of agnosticism he bent 
 his eye upon me with the old baleful gleam), '* that 
 some account of that debate has passed beyond 
 that proper boundary, and in consequence I have, 
 as you know, been beset by quill-pricks from without 
 the pale. The quills are sharp. I believed myself, 
 however, to be well armoured, or thick-skinned — 
 have it which way you will — and even now am not 
 
 84 
 
DEFINITION OF TERMS 85 
 
 feeling sore. But I knew, too, that I had an 
 Achilles' heel, a joint in the armour, a tender spot ; 
 and they have found it. So much, in the answer, 
 must depend on the definition given of reason ! 
 And I gave none ! We have to work within our 
 limits ; and time is short and definition long. 
 But these quill-pricks punctuate me with the 
 necessity for some attempt at definition, and there 
 is another term, besides reason, clamouring for 
 definition — that is, instinct. Instinct, as I have 
 said before, I take as being inherited habit, in- 
 herited, presumably, along lines of survival of the 
 fittest, those who fail to acquire the useful habit 
 dying out. I take it to be in no way akin to any 
 other or more mysterious form of subconscious 
 influence, such as some of the critics have suggested. 
 As for those who hold that ' reason is developed 
 instinct ' — and more than one has used that phrase 
 — I would not only * say them nay,' but would 
 submit" that the very statement appears to me to 
 involve a tacit confounding of two questions which 
 should be, for lucidity, kept quite distinct. Ques- 
 tion one : * Do animals reason ? ' Question two : 
 * Is Reason a developed form of instinct ? ' I am 
 prepared to be ' as damnably dogmatic as you 
 please,' to quote classic words, in saying nay to 
 the latter interrogative. The negative to the 
 former may possibly depend on definition of a 
 term. I will repeat a brief attempt at something 
 like definition which I have made from this chair 
 already. 
 
 ** Reason, then, I take it, works from known to 
 unknown. This, I maintain, those other animals 
 7 
 
86 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 never do ; they draw no new conclusion from 
 known premises. When we who are men proceed 
 to take action in accord with a conclusion formed 
 in this way, we then begin to call the conclusion a 
 * plan/ and begin to devise means for carrying the 
 plan into execution. It is this kind of work about 
 which by far the greater part of our reasoning 
 operations are busy. I maintain that no animal 
 ever makes a plan, in this sense : and yet every 
 animal is constantly acting in a way that looks, if 
 we regard its action only superj&cially, as if it were 
 just thus — i.e., in accord with plan — that it is 
 acting. This planning, which the man does, 
 implies a looking ahead with the mental vision, 
 and forming a mental picture of some design which 
 it is desired to achieve. 
 
 " The devil of it is,"' said Launceston, with a 
 vigour of unparliamentary language rare in our 
 polite assemblies, '' that acts of animals, especially 
 our domestic pets, are so confoundedly like what 
 they would be if the creatures actually had formed 
 a mental picture and worked to its fulfilment, that 
 the temptation to us, in our human way of think- 
 ing, to regard them as if they were so inspired is 
 almost irresistible. I will give an illustration from 
 one of the letters which I have received. My 
 correspondent writes : 
 
 *' * Do animals reason ? What is reason ? By 
 what tests do we distinguish instinct from reason ? 
 
 '* * May your question be posed thus : 
 
 *' ' Have some animals the power of seeking to 
 satisfy some want by more or less complex pro- 
 cesses operating in and from the brain, such pro- 
 
A CAT STORY 87 
 
 cesses being of a sequential character, thus implying 
 the capacity to deduce causes from effects ? 
 
 ** ' If to possess such a power is to reason, then 
 obviously animals do reason. 
 
 ** * I bred a tom cat about thirteen years ago 
 which is still alive. The cat's food is always placed 
 beneath a table in the scullery. To reach it the 
 cat must pass through the kitchen door, and then 
 through the scullery door. 
 
 " ' A few months ago I was playing bridge in 
 my study. The house was empty save for the four 
 bridge players. 
 
 An agitation of the handle of the study door 
 informed me that the cat wanted to come in. He 
 always does that. I opened the door, but the cat, 
 instead of entering the room, ran, with a little cry, 
 to the kitchen door, which was shut. I opened the 
 door ; the cat ran into the kitchen, and I returned 
 to the game. 
 
 ** * A few moments later the handle of my study 
 door was again agitated. On opening the door 
 there was the cat, which immediately, with the cry 
 which meant that I was to follow, ran into the 
 kitchen and stood gazing at the closed scullery 
 door. 
 
 " * On the first occasion I had let the cat into the 
 kitchen, but until the scullery door was open its 
 food was inaccessible. 
 
 ** ' To this fact it called my attention in unmis- 
 takable fashion by actions which imply mental 
 calculation as to the consequences which would 
 follow from them. 
 
 This is not a '' cat story." It is absolute fact, 
 
8« MAN—THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 which can be attested by all the parties, still alive, 
 who were playing bridge with me that evening. 
 *' * If my cat did not reason, what did it do ? ^ 
 ** You see," said Launceston, folding up the 
 letter, '' that is a very good instance to the point 
 that animals do, now and then, act so much as if 
 they were rationally prompted, that we are very 
 apt to fall into what I believe to be the error of 
 supposing that they really are thus inspired. 
 Since I hold this view, the writer of this letter is 
 perfectly justified in asking me : ' If my cat did 
 not reason, what did it do .? ' To the best of my 
 ability I will try to tell him. 
 
 " I am perfectly ready to admit that if a human 
 child were in the position of the cat — that is to 
 say, shut off on the one side by a door from its 
 supper, and, on the other side, by another door 
 from a human adult who was capable of opening 
 both doors, and so giving access to the supper — it 
 would act just as the cat acted — i.e., would go and 
 scrabble at the door behind which was its powerful 
 friend, and then, having attracted his notice, would 
 go to the other door, towards the desired supper. 
 But in doing so the child would act according to 
 a design foreseen : as we phrase it, he would * say 
 to himself,' ' I will get the man to open the door,' 
 and would form a mental vision of the whole opera- 
 tion. It is just that mental vision of a prospective 
 happening which inspires his actions : he is drawn 
 forward by that prospect. My view of the cat's 
 similar act is that it, on the contrary, was always, 
 at each stage in the process, being pushed along by 
 a succession of acts, each suggested by the act 
 
THE CAT'S MOTIVES 89 
 
 immediately preceding it and by the situation 
 created by that act. 
 
 " I will attempt, after the fashion of the jitge 
 d' instruction of a French Criminal Court, to ' recon- 
 struct ' the cat's acts and motives. It is uneasy 
 because it suffers hunger, owing to its time for sup- 
 per having arrived, or because stirred to appetite 
 by the smell of the banquet, or by the sound of its 
 arrangement, in the scullery. It is not able to get 
 to the supper because of the closed door, but it can 
 hear, and probably also smell, its human friend 
 behind another door. Experience, beginning in its 
 kittenhood, has given it the habit of going to this 
 friend in trouble ; so it scrabbles on the door which 
 keeps it from him. He opens the door ; they are 
 together. The first impulse, so obviously natural 
 as to need no laboured explanation, of every 
 creature when it wants a thing is to move towards 
 that thing. The cat wants its supper, and would 
 move towards it. But the door still intervenes. 
 The intelligent human friend understands what it 
 wants, and opens the door — the door into the 
 kitchen, where he supposes the supper to be. As 
 a matter of fact, the supper really is in the scullery, 
 beyond yet another closed door. So the cat repeats 
 its former acts ; its master has to leave his bridge 
 again (the history discreetly does not tell us what 
 the other players, under this double interruption, 
 said about the cat during the master's absence). 
 He opens the scullery door ; cat and supper are 
 made one ; all is peace. Of course, the second call 
 and the second door are incidental merely. What 
 explains the kitchen door will explain the scullery 
 
90 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 door equally. The double event does not deepen 
 the mystery in any way. 
 
 '* Obviously, I cannot prove that all went, in the 
 cat's mind, as I think it did ; I cannot prove that 
 it did not have a mental vision of the master coming 
 at its call and opening the door to unite it to the 
 saucer of its desire — I cannot prove that it did 
 not ; but I do not believe that it did. And I am 
 tolerably sure that no one can prove that the cat 
 did have the mental vision. My case that it did 
 not appears to me to be so fortified by innumerable 
 evidences of what we may perhaps call a negative 
 kind as to be very nearly unassailable. The lower 
 animals are much more remarkable — if they have 
 any of this power of design, of foreseeing, of reason- 
 ing from the known to the unknown — for the things 
 that they do not do than for the things that they 
 do. At every turn, in every incident, as it seems 
 to me, of their lives they indicate that they have 
 not this power, but that they are creatures which 
 work by habit and in obedience to the impulse 
 which each act, and the new situation created by 
 it, arouses immediately, as it is done. 
 
 " But they ' expect ' you may say — * they look 
 forward to the recurrence of what has happened 
 before.' Oh, yes, I give you that, but what makes 
 all the difference is the fact that it is a ' recurrence ' 
 which they expect — the something that has hap- 
 pened before. They have memory, of a kind, in 
 full measure, and very exact. But it is the dis- 
 tinguishing mark of the human mind to look forward 
 to that which has never happened before — to a 
 conclusion made up by its inferences from what 
 
REASON, NOT DEVELOPED INSTINCT 91 
 
 has already happened, from its premises, from its 
 experience. And it is just in this, in the habit of 
 obedience to the guidance of what has happened 
 before — and not only to that which has happened to 
 itself, the individual creature, but also to its ances- 
 tors in the millionth degree — that the other crea- 
 tures surpass man, that instinct transcends reason. 
 And by what appears to me a very strange confusion 
 of thought, it is out of this very fact that instinct 
 inspires such wonderful acts, far transcending all 
 the designing wisdom of the reason, that some 
 argue for the development of reason out of instinct ! 
 *^ Suppose for a moment that it were so, and 
 suppose a long-tailed tit or a solitary wasp to 
 be given reason in place of its instinct ; could 
 reason instruct the one to build its architectural 
 marvel of a nest, or the other to store grubs in a 
 tunnelled cell for a larval progeny which it has 
 never seen ? Instinct gives guidance infinitely 
 superior to all that reason could ever furnish for 
 these activities essential to the species' life ; but 
 is that any argument that reason is instinct deve- 
 loped to a high degree ? A five-pound note, we 
 are told, is better than a smack in the eye, but it 
 does not of necessity follow that a smack in the 
 eye is a highly developed form of a five-pound 
 note. The reasoning that affirms the one might 
 as well, it seems to me, affirm the other. That is 
 all that I can say now — it is all that I have time 
 to say. That is the pity of it. It is a terribly 
 cramped arena in which to do battle with the 
 myriad and myriad-quilled porcupines. If only I 
 had a little more space to cut and thrust ! But on 
 
92 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 this particular point, enougL. ! I want to say a 
 word now about the mistakes of instinct. 
 
 " It may seem strange, if instinct is inherited 
 habit, that mistakes can possibly arise. One 
 might think that a habit which a species has been 
 learning all through the ages must be a good one — 
 that its faithful following must always be for the 
 advantage of an animal which it has successfully 
 guided all this while in the course of evolution : 
 yet let us see again, in the light of object lessons 
 which lie close to our hand and clear to our eyes, 
 how the facts really stand. 
 
 ** In those pleasant diaries of a field naturalist 
 which Sir Herbert Maxwell calls ' Memories of the 
 Month,' you will find it written : * Still more extra- 
 ordinary was the behaviour of the blue tit-mouse, 
 as described by Mr. W. Farrer. The female was 
 sitting hard upon her eggs ; her mate brought her 
 so many caterpillars that she could eat no more, 
 and refused to take any ; whereupon he directed 
 his attention to a brood of young hedge-sparrows 
 in a nest a few yards distant from his own estab- 
 lishment, and Mr. Farrer succeeded in photograph- 
 ing him in the act of feeding the nestlings of a 
 species so little akin to his own as Accentor Modu- 
 larise The Good Samaritan himself,' Sir Herbert 
 adds, ' did not take a more liberal view of the 
 question — Who is my neighbour ? ' 
 
 " Thus comments Sir Herbert ; but, of course, 
 he knows — no one better — that it is with no idea 
 of helping another — nor even of charity to its own 
 babes — or of * playing the Good Samaritan,' as he 
 says, that the tit-mouse so acted. Such an idea 
 
ANTS AND BEETLES 93 
 
 implies a mental conception quite impossible for 
 the mentality of such a creature. What it was 
 doing was simply gratifying its personal instinct 
 to collect caterpillars and stuff them down some- 
 body's gaping throat — his mate's for choice, but, 
 failing her gullet, then some other. Thus, too, the 
 cuckoo's foster parents. 
 
 " Thus, too, those ant communities which cherish 
 in their midst the beetles of the Lomechusa clan 
 which prey on the very ants, or on their larv89. 
 Yet the ants nurse and clean and shift these beetle 
 larvse with identically the same care as they give to 
 their own. And here we see how wonderfully Pro- 
 vidence has contrived all things for the best — or, if 
 you like it better, how wonderfully evolution has 
 worked out its problems. To me it seems to matter 
 not at all which you say, so long as you realise that 
 it is by the way of evolution that Providence has 
 decreed that the world shall go. These Lomechusae 
 breed so fast and are so carnivorous that if the ants 
 let them alone they would quickly eat the ants out 
 of house and home and very existence; but this care 
 which the ants bestow on their larvae, in common 
 with their own, though exactly suited to the ant 
 larvae, in the changes of temperature and of mois- 
 ture into which they bring them, is absolutely fatal 
 to all but a very small percentage of the beetle 
 babies. Thus a fair balance is struck. If the ants 
 had even a feeble glimmer of intelligence to enable 
 them to realise the Lomechusae as their enemies, 
 and therefore to deny them their nursing care, then 
 they would infallibly so allow the number of their 
 foes to increase as to eat them to their deaths. 
 
94 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 Fortunately for their own survival they are so little 
 respecters of persons that they do for their dead- 
 liest enemies as for their own most cherished babes, 
 and slay their thousands by this misdirected 
 motherly care. 
 
 '' The observations of a very famous French 
 field-naturalist have recently been made more easy 
 for an English reader by translation into his own 
 tongue. These are the 'Souvenirs Entomologiques' 
 of M. Fabre, of which a portion is given into our 
 hands in one large and well-illustrated volume, with 
 the title of The Wonders of Instincts. It is a good 
 title, for the instinctive operations which it reveals 
 to us are truly most wonderful. We marvel — ^we 
 can never cease to marvel — at the inspiration which 
 moves the solitary wasp to store the cell made for 
 its young with just such food as will best suit that 
 babe which is yet unborn and which the parent 
 will never see. We are filled with admiration of 
 the secret motive which leads the grub of the 
 Great Capricorn, after many months of boring in 
 the heart of the hard tree-trunk, to bite its way, 
 just before undergoing the change into the pupal 
 form, almost to the very outside of the stem, so 
 that only a thin rind shall be left for piercing by the 
 perfect insect after the last metamorphosis. In 
 its final perfection it has none of the great timber- 
 cleaving jaws of the grub : but how was the grub 
 to know this ; who taught him ? Surely none but 
 He who * binds the sweet influence of the Pleiades 
 and looses the bands of Orion." Such foreknow- 
 ledge is very far beyond the scope of any such 
 faculty as our human reason. And yet, after a 
 
SPIDEES AND THEIR EGGS 95 
 
 while of wondering out these seeming miracles 
 which instinct prompts, we find ourselves, as we 
 read M. Fabre's pages, again and again amazed at 
 the idiotic acts, as our human reason would pro- 
 nounce them, to which this same instinct moves 
 the creatures. There is one of the spiders which, 
 so soon as she has laid her eggs and collected them 
 into a ball of web, attaches the ball to her own 
 hinder parts, and so travels about with it. From 
 time to time she elevates it into the sunlight so 
 that the eggs shall have the favour of the incubating 
 warmth of the sun. M. Fabre, experimenting, 
 found that the spider was not the least particular 
 whether it were her own ball of eggs or another's 
 which she thus attached to herself. Further, he 
 found her to be equally content with a ball of cork, 
 or of rolled-up silk, as with a ball of eggs, and that 
 she would sun this barren bale of stuff exactly as 
 if it were a pregnant sack of eggs. The evidence is 
 simple — that so long as she could gratify the in- 
 stinctive craving for the sensation of a bag or ball 
 of something attached to her, she was well satisfied. 
 " The psychological value of M. Fabre's work and 
 testimony is great, quite apart from its passing 
 interest for him who runs as he reads. Once for 
 all he must surely have exploded the myth that 
 instinct is reason in little, or that reason grows out 
 of instinct. Quite obviously they are plants of a 
 different species. He quotes Lacordaire, in his 
 Introduction to Entomology, referring to the burying 
 beetles as a glaring instance of an advocate of the 
 reason-ex-instinct myth : * " The following cas 3,** 
 he (that is, Lacordaire) continues, ** recorded by 
 
96 MAN—THE mSTAKE-MAKER 
 
 Gledditsch, has also every indication of the inter- 
 vention of reason. One of his friends, wishing to 
 desiccate a frog, placed it on the top of a stick 
 thrust into the ground, in order to make sure that 
 the Necrophori (burying beetles) should not come 
 and carry it off. But this precaution was of no 
 effect ; the insects, being unable to reach the frog, 
 dug under the stick and, having caused it to fall, 
 buried it as well as the body.'* ' Lacordaire cites 
 this as an instance of reason, the beetles deliber- 
 ately working under the stick's base in order to 
 ensure its fall. M. Fabre, by probing the stick 
 obliquely into the ground and hanging a mole so 
 that it was suspended clear of the stick, proved 
 that the beetles would always dig directly under 
 the carrion. Thus digging, they would inevitably 
 loosen the base of an upright stick by which it was 
 supported, but they never disturbed at all the 
 earth around the base of an inclined support. They 
 dug, because the presence of carrion stirred their 
 inherited habit of digging when such prompting 
 was at hand ; but their digging when the stick was 
 inclined was all in vain. They never dug near the 
 point at which the stick went into the ground, so 
 that the carrion never fell into the grave. They 
 dug as instinct, not as reason, would have prompted 
 them, and instinct, in this instance, misprompted 
 them. It did not achieve the purpose for which 
 the habit of the species was formed. 
 
 ** But the interest, as I take it, of the psychology 
 of the other animals mainly consists for us, who 
 are human, in the light that it throws on our own 
 psychology, on the beginnings of our own mental 
 
HUMAN BABIES 97 
 
 powers, such as they are. No one will doubt that 
 we see in the other animals the early stages of 
 much of the mentality which man, the heir of all 
 the terrestrial ages, has developed. The question 
 is whether we see in them the early stages of all 
 man's later developed mental powers. That is 
 only another way of stating the question whether 
 animals reason, using that word in the sense of 
 arguing from known to unknown, of drawing new 
 conclusions from premises known through experi- 
 ence, of forming a plan and working up to it. 
 
 **But there are others also, not of the lower 
 animals, to whom we look expectant that they may 
 show us some of the early stages of the mentality 
 out of which our own august powers have grown. 
 Those are the babies of our own kind. We can 
 hardly be so foolish as to overlook their value as 
 our teachers in this difficult and interesting affair. 
 It is rather a terrible thing to have to realise, as 
 we regard them, red and puckered and grimacing, 
 that we all were babies once, but the humiliation 
 has to be faced. I write merely as a man : mothers 
 regard their features differently. Yet Fortune, 
 who is herself a mother of some irony and some 
 humour, has so decreed that I should act as con- 
 sultant on matters of hygiene to a hospital for 
 babies, and the privilege of the acquaintance of its 
 inmates is perhaps the sufficient emolument attach- 
 ing to the post. It is a privilege not to be despised. 
 One thing that I have learnt is how astonishingly 
 soon a baby is capable of being led into the way of 
 vice, and how quickly the vicious tendency may 
 be corrected and the babe brought back to virtue's 
 
98 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 path. When I say ' astonishingly/ I write, again, 
 as a man : mothers should know it, but it appears 
 that all do not. For here was a babe, and it was 
 brought into hospital, and it cried, and cried, far 
 more than the babe of any rational parents had 
 justification for crying over the dubious aspect of 
 life, or than the ill for which it had been brought 
 in gave cause. It cried, merely because it wanted 
 its bottle, which is a perfectly right and proper 
 thing for a babe to do when it is due time for it to 
 have its bottle ; but this baby cried out of season, 
 as well as in season. And why did it do this ? 
 For the very simple and very wrong reason that 
 its mother, knowing no better, had always given 
 it its bottle, to quiet it, when it so cried. Whence 
 it had fallen into the vicious habit ; and a crying 
 baby in a hospital ward is as much worse than a 
 crying baby in its home nursery as a singing canary 
 in an aviary is worse than a singing canary in a 
 solitary cage ; it excites all the rest to emulation. 
 Physically, moreover, as well as morally, it is ill 
 for the babe to have the bottle out of season. 
 Therefore, in the hospital, the wisdom of the pro- 
 fessional baby-breaker intervenes. 
 
 " As there are manuals on dog-breaking, so, it 
 seems to me, should there, of at least equal neces- 
 sity, be manuals on baby-breaking. Perhaps there 
 are. The baby-breaker, then, refuses the baby the 
 solace of the bottle thus unreasonably demanded, 
 and turns an ear, which she may well wish deafer 
 than it is, to the voice of its complaining. Perhaps 
 she seconds this negative form of lesson with some- 
 thing more positive in the way of chiding, such as 
 
PUPPIES AND BABIES 99 
 
 is mutually understood between them. At all 
 events the result is this : that in a very few days 
 — days only, not weeks — that baby has unlearnt 
 its vice ; it takes its bottle at stated intervals, as 
 all virtuous babies do ; it cries no more than all 
 virtuous babies should. 
 
 " This is a true story, although its moral is so 
 beautiful ; and its hero was only four months old ! 
 Now, supposing the same thing had happened with 
 a puppy, and it is a drama that could just as well 
 be enacted with a puppy in the hero's (or is it 
 villain's?) role, would not every advocate of the 
 reason-developed-out-of-instinct theory have ex- 
 claimed in that event : ' See here ! Is not this a 
 most striking exhibition of reasoning power ? Did 
 not the puppy foresee that under its earlier dis- 
 pensation it would get its bottle if it squalled, and 
 equally did it not foresee, in the more Spartan 
 consulship of the matron of the hospital, that no 
 bottle came as the natural sequence of squalls ? ' 
 That, I believe, is the question that would probably 
 have been asked had a puppy been the squaller. 
 Seeing that it was a baby, and of four months only, 
 I suppose that it hardly will suggest itself. Such 
 a suggestion would seem absurd. Yet why absurd in 
 the one case rather than the other ? It is true that 
 a four-months-old baby is younger, in sense and 
 experience, than any puppy, save for the fact that 
 it is not born absolutely blind. That seven to one 
 ratio in which we commonly measure the relative 
 years of man and dog does not begin to be at all 
 accurate until the man is of age. I think we may 
 state it so. The dog of three is just about in the 
 
100 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 same pride of youthful life as the lad of seven times 
 those three years, and so too, onward, until the 
 last, lean-and-slippered-pantaloon stage : the man 
 of seventy-seven is aged just equally with the 
 eleven-year-old dog. But in their respective in- 
 fancies the ratio does not hold : the dog of two is 
 far nearer the prime of canine powers than the boy 
 of fourteen to the human prime : the dog of one 
 year is an ancient of wisdom and experience as 
 compared with the child of seven. 
 
 " Nevertheless, by the time that the human child 
 has arrived at that first seven-year stage, it is 
 quite obvious that some wonderful event has 
 occurred to it, some wonderful gift has been 
 acquired by it, or has grown up in it, a gift such 
 as the one-year-old puppy will never receive even 
 if it should live to the age of a very canine 
 Methuselah. The child has begun to form mental 
 pictures, on ahead of its immediate experiences : 
 which is just as much as to say that it has begun 
 to enter on its heritage of humanity which shall 
 distinguish it brightly from even the wisest of the 
 canine folk. Together with this power of looking 
 ahead and of forming a plan, it has developed a 
 dawning consciousness of self as distinguished from 
 not-self : it has begun to have a personality. I 
 think — but I put this forward only as a matter 
 of private judgment — that it has begun therewith 
 to enter on the possession of an immortal soul. 
 That is perhaps a look too long ahead, at this 
 moment : its vistas reach very far. But with the 
 acquirement of that forward-looking, plan-making 
 faculty which we call, in a word, reason, we see 
 
HUMOUR • ' 101 
 
 the child lose the grip of many of those instinct- 
 given faculties and habits which the puppy will 
 retain so long as life be in it. Very soon the most 
 childish piece of humanity will be able to laugh 
 at the wisest dog in all the world when the dog is 
 seen using its fore-paws and its muzzle in the vain 
 futility of covering over with earth, in the corner 
 of the dining-room, a bit of biscuit which it does 
 not require for its present needs. Its ancestors, 
 who did not live in dining-rooms, nor on biscuits, 
 formed the habit for it in days when it was a habit 
 that had a value. The dog faithfully repeats all 
 the motions of the burying now, though there is 
 not a muzzle-load of friable earth wherewith to 
 perform the interment. The child is perfectly 
 capable of playing a similar game — of hiding where 
 there is no cover nor camouflage wherewith to hide 
 — but this play is done in the full knowledge that 
 it is a game, that it is * pretending.' Therein lies 
 all the difierence. 
 
 *' Whether or no we ever do find in animals below 
 man a gleam of humour is another question, and an 
 interesting question, too. Again, as a matter of 
 private judgment, I may state my own opinion that 
 they do show us something of the kind. But in this 
 afiair of the hiding of a superfluous edible com- 
 modity there can be no doubt whatever that the 
 dog is working in grim seriousness of purpose. 
 Ther^j is no joke at all about it. It is done with all 
 the/iolemnity befitting an ancestral rite : which, in 
 some sort, it is. And just because it is for ever, to 
 the last day of its life, under the guidance of this 
 instinct — always the creature of the inherited 
 8 
 
10^2 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 habit, with a thin veneer of acquired experience 
 overlaid — therefore the puppy may be relied upon, 
 unless rabies or the like catastrophe perturb all its 
 machinery, never to ' run o& the rails," as the child, 
 with its rational look-ahead, is nearly sure to run 
 at one or other crisis of its human fate. Or, shift 
 the metaphor a little, and say : the instinct-driven 
 creature is like the tram-car travelling strictly on 
 the lines laid down ; the rational being the motor- 
 car with its freedom to go as the driver, reason, 
 steers it — now and again to dire disaster. 
 
 ** That is the difference : the lower creature will 
 always keep in the rut cleft for it by its age-long 
 habit ; the man will leave the rut. Sometimes, as 
 I have tried to show, the rut leads the lower crea- 
 ture to acts which reason would show it to be foolish 
 — foolish because they do not achieve the purpose 
 fo fulfil which the rut and the habit were made. 
 But reason gives the human animal an entirely 
 new kind of freedom, freedom to follow plans which 
 often in the words of Burns ' gang agley,' which 
 indeed are just now fearfully ' ganging agley,' as 
 the present condition of the poor world very forcibly 
 shows us. The mistakes of instinct are not as one 
 in ten thousand to those which are committed 
 under the misguiding of reason. And yet, and yet, 
 reason, in spite of its myriad mistakes, is, on 
 balance, an agent so infinitely more helpful to 
 progress than instinct that man, the one rational 
 terrestrial creature, is king of the earth — the rest, 
 his not yet wholly submissive (for the microbe is 
 still his very formidable enemy) but in general 
 tolerably subject people. 
 
THE PAIN-BEARING ANIMAL 103 
 
 ** Instinct, therefore, I repeat, as I said at the 
 start, makes her mistakes, but reason makes a 
 million more, and of the many definitions of man 
 which we have heard none, as I think, fits him so 
 closely or so significantly as that which I suggested 
 as the heading of this debate — * The Mistake- 
 making Animal/ And not only is man readier to 
 make mistakes, he is a great deal readier at profiting 
 by them, at learning by experience. The others 
 learn, but very slowly, and often by the death of 
 innumerable learners until only those that have 
 avoided the mistake survive to carry on a race which 
 has thus formed the habit of avoiding that parti- 
 cular mistake. This is a way of learning, but it 
 is not to be called a mental way. Man, with his 
 different mentality, realises the result of his mis- 
 take, and thence learns avoidance of it less painfully 
 than these others — and yet (curious reflection !), of 
 all the animals, man is pre-eminently the one that 
 suffers pain. I am almost tempted to try another 
 definition of him as * The Pain-bearing Animal.' 
 The others, relatively, suffer hardly any pain at all.'* 
 
 *' What the deuce [''exclaimed Foljambe. " When 
 my dog runs in and I give him a dashed good 
 thrashing for it, d'you mean to say I don't make 
 him suffer pain ? Never heard such nonsense in 
 my life ! " 
 
 The amused smile that Launceston seemed to 
 keep especially for Foljambe came to his face. 
 " Right again," he said. " Your criticism is 
 always right. The domestic animals are an excep- 
 tion. When they fall into the hands of a cruel 
 brute " 
 
104 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 ** I'm not a cruel brute. You must thrash a dog 
 when he runs in/' 
 
 " So that he learns, you helping him, by his mis- 
 take. Quite right. I didn't mean the ' cruel 
 brute ' personally. But animals in the natural 
 state suffer hardly at all." 
 
 " Not suffer ! " Davis echoed. '' How about 
 * Nature red in tooth and claw ' ? How can you 
 say that animals in the natural state do not 
 suffer ? " 
 
 *' * Hardly at all ' were my words," said Launces- 
 ton. '' As for ' Nature red in tooth and claw ' it's 
 a detestable phrase, utterly misleading, a sheer 
 travesty of the fact. Oh, but it's a long story, the 
 story of the world's pain — too long a story to begin 
 now, at this hour." 
 
 " Give it to us another night, for our next debate," 
 I suggested. 
 
 *' I might, if you could bear with it. It's part of 
 the great story, the human story — a big chapter — 
 but would not some other — Pershore,for instance — 
 a doctor should know about pain." 
 
 *' But should not talk about it," Pershore said. 
 " A doctor's job is to cure it." 
 
 " Put them out of their misery — eh ? But tell 
 us — here we are all among friends — what is the 
 way of doctors ? Do you not, if you see a poor 
 fellow dying, hopelessly gone, and in great suffering, 
 do you not now and then, mercifully, give him a 
 help, a little extra squeeze of the morphia tube ? " 
 
 *' Once, only once, I did it," Pershore admitted. 
 
 ** Tell us about it," said more than one. 
 
 "The poor man was in agonies — it was not a 
 
AN OVER-DOSE OF MORPHIA 105 
 
 war case — a civilian of middle age. I judged lie 
 could not last twenty-four hours, and lie was 
 in fearful pain, his poor wife distracted. He was 
 gone beyond all hope of science. I gave him 
 perhaps twice the dose that would have done for 
 a man in normal health — the only time I ever 
 did it." 
 
 We looked at him — I, at least — ^with a slight sense 
 of awe. It was something of an experience to feel 
 that one was talking to a man, one's own friend, who 
 could confess to have taken another's life, even in 
 circumstances which seemed to warrant it so per- 
 fectly. 
 
 ** But, man,'' came the deep voice of Sir James 
 Macadam, '' how could you justify it to yourself, 
 to your conscience ? How could you feel when you 
 came to signing the certificate ? " 
 
 '* Certificate, Sir James ! " said Pershore, as if 
 astonished at the question. 
 ** Certificate of death. I suppose as the doctor 
 
 in attendance ? " 
 
 ** Death ! " Pershore repeated, with the same air 
 as before — *' what death ? " 
 
 " The death of that poor man ! " 
 " Death ! He didn't die. The next morning 
 I went round, to make my condolences with the 
 widow, and she met me with the first smile I had 
 seen on her face for days. ' He's better, doctor,' 
 she said. ' I'm sure he's better. It's that medi- 
 cine you gave him last night.' And better he was : 
 from that moment he never looked back. I'd 
 given him enough, as I say, to finish a man in any 
 normal state, but his state was quite abnormal. 
 
106 MAN— THE MISTAKE-MAKER 
 
 and I suppose it gave him just the help he wanted. 
 Death ! Why, that man's alive and well now. I 
 got more credit by his case than any other I ever 
 attended. He'll dance at my funeral, that man, 
 yet.- 
 
 I do not know to this day whether Pershore's 
 story was a true one, or whether he invented it for 
 our edification and perplexing. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 " THERE MUST BE PAIN " 
 
 '* You may be surprised to hear it/' said Launces- 
 ton, opening to his debate, '' but I have a friend, in 
 the Anglican Church, with whom I often discuss 
 our own and others' difficulties. The results are 
 interesting, and often startling. I think he, no 
 less than I, was startled to find how large a place 
 the problem of pain fills in the perplexities of many 
 vexed souls. He was driven to the conclusion that 
 it was almost the principal impediment, for many, 
 to belief in a God of goodness and mercy. 
 
 ** We all know that from the very beginning of 
 speculation about the nature of the Creator and of 
 His creation this has been among the big obstacles. 
 A hundred books have been devoted to the attempt 
 to explain what Hinton, the writer of one of the 
 best known of them, calls ' the Mystery of Pain.' 
 Their conclusion has been to leave it very much as 
 they found it — a mystery still. 
 
 ** The Reverend J. T. Hardy, who has devoted 
 lucid and penetrating thought to it, makes a gallant 
 effort to outflank the difficulty of the position 
 altogether by denying that any difficulty exists. 
 His contention is, in fine, that suffering is so valu- 
 able an influence for moral improvement and spiri- 
 tual insight that it is not an evil, but a good. Surely 
 we have to limit that statement to the assertion 
 that it is a relative, not an absolute good. No man 
 
 107 
 
108 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 with the toothache can be expected to endorse the 
 latter view, any more than he will share the opinion 
 of Mrs. Eddy that pain is mere illusion. Suffering, 
 from Mr. Hardy's standpoint, is at once a moral 
 good and a physical evil : we find no trouble in 
 sharing that standpoint with him. We might al- 
 most say that it is a necessary evil, human nature 
 being what it is — resembling punishment, without 
 which the morals of man would be even less respect- 
 able than they are. It remains, absolutely, an 
 evil still, nevertheless, and the denial of this 
 leads Mr. Hardy into an impasse when he comes 
 up against the consideration of the suffering of the 
 creatures, that have no morals to improve, below 
 man in the scale. Dr. Strong, in his Manual of 
 Theology, p. 226, puts the clear truth of the case 
 with brevity and precision, writing : * Pain is an 
 evil, though it does good.' Professor Eucken also 
 has arguments which finally dispose of the fallacy 
 that pain may be regarded as other than an evil — 
 be it but a necessary evil. I was not, neither was 
 my Anglican friend, astonished that those he talked 
 to and tried to help should deem the pain of the 
 world mysterious : our surprise was only in finding 
 that, for so many of them, it was one of the chief 
 of their diflB.culties. He expressly said that it was 
 one of the difficulties which a majority of his 
 spiritual patients put in the first place. That did 
 seem a little surprising. 
 
 ** Now he had, or deemed that he had, a 
 tolerably adequate reply and solution to suggest to 
 them up to a point. Its weakness was that on 
 arrival at that point — exactly the point of Mr. 
 
LOWER ANIMALS, AND PAIN 109 
 
 Hardy's impasse — it broke down absolutely. He 
 would urge the orthodox view that pain was the 
 penalty of sin. In consequence of man's sin, pain 
 entered the world. (I am not, for the moment, 
 discussing this view — I name it only as one that an 
 orthodox Churchman might advance.) He would 
 carry that argument a step further, to a stage where 
 a large number of us may be ready to follow him, 
 and would urge the value of the discipline of pain 
 in the development of man's moral nature, of his 
 endurance, patience, sympathy, and so forth. 
 
 " Thus far he could win, in most cases, the con- 
 currence, more or less complete, of his hearer ; but 
 then the vexed soul would be at liberty to enter 
 an objection which he found himself very much at 
 a loss to counter. * All that you say,' the objector 
 would reply, ' may be very well as far as it goes. 
 It may be all very well as an account of human 
 pain. But you will hardly argue that the animals 
 other than man are to be improved in their morals 
 through sufiering. That rather disposes of your 
 second contention. And as for your first, which 
 is distinctly more difficult for us to concede to you, 
 it gives no explanation at all of all the suffering that 
 there was in the world before man came into it. 
 The pain of the countless animals that lived, that 
 suffered, and that died before man appeared can 
 hardly have been the consequence of the human sin 
 that was not yet perpetrated. What have you 
 to say to that ? ' 
 
 *' As a matter of fact, he found himself with 
 mighty little to say. He found himself brought up 
 against SQnjetMiig very like a blank wall. 
 
110 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 *' There is, to be sure, a line of thought that 
 you will find traced by certain theologians which 
 claims to give an explanation of pain before man's 
 coming. It is the argument that there was already 
 sin in the universe though man had not arrived to 
 commit it, because the revolting angels, Satan and 
 all his crew, had long ago sinned, and so brought 
 penalties upon the earth. 
 
 *' That may conceivably be a sufficient explana- 
 tion of it all for those who are able to accept and to 
 assimilate it. It is, however, an explanation which 
 will scarcely commend itself largely to modern 
 thought. It is Miltonic rather than scriptural, and 
 to most of us this idea of God's infliction of pain on 
 the lowly and unreasoning animals dwelling on this 
 earth because certain beings in the spiritual plane 
 had disobeyed His commands, is incompatible with 
 assigning to Him attributes of what we are at all 
 able to understand as mercy and justice. It is 
 equivalent, in fact, to making our God less, instead 
 of more, good than ourselves — an idea repugnant 
 even to one who was so little of a theist as John 
 Stuart Mill. But, indeed, the whole argument is as 
 if one should suppose that it accorded with any in- 
 telligible notion of even human, much less of divine 
 equity that a London sparrow should be caught and 
 tortured by a cat because the man in the moon or 
 the inhabitants of Mars had misbehaved themselves. 
 It is very difficult to treat the idea as at all worthy 
 of serious discussion : difficult not to write it off 
 as simply superstitious . It is scarcely less difficult, 
 however, to dismiss it with such a label tacked to it, 
 seeing that it is seriously debated and even, as it 
 
ANIMALS AS AUTOMATA 111 
 
 seems, in some sort accepted by a theologian of such 
 repute as Dr. Strong. ' Moral evil/ he writes in 
 that Manual of Theology which I have already cited, 
 ' is prior both in time and in importance to physical 
 evil. In time, for the sin of Satan is prior to the 
 existence of the physical world ; in importance, for 
 physical evil is, we believe, one of the results of 
 moral disorder." In spite of Dr. Strong's authority 
 we can hardly deem this a theory worthy of serious 
 discussion, and had Milton never written Paradise 
 Lost it is scarcely to be believed that we should hear 
 of it to-day. 
 
 ** The comfort that I am able to take to myself 
 and that I try to impart to other people is that the 
 mass and intensity of the suffering of the lower 
 creatures is very much less than they are usually 
 supposed. Descartes, as I have already said, wrote 
 a book of which one of the main contentions was 
 that the animals below man were pure automata 
 and had no feeling at all. Huxley does this book 
 the high honour of devoting one of his * Essays ' 
 to it, and, although far from agreeing with the 
 thesis which I speak of, certainly treats it with a 
 surprising measure of respect. 
 
 " The gist of his criticism is tolerably summed 
 up in these words from his Essay entitled Animal 
 Automatism : ' Though we may see reason to dis- 
 agree with Descartes' hypothesis that brutes are 
 unconscious machines, it does not follow that he 
 is wrong in regarding them as automata. They 
 may be more or less conscious, sensitive, automata : 
 and the view that they are such conscious machines 
 is that which is implicitly, or explicitly, adopted 
 
112 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 by most persons. When we speak of the actions 
 of the lower animals being guided by instinct and 
 not by reason, what we really mean is that, though 
 they feel as we do, yet their actions are the result 
 of their physical organisation/ 
 
 " That is to say that while they act mechanically 
 they are, still, conscious of sensation. So be it. 
 I am content to range myself with Huxley's ' most 
 persons ' of the above passage, but if there is one 
 of the many quotations made tedious by a thousand 
 repetitions which I especially abhor, it is that 
 about * Nature red in tooth and claw.' It is 
 abominable to me in part because it is so true, but 
 far more because it is so false. I hate it alike for 
 its literal truth and also for its spiritual lie. How 
 true it is in letter perhaps we who use it do not 
 commonly appreciate : the killing and rending 
 really are beyond all conception ; but as for its 
 spiritual implication — of Nature's cruelty in so 
 rending and killing — that is not merely false but 
 rankly blasphemous. 
 
 " First, then, in respect to that literal sense in 
 which it is so very true, in what measure do we 
 realise it ? We know indeed that there is fierce 
 killing by the carnivores from the lion springing on 
 the antelope in the forest to the cat pouncing on its 
 mouse in the kitchen ; we know that the swallow 
 subsists on insect life, and that many insect 
 kinds prey on one another. But, on the other 
 hand, the majority of the creatures which we see 
 most often do not exist at the direct expense of 
 others. Most of our domestic animals are herbi- 
 vorous, and not one of the cattle on a thousand 
 
NATURE'S PRODIGALITY 113 
 
 hills is an intentional killer. But if we leave con- 
 sidering the life on earth for a moment and think 
 of the teeming life in the waters the scene becomes 
 almost unbearably appalling to eyes disposed to 
 regard death as king of terrors. In those depths, 
 or indeed on those surfaces, of the killing there is 
 no end. Some few live either wholly or in part on 
 the algae and low forms of plant, but the very vast 
 majority in numbers that defeat computation, or 
 even conception, are occupied in a ceaseless devour- 
 ing one of another. If there be one thing more 
 astonishing than the death-rate of marine creatures 
 it is surely their birth-rate. The multitude of the 
 eggs laid by the females of certain of the fishes, for 
 instance, is only credible because we have the best 
 authority for its correct calculation. The one is 
 really the condition of the other : unless the sea 
 were to become intolerably full, such birth-rate 
 is only possible on condition that a very small or 
 even infinitesimal proportion of the born shall 
 come to maturity ; the intense marine population 
 is only possible on the condition that there shall be 
 this amazing production of the lives by whose 
 deaths it lives. Nature's tooth is indeed murder- 
 ous and red. The earth, and yet more the sea, 
 reeks of its shed blood. 
 
 ** The informing spirit of that abominable quota- 
 tion, however, is not the celebration of these violent 
 deaths — deaths to sustain lives — but a direct and, 
 as I maintain, quite false and impious impeachment 
 of Nature, and so, mediately, of Nature's God, on 
 the ground that life, thus taking life, is cruel, that 
 the terrestrial story is a tragedy. Tragedy we 
 
114 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 may confess it to be if death is tragedy, but that is 
 ever an unsolved problem. We do not know enough 
 of death, nor, perhaps, of life — certainly not enough 
 of their relative value — to be sure about it. But 
 pain is tragedy : it is tragedy's very soul ; we can 
 have no doubt of that. The question then is, in 
 what relation to pain does Nature's rending and 
 killing, her ensanguined tooth and claw, stand ? 
 
 " To state the query is almost to find its answer. 
 These deaths that Nature deals are ninety-nine 
 times out of a century as merciful as the lethal 
 chamber. In the first place we must realise, and 
 happily are compelled to realise, that we cannot 
 gauge the suffering of lower animals, even of our 
 own warmth of blood, by our own pain under the 
 same physical injury. Savage man suffers less 
 than civilised man, the lower mammal less than the 
 higher, the reptile, fish, insect, plant, less and less 
 again until we come to absolute insensitiveness. 
 It would be too long here to range the various 
 argument, whether we take evidence from the 
 gay activity and appetite of mutilated creatures, 
 or from the decentralisation of the nervous 
 system, which leads to this comforting convic- 
 tion. Enough that we are able to rely on it 
 without any fear that it is by reason of its comfort 
 that we accept it and have faith in it. It has a 
 firm base on solid, rational ground. The pain in 
 their violent deaths which the lower things seem to 
 suffer has little reality except in the conception of 
 the thinking man whose thought is yet so limited 
 that he must judge of their feeling by his — a widely 
 fallacious standard. And these deaths are com- 
 
MERCIFUL DEATHS 115 
 
 monly as swift and sudden as they are violent. 
 The olive dun comes floating tranquilly down the 
 placid stream, a trout opens his mouth and sucks, 
 and in a moment that dun has become trout : 
 a thing of a torpedo's energy rushes through the 
 stream, with immense toothed jaws, and the next 
 moment that trout is pike. So it goes. Most of 
 Nature's deaths are so swift that you cannot say 
 ' Going ! ' before the life is ' Gone ! ' Neither Dr. 
 Guillotine nor the electrocutists have devised exits 
 more speedy. 
 
 ''But compare, from another aspect, their 
 victims and those of this red-toothed Nature, and 
 see how things stand between them. The man 
 in the tumbril or on passage to the chair suffers a 
 thousand deaths, and, worse than death, of fear, 
 of misery, of shame, or whatsoever be the hideous 
 procession of the emotions. Till our own day comes 
 for hanging we shall not perfectly know them, but 
 we may suppose them disagreeable. And mark 
 you this — many a man has committed suicide be- 
 cause of this fear of death — a logical absurdity as 
 well as a moral crime — has sought death and gone 
 to it because of his very fear of death, so much more 
 grievous is the apprehension than the apprehended 
 thing. And for one man who has committed the 
 act, who shall say how many have been tempted 
 to it ? How many, that is, of mankind. To the 
 animal lower than man comes death, but not that 
 far worse thing, its apprehension. The unimagina- 
 tive beast, fish, and insect feel none of this. They 
 are gay and life-ful, unconsciously enjoying, and 
 the next moment they cease to be. That is all. 
 
116 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 Yet, so far, this argument is but negative : we are 
 showingonlytliatNaturedoesnotcausepain, though 
 she cause death. We may say far more, and posi- 
 tively ; it is her role to cause pain to cease. The 
 wounded beast or fish suffers, no doubt, though it is 
 suffering far less than man would suffer if he had 
 the like wound ; but such as the suffering is, Nature 
 quickly steps in to stay it. If an animal be wounded 
 in the herd, one of the great felines falls upon it, 
 and its pain is ended i; for the wounded bird there is 
 the hawk ; for the fish which wobbles as he swims, 
 that wobble shows up the flash of his light-coloured 
 underparts and attracts the pike or other fish of 
 prey. None linger, because their injury is the 
 opportunity of some other who lives by their death. 
 " That is Nature's plan, red- toothed to be merci- 
 ful. She is thus merciful in a positive active sense, 
 but these more active mercies are the exception 
 just because the wounded animal is the exception 
 and the rule the quick death, sudden, unlooked-for, 
 unf eared, of the creature in full life. That is what 
 life, as we know it, terrestrial life, has always been 
 until man, the creature with creative reason, came 
 upon the stage and wrought strange change in the 
 drama. Apart from man, who has his anguish of 
 the imagination, his torturing apprehensions and, 
 thereto, his faculty for prolonging lives of pain and 
 sickness, the ideal which Nature, unreasoning and 
 red-toothed, has of life is this — a vivid, happy 
 experience wrought to highest pitch, then the 
 sudden death, the end coming in mid-course. The 
 death of senility is the fate of few of Nature's 
 children c the tooth and claw do their executioner's 
 
CAT AND MOUSE 117 
 
 work too swiftly for that lingering to happen often. 
 Winter cold, doubtless, is theexecutioner of many, 
 but his is a very kindly lethal hand, for before death 
 come languor and torpor : the passage is from 
 one to another form of absence of sensation. The 
 conclusion of the reasoned matter is that Nature, 
 kind as a mother, and a begetter of life, is kind, no 
 less, in her endings of those lives which she began. 
 We may note exceptions, possibly apparent rather 
 than real, the cat playing with its mouse, the rabbit 
 paralysed with terror faltering along before the 
 stoat. What the emotions of these victims may be 
 we do not know, but we are obliged to suppose them 
 dreadful. Livingstone has written of a strange and 
 not wholly displeasing anaesthesia possessing him 
 as the lion which he had wounded clutched and 
 tore at him. Others, however, who have suffered 
 the like leonine embraces have not quite endorsed 
 his opinion of their pleasantness. 
 
 " But while we concede that these exceptions 
 are mysterious, we must fully recognise that they 
 are exceptions, and, even as exceptions, rare. 
 Death so mercifully swift as to be accompanied by 
 scarcely a sensation is Nature's constant rule. 
 Eed tooth and claw are her instruments for the 
 working of her mercy — of her mercy, not of her 
 cruelty. Let us wipe our eyes clear of the cobwebs 
 and see clearly. Neither the tiger nor the wolf, 
 which we take for our emblems of all ferocity, is 
 cruel. There is one cruel animal, one only — man. 
 Still, in regard to him likewise there is no need for 
 us to deceive ourselves. Cruel he is, beyond all 
 beasts, yet we may claim for him virtues beyond 
 9 
 
118 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 theirs — self-sacrifice and heroism, not merely 
 instinctive, like that of the ant or bee, but de- 
 liberate, of free choice and undertaken in full know- 
 ledge of what self-sacrifice may mean. But Nature's 
 tooth and claw redden in truest service to her 
 children. Consider but a moment how it would 
 be were she never so to blood her fang or talon, 
 never to cut the quick life short, to leave all to the 
 long death of disease, chance hurt, or senility. It 
 is enough to merely think of her stage set to such 
 hideous drama in order to realise the high mercy 
 of her swift-dealt deaths."' 
 
 Launceston's voice had been going a little 
 husky. He broke off to take a sip of water, and 
 during the pause a murmur of something very like 
 distant or decorously hushed applause sounded 
 in the room. It was an exceedingly rare testi- 
 mony in our Club of the interest which the debater 
 had excited, for our usual atmosphere was rather 
 chilly in its reserve and silence. 
 
 '' After all," he resumed, in tones which flowed 
 a great deal freer for the lubrication, " after all, 
 there must be pain.'' He paused a moment upon 
 this sad necessity as if to allow it time to sink into 
 his hearers' minds. It was a moment of which 
 Foljambe availed himself to growl out the question : 
 " Why the dickens should there be ? " A wintry 
 smile glimmered in Launceston's eye as he 
 identified the growler. 
 
 *' Because, old fellow, if it was not for the gout in 
 your big toe you would drink so much port that 
 you would soon be lost to a circle of admiring friends. 
 This, however," he continued, '' is only a modern 
 
BEFOKE PAIN CAME 119 
 
 instance. In order to appreciate the true value of 
 pain in the course of evolution we have to look both 
 higher and also lower than this toe which does so 
 much good service to society as a danger-signal 
 to our valued friend. We have to imagine in the 
 first place that there was a time, there were, in 
 fact, many millions of years of the earth's history, 
 in which no pain was known upon it. There were 
 all the ages when the planet was cooling and con- 
 solidating down from a gaseous to a fluid and thence 
 to a semi-solid mass, ages in which it was impossible 
 for life in any form to be developed, or to subsist, 
 upon it. Then came a period when, by some means 
 that we do not understand — perhaps by a special 
 creative act — life, first, as we deem likely, of the 
 plant kind, made its appearance on the terrestrial 
 scene. Still, as we suppose, there was no pain. 
 Then came animal life, protoplasm, and from 
 that humble beginning some philosophers have 
 deemed it possible to trace a development without 
 a break to the splendid creatures now gathered in 
 this room. And just at what point in that tre- 
 mendous procession came in the feeling of pain we 
 cannot precisely say, but we may presume with 
 tolerable certainty that it was many millions of 
 years in time, and many thousands of stages in 
 development, before anything at all worthy of the 
 dignity of the name of man made his bow on the 
 stage. 
 
 *' The expression ' feeling of pain * is almost 
 redundant. Perhaps it would be enough to say 
 ' feeling," without addition, for it is hardly possible 
 for us to think of feeling, of sensation of any kind, 
 
120 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 without conceiving the possibility of an extreme 
 of that feeling which has to be one of two things, 
 either pain or else pleasure. A feeling which is 
 neutral, inspiring neither pain nor pleasure, is 
 conceivable, indeed, but its conception seems to 
 carry with it the necessity that on either side of 
 this neutrality lies a sensibility to pain or to plea- 
 sure, as the case may be. In brief, it is impossible 
 for us to conceive of sensation without conceiving 
 also the sensibility to pain ; and if we accept that 
 conclusion we seem very hard on a justification 
 and an explanation of all the pain that so puzzles 
 us in the world. It is impossible, humanly speak- 
 ing, to conceive of sensation without sensibility to 
 pain, and it is impossible to conceive of progress 
 on the lines of evolution without sensation. 
 
 ** The immense part that sensation has played 
 in the evolution drama hardly needs to be elabo- 
 rated. The principal distinguishing mark of animal 
 from plant life is that it is mobile and that it is 
 sensitive. This is a general statement which may 
 be allowed to stand in spite of such exceptions as 
 the fixed barnacles, polypes, corals, and so forth, 
 in spite of the fact that some animals are mobile in 
 one phase of their metamorphosis and immobile 
 in another, and in spite of the dispersion of certain 
 plant seeds, such as those of the dandelion. It is 
 true, too, that we see plants behaving as if they 
 had sensation. The popular instance is the so- 
 called ' sensitive plant,' which retracts itself from 
 contact. 
 
 ** Movement is equally reflex and automatic, 
 no doubt, in the case of animal life in its lower 
 
NO SENSATION WITHOUT PAIN 121 
 
 forms, as in the case of plant movement, or even in 
 inorganic bodies. No one can say exactly at what 
 point sensation comes in, to give a new motive to 
 action, but probably it begins far back. It would 
 seem as if sensation of some kind were almost 
 necessary to the preservation of the life of any 
 moving object, since, but for such sensation, the 
 creature would go blundering into all kinds of 
 obstacles. From these beginnings we may suppose 
 a gradual development in the appreciation of the 
 pleasant and of the painful respectively, until the 
 effort to attain the one and to avoid the other 
 becomes the instinctive action of the race. Their 
 discrimination would very soon be essential to the 
 maintenance of the life and health of the individual 
 and the species. 
 
 *' The argument might be developed almost 
 endlessly, but it is so obvious and simple that it 
 hardly needs more than stating. These few words 
 are enough to call to mind its leading points : and 
 they carry us unfailingly to a threefold conclusion : 
 (1) that sensation is hardly conceivable without 
 involving the Iconception of pain, (2) that evolution 
 itself is hardly conceivable without involving the 
 conception of sensation, and (3) — which I have not 
 yet stated, but which is no less manifest — that 
 human nature, as we know it, is hardly conceivable 
 without involving the conception of evolution. 
 
 *' That brings us, of course, to the great question 
 of questions : ' Why evolution ? Why was it by 
 this mode alone, rather than another, that it pleased 
 the Creator to produce man on the earth ? ' I 
 speak in the anthropomorphic way of the First Great 
 
122 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 Cause because it is the simplest of the various 
 denotations of our ignorance. I do not suppose 
 that we are likely to find the answer complete in 
 this terrestrial life. It is one of those ultimates 
 of which the final solution must surely lie in some 
 quite different environment. It does seem, how- 
 ever, as if we could give some account, more or less 
 to our satisfaction, of such a less ultimate question 
 as the reason of pain. Pain is a necessity of 
 sensation, sensation a necessity of evolution, evolu- 
 tion a necessity of the moral nature of man. As 
 Sir Oliver Lodge writes : ' Perfection of machinery 
 would be too dull and low an achievement—- 
 something much higher is sought. The creation of 
 free creatures who, in so far as they go right, do so 
 because they will, not because they must — that 
 was the Divine problem, and it is the highest of 
 which we have any conception.' And therewith, 
 so far as it may be given here on earth, we have, 
 perhaps, the answer to that question, ' Why 
 evolution ? ' 
 
 " One of the frequent obstacles to a reasonable 
 faith in the blessed conviction that * God's in His 
 Heaven and that all's right with the world ' is the 
 difficulty of conceiving why the Creator, if He be 
 all-powerful, should not have created man in the 
 first instance with a nature that did not involve all 
 this pain and suffering. That, as I say, is one of the 
 ultimate problems of which the solution probably 
 is not anywhere writ large for us in the terrestrial 
 story — nor, perhaps, will it be. But we may, at 
 the least, say this, in regard to it, that humanly 
 speaking it is altogether impossible to see how man 
 
PAIN AS IN DISCIPLINE 123 
 
 could be such as he is had he not been made in this 
 way — the way of evolution. Had he been created 
 perfect, in ' perfection of machinery/ as Sir Oliver 
 has it, free of pain, as of evil, he might have been 
 indeed a noble creature, but he would have been a 
 creature vastly different from man. He would have 
 been no longer a creature rising by the dint of 
 effort. This, then, may be our answer to those who 
 ask us why it is that God did not make man free of 
 all this suffering : that, no doubt, He might have 
 created such a being, if He would, but that if He 
 had, or has, it would have been, or is, some being 
 other than man. 
 
 ** And in the meantime, as to this problem of 
 pain, we are obliged to recognise our pain as insepar- 
 able from the gift of sensibility ; and that is a gift 
 which we surely would not, even if we could, 
 renounce wholly, even for the sake of being quit 
 of all the suffering. Were we to do so we should, of 
 course, renounce therewith all the sensible pleasure 
 that we enj oy in life. And such renunciation could 
 only be possible to an absolutely suicidal pessimism. 
 It would be equivalent to denial that life in itself 
 is good — and that is a conclusion which convicts 
 him who maintains it of insanity in any court 
 composed of living and life-loving creatures. It 
 amounts, besides, to blasphemous and presump- 
 tuous arraignment of the Creator. 
 
 " Assuming the wisdom, therefore, as we needs 
 must, of the creation of man by the way of evolu- 
 tion, with the nature which we actually find in him, 
 pain has its plain use as a discipline in the forma- 
 tion, in the strengthening, and, at the same time, 
 
124 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 in the softening of that nature. No one, I think, 
 has written more strikingly in this sense than 
 Dr. Moberly in his Sorrow, Sin, and Beauty. It is 
 indeed a commonplace that the character is refined 
 by suffering, that sympathy and real goodness 
 and moral worth are seldom to be found in those 
 to whom the personal touch of sorrow has not come. 
 And granting, as grant we must, that evolution 
 was the way of wisdom for the creation of man, and 
 that pain was a necessity of evolution, we are further 
 driven to concede that pain was a necessity for 
 those beings lowlier in the scale who preceded man 
 in evolution's process. Sensibility was a condition 
 of their evolution and, moreover, it gave their 
 fleeting existence its joy ; that it was sensibility to 
 pain as well as to pleasure is a condition inherent 
 in the relations between the two ; their pain, their 
 joy, their sensibility, their nature were the founda- 
 tions of the higher sensibilities and the higher 
 nature evolved, from them, in man. Man indi- 
 vidually advances on stepping-stones of his dead 
 selves : mankind advances on stepping-stones of 
 its own dead forebears : the advance of those, 
 man's human forebears, was on stepping-stones of 
 the lowlier dead who lived before man. They, 
 too, are his forebears, in more remote degree : all 
 life on earth, and, maybe, inimitably beyond its 
 confines, is akin. 
 
 ** For all which reasons,'' said Launceston, fold- 
 ing up his notes, ** I conclude as I began, there 
 must be pain." 
 
 ** Well," said Pershore, after a pause, '' perhaps 
 you are right, Launceston, that there must be pain. 
 
WHY GOD PERMITS PAIN 125 
 
 Perhaps you have solved the problem satisfactorily 
 for yourself, possibly even for me ; but you have not 
 met the trouble wldch I find so constantly vexing 
 my patients — why, if pain at all, there should 
 be so much of it — why, to put it in that crudest 
 form which is so common, ' God does not stop 
 the war/ " 
 
 " Surely you know how to answer them when they 
 ask such a silly question as that ! " 
 
 " I know how I do answer them, at all events. 
 Practically I answer them out of the mouth of our 
 friend Soddy — that it is not the material man, the 
 man composed of matter and energy ; the transitory 
 mortal man, that God concerns Himself about, but 
 the immortal man, the real man, the permanent 
 personality, the soul. God is indifferent to the 
 man's pain : we only obscure such dim vision as 
 we have of Him by trying to prove Him other- 
 wise." 
 
 ** Bad diagnosis. Doctor," Launceston retorted. 
 " Or, at best, partly right. You spoil all by that 
 word * indifEerent.' Say, rather. He does not 
 interfere directly with the material man, allows 
 matter and energy to go their way, yet indirectly 
 intervenes by influence on the spiritual man, and 
 so, and not otherwise, has His hand in the guidance, 
 as I think Soddy calls it — the guidance, not the 
 control, still less the coercion — of that machine 
 which is the material man." 
 
 " Good," Pershore admitted. *' I accept it as 
 the better diagnosis. I am content to take it so. 
 But how many of my patients shall I get to under- 
 stand it ? " 
 
126 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 ** Exactly as many as have personally realised 
 that influence, and not one more/' 
 
 " That won't amount to a very large number. 
 But, to leave my unfortunate patients, you are 
 aware, of course, that there are some very remark- 
 able consequences flowing logically out of your 
 conclusion/' 
 
 '' What is my conclusion exactly ? " Launceston 
 asked rather aggressively, 
 
 " Well, your conclusion, or one of your conclu- 
 sions, obviously is that the quantity and intensity 
 of pain on earth is greater since the evolution of 
 man than at any previous time/' 
 
 "Certainly!" 
 
 *' And that — don't you see ? — amounts to a 
 very considerable arraignment of the whole scheme, 
 the whole idea of the creation of terrestrial life 
 — that its most finished product, so far, is its most 
 unhappy/' 
 
 " When you say it amounts to an arraignment, 
 Pershore, you are making, apparently without being 
 aware of it, two large assumptions — first that there 
 is a scheme, a purpose, in the world's creation, and 
 second that the scheme has failed because man 
 suffers pain. I admit the first assumption, the 
 teleological assumption as the lovers of long words 
 would call it. It does not seem to me that the 
 whole thing has any sense or reason that can be 
 understood by the human mind (and that is the 
 best and only mind that we can bring to bear on it) 
 unless we understand it teleologically — dreadful 
 word ! But as for your second assumption that 
 the scheme stands a confessed failure because of 
 
THE JUSTIFICATION NOT HERE 127 
 
 man's pain^ — well, I've about as much use for that 
 view as I have for some of the nasty medicine you 
 try to make me take/' 
 
 '' Very well, then : you don't admit it a failure. 
 How are you going to justify it ? " 
 
 Launceston smiled grimly. ''Don't you re- 
 member," he asked, *' the criticism on a certain 
 editor of a certain scientific journal, ' He seems to 
 forget that he is only the editor, and not the author, 
 of Nature ' ? I am neither author, nor even editor 
 of Nature. Why, then, should I have the job of 
 justifying her ? Still, I will say this, and I am 
 rather glad to have the opportunity of saying it and 
 of making a confession of my creed, for what little 
 it is worth : The very fact that Nature, or the 
 Creator, or whatever term you please to use, has 
 evolved creatures with an increasing, rather than 
 a diminishing, rate of sufEering is proof positive, to 
 my mind, that terrestrial happiness is not the end 
 and object of it all. There are many other testi- 
 monies — I mention this only as part of the ' cloud 
 of witness.' What, then, are we to suppose the 
 purpose to be ? The answer, as I think, is very 
 much that of the Scriptures, both the new and the 
 old, derided by the neo-Darwinian and Macadamite 
 schools : Not here on earth does evolution (with 
 man, as its highest product, so far as we, terres- 
 trially, know) find its goal : there is a * beyond ' 
 in which that which is ' real ' in man, that which 
 is permanent, his soul as distinct from that machine 
 composed of a temporary combination of matter 
 and energy, or of energy in matter, which we call 
 his body, will develop further than it possibly can 
 
128 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 within its mortal body. Keally it is to the essentials 
 of the old simple faiths and hopes that science, 
 after misleading us awhile into all sorts of uncom- 
 fortable and dark, cold places, blind alleys from 
 which there was no exit, seems to be guiding us 
 back. These faiths and hopes did not come 
 to man by any effort of his reason, but rather by 
 some more primitive source, so that when his reason 
 began to introspect and to take stock of what it 
 found, it found those faiths and hopes, found them 
 and criticised them and often found them most 
 inconclusive and unproven according to its own 
 standards of judgment. It has rejected them 
 therefore, has discarded them as objects of derision, 
 but still they had a vitality, and now that reason 
 in these latter days has come to a clearer vision 
 under the rays of the new scientific searchlights, 
 reason herself is donning the white sheet of peni- 
 tence and confessing that she finds her own latest 
 conclusions falling into strange and unexpected 
 acquiescence with those old beliefs in which 
 she had no part and which she regarded as 
 purely childish things. Science to-day is a pious 
 theist.'' 
 
 At this, it was Tilden that put himself into the 
 discussion. '' Have you done with him, Per- 
 shore ? " he asked. *' There's a word I should 
 like to say to him. I think youVe let him have 
 his conclusion too cheap." 
 
 Launcestoif s eyes brightened with the gleam of 
 battle. " "What is it ? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, really, it isn't so much your conclusion 
 as one of your premises that I wish to dispute : 
 
"CARE NEVER KILLED A CAT" 129 
 
 you take the view that man is not happier but less 
 happy than the brute. Is not that so ? " 
 
 '' Certainly." 
 
 " Well, that's where I don't follow you. I allow 
 you, of course, that the brute does not die the 
 thousand deaths of apprehension and so on before 
 its time — that is indubitable — but then, look at all 
 that a man has on the other side, the pleasurable 
 side, to set over against that — all the expectation 
 of joy that he has, his hopes. What I quarrel with 
 is, that you give too little value to his hopes, too 
 large a value, relatively, to his fears." 
 
 " I don't agree, Tilden. ' Care killed a cat,' 
 they say. Don't you believe it. Care never killed 
 a cat, nor even the smallest mouse ; but it has 
 killed and will kill many a full-grown man." 
 
 '' I agree that before there came a mind there 
 could not come mental pain, grief," Tilden said. 
 " That is plain. Equally, before there came a 
 mind there could not come mental pleasure, the 
 delight in intellectual achievement, the very mys- 
 terious delight that we take in beauty and in moral 
 goodness, the pattings on the back our friend 
 Conscience gives us (that is, when we deserve a 
 patting — he can smack hard enough when we 
 deserve a smacking). All this, I say, to man's 
 credit balance outweighs the debt which is made 
 up of his worries and his fears." 
 
 " Tilden, you are wrong — I am certain you are 
 wrong," said Launceston, speaking not at all 
 aggressively, but very earnestly. * * You are wrong, 
 I am sure, if you are balancing the account in the 
 scales of Jiaffiness alone. That is, I think, the 
 
130 "THERE MUST BE PAIN" 
 
 point. The right scales to use are not those which 
 make happiness the standard and criticism. Sup- 
 pose we leave the brute a moment : suppose we 
 come a stage or two higher : suppose we put into 
 the scales of happiness on one side an agricultural 
 labourer plodding after his plough, on the other 
 a genius — a Dante, a Napoleon. Which way will 
 your scales tip ? '' 
 
 " I suppose for brute contentment, for peace of 
 mind the plodder has it, but " 
 
 " Just so — the plodder has it. That's all I 
 claim. I claim that for the plodder. But I grant 
 you also your ' but.' There is the ' but.' And in 
 the ' but ' lies all the difference, the difference 
 which means so much." 
 
 " And you would say that savage man is happier 
 on the whole than civilised man." 
 
 " Ah, that's another story. The life of savage 
 man is so beset by fears, taboos, ghosts, bogeys, 
 and a thousand inventions of his childish (although 
 human) mind that he is a prey to worse fears and 
 cares perhaps than any others. He feels pain less, 
 physical pain — that's to his credit. If it were not 
 for his superstitions, I should rate him happier 
 than the civilised man ; but, again, it's a big 
 ' but.' " 
 
 " Well," exclaimed Foljambe, as Tilden made no 
 
 reply, '' I never heard such a pack of nonsense in 
 
 my life. How would you like, I should like to 
 
 know," he said to Launceston, '' to be an Esquimau? 
 
 I'd like to see you." 
 
 ** Daresay you would, old fellow, and I shouldn't 
 like it at all. The climate wouldn't suit me, and 
 
HAPPINESS NOT THE GOAL 131 
 
 I doubt if I could digest blubber. But/' he raised 
 bis eyebrows and looked at bis questioner as one 
 who observes some remarkable curiosity, '' is tbat 
 inquiry of yours really intended as a valuable 
 contribution to tbe discussion ? "" 
 
 Foljambe's answer was lost in deep growlings of 
 which all that I made out articulately was, " Wish 
 he would go and live with the Esquimaux. Might 
 teach him manners." 
 
 I asked Pershore what he thought of it all, as 
 the meeting broke up. 
 
 He replied by a question : " Which would you 
 say was the happier man, Folj ambe or Launceston? " 
 
 *' Happier ? Oh^ Foljambe without a doubt." 
 
 *' And now, if you were to be born again and a 
 fairy godmother were to ofEer you choice — which 
 would you be, Foljambe or Launceston ? " 
 
 " Launceston or Foljambe ? Why, Launceston, 
 of course. How could anyone ? " 
 
 " Just so. And you're like evolution. It's not 
 happiness merely that she's after, nor you neither 
 in your heart. There's something else, something 
 difierent. What is it ? " 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 " WHAT IS SIN ? '' 
 
 ** He ought to know wliat pain is, poor fellow/' 
 said Pershore to me in the evening following that 
 on which Launceston had given his address on the 
 grim topic. 
 
 " Does he suffer so much ? " I asked. 
 
 ** Horribly, I'm afraid, though of course he 
 makes light of it.'' 
 
 '' What is the matter with him ? " 
 
 ** He's poisoned, of course, poisoned by these 
 gases he's always experimenting with — gases to 
 kill the Boche and stuff to neutralise the effects of 
 their gas on our fellows. It's a curious thought, 
 but I suppose if we trace things back to their 
 ultimate causes, humanly speaking, there's no 
 other one man who has killed so many Germans 
 as Launceston. He's saved untold numbers of 
 our soldiers, too, by the masks and the antidotes. 
 Worst of it is, he's giving his own life." 
 
 '' So bad as that ? " 
 
 "Just about. Every organ nearly functions 
 sluggishly, is drugged, and he suffers gastrically — 
 never free from it. That's why we must bear with 
 him ; why we do bear with him ; why, even dear 
 old Macadam should bear with him, though he's 
 sorely tried, that old Scot." 
 
 132 
 
"SCIENCE IS THEIST" 133 
 
 " Too bad/' I said. '* He's downright rude, you 
 know, to that poor old fellow — great man in his 
 day, too. Why is it ? Why will Launceston take 
 any silly nonsense you please from Foljambe, yet 
 gets mad, like a bull that sees red, at a word from 
 Macadam ? Why is it ? " 
 
 '' You've said it and you've answered your 
 question. He doesn't get mad with Foljambe just 
 because it is such silly nonsense that Foljambe 
 talks. He's only a clown — stands for nothing. 
 But Macadam is something, and the something he 
 stands for is just that which Laimceston hates most 
 — the science of fifty years back — mind and matter 
 — the unbroken succession — rather deadly ! That's 
 why Launceston hates it. * Science is theist ' — 
 that's his cry. Macadam wouldn't say it, perhaps, 
 but that fifty years old science of his is very near 
 atheist. Says its agnostic, but says too that it 
 knows, and is able to account for, so much, that 
 the gnostic (materialist in his gnosticism, too) 
 leaves the agnostic a very small playground, gives 
 the tlieos a very small finger in the pie . Launceston 
 can't bear that. He thinks it a creed fatal, lethal, 
 to the best in man — has a deep down, considered 
 hate of it. Add to this the irritability of a really 
 ill man, originally very sensitive, I should think, 
 and overlaying his thin skin with a manner of 
 cynicism, and now poisoned, sickened, penetrated 
 with those filthy fumes — you can't wonder he jibs 
 and kicks quite unreasonably at the man who in- 
 carnates for him this creed, and all the more that 
 the man bears a name rightly honoured and to 
 which Launceston himself in his heart pays honour 
 10 
 
134 " WHAT IS SIN ? " 
 
 — honour for his past great labours, not for his 
 present faith/' 
 
 *' But how is he really — Launceston, I mean ? 
 Not dying ? Not doomed 1 \' 
 
 " I don't say he's in imminent danger of death 
 at the moment. He would have been, would have 
 been dead by now if he hadn't taken care, slackened 
 off a bit, taken some more fresh, clean air into his 
 lungs, six months or so back, when I took him in 
 hand. Probably he's shortening his life and in- 
 juring his health still ; but he isn't as bad as he 
 was. Hullo]." 
 
 The ' Hullo ! ' was for Launceston, who entered 
 the room at the moment. He looked ghastly. 
 
 '' How goes it ? " asked Per shore in a tone ring- 
 ing with cheeriness, several notes higher than when 
 speaking to me of his patient. Unsympathetic, he 
 sounded, but that was his role — to cheer, to per- 
 suade a sick man to think himself better, to dose 
 him with hope and with faith in himself and his 
 power to recover. 
 
 *' Never so well," Launceston answered. '' I've 
 got it, been at it all day, got a gas that will do — 
 heavy — will go down and look for them, down in a 
 dug-out — heavier than air, sinks, goes down like a 
 ferret to bolt them. Been at it all day." 
 
 "You look it." 
 
 " Look what ? " 
 
 ''Sick. 111. Green. Poisoned." 
 
 " Thanks — you flatter me." 
 
 " Get out of this, man, get out, breathe some 
 fresh air, walk. Or, better, get on a horse and 
 ride — gallop." 
 
WHAT'S CONSCIENCE? 135 
 
 " A horse ! Ride ! Gallop ! " said Launceston 
 severely, '" I consulted you, Doctor Pershore, for a 
 means of prolonging my life, not for bringing it to 
 a sudden and violent end." 
 
 " That's better. While there is humour there's 
 hope. But really, dear fellow, breathe some fresh 
 air, not always those damnable gases." 
 
 " Beautiful gases ! Think of it, going down 
 after them — fetching them out ! " 
 
 " Horrible ! Have you no conscience ? " 
 
 " What's conscience ? " 
 
 " Do you know what's the day of the week ? " 
 
 ** What d'you mean ? — Oh, I see — a good 
 subject for Thursdays ? Perhaps. What do 
 you say ? " The appeal was to me, and de- 
 lighted me. 
 
 '' The natural sequence," I said. " After ' Pain,* 
 * Moral Evil ' — the inevitable order. It could not 
 be better." 
 
 Launceston's lethal discovery made him strangely 
 amenable. For our next merry meeting he agreed 
 on his theme — * Moral Evil." 
 
 ** You, who are in this room," said Launceston 
 by way of conciliating his audience at the opening 
 of his address, " are miserable sinners — yes, I, too," 
 he added in response to a growl from Foljambe of 
 * How about yourself ? ' Let us try to see why 
 we are so. 
 
 " It is bound to cost us something of an effort 
 to put ourselves back into anything at all like the 
 point of view of primitive man thinking his first 
 
136 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 dim thoughts, yet that is an effort I would ask you 
 to make. We have grown into the habit, during 
 the million years or so which have passed over the 
 head of humanity since that time, of imagining 
 ourselves as thinking out an action first, forming 
 an idea of it, and then performing it. But primi- 
 tive man almost certainly did not act thus. On 
 the contrary, he found himself, so soon as he was 
 able to think and take stock of himself, doing a 
 multitude of actions by instinctive habit. The 
 actions were all there, being done, and he was there 
 doing them, long before he began to think about 
 them, and long, again, before he began to think 
 first and to act afterwards. The modern order was 
 almost certainly reversed in those early days of 
 man's self-consciousness. 
 
 " And, as a matter of fact, the actions which we 
 think out and plan, before doing them, bear very 
 much less proportion to the total sum of our 
 actions even now than it is quite easy to realise. 
 Yet if we will consider the day's work we shall 
 have to admit that it is so. Almost without a 
 thought, almost automatically, we perform the 
 actions which have become so habitual, of our bath, 
 our shaving, our toilet, and so forth. Our minds 
 may be deeply engrossed with some quite different 
 thought, all the while. I write as a man — far be 
 it from me to say that a lady's toilet is not matter 
 of anxious reflection. 
 
 " So, if you will follow out your actions through- 
 out the day, you will be astonished to find how 
 many are done without thought given them. And 
 fortunate it is that it should be so. The act done 
 
MORAL EVIL 137 
 
 automatically is done with economy of thought 
 and nerve stress. We should have neither leisure 
 nor vigour to think of anything really interesting 
 at all if an immense number of our daily acts did 
 not achieve themselves without any attention 
 directed on them. 
 
 " With self-consciousness came freedom, because 
 previously the motive which was momentarily the 
 stronger commanded automatic obedience. With 
 self-consciousness, man was able voluntarily to 
 reinforce one motive at the expense of another by 
 directing attention on it. Whereupon responsi- 
 bility began — conscience was born. 
 
 *' The best account of the origin of moral evil 
 and of conscience, from the modern scientific 
 standpoint, of which I know, is that given by Dr. 
 W. H. B. Stoddart in a small volume called The 
 New Psychiatry, which consists of the Morison 
 Lectures delivered by him at the Royal College of 
 Physicians of Edinburgh in March 1915. Dr. Stpd- 
 dart is a very distinguished medical psychologist. 
 Possibly his is a name not known to many of you, 
 but there is none that stands higher with those who 
 are interested in his special study — mental disease 
 and its cure. 
 
 *' His first lecture, to which he gives the title of 
 Fundamental Psychical Mechanisms, he opens with 
 the heading ' Instinct,' and proceeds : ' In order to 
 gain clear insight into the principles of abnormal 
 psychology, let us by way of preliminary examine 
 the human instincts.^ 
 
 " I have no intention of following Dr. Stoddart 
 into the abnormalities, which lie quite outside our 
 
138 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 present discussion. The normal is quite difficult 
 enough for us. 
 
 Instinct/ he writes, * is the blind prompting 
 inherent in an animal to act in a certain way. An 
 instinctive action is practically perfect on the very 
 first attempt, although there has been no previous 
 education in its performance, and it is of such a 
 nature as to produce certain ends without foresight 
 of those ends. Instincts are perhaps most charac- 
 teristic among the lower animals. As examples, 
 sexual acts, migration, the first year bird building 
 her nest and sitting on her eggs, nutrition and care 
 of the young, the lion stalking his prey, and the 
 congregation of certain animals into shoals, flocks, 
 and herds. In man we may instance the first 
 attempts at speech by the human infant, the first 
 attempts to walk, the avoidance of filth, making 
 collections of all sorts of things, seeking the com- 
 pany of the opposite sex, nurture of the young, and 
 the congregation into towns and cities. These are 
 but a few examples, but, even if the list were com- 
 plete, it would be found possible to group all the 
 instincts under two headings, viz. : those sub- 
 serving the function of preserving the individual 
 and those subserving the function of perpetuating 
 the race. They have also been classed into three 
 categories, according as they are moved by the 
 promptings of self-preservation, nutrition, or sex.' 
 *' So far he is on ground which is likely to be 
 familiar to all of us. He proceeds in his next 
 section to the discussion of what he terms ' The 
 Herd Instinct,' as follows : 
 *' * Now Dr. Wilfred Trotter, in two very able 
 
THE HERD INSTINCT 139 
 
 articles in the Sociological Review for 1908 and 
 1909,^ lias drawn attention to tlie existence and 
 importance of a fourth instinct ' (in addition to the 
 three above mentioned), ' gregariousness, or, as he 
 calls it, the herd instinct. Although this has long 
 been recognised, it had never before been seriously 
 contemplated and studied. When we come to 
 think of it, man is much more dependent on com- 
 munal life than appears at first sight. Left to him- 
 self, he is not only extremely miserable, but his 
 faculty of speech is useless to him and he stands 
 little chance of survival among the other animals. 
 Moreover, his conduct is very largely regulated by 
 the customs of his tribe. 
 
 The advantage of gregariousness lies in the 
 homogeneity of the herd, which enables large 
 numbers to act in concert. In hunting and war- 
 fare, for example, the advantage of this is obvious, 
 for the prey or enemy is more easily vanquished by 
 a large number of hunters than by a single unit. 
 Such homogeneity is assured by an inherent impulse 
 of each individual to behave in the same way as 
 his fellows, and those who depart from the usual 
 customs of the herd cease to benefit from the 
 advantages of gregariousness. The herd instinct, 
 like other instincts, is maintained by natural 
 selection. 
 
 " ' So it happens that in company there is an 
 unanalysable feeling of comfort, in solitude there 
 is an unanalysable sense of restlessness and dis- 
 comfort. This is just instinct. Similarly, if we 
 
 ^ Expanded later into a volume — The Herd Instinct^ by Dr. W. 
 Trotter. 
 
140 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 depart from the customs of our particular '* set "" 
 in matters of dress, amusement, religion, or politics, 
 either we feel uncomfortable or we are regarded 
 as eccentric, and ostracised. Stage fright and 
 shyness are the outcome of an instinctive desire 
 to leave our conspicuous position and to become 
 once more one of the herd. . . . 
 
 " ' Again, man is readily prepared to accept 
 suggestions which are in accord with the traditions 
 of his particular herd ; but he is disinclined to 
 receive new truths which have been revealed 
 by experience. People refused to look through 
 Galileo's telescope, Darwin was considered a mad- 
 man, the clinical thermometer was laughed at, 
 people refuse to believe in vaccination or inocu- 
 lation of any kind, new diseases are figments of the 
 imagination of their discoverers, and psycho- 
 analysis is immoral, because the new must always 
 encounter the opposition of the herd tradition. 
 But it must also be remembered that in such 
 instances herd tradition has to encounter opposition 
 from the new, and may be gradually overcome until 
 the experience becomes incorporated with the herd 
 tradition." 
 
 *' He goes on to argue that in matters of opinion, 
 such as politics, religion, finance, education, art, 
 literature, and all sorts of public problems, the 
 opinions of people ranged on both sides are based 
 on * herd tradition," and after a brief development 
 of this thesis he proceeds to what are really, for 
 our present inquiry, the most important passages 
 of all : * We have so far been discussing the influence 
 of the herd instinct on intellectual processes, but 
 
THE HEADACHE OF CONSCIENCE 141 
 
 we shall find that it also lies at the basis of our 
 moral sentiments. Whenever a man does anything 
 which he knows would meet with the disapproba- 
 tion of friends he experiences a feeling of uneasiness, 
 similar to that caused by isolation, solitude, or 
 separation from the tribe, a feeling of guilt ; and 
 when he does something which would be applauded 
 by his fellows, he has a sense of happiness and self- 
 satisfaction. This is, then, the basis of the moral 
 sentiment with which the voice of conscience is 
 indissolubly associated. A non-gregarious animal 
 can do what he likes : it has only itself to consider. 
 
 '* * There is a fundamental difference between 
 this herd instinct and the personal instincts of self- 
 preservation, nutrition, and sex. These are depen- 
 dent on the impulse of the moment ; but the herd 
 instinct is a controlling influence from without, 
 which is perpetually acting in antagonism to the 
 other three." 
 
 *' Elsewhere, writing of the conflict which fre- 
 quently ensues between the ' herd instinct ' and 
 the * personal instincts ' he writes : ' The herd 
 instinct is a true instinct and refuses to be repressed, 
 with the result that the patient ' (who refuses to 
 be guided by it) ' suffers from remorse, usually 
 accompanied by an unexplained headache and 
 other neurasthenic symptoms. ' The idea of the 
 * unexplained headache ' of conscience,'' Launces- 
 ton remarked, *' suggests an influence which might 
 be turned to some moral value. There are those 
 who would be more amenable to the threat of an 
 aching head than to that of the mental disturbance 
 more usually associated with 'a bad conscience." 
 
142 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 *' Now, is it not manifest what all this means — 
 what it implies ? It surely means that man, so 
 soon as he became man — that is to say, so soon as 
 a creature was sufficiently developed to be able to 
 regard itself in any self-conscious way and to be 
 aware of the nature of its acts — so soon as this 
 great era in evolution arrived, man found himself 
 with a conscience ready made, so to say : he per- 
 ceived himself already as a creature influenced by 
 a double set of motives, by a two-way tug — one 
 motive pulling him towards that which his purely 
 personal instincts suggested, the other towards 
 that which was for the good of the herd. When he 
 yielded to the former he knew discomfort — the 
 discomfort of an inhibited impulse — conscience- 
 sting. 
 
 ** In this connection some remarks of Professor 
 Lloyd Morgan are very well worth attention : 
 
 * The satisfaction or dissatisfaction,' he writes, 
 
 * arising from the performance or non-performance 
 of instinctive behaviour, evolved for the biological 
 end of the preservation of the social community, 
 is the perceptual embryo from which conscience is 
 developed." 
 
 '' He then proceeds to quote Professor Mackenzie, 
 in his Manual of Ethics, pages 285, 286, on ' am- 
 biguities in the use of the term *' conscience. "" 
 It is sometines used to express the fundamental 
 principles on which the moral judgment rests ; 
 at oth^r times it expresses the principle adopted 
 by a particular individual ; at other times it means 
 ** a particular kind of pleasure or pain felt in 
 perceiving our own conformity or non-conformity 
 
PUNISHMENT 143 
 
 to principle." This last seems to me the most 
 convenient acceptation of the term, except that I 
 should prefer to say simply that it is a feeling of 
 pain accompanying and resulting from our non- 
 conformity to principle/ 
 
 '' Lloyd Morgan further observes that such a 
 dejB.nition presupposes the existence of a principle 
 or ideal. * In the case of the animal/ he adds, ' such 
 an ideal of right conduct has probably not taken 
 form. But Mr. Mackenzie also speaks of the ' ' quasi- 
 conscience " begotten of custom. This comes 
 nearer to the feeling which animals may be sup- 
 posed to have when their behaviour does not accord 
 with that which, through instinct or habit, is the 
 usage of the conununity. And if, as seems to 
 be shown by observation, animals sometimes 
 punish the breaches of such usage — when, for 
 example, cats punish their kittens for uncleanli- 
 ness — the quasi-conscience will assume a more 
 developed form.' 
 
 ** I do not much like this word ' punish," as 
 used here,'' Launceston remarked. *' It seems to 
 imply a moral purpose of which there is no evidence. 
 I rather incline to think that the cat is angry with 
 the dirty kitten and therefore chastises it, obeying 
 the impulse of its anger. The effect, doubtless, 
 would be to tend to the reformation of the kitten's 
 manners ; but that is not identical with the 
 assumption that the old cat had this reformation 
 in mind when it inflicted the pain on its child — and 
 no less than that is the assumption which seems 
 to be involved in the use of the word ' punish.' 
 
 " Professor Morgan draws the conclusion that 
 
144 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 * long ere, in the course of mental evolution, the 
 correlative conceptions implied in the phrase 
 " right or wrong '' had taken definite form, percep- 
 tual situations must have arisen in which behaviour 
 carried with it the feelings of satisfaction or the 
 reverse which laid the foundation of that appro- 
 bation of the right which forms the superstructure 
 we build upon them by the exercise of reflective 
 thought/ 
 
 " Maybe. But whether or no we accept this 
 view of a ' quasi-conscience * actually evolved in 
 non-conceptive mind, assuredly we have its material 
 ready to hand in the two-way tug of conflicting 
 impulses to which the social animals are subjected. 
 In less degree, and more temporarily, we see the 
 same conflict in the family life of many of the 
 animals which we should not especially describe 
 as social. The first indications of it are there. 
 
 " There are two passages in Mr. Hobhouse's 
 Mind in Evolution bearing directly on this point, 
 the evolution of conscience, though Mr. Hobhouse 
 himself does not explicitly make use of that term. 
 In Chapter XI, under the chapter-heading ' Social 
 Instincts ' and section-heading ' Animal Morality,^ 
 he writes : * The higher animals lead a social life, 
 not only in the sense that they congregate together 
 like swarms of gnats or shoals of fish, but in the 
 sense that they have social or family relations with 
 one another. In these relations, acts of mutual 
 help or forbearance are involved, and it is out of 
 acts of mutual help and forbearance that morality 
 as we know it among men is built up. Are we then 
 to attribute morality to animals ? Have we the 
 
THE CONFLICT OF DESIRES 145 
 
 right to praise or blame them, to apply to them 
 epithets implying a moral significance ? This 
 question, so far as it is not a question of words, will 
 be found to resolve itself into a question of the 
 degree of intelligence which we impute to animals/* 
 
 '' Mr. Hobhouse's bent is to ascribe a very high 
 degree of intelligence to animals, but, for all that, 
 he hardly cares to credit them with a moral sense, 
 though he quite justly credits some of our domesti- 
 cated animals with a sense of remorse when they 
 have done that which they ought not to have done. 
 Even here, however, it would certainly be more 
 exact to say ' done that for which they remember 
 that they have been punished ' — the pain being 
 associated with the wrong act. * It is quite 
 possible,' he writes, ' that even in animal life, when 
 there is a conflict of desires, that one tends to pre- 
 vail which is most intimately bound up with the 
 animal's whole mode of life. And, at least among 
 the domestic animals, we see symptoms of shame 
 and remorse when, under the stress of momentary 
 excitement, such an impulse is violated — and 
 remorse is precisely the tingling with which the 
 permanent character, the real self, comes to life 
 again.' 
 
 ** This, surely, is very near a description of 
 conscience in its less spiritual form. 
 
 " It is a rather curious reflection, that if it had 
 happened to be creation's plan that self-conscious- 
 ness should be the acquisition of another branch 
 of the great life-tree — that branch which the social 
 hymenopterous insects form — they would have had 
 
 1 Mind in Evolution, L. T, Hobhouse (1901), pp. 272, 313. 
 
146 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 no conscience thus ready made for them. They 
 would not have found themselves subject to this 
 two-way tug of motives. These creatures are per- 
 fectly and singly obedient to the herd instinct. 
 The ants, for instance, work purely for the good of 
 the nest ; they have lost (I put it in this way 
 because it seems tolerably certain that they are 
 derived from ancestors that had it) the self- 
 regarding instinct altogether where it comes into 
 opposition with the good of the community. Self- 
 consciousness would have revealed them to them- 
 selves as sinless. 
 
 " There is no very manifest reason, on the 
 biological or the psychological side, why self- con- 
 sciousness, free-will, and all that they imply should 
 not have happened to hymenoptera just as well 
 as to one of the primates. The ants had almost 
 certainly (even at the date, which Dr. Arthur 
 Keith, in his Antiquity of Man, puts at a million 
 years ago, when man branched off from the common 
 primate stock) travelled much farther along the 
 instinct-driven path than any of these primates. 
 Possibly it was just because they had gone so far 
 on this path that this wonderful thing could not, 
 even on biological grounds, have occurred to them. 
 They may have passed the switching off points, so 
 to say, and committed themselves too far on the 
 one, the instinct-impelled, line. At all events we 
 may say this, that it is difficult to imagine that 
 they would have made as effective use as man has 
 done of the intellect, had it come their way, for the 
 physical, almost mechanical, reason, that neither 
 their mouths nor any of their other organs or 
 
THE VIRTUE OF SPEECH 147 
 
 limbs are so made that they would, as far as we 
 may judge, have been able to produce any sound- 
 signs at all comparable in variety and flexibility 
 with our language, our tongue-signs. It is difficult 
 to say just for how much the power of speech has 
 counted in the development of human thought, 
 but all who have studied the subject agree in 
 putting its value very high. That is a limitation 
 which some of the birds, of the crow and of the 
 parrot kinds , for example, do not suffer from. Some 
 of you may remember my old poll parrot friend 
 whom I brought into the Club one night as a 
 modern instance.'" (The pleasant smile which 
 came to the faces of many of his audience at the 
 reminiscence did not appear on the countenance of 
 Sir James Macadam.) 
 
 *' But apart from all the biological reasons why 
 intellect, self-consciousness, and therewith free-will 
 came the human, instead of the hymenopterous or 
 any other way, we may perhaps be justified in 
 thinking that it was in part on this very account. 
 Had it become the possession of the ants they 
 would have found themselves sinless, and the new 
 acquisition would in that case have had no moral 
 consequences. The creature that has no tempta- 
 tion towards sin has no motive to moral effort, no 
 knowledge of it ; the ethical problems do not exist 
 for him. 
 
 " But — and this is a point which the debaters of 
 the subject almost universally miss — it was only 
 at the moment when sin came into the world that 
 goodness made its entry also. All previous action, 
 however right it was in the mechanical sense of 
 
148 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 going true to a mark — the mark of subserving the 
 interest of the species — yet in no true sense deserved 
 to be called * good/ Sin entered into the world 
 because a creature became endowed with a recogni- 
 tion of the difEerence between good and evil. The 
 allegory of the Genesis story is perfect here ; but 
 it is often forgotten that the forbidden fruit taught 
 man good as well as evil. The case is very closely 
 analogous with the entry of pain. Pain entered 
 along with pleasure. Sensation implied the sensi- 
 bility to one as to the other. So also, when man 
 was evolved — a free and self-conscious creature, 
 although we have to suppose that at the first his 
 freedom was very dimly realised, very feeble, and 
 his consciousness was no more fully developed — 
 still, linked together and illuminated by the same 
 flash, came moral evil and moral good. The sense 
 of morality had to envisage the one, equally with 
 the other, just as, when man began to use his 
 reason and make his plans — incited by the vis a 
 fronte instead of a tergo, as Dr. James Ward has it 
 in his Realm of Ends, p. 440 — he made wrong plans 
 as well as right ones. Happily the right, both in 
 rational and moral planning, and also the right — 
 that is to say, pleasure — in sensation, was more 
 frequent than the wrong; otherwise the coil of 
 evolution must have retrogressed rather than gone 
 forward. 
 
 *' And this, further, is manifest, that if we are 
 to presume that morality, the development of a 
 power to act in a direction contrary to that in 
 which the bodily passions and senses would impel, 
 was a feature in creation's scheme, so far as it 
 
A LAW TO HIMSELF 149 
 
 applies to our earth, then we must realise that this 
 gift of will, self -consciousness, and reason had to 
 come the way of a social, not of a solitary, animal. 
 The other-regarding virtues could hardly come into 
 being in a creature that lived in a moral isolation. 
 He would owe no duty towards a neighbour, and 
 his duty towards God could be only a reinforce- 
 ment and expansion of his self-regarding virtues, 
 of his duty towards himself. So long as he did not 
 ruin himself by indulging his appetites unduly, it 
 is hard to see what sanctions virtue could have 
 for him. The Homeric Cyclops, living alone, had 
 a full right to be, as he was, a law to himself. 
 
 " Thus, had self-consciousness come to a solitary 
 animal it would not have revealed this animal to 
 itself as the inheritor of original sin, any more 
 than had it come to the perfectly altruistic hymen- 
 optera. In the latter event there would have been 
 no sin, no two-way tug of motives, no conscience, 
 because of the already absolute dominance of the 
 other-regarding motives. The duty towards the 
 neighbour was already perfectly carried out. In 
 the former case again there would equally have 
 been no two-way tug because there would have 
 been no sentiment of duty towards the neighbour 
 whatever : no neighbour, in a social sense, to whom 
 duty was due. 
 
 *' It may be noticed also, that if, as seems to 
 be probable, man was at least a semi-gregarious 
 animal at the date when his brain was first suffi- 
 ciently developed to entitle him to the name of 
 man, then we have no need, as some philosophers 
 have imagined, of seeking the elements of his 
 
 n 
 
150 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 altruistic motives in the parental and the filial 
 love. I do not believe that we are ever likely to 
 know at all certainly whether man, on first coming 
 into his kingdom as man, was solitary or gregarious. 
 Professor Wood Jones, in his Arboreal Man, and 
 many others have discussed the habits, in this 
 respect, of the anthropoid apes, but the value of 
 that evidence is diminished by the uncertainty of 
 man's exact relationship to those apes. His stock 
 quite probably branched off from the simian main 
 stem before any of what we call the primates were 
 evolved. But if parental and filial love were 
 indeed the origin of all altruism it was an origin 
 that had probably long been left behind by the 
 time that man entered on his inheritance of human 
 brain. The beginnings of that immense problem 
 of altruism had been already solved for him by 
 unconscious predecessors. He is still hammering 
 away at it, hardly enough, and with very varying 
 success, but with the immensely powerful aid which 
 is at human disposal if man will but summon it — 
 the spiritual aid of the God who has made him what 
 he is.'' 
 
 Now all these addresses, or whatever they should 
 be called — they were more than mere openings of 
 a debate — of Launceston's were being given during 
 the process of the Great War. Some had been 
 delivered to the accompaniment of occasional 
 * Whizz, Bang ! ' and so on, as bombs were dropped 
 from the air and our anti-air guns replied. Two 
 of the addresses he had to interrupt for a while 
 until the tyranny of noise was overpast, and one 
 was broken ofE altogether, when the raid was a long 
 
A SENSATION 161 
 
 sustained one. The audience had taken these 
 incidents very quietly, and they did not seem to 
 affect the lecturer himself at all. But never, as I 
 think, had the loudest of the explosions created 
 anything at all equal, in the nature of startling 
 sensation and amazement, to this announcement 
 of Launceston^s thus casually dropped in very 
 midmost of his discourse — ** the immensely power- 
 ful aid which is at human disposal if man will but 
 summon it — the spiritual aid of the God who has 
 made him what he is.*' 
 
 How is it that the singular murmur is produced 
 when a speaker creates that which the reporter 
 writes down as ' sensation ' ? Is it a shifting of the 
 feet and of the body into a more keenly expectant 
 attitude, a murmur of the lips ? What is it ? 
 I suppose that it is a composite of all these ele- 
 ments. At all events it was just such a little stir 
 as this that Launceston created by his announce- 
 ment. He made it in his most careless manner, as if 
 it were the most ordinary and most natural remark 
 — and then he paused to drink a sip of water. 
 
 As soon as he had drunk the drop he affected to 
 be enormously astonished by the surprise that his 
 remark had caused. Of course he was not in the 
 least surprised really : of course he knew that it 
 was bound to cause startling surprise : of course 
 it was just so, in order to create the surprise, that he 
 gave it out exactly as he did, as a thing ordinary 
 and inevitable ; and of course it was just to 
 enhance the effect that he drank his sip and so 
 made his pause after it. It was all admirably 
 done. 
 
162 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 " You seem surprised by what I said just now/' 
 lie resumed. " I don't know why you should be 
 so much surprised. I have said more than once 
 — haven't I ? — that modern science was theist ? 
 Well, then, did you think I meant nothing when 
 I said that ? I did, as a matter of fact, mean a 
 good deal by it. The very last thing that I have 
 any claim to be is a theologian. You need not 
 alarm yourselves by imagining that I am going to 
 talk to you of anything at all in the nature of 
 theology. I couldn't if I would, and assuredly 
 I do not want to. But I do say this, that if we are 
 not to believe and to affirm that man has at his 
 disposal sources of divine spiritual aid on which he 
 can draw if he only will — ^if we are not to believe 
 that, we might every bit as well, for all practical 
 human purpose, write ourselves down atheist at 
 once. Don't you think so ? " 
 
 Nobody seemed to be quite clear, or ready, with 
 an answer. Davis, a young man just gone into 
 Parliament, caused a laugh by suggesting that it 
 was a question of which * notice should be given.' 
 That was the general feeling. 
 
 " Explain, please ! " said Pershore, and Laun- 
 ceston went on again : 
 
 " What I mean is this," said Launceston impa- 
 tiently and emphatically, " that people talk such 
 nonsense — theologians talk such nonsense, the 
 clergy talk such nonsense, the ordinary good 
 Christian layman, or lay donkey, or whatever one 
 should call him, talks such nonsense — cannot 
 clear his brain of cobwebs — goes halting and 
 mumbling between two opinions — tells you in 
 
PRAYER 153 
 
 the first place ' you should pray to God, oh, yes ! 
 Pray to God and perhaps you will get what you 
 ask ' : then you say to him, ' Oh, you are in com- 
 munion, are you, with some Divine power ? ' and 
 he is frightened at once. ' Oh, I don't know what 
 you mean by that," he says, ' '' in communion 
 with/' Isn't that mystical ? ' 
 
 " This,'' said Launceston, with keen scorn, " is 
 what I mean by the cobweb-blurred vision, the 
 confused mumble of speech. * What is this 
 prayer you pray,' I ask my friend then, ' to a 
 being with whom you cannot frankly say that you 
 are in communication ? It is a prayer addressed 
 to a void so far as any relationship between you and 
 any person to whom it is addressed is concerned.' 
 ' Ah, but I do not admit that I am in no com- 
 munication. At times I hope, I even seem to 
 feel that I am.' ' Oh,' I reply, * you are aware of 
 a communion 1 ' 'At times I seem to be — yes, 
 I believe so.' 
 
 " I conceive," said Launceston, addressing us 
 now, and no longer his imaginary interlocutor, 
 '* that I have expressed the thing fairly — put the 
 point of view (or of blindness) of most of the ordi- 
 nary folk we meet, and even of most of the people 
 who, since they presume to write on these subjects, 
 ought to have thought them out. Why won't they 
 be frank with themselves ? Why won't they see 
 clearly ? Why won't they see that it must be one 
 of two things — either they feel an influence from 
 a spiritual source, or they do not — are consciously 
 aware of it, as we are aware, say, of an effort of 
 will that we make, or they are not so aware. And 
 
164 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 unless ttey are so aware, what in the name of wonder 
 does personal religion, does the whole spiritual 
 side of man, mean to them ? — a mere speculation, 
 nothing more. So it strikes me, at least. In no 
 other light am I able to see it. It must be there, 
 this spiritual communion, or else spirit means 
 nothing. How else will you have it ? 
 
 " I do not mean,'' he proceeded, speaking with 
 a rare earnestness which greatly impressed all who 
 heard him, '* to leave it just there, without saying 
 more on this point — that is, if you have patience 
 to hear me, at some other time ; but just for the 
 moment I will leave it like that, so as to resume 
 what I was saying on the subject of conscience — 
 conscience, with its roots and its origin down there, 
 as I have said, deep planted in the nature which 
 man found himself possessed of, or possessed by, 
 so soon as ever he found himself at all. Those are 
 its roots, no less divinely planted, if you will, than 
 any later nourishment and reinforcement sent from 
 Heaven that the growing plant may receive, but 
 assuredly to be so nurtured and strengthened as it 
 grows. 
 
 " And the case of conscience is not peculiar in 
 this regard. It only repeats, in its turn, the story 
 of evolution which all the other faculties of our 
 human nature reiterate persistently — the story of 
 the increasing purpose. I can well imagine the 
 objection of a critic to the * natural ' origin which 
 is suggested here for conscience and for the sense 
 of moral evil. He would claim for it a ' super- 
 natural' origin, a spiritual. I would reply that 
 the difEerence between us is mainly that he draws 
 
CONSCIENCE DIVINELY REINFORCED 155 
 
 a distinction between the 'natural' and the 'super- 
 natural ' which I am not willing to admit. Just 
 what, I would ask him, does this term of his, this 
 'natural,' mean, in such an opposition? His 
 only reply could be that the 'supernatural' is 
 from God. From whom, then, if not from God, 
 is the ' natural ' ? 
 
 " Surely, to any clear view, the distinction must 
 vanish, the opposition is devoid of meaning. 
 
 " The divine reinforcement of the highest dictates 
 of conscience, as an instinctive development, is 
 beautifully expressed by M. Boutroux in his Science 
 and Religion, p. 371, in Nield's translation. In the 
 first place, he imagines a man arguing thus : * Be- 
 sides being an individual belonging to a natural 
 species, every man is member of a human com- 
 munity. He ought, therefore, to comply with the 
 conditions underlying the community's existence. 
 And as, for each given community, at each given 
 period, the conditions of existence are expressed 
 by a totality of traditions, laws, ideas, feelings, 
 which constitute a kind of social conscience, there 
 is, for the individual who would be good for some- 
 thing, who would be himself in an objective and 
 true sense, a second obligation to obey the rules 
 of the community in which he lives, to be a sub- 
 missive and active organ of that community.' 
 Then he proceeds : 'What more does man need for 
 the guidance of his life 1 ' 
 
 " Well, argues M. Boutroux, besides these other- 
 regarding motives, superimposed on the self- 
 regarding motives with which instinct inspires 
 him, man does need a good deal more. He needs 
 
156 " WHAT IS SIN ? " 
 
 something wliicli is summed up conveniently in tte 
 word ' religion/ And what M. Boutroux intends 
 by the word, in this particular connection, he 
 further expands, as follows (p. 380) : 
 
 "Keligion 'believes that pure ideas, however 
 clear they may be, do not suffice to move the will ; 
 that what produces being is being, and she offers 
 human virtue the support of divine perfection, in 
 order to help it to exist and to increase. 
 
 Religion, in the second place, as fully deve- 
 loped, is the communion of the individual, no longer 
 merely with the members of his clan, of his family, 
 or of his nation, but with God as the Father of the 
 Universe, i.e. with God in all that is or can be. 
 Religion is, henceforward, essentially universal. 
 She teaches the radical equality and brotherhood 
 of all human beings ; and she offers, as motive for 
 the action of the individual, the conviction that, 
 however humble he may be, he can labour effectively 
 for the coming of the Kingdom of God — ^in other 
 words, for justice and for goodness. 
 
 " ' Lastly, religion purposes to train man through 
 an inward and substantial operation. It is not 
 merely external acts, habits, customs, that she 
 would teach — it is the man himself, in the deepest 
 source of his feeling and thoughts, of his longings 
 and his desires.' 
 
 *' You see, he writes *an inward and substantial 
 operation." Elsewhere (p. 397) he says : ' It is not 
 without significance that the psychologist and the 
 moralist consider mysticism an essential element, 
 and, perhaps, the foundation of religion. All 
 intense religious life is mystical, and mysticism is 
 
THE "EYE" OF REASON 157 
 
 the life-source from whicli religions, threatened 
 by a formal and scholastic spirit, derive fresh 
 vigour/ 
 
 " It is the source, too, from which the conscience, 
 that has its roots in the herd instinct, is fortified, 
 invigorated, purified. 
 
 ** Conscience, no less than other faculties and 
 impulses of man, has to submit to the criticism and 
 in some part to the direction of the ' eye ' of reason. 
 A misunderstanding in this regard has led many 
 into a difficulty which has no existence whatever 
 except in the fog created by their own misty think- 
 ing. ' You tell me," an objector will sometimes 
 say, * that conscience tells me what I ought to do. 
 But how can that be ? It tells me, a Christian, that 
 I ought to be faithful to one wife. Yet it does not 
 vex a Mohammedan because he has half a dozen. 
 It applauds a Thug for the cutting of a throat. 
 What kind of divine adviser can this be who bids 
 me do a thing that it condemns in another ? ' 
 
 *' A friend of mine whom I think I mentioned 
 before — a clergyman of the Anglican Church — 
 informs me that there are a large number of 
 people whose way to faith has been sorely obstructed 
 by some such stumbling-block as this. But surely 
 no religious teacher, with even the most rudi- 
 mentary equipment of psychology essential to his 
 profession, could instruct his disciples that con- 
 science ' tells people what they ought to do * in 
 any sense of being a universal guide. Its main 
 function is that of upbraiding them, of continually 
 reminding them and of bringing them face to face 
 again and again with their transgression, if they 
 
168 "WHAT IS SIN?" 
 
 have acted in a way contrary to that whidi they 
 believe to be right. Yet there are times and there 
 is a sense in which conscience acts as a guide, or, 
 shall we say, rather as a- finger-post, pointing the 
 way ? When the reason of man indicates to him 
 alternative paths of action, either of which he 
 feels himself free to take, forthwith, by aid of that 
 same faculty of reason, he summons up before his 
 mental eye a picture of the respective results of the 
 two courses of action. It is then, in the presence of 
 these two paths of possible action, that conscience 
 serves the function of a sign-post at the junction of 
 two roads ; for the man, in his hesitation, feels 
 that if he choose the one road conscience will 
 condemn ; if the other, that conscience will approve. 
 Already, as he forms the two pictures in his mind, 
 he may feel the faint premonition of the approval 
 as he sets his face towards the better course, of 
 condemnation as he turns it towards the worse. 
 
 " Such is the service of conscience while man is 
 doubtfully deliberating on his act, but more often 
 we realise it in its after- the-event operation, either 
 as the approver of the righteous act, or, perhaps 
 more often, the accuser, goading to renewed life 
 the memory of an act done in contravention of the 
 moral code of the actor. It has nothing to do, 
 save indirectly, with the framing of that code. 
 
 ** Partly for its bearing on this point, and partly 
 for the light that it sheds on another point no less 
 important for us to realise* I will conclude with a 
 quotation from Bishop Gore's Commentary on the 
 Efistle to the Romans, vol. i, p. 85 : * The actual con- 
 science of the individual, or of the society, at any 
 
BISHOP GORE ON CONSCIENCE 159 
 
 particular moment, afiords no adequate standard 
 of right and wrong. The moral conscience, like the 
 intelligence in general, requires enlightenment. It 
 supplies no trustworthy Information, except so far 
 as we are at pains to keep it enlightened. More 
 than this, its capacity to keep us admonished 
 depends on our habitually observing its injunc- 
 tions. To disobey conscience is to dull it and 
 finally to make it obdurate and insensitive. The 
 absence of conscientious objection to a particular 
 course of action may therefore be due either to our 
 having neglected to enlighten our conscience or to 
 having refused to obey it. The duty of an in- 
 dividual to himself is not only to obey his 
 conscience, but also to take pains to enlighten it. 
 And the duty of the individual to society is to 
 make continual efforts to keep the corporate con- 
 science up to standard.' '' 
 
 Launceston put his papers together. There were 
 a few moments in which no one spoke. Then 
 Tilden said : " I do not see how this exactly follows 
 from your dictum that science is theist." 
 
 ** I do not say that it does, exactly. I do say 
 that science has ceased to be an obstacle to Theism 
 as she certainly was fifty years ago. Do you not 
 agree with me. Sir James ? " He accompanied the 
 question with a keen look towards the corner in 
 which Sir James was sitting. 
 
 The old man was startled by the question thus 
 directly posed. " Eh, what ? "" he asked. 
 
 ** I am afraid that you do not agree. Sir James, 
 with much that I have been saying." 
 . ** I agree with verra little,'' Sir James assented. 
 
160 "WHAT IS SIN?'' 
 
 " Of most of what you have to tell us I am com- 
 pelled to say that it is subvairsive, clean subvair- 
 sive/' 
 
 " Subvairsive of what ? '* Launceston demanded 
 irritably, with his odious imitation of the old 
 Scotsman's accent. 
 
 '' Of science, of all the findings of science." 
 
 ** Subvairsive of the errors of a fossilised science 
 of fifty years ago,"' Launceston retorted scornfully. 
 " Do you think we have stood still all the last 
 fifty years, Sir James ? Science to-day is theist, 
 I repeat." 
 
 " It would be well an ye had, sir," was Sir 
 James's answer. "Unfortunately ye have no' 
 stood still, you have wandered grievously astray. 
 In what sense, I would ask, is your science theist? " 
 
 " In the sense that it admits — that it impera- 
 tively requires — the creative act of a 0eo5 at a 
 stage immeasurably later than your science of fifty 
 years ago admitted it, even if it admitted it at all — 
 that is, at the beginning of terrestrial life ; and 
 that it does not refuse, if it does not so imperatively 
 require, another act of the ©eds at an immeasur- 
 ably later period again — that is, at the beginning 
 of human reason." 
 
 " Subvairsive," the old man repeated obstinately. 
 ** Utterly subvairsive." 
 
 Launceston turned from him as if exasperated. 
 ** It is not my own word I ask you to take," he said, 
 as to his audience generally. " I refer you, as I 
 have before, to the view of the great chemist. 
 Professor Soddy, that physical science finds, out- 
 side and apart from her own domain, a something 
 
SCIENCE REALISING SPIRIT 161 
 
 in man which is permanent and is therefore real, 
 as his mortal body is not ; that is, his spirit. In 
 that sense is science, physical science, theist. It is 
 not within her province to discuss that spirit, but it 
 is within her province to realise that it is there. She 
 realises it in the very act of defining that province, 
 which places the human spirit outside that defining 
 line. In such sense, at the least, and in my 
 opinion in far fuller sense, is modern science theist.'' 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 
 
 " I've been thinking over those two breaks of 
 yours, Launceston, in the course of evolution/' 
 said Pershore, a few evenings later. " There's an 
 awful consequence that seems to me to flow from 
 them." 
 " Don't frighten us. What is it ? " 
 " That, if we admit two breaks, what guarantee 
 have we that there may not be a third — that we may 
 not, even now, at this very instant, be on the verge 
 of a new revelation ? " 
 
 " Is that all your ' awful consequence ' ? " 
 Launceston asked. 
 
 *' That's all, and enough, too, I think." 
 ** It's not all that I'm willing and anxious to 
 grant you," Launceston answered. '' As I thought 
 I had said before, I am disposed to think that not 
 only are we not to be guaranteed against a third 
 break, but that a third break is with us here and 
 now — that we are in the very breach, or in process 
 of being broken — however you like to take it." 
 *' What in the world do you mean ? " 
 " Oh, I do not say that it is in the world, if by 
 the world you mean this planet of ours. In part it 
 is in the world, of course, seeing it is in us ; but in 
 most part outside it." 
 
 162 
 
ALTRraSM 163 
 
 '* Explain, please/' said Persliore, in his usual 
 formula. 
 
 *' Explain ! " Launceston repeated. *' That 
 means ' level out/ I suppose — make all the ground 
 smooth. Well, before I can even begin to do that 
 there are some preliminary obstacles to clear of!. 
 A good many of the things which make it difficult 
 for most of the people I talk to and read about to 
 get hold of a tolerably intelligible view of the 
 general scheme of creation do not seem so very 
 difficult to me. For instance, as I have tried to 
 show, physical and mental pain and also moral 
 evil appear to me explicable. On the other hand, 
 there is much which does not seem to bother most 
 folks at all yet which strikes me as quite unintelli- 
 gible from any scientific point of view. What 
 account can science give us, for example, of man's 
 aesthetic sense, of his content in sacrificing material 
 satisfactions for the gratification of an ideal, of his 
 altruism ? " 
 
 The sound of the clearing of a throat, quite 
 inarticulate yet with a significance of dissent which 
 was quite unmistakable, came from the arm-chair 
 in which sat Sir James Macadam. 
 
 *' Yes, Sir James ? '' said Launceston. " Did 
 you speak ? " 
 
 " I did not," the old Scot replied ; '' but I 
 thought.'' 
 
 " Rather audibly ! " observed Launceston. 
 " May we hear what you thought ? " 
 
 " I thought that if only you would read your 
 Herbert Spencer you would not be saying that 
 science could not account to you for altruism," 
 
164 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 
 
 ** Really, Sir James ! But what does Herbert 
 Spencer say ? Will you not tell us ? " 
 
 There was a limpid ingenuousness about Launce- 
 ston's way of asking the question which must 
 have roused the suspicion of any less simple 
 man ; but Sir James took him perfectly seriously, 
 and said : *' I cannot give you Herbert Spencer's 
 words, but I can put very shortly the scientific 
 view for which he stands. The love of the fellow 
 being, which results in altruistic conduct, is evolved 
 from the love of the mate and of the child/' 
 
 " You mean that man was first narrowly indi- 
 vidualistic and egotistic, and that as he gained in 
 intellectual enlightenment he naturally evolved a 
 larger altruism/' 
 
 '* Just so — I think you will agree/' 
 
 " I agree entirely, Sir James," said Launceston, 
 " entirely, except in two particulars/' 
 
 " And what are they, if I may ask ? " 
 
 ** The first is, that I think your premises are 
 entirely wrong, and the second is, that even if I 
 could grant the premises I do not think that the 
 conclusion follows from them/' 
 
 " Eh, eh, eh," the old Scot gasped. He looked 
 at Launceston a moment fixedly, and then said, 
 ** Man, I think you must be mad." 
 
 " Very likely ; I'm sure I've got enough to make 
 me," Launceston rejoined, with a look at Macadam 
 which seemed to intimate that the very existence 
 of the eminent geologist would sufl&ce to explain 
 and almost justify insanity in all condemned to 
 have dealings with him. * ' The premises are wrong, 
 because it is becoming more •and more the accepted 
 
 \ 
 
TRIBAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 165 
 
 view that man's self-consciousness was first of all 
 a tribal, and only later an individual self-conscious- 
 ness, and the conclusion does not follow from the 
 premises, because even if man were first an indi- 
 vidualist, and with merely natural affections, it is 
 quite impossible to deduce any real altruism from 
 these feelings. If you analyse them you find them 
 to be merely natural gratifications of the ego. 
 Man finds no natural gratification whatever in any 
 act of altruism which has the character of self- 
 sacrifice. A gratification he does find, but it has 
 not its source in anything that is commonly under- 
 stood as human nature. Therein is the mystery/' 
 
 *' Again I say — explain,'' Pershore put in, as Sir 
 James made no reply. 
 
 " Well," said Launceston, "I have explained, 
 have I not ? I will try to put it a little more fully 
 if you like, but it practically all lies in what I have 
 just said. The way in which it seems most easy 
 and natural for us to suppose that things happened 
 is to imagine that the individual interest was 
 gradually merged in the family connection, and the 
 family in the tribe. Unfortimately that simple 
 and alluring process is not that which the evidence 
 at our disposal supports. The evidence, on the 
 contrary, tends to show us the primitive idea of 
 kinship to be one of the blood tie purely. The 
 family idea is a later conception, probably a con- 
 ception of more settled times. At first we find the 
 husband and wife regarded as by no means neces- 
 sarily of the same kin : in some cases, as when 
 exogamy was the custom, necessarily of alien kin. 
 
 *' The idea that most people have is of a gradual 
 12 
 
166 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 
 
 development of such altruistic virtues as patriotism, 
 sacrifice of self for country, for example, out of a 
 primitive all-absorbing egoism and individualism. 
 It would not be correct to say tbat the truth, so 
 far as we are able to ascertain it, is the exact 
 opposite of this, but assuredly the opposite is the 
 nearer, of the two extremes, to the historical truth. 
 The idea of the personality of the individual is so 
 very familiar and present to us of this century 
 that it is exceedingly difficult for us to realise, what 
 almost certainly is the true fact, that in the dim 
 dawn of consciousness man had a far clearer notion 
 of a tribal, than of an individual, personality. It 
 is likely that he regarded his tribe, his kin, as the 
 unit — the unit that mattered ; and this is really 
 what we mean by personality. It is in this sense 
 that Professor Robertson Smith writes of * the 
 infancy of mankind, the period of human history 
 in which individuality went for nothing, and all 
 common influences had a force which we moderns 
 can with difficulty conceive." 
 
 ** He refers here to ' the infancy of mankind," 
 but what he really means to imply by that phrase 
 is the earliest period of which * human history ' 
 tells us anything. We have to carry back our 
 imagination considerably farther from that earliest 
 dawn of history than most of us suppose, to arrive, 
 even in speculation, at man's true * infancy.' 
 
 ** But, arguing of that unknown from what we 
 more or less do know, it is reasonable to assume 
 increasingly less appreciation of individual, as 
 compared with tribal, personality the farther we 
 go back. 
 
MAN ALTRXnST BEFORE EGOIST 167 
 
 " All of whicli is as much as to say that man 
 was altruist before he was egoist. And as man's 
 reason developed and his consciousness of the 
 personal ego grew stronger and more clear, his 
 egoism would be apt to increase at the expense of 
 his altruism ; for reason, as we saw, supplies no 
 purely altruistic motives. It supplies such motives 
 as those which have for their content the intelligent 
 recognition of the fact that sacrifice of self for the 
 community is a condition of the community's 
 survival, and therewith of the individual who is 
 a member of that community ; but this is mani- 
 festly only egoism in an altruistic garb. The root 
 of the motive here is just as egoistic as that which 
 impels the individual to seek his own safety and 
 comfort and let the community look after itself — 
 only, it is a more intelligent and a farther-seeing 
 motive. From the moral point of view there is 
 no difference. 
 
 " When, and in so far as, altruism is an end in 
 itself, it is surely obvious, in spite of Herbert 
 Spencer and Sir James Macadam, that it is not the 
 reason of man which furnishes him with that end, 
 and, therewith, with his highest motives. There 
 is a very common confusion of ideas about it. 
 Reason is regarded with such immense venera- 
 tion, spoken of with such epithets as 'glorious,' 
 ' majestic,' and what not, tacked to it, that man has 
 come to conceive of his intellect as providing him 
 with the highest impulses to action of which his 
 nature is capable. The truth is almost diametrically 
 opposite. Reason does not supply us with a single 
 purely unselfish motive. Man, when he became 
 
168 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 
 
 man, found himself a member of a community — 
 found himself a creature of custom, habit, and 
 tradition. His reason often suggested to him 
 actions (self -regarding) opposed to those traditions. 
 It reinforced the selfish, sensual motives. But his 
 reason also taught him that, if he was to survive, 
 it was important for him to postpone the personal 
 motives to the social ones. All her arguments tend 
 towards self-regarding actions. She has no sanc- 
 tions to give for any consideration to others, to 
 our nation, our community, our children — ^unless 
 it be on the call of such enlightened selfishness as 
 might lead a man to educate his children well so 
 that they should help him in his old age, or to 
 assist his country so that he should not fall into 
 the hands of the enemy. But in such action there 
 is no real unselfishness : -it is only that the view 
 has been amplified and extended by reason's 
 operation. Nietzsche's argument is really a per- 
 fectly logical one on his premiss, and if, as he 
 contends, we are to be obedient disciples of the 
 pure reason it must logically lead us to that most 
 ridiculous creature that any distraught brain ever 
 conceived, the megalomaniac whom he styles 
 * super-man.' " 
 
 Sir James Macadam had been sitting in a kind of 
 crushed silence since Launceston's last attack upon 
 his position, but now he found courage to ask : 
 
 " If it is not the reason of man that has led him 
 to an enlightened altruism, will you be good enough 
 to tell us what it is ? " 
 
 " I will. Sir James," Launceston replied, with 
 unusual courtesy. " I am aware that your opinion 
 
ALTRUISM DIVINELY INSPIRED 169 
 
 of me is not a liigli one as it is. It will be greatly 
 lower still when you hear my answer. Every truly 
 altruistic sentiment, as distinct from those which 
 can be ascribed to an extended egoism, which a 
 man finds within him, comes to him, in my opinion, 
 directly from the Spirit of God. There — is not 
 that a childish confession to make ? — is not that 
 a return to the out-worn fetish, to the vain super- 
 stition, that our fathers used to worship ? " 
 
 Macadam's only reply was to shake his head 
 sadly, as it might be in despair of a world, or of a 
 man, for whom such a view was possible. Laun- 
 ceston would not let him rest, however. 
 
 *' You may not understand it. Sir James, but it 
 does not seem to me impossible that an opinion 
 may be correct just because our forefathers hap- 
 pened to share it.''' 
 
 The old man was tempted from his silence. 
 *' Subvairsive," he murmured, repeating his 
 favourite criticism,"subvairsiveandretrogressive/' 
 I looked for Launceston to fall upon him and 
 rend him after his manner, but he showed a rare 
 patience, slightly shrugging his lean shoulders. 
 Something he murmured of " An ancient fossil ! — 
 as well argue with a block of granite," and was 
 silent. 
 
 It was Pershore again who took the word. 
 " I think you owe us something, Launceston. 
 You have said too much not to tell us more. You 
 must not leave it at that." 
 
 " I do not wish to. If you can bear to listen 
 on yet another Thursday I should like to explain 
 my meaning, so far as I can. It may suggest a 
 
170 ALTRUISM AND EGOISM 
 
 thought to you, though you may not be able to 
 agree with it. It means either very much, or 
 nothing. I don't know which way you will take 
 it.'' 
 
 " Give us the chance, at least," Pershore said ; 
 and I think all present, with the exception of 
 Macadam, endorsed him. 
 
 Accordingly, on our following debate night, 
 Launceston opened with an address on what he 
 called Human Spirituality. I do not think that he 
 had ever addressed us at such length before, and 
 I am sure that he had never spoken, or rather, 
 read (for he had been at the pains to write his 
 thoughts out verbatim) with such conviction and 
 earnestness. Of Launceston, the cynic, there was 
 no trace at all that night. I think that for once 
 he was giving us his true self. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 " I HAVE already," Launceston said, " stated to 
 one or two of you my personal conviction that 
 altruism, the true altruism which is not merely an 
 enlightened and extended egoism, comes to men 
 directly from and by the Spirit of God. That is 
 a proposition with which you will, I think, have 
 little difficulty in agreeing if you are once able to 
 believe the more general proposition that man 
 really does, or may, thus commune and share 
 directly with the Spirit of God. It could be of 
 very little value to you if I were merely to affirm 
 my own belief in such communion. To carry any 
 conviction to your minds I must draw from far 
 higher sources. Therefore the address with which 
 I will open your debate to-night will consist in the 
 main of citations from some such sources. My 
 own contribution will amount to not much more 
 than a few remarks thrown in for the linking of the 
 cited passages. Very fortunately for my purpose 
 we shall find the high authorities in a rare agree- 
 ment. But first it is necessary to make clear, or 
 at least as clear as the nature of the subject will 
 allow, the sense which I would attach to the 
 * spirituality ' of which I wish to speak to you, for 
 the word has been used so variously that without 
 
 171 
 
172 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 some such preface its meaning must be utterly 
 vague. 
 
 " An acute hint of the difficulty is given by Sir 
 W. Barrett's attempted sharp distinction between 
 the spiritual ' order/ as he calls it, and the psy- 
 chical.* He insists on the distinction, and very 
 rightly, yet it is a distinction which even his own 
 writings prove to be exceedingly difficult to sustain. 
 Thus, he would not deny that spiritualism and the 
 spiritual order form special part of the province 
 of investigation of the Psychical Research Society. 
 The term here, as always, requires careful guarding. 
 
 " Professor Miinsterberg, in The Eternal Values, 
 has a trenchant comment on the two senses in 
 which the very term * psychology ' itself has been 
 used and on the errors which have arisen from a 
 lack of sufficient discrimination between them : 
 ' the casual psychology, which considers all inner 
 experiences as material for description and explana- 
 tion,' and ' another kind of psychology, which some 
 like to call voluntaristic psychology, which inter- 
 prets the meaning of the self and follows up the 
 inner with relations. There is no harm," he adds, 
 * in the double use of the word so long as in this 
 way the two methods are cleanly and clearly 
 separated. A danger for intellectual straightfor- 
 wardness sets in when both are carelessly mixed, 
 as often happens." « 
 
 " What I mean, then, by spirituality is man's 
 faculty, capable of conscious exercise, of putting 
 
 1 On the Threshold of the Unseen, p. 19, by Sir W. Barrett, F.R.S, 
 Kegan Paul, 1917. 
 » The Eternal Values, p. 17, by Prof. Miinsterberg. Constable. 
 
THE DAWN OF SPIRITUALITY 173 
 
 himself into communication with influences which 
 do not seem to come to him by way of his reason 
 or by any of the recognised nerve channels. 
 
 " By what channels they do enter we cannot, in 
 the present state of our knowledge, determine. 
 There is no need to distrust the reality of the 
 communications, nor to believe that they are a 
 product of self-suggestion, just because their way 
 of entry is unknown. We are as yet, as we may 
 suppose, enjoying only the dawn, hardly more than 
 the first twilight, of this spiritual faculty. We 
 may be very certain that there was a time when 
 humanity was much in the same position relatively 
 to intellectuality, that it is now in regard to spiri- 
 tuality. The reason of man was no more than a 
 light dimly dawning over the hills. And just as 
 it happened then to a few more advanced than 
 their fellows to catch the rays of that dawning 
 sun of intellect, so it is now that comparatively 
 few are yet conscious of the beams of this later 
 dawning sun of spirituality. 
 
 ** But let me be clearly understood — when I say 
 that this is a late, a recent dawn, I do not wish to 
 imply that it is only within the last few years, 
 when we have begun to call ourselves * psychic,* 
 that this spiritual faculty has been developed. 
 Our psychological idea must be strange indeed if 
 we would deny the name of ' psychic ' to such 
 persons as Plato, Plotinus, St. Paul, St. John, to say 
 nothing of the Oriental theosophists. But all this 
 is, relatively, a very modern story. The discovery 
 of Neanderthal burying-places has shown us that 
 some species of man as long ago as fifty thousand 
 
174 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 years was burying with its dead a provision for the 
 soul's journey to the other land. I do not mean 
 to cite this as any witness that man, at this com- 
 paratively remote period, had caught any of the 
 beams of the sun of spirituality. I can remember 
 Mr. Andrew Lang beginning his course of 
 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University with 
 the words, * Once it began to thunder, and man 
 began to wonder.' Out of his speculations, perhaps 
 out of his dreams,* man may have deduced a life 
 of the soul after terrestrial death. This is an 
 entirely different matter from any such conscious- 
 ness of spiritual influence as I am writing of, and 
 perhaps was long precedent, in the course of human 
 progress, to anything of the kind. 
 
 " The point, in development, or evolution, at 
 which spirituality, in the sense which I am claiming 
 for it, first entered into the stock of the human 
 faculties, is quite impossible even to conjecture. 
 An approximate date of a million years ago is that 
 at which it is estimated that the dawn of intellec- 
 tuality gave the creature which caught its gleam 
 a fair claim to be called man. Even should it 
 please us to imagine the first twilight of spirituality 
 as far back as that date of fifty thousand years ago 
 at which we have detected man burying the 
 viaticum with his dead, even so we make it but 
 a very modern thing in the comparison — a posses- 
 sion of but fifty thousand years in comparison with 
 one of a thousand thousand — in the ratio of 1 to 
 20. And seeing how slender a portion some of 
 humanity can claim even to-day in that far older 
 
 1 Vide Origin of Civilisation, by Sir J. Lubbock, 5th ed., p. 220. 
 
SPIRITUALITY NOT INTELLECTUAL 175 
 
 intellectual heritage, it is surely no great wonder 
 that only a few have acquired any part in this so 
 much later gift. 
 
 " Unfortunately, to talk of spirituality to those 
 who have experienced nothing of it is to speak in 
 an unknown tongue. We have to explain, to 
 make our poor effort at explanation, in intellectual 
 terms c and we are speaking of that which is not 
 at all intellectual but really different — if one thing 
 ever can truly be said to be thus different from 
 another — ^in very kind. 
 
 " Spirituality, in this sense, is an entirely different 
 matter, too, from an intellectual belief, even of the 
 deepest conviction, in a Deity who hears and 
 answers prayers. It is not an affair of the intellect 
 at all. And, again, it is also quite different from 
 any ecstatic or trance-like state or from that 
 imagined inspiration of the theurgic mystic by 
 which he believes that essential truths are revealed 
 to his knowledge. On the other hand, it seems to 
 be identical with what I take to be the only sane 
 meaning of mysticism — a felt influence, an * in- 
 flowing ' through channels other than those of 
 sense or reason. There is, indeed, a certain school 
 of the mystics who would claim that we have, in 
 this divine intercourse, the last word, and the 
 completed word : that there will be no more for 
 us to know, even after death. I think, however, 
 that we may reasonably hope for a far richer 
 fulfilment than it is designed that we shall ever 
 attain in the terrestrial life. 
 
 " Of course I know," said Launceston, looking 
 up from his paper at this point, for he had been 
 
176 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 reading from typed pages, "I know," he said, 
 glaring at us and directing a glance of particular 
 malignancy at the far corner in which Sir James 
 Macadam had settled himself, " I know that I 
 have spoken a word now which arouses all your 
 suspicions — mysticism, something dreamy, vague, 
 a thing of ecstasy and trances and the vision of the 
 soft-headed. I tell you, on the contrary, that 
 mysticism is the creed and the practice of the 
 hard-headed, the practical, the men and women of 
 the world who have done something in and for the 
 world. It is the creed and practice of St. Bernard, 
 St. Teresa, General Gordon, Florence Nightingale 
 — and a multitude more of strenuous and vigorous 
 workers. Of your ecstasies St. Teresa herself 
 writes with a hearty contempt : * I call it nonsense,^ 
 and adds that it is a waste of time and injurious 
 to health. I am not speaking of any affairs of 
 ecstasies or dreams when I say mysticism. I am 
 speaking of that communion of the spirit of man 
 with God which is, as Dean Inge says, ' an abso- 
 lutely certain fact of experience which needs no 
 philosophical argument and no historical proof." 
 
 " What is soft-headed and utter nonsense is to 
 suppose that you are intended to go through life 
 without getting help from non- terrestrial, spiritual 
 forces. 
 
 *' That spiritual influences do exist — ^influent, or 
 flowing in, somewhence — is really an assumption 
 implicit in Theism, in Theism in the full sense : in 
 the sense that not only is there a God, but that He 
 is * God who is interested in His creation, who 
 does not reside entirely aloof from it, has not merely 
 
THE "EVIDENCES" 177 
 
 "' set it going," to enjoy the spectacle, taking no 
 further hand in the direction/ There are perhaps 
 these two senses in which it is possible to under- 
 stand Theism. What is not easy to comprehend 
 is the position of the man who will deny God 
 altogether — the dogmatic atheist, as he has been 
 called. The ancient argument from design, made 
 most familiar to us by Paley, seems to be good 
 enough for his gainsaying. 
 
 " To what end the design may be working is 
 another question, but, no matter what our answer 
 be to that, to most of us it will surely seem that it 
 is only the fool who has said in his heart ' There is 
 no God,' in the sense of denying some first cause — 
 a first cause, moreover, endowed, according to our 
 human judgment and measure, with what we call 
 intelligence. In the face of all the * evidences ' — 
 to cite Paley's title — that are about us, such denial 
 appears scarcely rational. Science, modern science, 
 is, so far, theist. 
 
 ** Professor Aliotta, of Padua University, in a 
 book translated into English under the title of 
 The Idealistic Reaction against Science, makes some 
 penetrating and illuminating comments very much 
 to the present purpose. He, be it noted, discusses 
 the * evidence ' (in the widest sense) from the 
 scientist's point of view. 
 
 " ' Excluding absolute idealism and absolute 
 monism,' he writes, ' there is but one way of explain- 
 ing the essential relation which must exist between 
 natuje and the mind of man in order to make know- 
 ledge possible and to justify its value : we must 
 posit between the two terms a link of an ideal order 
 
178 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 in an Absolute Consciousness to which both are 
 present as successive phases of the realisation of 
 an eternal design of that Consciousness. We do 
 not then consider mind as being statically identical 
 with nature, as realistic monism does, since their 
 unity does not lie in the real substance, but rather 
 in a process of which the various moments find their 
 ideal synthesis in the end which unifies them. If 
 this ideal synthesis can only be understood if an 
 Absolute Thought be postulated, it is obvious that 
 faith in God is the necessary outcome of faith in the 
 objective value of science.' ^ 
 
 " And again, on page 465, he tells us :• 
 *' ' He who doubts the evidence of God must 
 doubt the objective value of his cognition. We 
 seek the deepest reasons for faith not in some blind 
 feeling, nor yet in an illogical will to believe at all 
 costs, but in those very rational motives which 
 lie at the root of the exigencies of science. The 
 scientific man who sets himself to understand nature 
 manifests his faith in the rationality of the world 
 by the very act of turning to Him in the yearning of 
 his soul, and works all unknowingly for the glory 
 of God, even though he may call himself a mate- 
 rialist. The voice of the Eternal speaks to his 
 reluctant mind through sensible appearances; he is 
 the unconscious priest of an undying religion, that 
 faith whose temple is the universe and whose 
 inexhaustible revelations will be found in the 
 inmost depths of the mind. God is thus brought 
 before us as the necessary basis of the possibility 
 
 * Idealistic Reaction against Science, p. 463, by Professor Aliotta, 
 translated by Agnes McCaskill. Macmillan & Co., 1914. 
 
SCIENCE "SEEKING" RELIGION 179 
 
 of knowledge : the criticism of pure reason itself 
 leads to Him even apart from tlie exigencies of 
 moral life/ 
 
 *' M. Boutroux expresses almost exactly the 
 same thought, writing : ' Religion must no longer 
 be presented as an arbitrary conception, tolerated 
 theoretically, perhaps, by science, but unconnected 
 with her ; science even seeks her, without knowing 
 it/^ 
 
 " And again, on the very next page : 
 
 Radical heterogeneity ' (between religion and 
 science) * is impossible, since, if God exists, He is 
 the cause of the world which, by reason of its laws, 
 is the object of scientific study, and between cause 
 and effect there cannot fail to be some relation/ 
 
 ** But notice that all this, excellent as it is, is 
 something quite different from the question of 
 religion. As Bender says : ' Not the question about 
 God, and not the inquiry into the origin and pur- 
 pose of the world is religion, but the question about 
 Man. All religious views of life are anthropo- 
 centric' This quotation is from his Wesen der 
 Religion^ page 85, cited by Professor James in the 
 Varieties of Religious Experience.* 
 
 '' Theism surely has to mean for us a great deal 
 more than the mere existence of God. If it is to 
 imply a God who, humanly speaking, 'matters' — 
 who is one to be of any importance for the life of 
 man, still more if He is to be an object of man's 
 worship — then He must be a directing, a sympa- 
 
 ^ ^ Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy, p. 273, by 
 Emile Boutroux, translated by J. Nield. Duckworth & Co., 1909. 
 =» Page 607, note. 
 
180 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 tliisiiig, a helping God. Once we are in touch 
 with such a God as this, then indeed we can say, 
 be our creed what it may, that religion has become 
 a reality for us. 
 
 '' But how are we to come into such touch ? 
 How have men done so ? How are they doing so ? 
 That is surely the great question for Theism in its 
 wider sense. The question of Theism in the more 
 narrow sense — whether there be a God at all, 
 a consciousness other and immensely larger than 
 our own, in the imiverse — is hardly in need of 
 further argument. 
 
 " I will pass, then, to consider how, if at all, 
 man comes into communion with this other and 
 immeasurably more effective consciousness. 
 
 '' Does he come into communion with it ? Logi- 
 cally, that is the first part of the question to which 
 we should try to find an answer. We should 
 perhaps seek the answer first among the philo- 
 sophers. That is a better way than going directly 
 to the saints. Theirs is evidence which might be 
 suspect of bias. We may bring it into the case by 
 way of confirmation, at a later point, before we 
 give the verdict. 
 
 " I would quote a further passage or two from 
 Professor Aliotta's book, cited above, but I would 
 give the quotations with a caution which I will 
 mention almost immediately. 
 
 " ' In order,' he writes, ' to give the mind the 
 right to project its forms into the spiritual world, 
 it will suffice to suppose human consciousness to be 
 the end towards which the becoming of things tends. 
 Nature, when thus regarded as a means to the 
 
PROFESSOR ALIOTTA 181 
 
 advent of tlie spiritual life, will find therein the 
 profound revelation of its true being/ * 
 
 " They are very striking words, and he is so 
 convinced of their worth that he almost repeats 
 them on page 426 : ' Give nature/ he there says, 
 ' its value and concrete meaning as an instrument 
 of spiritual life, and the spectre of the unknowable 
 will vanish/ 
 
 " Not only so, but, he might have added, all 
 creation at once becomes logical. I do not, how- 
 ever, wish to push the testimony of these passages 
 further than is legitimate. The words * spiritual 
 life ' are thus translated from the Italian, and I do 
 not gather that their meaning is precisely, in Pro- 
 fessor Aliotta's sense, that which I have proposed 
 to attach to spirituality. His ' vita spirituale ' has, 
 as I take it, more of the intellectual content than 
 we understand in its English literal translation. 
 That is the ' caution ' which I spoke of above, and 
 I will ask you, still bearing it in mind, to consider 
 further the following words, with which the Italian 
 Professor brings his very remarkable book to a 
 close. 
 
 " * Reality can only be known through the 
 medium of the forms of the mind. Knowing this, 
 we do not hesitate to conceive all the other centres 
 of active spontaneity, and the common principle 
 from which their existence is derived, as modelled 
 on our spiritual substance in its most living and 
 concrete aspects. 
 
 *' ' This principle is for us an Absolute Self- 
 conscious Personality, which is, like our mind, 
 
 ^ Idealistic Beaction against Science, p, 424. 
 13 
 
182 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 Volition, Thought, and Imagination in one indi- 
 visible whole, an Ego, which is not motionless and 
 shut up in an abstract identity, but eternally renews 
 itself in its inexhaustible life. Creative activity 
 is its essence ; just as it is the essence of our mind, 
 which experiences it in itself, and has therefore 
 concrete cognition of it; it is no obscure mystery, 
 no incomprehensible dogma, but rather something 
 which is revealed to us in the continual evolution of 
 universal reality and our own consciousness. The 
 question '' Why has God created the world ? " is 
 then meaningless to us who are incapable of con- 
 ceiving aMind which is not fruitful and active spon- 
 taneity. The work of creation is as eternal as that 
 Consciousness which manifests its abundant life 
 in that work. The lot of the theistic conception 
 is not indissolubly bound up with that of a beginning 
 of the cosmic process in time, since it is possible 
 to reach the Personal God, even if we conceded no 
 eternity to the world. The work of creation has 
 no end, just as it had no beginning : we behold its 
 accomplishment with our own eyes in everything 
 which lives and is subject to change, in the opening 
 flower, the sprouting seed, and the glowing dawn 
 in the heavens.^ 
 
 *' Those are splendid words, even in the trans- 
 lated form, and so far as they reach are as true as 
 they are glowing ; but, after all, Aliotta's concern 
 is mainly with epistemology — dreadful word ! 
 That is to say, with the mode in which intellectual 
 knowledge is humanly possible. He scarcely 
 touches that warmer, more intimate Theism 
 which consists largely in the sense of a presence, and 
 
M. BOUTROUX 183 
 
 a communion with that presence, that are morally 
 and spiritually uplifting and comforting. The 
 most incisive and clear-sighted account that I 
 know of Theism in this truly religious sense is 
 furnished by M. Boutroux in his work from which 
 I have briefly quoted above, Science and Religion 
 in Contemporary Philosophy. Again and again 
 he tries his hand at a definitive or descriptive 
 account of religion : i 
 
 '' * Religion would appear to be essentially that 
 connecting link between the relative and that 
 Absolute — Infinite and Perfect — which Herbert 
 Spencer conceived/ This might have been written 
 by Aliotta. But lower on the same page (119 of 
 the English translation) he goes further i: * Religion 
 is the secret consciousness of the reality of life, 
 i.e. of the soul, and its connection with those beings 
 which, as perceived by our understanding, seem to 
 impinge on each other mechanically, like the atoms 
 of Democritus." 
 
 ** Again (p. 203) : ' Religion is Just that inward, 
 subjective content of consciousness which scientific 
 psychology thrusts aside in order to attend solely 
 to the objective phenomena that are concomitant.' 
 
 *' And, previously (p. 197), we find : ' It is so 
 far as they ignore or reject the scientific explica- 
 bility of the elements of religion that men are 
 reUgious.' 
 
 " We seem to be travelling, here, rather far from 
 Aliotta, whose whole gist is that the idealistic 
 reaction of the intuitionists against science has 
 been carried to an extreme which sometimes 
 reaches absurdity. Nevertheless, Boutroux him- 
 
184 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 self remarks elsewhere (p. 234) that there is no 
 use in protesting that the act of faith, prayer, and 
 the sense of union with God ' are to be regarded as 
 entirely spiritual and as in no way related to 
 material things. Just because they fall within 
 consciousness they are amenable to science,^ and 
 so on. Boutroux, in fact, comes back to the view 
 in which we must surely agree, the view which 
 Poincare puts so aptly, and which is quoted 
 approvingly by Aliotta, that ' reason is still the eye.' 
 Howsoever the religious consciousness, the sense 
 of communion, spirituality, or whatever we please 
 to call it, comes to us, once having come as a state 
 of consciousness it is, as such, immediately and 
 obviously an object of philosophical observation. 
 
 "" And, as I asked you to listen to the last words 
 of Professor Aliotta's book, so now I will quote 
 some concluding passages of this of M. Boutroux : 
 
 " ' We should make religion an incomplete and 
 still abstract idea if we were to confine it to beliefs 
 and practices. Just as it starts from feeling, so it 
 ends therein ; for the object of dogmas and rites is 
 both to express feeling and to determine it. The 
 development of feeling is like a circle which only 
 recedes from its starting-point in order to return 
 thereto. It is not without significance that the 
 psychologist and the moralist consider mysticism 
 an essential element, and, perhaps, the foundation 
 of religion. All intense religious life is mystical, 
 and mysticism is the life-source from which reli- 
 gions, threatened by a formal and scholastic spirit, 
 derive fresh vigour. 
 
 '' ' But there is an abstract and barren form of 
 
"FRUITFUL" MYSTICISM 185 
 
 mysticism as well as a positive and fruitful form. 
 The first is that which endeavours to live entirely 
 by feeling, believing itself freed from the tyranny 
 of dogmas and practices. In isolating itself from 
 the intellect and from activity, feeling is not 
 raised; it becomes enfeebled. On the other hand, 
 guided and enriched by thought and by action, 
 feeling may, indeed, expand and display its creative 
 property ; it is then the active mysticism, so 
 incomparably efficacious, which we find at the heart 
 of all the great religious, moral, political, and social 
 movements of humanity.' ^ 
 
 *' We have it all, and, briefly stated, there — his 
 full conception : ' As religion starts from feeling, 
 so it ends therein ' — its source emotional but its 
 contents to be checked, to be affirmed, or rejected, 
 by the intellect. That, in few words, I believe 
 to be fair statement of M. Boutroux' position, and 
 it is a statement which seems to be endorsed 
 by Professor Aliotta in that final chapter, which 
 he entitles, ' The Spiritualistic Conception of the 
 Universe.' 
 
 *' M. Boutroux, as I conceive, is largely in accord 
 with Professor James, to whose Varieties of Religious 
 Experience he devotes a chapter. Especially he 
 discusses sympathetically James's attitude towards 
 the mystics. Could one indeed do otherwise who 
 can write that * feeling ' is both the Alpha and the 
 Omega of the religious alphabet — though there be 
 many letters, standing for rigid intellectual study, 
 between ? 
 
 ^ Science and Religion, by M, Boutroux, translated by J, Nield, 
 1909. 
 
186 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 " Insistently, in any inquiry of this kind, Pro- 
 fessor James demands attention. In those most 
 engrossing Gifford Lectures lie not only passes in 
 review the most striking and typical varieties of 
 religious experience, but adds, what is of particular 
 value, his personal view. So far as one may gather 
 he does not rank himself among the mystics, but 
 none the less gives his unmistakable verdict that it 
 is in mysticism that real religion has its very source. 
 
 " It is needful to put in a word of caution here. 
 Men have meant very different things by this word 
 * mysticism.' I find that some Christian church- 
 men use ' mystical ' in the sense of ' having to 
 do with the sacraments — the ' mysteries.' That 
 is one of the dictionary's meanings of the word, 
 but it is not the sense in which James employs it, 
 and it seems to me a pity to employ it so, because 
 there is something quite different which it may 
 be taken to suggest more usefully ; and that is the 
 religious * feeling,' the feeling of communion with 
 something which is not an ordinary object of sense. 
 
 " In its extreme activity it may be this same 
 feeling which works itself out into the states of 
 trance or ecstasy. We should hesitate, perhaps, to 
 call these states morbid or psycho-pathic. They 
 have played an important part in the consciousness 
 of some who have done the greatest and most 
 practical work in the world. They have been of 
 the first assistance to those specially constituted 
 persons in the achievement of their tasks. But 
 undoubtedly they are exceptional, not normal ; 
 and probably for every one person who has enjoyed 
 or suffered experiences of the kind there are 
 
PROFESSOR JAMES 187 
 
 hundreds who have been conscious, without passing 
 into any psychic state of very unusual character, of 
 a feeling of communion with, or of invasion by, 
 influences which do not seem to enter by the 
 ordinary nerve channels. 
 
 *' Doubtless that is an extremely colourless way 
 of stating this experience, but for the moment I am 
 trying to put it in the most general form possible 
 in order to include the greatest possible number of 
 instances. 
 
 ** The lecture in which Professor James gives the 
 verdict which seems to me of most value for our 
 present purpose is that which he heads ' Philo- 
 sophy," immediately following the lecture on 
 mysticism. ' In a world in which no religious 
 feeling had ever existed," he writes (we are here in 
 touch with the religious feeling so strongly insisted 
 on later by Boutroux), ' I doubt whether any philo- 
 sophic theology could ever have been framed. I 
 doubt if dispassionate intellectual contemplation 
 of the universe, apart from inner unhappiness 
 and need of deliverance on the one hand and 
 emotional mysticism on the other, would ever have 
 resulted in religious philosophies such as we now 
 possess." ^ 
 
 " You see, again it is emotion, feeling, that is the 
 starting-point. 
 
 *' But again, he, like Boutroux, though he puts 
 feeling in the place of the Alpha in the alphabet of 
 religion — I am less certain whether he would give 
 it the place of the Omega also — vindicates the 
 proper rights of the intellect. ' Feeling," he 
 
 1 Varieties oj Religious Experience^ p, 431. 
 
188 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 writes (p. 432), ' is private and dumb, and unable 
 to give an account of itself. It allows that its 
 results are mysteries and enigmas, declines to 
 justify tbem rationally, and on occasion is willing 
 that they should even pass for paradoxical and 
 absurd. Philosophy takes just the opposite atti- 
 tude. Her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery 
 and paradox whatever territory she touches. , . . 
 To redeem religion from unwholesome privacy, 
 and to give public status and universal right of way 
 to its deliverances, has been reason^s task.' We 
 may compare with this, on the ' dumbness ' of 
 ' feeling," Professor Edward Caird's remark, in his 
 Evolution of Theology in the Greek Fhilosofhers, 
 vol. ii, p. 226. Discussing Plotinus, he writes : 
 ' The inmost experience of our being is an experi- 
 ence which can never be uttered." 
 
 *' In giving some kind of eicpression to the im- 
 pression of feeling, James maintains (and probably 
 we shall be in agreement with him) lies the intellect's 
 proper sphere in religion. ' The intellectualism in 
 religion which I wish to discredit," he adds, on the 
 following page, ' pretends to be something altogether 
 different from this. It assumes to construct reli- 
 gious objects out of the resources of logical reason 
 alone, or of logical reason drawing rigorous inference 
 from non-subjective facts. It calls its conclusions 
 dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, 
 as the case may be ; it does not call them science 
 of religions. It reaches them in an a priori way 
 and warrants their veracity,' From the manner 
 of this statement it might seem as if the writer put 
 this warrant of veracity, here claimed for the intel- 
 
THE WARRANT OF FEELING 18Q 
 
 lectual conclusion, into a sharp contrast with the 
 situation in which the feeling of religion left its 
 results. But this, on his own testimony, is by no 
 means the fact. Of course, the warrant of logic 
 is different in kind, but the warrant of feeling is 
 forcible enough in its own kind — and, James would 
 add, for those who experience it, far more intimate, 
 real, and valid. 
 
 " He sums up the warrant that it gives, and its 
 limitation under three heads : * (1) Mystical states, 
 when well developed, usually are, and have the 
 right to be, absolutely authoritative over the 
 individual to whom they come. (2) No authority 
 emanates from them which should make it a duty 
 for those who stand outside of them to accept their 
 revelations uncritically.' * 
 
 ** Herein, as is obvious, the warrant differs from 
 the intellectual warrant which claims universal 
 assent. But, under the third head, James indicates 
 a measure which seems to be set even to the intel- 
 lectual warrant by the mystical states themselves : 
 
 *' * They break down the authority of the non- 
 mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon 
 the understanding and the senses alone . They show 
 it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open 
 out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, 
 so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, 
 we may freely continue to have faith.' 
 
 " Taking these heads, one by one, as his texts, he 
 proceeds to debate them in the following pages 
 most interestingly at a length to which we cannot 
 go with him here. One sentence we may notice in 
 
 * Varieties of Religions Experience, pp. 422-3« 
 
190 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 his discussion of the second of the three heads : 
 ' To come from thence ' (i.e. from the source to which 
 these mystical states owe their being) ' is no infal- 
 lible credential. What comes must be sifted and 
 tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation, with 
 the total context of experience, just like what comes 
 from the outer world itself. Its value must be 
 ascertained by empirical methods, so long as we 
 are not mystics ourselves." 
 
 " Professor James's pragmatism is well known. 
 It is by their fruits, mainly, that he would value 
 such mystical experiences. How they ' work ' is 
 for him the supreme test, as, in effect, it seems to 
 be for Eucken and the modern German school of 
 his type. But even here again, he would concede, 
 I think, that for other minds there may be other 
 than this practical and utilitarian measure of value, 
 which for them are as valid as this measure is for 
 him. I presume he might be willing to accept the 
 designation of a pragmatist for himself, but not 
 of one who elevated pragmatism to a dogma for 
 others. 
 
 *' His study of the whole question of religion is 
 a wonderful testimony to his serenity and liberality 
 of judgment. In no sense a mystic himself, quite 
 unable, as it seems, to share in the feeling of any 
 influence coming from * the subliminal,' whence, 
 he conjectures, it permeates into consciousness, he 
 is still capable of appreciating its truth and its 
 value so highly as to be able to write that ' personal 
 religious experience has its root and centre in 
 mystical states of consciousness ' (p. 379). His 
 admirable summation, in the concluding lecture. 
 
EUCKEN 191 
 
 of the results investigated in those which have 
 preceded it, is really no more than an expansion of 
 this brief comment. 
 
 *' * Summing up/ he writes, on page 485, ' in the 
 broadest possible way the characteristics of the 
 religious life, as we have found them, it includes 
 the following beliefs : 
 
 '* ' 1. That the visible world is a part of a more 
 spiritual universe from which it draws its chief 
 significance ; 
 
 " ' 2. That union or harmonious relation with 
 that higher universe is our true end ; 
 
 ** * 3. That prayer or inner communion with the 
 spirit thereof — be that spirit " God " or " law "" — 
 is a process wherein work is really done, and spiri- 
 tual energy flows in and produces effects, psycho- 
 logical or material, within the phenomenal world. 
 
 ** * Religion also includes the following psycho- 
 logical characteristics c 
 
 " * 4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to 
 life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchant- 
 ment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. 
 
 " * 5. An assurance of safety and a temper of 
 peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance 
 of loving affections." 
 
 " But I take it that of all the modern philosophers 
 he who conceives himself to have the most helpful 
 gospel to preach to us is Eucken. Eucken, as I 
 understand, would disclaim for himself the title of 
 mystic ; but then, that is only because he means by 
 the term * mysticism' much that most of the mystics 
 themselves are careful to exclude from it. Eucken's 
 is essentially an active system, a system that does 
 
192 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 work, that affects human life and claims to give 
 it a fresh spiritual impulse. Therein it touches 
 mysticism in its most vital sense, and therein also 
 it detaches and distinguishes itself from mysticism 
 of the passive kind, the purely contemplative. 
 But this pure passivity is disavowed by the ma j ority 
 and, as we must surely think, by the best, of the 
 mystics themselves. The true mysticism is a 
 powerful inspiration to activity not only in the 
 spiritual and intellectual but also in the social, 
 moral, and practical spheres. 
 
 " Philosophy has so very largely cut itself away 
 from any idea of practical guidance of life that we 
 hardly expect of a philosopher that he shall come 
 to us with any gospel, any message of hope and 
 help. It is almost startling to find Eucken assum- 
 ing, as he assuredly does, such an attitude. We 
 have grown accustomed perhaps to regard phi- 
 losophy as an intellectual concern merely, an 
 explanation rather than an aid to life. It is true 
 that the ' I ought ' of Kant is a moral maxim which 
 may be set in opposition to the intellectual ' I think ' 
 of Descartes, but the Kantian morality for its own 
 sakQ makes but a chilly appeal to the heart of 
 man. It hardly fires him. Eucken, harnessing 
 the moral to the spiritual, gives a motive force to 
 the moral at the same time as he enriches, im- 
 mensely, human life, which he shows to have been 
 impoverished almost to bankruptcy by its pre- 
 ponderant attention to things material and intel- 
 lectual. As he himself says, in that book which I 
 suppose to contain the ripest product as well as 
 the fullest expression of his thought, Life's Basis 
 
SPIRITUAL DESOLATION 193 
 
 and Life's Ideals — to give it the title of its English 
 translation — ' the chief aim of this investigation is 
 to reveal and to call forth life ; it is not its chief 
 aim to interpret life in conceptual terms/ * 
 
 " And this aim is to be attained only by a rela- 
 tive detachment from things of sense and intellect. 
 Thought is not to be concentrated on effects (p. 56). 
 Care for the soul is impossible while a man is 
 occupied in striving for results (p. 61). And he 
 perceives the special danger in the conditions of 
 modem industrial life, that a man is liable to be 
 fitted into place, as a piece in the machine, and 
 thus lose his real personality, his soul. This point 
 is insisted on in pp. 45, 85, 89 and elsewhere. And 
 this is the worst loss that can befall man : * Not 
 suffering, but spiritual desolation is man's worst 
 enemy ' (p. xv in the Introduction). 
 
 '* Surely it is not for one who can write thus to 
 disclaim for himself a place with the highest of the 
 mystics. His idea of mysticism, however, was 
 plainly not taken from those whom we should 
 regard as the best examples. He is aware (p. 246) 
 that his own view involves ' an approximation to 
 mysticism.' But, he adds, we need it * in a new 
 form. . . . The older mysticism was the offspring 
 of a worn-out age, which primarily reflected upon 
 quietness and peace, . . . and so, to be merged in 
 the formless infinite would be regarded as the 
 culmination of life. As the spiritual life is to us, 
 on the contrary, an increasing activity and crea- 
 tion, a world of self-determining activity, so its 
 
 ^ Lt/e'a Basis and Lifers Ideals, p. 108, by R. Eucken, translated 
 by Alban G. Widgery. A. and C. Black, 1912. 
 
194 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 being called to life at individual points is a rousing 
 of life to its highest energy. . . . One may or may 
 not call this mysticism ; in any case mysticism of 
 such a kind cannot be charged with that which 
 now appears to us to be defect or error in the 
 older kind/ 
 
 " Shall we not, therefore, agree with Eucken, 
 grant him full permission to describe mysticism, 
 in its best sense, in just such terms of activism as 
 he admits of one of its kinds here, and in the spirit 
 of that mutual agreement hail him to the mystic 
 ranks ? 
 
 ** I think that we may so rank him, and further, 
 I would quote his words as to the origin of the 
 spiritual life— ^the dawn, as I have called it, of 
 spirituality : ' A new life," he writes (p. 136), ' dis- 
 tinct from that of nature, arises in our soul. With 
 a great diversity of manifestation it surrounds us 
 with an indisputable actuality ; no one can fail to 
 recognise that something of importance, something 
 distinctive comes to pass in us. But as soon as 
 we try to comprehend these manifestations as a 
 whole, and to ascertain the meaning of the whole, 
 a difficult problem arises. It is comparatively 
 easy, however, to come to an understanding as to 
 the negative aspect of the matter. It is obvious 
 that the new life is not an embellishment or a con- 
 tinuation of nature ; it would bring with it some- 
 thing essentially new. Again, it is obvious that it 
 is not a product of a single psychological function, 
 such as thought or feeling ; it would form a whole 
 transcending the psychical functions, and from 
 this whole determine the form of each function dis- 
 
"THIS NEW REALITY" 195 
 
 tinctively. But what is this new reality and this 
 whole to which the course of the movement trends ? 
 The more we reflect over the question, the more 
 strongly we feel that it is a direction rather than 
 a conclusion that is offered us in this matter ; 
 something higher, something inward, and so on is 
 to evolve, but what is embedded in the inward and 
 in what this supremacy is based is at present not 
 apparent. Further, every attempt at a more 
 definite orientation at once reveals to us a wide 
 gulf, indeed, a harsh contradiction, between the 
 content of that which is sought and the form of 
 existence from which it is sought. The chief 
 impulse of the spiritual life is that it wills to 
 liberate us from the merely human ; to give us a 
 share in the life of the whole ; to remove us from 
 a happening between things to their fundamental 
 happening. Seen from within, the history of 
 humanity is primarily an increasing deliverance of 
 life from bondage to the narrowly human, an 
 emergence of something more than human, and 
 an attempt to shape our life from the point of view 
 of this : it is an increasing conflict of man with 
 himself. At the same time, however, it is a taking 
 up of the whole into himself ' . . . and so on. 
 
 " Eucken pursues all his theses to their remotest 
 corners with a national thoroughness and persever- 
 ance. 
 
 " Elsewhere (p. 152) he speaks of the ' relation 
 ... of man to the spiritual world, which is immanent 
 in him, and at the same time transcends him.' 
 And it would appear that he regards both this 
 immanence and this transcendence as existing long 
 
196 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 before man came to any consciousness of them, for 
 he writes (p. 170) of ' the union of the spiritual life 
 with man ' as ' something old in so far as it must 
 have been existent and in some way effective from 
 the beginning, something new in so far as its 
 distinct emergence and its transition to a state of 
 self-activity must alter the condition of things 
 essentially/ 
 
 *' In Professor Eoyce's Gifiord Lectures, pub- 
 lished under the title of The World and thelndividual , 
 considerable space is devoted to Mysticism, but 
 this is rather on a special use of the word, arising 
 out of the discussion of the nature of being — of 
 reality. Criticising the realistic hypotheses of 
 being as involving an essential dualism, he admits 
 that unity is to be found in the oriental conception 
 of the absorption of the individual into the absolute 
 self, but that unity thus achieved is so perilously 
 like nonentity that it is difficult to accept it as 
 giving an account of being — of which it is almost 
 a negation. A like remark, we may remember, is 
 put by M. Anatole France, in Thais, into the mouth 
 of the philosopher Nicias. ' One wins the truth,' 
 Professor Eoyce writes — on this hypothesis — ' not 
 through a cultivation of what we ordinarily call 
 Reason, but through a quenching of Reason in the 
 very presence of the absolute goal of all finite 
 thought.' * 
 
 " That is his comment on the philosophic 
 mysticism which he is here considering. On the 
 other hand, on the more directly religious side of 
 
 1 The World and the Individual^ p. 155, by Josiah Royce, Ph.D. 
 Macmillan 1900. 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 197 
 
 mysticism lie is able to say elsewhere (p. 190) of 
 the mystic : 
 
 '* * As a religious teacher he is inspiring for all, 
 just because he appeals to our own individuality. 
 He breathes the common spirit of all the higher 
 religions when he conceives your goal as an inner 
 salvation, and your search for truth as essentially 
 a practical effort to win personal perfection. It 
 is no wonder then that the mystics have been the 
 spiritual counsellors of humanity/ 
 
 " Towards the end of the course of Lectures 
 (p. 417, 2nd Series), he sums up their general 
 conclusion as follows : ' The one lesson of our 
 entire course has thus been the lesson of the unity 
 of finite and of infinite, of temporal dependence 
 and of eternal significance, of the World and all 
 its Individuals, of the One and the Many, of God 
 and Man. Not only in spite, then, of our finite 
 bondage, but because of what it means and 
 implies, we are full of the presence and the freedom 
 of God/ 
 
 '' I do not apologise,'* said Launceston, " for 
 keeping you so long over these pronouncements of 
 the philosophers. Had it been my own words to 
 which I asked you to listen at such length I should 
 be apologising with bitter shame. But so much 
 misunderstanding prevails on this subject that I 
 wanted to make the case strong by much testimony. 
 There has been a suspicion about this mystic mes- 
 sage as if it were something misty, mysterious, not 
 for the common everyday life of man, as if it were 
 opposed to common sense. Miss Florence Night- 
 ingale is perfectly justified in her dictum that 
 14 
 
198 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 ' mysticism is the essence of common sense/ What 
 is opposed to common sense, and is, indeed, absolute 
 common nonsense, is the idea that man is set in 
 this world without this source of help from beyond. 
 
 *' Very much more shortly I will now speak of 
 the witness of the mystics themselves. I will 
 first, however, cite one final passage from James's 
 Varieties, because it may serve us as an introduction 
 to the deliverances of the saints. On page 419 
 he writes : ' This overcoming of all barriers between 
 the Individual and the Absolute is the great mystic 
 achievement. In mystic states we both become one 
 with the Absolute, and we become aware of our one- 
 ness. This is the everlasting and triumphant 
 mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of 
 clime or creed. In Hinduism, in neo-Platonism, in 
 Sufiism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, 
 we find the same recurring note, so that there 
 is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity 
 which ought to make a critic stop and think, and 
 which brings it about that the mystical claims have, 
 as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. 
 Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, 
 their speech antedates languages, and they do not 
 grow old.' 
 
 '' They are words singularly close in their 
 significance to those of another preacher, who speaks 
 from a very different platform. Dean Inge, in one 
 of four remarkable addresses delivered in the chapel 
 of Corpus Christi College at Cambridge and pub- 
 lished under the title of S'peculum Animce, tells 
 his hearers that : * Taking as my theme what is 
 absolutely central and fundamental in religion, the 
 
DEAN INGE 199 
 
 relation of man as a personal and immortal spirit to 
 God as the personal and eternal Father of spirits, 
 . . . whatever may be the issue of all the manifold 
 critical, historical, ecclesiastical, political, economic 
 problems that claim for solution and make our 
 life so unrestful, the foundation of God standeth 
 sure ; the things that cannot be shaken remain/ ^ 
 
 " He goes on to indicate some of the typical 
 vexations, and then proceeds : ' But when we turn 
 from all these perplexing problems, and think of 
 spiritual life in its purest and simplest nature, 
 what a difference we find ! We have interrogated 
 the scribes and lawyers, and their witness agrees 
 not together. On all questions about religion 
 there is the most distressful divergency. But the 
 saints do not contradict each other. They all tell 
 the same story. They claim to have had glimpses 
 of the land that is very far off, and they prove that 
 they have been there by bringing back perfectly 
 consistent and harmonious reports of it. There 
 never was a greater mistake than to suppose that 
 there is no authentic information, but only sub- 
 jective fancies and hallucinations, about the 
 spiritual world. Subjective fancies betray their 
 subjectivity by reflecting the idiosyncrasies of their 
 creators ; but in the higher religious experiences 
 there is singularly little subjective distortion. 
 You may take up mystical books written in Europe, 
 Asia, and America two thousand years ago and 
 last year ; by men and women ; by Catholics and 
 Protestants ; by philosophers and unlearned, 
 
 * Speculum iAnimce, pp. 3 et seq., by W, R. Inge, D.D, Long- 
 mans, 1911, 
 
200 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 ignorant people ; and if they were all translated 
 into modern English you would hardly be able to 
 distinguish them/ 
 
 " These are almost the very words of Pro- 
 fessor James. Dr. Inge appends a caution to 
 them : 
 
 " ' I am not speaking, you will understand me, of 
 trance or ecstasy ; I am simply speaking of prayer 
 — ^prayer, of which the old and true definition is 
 *' the elevation of the mind and heart to God."" 
 It is in prayer, using the word in this extended 
 sense, that we come into immediate contact with 
 the things that cannot be shaken. It is when we 
 exercise this highest of our privileges that we ascend 
 in heart and mind to the sphere of true realities, to 
 the world which, though unseen, is not unknown, 
 and of the existence of which we have a far greater 
 certainty than we can have of the world which we 
 perceive with our senses.' 
 
 '^ Later in the same address he tells his hearers, 
 ' I only want to remind you that the communion of 
 the soul with God is an absolutely certain fact of 
 experience, which needs no philosophical argument 
 and no historical proof." 
 
 ** ' We have," he says elsewhere, ' the spiritual 
 faculty, that gift which, as Plotinus says, all possess 
 but few use, the privilege of communion with God 
 in prayer." 
 
 " He confirms his own view with two quotations 
 from William Law, author of the Serious Call to a 
 Devout and Holy Life, The second and shorter is, 
 ' The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches 
 towards him with half that certainty as God, the 
 
THE MYSTICS 201 
 
 source of all good, communicates Himself to the 
 soul that longs to partake of Him/ 
 
 " In the same sense we have Ward writing, in 
 The Realm of Ends, p. 450, of * that nascent sense 
 of the Divine presence which constitutes the truly 
 religious life, and converts faith into the substance 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen/ 
 
 ** It is hardly necessary, and it is hardly worth 
 while to cull at all largely from the testimony of the 
 saints, for the simple reason stated by Dean Inge, 
 that it is all so faithfully to the one effect. The 
 bulk of the testimony is immense. There is 
 Dean Inge's own book, Christian Mysticism, there 
 is Baron von Hiigers monumental story of the life 
 of St. Catherine of Genoa, published under the 
 title of The Mystical Element in Religion, there is 
 all the literature of and about Buddhist mystics, 
 and, finally, the personal records of the saints and 
 mystics themselves, St. Teresa, St. John of the 
 Cross, St. Ignatius, Joseph Boehme, William 
 Law, Fenelon, Molinos, Brother Laurence, and a 
 vast number besides, but all essentially to the same 
 effect. The type of early German mysticism repre- 
 sented by Tauler is perhaps a little different, but 
 rather in its content than in its mode of access. 
 These people, as I gather, all believed that they 
 felt something. It was a communion of which they 
 had a consciousness, and were aware. Indeed, a 
 communion of which they were not aware and of 
 which they did not feel conscious would have no 
 meaning at all. It would be non-existent — words 
 without sense. And that all these people should be 
 self-deceived, people of high intellectual power and 
 
202 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 of much practical achievement, seems to me an 
 enormous supposition — quite incredible. Thus, all 
 the testimony combines to give a most confident 
 afiSirmative answer to the question which I have 
 proposed to you. On the assurance of overwhelming 
 witnesses there is this other country from which 
 influences flow into the consciousness of man, 
 and if you will grant me this admission there is 
 hardly need to debate the furtherand minorquestion 
 whence man may derive those altruistic dispositions 
 which, apart from this solution, are surely quite 
 inexplicable. Science is theist, and the highest 
 mysticism, which I have here called spirituality, 
 comes as the crown and end of evolution : 
 
 " * All tended to mankind, 
 And, man produced, all has its end thus far : 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 A tendency to God.' 
 
 " But now you may ask me, ' How is it to be 
 attained by us, who are but common members of a 
 workaday world, who make no claim to saintship, 
 how are we to come within touch of these divine 
 influences ? ' The answer is easy. Even Eucken, 
 not claiming himself a mystic, gives it to us as I 
 said just now, and every avowed mystic who has 
 written his experience for us confirms him. The 
 soul, to receive the message, must be in quiet ; it 
 must not be beset and absorbed by cares, by sensual 
 longings or intellectual quests. The state is to be 
 one of passive receptiveness. 
 
 " The mystical writers agree in calling this a 
 state of contemplation in contrast with the state 
 of meditation, in which last the intellect is active. 
 
CONTEMPLATION 203 
 
 It does not matter to whicli of tlie great mystics 
 you go, this is always tlie essential condition. It 
 makes little difference into what stages they are 
 pleased to divide the journey of the soul along the 
 path to the divine communion. That is no more 
 than the reflection of the difference in their own 
 natures and in the metaphors which have seemed 
 to them most apt for describing the pilgrim's 
 mystical way. Thus, the ' four steps ' of St. Ber- 
 nard are the equivalent of the ' seven mansions of 
 the soul ' of St. Teresa and of the * Night of the 
 spirit' of St. John of the Cross. This Spanish 
 mystic, St. John, is just as emphatic as St. Teresa 
 about the ' nonsense ' of visions, auditions, and so 
 on. He, too, regards the mystic not as the passive 
 dreamer, withdrawn from active life, claiming that 
 this is * a solid and substantial doctrine, suited to 
 all.' It is not the creed of the Quietists, you see, 
 that these hard-headed people profess, but quite 
 a different matter. They imagine the mystic, re- 
 freshed by his communion with the divine, coming 
 into the active life of the world and playing a 
 strong part in it, very much the stronger by virtue 
 of this reinforcement. But the quiet of the soul 
 is the condition for the conscious reception of the 
 communion : all agree there. 
 
 *' I am careful to say * the conscious reception,' 
 because I am quite convinced that all of us are 
 recipients of some influence from spiritual sources, 
 even though most of us may go through a long life 
 without any awareness of it. You will find it a 
 little difficult, I think, to account otherwise for the 
 heroism and cheerful sacrifice of self being daily 
 
204 HUMAN SPIRITUALITY 
 
 done in France at this time by those who must 
 seem to us as very brutal men. 
 
 ** That, however, is only by the way. I may 
 say this, to finish this over-long address, that 
 though there is this consciousness among the 
 mystics about the only right mental attitude in 
 which to receive the consciousness of the spiritual 
 influences, they are equally agreed that it is an 
 attitude not easy at first to maintain. It needs a 
 severe effort of will to stay that ceaseless questing 
 which is the habit, and often the terrible infliction, 
 of the intellect. There is no cause for despair, I 
 think, if you find yourself unable, or able only for 
 a moment at a time, to cease that quest. Despite 
 your will, it is sure to resume its activities. But 
 the cessation can be brought about. William 
 James, though no mystic, but a skilled psychologist, 
 assures us of that, and by practice it becomes more 
 easy. Believe me — it is well worth while.'* 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 man's age on the earth 
 
 When Launceston stopped members were not very 
 ready to take up the debate. I noticed a tendency 
 to low- voiced discussion in couples or small knots 
 rather than to direct question or challenge. 
 
 It was Davis, as perhaps was right, he being 
 M.P. and also one of the youngest, who at length 
 threw the ball to Launceston. 
 
 '' You group together," he said, " at least I think 
 that was your idea, and at all events it is often 
 done, the religious emotion with the aesthetic. My 
 trouble is that we can understand through what 
 senses beauty in a picture or in music makes its 
 appeal — through the eye or the ear — ^but this 
 communion, how, through what sense, do we 
 become aware of it ? Is it a sensation ? If so, 
 by what sense organ is it communicated ? " 
 
 " I believe that we should do right to call it a 
 sensation,'' Launceston affirmed. '' I was rather 
 shy of the word, and called it emotion more often, 
 if I called it anything, in the paper I read, because 
 I did not want to frighten you ofi what ought to 
 be very familiar ground, but is, to most people, 
 strange ground. But I would sooner, quite frankly 
 call it a sensation. Then you said * Through what 
 organ of sense ? ' Well, I would admit that there 
 is no specialised human organ, so far as we are 
 
 206 
 
206 MAN'S AGE ON THE EARTH 
 
 aware, by which the spiritual communion is made ; 
 but then I would remind you of three facts : first, 
 that specialised sense organs are a relatively late 
 product of evolution. I imagine you will agree 
 that animate things were affected by light, for 
 instance, and noise, for countless ages before any 
 animal had specialised eyes and ears. And these 
 are only adapted for certain vibrations. X-rays 
 will pierce you anyivhere — not only through the 
 eyes. I have known a deaf man enjoy music by 
 resting his upper teeth on the edge of a piano that 
 was being played. (No, Foljambe, my facetious 
 friend — they were not false ; they were his own 
 teeth and they were in his mouth as he set them 
 upon the piano.) 
 
 "Then, secondly, I would point out to you 
 that the tactile sense is very little specialised, 
 or (better) localised : you can feel contact nearly 
 all over your body. And finally, you should 
 remember that this which we are speaking of is 
 a communion of spirit with spirit. Is it certain, 
 is it necessary, that, even though our spirit is 
 linked up with our material body while we are 
 on this planet — is it necessary that another spirit 
 should communicate to our spirit through the 
 material nerve channels ? My own view is that 
 it does so — that it is through the ordinary nerve 
 channels, though through no specialised, localised 
 organ, that this communication comes. But though 
 that is my view, I do not for a moment think that 
 it is necessarily right. And you should remember 
 that one of the great difficulties in the theory of 
 knowledge is the connection between spirit and 
 
DAVIS, M.P. 207 
 
 matter. Now in this communion that we are 
 speaking of, if you choose to disagree with my 
 view, and will prefer to think that spirit communi- 
 cates directly with spirit, without any material 
 medium, why then, of course, you dodge that big 
 difficulty altogether. 
 
 " So much for that; and now I will give you 
 another suggestion, which may seem fantastic, 
 because it is strange, but is not, as I think, on that 
 account impossible. It is that although there is 
 no specialised organ for the reception of the spiri- 
 tual messages now, that is no reason why there 
 never shall be. Who is to say that we are not even 
 now in process of evolving it, to the end that the 
 communication shall become increasingly more 
 forcible and clear ? Who can deny such a possi- 
 bility ? Science certainly cannot." 
 
 " All things are possible,"' said Davis. 
 
 Launceston turned upon him with the Berserk 
 fury to which imbecility was apt to stir him. 
 " That's such a damned silly remark in this par- 
 ticular connection that I don't suppose anyone 
 who wasn't a Member of Parliament could possibly 
 have made it ? It has not even the merit of being 
 original in its silliness." 
 
 " I wish you were in Parliament," the young 
 legislator retorted angrily. ""Perhaps you'd be 
 taught manners." 
 
 ** In Parliament! Manners! My dear Davis! 
 The reception of the spiritual influence without 
 a special sense organ for its reception is surely an 
 extraordinarily easy supposition in comparison 
 with that." 
 
208 MAN'S AGE ON THE EARTH 
 
 A peace-loving member who seldom spoke broke 
 in between tbe clashing swords. 
 
 *' All these processes of evolution you have been 
 telling us about, Launceston/' he said — '' it seems 
 as if they would demand enormous periods of 
 time/' 
 
 "Let them demand/' Launceston replied, largely 
 generous. "" They shall have them. That is what 
 makes eternity such a pleasant medium to work 
 in. You may take just as long as you like over a 
 job, and when you have done it you find yourself 
 with just as much time before you for the next 
 job as you had at the start. There's a fine lot of 
 room to make mistakes and go back on them and 
 start again. Evolution's always doing that." 
 
 " But man is not eternal — not terrestrially eternal 
 at all events. We find him with these ideas of 
 spiritual communion very far back in his history : 
 he hardly seems to have developed them much." 
 
 " Far back in his history, do we ? That is just 
 what I doubt. What is his history ? " 
 
 The usually silent member was terrified. '' Oh," 
 he said, " that's a large question. I would much 
 rather you answered it." 
 
 *' I don't mind having a try, just because I think 
 the kind of answer that most people would give is 
 entirely wrong. I don't want to misrepresent the 
 idea that the ordinary man has of his own history 
 on the earth, but it seems to me to be like this : 
 a belief that all the main points of the story, all 
 the more important happenings in human affairs, 
 are given us in three forms, first that of history, as 
 it deals with what is most surely ascertained. 
 
AGE OF THE HUMAN STORY 209 
 
 secondly that of tradition, as the evidence becomes 
 more doubtful, and thirdly of legend, as the witness 
 gradually fades into the mist and disappears. 
 And ' away back,* behind this legendary period, 
 people seem to figure to their minds a little space, 
 of practically no account, in which man was hardly 
 to be distinguished from the brute, and in which 
 nothing occurred to him that really mattered. 
 Virtually the whole story people seem to conceive 
 as either (1) plainly set out in history ; or (2) 
 dubiously reported in tradition ; or (3) suggestively 
 fabled in legend. 
 
 " I really believe that to be the common concep- 
 tion. Attention has been focussed on this period 
 of — how many years shall we allot to it ? The 
 Egyptian dynastic record is estimated to commence 
 about 4,500 years B.C. and there is abundant evi- 
 dence of man's presence in the Nile Valley before 
 that. Let us, then, to be fairly on the safe side, 
 allot, in round figures, ten thousand years, which is 
 very generous dealing, to this period covered by the 
 threefold witness of history, tradition, and legend. 
 And after that generous reckoning let us see, for 
 a moment, how long it is reasonable to suppose that 
 man, a creature worthy of the name human, has 
 existed upon the earth. We shall then be obliged 
 to realise that this space of a few thousand years 
 during which we have the above more or less 
 doubtful account of him is in reality only a very 
 small fraction of the whole ; that for the immensely 
 larger portion of his story we have no record here 
 whatever ; that it is of a relatively quite unim- 
 portant little bit of human happenings that the 
 
210 MAN'S AGE ON THE EARTH 
 
 record tells us anything at all. And one important 
 efiect of the realisation of the true pace of human 
 progress, so much more leisurely than men com- 
 monly suppose, should be to rebuke that impatience 
 which they often bitterly express at the slow ad- 
 vancement of humanity along this latest opened 
 spiritual path. 
 
 " There is a big difference of opinion, I think, 
 among the geologists as to the date at which the 
 different geological strata that form the earth 
 crusts have been deposited. Thus, for the most 
 recent deposit of all, which is of a thickness of 
 4,000 feet, approximately (Sir James will please 
 correct my figures if my memory has erred), we 
 have the estimate of Professor Kutot that it was 
 deposited in 140,000 years, while Professor Penck, 
 on the other hand, maintains that it occupied at 
 leasthalf a million, and perhaps a million and a half, 
 in the laying down. The estimate of Professor 
 SoUas,^ adopted by Dr. Arthur Keith* in his Anti- 
 quity of Man, takes a medium view between these 
 wide extremes, and reckons for all the more recent 
 strata a uniform rate of deposit of one foot in one 
 hundred years. Is that not so ? "" he asked, as he 
 turned, with a courtesy rather unusual, to Sir James 
 Macadam. 
 
 A nod of Sir James's grizzled head confirmed the 
 figures as Launceston stated them. " But,"' the 
 old Scot added prudently, "" I know nothing about 
 your Dr. Keith."' 
 
 *' No ? '' said Launceston. " I'm surprised. But 
 
 1 Nature^ 1900, vol. Ixii, p. 481. 
 
 2 Antiquity of Man, p. 307. 
 
THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD 211 
 
 lie is a modem ; that quite explains it. But the 
 importance of these calculations for my purpose 
 lies in this, that the probable date of man's 
 appearance on the scene is indicated, in the 
 geological record, by the age of the strata in which 
 we find weapons and flint implements which 
 show human handiwork. I think that approxi- 
 mately a million years ago would be the earliest 
 date according to the above calculation. That 
 means that man, a creature with a brain entitling 
 him to the dignity of that name, has existed on the 
 earth for a million years. To say nothing of the 
 countless ages through which evolution was making 
 its patient preparations for him, the actual human 
 drama has been playing itself out all that while. 
 See what a tiny proportion of that total is covered 
 by the ten thousand years which people are in the 
 habit of deeming to comprise almost the whole 
 story. It is, in fact, just one hundredth, or 1 
 per cent., of the whole that they have accustomed 
 themselves to look upon as the sum-total. We need 
 a drastic readjustment of our perspective into the 
 chronology of human happenings on the earth. Or, 
 if it should please us to refer the beginning of the 
 story to the date when the human stem branched 
 from the common anthropoid or from some earlier 
 simian stock we should of course have to go back 
 immensely farther again."' 
 
 '' There's one thing," said Foljambe, " I don't 
 quite understand." (' Impossible ! " Launceston 
 interjected, but Foljambe took no notice of the 
 impertinence.) " If man has lived on the earth 
 such a devil of a time, as you say, how is it you don't 
 
212 MAN'S AGE ON THE EARTH 
 
 find more of him — more bones and things, when 
 you begin to dig ? How is it you don't find the 
 missing link ? '' 
 
 " Oh, surely, you don't have to look very far 
 for the missing link. No, no, I don't mean any- 
 thing personal," he said hastily, as Foljambe began 
 furiously to splutter. " I only mean that we have 
 got him for you already labelled, and you may 
 find him described in any book of anthropology. 
 He lived in Java, at least he was found buried there. 
 His name is Pithecanthropus Erectus — the ape- 
 man who stands upright — more or less upright, 
 you should understand. I hardly suppose he had 
 quite your military carriage. Then, as to why we 
 don't find more skeletons when we dig : you are not 
 to suppose that there were crowded graveyards in 
 those days. You must not imagine a human popu- 
 lation as we have it to-day. The correct idea, I 
 suppose, would be of humanity barely and with 
 great difficulty supporting its life and prolonging 
 its race in the midst of terrible competitors around 
 it. Very sparse, indeed, must have been that early 
 human population, though apparently of several 
 different species ; and big carnivorse to break up 
 the skeletons were plentiful. Man has left us some 
 good milestones, for all that, by which we can track 
 his progress — the earlier and later Stone Ages, the 
 bronze age, and so on. Just how early he began 
 that tool-making which is one of the clear-cut 
 distinctions between him and the other animals is 
 very much disputed — whether the Eoliths from the 
 Pliocene and Miocene and even earlier are of human 
 making is still an open question, but there is 
 
MAN IN THE PLIOCENE 213 
 
 evidence that he made pits for elephant trapping 
 in the Pliocene/' 
 
 " I'd like to have known him," was Foljambe's 
 comment, which raised a laugh. 
 
 " You would have been great friends, I'm sure," 
 Launceston said, " with a great deal in common. 
 No, no," he protested again as Foljambe showed 
 renewed symptoms of the wrathful splutter. 
 " On the whole, the ancient skulls show a brain 
 capacity not inferior — in size, I mean, the con- 
 volutions are not so certain — to modern Caucasian 
 skulls and far larger than some existing races, like 
 the Australian. Dr. Keith says explicitly that the 
 aboriginal race of Australia might " serve as a 
 common ancestor of all modern races.' ^ The 
 Neanderthal man, with his big, heavy head, and 
 curious specialisation in more than one direction, 
 was quite an exceptional type. In his extinction 
 I expect he paid what seems to be the inevitable 
 penalty of over-specialisation. 
 
 " And yet this great-headed, extinct, altogether 
 abnormal human creature, furnishes us with 
 what, to my mind, is perhaps the most striking and 
 arresting fact of all in the ancient story of our kind. 
 He bears us witness that even so long ago as his 
 remote Pleistocene day man must have begun to 
 form conjectures about a future life for his indivi- 
 dual self, for already we find him burying, with 
 his dead, provision of food and of weapons for the 
 voyage to the other world." 
 
 " That is a consideration which seems to me to 
 afiect the perspective of the whole human story 
 
 1 Antiquity of Man, p. 270. a Ibid., p. 117. 
 
 15 
 
2U MAN'S AGE ON THE EARTH 
 
 profoundly. It would not be correct to say that it 
 was very early, as measured by the whole duration 
 of the human drama, that man began to speculate 
 on a life of his soul beyond the terrestrial plane. 
 Even the beginnings of the Pleistocene period are 
 not put further back than 400,000 years, and there 
 is no evidence, so far as I know, of burial or pro- 
 vision for the dead in the Pliocene. It may have 
 been even far on in the Pleistocene that the idea of 
 a life after death was first formed in man's develop- 
 ing brain. That does not place it in a really early 
 chapter of the story. But it does, on the other 
 hand, put it immensely farther back than any 
 date at which most people think of it as an element 
 in human thought. Much surprise, as no doubt 
 you all know, has been expressed at the discovery 
 that the surgical operation of trepanning was well 
 known and freely practised by man in the far later 
 Neolithic age. And it was practised with success, 
 as is proved by evidence in many of the instances 
 that the edges of the cut bone have healed. 
 
 " That is a marvellous fact, though it is to be 
 matched to-day by a like operation performed 
 among some modern tribes of a low degree of cul- 
 ture, such as the natives of New Ireland. It was 
 also in use among the Peruvians of past, but histori- 
 cal, time. Yet this bold bit of surgery, done with 
 the primitive tools of sharp obsidian, strikes me 
 as nothing, by way of witness to the antiquity of 
 man's origin and the slowness with which the 
 mills of God have ground him into his present 
 state of imperfection, compared with that striking 
 spectacle of Neanderthal man, and also his 
 
AN ALLEGORY 215 
 
 contemporaries of a species more like ourselves, 
 burying the dead with their viaticum in the 
 remote Pleistocene past. 
 
 " We may turn all the pages of the later story 
 in such books as Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, 
 Tylor's Primitive Culture, Frazer's Golden Bougli, 
 and so on, yet nowhere find another quite so 
 arresting as this." 
 
 . . • • . 
 
 Launceston buttonholed me when the room 
 began to clear. "' Do you think," he said, ** the 
 Club would stand an allegory 2 " 
 
 " On what topic ? " I asked. 
 
 " .On the Universal Cinematograph." 
 
 " What's that ? " 
 
 " Think, and you will see. Good-night." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 When Launceston told me that I might announce 
 that he would read a paper on ' The Universal 
 Cinematograph ' I was immediately beset by all 
 manner of questions as to what the mischief he 
 could mean by it. I referred the inquirers to the 
 reader of the paper himself, a reference which rid 
 me of their importunities but did not greatly 
 advance their information, for Launceston was not 
 an easy man to ' draw,' if he did not feel disposed 
 for drawing, and he was not famous for a very 
 forthcoming disposition in that respect. The most 
 they could get from him was : " What does it 
 mean ? Universal Cinematograph ? Surely it 
 explains itself. I can't tell you any more clearly 
 than that what it means."' 
 
 With that answer they had to go away, discon- 
 tented, generally to return to me again with 
 further demand for enlightenment ; but it was light 
 that I could not have given them, if I would, for 
 I knew no better than they what Launceston 
 intended by his title. One thing only I did know 
 better — I knew better than to go on pestering 
 him to tell me his meaning. I saw that he had 
 no inclination to explain himself, and at that I 
 left it. 
 
 216 
 
THE ARCHANGELS 217 
 
 If his object in enshrouding himself in this reti- 
 cence was to attract an audience he was successful. 
 I have seldom seen the large room in which we 
 held our ' Thursdays ' so crowded. Contrary to 
 his custom, it appeared that he had this paper 
 written out — typed in full. He looked carefully 
 at the page, which he held close to his eyes, as if 
 he needed to consult it to remind him of his sub- 
 ject, and read out the heading : 
 
 ^ The Universal Cinematograph.' 
 
 He proceeded, in the level tones that he might have 
 used for reading a newspaper money market report, 
 as follows : 
 
 " There was nothing doing in heaven : the 
 archangels, particularly, were at leisure ; and 
 Gabriel said to Michael : 
 
 " * Have you had a look at that planet, the 
 Earth, lately 1 ' 
 
 " * No,^ Michael said, ' I have not seen it for a 
 long time — I forget just how long it is. I should 
 say about a million years or so — something like 
 that.' 
 
 " ' I know,' Gabriel answered. ' I think we had 
 a look at it together then. It was just about the 
 time when that new thing, Man, was developing 
 on it — d'you remember ? And we thought what 
 a curious thing it was. D'you remember — quite a 
 small powerless creature, but it could do things 
 that none of the others could. It could plan ahead 
 — I mean, make plans and act up to them — much 
 more as we do than any of the other Earth animals. 
 
218 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 D'you remember it could make fire : none of the 
 other Earth animals could do that ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, I remember/ said Michael, ' and," he 
 added, always interested in anything that had to 
 do with martial weapons or the like, * bows and 
 arrows/ 
 
 " * Ah, so it did. I recollect, too, I said at the 
 time that the other animals, the big things like 
 those mammoths and the sabre-toothed tigers, must 
 look to it that Man didn't get the mastery of all 
 of them, although he was such a poor, weak-looking 
 little thing, with this power of his which made him 
 something like us/ 
 
 " ' Oh yes,' Michael replied scornfully, ' you're 
 always guessing, Gabriel, and nine times out of 
 ten, evolution goes just the other way from that 
 which you've expected of it. Look at what hap- 
 pened in Orion, and again in the Moon, and what 
 you'd said was going to happen.' 
 
 " * Well,' Gabriel admitted, ' I confess I was mis- 
 taken. That's a thing that may happen to any 
 archangel. I don't pretend to omniscience. But 
 what I do assert is that it's more interesting making 
 guesses at what's going to happen, even if it don't 
 quite come off, than it is to go on like you, Michael, 
 through all eternity just flying about and never 
 thinking about anything at all.' 
 
 " ' Well, well,' said Michael good-humouredly, 
 ' don't let's quarrel about it : it's such a bad 
 example to the lower angels. Shall we go and 
 have a look at the Earth and see how it's getting 
 on and whether your speculations have come off 
 this time ? ' 
 
TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM 219 
 
 " ' Very well, then, 111 come along ; only don't 
 you make any mistake about it — I'm not exfecting 
 to find that that little thing man has the mastery 
 over the other Earth animals. What I expect is 
 that the others, the bigger ones and the biting ones, 
 have killed him off long ago. I'm only saying that 
 it's not impossible that he might have got the 
 mastery over them by his reason. I don't suppose 
 for a moment that he has.' 
 
 " ' Oh ! I say,' Michael said, ' I call that hedg- 
 ing ' ; but he flew along contentedly beside the 
 other all the same. 
 
 '' ' How long ago is it that you first had a look 
 at the Earth ? ' Gabriel asked. 
 
 " * Oh, I don't know — it's a good long while. It 
 was just about the time that it had cooled down 
 a bit and that life was just beginning on it. I 
 generally go and have a look at the new planets 
 just when life's beginning on them. It's inter- 
 esting.' 
 
 '* * Yes, it is,' Gabriel agreed. ' I wish I had the 
 time to do it, but these planets change so fast, 
 one has no time to keep up with them all.' 
 
 " ' No,' said Michael, ' but I like to have a look 
 at them now and again, to see how they're going 
 on. As a matter of fact, it's some time since I've 
 been in the solar system at all — there are such a 
 lot of systems to go and see.' 
 
 " ' I suppose we're going right, aren't we ? ' 
 Gabriel asked anxiously. ' I'm not very certain 
 about the way.' 
 
 " ' Oh yes, I'm pretty sure we are, but we may 
 as well just ask somebody.' He hailed a passing 
 
220 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 angel as lie spoke, who assured them that they 
 were heading quite straight for the solar system. 
 Michael asked how far it was. 
 
 " ' It'll take you about twenty minutes/ the 
 lower angel said quietly, and Michael thanked him 
 and they flew on. 
 
 " The normal pace of an archangel, when there 
 is no reason for hurry is, roughly speaking, about 
 sixty or seventy times the speed of light, and light 
 travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, so you 
 can very easily calculate how far they had to go 
 to reach the solar system. 
 
 " ' What interests me,"" said Michael, as they 
 paddled on, ^ is to see what very different forms 
 life assumes on the difEerent planets.' 
 
 " * Well, but, my dear Michael,' replied Gabriel, 
 who sometimes found it a little hard to be patient 
 with the slower intelligence of the soldier arch- 
 angel, ' you surely would not expect to see the 
 same kind of life being developed in an atmosphere 
 full of hydrogen, say, as in an atmosphere of 
 oxygen and nitrogen — not to speak of the different 
 force of gravity in different planets when one's 
 ever so many times the size of the other.' 
 
 '* ' No, I don't say that you would expect it, but 
 I say it's interesting to see the difference all the 
 same.' Michael stuck to his point. 
 
 *' Presently they found themselves in the solar 
 system, which they knew at once by the direction 
 in which the ether circulated. Besides, they could 
 see plenty of familiar stellar marks — the Southern 
 Cross, the Great Bear, and so on. An archangel 
 can see nothing of any system in the universe 
 
FASTER THAN LIGHT 221 
 
 except that in which he happens to be, but once 
 he is within the limits of any one system he can 
 see all that is going on within it, and can hear any- 
 thing, too. Obviously, it is not at all the same 
 kind of seeing and hearing as that of men, for while 
 the archangels can see and hear everything — the 
 totality of sights and sounds — they can also see 
 and hear each detail separately and in such a way 
 that its sight or sound is never confused and 
 muddled up in that of the whole — as a man's sight 
 or hearing of particular faces or voices is confused 
 in a great crowd. The archangels were able to 
 take a view of the whole system at once, if it so 
 pleased them, or again they could, if they pleased, 
 shut out all except a single detail, and, of course, 
 as they moved so much faster than the light, they 
 could see what had happened at any moment of any 
 planet's history by just going to the point of space 
 to which the light from that planet had travelled 
 during the time which had elapsed since the 
 occurrence of the events which they wished to 
 see.> 
 
 " However, they did not dally much just then, 
 because they had come into the solar system at a 
 point nearly opposite that at which the Earth 
 happened to be, for the moment, and as they went 
 along Michael exclaimed : ' I say, the sun's hot ; 
 don't let's go too near him, let's go along a little 
 faster, and get round him.' 
 
 " They put on a little spurt to something like 
 
 1 Note : — ^AU this was before Einstein had come to tell us that 
 nothing can go faster than light ; but perhaps even he would make 
 an exception of archangels. 
 
222 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 a hundred times the speed of light, and, coasting 
 round, soon got into the shade of Mercury, out of 
 the too intense sun-heat, and could see the Earth 
 quite comfortably. It was less than a hundred 
 million miles away. Directly they got out of the 
 glare they could see everything in the Earth very 
 clearly. 
 
 *' For a moment or two after getting their eyes 
 into focus for seeing things on the Earth, the two 
 archangels were speechless. They were speechless 
 with amazement. Then Gabriel said, solemnly, 
 
 * Michael, it's the most extraordinary thing I ever 
 saw. I never saw such a development on this or any 
 other planet, did you ? And in so short a time ? ' 
 
 '' ' Certainly, I never did," Michael admitted, 
 scarcely heeding what Gabriel said in the intentness 
 of his study of the Earth. 
 
 '" ' I said a minute ago,' Gabriel continued, 
 
 * that I thought man would have got the better of 
 the rest ' 
 
 " ' You distinctly said you thought it most 
 probable he would not,' Michael interrupted. 
 
 ** ' But,' Gabriel went on, taking no notice, ' I 
 never thought it would come to this — why, man is 
 everywhere, man is everything. The rest of the 
 animals are nothing; they are nowhere on the 
 Earth. Why, bless me, there must be — what — 
 a thousand million of men ! ' 
 
 " * More, far more,' said Michael decisively. It 
 was part of his ordinary day's work to compute the 
 numbers of armies. * Half as much again, and 
 more.' 
 
 ** ' Wonderful,' said Gabriel, ' and look — their 
 
THE EARTH DRAMA 223 
 
 cities, their houses, their ships, their aeroplanes — 
 all better than I ever saw on any other planet/ 
 
 " ' Yes," Michael agreed, ' but there are lots of 
 things they don't seem to have that they have in- 
 vented on some of the other planets — Jupiter, say, 
 
 and Uranus. There are no nor , etc/ 
 
 He mentioned terms that, of course, could have no 
 meaning for any person on Earth, since Earth has 
 never known the things for which the terms stood. 
 
 '* * No," said Gabriel, * that's true. But natu- 
 rally you could not expect any one planet to find 
 out everything. That would be too much to ex- 
 pect. And their music ! Hark ! is it not fine ? ' 
 
 ** It happened to be Sunday afternoon, and 
 selections from Bach's Passion Music were being 
 sung in the Temple Church. 
 
 " * It's wonderful for such tiny little creatures, 
 certainly,' Michael agreed. 
 
 ** ' I told you so,' Gabriel said. ' I told you how 
 it would be, that man's development would be 
 extraordinary.' 
 
 *' * I tell you what it is, Gabriel,' Michael replied. 
 * I'll bring the recording angel along next time we 
 go to see a new planet together. It seems to me 
 your memory's such a good one that you remember 
 a lot of things that never happened." 
 
 " * Is it ? I'm not going to quarrel with you,' 
 Gabriel answered, laughing. ' I'm too interested 
 to quarrel. But for goodness' sake, don't do that — 
 don't bring the Recorder along. He has his uses, 
 I grant you, but he's a dry little mathematician 
 of a fellow. No imagination ! ' 
 
 " ' No, but you've enough for two,' Michael 
 
224 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 retorted. But Gabriel hardly heard him. He was 
 all intent on the Earth drama. 
 
 " ' It's very touching/ he said, ' and very beauti- 
 ful. These little creatures, these men, have become 
 living spirits.' But then, as he continued to hearken, 
 his face broadened out into a smile. ' Michael,' 
 he exclaimed, ' Michael, listen ! Do you hear what 
 they are saying, these men ? They are praying God 
 that He will not be angry with them ! Angry — 
 God ! And with little things like that ! Michael, 
 is it believable ? Listen what they said then : 
 *' Save us, Lord, from Thy wrathful indignation." 
 Oh, Michael — wrathful indignation ! Think of it ! 
 The notion that God — God — could be *' angry," 
 could be moved to '' wrathful indignation," by 
 little tinies like these. Oh, Michael, the idea of 
 
 itr 
 
 " ' We've seen strange fancies grow up in the 
 thoughts of the creatures on other planets, too — 
 haven't we ? ' Michael said, ' when they first 
 began to have a living spirit within them.' 
 
 *' ' Yes, we have, to be sure,' Gabriel answered, 
 ' but nothing, surely, nothing quite so ridiculous 
 as this — that He whom they evidently realise, 
 more or less, to be the Creator of all this ' — he 
 flung his immense arm aloft to indicate the infinitude 
 of space about them — ' that He — ^He could be 
 stirred to anger — to anger, Michael ! — ^by little 
 atomies like these. Of course. He will be moved to 
 grief for them, sorrow for the pain they bring on 
 themselves by their follies while they are working 
 their hard way up through evolution's school to 
 some clearer knowledge. We know that had to be. 
 
THE EUGENIC ACT 225 
 
 on every planet that we have seen support life for 
 the brief space of time between its incandescence 
 and its freezing — but anger ! To think that they 
 should imagine they move the Creator of it all to 
 anger ! Oh, Michael, are they not funny little 
 things ! Look at them — how busy ! And what 
 d'jou suppose they think it is all about ? What 
 do they think they're doing ? ' 
 
 " ' I never was clever like you, Gabriel, guessing 
 what was happening, or going to happen, on the 
 planets,' Michael said humbly. 
 
 '* * I tell you what seems to me to be going to 
 happen very soon on this Earth,' Gabriel said. 
 * The men are breeding too fast. They'll get it 
 too crowded up directly.' 
 
 " ' Looks like it,' Michael agreed. ' I expect 
 there'll be trouble about it soon.' 
 
 *' ' Bound to be,' said Gabriel. ' Don't you 
 remember what happened in Jupiter ? First they 
 passed the Eugenic Act, that only the sound in 
 body should have children, and then less than 
 a thousand years later they passed the Moral 
 Eugenic Act, that only those who were morally 
 sound should marry. It began, you know, with 
 their forbidding any criminals to marry — it grew 
 out of that.' 
 
 *' ' I seem to remember something about it.' 
 
 " ' Oh yes, and then in a few generations they 
 bred out the morally unsound just as, a thousand 
 years or less before, they had bred out the physically 
 unsound. They were fine spirits in Jupiter before 
 life was ended on it — almost angelic' 
 
 Yes, but they couldn't do that till they had 
 
226 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 one set of laws for tlie whole planet. These men, 
 on the Earth, are divided into nations and each has 
 a different set of laws/ 
 
 " ' Oh yes," Gabriel said impatiently, ' but surely 
 you know that is just a phase that all the planets 
 have gone through. They will soon get over that. 
 Why, we've heard them talking a great deal about 
 internationalism even while we've been listening 
 to them here. That is the beginning of a single set 
 of laws for the whole planet — of course with a 
 few differing local regulations which the difference 
 in climate makes necessary.' 
 
 *' ' But law itself is only a phase, isn't it ? ' 
 
 " ' Of course it is ; of course these Jupiter 
 creatures didn't need any laws at all when they 
 were all morally sound. They had gradually 
 eliminated all the bad laws, and none of them ever 
 broke, or wanted to break, the good laws ; so natu- 
 rally the laws ceased to exist for them — it must 
 always be like that.' 
 
 *' ' I want to have a look at the story of these 
 people,' Gabriel said, ' to see how they have come 
 to the point they are at now.' 
 
 " Of course it was not necessary for the arch- 
 angels, with a power of vision unlimited within the 
 system in which they happened to be, to pore over 
 written pages in order to read a history. All that 
 was needful for them to do was to transport them- 
 selves to the point in space from which they would 
 see the events in actual process. If this is at all 
 difficult, at first, to understand, it becomes obvious 
 the moment we begin to think of the mode, and 
 the pace, of transmission of light. To take an easy 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FILM 227 
 
 and concrete instance, in small figures, it was only 
 necessary for these archangels to go to a point in 
 space so far distant from the Earth that light from 
 the Earth would take a thousand years to reach it 
 in order see the events that were taking place on 
 Earth a thousand years ago. That is quite simple. 
 In fact, the whole story of the Earth, or of any 
 other planet, is, as we might say, ' filmed ' at 
 some distance or other — it only needs to go to 
 the right distance in order to see the event in 
 occurrence. 
 
 *' Then, if these archangels, having seen all 
 that they wished of the happenings of a thousand 
 years ago, desired to read ofi the history of the 
 next hundred years, let us say, all they had to do 
 was to move a little nearer earthward till they 
 came to the point to which light from the Earth 
 would have travelled in nine hundred years. Thus 
 the whole course of events would be unrolled for 
 them as if they had been actual participators in it. 
 And equally, of course, by travelling away from the 
 Earth at rather a faster pace than the light, they 
 might, had they a wish for any such fantastic 
 entertainment, see the course of events unrolling 
 itself backwards — might read history backwards, as 
 we say — see what happened previously before that 
 which happened later — instead of watching the 
 shell from the long-range ' Big Bertha ' coming from 
 the muzzle of the gun and falling on Paris to knock 
 down Notre Dame Church, watch the reverse 
 appearing to happen — the church gradually build- 
 ing up again its fallen stones and pillars, the shell 
 appearing to recede from the neighbourhood of 
 
228 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 Paris, and disappearing again down the muzzle 
 of the * Big Bertha ' from which it was launched. 
 All this they might see if they wished. All that 
 was needed to see it was the power of moving rather 
 faster than the light and a vision virtually infinite 
 for that system in which they were. These two 
 conditions granted, the rest is simple, is natural, 
 and inevitable. 
 
 " As a matter of fact, the point to which it 
 pleased these archangels to transport themselves 
 first, to begin their inspection of the story of our 
 planet, was about one thousand times, in round 
 figures, more distant than that which we have 
 been imagining — a point from which they could 
 view the happenings of about a million years 
 ago. 
 
 " ' You see," said Gabriel, as they went along to 
 it, * if we begin about a million years back that 
 will just take up the story from the point which it 
 had reached the last time I came to have a look 
 at the Earth. That, if I remember right, was just 
 about a million years ago. 
 
 ** ' Ah yes," he said, when they had arrived 
 there. ' That is just about how it was : I re- 
 cognise it all." 
 
 " I don't want to bother you," said Launceston, 
 " about all the Earth history they saw — Pithecan- 
 thropus, Neanderthal man, the glacial epochs, the 
 different Stone Ages, the Bronze, and so on. It 
 interested them, because they were seeing and 
 hearing it all for the first time ; but it would only 
 bore you, who have heard it all a hundred times. 
 Of course they were coming gradually nearer the 
 
WHAT PROGRESS? 229 
 
 Earth all the time at about the same gentle pace 
 that light travels so as to see the events in their 
 right order. 
 
 " ' Look here, Michael/ Gabriel exclaimed, when 
 they had come down so close that they could see 
 things almost as we might see them happen. 
 * Isn't that funny ? You remember a little while 
 back — in the year they called 451, wasn't it ? — 
 we saw those men coming from the East under the 
 man they called Attila, wasn't it ? They were 
 stopped by the Western men at exactly that same 
 place, Chalons, that these men who are coming 
 from the East now are being stopped. Funny 
 thing, isn't it ? " 
 
 " ' Yes,' Michael agreed. " I don't like their 
 way of j&ghting nearly so much now though — all 
 that noise and smoke. Tiresome, I call it. I like 
 to see my Devil when I'm fighting him.' 
 
 " I daresay you're right. Well — there's not 
 much more to see. We ought to be getting back. 
 We can drop down and see how they're getting on 
 again after another million years or so.' 
 
 " * Yes, let's go. Good idea of yours though, 
 Gabriel,' Michael said approvingly as they flew 
 back again — ' not a bad show at all.' 
 
 *' Gabriel was silent for a while. Then : * Would 
 you say they were making progress — those people i ' 
 he asked. 
 
 " * Progress 2 How do you mean ? ' 
 
 ** ' Well, does it seem to you that they were any 
 more advanced that second time that the fellows 
 from the East got their set-back at Chalons than 
 they were the first ? " 
 16 
 
230 THE UNIVERSAL CINEMATOGRAPH 
 
 " ' I don't know, I'm sure. What do you think 
 about it ? ' 
 
 " ' They could kill each other at longer range : 
 that's about all the difference I could see/ 
 
 ** ' That's something,' said the fighting arch- 
 angel. 
 
 " Gabriel laughed." 
 
 And on that note of celestial laughter Launceston 
 stopped. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE earth's place IN SPACE 
 
 There was a good deal of discussion after Launces- 
 ton had finished his Universal Cinematograph 
 address, but I did not take any notes of it. A day 
 or two later when I came into the Club, Foljambe 
 met me, also coming in. We found Launceston 
 in a corner of the morning-room, writing. 
 
 *' Strong on the wing, those archangels of yours, 
 eh, Launceston ? "" Foljambe said. " Have to hold 
 pretty far ahead when they were coming over." 
 
 Launceston did not deign him any attention. 
 
 " What the deuce did you mean by it all, if it 
 meant anything ? What was it all about ? '' 
 
 ** Time, time,"' Launceston snapped, without 
 looking up from his papers. 
 
 " Time ! Time ! " Foljambe echoed. '' We aren't 
 at a boxing match.'' 
 
 '" The relativity of time and space then. That's 
 what I wanted to illustrate." 
 
 "' Thanks. I'm afraid I'm no wiser than I was." 
 
 " You can't possibly be more foolish, if that's 
 any comfort. Do go away : I'm trying to write." 
 
 " Damn old bear ! Not fit to be in a Club," 
 said Foljambe, and was going out, grumbling, when 
 Launceston jumped from his chair. 
 
 231 
 
232 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 " Sorry, sorry, old fellow," lie said. " I apolo- 
 gise. It's those damned gases. You wouldn't be 
 very sweet-tempered yourself if you'd a vulture 
 always tearing at your vitals." 
 
 '' Our old friend Prometheus, eh ? " 
 
 ** What a memory you've got ! " 
 
 " I don't forget my old friends. My tutor intro- 
 duced me to him. I always felt sorry for the old 
 chap — Prometheus, I mean — and I'm sorry for you 
 too, Launceston, I'm sure. Vultures at your 
 vitals ! " 
 
 " We call them microbes nowadays, but that 
 doesn't seem to blunt their beaks." 
 
 *' Pershore tells me you're better in essentials," 
 I ventured. 
 
 ** Oh, cuss the essentials ! I don't care a bit 
 about them. They're the things that kill you — I 
 don't mind them. What I mind are the things 
 that keep you alive and keep you worried all the 
 time. Gastritis, the doctors call it. Sensible men 
 call it stomach-ache." 
 
 " Those archangels," Foljambe put in, " do you 
 suppose they have it ? " 
 
 " Wait and see, old fellow ; you're sure to be 
 one before very long." 
 
 " By the way, we had a talk in Black's the other 
 night--I was telling them, as well as I could, about 
 these archangels of yours, and we were trying to 
 reckon how far we'd have to hold ahead, and we 
 got talking about how big the earth is. How big 
 is it?" 
 
 ** You mean, diameter, circumference — what 2" 
 
 " No, no — I don't mean like that ; I mean, how 
 
"THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE" 233 
 
 big is it compared with the rest of the job — with 
 the universe, I suppose you'd call it ? " 
 
 Launceston grinned with the relish which he 
 often found in Foljambe's talk. " Perhaps I might 
 tell you that," he said, '" if you could tell me just 
 one thing." 
 
 " What's that I " 
 
 " The size of the universe." 
 
 " Oh well," said Foljambe, '' I thought you, 
 don't you know, were more likely to know about 
 that than me." 
 
 " I like your ' me ' — the accusative sounds 
 modest. Good subject for a debate," he went on, 
 turning to me — " The Earth's Space in the Uni- 
 verse.' " 
 
 " Excellent, if you'll open it." 
 
 "" I don't mind. You seem to have got me on 
 the talk. But I do too much of the talking." 
 
 I should have told any other of the members 
 that we could not have too much of him — which 
 would have been untrue. I did not tell Launceston 
 so, of whom it might be almost true. I knew him 
 better. 
 
 " Come and hear what I have to say about it, 
 Foljambe," he said, " and give us your own com- 
 ments. It's rather a big question to answer just 
 now, without notice." 
 
 Therefore, a few Thursdays later, Launceston 
 opened for us with the heading not precisely as he 
 had suggested. He now gave us as the subject of 
 his paper : 
 
 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
234 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 ** There is a point, '' he began, *' in which the 
 perspective of the ordinary man, who has given 
 little thought to science, seems to stand in some 
 need of correction — that is, his view of the size of 
 this world of his in relation to the general scheme. 
 '' If you ask the ' man in the street ' or the 
 ' man in the club/ ' What is the size of the earth 
 as compared with the universe surrounding it ? ' 
 he will answer readily enough : ' Oh, we are a very 
 small affair really ' and, saying this, he will deem 
 himself to have shown a remarkable intelligence, 
 perhaps rather more humility than was to be 
 expected of him, and will reflect, with complacency, 
 how greatly more enlightened we are than those 
 poor forefathers of ours who believed the earth to 
 be the hub of the universe around which the rest 
 revolved. 
 
 " Pressing such specimens of the ' ordinary man,^ 
 as we may make bold to call him, for some stan- 
 dard of measurement of the size of the world in 
 comparison with the universe, we are likely to get 
 extraordinarily different answers. One will say, 
 ^ Oh, I should think the earth, in comparison with 
 the whole affair, is something like what Ireland 
 would be in comparison with the earth.' 
 
 " Another will put the ratio of the earth to this 
 ' whole affair ' as ' no more than an English county 
 in comparison with the globe ' ; another will say 
 it is ' as Hyde Park is to the earth ' ; a fourth as ' St. 
 Paul's to the whole earth.' But that last is a 
 proposition which will hardly be accepted without 
 some gentle derision and protest such as ' Oh no, 
 my dear fellow, we may be a little bit of a planet. 
 
THE TRAP 235 
 
 it is true, but we can't count for quite so little as 
 that amounts to in the general scheme/ 
 
 *' Of course, the question, as I have put it, is an 
 absolutely unfair one. It involves a trap and a 
 fallacy ; but ' the man in the club ' is very unlikely 
 to detect that (unless the club be the Athenaeum, 
 or some such home of wiseacres). As a matter of 
 fact, we do not in the least know the limits of the 
 universe, if any, and it is perhaps equally difficult 
 for the human mind to conceive its limits as to 
 conceive it limitless. There is a point, however, 
 at which we may begin to draw an imaginary line 
 around some portion of this universe, and that is 
 the farthest point at which a star is visible to us 
 with the aid of our most powerful telescopes. 
 The distance which we can thus visually probe is so 
 immense that it is quite impossible to give any 
 idea of it by means of our ordinary measurements 
 of space, such as miles. We can only hope to 
 get, and to give, some dim notion of these dis- 
 tances by expressing them in terms of the time 
 which light takes in traversing space. 
 
 " Looking out from our globe, in all directions, 
 with our telescopes, we arrive at points on an im- 
 mense, earth-enveloping sphere. That sphere is 
 of such dimensions that, as Lord Kelvin tells us, 
 it would ' take 6,000 years for light to travel right 
 across it.' Sir Oliver Lodge ^ quotes some further 
 remarks of Lord Kelvin under this head, so the 
 estimate of these vast spaces has authority. It is 
 so amazing as to need all possible vouchers for its 
 at least approximate accuracy. 
 
 1 Substance and Faith. Sir 0. Lodge, p. 61. 
 
236 THE EARTH^S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 " I am afraid I must bother you with some 
 rather large figures. If they trouble you at all, 
 please refer to our friend Mr. Foljambe, who is 
 really responsible for this debate." 
 
 Foljambe, thus unexpectedly mentioned, splut- 
 tered. 
 
 " Light,"" Launceston resumed, " travels at the 
 rate of about 186,000 miles per second. To get 
 the distance therefore, in miles, of the diameter 
 of this sphere, you would have to reduce 6,000 years 
 to its equivalent number of seconds, and to multiply 
 the result by 186,000. There are 31,536,000 
 seconds in a year, so the sum is quite an easy one to 
 do, but by the time you have worked it out the 
 figures and the mileage are so big that they convey 
 scarcely any meaning. 
 
 " Now the diameter of the earth is, roundly, and 
 taking an average measurement, 7,900 miles. 
 And since light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a 
 second, and 7,900 goes into 186,000 about 23 times,^ 
 light would traverse the distance of the diameter of 
 the earth in about one twenty-third of a second. 
 So, if we can form any idea of the comparison 
 between one twenty-third of a second and 6,000 
 years, we may have a corresponding idea of the com- 
 parison between the size of the earth and of the 
 sphere which is shown to us by our most powerful 
 telescopes. 
 
 *' And even this sphere is only a piece which our 
 minds and our telescopes, in combination, have 
 carved out of a whole of we know not how much 
 greater dimension — if it have dimension at all. 
 
 1 23*64 times — precisely. 
 
LARGE FIGURES 237 
 
 '' We may try to get an idea of the relative sizes 
 of the earth and of this telescopically visible sphere 
 in another way. 
 
 ** Since light would traverse the distance of the 
 diameter of the earth in one twenty-third of a 
 second, it follows that its diameter would have to 
 be twenty-three times longer than it is for light to 
 occupy one second in traversing it. 
 
 "Yet, even in that case, it would still be 6,000 
 multiplied by 31J million times smaller than this 
 visible sphere. (I am taking here 31J millions as 
 approximating to the actual 31,536,000 seconds in 
 a year.) 
 
 " Now the earth's diameter, without this multi- 
 plication by 23, is 7,900 miles, which works out at, 
 roughly, 500 millions of inches. Therefore one inch 
 is only 500 millions of times smaller than the 
 diameter of the earth. Compare that with the 
 number, noted above, of millions of times that 
 the earth's diameter, even after being multiplied 
 by twenty-three, is smaller than the diameter 
 of our visible sphere ! 
 
 '" Surely it gives rather a startling measure of 
 the exceeding, the incredible, minuteness of our 
 earth in the general scheme. 
 
 " It boils down in the end to this, that the dia- 
 meter of the telescopically visible sphere is to the 
 diameter of our earth, as that diameter is to 8~55 e^ 
 (roundly) of an inch : and I am told that one ten- 
 thousandth of an inch is nearly the least that our 
 most powerful microscopes can reveal to us. 
 
 " That last result you may arrive at in this way : 
 The multiplication of the 3H millions by 6,000gives 
 
238 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 you 189,000 million as tlie number of seconds 
 which light would take to go across the big sphere. 
 It would take one second to go across the D of E 
 (diameter of earth) if that diameter were 23 times 
 greater than it is. The relation of the diameter of 
 the sphere — call it D of S — would therefore be 
 to the D of E as 18'6,000 millions, multiplied by 23, 
 to one, or 4,278,000 millions to one. Now the D of 
 E is 500 millions of inches. Therefore the D of E 
 stands in the same relation to the D of S as 500 
 million inches divided by 4,278,000 millions stands 
 to D of E. That is to say that — 
 
 As D of S : D of E : : D of E to ^^^ of an in. 
 
 1 _ 
 
 8 5 5'6 JJ 3? 5J 
 
 ** It appears, therefore, that the size of the earth 
 relatively to this portion, which we can make visible, 
 of the terrestrial space, is not as that of Ireland to 
 the whole earth, nor as that of an English county, 
 nor as Hyde Park, nor even as St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 The relation is as that of the earth to this scarcely 
 imaginable and even microscopically invisible 
 fraction of an inch. 
 
 " Let us try ' another way ' — to use classic 
 phrase — of envisaging, or forming some idea of, 
 the quantitative importance of our planet in the 
 universal scheme. 
 
 ** The sun, the source of light to us, is, relatively, 
 quite a near neighbour. If we were in an airship 
 and could travel straight towards the sun at a 
 constant speed, all the way, of fifty miles an hour, 
 we should arrive there in a little over two hundred 
 and ten years. It is but a step in comparison 
 
AN IMPOSSIBLE COMPARISON 239 
 
 with the distances of that spatial sphere which we 
 ^ have been considering. It is but 93 million miles. 
 
 ** Since light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles 
 a second, we get the time occupied by the coming 
 of the sun's light to us by means of dividing 
 93,000,000 by 186,000— with the result that we 
 find that time to be 500 seconds, or 8 minutes, 
 20 seconds. 
 
 " Dimly, by comparing in our minds the idea of 
 8J minutes with the idea of 6,000 years, we may 
 get a notion of the distance between our earth and 
 the sun in comparison with the distance of the 
 diameter of the sphere whose confines our tele- 
 scopic vision can reach. 
 
 " The very nearest of the fixed stars is so far 
 from us that it takes the light four years and four 
 months to reach us, indicating a scarcely con- 
 ceivable greater distance than that of the sun from 
 the earth. But the farthest of the fixed stars that 
 we can see through our telescopes would be so 
 distant that it would take the light three thousand 
 years to reach us, a time dimension which suggests 
 a space not almost, but utterly, beyond the power 
 of our minds to form a notion of. 
 
 *' Our earth, therefore, in comparison with the 
 space which our telescopes can reveal to us (which 
 itself is but a portion of the whole, if, indeed, we can 
 rightly give the name of ' whole ' to what may, 
 for aught we know, be infinite) is a particle of 
 such extraordinary minuteness that the most 
 powerful of our microscopes cannot make visible to 
 us so small an object. It is impossible, indeed, to 
 get our perspective correct, where the divergencies 
 
240 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 are thus entirely beyond our ken. They stretch 
 from what really may be the infinitely great to what 
 for all purposes of human vision, even micro- 
 scopically aided, is the infimitely little. But these 
 considerations may at least serve to show us that 
 the perspective of the ordinary man is even more 
 ludicrously at fault in regard to this than to some 
 other details which I have noticed of the terrestrial 
 story. It needs even more drastic revision here 
 than elsewhere. His own minuteness and the 
 insignificance, spatially, of the scene on which he 
 has to play his little part, are inexpressibly greater 
 than he has commonly supposed. The size of this 
 planet of ours which we are tempted to deem so 
 important, is enormously, and out of all real 
 knowledge, exaggerated when we speak of it as 
 ' a speck in the universe.' A speck bears really 
 much the same relation to that g^s-g th fraction of 
 an inch as the diameter of the earth bears to that 
 of what we vaguely call a ' speck.' 
 
 " Sir Oliver Lodge essays his contribution 
 towards helping us to some comprehension of the 
 distances thus : 
 
 " ' The sun a million times bigger than the 
 earth ; Arcturus a hundred times bigger than the 
 sun, and so distant that light has taken two centuries 
 to come, though travelling at a rate able to carry 
 it to New York and back in less than the twentieth 
 part of a second — facts like these are common- 
 places of the nursery, but even as bare facts they 
 are appalling.' * 
 
 ** Yes, they are so appalling that although they 
 
 * Raymond. Sir O. Lodge, p. 309, 
 
THE UNBIPORTANCE OF SIZE 241 
 
 may be, as he writes, with some exaggeration, 
 ' commonplaces of the nursery," it requires a mind 
 very far removed from the commonplace, prob- 
 ably far higher than the human, to appreciate 
 their real meaning. 
 
 " All these are considerations which may well 
 incline man towards a tolerably modest estimate of 
 the importance in the general scheme of his terres- 
 trial home. It may well rebuke any tendency to 
 big and boastful views of himself and of his imme- 
 diate environment. It is almost inevitable, seeing 
 of what fashion the human mind is made, that it 
 should have this influence. 
 " Yet, it is an influence utterly unreasonable, 
 " To the human mind, with its ideas of the 
 importance of mere size and quantity, it must seem 
 that nothing so tiny, as this earth is proved to be, 
 can count for much. For that mind it is difficult 
 to realise that, to the infinite, size, whether great 
 or small, means no more than time, whether short 
 or long, to the eternal. These are but finite and 
 relative measures, and have no place in the infinite 
 and absolute, for 
 
 * Scant is the need of dial, to tell how the minutes flee, 
 For Him who measures His piece-work on the scale of Eternity,' 
 
 The further we develop our microscopes, and the 
 more minutely we are able to pry into the com- 
 position of the smallest particles of the world's 
 substance, the more our amazement grows at their 
 perfection and finish, even in their material parts. 
 Microscopically and telescopically alike, the imi- 
 verse reveals to us further marvels the further we 
 
242 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 contrive to see into it. The further science leads 
 us in the one direction or the other, the larger and 
 longer vistas she opens to our gaze. The two 
 secrets that she denies to our quest are the ends of 
 the vistas, and their beginnings. We live and 
 move here in the midst of, and as part of, the great 
 life current, with short views this way and that, 
 for a short while only. Yet, for all that, we have 
 no reason to deem ourselves of slight account. 
 
 " As we have learnt that for the infinite there is 
 no little and there is no great, so, for the infinite 
 creative mind, this little that we are may be far 
 more than equal, in its true import, to the greatest 
 at which we can guess. I would even contend that 
 the extreme littleness of our earth really furnishes 
 us with firm ground for arguing the importance of 
 the Creator's care of each individual and of his 
 fortunes upon it. If the whole globe of earth is 
 microscopically small in comparison with even 
 such fraction of space as our telescopes can 
 penetrate, and if the Creator's care is directed to 
 so microscopic an atom at all, we seem to find in 
 this very consideration proof positive that nothing 
 can be too trivial for His care. Our human esti- 
 mates are apt to suggest to us that such a business 
 as the great (what we call the great) world war is 
 something which is worthy His attention — ^we are 
 disposed to regard Him as even somewhat to 
 blame, somewhat lacking in care, in permitting it. 
 But if you or I suffer a toothache, we are apt to 
 deem that far too small a matter to trouble Him 
 about. Those who believe in the use of prayer 
 would perhaps not think it right to pray to Him 
 
THE IMMEASURABLE 243 
 
 to ease it, though we do pray Him to ease us of 
 the miseries of a great war. Yet to the vision 
 which sees our whole earth when put into com- 
 parison with even such of the universe as is tele- 
 scopically visible to us to be as minute as the 
 smallest atom which our strongest microscopes can 
 show us — to a vision which is familiar with such 
 standards as these, there can be but little differ- 
 ence between a world war and an ache in the 
 tooth of a single person in that world. Where the 
 scale is so immense (probably it is even more than 
 immense — which means only immeasurable — prob- 
 ably it is infinite) all differences which we are able 
 to estimate sink to nothingness, the little assumes 
 a size as important, or as unimportant, as the 
 great, measures become of no account just because 
 we are attempting to apply them to the immeasur- 
 able. 
 
 ** And there is another line of evidence which 
 shows how absurd is the human outlook by which 
 we measure the value of things according to their 
 size. The extraordinary discoveries of radio- 
 activity have revealed an energy in the tiniest 
 atoms far transcending all that we had any idea 
 of previously. Those great drivers of the machines 
 of men, coal and oil, are very feeble folk in com- 
 parison. See here what Soddy says, the great 
 chemist whom I have quoted to you before : ' In 
 the slow changes of the radio-active elements there 
 is known to be an evolution of energy nearly a 
 million times as great as has ever been obtained 
 from a similar weight of matter before.^ And 
 perhaps the most extraordinary thing of all is that 
 
244 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 we have here what is very nearly a case of eating 
 your cake and having it too, because, in spite of 
 the tremendous energy evolved, the power of further 
 evolution is scarcely spent. Our knowledge of 
 these radio-active elements is, of course, quite new ; 
 but to take the instance of radium itself, it is 
 calculated (again I quote Soddy) that ' In a year it 
 evolves about 150 times as much energy as would 
 be evolved in the complete combustion of the 
 same weight of coal ' (by which complete combus- 
 tion of course all your coal is spent and gone), ' yet 
 in the fifteen years that have elapsed since the 
 discovery no measurable diminution of this rate of 
 emission has been observed/ It is equally power- 
 ful — that is to say, with an equality so close that 
 the finest means which science has of measuring 
 the power can detect no difference — now as when 
 it was discovered, fifteen years ago, in spite of the 
 terrific energy that it has been liberating all the 
 while. 
 
 " Yet this radium, although it is so stable as all 
 this, is a relatively fast liver and fast dissipator of 
 its activity in comparison with some of the other 
 products of the uranium series to which it belongs. 
 The products of uranium and thorium have been 
 arranged in a series according to the length of life 
 of their atoms, the parent elements being the 
 slowest of all in their changes, and there is a con- 
 siderable difierence — I think we may be justified 
 in calling it quite a considerable difference — ^in 
 their respective rates of change. ' Each of the 
 changes,' writes Soddy in his Science and Life, 
 * proceeds at definite rates . . . and so it comes 
 
THE IMMENSE 245 
 
 about that each of their successive products has a 
 characteristic average period of life. Its atom 
 remains in existence for a period of time which is, 
 on the average, definite, and which varies among 
 the various successive members between the ex- 
 tremes, estimated indirectly in a variety of ways, 
 of a hundred- thousand-millionth of a second on the 
 one hand and twenty thousand million years on 
 the other/ I think we really are justified in calling 
 the difference considerable. In fact, the poet 
 wrote very much more truly both of time and 
 space than he realised when he wrote that 
 
 * The mills of God grind slowly. 
 But they grind exceeding small.* 
 
 Yet he might just as truly, though perhaps less 
 interestingly, have written 
 
 * The mills of God grind quickly. 
 But they grind exceeding large.' 
 
 The fact being that they take no regard whatever 
 of fast or slow, nor of small or large. These are 
 relative measures which do not concern them. 
 The very word measure does not apply to them : 
 they deal with the immense.'' 
 
 " By Jove, and they're about right," said Fol- 
 jambe, who had by this time sputtered out all his 
 fury and was following Launceston with a dazed 
 but cheerful face. " Not much need to be bother- 
 ing about eternity if you were an atom of radium 
 and lived twenty thousand million years. Long 
 enough for me, anyway." 
 
 " Oh, you won't live as long as that if you're 
 17 
 
246 THE EARTH'S PLACE IN SPACE 
 
 radium, old fellow," Launceston told him. " Must 
 get yourself made of uranium to last that long/' 
 
 " It shows some contempt on part of nature,"' 
 said Pershore, '' of our human measures, doesn't 
 it ? " 
 
 " Soddy, I believe, would tell you that you had 
 no right to speak of this as nature. He would 
 deny, I expect, that such a thing as ' inanimate 
 nature ' can be. Nature, I suppose, must mean 
 something to do with birth — wasn't there a verb 
 nascor that we used to hear about at Eton, Fol- 
 jambel — and Soddy will not allow any idea of 
 birth or creation in connection with his matter 
 and energy. That, however, is rather beside the 
 point. There is a passage in William James's 
 Gifford Lectures which bears directly on it. ' So 
 long,' he says, ' as we deal with the cosmic and the 
 general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, 
 but as soon as we deal with private and personal 
 phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the 
 completest sense of the term/ 
 
 " He writes that last in italics. 
 
 " We may recall, too, that well-known passage 
 from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici : ' That 
 mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my 
 mind. . . . Whilst I study to find how I am a 
 microcosm or little body, I find myself something 
 more than the great. There is surely a piece of 
 divinity in us — something that was before the 
 elements and pays no homage to the sun.' 
 
 " So, as the conclusion of these last three ad- 
 dresses with which I have opened our debates, I 
 would ask you to regard this terrestrial drama in 
 
THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE 247 
 
 rather a new light, thrown first on its distant past, 
 and secondly on the area of the scene whereon the 
 drama is being played. 
 
 '' That scene is inconceivably small in compari- 
 son with even that portion of creation of which 
 we have some optical knowledge. On that incon- 
 ceivably small space, man, a very tiny actor even 
 in relation to a scene which is itself so minute, has 
 been playing the serio-comic drama of humanity 
 for at least one million years ; and is playing it up 
 to a certain crux, at which it will arrive in some- 
 thing less than two short centuries. 
 
 " That is the picture of terrestrial humanity, its 
 story, its prospect and its environment which we 
 have to envisage — considerably unlike that which 
 imagination commonly presents to us, but assuredly 
 rather closer to the reality. With that general 
 picture in mind we may get something more like 
 a true perspective in which to view the movements 
 of the piece." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE KEAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 Launceston had surpassed his own ill record. The 
 Club was humming like a hive of angry bees with 
 his name the point of offence about which they 
 buzzed. The offence really was very rank. Mollify 
 it as his friends, such as Pershore, might, by urging 
 that he was a sick man, so tortured and poisoned 
 by the foul gases which he was always absorbing 
 that a normal standard of judgment should not 
 be applied to him — it still stank to heaven. He 
 needed not only all they could urge, but a little 
 beyond that again, for he had called poor old Sir 
 James Macadam, most kindly and inoffensive of 
 learned Scots, " a danmed old fool," called him so 
 roundly to his own venerable and outraged face. 
 It was monstrous, it was unpardonable ; the Club 
 went through all the adjectives that it knew to 
 label the insult as it deserved, but still found them 
 inadequate. 
 
 Sir James, as on a former occasion, made formal 
 complaint to the Committee, and the Committee, 
 as before, authorised me to write to Launceston, 
 telling him that in the Committee's opinion he 
 should at once apologise and withdraw the offensive 
 expression. There were those who favoured 
 stronger measures, such as a specially convened 
 
 248 
 
AN OUTRAGE 249 
 
 general meeting at whicli the question of expulsion, 
 with the stigma of *' conduct unbecoming a gentle- 
 man/' should be considered ; but I think that the 
 majority felt, regrettable though the incident was, 
 and regrettable as the words wrung from Launceston 
 in his morbid irritation often were, that the Club 
 without Launceston would be the Club without the 
 most piquant of its sauce. 
 
 So I wrote the letter as instructed, and in course 
 of post came back a reply from Launceston. It 
 was of some length and must have occupied him 
 for quite an appreciable time stolen from his 
 poisonous experiments, but it carried its own evi- 
 dence to the enjoyment with which he wrote it. 
 I have no doubt that it acted upon him as a fine 
 tonic. Its effect on the Committee was to perplex 
 them still more profoundly. It was my business 
 to read the letter aloud to them, and my enter- 
 tainment to observe the faces of the members as I 
 read. For, in the midst of the long rigmarole, 
 Launceston had written : " Let us discuss word 
 by word the phrase to which Sir James Macadam 
 objects. It is a phrase of but three words — 
 damnedjold, and fool. Of these, I retract the word 
 * damned,' because it is blasphemous ; but I main- 
 tain the word ' fool,' because it is true. As for the 
 epithet * old,' I have been at the trouble to look up 
 the date of Sir James Macadam's birth in one of 
 the many reference books of learned and illustrious 
 men in which his name is to be read, and I find it 
 impossible that he can in reason object to its appli- 
 cation to him. Furthermore, I have the honour to 
 submit to the Committee that although Sir James 
 
250 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 Macadam has thus cast himself, by virtue of his 
 letter of complaint, for the role of the injured person, 
 I have, in fact, far stronger reason to complain of 
 him than he of me. For he has said of me, as I 
 am able to prove by witnesses whom the Committee 
 will readily confess to be credible, that I am " the 
 most disagreeable man in the Club "' (" He needn't 
 call witnesses to that," a member interrupted.) 
 " Now I would point out to the Committee, with the 
 utmost submission, that this is a description far 
 more offensive than any that I ever have, or would, 
 apply to Sir James Macadam ; for he has hereby 
 elevated me, as the Committee will observe, to a 
 singular and unique pedestal of opprobrium, seeing 
 that it is obvious that there can be but one most 
 disagreeable man in this or any other Club, whereas 
 it is not only possible, but I should think highly 
 probable, and even I would go so far as to say 
 almost certain, that both in this and in other 
 Clubs there is quite a considerable proportion of 
 old fools." 
 
 In this manner went on the letter, covering 
 several sides of paper ; and when I had come to an 
 end of its reading the debate grew animated. What 
 should be done about it ? 
 
 It was generally regarded as in spirit almost an 
 aggravation of the original offence, though pur- 
 porting to be couched in terms of apology. In the 
 midst of much controversy and diverse opinion 
 I gained, for once, some credit by suggesting that 
 I should send it on, as by order of the Committee, 
 and without comment, to Sir James himself, to see 
 how he would receive it. We might allow our 
 
THE THIRD ILLUSION 251 
 
 future course to be shaped by his attitude, if we 
 approved it ; if not, we were in no worse case 
 tlian the present. This was passed nem. con,, and 
 I forwarded the letter accordingly. 
 
 And then the funniest episode of the whole farce 
 was enacted — Sir James Macadam carrying the 
 letter round from one member to another, asking 
 each in turn what he thought of it ; and whether 
 he ought to look on it as an apology. 
 
 Launceston's attitude at the time was humorous, 
 too, for he went about the Club quite serenely, as if 
 he were entirely unconscious that he had ever been 
 the occasion of any storm and was a very present 
 storm-centre still. 
 
 Macadam had not answered Launceston's letter, 
 either directly or through the Committee, before 
 a next debate night came. Launceston was again 
 due to open the discussion for us. He had agreed 
 to do so following a desire expressed by some 
 of the members in consequence of a word that he 
 had let drop towards the conclusion of his address 
 on the Earth's Place in Space. He had then spoken 
 of a certain crux at which the earth was due to 
 arrive in some two hundred years or so, and I had 
 been requested, before his outrageous affront of 
 Sir James Macadam, to invite him to expound to 
 us the meaning of this mysterious hint. He had 
 agreed to do so, but declined to unfold the meaning 
 before the delivery of the address itself, and he 
 began it in these terms : 
 
 ** I have tried, in two former papers, which I have 
 read you, to say something about two of the illu- 
 sions in which men in general seem to me to live — 
 
252 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 the illusion about the age of man on the earth, and 
 the illusion about the size of the earth in the uni- 
 versal scale. I now would like to say a word, if 
 you will allow me, about another popular illusion — 
 the illusion that man can go on living as he now lives 
 on the earth, fulfilling and multiplying — the illu- 
 sion of ignorance that a great crux in his terrestrial 
 destiny, the greatest, I suppose, that will have faced 
 him at any time since he became possessed of reason 
 and became man, is hard upon him. I propose to 
 say a word to-night about what I wiU call ' World 
 Congestion and the Real Armageddon/ "" 
 
 He had a genius for headlines. It should be 
 remembered that we were still in the stress of the 
 Great War. There was not the least fear of our 
 forgetting it, for that evening at least, for, almost 
 before he started, the alarm bombs had gone 
 and the greater part of his address was punctuated 
 freely by reports of varying noise and terror. Still 
 he went on in his even, wearied voice, which carried 
 wonderfully, and seemed to cut through deeper 
 sounds with its thin, shrill edge. 
 
 He paused a moment after the announcement 
 of his topic, as if to let its meaning penetrate, and 
 proceeded : 
 
 ** It is likely that we who live in the first quarter 
 of the twentieth century may deem that these, which 
 it is our own lot to endure, are sufficiently strenuous 
 and stirring times. Nevertheless, if we can but 
 free our eyes of prejudice and look with a clear gaze 
 on the future, we are obliged to perceive that the 
 moment of extreme stress has by no means fallen 
 upon humanity even now ; that it has yet to come, 
 
WHITTAKER'S ALMANACK 253 
 
 and that it threatens the world in a not very 
 remote future. 
 
 ** I realise quite fully that this is prophecy of no 
 smooth or popular kind. It is not thus that many 
 people envisage the possibilities of the days when 
 the great European War shall be a memory and we 
 have bequeathed, as we fondly hope, peace upon 
 earth to our posterity for many generations. For 
 a generation or two, it is true, peace of very exhaus- 
 tion will perhaps be the portion of the nations 
 engaged, but it is not the least use to close our eyes 
 to the grim prospect that lies further ahead again. 
 Not in our time, nor in that even of our grand- 
 children maybe, will the real, the shrewdest pinch 
 come, but when its pressure does, as infallibly it 
 must, close in, it will prove by far the most terrible 
 and most testing grip that poor humanity has been 
 called on to endure upon this planet." 
 
 Again he paused for a moment, as if to allow the 
 full horror of the prospect which he suggested to 
 come home to our stricken souls. He went on in 
 a voice of added and affected weariness : 
 
 " I have the honour to be addressing a literary 
 audience. I will assume therefore that you all 
 read your Whittaker's Almanack. In that admir- 
 able handy book, tucked away in the very smallest 
 print at the bottom of a column, as though it were 
 a matter of extremely little import, you may find 
 the laconic statement : ' It has been estimated 
 that the earth can maintain a population of 
 6,000,000,000, a total which will be reached about 
 A.D. 2100 at the present rate of increase.' 
 
 *' Of course, no one who has the very___slightest 
 
 / 
 
254 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 acquaintance with, statistics can fail to be aware that 
 their study is peculiarly beset with pitfalls. Brevity 
 is the soul of Whittaker, and he does not cumber 
 his packed page by giving us his authority for this 
 estimate, but it is one which is in the main endorsed 
 by a number of census and rate-of-increase figures 
 drawn from different sources. Moreover, if it be 
 only approximately correct — even if we were to 
 allow it all possible margin of error — it would still 
 seem to point to a situation in the near future such 
 as man has never been faced with in all the ages 
 of his history. 
 
 ** The chief difficulty of arriving at any statistics 
 
 which are to be relied on consists in the fact that 
 
 for the Mongolian family, comprising a very large 
 
 section of the human race, no figures touching 
 
 the rate of increase are available. We can but 
 
 conjecture the rate from that of other nations, 
 
 chiefly of the Caucasian family, for which the figures 
 
 are before us, from their observed expansion and 
 
 from the accounts of their progress which can be 
 
 gathered from themselves and from foreigners who 
 
 have lived among them. Emigration from Western 
 
 Europe, apart from the temporary interruption 
 
 caused by the war, continues, but that of the 
 
 Mongol yellow race is not nearly as large as it used 
 
 to be. America and others of the new countries 
 
 that still have much space to develop, have learnt 
 
 that there are disadvantages attached to this 
 
 invasion of the yellow coolies and are strenuously 
 
 resisting it. If it was not for these untimely and 
 
 Hunnish noises," said Launceston, as a peculiarly 
 
 obstreperous bombing began, '' I would now 
 
STATISTICS 255 
 
 suggest to any member who shares my own 
 boredom with statistics, that he go to sleep for five 
 or ten minutes. Some figures are inevitable. 
 
 " Mr. Longstaff, in his Studies in Statistics, deals 
 closely with the figures of the population for Wes- 
 tern Europe, but he leaves Eussia and the Balkan 
 peninsula alone, as factors too indefinite for his 
 calculations. From the rest of the area under 
 consideration he deduces a conclusion at which he 
 is plainly and confessedly terrified ; so much so that 
 in spite of the evidence he hardly dares to accept it. 
 He finds (pp. 183 et seq.), writing in 1891, and in 
 respect of the last thirty years open to his inquiry, 
 an increase at the rate of 21 per cent., say Ifths 
 millions per annum, or 6-6 per cent, in each ten 
 years. That is to say, that if the population of 
 that area continued to increase at the same rate 
 as from 1850 to 1880, it would arrive in 1990 at 
 close on 455 millions. * A simple calculation," he 
 writes, ' shows clearly that the rate of increase 
 (6-6 per cent, in each ten years) cannot possibly have 
 been as great in the past, and that if it should be as 
 great for another century the population will be 
 increased by 200 millions — more than doubled — 
 a result not, indeed, impossible, but one that taxes 
 our power of belief considerably." 
 
 " Doubtless it is a conclusion which gives cause 
 to think, but so far as the figures go their evidence 
 is incontestable. 
 
 ** Dr. Newsholme, in Elements of Vital Statistics, 
 brings the story down rather later ; but it is neither 
 a strikingly difi'erent, nor a greatly more consoling 
 story. He sets out at length the annual increase 
 
256 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 per cent, of a large number of countries. Tlie 
 last period under his review runs from 1901 to 
 1905. New Zealand and Ceylon give the highest 
 mean annual increase for these years, the former 
 2-90 per cent, per annum, the latter 2-16. Immi- 
 gration obviously is the main source of their 
 increase, as also in the case of Chile, which comes 
 next in order with 1-96. The rate for the United 
 States was 1-73. But these accessions are achieved 
 without any undue drain on the older countries 
 from which the immigrants are taken. England 
 and Wales, in spite of their emigration, show an 
 increase of 1-15 a year. Germany does consider- 
 ably better with 1'17. The kingdom of Prussia is 
 higher again at 1-58. France is extraordinarily 
 low at 0-17, and Ireland shows the single instance 
 of a decline, with minus 30 per cent. 
 
 *' From the whole list compiled for these years and 
 presuming the same rate of increase maintained, 
 Dr. Newsholme calculates a doubling of the popula- 
 tion of Prussia in 49-2 years, of England in 59*1 
 years, of Italy in 65-7, of Austria in 74-1, and of 
 France, with her quite exceptional birthrate, in 
 591 years. Taking these figures one with another, 
 they sufficiently show that, while filling the new 
 countries, the old nations are very far from lowering 
 their own population. We have put France in the 
 above brief list as an example of the lowest — very 
 considerably the lowest, seeing that Spain comes 
 next with 0-45 — rate of increase. Ireland, as we 
 have seen, has, uniquely, a decrease. But if we 
 were to estimate at one hundred years the time in 
 which the population would double itself all the 
 
THE CENSUS 257 
 
 world over, we should then find, putting the present 
 world population at 1,623 millions, that in two 
 hundred years it would come to 6,492 millions, 
 and that we may arrive at approximately the result 
 given in Whittaker of 6,000 millions in 2100. 
 
 " There is another and rather different com- 
 parison, also indicating the rate of increase of 
 population, given in MulhalFs Statistical Diction- 
 ary, His table is of the number of inhabitants per 
 square mile in various countries in the years 1820 
 and 1890 respectively. The United States, as is to 
 be expected, shows the largest increase, rising from 
 three inhabitants per square mile in the former 
 year to twenty in the latter. Germany has nearly 
 doubled its density in the same interval, but still 
 stands at only 233 to the square mile. England, 
 next to the United States, shows the largest addition, 
 with 505 to the square mile in 1890 as compared with 
 207 seventy years before. Belgium's density is 
 the highest, with 530 to the mile, and she has nearly 
 doubled in the period under review. France shows 
 an increase that is rather astonishing when com- 
 pared with the figures given by LongstafE — though, 
 of course, the period is quite different — from 172 
 to 320. Eussia (presumably the estimate is con- 
 fined to Russia in Europe) has rather more than 
 doubled, with 42 inhabitants to the mile in 1890 
 as against 20 in 1820. In the latest edition of the 
 Encyclofcedia Britannica, Mr. W. A. Phillips writes, 
 under heading ' Russia ' : * The population of the 
 empire, which was estimated at 74,000,000 in 1859, 
 was found to be over 129,000,000 at the census 
 of 1897, taken over all the empire except Finland. 
 
258 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 In 1904 it was estimated to be 140,000,000, and in 
 1906, according to a detailed estimate of the 
 Central Statistical Committee, it was 149,299,300. 
 Thus from 1806 to 1897 the population increased 
 74J per cent., and from 1897 to 1904, 26-3 per cent., 
 an average annual increase of 2| per cent, during 
 the period 1860-97.' 
 
 " The latest available information puts the 
 population of the Russian Empire at 173,500,000. 
 Ireland again provides the single instance of a 
 decline, with 212 to a mile at the earlier date, 
 and no more than 148 at the later. For Europe 
 generally Mr. Mulhall puts the increase from 
 at 54 to 90. 
 
 '' Webb's Statistical Dictionary brings up most 
 of the figures given by Mulhall to a later date. In 
 the 1911 edition he estimates the average number 
 of persons to every square mile in Europe at 110, 
 in America at 10, and all the world over at 31. 
 He assumes the total world population, for the 
 purpose of this calculation, at 1,610 millions, and 
 presumably would confine his mileage estimate to 
 what is considered the humanly habitable portion 
 of the globe — excluding the Arctic and Antarctic 
 extremes. 
 
 ** This brings us back again to consideration of 
 the number of human inhabitants that the globe is 
 capable of supporting. Longstaff makes a cal- 
 culation under this head, basing it on figures that he 
 quotes fromDr. Parkes' Manual' of Practical Hygiene. 
 Dr. Parkes estimates that each human being re- 
 quires, on an average, 5| bushels of wheat per year, 
 besides animal food. And thence LongstafE makes 
 
THE TIMBER SUPPLY 269 
 
 the deduction that a thousand square miles is 
 needed for the support of each million of the popu- 
 lation. It is understood that he takes the good with 
 the bad land, for the purpose of the calculation, and 
 strikes an average of the wheat-producing capacity. 
 He concludes, however, with this warning, that the 
 timber supply will be exhausted far sooner than the 
 wheat supply, as estimated above, giving as his 
 authority W. Little, Forestry, August 1883. Man- 
 kind, however, may conceivably exist in a dearth 
 of timber. It may devise, it has devised, and is 
 still further devising substitutes. But the bread 
 remains the stafi of its life — appears to be its 
 imperative need. 
 
 " Of course, the difficulty of taking the census and 
 of reckoning the rate of increase, even approxi- 
 mately, of an immense, loosely compacted and 
 densely thronged empire such as that of China is 
 insuperable. The best that can be done is in the 
 nature of intelligent conjecture. Sir J. A. Baines, 
 C.S.I. , contributed to the Journal of the Royal 
 Statistical Society for June 1911 a most interesting 
 article on the taking of the census in India ; but 
 the machinery available in India is still far to 
 seek in China. I think that is about all I have to 
 trouble you with in the wearisome way of figures, 
 so if anybody has been fortunate enough to be 
 able to doze a little, perhaps he had better wake 
 again. 
 
 " The more we consider all the statistics, the 
 greater reason we seem to find for deeming the 
 calculation, that the world will be congested with 
 humanity in something less than two centuries 
 
260 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 hence, not an inexact one. What I want to do 
 now is to consider for a moment what that conges- 
 tion must mean for us — or for our descendants of 
 no very remote degree. 
 
 *' When a man of energy finds himself so cum- 
 bered and crowded to-day that there seems to be 
 no room for him in this, his own little island, what 
 he does — presuming the country not to be at war — 
 is to take out the atlas, or apply himself to one 
 or other of the many colonising agencies, and see 
 where, around the globe, within or without the 
 British Empire, he may find a pleasant and wider 
 place. In a word, he emigrates. That is his 
 solution of the crowding problem. And that is the 
 solution which is going to serve us, of Britain, and 
 those of other old European countries for a few 
 more years to come ; but it is a solution which, 
 unless the unforeseen should happen, must fail us 
 round about the year a.d. 2100. 
 
 *' I do not know whether this strikes you as a 
 point in some very far distant future. To me it 
 makes rather the appeal of a menace as imminent 
 as it is alarming. Of course, we may give these 
 round figures a little latitude. By a score of years 
 or so it is very possible that the actual congestion 
 point may be delayed. It is equally possible that 
 it may be advanced by a like short span. But 
 what do a score or even fifty years amount to in 
 the story ? Every advance we make in reading 
 the history of Creation, as it is stored for us in 
 the rocks, seems to throw back its beginnings to 
 a more immeasurably far past. The very story 
 of man himself, the youngest of all Evolution's 
 
A CROWDED WORLD 261 
 
 cliildren, becomes respectably venerable in the 
 pages of Dr. Arthur Keith's book The Antiquity of 
 Man. I have quoted you him before. Arguing from 
 the strata in which indubitably human evidences 
 have been found, and from the estimated rate of 
 deposit of the strata, he calculates a million years 
 ago to be, roundly, the date at which a creature 
 with a brain capacity which might entitle it to the 
 dignity of being called human was first developed 
 on the earth. What is almost more extraordinary 
 is that so long as fifty thousand years ago Neander- 
 thal man — that creature with a brain actually 
 larger, though, perhaps, not so complexly con- 
 voluted, . tha^ our own, was already burying his 
 dead with implements set beside the corpse in 
 order to help the spirit on its journey to the world 
 beyond. Fifty thousand years ago had he thus 
 begun to listen to the intimations of immortality 
 to which many of his near kin close their ears to-day. 
 So strangely leisurely is the Creator at His work ; 
 so leaden-footed is the march of progress according 
 to the tiny measures of time that we apply to it. 
 Such an infinitesimal fraction of the whole are those 
 two little centuries which infallibly, so far as we 
 can see, must bring humanity to a point of conges- 
 tion so extreme that no longer will the European, 
 for whom the old world has no place, be able 
 to say, ' I will go overseas. There is space 
 for me." 
 
 *' Only two centuries, at the most, shall pass, 
 
 and there will be no room for him. He will find 
 
 footing, if at all, in a new land only on the condition 
 
 of thrusting out from it — that is to say, thrusting 
 
 18 
 
262 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 to his death — some previous inhabitant. Is the 
 prospect a sufficiently appalling one ? 
 
 '* Of course, there is nothing in any way novel 
 about a theory which merely supposes a tendency 
 of population to increase faster than the means for 
 its support. That the one progresses geometrically 
 and the other arithmetically is the form — far too 
 extreme — in which their mutual relation has been 
 stated. It is the view specially associated with the 
 name of Malthus, although, as Mr. Udny Yule has 
 pointed out, it was no novel doctrine even then that 
 Malthus preached. Indeed, it is Mr. Yule's opinion 
 that earlier writers, such as Arthur Young, were in 
 advance of him. But it was Malthus who gave the 
 view its emphasis and its wide publicity. 
 
 " It has been held, as against Malthus, that man 
 will inevitably check the natural rate of his 
 multiplication when he begins to see it menacing 
 him with imminent starvation, and in a few 
 countries, as in France most particularly, there is 
 a strong tendency to arrest the pace of increase. 
 But it would be very unwise to build wide hopes on 
 such local and very likely only temporary mani- 
 festations. The diminished birth-rate of France is, 
 of course, taken into the calculation on which is 
 based the estimate of the date of world-congestion. 
 Unfortunately, the facts do not confirm the com- 
 fortable illusion held by Carey, the great American 
 economist, in opposition to Malthus, that some 
 vague benevolent influence tends to check undue 
 multiplication. The popular belief that advancing 
 civilisation automatically decreases the rate is quite 
 untenable. On the contrary, we find Darwin writ- 
 
LOWER DEATH-RATE 263 
 
 ing in The Descent of Man, ' There is reason to 
 suspect, as Malthus has remarked, that the repro- 
 ductive power is actually less in barbarous than in 
 civilised races. ... I have shown in a former 
 work ( Variation of Animals and Plants under Domes- 
 tication, vol. ii, pp. 111-113, 163) that all our 
 domesticated quadrupeds and birds, and all our 
 cultivated plants, are more fertile than the corre- 
 sponding species in a state of nature. . . . We 
 might, therefore, expect that civilised men, who, 
 in one sense, are highly domesticated, would be 
 more prolific than wild men. It is also probable 
 that the increased fertility of civilised nations would 
 become, as with our domestic animals, an inherited 
 character.' 
 
 " Obviously, we have to give up any prospect of 
 a modification of the stress, which we might have 
 been disposed to base on a natural tendency of 
 civilisation to lower the birth-rate. So far from 
 that, its trend is precisely in the opposite line — to 
 heighten it. And the death-rate, coincidently, is 
 lowered by better care, better medical treatment, 
 better sanitation, better food — by all the advan- 
 tages in the struggle for life that science can put 
 at man's disposal. 
 
 ** Nor does there seem any better reason to 
 suppose that the modern migration from the coimtry 
 to the town will have the effect of diminishing the 
 pace of increase. In the same number of the 
 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society — that for 
 1906 — from which I took the comment cited above 
 of Mr. Udny Yule on Mai thus, Mr. Yule observes 
 (p. 63) that ' urbanisation is not, ^per se, a cause 
 
264 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 of lowered birth-rate/ The whole paper is well 
 worthy of study in connection with this question. 
 The writer discusses the effect of ' trade cycles/ of 
 varying prosperity, on the marriage-rate and on 
 the birth-rate. And in every consideration of the 
 general subject the oft-quoted dictum of Dr. 
 Farr has to be borne in mind, that all who are born 
 must come one day or other to the ' Urn of Death." 
 There must be this intrinsic difference between 
 birth and death — that the former event may happen 
 or it may not, but the latter is, humanly speaking, 
 a certainty. 
 
 " In whatever direction, then, we may look for 
 our facts and figures, and granting all the latitude 
 possible to the conclusions towards which they 
 point, we nowhere find reason to depart at all 
 widely from the deduction stated that the year 
 A.D. 2100 must find the space of the world filled 
 by man to its extreme capacity. 
 
 " People are apt thoughtlessly to suppose that 
 the loss of life in a great war will seriously affect the 
 issue ; but fearful as the slaughter in this vast 
 contest is, what, in sum, will it amount to ? Even 
 putting it at the very high figure of ten millions, 
 first to last — what is even that in comparison with 
 the numbers of our present world population ? 
 For how long is it to defer the day of final conges- 
 tion ? It is obvious that its effect is hardly con- 
 siderable. 
 
 " At the date of Malthus' writing it was scarcely 
 possible for him to look forward so clearly as we 
 are able, and are even compelled, to look towards 
 the final world congestion. The problem presented 
 
THE IMMINENT STRUGGLE 265 
 
 itself to him in rather a different form. The 
 multiplication of humanity since his time has been 
 so rapid that it has assumed another aspect. We 
 speak to-day in a Darwinian, rather than in a 
 Malthusian, sense of the struggle for life ; and that 
 struggle has been, we fully recognise, of the essence 
 of all evolution. Man, with his acquisition of 
 reason, gained so immensely over all the rest of 
 creation that the story of the last million years has 
 been principally the story of his winning the king- 
 ship over them. Save for certain insects and 
 microbes that still defy him, largely by virtue of 
 their very minuteness, all others have been com- 
 pelled to yield to him. That struggle lies behind 
 him. The time has yet to come when he will engage 
 in the most direful struggle of all — the veritable 
 Armageddon — the struggle for life and for food 
 with his own kind. Humanity, as it would seem, 
 may still expect something like two centuries of 
 respite before congestion becomes world-complete, 
 yet with every increasing generation the stress must 
 grow the tighter. 
 
 " And during those centuries, in what manner, we 
 may ask, will man proceed with his evolution ? 
 Changes there will be, no doubt, but in one essential 
 matter we may be very sure man will not change. 
 There will be no modification worthy of entering on 
 the final balance sheet in that which we commonly 
 term his ' human nature.' Fifty thousand years 
 ago, as we have seen, man was already burying with 
 his dead their viaticum to another world. The 
 space of two centuries is a very inadequate span 
 for the working of any considerable alteration in 
 
266 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 the nature of a being whose development proceeds 
 at the rate of which this most significant fact gives 
 us some idea. Those critics are vastly wrong who 
 deny all moral advance to human nature. Despite 
 all the cruelties of the present war it is unthinkable 
 that white men could now enjoy the spectacle of 
 those gladiatorial shows in which the Romans had 
 delight. The very fact that such a crime as the 
 sinking of the Lusitania horrified the whole world 
 indicates a world-wide advance and quickening of 
 the humane sentiment ; but that progress is not set 
 at a pace which will affect a modification of any 
 importance in the brief space between to-day and 
 the day of ultimate congestion. 
 
 " Very greatly swifter is the pace of scientific 
 invention and the development of the infernal 
 machine. It is indeed conceivable, though whether 
 it is a conception to afford comfort may be more than 
 doubtful, that the next century or two may see the 
 discovery of some death-dealing influence or force 
 such as Bulwer Lytton prefigured in his Yril — that 
 fatal electrical emanation which a child could wield 
 and which would carry death illimitably. It was, 
 as it were, a wireless telegraphy of deadly voltage. 
 The imagination shudders at the prospect of such 
 a power in the hands of a being so utterly unfit 
 to be entrusted with it as man even to-day is proving 
 himself to be, yet it is a prospect of which we shall 
 do well to recognise the possibility. It would be 
 a stultifying conclusion indeed of all man's con- 
 quest of world forces if he were finally to employ 
 them to the total destruction of human life upon 
 the planet, and not of human life alone, but of 
 
A POSSIBLE DENOUEMENT 267 
 
 every living creature whose sensibility was suffi- 
 ciently developed to react to the deadly influence. 
 It would, indeed, be a dramatic denouement of 
 the world play, thus to rid the stage of all its 
 actors save the very lowest forms of life scarcely 
 evolved from protoplasm. Terrific and cata- 
 strophic as such a conclusion may be, it is not 
 beyond the horizon of sane philosophy. Then, 
 when the stage is swept, the drama of evolution 
 might conceivably recommence from the opening 
 scenes to work itself out anew to who shall say what 
 similar or what widely difierent conclusion ? 
 
 " We do not need to travel so far into the region 
 of conjecture so speculative — though still perfectly 
 rational — as this to foresee a future that shall try 
 the steadfastness, the courage, the organisation, the 
 self-control and every highest quality of humanity 
 as these have never before, in all man's history, 
 been put to the proof. To-day we are filled with 
 wonder at the madness and the wickedness of 
 Germany, which has thrown nearly the whole 
 world into misery unspeakable in a war wholly 
 unnecessary. War in 1914 was in no sense a ne- 
 cessity for Germany, for the German, crowded in 
 his native country, had but to go across the sea and 
 there was ample room for him. In every land he 
 found a footing, and well knew how to maintain it. 
 With the passage of another century and a half 
 that free footing will be his no longer. He and 
 every man going from his own land will need to 
 fight to gain a place in another. What is to be the 
 issue ? Is it possible to doubt it ? Can we question 
 but that the issue will be war, bitter war, war not of 
 
268 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 a nation's choosing, but thrust almost of necessity 
 upon nations to conquer the very room to live ? 
 Conceivably it is possible that, should they perceive 
 the imminence of an invention such as that ' Vril ' 
 fluid above noticed, the nations of the world might 
 impose upon themselves a self-denying ordinance, 
 prohibiting its use, breaking up the mechanism of 
 its manufacture even as machines were destroyed 
 as illegal engines by the wisdom of the rulers in 
 Erewhon. That is a possibility, though recent 
 experience does not encourage the hope of an ad- 
 herence to ordinances of the kind. The proved 
 disposition of warring humanity is, rather, to avail 
 itself of every most devilish mechanical and 
 chemical agent that science can contrive. It is 
 vain to build on any tenderness or mercy in our 
 poor human nature, or to expect any change of 
 heart in so short a time. 
 
 *' The battle, then, the inevitable battle which 
 seems almost of necessity imposed, can hardly fail 
 to be to the strong. It looks as though that 
 nation or that race which is most populous, most 
 prepared, most ruthless, is the nation that shall 
 win and shall possess the earth. 
 
 " The preliminary skirmishes, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, will be not so much in the nature of any 
 battles of giants as of the pitiful destruction of the 
 lower races and of the less effective peoples. There 
 will no longer be space to allow to the Red Indian 
 his ' Reserves.' More and more will the white man 
 thrust the man of colour — no matter what the hue — 
 out of his rights as fellow-man. Gradually will he 
 be shifted altogether from the scene to make way 
 
THE YELLOW PERIL 269 
 
 for the more serious drama in which the best- 
 equipped and strongest nations will compete for 
 final dominance. 
 
 " Some years ago Mr. Pearson startled the West 
 with his theory of the ' Yellow Peril/ enunciated in 
 a book called National Life and Character, It was 
 written before the Russian- Japanese War had 
 revealed the surprising power of the island yellow 
 race. Its point was the menace to the peace and 
 the civilisation of the West which the writer con- 
 ceived would become imminent when China, with 
 her vast population, awoke out of her stagnation, 
 availed herself of the discoveries of Western science 
 and ranged herself for battle according to Western 
 models. It was a forecast which had some vogue 
 in its day. Its essential error was that it took no 
 account of the element of time in its conclusions. 
 It debated human problems as if conditions were 
 to remain unchanged almost indefinitely. It forgot 
 that the moment was fast approaching when the 
 world would be full, when the increasing nations 
 must fight for the very right to live, when it would 
 be too late for China to stir from her long sleep, when 
 all that those newly awakened eyes could perceive 
 would be the conqueror entering into possession 
 and thrusting her out of existence by the power of 
 his better equipment. It is now scarcely conceiv- 
 able that she can stir so quickly and so effectively 
 from that long sleep as to be a dangerous element 
 in the wars for the world's final settlement. 
 
 "It is increasingly likely, as locomotion and 
 communication become ever easier, that the lord- 
 ship of a world thus virtually reduced in its 
 
270 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 dimensions shall fall into the hands of one sole 
 authority. The extent of the Roman Empire, 
 held all under one hand in the days when the 
 Emperor's edict ran no faster than a horse might 
 gallop, is a fact far more surprising — viewed in its 
 right perspective, a fact far bigger — than would 
 world domination by a single Power be even to-day. 
 And still less will such world domination be matter 
 of exceeding difficulty or wonder with the scientific 
 improvements likely to be available for man's use 
 two centuries hence. It seems almost certain that 
 we have to foresee the strongest nation dominating, 
 decimating, finally destroying all those that are 
 weaker, until that nation itself shall eventually 
 replenish the whole habitable surface of the globe. 
 
 " And, once again, thus arriving at the end of 
 yet another chapter of the story, we have to ask 
 ourselves, ' What then ? What are we to find when 
 we once more turn the page ? That the struggle 
 which has so far been for national predominance 
 and possession, has to take on itself a fratricidal 
 character — ^brother fighting brother for a living 
 space upon the earth V It is difficult to see how 
 it can be otherwise. 
 
 " Out of the welter what is to issue forth ? 
 What modus vivendi in the form of a strict regu- 
 lation of the birth-rate to match the death-rate 
 will these world masters contrive so that con- 
 ditions be not altogether intolerable ? These 
 are questions to be asked — for them, not for us, 
 to find the answer ! More than enough for us to 
 realise that before such an extreme of congestion 
 can be reached life, as we to-day envisage and 
 
A WORLD OF TROGLODYTES 271 
 
 enjoy it, will long have ceased to be worth the 
 living. The ' open space/ ' the lungs of the cities/ 
 will have been claimed years before for the inexor- 
 able necessity of growing food or of building 
 dwellings upon them. Either that or man must 
 become again a race of troglodytes, living beneath 
 the earth, in a manner more or less prefigured by 
 the life in the deep prepared trenches separating 
 the battle-lines to-day. Dwelling beneath the earth 
 and growing his f ood-stufi upon its surface, man for 
 a while may cheat the fate with which the world 
 congestion threatens him. It can but delay for a 
 brief while the supreme hour. Save for a cataclysm 
 which shall destroy terrestrial life as fatally as 
 any development of the * Vril ' or the like power of 
 human device, a new man will be able to find place 
 on the earth only on condition of thrusting another 
 off it. That, so far as his life on earth can take him, 
 is the destiny towards which man quite manifestly 
 is moving. Well, indeed, might Huxley say that 
 evolution promises us no millennium. 
 
 " It is a destiny from which two lessons, at least, 
 are no less manifest than the fact itself. 
 
 " The first is a lesson which may point man more 
 emphatically to the recognition that his ultimate 
 destiny, the destiny which really matters, is not an 
 afiair of this earth at all. If this were all, then 
 evolution, far from being on the road towards the 
 millennium, would be an age-long journey to no 
 goal at all, a means towards no end. A few may 
 still, in spite of clear vision of the terrific stress that 
 has to come, believe in the ultimate perfectibility of 
 man upon this earth. They are souls endowed with 
 
272 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 a patience and long-suSerance that are passing 
 marvellous when we consider that Neanderthal 
 man, fifty thousand years ago, was already so far 
 advanced in thought as to hold distinct views of an 
 after-life, and when we consider, beside that curious 
 picture, the long space which seems to separate 
 humanity from perfection to-day. With that 
 comparison in mind, the believer in terrestrial 
 perfectibility must appeal to most of us as a being 
 gifted with an optimism that we can admire, but 
 cannot hope to imitate. 
 
 " That, as it seems to me, is one of the lessons — 
 pointing us a truth which a cloud of other witness 
 presses on us, that the final destiny of man is to be 
 achieved in an environment other than that of 
 the planet of his present pilgrimage. The other is 
 of a more material character, and our readings 
 and acceptance of it will depend on the view that 
 we may happen to take of the conclusion of the 
 terrestrial story. Is the inevitable struggle to be 
 worth the waging ? Does it seem to us better 
 th^t we shall be of the surviving, the dominant, or 
 of the beaten and of the extinguished race ? Is the 
 life that we can see imminent for our posterity to 
 be worth the living, or is it not ? 
 
 *' Acceptance of the latter alternative is by far 
 the easier way ; it is the way of Mary, rather than 
 of Martha, and we know what has been said in 
 that regard. But, in the circumstances, it is also 
 the way of national death. 
 
 " Are we prepared to accept this conclusion, and 
 to welcome it as the lesser evil ? If so, very well. 
 In that case we have no need to put our house in 
 
THE BRITISH WAY 273 
 
 any particular order. We may leave it in the hands 
 of fortune. But if we prefer the former choice, if 
 it be our resolve to take our strenuous part in the 
 struggle, and, God helping us, to play eventually 
 a dominant role, then, on the other hand, it behoves 
 us to look to it very carefully that we are so organ- 
 ised, so prepared, that the day of battle shall find 
 us at all points armed. 
 
 *' I know the first comment will be that it is 
 useless, even fanciful, to look so far ahead. That 
 is a comment most characteristically British. 
 Whatever our virtues, and we believe them many, 
 as a nation, that of long-sightedness, or of even a 
 moderate quality of foresight, is not to be reckoned 
 among them. There is only one nation of modern 
 times that has shown prevision in any conspicuous 
 degree : that is Germany. We commonly say 
 that we cannot understand the madness which 
 incited Germany to declare war at the moment 
 when she chose. As the event is proving, it was 
 not the most auspicious for her particular purpose. 
 But that purpose, which was no less than world 
 domination, was thwarted by one mistake only in 
 her calculation, the mistake of deeming that Great 
 Britain, with Ireland, was too internally distracted 
 to unite against a common foe, and that the tie 
 which bound the Colonies with the Island Mother 
 was not stout enough to stand the strain of war. 
 Had this calculation not been a mistaken one, 
 Germany's immediate objects in the war would 
 have been attained at comparatively little cost. 
 No one who has intelligently followed the course 
 of events in the great struggle can well have any 
 
274 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 illusions in that regard. It is almost as impossible 
 to doubt, seeing the powerful German influence 
 revealed in the South American States, that it was 
 her more ultimate purpose to establish herself as 
 dictator in the United States likewise, challenging 
 that Monroe doctrine which the States were in no 
 condition of naval and military readiness to uphold. 
 Finally, she had but to harness the Balkans and 
 Turkey to the wheels of her war-chariot in order 
 to drive it in triumphal procession around the 
 world. Her Eastern and her Western triumphs 
 would have joined hands. Russia, enclosed within 
 her own vast borders, would have been as inert as 
 the United States. Germany's world dominance 
 would have been complete. 
 
 " This is a grandiose scheme, but, grandiose as it 
 is, they are surely blind to the logic of events and 
 of demonstrated fact who can doubt that it was 
 the scheme quite reasonably considered in the 
 German mind — reasonably, because, save for Great 
 Britain's intervention with her sea power, it would 
 have been even now in full course of realisation. 
 It is, in fact, a huge failure, but it wanted only a 
 little of being a huge success. Now Germany, 
 among all modern nations, is most richly endowed 
 with foresight. For fifty years, as we now know, 
 she has been working with world domination, no 
 less, as her goal. She is also — ^it is a large factor 
 in her successful prevenience — endowed with the 
 statistical talent. It is not to be supposed that 
 her statisticians have failed to work out the simple 
 sum in world acreage, in population and its rate 
 of increase, to its arithmetically certain conclusion 
 
THE FUTURE 275 
 
 of world congestion in or about tlie beginning of 
 the twenty-second century. Neither is it to be 
 supposed that she did not have this conclusion 
 vividly in view when she opened her campaign 
 against the world's peace in the autumn of 1914. 
 Had that campaign gone according to her perfectly 
 reasonable expectation there is no question possible 
 as to the nation that would have conquered in the 
 final Armageddon to settle the mastery of a world 
 crowded to the very crisis of its life-supporting 
 power. In that case there would hardly have been 
 an Armageddon yet to fight. In that case she 
 would have swallowed one day, in a small morsel, 
 Great Britain, after all our present European allies 
 had been reduced to impotence. America, a vast 
 helpless Colossus, would have been bound and 
 fettered in due course, and the Junker would have 
 triumphed as the insufferable tyrant of a stricken 
 earth. 
 
 *' Happily, as becomes increasingly manifest, 
 God in His mercy had other destinies for mankind 
 on this planet. The real Armageddon is perhaps 
 still to fight, and may be set in array before the 
 first hour of that fateful twenty-second century 
 shall strike. Is the idea of looking thus far ahead 
 too fanciful to be entertained seriously, or is it 
 only our national incapacity to see further than 
 the length of its own nose that will condemn such 
 an idea as vain and unpractical ? By ' practical ' 
 we are nationally ready to signify those things only 
 that lie immediately before our eyes, and to deride 
 as ' imaginative ' those which loom in the future. 
 That has been our British way, and it has cost 
 
276 THE REAL ARMAGEDDON 
 
 us very dear. But even the most practical can 
 scarcely criticise as * imaginative ' a future to which 
 those dull things, dear to the practical mind — 
 figures — bear their arithmetical witness, not to be 
 impeached. If no planetary change or convulsion 
 intervenes, if the present rate of increase of popu- 
 lation is at all maintained, it is as clear as facts 
 and figures can make it that the world will be so 
 fulfilled with humanity as to leave no room for 
 further increase in or about 2100. There is nothing 
 imaginative in this forecast. Imagination may 
 indeed begin to exercise itself, and it is very well 
 that it should, on the happenings that are probable 
 as a result of that congestion, and on the means 
 that it behoves us, as a nation, to take in view of 
 its certain imminence. And if the imagination 
 thus exercised does not suggest the probability 
 that these happenings will be terrific and tragic 
 beyond all that has been known in the story of 
 the world before, then, as it seems to me, it must 
 needs be imagination conjoined with a gift of 
 optimism that is greatly to be envied. 
 
 " But in sober truth it is no great way forward 
 to look. Already, without an adequate conception 
 in their minds of the real Armageddon that has to 
 be, people are speaking of the present war that we 
 are waging as ' for the sake of generations that are 
 to come.' A very few of these generations will 
 have come and gone before the stress of this very 
 much more serious struggle is upon the world. 
 ' For what,' we sometimes ask, ' are we fighting 
 now ? ' And we answer readily enough ' For 
 liberty, for the right to live free.' But if we ask 
 
SPACE IN WHICH TO LIVE 277 
 
 for what our children's grandchildren — ^it is not 
 likely to be much further deferred than that — will 
 be fighting in those days to come, the answer that 
 we have to make is obvious : ' For life, for the 
 right to live at all/ It will be no less a necessity 
 than this : they will fight for space to live. 
 
 ** And with a future so immediate and so in- 
 evitable as this spread plain before their eyes we 
 may yet hear people speak with smug complacency 
 of the course of the world after the war, as if 
 humanity's development were to continue on it 
 in precisely the same conditions as in the past 
 when man was fulfilling his destiny of replenishing 
 the earth. They are blind, as it appears, to the 
 obvious, the necessary and the very drastic changes 
 in the circumstances when that part of his fate 
 shall have been fulfilled and when he shall proceed 
 to the next and infinitely shrewder problem of his 
 life in an already fully replenished earth. It is 
 not an amusing prospect. But what would be 
 amusing, were it not pathetic, is the talk of the 
 ' general disarmament ' and of the ' abiding peace,' 
 which are to be among the natural consequences 
 of the satisfactory termination of the war. Such 
 talk is rife, and, pitiful as it seems, there are talkers 
 who believe in what they say. More pathetic 
 still, in days of a not very remote future, will be 
 the fate of our people if they and their rulers allow 
 themselves to be hypnotised by the suggestion of 
 this smooth folly, if they fail to realise the situa- 
 tion towards which humanity is most inevitably 
 working, fail to prepare for the dire clash that is 
 assuredly bound to come." 
 19 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A BOMB-SHELL 
 
 " It's an awful suggestion — a fearsome prospect," 
 said Davis, as Launceston wound up his address. 
 I suppose tliat just about expressed what all of 
 us thought — ' a fearsome prospect/ "" But it will 
 never happen," Davis continued, "never. I be- 
 lieve better of the Power that has the guidance 
 of the world than to think it. Never ! " 
 
 " Now there," Launceston exclaimed irritably. 
 '' Isn't that just of a piece with all the silly optimism 
 that believes nothing is going to happen which is 
 unpleasant ? Isn't it just like the silly optimism 
 of people before Germany plunged us into war — ' A 
 European war ! Oh, it's such a dreadful thing, 
 it'll never be allowed to happen ! We must 
 think better of the Power that has the world in 
 hand!'" 
 
 Davis had no counter ready. Launceston touched 
 him on a tender spot here, for he was one of those 
 who had emphatically voiced the pleasant illusion 
 that no calamity so dreadful as the Great War 
 would be permitted. With the skill of a young 
 parliamentary hand he changed ground. "Are 
 you meaning to tell us," he asked, " that it's no 
 value to a nation to have a large population ? That 
 would seem a natural inference from your position. 
 
 278 
 
THE VALUE OF IVIEN 279 
 
 Yet look at our present position : what is it that 
 our generals in France are crying for ? Men — men 
 — men ? " 
 
 Launceston countered with another question. 
 " Have I not heard you say this was to be the last 
 of wars, that the era of democracy which it is to 
 introduce is to be an era of world peace ? Isn't 
 that your view 1 " 
 
 *' Certainly it is my hope, and — yes — I think I 
 may say that it is my view/' 
 
 " Let us take your view then, as our basis for 
 argument. What is it that makes men of value 
 now ? — ^war. Men are valuable as fighting material, 
 just as guns and munitions are valuable. But men 
 in the days of the world peace which you tell is to 
 come will not be of value, any more than the guns 
 and munitions. Of far less value indeed, and much 
 more readily to be spared, because a man eats and 
 a gun does not. In a world at peace and rapidly 
 approaching the congestion point the room of a 
 man will be of far more value than a man.*' 
 
 " The food resources of the sea which are almost 
 unlimited have hardly been touched yet,'' Davis 
 replied. 
 
 " Oh-ho. I have hunted you off the firm land, 
 have I ? Well, I will grant you there is much more 
 harvest to be reaped out of the sea yet. Still, 
 ' unlimited ' is no word for it. There are wide 
 tracts of the sea where there is no life, both surface 
 and depth tracts." 
 
 " But, bless my soul, my dear fellow," Foljambe 
 sputtered in, "I never heard such a pack of non- 
 sense in the whole course of my life. You don't 
 
280 A BOMB-SHELL 
 
 need to go to sea to look for your tracts. You 
 haven't made allowance for the immense tracts of 
 land that are now uninhabited, or with only a very 
 small population — South America, Africa, Australia, 
 Siberia, Canada. Why, I don't believe that at the 
 present moment the world's half populated — not 
 half." 
 
 The welcoming smile with which Launceston 
 greeted this intervention might have given Fol- 
 jambe suspiciously to think. A look of outraged 
 surprise took the place of the smile as he replied : 
 ' What ? Do you mean to tell me that you really 
 think there is actually half the available space of 
 the world still unoccupied — really half ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do," he said, " yes " — defiantly, as one 
 who braces himself to a great and most daring 
 expression of opinion. " I really do believe that 
 there is still half the world available for man to 
 live in." 
 
 " And that would mean, then, that there is still 
 room in the world for double the number of people 
 that are alive on it at present % " 
 
 " I am ready to assert that, too — that in all 
 probability there is room in the world for double 
 the number of people that are in it now." 
 
 He thrust out his under- jaw, bull-dog fashion, 
 and looked at Launceston to see how he would 
 stand such an audacious avowal as that. 
 
 ** Areyoureally ? " Launceston answered. " And 
 all the argument that you have just been hearing 
 aimed at showing you that if there were room for 
 no more than double the people that are in the 
 world now, the world would be full up to the limit 
 
THE OPEN SPACES 281 
 
 of its capacity for supporting human life not in 
 two hundred but in one hundred years. Popula- 
 tion at the present rate of increase doubles in one 
 hundred years. It increases fourfold in two hun- 
 dred. The whole argument is based on the assump- 
 tion that the world is capable of accommodating 
 not twice its present population, but four times."' 
 
 A sputtering attack of unusual virulence was 
 Foljambe's only answer. It was Launceston who 
 again took up the parable : 
 
 '* I am not claiming/' he said, " that very large 
 spaces are not still open for humanity — very large 
 opportunities both by land or sea. All I say is 
 that they are limited, strictly limited, whereas the 
 increase of humanity is — so far as we see — not 
 limited. Mark you — you who are no arithmeticians 
 and do not grasp the law of geometrical progression 
 — at the present rate of increase population doubles 
 in one hundred years. That means that in the 
 next hundred years it will have increased by 
 1,500,000,000, making 3,000,000,000 in all. That 
 is not much, you will say — there is space and food 
 for them. But take the next hundred years. The 
 increase, presuming it continues at the same rate, 
 in that century, will be not 1,500,000,000, but 
 3,000,000,000, or a total of 6,000,000,000. Will 
 there be room for them ? — Perhaps. Possibly. I 
 think not. But even if there be, let us take, if you 
 please, another hundred years — even so we come 
 to only three hundred years forward — and at the 
 end of that third doubling we find the number of 
 humanity grown to no less than 12,000,000,000 — 
 a number which no human being in his senses can 
 
282 A BOMB-SHELL 
 
 suppose for a moment would find sustenance on 
 the earth." 
 
 There was no further discussion. The conditions 
 gave little of the calm that favours philosophical 
 debate. We had carried on, with much gallantry, 
 before, on air-raid nights, striving to emulate the 
 famed detachment of Archimedes, but this night 
 of the nights the bangs and rattling sounded nearer 
 and more incessant than ever before. The meeting 
 broke up. Still, few of the members cared to risk 
 the journey to their homes. A roof did not give 
 effective security, but it was better than the open 
 heaven at such times. Launceston, whose rooms, 
 as I think I have said, were just across the street, 
 made a bolt for them. Sir James Macadam, who 
 had his bedroom in the Club, climbed up the 
 private stairway leading to it with the avowed 
 intention of putting his head under the clothes as 
 soon as possible. The rest of us talked together, 
 starting uncomfortably at each report, and feigning 
 to hear nothing and to be not in the least per- 
 turbed. 
 
 In the midst of this game of pretences, which 
 deceived nobody, came a crash that was perhaps 
 not louder than many which we had heard that 
 night. Yet we all stared, or so it seemed to me, 
 into each other's faces as if with a knowledge that 
 something difierent from the happenings indicated 
 by the other noises had happened now. The report 
 was not extraordinarily loud, but it came with an 
 accompaniment of crash and rattle which distin- 
 guished it. The whole house shook as if a huge 
 Cyclops had given it a fist blow. In an instant we 
 
THE FIRE-BOMB 283 
 
 were aware of an appeal to another sense : rather 
 a sweet sickly smell came to our noses. 
 
 We were in the large room that gave on the hall, 
 and at once someone opened the door and we hustled 
 each other out. The hall floor was a mass of roof 
 and ceiling wreckage. On the side farthest from 
 the front door a sheet of smoke licked by quick 
 tongues of flame already went up to the ceiling. 
 One is stupid, I suppose, at such crises, for I did not 
 realise what it all meant till someone exclaimed, 
 ' Fire-bomb," and then it was obvious. The bomb 
 had come through the roof and buried itself in the 
 floor near the bottom of the stairway leading to 
 Macadam's rooms. 
 
 How things happened then I hardly know. 
 Someone telephoned to the fire-station. Someone 
 else went out to the fire-call place. Others organised 
 a chain for passing water from the next house and 
 throwing the contents at the flames. But they 
 seemed to surge the more, with denser smoke, at 
 each bucket discharge. 
 
 And then someone shouted, " Macadam ! Mac- 
 adam's up there ! Hell be burnt to death.'' 
 
 A dozen or more of us shouted *' Macadam ! " 
 and " Fire " at our loudest, but the tinder-dry wood 
 of the old house went crackling and the flames began 
 to make a roar, and not a sound of response came. 
 The staircase was by now impossible even to reach, 
 far less to ascend, for the flame and smoke. 
 
 At that instant Launceston came in by the front 
 door. He took in the position at once. " What ! " 
 he exclaimed, at his shrillest. '' Is that poor old 
 fellow up there and you're all doing nothing ? " 
 
284 A BOMB-SHELL 
 
 Before one had time to answer lie was gone. In 
 another minute he was back again with gas-mask 
 on and in his hand a coil of rope. He dashed in, 
 thrusting us aside. Someone called " Stop him ! " 
 but before a hand could be stretched out he was 
 through us, through into the midst of the volleying 
 smoke, the tongues of flame, on the staircase. 
 There was a glimpse of him, as he got the door at 
 the stairhead open and the smoke pillar bent its 
 head as if to follow him in. I suppose there was a 
 draught through the opened door. 
 
 There followed some moments of awful strain. 
 Then some sort of commotion, change in the draught 
 again or something, happened at the stairhead. 
 An object came banging down the stairs. It was 
 the end of the rope-coil fastened about a heavy 
 book. Then Launceston's high voice, like a scream : 
 " Pull, pull— pull like hell.^' 
 
 It seemed more like hell than anything earthly 
 as we tugged — eyes stinging with smoke and 
 throats choking — at some dead weight which gave 
 to the tug and presently with a bump, bump, bump, 
 was descending the stairs. Next we pulled the 
 bundle through smoke and splintered wood and 
 plaster fragments to the front door, and hardly 
 even at that tragic moment could one help 
 laughing at the spectacle — an immense roll of 
 heavily smoked bedclothes, coiled about by the 
 rope, and within it, as we hurriedly undid it, 
 like a vast grizzled baby, lay old Macadam, 
 scarcely conscious, but breathing — breathing very 
 hard indeed, as well he might, between smoke 
 and blankets. 
 
THE RESCUE 285 
 
 Pershore was at him directly. " He'll be all 
 right/' he said. " But Launceston ? '' 
 
 Launceston had not reappeared. We tried ques- 
 tioning Sir James, but the old man was still dazed. 
 The one obvious thing was that Launceston had 
 not come down. By this time the stairway was 
 plainly impossible — a mass of smoke and flame. 
 At any moment it might collapse. Several together 
 shouted Launceston's name and we listened intently 
 for his thin notes to pierce that roar and the crackle. 
 But since that last " Pull like hell " we heard 
 nothing. 
 
 A voice at the door exclaimed, " Good God, what 
 a scene ! Anyone hurt ? " It was Davis who 
 had just started for home when the bomb fell. 
 
 "Launceston,'' someone answered. '"In Mac- 
 adam's room. He must be dead by this time." 
 
 From behind Davis, as he stood peering in, came 
 a quiet voice in a high pitch : " Sorry to disappoint 
 — not yet." 
 
 " Launceston ! " " Launceston ! " one exclaimed 
 and then another. 
 
 ** By all that's wonderful, how did you get here ? " 
 Pershore asked. 
 
 " By nothing more wonderful than a fire-escape. 
 They've got an engine in the back street. Look 
 out ! " 
 
 The first activities of 'the engine inspired his 
 warning. A jet of water directed by some sala- 
 mander at Macadam's window drenched and nearly 
 felled those standing farthest in the hall. 
 
 " Bring him over to my rooms, some of you," 
 Jjaunceston said, pointing to Macadam, still half 
 
 .^/ 
 
286 A BOMB-SHELL 
 
 buried in his blankets ; and at the moment that 
 we carried him out another fire-engine dashed up 
 the front street and prepared to direct its energies 
 through the door. Working from back and front 
 together they got the mastery of the flames. 
 
 Meanwhile we had laid Macadam, still, by Per- 
 shore's counsel, keeping him prostrate, on the 
 floor of Launceston's dining-room. He was 
 regaining his wits. 
 
 '' Launceston, my dear fellow," he said feebly, 
 reaching out a hand to him. "You saved my 
 life." 
 
 " A thoughtless impulse," Launceston answered 
 carelessly. " I expect I often shall regret it." But 
 the lines of his gaunt face softened in a very kindly 
 smile as he laid his hand on the outstretched one. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 The damage done by the bomb was curiously small 
 in area, but curiously complete within its area. 
 The stairway, to Macadam's rooms was entirely 
 destroyed, and there was a hole, not large, in the 
 roof and the top floor, but very little injury else- 
 where except broken windows. Had it been an 
 explosive bomb and not a fire-bomb no doubt there 
 would have been another tale to tell — and another 
 teller, for I suppose it would have killed us all. 
 As it was, the hole in the roof was patched in a 
 wonderfully short time ; the broken panes remained 
 unmended for a wonderfully long time, because of 
 the scarcity of glass. But most of the Club was 
 very soon habitable, under electric light, for of 
 course the boarded-up windows let in no daylight. 
 Our big room was quite intact, and on the Thurs- 
 day fortnight after the bombing Launceston was 
 once again and, as he announced, for the last time, 
 opening a debate for us exactly as if no missile from 
 the Huns' aeroplane had come amongst us. 
 
 Very different was his greeting now from the 
 coldness of his welcome a fortnight before when the 
 members were righteously bitter about his insult 
 to Sir James Macadam. The position in respect of 
 that insult was not verbally altered, but a single 
 
 287 
 
288 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 deed had changed it as no number of words possibly 
 could. Macadam was still temporarily lodging 
 under Launceston's roof, not at all the worse for his 
 smoking. 
 
 When Launceston got up to deliver his address a 
 storm of applause welcomed him. Such a greeting 
 had never been in the history of our very decorous 
 assemblies. He had appeared perfectly indifferent 
 to the unconcealed coldness of his last reception, 
 but even his aloofness was not proof against this 
 demonstration. Those near him said that there 
 were tears in his eyes. I did not see this, but 
 I know that his voice was very shaky and 
 that he could hardly make his first sentences 
 audible. 
 
 *' He did not propose, he told us, to suggest any 
 new topic, but to review and summarise the 
 substance of some of his former papers. "' You 
 have listened to me," he said, '' with great long- 
 sufferance, and I faithfully promise that when I 
 have inflicted one final discourse upon you to-night, 
 I will, so far as any opening addresses are con- 
 cerned, for ever after hold my peace. 
 
 " In some previous remarks I suggested a con- 
 siderable revision of the commonly received views 
 on three details of the story of evolution on this 
 planet, and then I endeavoured to show reason to 
 think that the drama had not been left to work itself 
 out, to its present state of imperfect development, 
 without guidance and redirection by its Creator, 
 but that a recreating hand had, at more or less 
 definite moments, made an alteration in the piece, 
 by introducing a new force. The latest force I 
 
THE KEY OF THE ENIGMA 289 
 
 suggested to be spirituality, in the sense of felt 
 communion by man with God. 
 
 " I even ventured the conjecture that in this 
 communion, considered in the light which evolution 
 throws upon it, we may find the key to the enigma 
 of God's purpose in terrestrial creation and to those 
 problems of moral evil and of pain which have 
 clamoured for solution ever since man began to 
 regard himself self-consciously. 
 
 '* Granted that the world, with man as its most 
 finished product, was to be made by way of evolu- 
 tion it seemed explicable, intelligible, perhaps 
 inevitable, that both pain and moral evil should 
 have place in it. There remained still that 
 which I then called the question of questions : 
 * Why evolution ? Why did it please the Maker 
 to make man by this long, sinful, and painful 
 process ? ' 
 
 " Evolution, as it seemed, could give reason for 
 everything except itself ; could solve all puzzles 
 except its own. 
 
 * * But it also app ears possible that in the evolution 
 of human spirituality we have the key to this last 
 puzzle, this question of questions, also. 
 
 " I will ask you at least to consider if it may not 
 be so ; if on this hypothesis the whole universe do 
 not hang together ; if it do not here find a meaning, 
 a motive, an end and also a beginning ? For I 
 would have you note this, that, though I have 
 spoken of this * Why evolution ? ' as the question 
 of questions, there is really one, more ultimate still, 
 which lies behind it : ' Why creation ? ' Not only 
 why was man made just in this way, by this long 
 
290 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 process, but also, and more ultimately, why was 
 he made at all ? 
 
 *' It will appear that I am taking it for granted 
 that it was for the sake of the making of man that 
 the whole terrestrial scheme, and probably much of 
 the extra-terrestrial also, was put on the stocks. 
 It is a large assumption, some will say, but I believe 
 it impossible, for us, to accept any other. 
 
 " But I am disposed to assume very much more 
 than this — byway of an hypothesis only, if you will, 
 but of a working hypothesis, and, in my opinion, 
 the only hypothesis which will work — namely, that 
 the Creator made the whole of what we may call 
 the terrestrial universe with the single purpose of 
 producing a being worthy of this gift of spirituality, 
 worthy for Him to hold converse with, a being 
 whom His infinite mind may have relations with, 
 relations as yet very little realised by man living 
 here on the earth, but relations that man after his 
 terrestrial death may hope to find far more vivid 
 and more direct, and relations which, even on the 
 earth, men who come after us may be able to make 
 far more strong, close and clear as the education and 
 practice of their spirituality progresses. Just as it 
 was first with sensitivity, then with intellect ; so 
 too, as I believe, will it be with spirituality. 
 
 ** Remains still, however, that which I called 
 the question of questions. Why was it by way of 
 evolution that the Maker chose to make the being 
 that was to be given the privilege of communion, 
 mind to mind, with Him ? 
 
 ** I will ask another question : Can we conceive 
 that a creature made originally and at a single 
 
THE VALUE OF THE STRUGGLE 291 
 
 stroke, perfect, could have as much value, could be 
 as fine a product, judged by any standard which we, 
 reasonable human beings, are able to apply, as a 
 creature which has risen to a certain, perhaps very 
 moderate height by its own exertion, by its own 
 struggles against the lower impulse and by the 
 effort to obey the higher ? I think we can only 
 answer that question in one way. We are obliged 
 to ascribe more dignity, more worth to the one that 
 has striven. And, judging thus, from our human 
 point of view, we have to assume a like judgment on 
 part of the Maker ; for, as I have urged before, it is 
 no reproach to say that our God is anthropopsychic. 
 We are compelled to ascribe to Him the qualities, 
 raised to an infinite degree, which we regard from 
 the human standpoint as the highest for us. If we 
 do not conceive of Him as in some sort anthropo- 
 psychic, we deny Him psyche altogether. We are 
 compelled to think of His qualities in human terms 
 simply because we know and can conceive none 
 higher. 
 
 *' We are to conclude therefore that the Creator 
 also must set the greater value on the creature that 
 has striven to rise, and, striving, has risen, than to 
 one raised to the pinnacle at the first. 
 
 * * From this point we entirely turn the flank of that 
 most difficult fortress to take by any frontal assault, 
 the conception of God's omnipotence as related to 
 man's freedom — freedom to do wrong as well as 
 freedom to do right. And at the same time we also 
 outflank that other fortress, scarcely less impreg- 
 nable to any other argument, the reconciliation of 
 the existence of moral evil with a scheme estab- 
 
292 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 lished by a God whom we acknowledge to be good. 
 Unless God so limited the operation of His omni- 
 potence as to allow this freedom to man, man 
 could not be the creature struggling to rise. He 
 would be the child tied to his nurse's apron-strings, 
 not the responsible being. Man without freedom 
 would not be man. Man without freedom to do 
 evil could hardly be called good. Liability to do 
 evil is really a condition of goodness in any human 
 sense. 
 
 " So here we have the answer to the question of 
 questions. It is the answer, at all events, which 
 satisfies me. We may put it thus : by way of 
 evolution, which is the way of pain and the way 
 of moral evil, God made man in order that by the 
 creature's strivings the creature might become 
 worthy of spiritual communion with the Creator, 
 a communion at first feeble and stammering but 
 surely to be strengthened and made clear, far 
 beyond all present imaginings, even in this life, and 
 to find its fulfilment only when the terrestrial body 
 has been put off in exchange for that which St. 
 Paul speaks of as celestial. 
 
 " It may surprise you, as it certainly did me, 
 but the conception that the death of the terrestrial 
 body entered into the world through sin is one 
 which some of the modern spokesmen of the Church 
 have not by any means abandoned. Dr. Hall, in 
 his Paddock Lectures, 1909 and 1910, affirms a 
 conviction, and genuinely believes himself to have 
 brought forward argument to support it, that 
 * man's original state was one of supernatural grace, 
 in which he was enabled wholly to avoid sin and 
 
THE VALUE OF DEATH 293 
 
 to escape the physical death to which he was 
 naturally liable/ 
 
 " Dr. Hall, it seems, can contemplate with satis- 
 faction the unending life of man in such conditions 
 as those described in the first chapters of Genesis 
 as prevailing in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. 
 Certainly if man were to be eternally happy in 
 circumstances of the unvarying monotony there 
 pictured for us, he would need to be a creature of 
 disposition so entirely different from man as we 
 know him that it would be better to find for him 
 some other name. 
 
 " There is an eloquent passage in Dr. Fairbairn's 
 Philosophy of the Christian Religion which draws a 
 striking contrast between the conception of a being 
 made, by a wave of the Creator's magic wand, 
 perfect, sinless, deathless, and man struggling up 
 through countless deaths, generations, and failures 
 towards a high destiny. ' Death,' he writes, ' has 
 thus added to the pomp and the fruitfulness, to 
 the glory and grandeur of life. Without it we 
 should have no struggle of will against destiny, of 
 the thought which wanders through eternity and 
 beats itself into strength and hope against the bars 
 and the barriers of time ; without it man would 
 have had no sense of his kinship with the Infinite, 
 for the finite would have been enough for him. 
 And if a soul made for eternity were to be withered 
 by time, would not that, in another and darker 
 sense than attends the end of immortal being, be 
 the death of all that is worthiest to live ? And 
 has not time, by her successive generations, been 
 enriched, enlarged, made varied and wealthy as 
 20 
 
294 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 she never could have been by a race of immortal 
 Adams, unchanged and deathless ? It is a poor 
 and a pitiful dream to imagine that it was a happier 
 than a mortal state were man to know no death, 
 but to endure in characterless innocency, un- 
 touched by the shadow feared of man, never feeling 
 the light within made resplendent by the darkness 
 death shed without. Instead of a single generation 
 we have a multitude of successive generations, each 
 fuller of humanity than the one which went before. 
 Instead of one individual we have an endless series 
 of mortal persons on the way to immortality, each 
 a miniature deity, each in time yet destined for 
 eternity, each with inexhaustible potentialities 
 within him, each realising himself under the con- 
 ditions which a measured existence affords, and all 
 contributing to make the wondrous and varied life 
 which we call the history of man. Who will 
 venture to say that the dream of an innocent Eden, 
 a single paradise of immortals, is comparable to , 
 this majestic procession of mortals moving on to 
 the music of a celestial Dead March through time 
 towards immortality ? ' ^ 
 
 " The passage is even a little too eloquent, but 
 it has some fine things in it. In the crudest way 
 we suffer rebuke frequently for our foolish concep- 
 tion of the relation between death and life even in 
 creatures below man. We kill a rabbit, let us say, 
 and leave it to lie, ungathered. Within three days 
 we come upon it and, behold, its putrescence is a 
 mass of living bodies ! Killing one creature, we 
 
 1 The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, A. M. Fairbaim, 
 D.D., LL.D„ 3rd edition, 1903, pp. 143-4. 
 
LIFE'S GREATEST ADVENTURE 295 
 
 seem to have created the conditions of life for a 
 myriad. Thus are we mocked and rebuked, even 
 by the unspiritual ; and when we come to man, 
 who is a spirit, the rebuke and the mock are beyond 
 all human measure louder and more emphatic. 
 Death, for man, is not the end of life, as we absurdly 
 look upon it : it is lifers greatest adventure. 
 
 " I have spoken, on former Thursdays, of what 
 seem to me the false perspectives which man is apt 
 to take of several of the details of the universe and 
 of his own story and prospects; but of all his 
 popular perspectives none, I think, is quite so false 
 as that in which he generally regards the relations 
 of life and death. It is in his common speech that 
 we most readily detect him in his error. He sets 
 the two terms over against each other, as though 
 they were two natural opposites ; he may even be 
 surprised that anyone should take the trouble, as 
 I do now, to go out of my way to tell him that 
 these two words do not, in any human sense, stand 
 as symbols for opposite ideas. He will regard such 
 a statement as absurd, and will persist that of 
 course they are natural opposites and contrasts. 
 His conception is that life has been given him only 
 on the condition that it shall terminate in death : 
 that death comes in as some terrible, yet inevitable 
 catastrophe, after which he shall enter upon some 
 existence tremendously new and strange — that is, 
 of course, supposing him to be a believer in a life 
 of the human soul after death. The gulf of death 
 he must presume as vast. He envisages an end of 
 life and a rebeginning. 
 
 *' That is the popular view. The view which I, 
 
296 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 rather, believe to be correct is that we are indeed 
 given the gift of life, but that this gift, once 
 bestowed, is never to be taken away if we do but 
 use it wisely. It is not that immortality is to 
 begin on the other side of that great gulf of death : 
 there is really no gulf ; the gift has been given 
 now, once for all. It is not to be taken away. We 
 have it here and now, and we may have it there 
 and then, death making no break in the life of the 
 personality, but merely a change in the conditions, 
 in the environment, in the mechanism by which 
 the personality, the spirit, will continue its work. 
 
 ** As Professor Boyce says of our terrestrial life : 
 ' The purpose that can be fulfilled by the ending of 
 such a life is necessarily a purpose that, in the 
 eternal world, is consciously known and seen as 
 continuous with, yes, as inclusive of, the very pur- 
 pose whose fulfilment the temporal death seems to 
 cut short. . . . The possibility of death depends 
 upon the transcending of death through a life that 
 is richer and more conscious than is the life which 
 death cuts short, and the richer life in question is, 
 in meaning, if not in temporal sequence, continuous 
 with the very life that death interrupts." ^ 
 
 " But this gift, this opportunity, is bestowed 
 conditionally only. It is freely offered, but our 
 role in receiving it is more than merely passive. 
 A certain passivity, in the sense of banishing the 
 preoccupation with things of sense and of intellect, 
 appears, by common witness of all the saints, an 
 essential condition to reception of the spiritual 
 message, and a firm effort of will is needed to effect 
 
 1 The World and the Individualy 2nd series, p. 440. 
 
THE DEATH OF THE SOUL 297 
 
 tliis banisliment of worldly care and this quiescence 
 of spirit. Moreover, the psychic guidance is rather 
 ' a direction than a conclusion/ as Eucken has it. 
 The * eye ' of reason is still needed, for its critical 
 work, and our will and attention are to be bent to 
 guide us in the altruistic rather than the egoistic 
 path. As Professor Koyce says : ' You are a Self ' 
 (a term which he uses as equivalent to ' the possessor 
 of a soul ') ' precisely in so far as you intend to 
 accomplish God's will by becoming one ; and you 
 are an individual precisely in so far as you purpose 
 to do your Father's business in unique fashion, so 
 that in this instant shall begin a work that can be 
 finished only in eternity.' 
 
 " He can say this, though he can also write that 
 ' a frank admission of the natural origin of Self, 
 and a study of its relations to the physical world, 
 in no sense involves an abandonment of the idealistic 
 point of view.' 
 
 *' Not only has the soul to realise itself and 
 receive the spiritual communion once for all : it 
 has continually to renew, never to lose, that mes- 
 sage. Let us be under no mistake in this. All 
 evidence, all intimations point to an alternative of 
 possibilities for the soul — of mortality or of immor- 
 tality — even after its achievement of psychic life. 
 It is surely this that is meant by the ' death of the 
 soul ' of Christian writers, which is the result of 
 that ' sin against the Holy Ghost ' — the shutting 
 of the psychic channels against the spiritual influ- 
 ence. It is that ' destitution of the spiritual life ' 
 of which Eucken tells. From every school of 
 thought, except the materialistic, quotation might 
 
298 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 be made of reference in one or other phrase to this 
 spiritual death, and all alike regard it as the worst 
 that can befall man, his real death, bringing him 
 again to that level of the brute from which it has 
 been the work of a million years to lift him. 
 
 " And now a very wonderful, but, as I think, 
 very certain fact has to be noted, namely, that once 
 the initial impulse to egoism is conquered and man 
 gives himself freely to the service of his neighbours, 
 experience proves that he receives a higher measure 
 of happiness, even in this life on earth, than is 
 ever the portion of those who seek purely selfish 
 ends. There is no cant or affectation in such an 
 assertion. It is a truth which any man may prove 
 for himself by putting it to the test, or may con- 
 vince himself objectively (if that is the way which 
 he prefers) by taking stock of his acquaintance. 
 It will be very strange if he is not driven to the 
 conclusion that the happiest among them are those 
 who are giving themselves most unreservedly to 
 the service of others, and the most miserable those 
 who are most self-engrossed. It is a conclusion 
 which may lead us to suspect that if we had any 
 means of gauging the comparative happiness of 
 gregarious animals lower than man in development 
 we should find that with them, too, the happiest 
 was the one that obeyed the herd instinct most 
 completely and gave least heed to the self -regarding 
 instinct. 
 
 " Of course, if reason could be convinced of this, 
 and could accept it as a premiss, she would then have 
 a perfectly good basis on which to furnish altruistic 
 motives. It is, however, a truth of which reason 
 
THE CHANGE IN ETHICAL VALUES 299 
 
 declines to take account. She cannot logically 
 demonstrate it ; and it is seldom or never tliat she 
 thinks of dealing with it as any part of her stock- 
 in-trade. 
 
 ** Apart from the specially Christian lesson, the 
 religious sense common to all Theism seems to tell 
 us, inter alia, that a really enlightened egoism 
 forbids us to act as if this life were all — that our 
 real personal advantage lies in altruism — and thus, 
 in the end, abolishes the distinction between altru- 
 ism and egoism. When we look at life in the other 
 world as but a prolongation of our terrestrial life the 
 apparent discords are seen to blend into harmony. 
 Mr. Balfour, as I venture to think, is less con- 
 vincing in his Theism and Humanism respecting the 
 relations between egoism and altruism than on 
 most of the aspects of the immense question which 
 he touches with his illuminating thought. On 
 page 108 he tells us : * Evidently there has been 
 a profound moral transformation in the course 
 of ages. None suppose that ethical values are 
 appraised in the twentieth century as they were 
 in the first Stone Age. But what has caused the 
 change is not so clear. ^ 
 
 ** It may be admitted that it is not absolutely 
 * clear ' ; but Mr. Balfour is arguing against the 
 theory that selection is able to give a sufficient 
 account of it. It is my own personal conviction, 
 as it is also Mr. Balfour's, that altruism has been 
 reinforced by other forces than those which the 
 law of the survival of the fittest implies, but none 
 the less Mr. Balfour's argument does not strike 
 me as effectively overthrowing the position of 
 
300 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 those who may contend that this law does give a 
 perfectly good account of its beginnings. The tribe 
 whose members would sacrifice themselves for 
 the common good would surely have an advantage 
 over tribes in which each fought solely for his own 
 hand. It is perfectly true, as Mr. Balfour says 
 (p. 115), that ' Altruism is not based on egoism; it 
 is not egoism in disguise ' ; but when he proceeds 
 ' the ends to which it points are ends in themselves ; 
 and their value is quite independent of argument, 
 neither capable of proof nor requiring it ' — ^we then 
 may again admit the truth of his contention (I, at 
 least, would cordially endorse it) that altruism 
 issues in ends that have a value independent of 
 argument ; but still, if a man choose to take the 
 other view and to maintain that the value of the 
 beginnings of altruism is perfectly capable of proof, 
 I do not see how we are able to convict his argu- 
 ment of error. Altruism is, truly, not ' based 
 on egoism,' but it would be a great mistake to 
 doubt that altruism Issues in egoistic satisfac- 
 tions. 
 
 '" Elsewhere (p. 126) he writes : ' In so far as we 
 do not injure lest we should ourselves be injured, 
 in so far as we benefit that we may be benefited our- 
 selves — just in that proportion we treat altruistic 
 actions merely as the means of attaining egoistic 
 ends. The two competitors are not reconciled, but 
 a working arrangement is reached under which 
 the conduct appropriate to the higher ideal is 
 pursued from motives characteristic of the lower. 
 Is any truer reconciliation possible ? Scarcely, as 
 I think, without religion. I do not suggest that 
 
MR. A. J. BALFOUR'S VIEW 301 
 
 any religious theory gets rid of ethical anomalies, 
 or theoretically lightens by a feather-weight the 
 heavy problem of evil. But I do suggest that in 
 the love of Good by the individual soul, the collision 
 of ends for that soul loses all its harshness, and har- 
 mony is produced by raising, not lowering, the 
 ethical ideal." 
 
 " We may be in perfect agreement with all this, 
 and yet may remember that in our discussion of 
 Conscience we seemed to see the gregarious animal, 
 even of a lower type than the earliest man, finding 
 a satisfaction in obedience to the altruistic motive 
 supplied by the ' herd instinct,' and therewith a 
 certain reconciliation (to be immensely reinforced 
 by spiritual aid at a later stage) of the egoistic 
 and altruistic motives. 
 
 ** The very final sentence of this same lecture, 
 * Ethics and Theism," indicates very clearly the 
 cardinal point of Mr. Balfour's view : ' Ethics 
 must have its root in the divine ; and in the 
 divine it must find its consummation." In a 
 certain sense we have to deem it true that ethics, 
 like all the rest of creation, material, psychic, or 
 whatever it be, has ' its roots in the divine " — ^is 
 divinely created ; but this is scarcely the lecturer's 
 sense here. His meaning would seem to be that we 
 cannot perceive a root, a source, for ethics in man's 
 terrestrial conditions considered socially and bio- 
 logically. But surely that is just where it does 
 seem possible to find its roots, though for the per- 
 fection of its growth it is a plant which truly enough 
 needs the rays of the divine sun. With the last 
 clause that * in the divine it must find its consum- 
 
302 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 mation ' we might think that there could be no 
 possible disagreement. 
 
 '' And now I wish, by way of conclusion of the 
 whole matter, to say a word about the only justifi- 
 cation that we are able, without self-deception, or 
 mere vague repetition of cant and not quite honest 
 terms, to give to ourselves for speaking of that 
 love of God which is preached to us, and which, I 
 am thankful to say, we really may find a warm and 
 distinct feeling in our hearts. Surely, as I think, 
 we deceive ourselves if we imagine that reason 
 reveals to us a God of Love as it considers this 
 warring world ; and still less is it able to give us 
 account of that human love with which we make our 
 response. There is more in it than this. Love or 
 affection is not conceivable towards a Being or a 
 Principle, or whatever we like to call it, which we 
 have not seen or heard or realised by any of the 
 ordinary means known to man, except on the sup- 
 position that He makes His influence felt by some 
 means other than these ordinarily recognised ones, 
 so that we do become aware of His presence, of His 
 nearness, of His actual coming into our innermost 
 being. 
 
 " There is no use, as I think, in our blinking the 
 fact that the historical evidence and the witness 
 of the world about us are not sufficient to excite in us 
 any feeling approaching love to the Creator of it 
 all. We had as soon He had left it alone. We 
 have conviction that He might have made it much 
 better than it is. Either so, or else He is not able 
 to make it better — which is yet more unthinkable, 
 seeing how much He has been able to do. We have 
 
GOD'S INCOMING 303 
 
 to believe that it has seemed good to Him, in a 
 wisdom which we cannot pretend to fathom, to 
 leave us in the present state of little happiness for 
 some hidden end. We think that we can see reason 
 for it in the design of training us by moral effort and 
 by suffering to become something better than we 
 could conceivably become without that experience. 
 That is as much as we are able to say by way of 
 justifying and explaining His dealings with His 
 creatures. But this, our best hope and highest 
 faith, is scarcely sufficient to excite in us a sense of 
 gratitude. We need something more immediate, 
 more near, more warm. 
 
 " And this something we have, in full measure, 
 if, and if only, we are able to be aware that God 
 is in some way making His influence. His own being, 
 penetrate into ours. Believe me, without this 
 feeling, this awareness, all talk of our love of God is 
 arid, it is meaningless. If we have this awareness 
 we cannot fail to feel love for, to feel drawn towards, 
 to recognise that we are comforted and stimulated 
 by, the Source of this influence poured into us. We 
 are certain then that all is well with us, because God 
 is with us, and has not left us, once He has created 
 us, to run our course unaided. We are then able 
 in a true sense to say that we love Him — then, and 
 only then. 
 
 " Surely it is the whole root of the matter, this 
 awareness of God's incoming into our souls ! Surely 
 it is this that should be preached from all pulpits 
 and taught in all schools and in every home. Surely 
 it is the true gospel ! And surely it is the very 
 gospel which Christ brought and taught, and was 
 
 A 
 
304 THE SUMMING-UP 
 
 never tired of teaching in many a passage and in 
 many a proverb and in the example of His whole 
 life on earth. * The Kingdom of Heaven is within 
 you/ It is there if you will but realise it and open 
 your soul to its reception. The reception is not 
 difficult. You have but to expect it, to ask for it. 
 God is very willing, He is ever seeking, to impart 
 Himself to His creatures. This is the message that 
 all spiritual pastors and masters ought to carry 
 to their people, and this is, or should be, the j&rst 
 purpose of prayer. * Thy kingdom come.' That 
 is the first and great petition. * Prayer," it has 
 been said, ' is a mood." It is the mood of expect- 
 ing, of asking for, this incoming of the Spirit of 
 God. After that, in second place, is the prayer 
 for specific things needful for us : ' Our daily 
 bread ' and ' Deliver us from evil." But the first 
 thing we should ask is for the coming within us of 
 ' the Kingdom of Heaven.' That is the first and 
 great need and petition, with its implicit corollary : 
 * Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' " 
 
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