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LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT :
STUDIES OF
ORGANIC IN HUMAN NATURE
LIFE
IN MIND Si CONDUCT:
STUDIES OF
ORGANIC IN HUMAN NATURE
BY
HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D.
ILontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
AU rights reserved
BiCHARD Clay and Sons, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
3T>
M44i
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Men think new that which is old — Small fraction of human course on
earth — Are the inventions of modern science new ? — Discovery made
through rather than by the individual — No new reflections on human
nature to be made nowadays — Old thoughts new to new thinkers of
them — Conventional language and artificial divisions of knowledge —
Separate methods of study of mind — Living structure and function in
the life of mind — Origin and primal meaning of the terms of psychology
— Psychical terms own a physical origin and import — Intellect, cogita-
tion, reflection — Reason, deliberation, assimilation, rumination — Under-
standing, attention, ecstasy — Physical inwardness of mental feeling —
Emotion and its qualities — Vagueness of metaphysical language— The
organic in thought, feeling and conduct— General aim of the enquiry .
Pages 1 — 15
CHAPTER II
LIFE AND MIND
I. — Organism and Life
An organic mechanism— Its outward discharge, regular and irregular —
Inward and noxious discharge — The general paralytic — The epileptic —
Explosive discharge — Nature's explosive method of work — The re-
productive instinct and act — Life an equilibrium of antagonistic
forces— Physics and Physiology— The cycle of life : production, pre-
servation, destruction — Self-repair of living matter — Every organism a
complexity of organisms — Passive and active matter — The so-called
vital force — Degenerations of life — Colloid and crystalloid matter —
Homogeneous and heterogeneous — Life and death — Degrees of vital
substance — Conservation of energy Pages 16 — 31
6305G7
CONTENTS
II. — Organic Structure and Function
Irritability of tissue — Unconscious purposive action — Consensus, con-
sentience, consciousness — Consciousness and individuation — Internal
activities of the organic molecule — The principle of individuation —
Spontaneity and physical reaction — Excitability of nerve and reflex
action — Simple and complex reflex action — Latent sensory stimuli —
Reflection and will — Incorporate antecedents — Diverse qualities of
brain — Fundamental sources of mental energy ; self-conservative and
I'eproductive instincts — The cerebro-spinal and splanchnic nervous
systems — The intellectual mechanism — The motive forces of reflection —
The expressions of emotion — Sublimations of feeling — Intellect and
purposive action — Compositions and disintegrations of will — The
organic basis of will — Over-sensitiveness, passionateness — Physiological
conditions of sensibility — Co-operation of phj^siological stimuli —
Different levels of volitional evolution — Organization of moral feeling
and will — Life-history the exposition of character — Inane abstractions —
Conditions and circumstances of reproduction— Bodily structure and
character Pages 32 — 54
CHAPTER III
THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
I. — Its Construction and Despotism
The social source of the moral imperative — Benefits of social imion — Social
composition of vices and virtues — Social developnaent through marriage,
family, tribe, nation — -Individual rights and social authority — The
social necessity of superstitious hypotheses — Ceremonies, taboos,
customs and fashions — The disintegration of a community — Social
variations — Suppression of variations — The conatus of organic growth
and the sun's energy — The self-regarding passions as motive forces of
social progress — The prudence of social conformity — Morality the
selfishness of the species — Immoralities as natural degenerations —
Universal brotherhood and a reign of righteousness . . . Pages 55 — 70
II. — Social Atonement
Individual and social being — Law of social atonement — Reward and
retribution by natural social law — Prevalence and uniformity of
sacrifices — Well-doing the function of a sound social nature — Debt and
credit in the social system — The manifold atonements of social life —
Composition and compensation in social evolution — Vices and virtues
equally necessary — Evil a factor in the development of good — A temper
of philosophical acquiescence — The social source of the moral mandate-
Action and reaction of individual and social medium — Variable mean
between egoism and altruism Pages 71 — 81
CONTENTS vii
CHAPTER IV
IMAGINATION AND IDEALISM
I. — Im AGIX ATIOX
Rational and irrational imagination — The delight of delirious imagination
— Pathological interpretation — Dissociation of mental function —
Delirium of thought and of feeling — Transcendental feeling and reason
— Imaginative shapings of transcendental feeling — Imagination in
the different mental fimctions — Anthropomorphic interpretation of
elemental energy — Is the feeling of transcendental union illusion? —
Imagination a function of organic matter — Dreams^ . . . Pages 82 — 92
II. — The Ideal
The partial truth of proverbs, maxims, adages — The ideal in theory and
the real in practice — Moral principles idealizations of the real —
Constant war between the ideal and the real— Proverbial half truths —
Indispensable coexistence of the ideal and the real — Universality of
ideals — Optimistic and pessimistic ideals and t€mperaments — The
mean between ideal and real — The ideal of the race — A moral
equilibrium incompatible with increase of knowledge — Over-valuation
of knowledge — Knowledge essentially selfish — Its glorification in the
interest of the species — The cement of society not knowledge but
charity — Scientific inventions baneful as well as beneficial — Can know-
ledge grow to an ideal perfection ?— Or moral perfection be attainable ?
— Confusion of moral ideals — Fanatical enthusiasm of humanity — The
eternal paradox — Symbols — Degrees of belief — Worship of symbols —
Idols of wood and stone — Idols of the heart and imagination — The
doctrine of the Trinity — Religious worship of pictures and statues —
Decay of symbols — Transformation, not cataclysm, in organic develop-
ment Pages 92 — 115
III. — Hypocrisies
Habitual hypocrisies — Waves of pessimism— The necessity of hypocrisy —
Its good uses — Self-respect and hypocrisy — Unconscious hypocrisy —
Mental duality — Hypocrisy concerning the reproductive organs and
functions — Mental disintegrations and disintegrate developments —
Observance of the mean by efi"ective hj-pocrisy — Life a mean between
extremes — The mean in conduct — Special standpoints of morality.
Page.-i 115—126
CONTENTS
IV. — Lies — Affect atiok
Whj' men love to lie — Lies are idealizations : witness to productive energy
of nature in mind — The liar not wholly and wilfully false — Justifiable
lies — Gradations of quality in lies — The heroic liar — Veracities neces-
sarily impracticable — ^Illusions the incitements of progress — Affectation
and lying — Artistic and useful affectations — Affectation injurious to
character Pages 126 — 133
CHAPTER V
ETHICAL THEORY AND ACTION
I. — Conscience
An innate tribunal — Difficulties of application in the concrete — No-
absolute conscience, but manifold relative consciences — Conscience the
voice of the social kind — The physical basis of conscience — Conscience
in savages — Inchoate and rudimental conscience — Late evolution and
quick dissolution of conscience — Moral defacement and denudation —
Continuity and unity of body and spirit — The brain-weak neurotic —
Moral and motor apprehensions — Lessons of materialism
Pages 134—145
II. — Morality
Self-interest the basic motive of conduct — The ten commandments induc-
tions of experience — Elimination or assimilation of morbid social
elements ?— Sorrow and sympathy — Outbursts of the brute in the man
— Admiration of the immoral hero — Adoration of the moral hero —
Confucius's enunciation of the moral law — Retribution the rule of
practical morality — Social approvals and disapprovals — Conscience
bred by law — The ideal and the real — Structural virtue not self-
conscious — The inheritance of a good organization — The value of a
good example — Virtue a prudent wisdom — Conquest of culture and
its rules of intrasocial origin — Different estimates of virtue — Rectifica-
tions of laws — Arbitrary rights of the State — Relativity of morality —
Passions essential factors in social development — Scientific study of
and evil Pages 145 — 163
III. — Patriotism
Patriotism and morality — The religion of patriotism — Narrow and bigoted
patriotism — Humanity before patriotism — A growing humanization . .
Pages 163— 16S
CONTENTS
IV. — War and Peace
Condemnation of murder and glorification of war — The inter-human
struggle for existence — The law of organic construction through
organic destruction — Natural inconsistency between theory and
practice — »Self-valuation and nature's valuation — Cessation of war and
transformation of human creature — Is war a benefit or a bane ? . . . .
Pages 168—173
CHAPTER VI
RELIGION— PHILOSOPHY— SCIENCE
I. — Religion
Vitality of religion — Its root in the feeling of cosmic unity — Religion and
religious systems — Survival of the fittest — The elemental feeling in art,
poetry, philosophy — Every religion a fitting vesture — Hebrew per-
sonification of the Divinity— Mental duality in relation to religion
and reason — Unjustifiable religious persecution — Religious persecution
sometimes justifiable— Hostility of religions to knowledge — The follies
of men the wisdom of the world — Knowledge and the lust of life-
Sublimity and impracticability of the Christian ideal — Self -idolatry of
the secluded sage — The conclusion Pages 174 — 187
II. — Philosophy
Philosophy essentially a simple matter — The true and the good in-
separable — The exposition of truth — Vagueness of metaphysical thought
and language — The vitality of metaphysics — The philosopher not self-
sufficing — Clear and distinct ideas — Lost thoughts rediscovered — The
mystery of life — Conduct the end or purpose of life . . Pages 188 — 196
III. — Science
The little that can be known — The pioneer of science — The specializations
of science — Need of a scientific synthesis — Organic unity of science —
The scientific method of observation and experiment — The reform of
scientific nomenclature — The questioning spirit of science
Pages 196—203
CHAPTER VII
NATURE— MIND— REASON
I. — Nature and Mind
The becoming of things — Structural organization of mind — Discords in the
universal concord — Lucky and unlucky events — Providential circum-
stances — The study of mind as a part of nature — Nature and free will
— The opinion of free will a useful illusion — Mind the supreme organic
harmony — Organic sympathy and repulsion — Interaction of bodj"^ and
mind — The unity of mind and nature Pages 204 — 213
CONTENTS
II. — Reason
Implicit prior to conscious reason — No division in nature between reason
and instinct — Complex reason like complex reflex action and instinct
an organized acquisition — Equivalent ideas interchangeable in reasoning,
like equivalent parts in machinery — Difficulties of substitution of
mental equivalences— Men commonly reason from accepted premisses,
without testing the reason of them —Irrationality of men and bees
compared — The ideal and the real man — Animal tendencies and angelic
aspirations — Reason a limitation and constructive process, and its
limitation a boon — Universal reason a nonsense in words — The heart
and the head : feeling and reason — Special feelings not original and
elemental but derived and secondary : bespeak precedent culture of
reason Pages 213 — 225
CHAPTER VIII
HABIT— INTONATION— EXPERIENCE— TRUTH
I. — Habit
Habit the growth of a nature — The incorporation of function in structure
— The formation of a fit nervous reflex — Its large part in mental
structure — Habit of belief and renunciation of reason — Mind divisible
and able to act in parts — Difi"erent minds are different organs — The
destruction of a mind by destruction of its habits of belief
Pages 226—232
II. — Mental Intonation
Associations of sense and sentiment — Revival of associations in memory —
Transforming effects of custom — Formation of special cerebral patterns
of structure — Effects of exclusive education — Adaptations to social
medium — Organic hardenings of mental differences — Exemplification of
nervous fashioning — Consolidated thought develops its appropriate
effluence of feeling — Exemplification of that law — Analogy between
association and disassociation of ideas and movements
Pages 232—239
III. — Experience
Experience must be vital to be instruction — The inexperience of youth
and the experience of age — The hurtful provokes attention and inquiry
— The historian without practical experience of men — Beliefs and
scientific theories which are not based on experience — The fool and the
wise man — Failure in an evil environment not blameworthy — The
quenching of enthusiasm by experience — The solid wisdom of proverbs
— A systematic exposition of proverbs — Experience the basis of sound
psychology Pages 240—248
CONTENTS xi
IV.— Truth
What is truth ? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth —
Truths perish as well as prevail — Wisdom and folly reciprocally
necessary — Free development of thought — Feeling more fundamental
than reason — Truth beneficial to society in the long run — Efficacy of
the lie — Comparison of truth and light — Innate love of truth — The
relativity of truth Par/es 249 — 255
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION— MENTAL CULTURE— CHARACTER
I. — Edccatiox
Mental mechanism constructed by education — The innate forces of
individual character — The beginnings of ills to be stopped — The
mischief done by parental partiality — Educational eflPects of custom —
The evils of early over-cramming — Uniform scholastic methods — The
use of special studies to correct special faults — Wry minds sometimes
must grow awry — Psychological ignorance and ignoring of organic
structure and function — Unconscious education by the environment —
Education in knowledge of physical nature — Education in relation to
body politic and social — The practical instruction of reason — The
danger of little knowledge— Man not rational but potentially rational —
Over-estimation of the value of education — Good use of such over-
estimation Pages 256 — 272
II. — Mental Culture
Self-education — The pleasures of sense and intellect— Knowledge and
pleasure — Native bias of character — Self-love — The development of
knowledge by human converse — Special mental facets and special
developments — The tyranny of organization — Mental exercise an
invigoration of vitality — The conditions of good mental health — Inter-
actions between body and mind — The lessons of moral degeneracy —
The theatre as means of mental culture — A means of amusement —
Effects of occupation on individual nature — Freedom from social
trammels impossible — If only the individual had two lives ! — Danger of
leaving off the routine of a lifelong occupation — Increase of human
specialism Pages 273 — 286
III. — Character
'Character the basis of conduct — Conscious suppression of character futile —
Diversities of racial character — Constitutional vitality and character —
Moral and vital energy— The revelation of character — Subconscious
mental currents — Character and circumstances — Formation of character
by action — Intellect and moral feeling dissociated — Vices proceeding
from virtues — The prospects of human society — How to know self . .
Parje.i 286—295
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER X
FRIENDSHIP— LOVE— DESIRE— GRIEF— JOY
I. — Friendship
The value of friendship — Friendship a limitation — The good uses of a
friend — Unions of cliques, clubs, associations — Material and spiritual
views of friendship — The ruptures of friends — Common interests in
friendship — Perfect friendship an ideal Pages 296 — 300
II. — Love
Its strength and subtilty — Infra-sensible undulations of energy — Love an
overwhelming physical attraction — The harmony of reciprocal love —
Beauty and ugliness — Love rooted in the productive energy of nature —
Love-marriages and marriages of interest— The self-sacrifice and selfish-
ness of lovers —The transcendental rapture of love — A delirious trans-
port of egoism — Its eternal illusion Pages 300 — 308
III. — Desire — Hope
Desire insatiable — Its boundlessness — Multiplications of desires and theii'
gratifications — Present enjoyments spoilt by desire — The %atal basis of
desire and hope — The love-passion and its glamour— The ideal and the
real — The role of feeling in belief — Ultrafidianism and supra-rational
reason — Men believe as they feel — Reality of pleasure — The cultivation
of illusions — Consecrated lies — Idealization of the real
Pages 309—319
IV. — Grief — Suffering
Grief increased by imagination — The transport of a grief — Outward show
of grief — Physiological limits of grief and pain — Pain an evil in itself,
not merely in opinion — The sure cure of grief — The permanent eflfects
of gi'ief — The unitj- of the physical and moral nature — The good use of
sufi'ering Pages 319—326
V. — Joy — Laughter
Joy denotes vital energy — Constitutional weakness of vitality — The
expression of vitality in feeling and thought — The physical basis of
mind — Reception and response of mental undulations — Futile dis-
cussions about the szimmum honum — The varities of laughter — Subtile
emanation of character Pages 326 — 332
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER XI
I. — Organic Variation And Heredity
1. — Organic Variation
Organism and medium — Organic variation — Evolution and involution —
Variation and external stimulus — Law of organic development —
Organic modifiability — Mental variations — Vicissitudes of families and
variations — Persistence of organic qualities — Family names and family
characters — Bodily and mental variations — Aptitude to variations . .
Pages 333—342
2. — Heredity
Reproduction and production of qualities — Reversion to ancestral forms
— Vice and virtue bred into or out of a stock — -Shakespeare's com-
position of parental elements — The reproductive act — The affective
element in heredity — Male elements in female, and female in male
nature — Seasonal development of hereditary qualities — Fundamental
type and its variations — Stable and unstable mental compositions —
Various aspects and inconsistencies of character — Non-inheritance of
genius — Unkno-mi laws of heredity — Insanity and heredity — Special
talents in imbecile or insane persons — Fundamental law of human
development Pa^es 342 — 355
II. — Genius and Talent
Difference between genius and talent — The man of genius — Special kinds
of genius — Sanity of highest genius — Subconscious creative acti\'ity —
Quality and tone of brain — Genius excites suspicion and enmity —
Unhappiness of genius — Native differences of mental faculty —
Sympathy and antipathy of minds — The seeing mind — Sociability and
sincerity — Want of sympathy with the kind — A life of detachment —
The proper part to play in the drama Pages 356 — 367
CHAPTER XII
FATE— FOLLY— CRIME
I. — Fate asd Fortune
The little hinges of great events — Estimates of events — The way of
development the right way — The epoch-maker — Epoch-maker or
epoch-made ? — The dependent fate of a great movement — Incalculable
operation of mental forces — Power, not wisdom, in the multitude —
Fortune and providence — Homo magnus or homo felix — The fate of
organization — Christianity and Paganism Pages 368 — 379
v^
xiv CONTENTS
II. — Folly and Crime
Fools constitute the majority— Need no compassion— The criminal— The
anarchist — Clever and weak-minded criminals — Reasons and attractions
of crime — Routine of respectability — Criminal, epileptic, insane, and
fanatical temperaments — Degeneration by natural law — Organized
nervous substrata — The lesson of punishment — The aim of punish-
ment — The prevention or reformation of criminal — Nature's possible
irony— Crime evidence of organic vigour Pages 380—393
CHAPTER XIII
PAIN— LIFE— DEATH
L— Paix
Pain a necessary condition of existence — Endurance not complaint — Sus-
ceptibility to pain with complexity of organization — Types of organic
structure according to need of killing and not being killed — Pain a
danger-signal serving self-conservation — Not remembered as it was,
only that it was — Lowest organisms feel little or no pain, and instantly
forget — Pain attends the organic decay of old age — Although felt in,
not felt by, the part — No fixed and constant consciousness — Manifold
varieties of pain — Useless and exhausting pain — The pains of parturition
— Consciousness of pain and curiosity to know — The erect posture and
the bodily conditions of labour-pains — Fable and allegory— Unconscious
wisdom or wisdom consciously obscured — The design of pains of partu-
rition — The negation of the desire to live — Pain a natural effect of
organic undoing — Spontaneity or attraction : sensibility and suscepti-
bility — Pleasure and pain as motives of action — The reconciliation
of individuality with solidarity, physiological and social — The design
of pain — Avoidance of pain the prime motive of conduct — Voluntary
infliction of pain — The moral good of pain — Over-sensitiveness to pain
and over-sentimentality — Human optimism Pages 394 — 417
II. — Life
The lust of life — A drama of mixed tragedj' and comedy — The love of life
despite the vanity of it — The routine of life — Self-renunciation, religious
and stoical — Christianity and stoicism — Nature's wonted ironj- — Un-
adaptibility of the fixed structure of age — Old age and youth — Praise
of the past by old age — The pleasures of old age . . . Pages 417- — 420
CONTENTS
III. — Dkath
Death the natural ending of life — The waning of desires with the
waning of life — Religion and philosophy augment the fear of death —
The gloomy ceremonials of the scene of death — Thoughts, feelings, and
behaviour at the point of death — The preservation of character in
dying — Social dependence in dying — Deception and self-deception of
the dying person— No special illumination, but gradual weakening of
mind before death— Death a necessary concern to the individual — Con-
tinuance of life against reason — Praise of death — Death a necessary
condition of life Payes 426—435
CONCLUDING CHAPTER
END AND AIM
The doctrine of final causes — Order and disorder, goodness and badness-
Mental products purely relative — Sin, evil, disease and death nowise
anomalies — Every death a natural and necessary event — The good use
of revenge — Anger justifiable socially — Ambition neither vice nor
virtue — No evils from standpoint of pure reason— Absurdity of seek-
ing for the origin of evil — Immortality, personal and impersonal.
Pugen 436—444
LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Men think new that which is old — Small fraction of human course on
earth — Are the inventions of modern science new ? — Discovery made
through rather than by the individual — No new reflections on human
nature to be made nowadays — Old thoughts new to new thinkers
of them — Conventional language and artificial divisions of know-
ledge — Separate methods of study of mind — Living sti'ucture and
function in the life of mind — Origin and primal meaning of the
terms of psychology — Psychical terms ovm a physical origin and
import — Intellect, cogitation, reflection — Reason, deliberation,
assimilation, rumination — Understanding, attention, ecstasy —
Physical inwardness of mental feeling — Emotion and its qualities
— Vagueness of metaphysical language — The organic in thought,
feeling and conduct — General aim of the enquiry.
The conclusion of a sober reflection on the brief records
and various revolutions of human things has been enshrined
by Shakspeare in the lines of his sonnet to Time : —
"Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,
And rather have them born to our desire
Than think that we before have heard them told."
And long before Shakspeare's day Laotze, the Chinese
contemporary of Confucius, six hundred years before Christ,
had expressed the same thought. " A vivid light," he said
" shone on the highest antiquity, a few rays of which only have
2 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
reached us. It appears to us that the ancients were in dark-
ness because we see them only through the thick clouds from
which we ourselves have emerged. Man is an infant born at
midnight who when he sees the sun rise thinks that yesterday
never existed." The thought was probably then stale, having
haply been made in Egypt six thousand years ago, and having
certainly been made by the preacher who, weary of the
monotony of things, declared that the thing which has been
is that which shall be, and that there is no new thing under
the sun. As mankind did not begin to think for the first time
in ancient Greece nor first discovered their moral principles
in Palestine, the vulgar belief of so late an intellectual and
moral beginning simply proves with what sure and blind a
faith the thoughts of people can rest circumscribed within
their special epochs, and be counted ne\v because new to
them.
So brief is the record of historical time in comparison
with unrecorded and forgotten time, so fabulous and false for
the most part most so-called histories, that there are no
sound data on which to ground a true knowledge of the
remote human past. If men were ever as wise then as they
are now, it is plain that we should not know it. Nor are the
data adequate to warrant a safe prediction of the future
fortunes of humanity on earth. Whether its past career has
been a succession of alternating developments and degenera-
tions, or a series of progresses in one place alternating with
regresses elsewhere, yet with a gradual advance on the whole,
even that is uncertain. To modern optimism, proud of present
and sure of future human progress, Plato's fanciful notion
of recurring evolutions and dissolutions of the same state of
things in periodical revolutions of time will be wholly
unwelcome.
Although new comers on the human stage extol the
discoveries they make as new because they are new to them,
as they call the moon new at every reappearance in its
monthly course, exulting accordingly over their benighted
predecessors, it is hardly credible that the special discoveries
I INTRODUCTORY 3
and inventions of modern science are not novel, at all events
on this planet ; incredible indeed that the human mind ever
before hit upon, and pursued systematically, such profitable
methods of scientific observation and experiment as char-
acterize its present state of evolution and have led to its
great conquests over nature. Nor is it easy to agree with
Shakspeare that the pyramids of Egypt were but repetitions
of what had been done aforetime, notwithstanding the
authority of his long-sighted imagination.
' ' Thou can'st not think O Time that I do change ;
Thy pjTamids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,
They are but dressings of a former sight."
Howbeit Shakspeare perhaps projected his imagination
beyond the limits of this minor planet to a a superior planet
in which such mighty works may have been done. For
when we consider that other planets are constituted of the
same elements as the earth, subject to the same universal
laws, launched on similar courses under similar conditions,
and that their elements must according to fixed chemical laws
enter into the same compositions under the impact of the
same forces in parallel circumstances, it is no more strange to
imagine the production of a series of organic beings, similar
or superior to those on earth than to expect the growth of
two similar trees from two seeds of the same kind. The
organic stream of tendency, so long as it is vitally quickened
and propelled by due heat and light, must needs have like
issues in the cosmic succession of things.
Such is reason's good conceit of itself that it is apt to
pride itself on creating that which creates it. Consider how
steadily and silently the stream of human tendency works in
the making of scientific discoveries and inventions : particular
persons are credited with the merit of them who after all are
but the organs of them ; for it is not the individual who
clearly foresees and designedly plans them, it is the plan or
course of organic nature which progressivly fulfils itself and
reveals them through his development. Therefore it is that
B 2
4 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
no one makes a scientific discovery without some one else
having partially or wholly anticipated him, that disputes are
frequent and bitter as to who was the first to make it, and that
he who proves the new thing to the understanding of his con-
temporaries is acclaimed and labelled as the discoverer, albeit
he may actually have counted least in the discovery, most
only in the demonstration. Were a single rose to flower early
in its season, fading and falling before other roses blossomed
on the same tree, it might suppose itself to be original and
unique, not witting that roses had flowered independently
on that tree in previous seasons, and would likewise flower
after it in the same season without borrowing from it ; and
if among several roses in bloom at the same time one was
foremost in height of place, perfection of form, and glory of
colour, it would doubtless, had it the requisite tincture of
human vanity, see therein its particular merit, and imagine
that its fame would endure for ever. The growths of
knowledge and virtue which flower on a particular branch of
the human stock, are they any more original, unique and
meritorious ? From the general development of knowledge
and feeling in a common social medium at a particular time
and place, it must needs be that several organs thereof
independently attain to pretty nearly the same structural
form and function ; the event is as natural and necessary as
the independent production of the same or similar proverbs,
superstitions, customs, errors of reasoning, vices and crimes in
separate peoples of the earth.
Be that as it may with great scientific discoveries, it is
most certain that no new reflections on men and their doings
can be made nowadays. Human nature having been much
the same since it began to think on itself, and intellects as
powerful as any which exist now having existed aforetime,
it was inevitable that persons of good understanding reflect-
ing rightly on the materials of human experience should
arrive at the same judgments independently. For as mind
is not self-created in any mortal, nor infused into him mira-
culously from without, a something uncaused yet causing.
I INTRODUCTORY &
free or fortuitous in function, but both in being and function
obeys strict natural laws of cause and effect, it cannot choose,
when rational, but come to the same conclusion from the
same premisses : must do so as surely as two persons of equal
bodily powers and skill who put the same muscles into the
same sort and degrees of movements must perform inde-
pendently the same feat. Two mental organisms, like two
bodily organisms, constructed after the same pattern and
working on similar materials, necessarily produce similar
products. Therefore it is that no one nowadays makes a
sound reflection concerning human motives and conduct
without soon discovering, if he make adequate search, that
it has been made before and made probably over and over
again : he may often trace it, if he be curious, from the latest
modern thinker who utters it, back to some ancient sage
who uttered it long ago ; nay, perhaps to some old proverb
which was the wise saw of a forgotten sage who thus preg-
nantly summed up the inarticulate wisdom of the race.
The thought is essentially the same, though the mode of its
outward presentation differ in different languages, and to
suit the special styles of thought and feeling of different
epochs.
As individuals die, and with them that which they pain-
fully learnt in their life-travail, to be succeeded by new
beings who in turn have patiently and painfully to learn for
themselves before they in turn vanish, it comes to pass that
old thoughts necessarily appear to be new to the young
world which rethinks them for itself, and that the last
thinker who utters ancient wisdom hails himself, and is often
hailed by others who learn from him, as the discoverer. If
he sets the truth tersely and lucidly or melodiously in a
frame of fit words, or sticks it into men's minds by some apt
assonance or alliteration, he may capture the long fame of it.
So inveterate too is the custom to mistake familiarity of
words for understanding of things when there is no real
understanding of them that most people are apt to believe
they utter a new thought when they only express an old
6 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
thought in new terms. Strange indeed it is to see how com-
pletely the conventional language of one age will hide a vital
truth from a succeeding age speaking the same language,
until it is translated into a new mode of expression. So it
is that many a trite adage familiar as household words, which
would be spoken and heard without real thought of its
meaning, delights and instructs, seeming fresh and new,
when it is divested of the custom-caked covering in which
it has been enshrouded, and is clothed afresh in new words
and imagery. Nay, the old platitude will prick with pleasing
surprise many minds when it has been patiently enucleated
from the gross crudities of ill-digested thought and jolting
jargon of maimed and dislocated grammar in which the
affectation of the charlatan eager, mountebank-like, to draw
vulgar attention to himself and his wares has deliberately
chosen to involve it.
Besides the obstacle which the hardening of words into
lifeless forms is to fruitful thought, another obstacle, not less
notable, is the hardening of artificial divisions of knowledge
into separate classes and sciences with their special nomen-
clatures, although the things themselves are not really
separate and not therefore to be truly comprehended as dis-
tinct and separate : the result being that terms of classifica-
tion which, being names fixed to fitly sorted compartments
of thought, are its convenient and indeed necessary aids of
reference and memory amidst the multiplicity and variety
of things, are held to denote separate realities and thereby
the essential concatenations of nature obscured or quite
overlooked. Thus too it comes to pass sometimes that
different languages are employed to denote the same things
without the least suspicion that they are the same. As it is
certain that separate religions must disappear before there
can be one true religion, so must the several sciences cease
to be separate before true science can be.
Assuredly when the crusts of conventional terms are
broken and the essential continuities beneath rigorous
divisions of things discerned by insight into their deep
I INTRODUCTORY 7
connections they often show themselves more simple and
clear than they seemed and were thought to be. Nowhere
perhaps is this more likely to prove true eventually than in
the domain of the study of mind. There at present the
metaphysician prosecutes his own method of study and uses
his special vocabulary, the psychologist pursues his separate
method and has his favourite phraseology, the physiologist
follows his method of positive research and employs his
special language ; yet these formidable systems having
their different names, pursuing separate paths, speaking
different and mutually unintelligible languages, hostile in
attitude towards one another, almost as averse to meet as
parallel lines, are actually concerned with one and the same
subject. Is there not good reason to expect that these
divisions will disappear in time, and that when they are
gone and facts seen as they truly are, matters will be much
simplified, a vast deal of confusing and obscure verbiage
relegated to oblivion, and Avords used which shall signify as
well as sound ?
As mind is life, whatever more it be, growing, maturing
and decaying within its fixed period, like all life, it is hard
to see how its nature and functions can ever be rightly under-
stood without a knowledge of organic life and its processes of
growth and development. Furthermore, as mind is not only
life, but its particular life is demonstrably the life of the
particular body in it, an adequate knowledge of its nature
and functions must needs involve a knowledge of the several
bodily organs and their co-ordinate functions in the unity of
the whole — especially of the exquisitely fine networks of
nervous organization which are the indispensable conditions
of its earthly being, which grow in number and complexity
with its growth, and on the integrity of which its function
depends. It may not, it is true, be lawful and right, may
indeed sometimes be mischievous, to introduce the con-
ceptions and terms of a lower into a higher science ; but the
question here is not concerning two sciences, higher and
lower, it is the question of one science which, having its root
8 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
in a physiological basis, has its flowering in the mental pro-
cesses of which metaphysics and psychology claim to take
exclusive cognizance. A biological study of mind in its
ascending developments, animal and human, can hardly fail
to help the student of it, whatever his specially esteemed
method of enquiry and however wonderful his self-conscious
intuitions into the operations, conscious and unconscious, of
his own mind.
Those who object to bring psychology down from abstract
heights to an organic basis, and to interpret mental functions
in any terms of physical organization, might not do amiss to
collect its descriptive terms and to consider closely their
origin and primal meaning. These are essentially physical
terms, bespeaking a material origin, imbued with sense-ex-
perience, and signifying in the concrete properties which are
physical ; and being such, it might be instructive, and not a
little startling, to enquire how much meaning is left in them
when all the physical meaning is taken out of them.
Such words as intellect, reason, reflection, cogitation,
pondering, deliberation, brooding, rumination, which sound
purely mental ; such terms of feeling also as emotion, agitation,
compassion, fervour, ardour, inspiration, — all tell the same
story ; they are terms of physical origin and import which
have been applied by abstraction from physical to mental
processes. Hearing that some one has had a severe shock, I
must ask whether it was a mental or a physical shock ; and
if I go on to enquire what a mental shock which has
killed a man means at bottom, I perceive that it has no
real meaning except as a physical process : that it has
killed him by a violent nervous commotion, just as a stroke
of lightning might have done.
Intellect and cogitation — derived from intelligo (more
correctly intellego) or interlego and cogo or coago — signify the
gathering or collecting of things of the same kind, or of
the qualities which several things have in common, into
assortments or classes which are then denoted by a common
name. Intellect is indeed structurally a correct classification,
I INTRODUCTORY 9
the assorted experiences of things organized in their fit
nervous structure, an orderly and proportioned cerebral
instruction ; and to revive actively on the required occasion
that which has been thus suitably collected and stored is to
re-collect it. To classify thus mentally is nothing else but, in
other language, to make a generalization or induction ; an
ascent in thought from particulars to the general notion which
can be applied afterwards deductively ; to do in fact what is
done at a higher mental stage when a scientific theory is formed
from observation of instances and subsequently used to plan
a particular invention. The physiological process is a forma-
tion of cerebral reflexes or thought-tracts to respond on the
sensory side to the qualities or relations common to several
particulars, which is the inductive pole of the intellectual
process, so to speak, and on the motor side to react on the
particulars having such qualities or relations, which is the
deductive pole of it.
Reason, again, signifies ratio or proportion, which is the
notable essence of sound, as its absence is the characteristic
note of unsound thinking or reasoning. The cerebral re-
gistration of the facts of experience in their right ratios
and relations is the rightly proportional in-formation of
mental structure and consequent just balance of function.
Were such registration perfect and universal, psychology
might have all the certainty and perfection of mathematics ;
it would then be mathematical, as its hope is one day to be.
The process is parallel on the mental plane to that which
takes place at a lower nervous level in the fit formation and
nice performance of a purposive bodily act ; for a want of
proportion in the special movements of such purposive act
is essential irrationality. The person who, in order to take
hold of a very small object where a nice use of finger and
thumb would suffice and be graceful, uses his whole hand
clumsily and uglily, perhaps even adds ungainly movements
of arms and shoulder, like an idiot or a partially paralyzed
person, exhibits essential irrationality of the nervous
mechanism governing such movements, and is not unlikely
10 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
to exhibit similar want of ratio in mental to that which he
does in motor apprehension.
Deliberation, like ])ondering, is obviously the balancing or
weighing of one mental impression against another in order
to find out the ratio ; the new experience being compared
with the old and assimilated by it, if like and liked, or dis-
criminated and separately registered, if unlike and not liked.
Here then in speaking of assimilation we encounter a physio-
logical term denoting that which in psychological language
is mental classification. Nor is it the only term of its kind,
for it is thought natural to speak of the digestion of facts in
the mind ; to say nothing of the translation of such crude
words as rumination and chewing the cud into terms of
mental use.^ Now as it is not the crude matter of food
taken into the stomach which is directly assimilated by the
bodily tissues and constitutes their nourishment, but the
sublimed essences or abstracts of them, so to speak, which
are formed in the refining processes of the various metabolic
laboratories through which they pass ; so it is with the
mental life which is constituted and nourished, not by the
direct impressions of sense but by the sublimations or re-
presentative abstractions into which they are converted at
a higher cerebral plane. To gain and forthwith spend is not
the way to grow rich in business, nor directly to receive and
react the way to grow in mind ; in both cases gains ought
to be invested in capital, which investment mentally is
progressive structuralization of supreme cerebral plexuses.
What is understanding but to stand underneath things, as
it were, so as to see and apprehend their bases and bearings ?
What is attention but a special cerebral tending or tension
marking a set or polarization of the molecules of a cerebral
tract in one direction whereby the sensibility to the par-
ticular impression and the reactive hold or apprehension are
intensified ? With which attentive bent goes along necessarily
more or less insensibility and inactivity of other then and
^ Crude-sounding indeed, yet capable of poetic use, for Keats speaks
of youth as "chewing the honeyed cud of thought."
I INTRODUCTORY 11
thereby partially dissociated federal tracts of the mental
organization, dissociations ranging in degree from mere
absence of mind to rapt entrancement. For if the activity
of the special tracts rise to a certain pitch, becoming con-
vulsive, so to speak, it is completely dissociated functionally
for the time from the rest of the federation ; there is a break
of mental contact and it stands out as an ecstasy. Once
more it is manifest how the name denoting a physical process
has acquired purely mental, in this case even high spiritual,
meaning. Take out of an ecstasy the physical basis which
the name literally implies, and what is the actual meaning
then left in it ?
The mental faculty or process of reflection rests on the
physical reflection or turning of a nervous current from one
to another track of the mental organization : a sort of
message of enquiry to every class or compartment of the
mental stores in which knowledge has been collected, sifted,
laid up for use and fitly labelled. To reflect fully on an
object is to put into adequate action all the associated
cerebral reflexes required to constitute it mentally, the
reflections on the physical side being correlative with the
conscious reflections on the mental side. And forasmuch as
no object in nature is ever isolated, but every object has
its connections and relations, these again their connections
and relations, and so on in multiplying and ever expanding
radiations without end, the aim of growing reflection is the
progressive establishment of a mental order of things in ever
fuller and more exact conformity with their external order, so
far as this can be known — that is to say, be framed internally.
For the best that finite man does or can do in growth of
knowledge is to lay hold of and map out for himself so much
— and that an exceeding small piece — of the infinite environ-
ment as with his present organs of sense and movement he
can compass and get into such definite adaptive relations
as to respond to and react definitely on : thus collecting
and arranging in order things which he can think and re-
collect, he makes for himself an internal order which is
12 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
knowledge — a mental organization in fact. The world he
then knows is that which is thus translated into terms of
self-experience, the world as it is to him, nowise the world
of another self, still less that which is beyond the finite
relations of his small self
Common instinct, having its wonted close grip of the
realities of things and expressing itself directly and coarsely,
has hit upon such phrases as to jog the memory, to rack or
ransack or cudgel the brains, to run in one's head, to set
one's wits to work or to let them go wool-gathering, thick-
witted and sharp-witted, and the like, in order to express
that which is felt to be the true physical inwardness of
things. Even such vulgar phrases as " knock sense into " a
person and " knock sense out " of him have their physical justi-
fication ; for as a blow or a fall on the head will notoriously
efface all thought and memory, so it has rarely and strangely
chanced that a lost memory and understanding have been
restored suddenly by the shock of such a blow, for all the
world as though dislocated molecules of the thought-tracks
had been instantly set right by the concussion. In the
common language of the people, if we consider it well, there
is often a bottom of true instruction, for its terms are preg-
nant with the lessons of real human experience ; reflecting
the vital hold of things which living contact with them
imparts, they fail not to throw valuable light on the origin
and development of ideas. The introspective psychologist
himself might not do amiss to watch closely that which goes
on in his own mind when it is in process of thinking, instead
of minding only the thought-products, noting the pauses in
passing from one thought to another, the strains of attention
or adaptive tension, the easy run or uneasy jerks of thought-
junctions, the sluggish and obstructed flow of the thought-
current in bad moods, and the rapid and even flow thereof
in good moods ; for he may then be conscious of a set of
inward experiences strongly suggestive of subtile physical
operations within his own brain, perhaps not rationally
interpretable otherwise.
I INTRODUCTORY 13
Obviously the terms descriptive of the modes and
qualities of feeling testify to the same basis of physical
meaning. Emotion signifies that which emotion was always
felt to be — namely, an internal commotion or perturbation
moving outwards to discharge itself. How then describe
its qualities except in the language of physics ? It is
quick or dull, bright or gloomy, warm or cool, flutter, flurry,
tremor, palpitation, cutting, piercing, sweet, bitter, caustic,
thrilling, quivering, electric and so on ; and the subject of it
is accordingly cold or warm-hearted, cold-blooded, luke-
warm, gushing, callous, torpid, hot-headed, fiery, and the
like. That the heart in common language stands for
emotion is popular witness to the important part which the
internal viscera play in the production of feeling ; a fact
similarly attested by such expressions, once in use, as " bowels
of compassion," " white-livered," " spleen," and others. Grief
is heartache attended by a slow and weak pulse ; joy, a
cordial attended by a quick and strong pulse ; and the
saddest grief of all is heartrending and its subject some-
times heart-broken. Here, however, the mental expression
goes beyond the physical fact, for the heart never is broken
by grief unless it has been before so wasted by disease of
structure as to be nigh bursting. All the feelings then,
highest and lowest, even the transport out of self which is
called spiritual ecstasy, are describable only in crude terms
derived from physics. When not so describable, they are
incommunicable, ineffable, not to be valued, either because
they are beyond value or because they are valueless. What-
ever the truth be with regard to the senses and intellect,
there is nothing in the language of intellect which has not
entered by way of sense.
It seems a pity that metaphysical psychology, instead of
being so much beholden to physics, had not from the first
its separate and independent nomenclature, seeing that it is
concerned with the study of that which lies outside the domain
of all physics. Then it would not have been necessary for it
to divorce from sense the terms stamped and made current
14 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
by sense, to strip physical words of all physical meaning, to
abstract names from matter and its properties to denote the
workings of an immaterial entity. For the trouble of it now
is that the translation of the terms of sense and experience
into a domain of being absolutely distinct from sense-
experience makes it hard to define what exact meaning
they have there, and easy for no two persons to agree in
their use of them ; the inevitable result being, if not what
Bacon called frivolous disputations, confutations and ver-
bosities, at all events much disquisition with little or no
progress. With this notable result too, that in this, as in no
other science, every beginner proceeds confidently to discuss
and settle the very foundations of his science, and every
fully equipped worker, after going to work diligently to
thresh the old problems, leaves them to be threshed over
again by those who come after him. In no other region of
knowledge therefore might so much that is written be
entirely forgotten, as for the most part indeed it is instantl}'
forgotten, without the world being one whit the loser.
Astrology, despite its vagaries, is supposed to have pointed
the way to astronomy, and alchemy, notwithstanding its
futile researches, to have begotten chemistry ; but it certainly
cannot be said of psychology that it has yet helped to found
a scientific ijsyclionomy ; on the contrary, it has for the most
part purposely rejected any study of the facts and laws of
organic life as not requisite to the construction of a mental
science, taking its proud stand on an absolute breach in the
continuity of nature.
As it is hard to conceive the notion of a discontinuity
of nature, and harder still to discover the least evidence
of it in the study of concrete men and things, the main
object of the following chapters is to exhibit the con-
tinuity of organic nature through all human functions —
in fact, to adduce evidence of the development of life, by
gradual scale sublimed, from root in body to flower in
mind, which Milton perceived clearly and emphatically
expressed.
I INTRODUCTORY 15
One first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life ;
But more refined, more spirituous and pure,
As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assigned.
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportioned to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes : flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed.
To vital spirits aspire, to animal.
To intellectual ; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding : whence the Soul
Reason receives, and Reason is her being.
Discursive, or Intuitive.*
(Paradise Lost, b.v. 1. 472-488).
There has been no thought of writing a methodical treatise
nor of setting forth any system of doctrine. By bringing
several subjects usually treated as if they were separate, and
for the most part abstractly, into touch with the realities of
organic life and into vital relations with one another, they
are put into positions in which they may be safely left to
suggest their own lessons. Nor is there anything new in the
moral reflections made, which for the most part have been
made over and over again ; any novel aspects of them which
may appear are the natural result of their fusions and
oppositions, their collisions and concurrences, their qualifi-
cations and accentuations when brought into contact and
connection with one another and with facts. The various
applications of the argument have entailed some repetition.
* In his Treatise on Christian Doctrine Milton declares his distinct
opinion that there is no ground for the supposed distinction between
body and soul — " that man is a living being, intrinsically and properly
one and individual, not compound or separable." After quoting
several passages from Scripture in support of this opinion, he says that
nowhere in Scripture is it said that ' ' the spirit of man should be
separate from the body, so <as to have a perfect and intelligent existence
independently of it," and that "the doctrine is at variance both with
nature and reason."
CHAPTER II
LIFE AND MIND
I
ORGANISM AND LIFE
An organic mechanism — Its outward discharge, regular or irregular —
Inward and noxious discharge — The general paralytic — The
epileptic — Explosive discharge — Nature's explosive method of'
work — The reproductive instinct and act — Life an equilibrium of
antagonistic forces — Physics and Physiology — The cycle of life :
production, preservation, destruction — Self-repair of living matter
— Every organism a complexity of organisms — Passive and active
matter — The so-called vital force — Degenerations of life — CoUoid
and crystalloid matter — Homogeneous and heterogeneous — Life
and death — -Degrees of vital substance — Conservation of energy.
Constitutionally the human body, like every other
living body, is an organic mechanism which, charged by
nutrition, discharges itself in functions so long as it is alive :
an exceeding complex, intricate, and most subtilely com-
pounded structure, fashioned by gradual processes of adaptive
interaction with its changing environment through dateless
time to discharge itself in certain set ways.
Its discharge of energy may be either formal or formless —
that is, functional or functionless. When the fit external
object of discharge is wanting, the explosion of unfulfilled
passion — irritation, affection, emotion, perturbation, or what-
ever the internal commotion of molecular activity be named
CH. II ORGANISM AND LIFE 17
— spends itself in a confusion of aimless, tumultuous, some-
times grotesquely incoherent movements. Hysterical tears
and laughter, sobs and wails, cries and ejaculations, contor-
tions of joy and pain, and the like, have their subjective
uses, although they serve no objective ends; they yield the
ease of a discharge, are a self-relief. Behold the squalling
infant or the howling idiot venting its passion in contortions
and quasi-convulsive agitations of its whole body — face,
voice, limbs, trunk ; the fury of the passionate adult uttered
in grinding teeth, clenched fists, facial grimaces, violent
gestures, exclamations and oaths ; the several discharges of
other passions in uniformly regular movements which, being
employed and known as their wonted modes of expression,
have their social meaning and uses, understood of the kind,
yet, having no objective ends in themselves, would but for
such conventional usage and interpretation be thought as
unmeaning and styled as morbid as convulsions.
The discharge of passion is not outward only; if the
explosion gets not vent in visible movements it spends itself
inwardly in invisible perturbations of the innermost organic
processes. Such manifest effects as constricted and enlarged
blood-vessels, pallor and flush of face, arrested and perverted
secretions, witness to more intimate disturbances which take
place inwardly ; whence subtile chillings, and flushings, and
spoilings of the normal metabolic processes, with the produc-
tion of baneful organic compounds : whence also hurtful
inflamings and vitiations of thoughts summoned to the
sessions of unruly passion. The passion-infected processes
of faulty nutrition and the passion-infected processes of
vicious thought own a like essential origin, and are of like
essential nature. He who cannot consume his passion
internally by fit distribution along well-ordered paths of
reflection and action, as becomes a well-composed and well-
cultured mind-mechanism, does wisely perhaps to give it
innocuous issue in wild speech and gesture, lest othermse it
spend itself noxiously in poisoning his mental tone and
disordering his organic functions. Oaths have their hygienic
18 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
uses when they discharge passion which, failing a better
vent, might do harm if spent inwardly.
Behold, again, the general paralytic whose far-gone disease
has extinguished his mental and motor powers : bereft of
thought, speech, voluntary movement, he lies a mere animal
log, impotent to help himself in the least, able only to
swallow semi-liquid food that is pushed far enough into his
g^ullet to come within the reflex grasp of its muscles. His
tracts of mind having been so devastated by the destructive
disease that no current of energy can pass along them, it is
now a razed oblivion and he virtually in the situation of an
animal whose supreme cerebral centres the vivisector has cut
away ; albeit not quite like a creature naturally destitute of
such centres, since he is now denatured, having lost a multi-
tude of fine and complex channels of discharge which it
never possessed. Like it, however, he is still a pretty good
organic machine, digesting well the food given him and fairly
nourished by it ; all the internal organs, except the brain
which they survive, being sound and active. What happens
at last ? Oftentimes violent epileptiform convulsions in such
rapid sequence that he has perhaps two hundred fits in
twenty-four hours before he dies, if he then dies, exhausted.
That is the incontinent discharge which the gross accumulat-
ing forces of organic nutrition, wanting their many and fit
means of storage and channels of fine distribution, make for
themselves through the devastated machinery of the brain.
Behold, once more, the epileptic who, walking quietly along
the street, abruptly flings out^rigid arms, utters a strained wail
or yell, and, his whole body stiffened in tetanic spasm, falls
senseless to the ground, not otherwise than as if he had been
transfixed by an overwhelming electric shock, and is then
fearfully convulsed. All the force now convulsively displayed
was before potential in him ; it has only been discharged
abruptly in tumultuous explosion, and though formless as
regards its right forms of expression, yet so bounded by the
fixed forms of his bodily structure which it contorts as to
make him the hideous spectacle which he is.
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 19
In these cases the explosion is none the less natural and
necessary because it is styled morbid, it is only the outburst,
in large and violent volume, of energy which in normal
health is finely divided and distributed through a multitude
of minute and regular pulses in proper functions. One
might liken the process of things to the stored electricity
which, distributed fitly along the proper insulating wires,
serves to light a thousand lamps or turn a thousand wheels,
but when not so insulated and distributed through regular
channels explodes and shatters like a lightning-flash.
It is apparently a favourite way of nature to work by
means of explosions. Earthquakes and thunderstorms,
volcanic outbursts and popular revolutions, the raging of the
sea and the madness of peoples, pulses of muscles and thrills
of nerve alike fulfil that Jaw. A sneeze is an explosion ; so also
is a yawn, a sigh, a cough, a pang of pain, the expulsion of a
secretion or an excretion; and at bottom every muscular
contraction, every thrill of feeling, every current of thought
is the cumulative effect of a regular sequence of minute
explosions. Physiologically there is gratification, too, because
there is relief, in the discharge. What more exasperating
than the frustration of a reflex discharge imminently expected
even if it be only a sneeze ? What fiercer pain, intestinal,
uterine, urethral, than that caused by the violent reflex
spasm'-which strains in vain to overcome a complete block ?
From the discharge of secretion or expulsion of excretion,
when the expected end is baulked, to the impotence of the
inspired mortal to utter the ineffable, when he suffers " the
burden of the incommunicable," the tale throughout is the
same.
Asj nature's evident concern is to propagate and per-
petuate life, not to continue individual life — of that there is
small heed — the work is done by the domination of an
imperious reproductive instinct urging gratification as a
blind explosive lust, without regard to the purpose of the
performance. To this overmastering instinct animal life
owes half its force and all its ornament. Reason has little
C 2
20 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
or nothing to say in the business even in creatures which
most possess it ; for had reason implicit rule of the origin
and foresight of the end of the instinct, it might frustrate
its 23urpose or rule it out of being. Yet how quiet a
means might conceivably have been devised for the pro-
pagation of the species, not unfitting the dignity of the
noblest and most refined species, in a simple and graceful
way with no more expenditure of passion and action than
the still communion of a kiss or the touch of a gentle hand.
But nature has willed otherwise ; it effects the passionate
purpose which it has at heart by the urgent desires and
quasi-magnetic attraction of two individuals to become one
in an ecstatic union of body and soul, and then to give ofi" in
an explosion of intense sensation and motion a part of the
temporarily unified being to become another self ; an ecstasy
of union which is a sort of physiological, sometimes an actual,
epilepsy. It is the underlying attraction, physical like the
attraction of the sea by the moon, or of the plant by light,
which expresses itself in feeling as desire, not desire which
generates the attraction of which it is effect and exponent ;
and in that organic attraction one may discern the outward
and visible operation, in mass, of the same kind of force which
works inwardly and invisibly in the ascent of organic
molecules to higher complexities of composition. Crude as
it looks to think of the rapturous union of two sentient
and rational beings as a quasi-magnetic polarization, yet if
descent be made in thought from the mass to the molecules
which form it, and their determinate positions pictured in
mind, the conception, so far from being monstrous, seems
natural and necessary.
From the simplest form of living monad to the most
complex animal organism there is a progressive process of
charging in structure and discharging in function, the end
or aim of the discharge being determined by the form of the
structure. Structure invisible sometimes, no doubt ; for to
say of any living matter, however seemingly homogeneous,
that it is actually structureless, would be to say that there can
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 21
be no structure where our gross senses with their latest and
best instrumental aids cannot detect it ; which is absurd. It
were as foolish to assert at noonday that the starry heavens
are amorphous. Life is a process not a fixed state, a flux
not a stay of being, a formal not an internal equilibrium ;
mobile colloid matter in continual process of making and
unmaking within bounds set by a fixed or quasi-crystalloid
structure; complete fixture would be death. In a living
molecule, as in a solar system, opposing forces are at work to
maintain by their counteractions the unity of a continuing
equilibrium : attractive or constructive forces to bind to-
gether and build up counterbalancing or, as it were, coercing
forces which tend to dissolve and break down. Universal is
such opposing tug of forces, a perpetual tendencj^ of things to
relapse into chaos working everywhere in antagonism to forces
which strain to effect the order and progress of a cosmos.
Is there not something radically wrong in the complete
separation and the abrupt contrast made between life and
physics ? In the different applications of the words Physics
and Physiology, the etymological import of which is the same,
there is perchance, as Coleridge suggested, a hidden irony at
the assumption on which the division is grounded. Without
doubt the physics and chemics of life are infinitely more
delicate, complex, condensed and tense than the ordinary
physico-chemical processes, diverse from and superior to
them ; yet they must at bottom resolve themselves into
modes of motion and be problems of molecular physics.
How can we think definitely of life in the ultimate resort
but in terms of motion — of motions in succession conceived
under forms of time, of coexistent motions conceived under
forms of space ?
The habit being to think grossly of time and space, it
is hard to alter the customary measures of them ; more
hard indeed to contract than expand them, to picture in
mind their infinite divisibilities, to realize the rapid, intense,
exquisitely fine and complicated motions — the perpetual
additions, subtractions, substitutions and compositions of
22 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
atoms and molecules which go on in the changing whorls
of the infinitely little. Custom-thralled conceptions of time
and space therefore do not serve well in these regions,
they rather do a disservice. Were there a sensible discharge
of molecular energy at appreciable intervals of time, a
measurable pause between each regular discharge, as there
is between every beat of the pulse and between every
movement of respiration, there would be no more need
to wonder than there is to wonder now at the regular repair
by night of the waste done to the tissues by day. Only
perhaps by realization of the intense concentration of time
and energy within the minutest imaginable comj^ass of
matter, such realization as the contraction of a year into an
instant, of a mile into a millimetre, of a solar system into
a molecule, will vital phenomena be made more easy of
comprehension. Terrifically awful to men is the volcanic
explosion overwhelming a whole city and its inhabitants,
because it is so great in comparison with them, whereas it
is more simple than a molecular explosion, which, because it
is so little in comparison Avith them, they make nothing of.
Production, preservation, destruction — such is the inexor-
able cycle of life, be it in mollusc or man, matter or mind,
and whatever the factors, processes, and periods of it.
Between ordinary physical energy and the highest human
energy there is an apparent deep gulf fixed, but that is
because the intermediate steps are overlooked ; for in nature
there is no division anywhere, everywhere is the continuity
of a flux of things without beginning and without end.
Between animal and inanimate nature intervenes all the
lower vitalized vegetable world in its manifold forms and
degrees of life, from minute and mean to mighty and majestic,
accumulating stores of vital matter and power which man
uses either directly for his food or indirectly in more
concentrated form when it has been further vitalized by the
animals which feed on it and on which he feeds. The
minute seed grows silently and steadily by assimilating and
condensing into its substance along with suitable material
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 23
element the intensely active and most subtile-potent motions
of light and heat which continuously beat upon it with their
innumerable waves and continually add to its gradually
growing gains ; thus progressively it absorbs and funds them
and their motions in living matter and its motions, so that
at last through these minute, constant, intense toils of coercing
construction and the accumulating increments of organic sub-
stances the tree towers aloft in all the grandeur of its mature
form.
What an inconceivable concentration of condensed energies
it then finally represents ! All which, thousands of years after-
wards, the carbonized wood gives out again for human use and
comfort in heat and light ; the energies stored in the
multitudinous minute laboratories of its structure beinsr
unloosed and discharged at large in the coarse furnaces of
human manufacture : compounded on a more than microscopic
scale of minuteness by micro-physical and micro-chemical
processes, they are now decomposed and displayed on a
macroscopic scale. If one drop of water contain and may be
made to evolve as much electricity as under different modes
of display would suffice to produce a lightning-flash, what
amount of concentrated energies does not the smallest
particle of living protoplasm hold enthralled ? The release
and expansion of its condensed intensities of motion by
explosion of its substance must needs be a large and
voluminous display of simpler motions. Considering the
still yet tremendous force exerted by the tender shoot or
root which, insinuating itself insidiously into the crevice of a
wall, grows silently and steadily until it cracks and shatters
the masfjnrj', one may imagine what sound and tumult there
would be if the mute motions of its internal forces were
discharged instantaneously in one massive explosion. When
we follow then the steps of ascent of living matter in
constitution and dignity from the simple vegetable protoplasm
up to its highest eminence in the protoplasm of the human
brain, and reflect on the progressive condensation of energies
of which it is the organic climax, it is not so difficult as it
24: LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
looks at first sight to think of human thoughts and doings
as efiects of the decomposition and regulated discharges of
the subtile-complex compositions of matter and motion in the
many and various elements of nature's supreme organism.
Nobody nowadays resents the notion that the bread which
he eats is converted into bodily strength and energy, but
most persons, being wholly ignorant of minute matter and
its forces, deride the notion of its conversion into mental
energy, albeit the scientific theories of ether-waves and
ether-whorls tend steadily to render the conception less
startling.
Great stress is naturally laid on a notable difference be-
tween living and non-living matter — namely, that when
decomposed and discharged living matter recomposes and
recharges itself, thereby maintaining its being through a
constant flux of changes. But what does the statement
really signify ? The actual living molecule which is spent
in function does not renew itself and live again, any more
than the soldier slain in the advancing line of battle comes
to life to fight again. Other living matter of the same
composition and pattern replaces the disintegrated matter,
such repair being the work of the whole organism by means
of the successive manufacturing processes in it through
which the non-living substance of food passes to be made
living. As a decayed brick in a house-wall is rej)laced by
a duly manufactured sound brick, so the organism is repaired
by the substitution of a duly manufactured fresh molecule
for the waste and dead one.
Certainly the living body, while it is a sound whole, effects
by its wonderful alchemy, physico-chemical or vital, the
repair which in the case of a house must be done for it
mechanically from without. In this regard it differs also
from the nearly allied case of a damaged crystal of salt
which has its breach repaired and form restored in a fit
saline medium by the deposit of matter from without in a
mechanical fashion ; for although there is a formal restora-
tion of matter in both cases there is not that intimate
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 25
reciprocal interaction of being between crystal and saline
solution which there is between organic molecule and or-
ganism : in the one there is manifest addition from without by
accretion, in the other there is addition by transformation of
matter and evolution from within through invisible and yet
inscrutable life-making processes. That is true in a sense, no
doubt, but may it not be thus true only because we can
neither get within nor observe from without the infinitesimal
process ? A closer analogy to the flux of life is a regiment
of soldiers in which, as individuals fall out by death,
their places are quickly filled by fresh individuals, whereby,
the losses being regularly repaired, the life of the regiment
goes on unimpaired. Moreover, just as the new soldier fit
to replace the dead soldier is not supplied by the regimental
body, but enters it from without more or less prepared and
fashioned for his place and function, seeing that the recruit
must be enlisted, drilled, instructed, so the fit material to
replace the dead by a living molecule in every special struc-
ture of an organism has to be enlisted, so to speak, from
without, and then to be fitly digested, disposed and foshioned
by the various subtile agencies which co-operate in meta-
bolism, before it can be put into place and serve to continue
the life of the w^hole. A complex organism, like a well-
ordered state, is the ordained integration of a multitude of
special organizations — superordinate, co-ordinate, and sub-
ordinate — which work together in constant and essential inter-
relations to maintain its vital unity.
Could we trace a particle of food in minute continuity
through all the successive changes undergone by it in the
intermediate stages which its elements traverse in their
progress from death to life, and understand the series of
physical and chemical transformations which take place,
the contrast between the extremes of gross dead matter and
fine living matter, seemingly so abrupt and great, might be
vastly lessened, if it did not wholly vanish. After all, it is
but stubborn habit, not justified by facts, to make a violent
separation between so-called inert passive matter and
26 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
active energizing matter ; there is no real difference of
kind between them ; not only does the visible reaction of
a passive body to action on it imply intrinsic activity, but its
very capability of being acted on — its patience, passion, or the
internal commotion which passion signifies — implies secret
activity in it.^ Therefore it is that, as Coleridge said, the
division of substances into living and dead, though psycholo-
gically necessary, is of doubtful philosophical validity. It is
because of the complexities of things within the exceeding
minute compass of matter, and of the condensed subtilties,
intensities and rapidities of the motions that go on within
the confines of its form, that we cannot picture them in ima-
gination, as we can in some measure picture ordinary physico-
chemical activities. Be that as it may, however, certain it
is that from broken crystal reconstituting its form in a suit-
able medium, through simplest living unit, vegetable or
animal, which takes matter from without to transform
directly into its substance, up to the most complex organism
which elaborates the nutritive material successively in the
various factories through which it is made to pass in its
process of vitalization there is transition not break, continuity
not interruption, evolution or development, not cataclysm
nor creation. That physical and chemical activities stop
abruptly at the edge of a living particle is simply incredible ;
it is easily credible that, entering it, they undergo a change
into new and stranger complexes.
Such orderly transition does not mean that life is no more
than physics and chemistry, as these sciences are yet known
to us ; on the contrary, rightly viewed, it means that the
ultimate complex unit of life represents much more than
any known physico-chemical activities, being, so to speak,
the quintessence of many simples and complexes in one
1 " It is clear that to exist is the same as to act or work {Quantum
operor, tantum sum) ; that whatever exists works ( = is in action, actiially
is ; is in deed) ; that not to work, as agent or patient, is not to exist ;
and lastly, that jMtience .(= '>^'is patiendi) and the reaction that is its
coinstantaneous consequent is the same activity in opposite and
alternating relations." — -Coleridge, Lit. Corr.
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 27
minute whole and the development of new properties in
consequence.! It imports, in fact, a microphysics and a
microchemistry which we have yet to learn ; for which
reason the term vital force serves for the present to denote
the subtile and unknown processes. The objection to its use
is its abuse to signify some quasi -metaphysical entity not
subject to material laws and the acceptance of such imagin-
ary entity as an explanation, or if not as explanation, at
any rate as a sort of sacred and insoluble mystery which it
is pious to adore and it would be impious to probe by scien-
tific methods. As if, forsooth, life would suffer depreciation
and not be the wonder it is to its conscious self by being
linked in unbroken continuity with physics and chemistry,
and to trace the evolution of one thing into another were to
say that the one thing is the other.
It is strange that those who diligently busy themselves
with researches into the beginnings of life and the trans-
formation of lower into higher life do not, besides trying to
trace the dead into the living, watch closely the degenera-
tions of higher into lower life under suitable conditions,
natural and artificial, and of lowest living into dead matter.
The vital force fails signally sometimes to rise to the height
of its mission even when the conditions are such as might
seem to warrant the expectation of better things — as, for
example, when, instead of repairing a tissue like muscle by
its own proper substance, it succeeds only in replacing it by
an inferior fibrous tissue; or when, out of sheer innate
weakness, instead of keeping life going at its normal level,
it makes a pus-cell where it ought to make a sound living
cell. The phenomena of inflammation, which is the begin-
ning of so many ways to death, present a study of the decline
of strong life into weak life and of weak life into death.
However, let the line of enquiry be as it may, it is not likely
soon to solve the mystery of life ; the subtilties of nature in
^ As the life of the bacterium is not destroyed by the lowest pro-
ducible temperature, when all chemical affinities cease, it is evident
that life is more than chemistry, although having a chemical basis.
28 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that domain far exceed the subtilties of present observation ;
and nothing can be more fatuous than to suppose that the
microscope, which, like the telescope, has its limit of vision,
will ever reveal the infinitesimal processes at the basis of
life, unless it be the philosopher's fancy that whenever one
veil of nature is raised he will not find another behind it,
but triumphantly expose the First Principles of things.
Having considered life and death together from the stand-
point of living matter, one may also consider them from the
standpoint of dead matter. When the attractive forces com-
pletely predominate in a chemical substance it is so fixed
and stable as to be practically inert, inwardly and outwardly
motionless apparently, at rest in what Leibnitz called the
sleep-state of the monads ; in like manner, although not
perhaps in the same degree, when the attractive affinities so
predominate in a vital molecule as to render it stable and
seemingly inert, it is then fixed or formed structure whose
life is of a low order only, not far removed from death — dead
life or living death, so to speak — being in relation to active
living substance much as matter in its inert crystalloid state
is in relation to matter in its active colloid state. Were a
complex and unstable substance in a colloid state, its con-
stituent molecules so delicately balanced that the least touch
sufficed to explode them, to discharge its energy in the
explosion, the result would be its destruction. But if the
substance were to discharge its energy by minute, measured
and rhythmic explosions, and, reconstituting itself regularly
after each explosion, to keep its form, the result then would
be a close resemblance to the simplest protoplasmic life.
Conceive, then, a framework of fit form and requisite nicety
and complexity of adapted parts, like the framed structure
of a living organism, to be packed with an unstable colloid
compound, mobile and full of pent-up energy, yet kept in
due bounds by structural form, and to have its succession of
minute explosions regulated to perform a definite work or
function ; thereupon grant to the impacked substance or
plasm the power of repairing its waste in a suitable medium ;
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 29
the substance would be virtually a protoplasm, and the
self-feeding mechanism a living organism. Impair the
machinery by which the many and minute internal motions
are ruled to serve definite functions, so that they mix in
tumultuous welter and discharge themselves violently, and
the effect would be a tumultuous explosion like that which
shakes terribly the epileptic.
Could the minute workings of a sjDeck of simple living
protoplasm, apparently homogeneous and A\'ithout fixed form
to give definite aim to its energies, be closely watched,
little more might be seen in it, at all events not anything
much more special in kind, than in the subtile and active
physico-chemical compositions and decompositions of an
unstable chemical colloid, were they also traceable with
equal exactness. If homogeneous at first, it manifestly could
not continue so when acting in external conditions opposing
its full freedom of movement in all directions; for these
opposing conditions against which it strikes must needs
cause answering alterations, external and internal, of its
plastic substance, and such alterations, if definitely kept
up by the conditions of the environment, determine lines
of direction of its internal forces which eventually become
structural. It would grow structurally to its circumstances,
as it is the characteristic of all life to do, and afterwards
its structure harden by degrees, as its fate is, so as to
obstruct and eventually stop plastic life. As to its power
of self-repair, that need not count too much as a difference,
since it always requires a fit medium for the purpose, and in
an unfit medium suffers a suspension or extinction of life.
When it thus becomes inert and apparently lifeless, perhaps
remaining so for a thousand years, is it truly alive ? Might
not such suspended life be almost as fitly styled death in
life, or living death ? Certainly its activities are not then so
much superior to those of so-called dead matter, into which
by a little further deadening they insensibly merge, as to be
conceivable only as absolutely different and separate.
If instead of speaking of living and dead matter any one
30 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
were to speak of living and dead activities, it would be
manifest that he was talking nonsense. The activities of
dead matter are real enough, infinitely more so than was at
one time suspected, but dead activities would be a contra-
diction in terms. All inanimate substances owe their diverse
powers of reaction, when acted upon, to activities within
them, latent when not patent, not dead but dormant ; and
the properties by which they affect other substances are
essentially their acts. Suspended or insensible motions with
preservation of form are common to animate and inanimate
matter, and can in both cases be quickened by the proper
external stimuli ; as the frozen energies of ice are unloosed
by heat, so are the suspended energies of living matter, though
dormant for years, unloosed by heat and moisture. Life and
death being neither separate nor separable conceptions ought
not therefore to be set over against one another as belonging
to absolutely distinct categories of thought and being ; for
death is a constant and necessary part of the process of life,
and life a constant and necessary part of the conception of
death — one cannot be thought without the other. Composi-
tion, transformation, dissolution of matter and force, such is
the cycle of events from death to life and from life to death.
Life viewed in the abstract as a constant entity is no more,
then, than a general term or name including countless par-
ticular lives of diverse degrees and qualities according to the
various structures, simple and complex, which subserve and
condition it. St. Paul saw that clearly enough when, con-
templating the transformation of the terrestrial into the
celestial body, he declared that all flesh was not the same
flesh, but that flesh differed much in dignity. So also did
Milton when he expounded the various degrees of substance
and in things that live of life. The life of a brain-cell is
one thing, the life of a blood-cell or an epidermic cell another
thing, the life of any element of fixed structure very different
in quality from that of an active element of protoplasm. Of
a still lower dignity than any animal life, lowest type of
all, nearest to inanimate activity, is the life of a vegetable
II ORGANISM AND LIFE 31
protoplast ; while the lowest animal forms of life are notably
so like vegetable organisms as to render it hard to say
whether they are animal or vegetable. Certainly the abstract
notion of life as an entity of fixed quantity and quality,
something existing somehow separate from matter, has been
and still is a hindrance to a definite and true conception of
its concrete nature. The name sanctioned by authority and
custom has governed the facts instead of the facts governing
the name.
Scientific observation of vital processes in all their varie-
ties, degrees and periods show plainly that they obey the
law of conservation of matter and energy which reigns
throughout nature. Nothing is ever created out of nothing,
nothing is ever destroyed absolutely. Everywhere that
which disappears in one form reappears in another form :
torn, twisted, triturated, compressed, sublimed, rarefied,
matter is the veritable Proteus, ever one substance beneath
its multitudinous transformations. To speak of life in any
of its manifestations as self-creating and self-acting is not
more truly rational than it would be to speak of a self-creating
and self-acting locomotive ; it is as if one viewed the me-
chanism as a separate and self-acting body without taking
thought of the long and tedious antecedent processes of its
formation now incorporate in its structure, of the many
mind-powers which it thus represents, and of the necessary
external supplies and conditions of its function. The dpng
mortal need not ever lament the loss he "vvill be to the world ;
he may safely say to himself, " There was no addition to the
matter and force of the universe when I was created, there
will be no subtraction from it when I perish."
32 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
II
ORGANIC STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
Irritability of tissue — Unconscious purposive action — Consensus, con-
sentience, consciousness — Consciousness and individuation — In-
ternal activities of the organic molecule — The principle of in-
dividuation — Spontaneity and physical reaction — Excitability of
nerve and reflex action — Simple and complex reflex action — Latent
sensory stimuli — Reflection and will — Incorporate antecedents —
Diverse qualities of brain — Fundamental sources of mental energy ;
self-conservative and reproductive instincts — The cerebro-spinal
and splanchnic nervous systems — The intellectual mechanism —
The motive forces of reflection — The expressions of emotion —
Sublimations of feeling — Intellect and purposive action — Com-
positions and disintegrations of will — The organic basis of will —
Over-sensitiveness, passionateness — Physiological conditions of
sensibility— Co-operation of physiological stimuli — Different levels
of volitional evolution — Organization of moral feeling and will —
Life-history the exposition of character — Inane abstractions —
Conditions and circumstances of reproduction — Bodily structure
and character.
Haller gave the name of irritability to that property of
muscular protoplasm whereby it reacts to an irritation or
stimulus. The living element behaves exactly as if it felt
the stimulus and responded to it ; only it is not thought right
to ascribe feeling to that which is not supposed to be con-
scious. In like manner it would be wrong to perceive feeling
in the lowest form of living monad reacting fitly to its
stimulus, though it give all the signs of that which were it
deemed conscious would be feeling, for it is destitute of that
which observation shows to be the necessary physical basis of
consciousness.
In face of a process of impressibility and reaction which
on the one hand is not high enough to rise to a conscious
plane, and on the other hand is too high to own ordinary
physical agency and be called physical, the custom is to put
it in a category of its own and to give it a special name.
That is the usual artifice of making a separation in nature
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 33
where continuity reigns everywhere ; a procedure which,
though expedient for purposes of thought, is oftentimes the
cause of no little wrong thought. When a particular adaptive
act is done consciously, and can be done with the same ease
and precision unconsciously, the right conclusion is not that
the two processes are different in kind, but that consciousness
is not of the essence of the process — that it is adjunct not
agent. Sympathy of parts in response to a stimulus and
unity of reaction by the whole — which is formal or purposive
action — can and does take place without predesigning con-
sciousness, even without conscious feeling. Is the process
when unconscious so far in nature and dignity below that
which it is when conscious as to warrant a trench of separa-
tion between them ? All the more significant a question
this, seeing that conscious purpose, being a term of compre-
hension by a quite limited human self, cannot be predicated
of the unlimited not-self, which is incomprehensible.
Pondering well the basis of things in vital reaction it
is evident that it is the organic affinity or sympathy of
parts which is the basis of consciousness, not consciousness
which causes the sympathy. The co-operation of the several
parts of a whole to an end imports a consensus or sym-
pathy of them, and such consensus is a step on the way
to consentience or co-feeling, which, again, at a still higher
remove, becomes a eon-scio^csness — that is, a co-hnoiving or
cognoscence. For the progressive development of life means
a progressive specialization and complication of structure,
whereby the correlations of manifold parts within a formal
whole are multiplied and the quasi-physical sympathy rises
to its highest and most compound expression — that is to
say, to consciousness. The bounds set by its external form
circumscribe, if they do not constrain, sjonpathy of the
internal motions of a living monad. The unconscious
process has its plain parallel in the conscious operations of
daily life : let a number of persons work together to a
common end, their energies thus loosely defined and
directed, they soon begin to feel together, co-operation
34 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
breeding consentience, or synergy sympathy; and from
feeling together they go on afterwards to think or know
together, consentience or sympathy crystallizing, so to speak,
into definite consciousness or synthesis, from which common
consciousness of fellowship in aim and work emanates in
time the corporate conscience which, just because it is
special and limited in its range, may nowise be the fine
fragrance of feeling which true moral conscience is.
Whatever the conscious element in a vital reaction, and
wherever in the scale of life it first faintly dawns, it mani-
festly develops insensibly and progi^essively from unconscious
reaction. The new and strange transformation is a mystery
no doubt ; but, after due wonder at it, no more so than the
mystery of vital or any other energy, or of the transforma-
tion of one energy into another, which are accepted facts of
our relative experience, inexplicable within it and meaning-
less outside it. Why wonder more at vital energy than at
electric energy, or at the organic traction of a logical sequence
than at the inorganic traction of gravitation ? Though
custom blind us to the mystery of common things it does
not efface the mystery of them ; nor does the want of custom
make uncommon things more a mystery. Is there anything
essentially stranger in self-perceptions by the inner sense of
consciousness than in the different special consciousnesses of
the several senses ? If the mental organization of the brain
incorporate the experiences of these outer senses through
untold ages, registering in its structure the manifold affec-
tions of their several consciousnesses, it is easily imaginable
that such stored compositions of sense, when excited together
internally, must needs produce an internal common sense or
consciousness. Certainly, if the separate sense-conscious-
nesses did not combine in the perception of a particular
object, that object would be as many different objects as
there were senses affected by it ; but inasmuch as the senses
combine their special modes of affection in a unity of
perception or apprehension, which they do by virtue of
being functions of one body, there results a consciousness in
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 35
common which, being effect and exponent of individuation,
is a self-consciousness.^
The gap between organic irritability and physical reaction
is much lessened when we picture in mind the intensely
quivering intestine motions of the organic unit. Although
the visible rebound of an elastic ball thrown against a wall,
or of a billiard ball driven against the cushion of its table^
is entirely physical, yet the result is not haphazard, even
though the throw or stroke be made at random ; the rebound
is exactly determined in force and direction by the force and
direction of the resistance which its impact meets in the
wall or the cushion. Such definite effect might be called
the aim of the operation, and is so called when the expert
billiard-player, conceiving and achieving exactly the stroke
he wishes to make, so appreciates and combines the forces
engaged as to make them fulfil his precise aim. Conceive,
then, on the one hand, the motions of a multitude of bounding
balls to be invisibly contracted within the minute compass of
an organic unit, its form circumscribing their complex inter-
play of motions and determining the resultant motion of the
whole, and along with this spatial condensation a necessarily
corresponding compression of the times of their motions, now
therefore inconceivably swift and subtile in the minute space ;
on the other hand conceive the infinitesimally fine and
intensely quivering internal motions of the organic unit to
be decompounded, expanded in space, and proportionately
lengthened in time, so that each motion equalled in measure-
ment that of a visibly rebounding ball ; — then if we bring
the two conceptions together and compare them, the two
orders of physics, visible and invisible, will not be so far
aloof as they seem superficially. Could any one imagine
himself inside the organic molecule and able to watch its
rapid intestine motions as he can watch the easy motions of
' All the more conceivable if we accept what Bacon calls the
vestigia communia of the senses, the latency of all in each, and reflect
that, physiologically, they are so many specializations of a general
diffuse sensibility which is not that of any one of them.
D 2
36 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the billiard ball, or the seemingly slow but actually most
rapid motions of the starry heavens, matters might be more
simplified.
To say with the metaphysician that an organism possesses,
or is possessed by " a principle of individuation " is to say in
other language that an organic unit is a complex organic
compound which, once formed, resists disintegration, holding
together as long as it can, not otherwise than as a chemical
compound does. Every being naturally resists, passively or
actively, its unbeing, and organic being most actively of all.
The reactions shown by it in fulfilment of its nature to be
•and grow in suitable conditions for its ordained period, are
rightly described in other terms than those applied to
chemical reactions : attraction or affinity becomes active
liking or desire — it affects or selects that which, being
agreeable, it can assimilate or make into its like and so use
for its maintenance and growth ; indifference or incompati-
bility becomes dislike or repulsion — it shuns or rejects that
which it cannot assimilate and, being disagreeable, it can
make no use of or is hurt by. That is the fundamental
motive of all organic being, high and low.
Undoubtedly the necessary descriptive terms have been a
hindrance to close investigation of the basic facts, separation
of names having led to a separation of things in thought.
So it came to pass that the like or dislike was accepted as
itself an explanation, without considering more deeply that
the attraction or repulsion had a material basis, and what it
signified physically. Nay, it further led to the assumption
of an intangible mysterious something behind the substance,
a hidden vital entity, which liked and disliked, loved and
hated, rejected and embraced. Yet, when all is said, the
organic element reacting to embrace the fit and repel the
unfit stimulus no more makes a spontaneous election than
one chemical element does of another in order to form
a compound, or than the sunflower does when, responding
to the sunbeam's caress, it turns to greet it. The reaction,
in fact, is not something spontaneous within the organic
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 37
substance which goes before the movement to determine it,
but simply the physical reaction of the specially constituted
matter to the stimulus suited to act on it. How imagine spon-
taneity in the reaction of the tender shoot to the stimulus of
light, and in the gradual gi'owth, steadily, imperceptibly,
molecule by molecule, of the branch by the incorporation of
innumerable successive reactions into structure ? Because
the attraction is jfixed, definite, certain, we do not speak of
spontaneity as we might and probably should do were there
any show of uncertainty, doubt, choice ; as he, indeed,
can hardly help doing who watches a wavering vine-tendril
swaying to and fro slowly in seeming indecision before
definitely fixing itself.
From lowest organic irritability to highest organic re-
action there is continuity of natural process, no break or
pause in the ascent from monad to man. Whatever the
superior agency at work in the highest nervous processes,
the basis is physical reaction : that which is irritability in
muscular substance becomes excitability in nervous sub-
stance. When a nerve is stimulated there is a constant
sequence of events : it is excitable, a nervous energy of some
kind is excited, and this subtile energy travels as a wave or
current along a nervous track to its terminals, to spend itself
there in work of some kind, good or bad. Simple reflex
action is just such process along fitly fashioned structure.
The wink of an eyelid — nowise an instance of the simplest
reflex action — is as direct an effect of its special nervous
mechanism as any stroke which does its special work in a
physical machine ; it imports a nervous machinery formed
and fitted through remote ages now to act automati-
cally. Such vital automatism, representing the then active
memory of embodied experiences, may be called the present
awakening of their silent memories. In every acquired
reflex action the fit organization is seen in manifest
process of gradual formation by repeated practice of a
special nervous tract in a special work, and the automatic
function of it when completely formed. A man spits as
38 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
easily as he coughs, but the one is an art which he
has had to learn gradually for himself, and he may do
well or ill, whereas the other is a function which has
been learnt for him in a dateless past and he now inherits
ready-made.
In the simplest reflex act the single impulse goes directly
from start to issue of fit-linked movement, but in complex
reflex action the impulse is distributed along various co-
ordinated tracks, to end in the combined movements, simul-
taneous and successive, of the final act. A configuration or
composition of motions is organized in the mental confedera-
tion — an organ, so to speak — the elements of combination
being simple reflexes that have been formed previously and
duly articulated and fixed in structure ; for as an organ is
composed of different tissues, so a compound reflex is com-
posed of different simpler reflexes. What, then, must its full
excitation by a fit stimulus be ? Nothing else but the
ordered discharge of its store of acquisitions, the unloosing
in function of its consolidated purposive movements.
Here due attention may be drawn to the fact, nowise
adequately appreciated, that the definitely organized con-
figuration or pattern of a complex reflex contains implicitly
the sensory as well as the motor elements of its composition ;
not only the simpler constituent reflex movements, that is
to say, but a latent incorporation of the sensory stimuli in
response to which they were formed in the past and now
tacitly respond. Though not consciously felt, these are
silent memories represented in structure and functioning in
its function. Therefore it is that the external stimulus,
exciting them according to their mutual ordering, produces
a resultant activity out of all apparent proportion in kind
and degree to its quality and quantity. What evident ratio
between the leap of a hunter and the gentle stimulus of the
rider's touch ? Yet the horse could not make the leap had
not countless ages of perfecting practice embodied the fit
sensory and motor elements in the present equine structure ;
its mysterious inmost mechanism containing implicitly the
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 39
many potential impulses which are now, by virtue of special
training and in response to a special stimulus, exploded
within rule in so swift succession as to seem instantaneous.
In the most complex reflex action of all, which takes
place in the supreme cerebral centres of man when the
sensation elicits reflection, and the reflection, whether
narrow or wide, shallow or deep, is followed finally by the
proper voluntary act, the process is essentially parallel. An
act of will is a purposive act, a more or less compound
formal act, in which a nervous impulse stimulating and
gathering forces in sequent motion issues after traversing
definite paths of reflection — in other words, after implicating
its definite reflexes. Here, however, the complexity of
things is apt to obscure the simplicity of the conception. In
the first place, we have not to do immediately with sensations
and their respondent movements, but with their supreme
cerebral representatives, their functions raised to a higher
power, in fact with abstractions of them ; for these pregnant
forms or compositions of represented sensations and move-
ments subserving general and abstract thoughts mean
physically the finest nervous plexuses on the highest cerebral
plane, representative plexuses abstracted from constituent
nervous processes of a simpler and lower order. They are
indeed just the parallel nervous processes of the ascending
processes of mental development, the processes, that is, of
generalization, classification, judgment. As always in
the ascent of organic matter in dignity, there is a progressive
concentration of energies into more minute compass of finer
and more complex substance. In the second place, as the
working of reflection is indirect, circuitous, complex, the
currents of energy passing swiftly along several tracts to
reach their end, the underlying physical process is easily lost
sight of Conscious that they instantly will a certain end,
men stay not to consider how the unconsciously traversed
paths of the purposive act have been gradually fashioned
by practice, so that the act of will is possible and now done
instantly. Did they but think well on it they would perceive
40 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that the largest part of any act of will is always unconscious,
and the best-fashioned will unconscious in largest measure.
It follows naturally, then, that as with composition of move-
ments in the compound reflex, so with combination of thoughts
in reflection, there is no apparent proportion between the
large and deep reflection of the wise brain and the simple
impression which perchance solicits and elicits it. How
could there be ? The present wise reflection never could be
performed had it not been made potential by the incorpora-
tion in the brain of millions of ancestral reflections reaching
back immemorially to simpler primal forms, any more than a
man could grow to think and do as he does but for the long
line of his organic antecedents quintessentially and invisibly
incorporate in the richly pregnant germ from which its
mature structure is step by step evolved visibly. If every
brain contained mental stuff of the same quantity and quality
structurally fashioned after the same pattern, it would
perform mechanically the same reflection on the occasion of
the same stimulus : it could not do otherwise than reason in
exactly the same way from exactly the same premisses.
When a sane brain habitually works irrationally it is no
accident, nowise a freak outside mental laws ; it is the fault
of ancestral formation" bespeaks an irrational foundation
uncorrected by rational training.
As brains are not simple and uniform in constitution but
differ much in complexity and quality of structure, and as
every object has several facets or aspects of appeal, it results
that an impression which elicits little or no reflection in one
brain excites wide reflection in another brain and different
reflections in different brains. The premisses never are quite
the same : as many minds so many modes of perception,
feeling, thought and j udgment. Now to say of one mind that
it thinks differently on something from another mind — of
the botanist, for example, that he has other ideas of a tree
than the peasant — is to say that the structure of it in
the relation to the object differs, its information or mode of
formation by nature, training and culture having been
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 41
different, and that the special reflection is the natural
function of the special structure. For in no case is the
object which is perceived and thought either outside or
within the mind, as ordinary language implies, it is mind
then and there active, the synthesis or product of subject
and object, the thing and the think in one : there exists no
separate mind to lay hold of and think on an external object,
but a concrete brain brought into suitable contact with the
particular external object makes the particular thought
or mind.
If the human body, like every other organism, be a complex
mechanism adapted to generate and framed to store force
when suitably supj)lied with nutritive fuel, and thereafter to
distribute and use it in manifold ways, a natural question is :
What are the working forces which prompt and sustain its
doings ? They are obviously two — the self-conservative
instinct to maintain and increase its life and the reproductive
instinct to propagate and perpetuate life ; these the two
deejD sources of motive energy from which all feelings and
actions spring. They depend not on reason, but go before
it in the order of organic being, are elemental ; they attest
indeed the energic force — the nisus formativus — of organic
evolution working in the individual.
Physiologically the self-conservative instinct is served by
the visceral organs co-ordinated by the splanchnic nervous
system to co-operate in unity of function ; the propagative
instinct specially by the reproductive organs, which not
only serve its special function but, likewise co-ordinated,
play their part in the unity of the whole body. Had
the animal organism been fixed to one spot like a tree, and
able so to obtain its requisite nourishment, such purely
organic system might have sufficed ; no further mechanism
would have been needed to maintain and propagate the
self But inasmuch as the animal had to move about to
get its food, another system of organic mechanism was added
for the purpose — a locomotor system to serve as means and
instrument of the gratification of the fundamental instincts.
42 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Thence ensued a concurrent need — the need of a special
nervous system, the so-called cerebrospinal, to co-ordinate and
direct the instruments or members subserving the life of
active relation with the external world. These two nervous
systems, although having their special dominions, are not
separate and independent : how indeed could they be sepa-
rate in one body, itself an organic whole, in which every part,
mutually related, works in the whole and the whole in every
part ? Intermixed throughout they are in vital interrelations
through a central nervous system of brain and spinal cord
representing a complex hierarchy of fine nervous plexuses
with afferent nerves from and efferent nerves to all parts
of the body, every part of which is represented centrally
in it, and all parts kept in co-ordination and unity of func-
tion by it. On the one hand then stands the organic system
serving the life of feeling and linking man to the nature
which was and is ; on the other hand, the motor system which,
serving the life of relation, is the means and instrument to
the nature to be through him; and between them is the
internuncial cerebro-spinal system, mediator-like partaking
the two different natures and thus subserving their mutual
interaction.
Now this intermediation supposes, and its cerebro-spinal
basis imports, an intellectual mechanism in the supreme
centres to minister to the formation of ideas and the fit
associations of them. The increasing speciality and com-
plexity of the individual's relations with the external world
are accompanied by a corresponding specialization and com-
plexity of the organic machinery, which embodies in its struc-
ture and thereafter displays in its functions these multiplying
relations of sensory impressions and adaptive motor reactions.
Their incorporate ratios are the basis of conscious reason,
which is indeed the effect and exponent of them, nowise the
pre-existent dictator of their successful adaptations ; if they
existed not in structure it could not be performed in function.
Nor does this intellectual system, any more than the motor
system, supply the motive impulses of action ; these spring
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 43
from the organic life and supply the energy which is guided
and ruled by the understanding through paths of reflection —
that is to say, through the fitly-formed cerebral reflexes which
mental reflections import. The idea is impotent to act, it has no
motive force in it ; is simply the form, clear or obscure, distinct
or vague, through which the force of feeling works well or ill to
its end. Obviously force and form ought to co-operate in full
and nice adaptation to achieve the best result — the force of
desire or feeling find its fit stay, rule and instrument in the
intellectual mechanism, and the mechanism be adapted to
use the force functionally in the best way and with the least
waste. No machine can function otherwise than badly
which has not adequate motive force to work it, and it is but
a poor machine in which, as in many physical machines,
a large proportion of the force is wasted in its working. How
rare in human life the happy chance of an exact fit oi force
and mechanism, the just proportion of feeling to intellect in
the brain ! And how many miseries, vexations, errors, follies,
failures, calamities and catastrophes does their dispropor-
tion not occasion !
A just reflection on the exquisitely fine and admirably
perfect mechanism of a gnat's body, which contains impli-
citly more reason than is yet explicit in human reason, might
almost tempt a wonder, if not a regret, that reason ever
became conscious in man, seeing how excellent was its
workmanship before it was conscious. Further reflection,
moreover, on the structure and function of the human body,
if unbiassed by preconceived opinion of its perfect construc-
tion, might even warrant the conclusion that nature has
yet much reason to learn and apply before it reaches per-
fection in its highest organic w^ork.
Passions or emotions signify nervous commotions which
discharge themselves in movements, visible or invisible.
When their outward and visible movements obey the rules
of social convention they are called natural and proper,
perhaps beautiful ; they are reckoned irregular and uncouth,
perhaps ugly, when they overleap such rules. Although a
44 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
convulsive grimace is as natural as a smile — more natural,
indeed, sometimes to an intensely neurotic temperament — it
is not pleasant to see, because, having no social meaning
attached to it, it is not a sign of intelligent import ; not being
the outward translation of a friendly mood, as the smile is,
but meaningless movement on a face where the onlooker
expects the reflection of intelligence, it is called defacing and
deemed a deformity. Every passion is good or bad, beautiful
or ugly, according as it does or does not mark and promote
the gratification and well-being of the bodily organism in
which it is roused and the social organism of which that body
is a living member, that is to say, according as it physio-
logically quickens and aids, or weakens and hinders, the
individual organic processes, socially aids or hinders the
processes of the collective life. Is it not pretty much to these
fundamental principles that all elaborate disquisitions con-
cerning the nature and value of human motives and acts
are reducible at last ?
The forms of emotional expression in physiognomy,
gestures, gait and attitude being for the most part conven-
tional, different peoples select, train and employ their
respective specialities of movements for the purpose; and
as each nation persistently teaches its own forms by example
and precept to its members from their cradle, and the infant
is constitutionally a most imitative reflex mechanism, these
are so imperceptibly grafted and firmly fixed as habits as
to seem most natural. Thus it comes to pass that the
expression of a passion which is pleasing and grateful to one
human section looks disgusting and ugly to another section,
and that peoples are prompt to dislike, hate, fight and kill
one another because their languages or their grimaces differ.
Liking can be expressed by licking as well as kissing, and is
just as natural, albeit not so polite, an art, nor ranking so
high in the order of mental evolution. For as men grow in
refinement a sort of abstraction or sublimation of the con-
crete is registered in delicate reflexes at a higher cerebral
level — ascent, for example, made from the playful bite, the
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 45
lick and sniff of coarse liking or lust to the most refined
expressions of the passion ; from the angry bite, the snarl or
sneer of dislike, and the scowl of hatred to cold motionless
disdain. What takes place in this process of humanization
is a progressive refinement and condensation of force in more
delicate cerebral mechanism, which then expresses itself in
fine and restrained function ; witness, for example, the calm
contained power in the quiet reserve of good breeding, when
exhibited in contrast with the tumultuous agitation of vulgar
feeling; or, again, the gross, uncouth, howling laugh of the
imbecile who is incapable of the gentle restrained smile of
intelligence ; or, again, the rapt, almost breathless ecstasy of
the spiritual love-transport in contrast with the fierce and
violent commotion of brutal lust.
When the organic mechanism discharges itself through
currents of ideation and reflection in purposive action, the
function is called voluntary. The real motive power is not
then, of course, in the ideation or reflection, but in the force
of feeling or desire which thus presses to and expresses itself
in action suited to discharge and ease it. The paths of
reflection by which, being fitly ruled and conducted to its
end, the force becomes purposive are the suitably fashioned
intellectual means or mechanism of its fulfilment ; as without
the force of feeling the intellect would want motive power, be
impotent to act, inert mechanism only, so without its fitly
instructed or structural means the feeling would issue in
unruly, random, explosive, perhaps hurtful action. Indispens-
able condition of every definite act of will is the silent
intuition or distinct conception of its purpose or aim — of its
defined form, so to speak ; and such intuition or conception
presupposes and implies the acquired mechanism of organized
reflection, which, like the fit muscular mechanism, constitutes
the definite means of its performance.
As the reflection preceding an act of will is little or much,
narrow or wide, shallow or deep, the consequent volition is
more simple or composite accordingly. Wills are indeed
most various in composition and quality, there being no
46 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
such thing as a constant will apart from each particular will ;
and it is always the individual who performs the particular
will, not an abstract will which actuates him and performs
itself Beneath every volition, as beneath every reflex pro-
cess, runs a fine wave of physical energy presupposed by and
conditioning it; the course of this motion may be com-
paratively straight and simple or circuitous and complex,
but in either case its purposive path has been organized by
practice so that the particular will can now be done which
never could have been done had it not been thus fitly
instructed or structuralized. For it is gradually fashioned
not by an autocratic will from some higher sphere inter-
vening to pre-concert and command execution, but by a
steadily perfected interaction between the proper muscular
movements and the object, the purpose perfecting with the
perfecting execution and not perfect until the execution is
perfect. The unlearnt will can no more will than the
untaught hand of the child can grasp.
Every act of will, whether of high or low degree — the will
to blow a nose, to scratch a pimple, to fasten a button, to
hold a pen, to meet a shock, to suffer or avenge a wrong —
being a matter of gradual instruction, can therefore be done
well or ill ; the particular will being strong or weak, definite
or indefinite, perfect or imperfect, according as its nervous
mechanism has been completely or incompletely organized
by the instructing practice. He who knowingly puts out
his hand to grasp an object which he wants or to push away
an object which offends him — both acts possible to him only
because he learnt them from his cradle — is said to put his
will in action, although it would be more exact to say that
he performs a particular will. His present instant and
definite purposive act prompted by desire is thus instant
and definite because it is done by the instructed means of
perfected reflex action incorporating in its organization
antecedent reflection of which he is now unconscious. In
like manner the most complex will which is performed owns
the same principle of structural formation, in-formation or
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 47
instruction ; it is a case only of composition of reflections
and a resultant compound volition with richer contents.
There is not indeed a single act of perfectly formed Avill,
simple or complex, which might not be performed in exactly
the same way in response to the right electric stimulus
precisely and exclusively applied, were that feasible, to the
proper area of the cerebral cortex. Such will is actually so
performed in a sort when disease, disintegrating the mental
organization of the supreme cerebral area generally, yet
dissecting out, so to speak, a special nervous tract which it
leaves unhurt, excites and exhibits the dissociated function
of the surviving tract : articulated normally in the mental
organization, the volitional tract is then disarticulated by
the disease. The intelligent observer may patiently watch
instructive displays of such disintegrations as they are
grotesquely presented by the grimacing features of the dying
general paralytic ; for the dismembered volitions then exhibit
in strange distortions the irregular actions of the devastated
organic mechanism.
Although feeling supplies the motive force of will, yet feel-
ing itself is not original but derivative, being the conscious
outcome of the fundamental attraction or repulsion in the
nervous element whose excitability has been affected by the
impression. Without this underlying physical affection or
commotion the passion, emotion, or affection of mind could
not be, and because of the special constitutional dependence
the quantity and quality of feeling differ in different persons,
in the two sexes, in the same person at different seasons of
life. Thus, as always, ultimate analysis reaches and strikes
a physiological basis of molecular physics — the fundamental
facts of the stimulation of nerve-element, the excitation of a
current of energy in consequence, and the distribution of
that energy along definite nerve-tracks. Will comes out
at last as organic irritability raised to its highest terms
of cerebral expression, and the best will as the present
culmination of organic evolution.
Individuals notably differ much in sensibilities. Some
48 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
have such over-sensitive and irritable temperaments, such
low flash-points of sensibility, so to speak, that they
cannot stay to control sensations, but are moved by the
present sensation, if at all urgent, and act according to
the few servile ideas summoned hastily to its sessions ; they
cannot rule and guide the sensation in right ratio along
paths of reflection so as to maintain due proportion — that is
to do rationally ; which is to say, in other language, that they
cannot pause to muster and weigh reasons and judge and act
well accordingly. The will they perform then is necessarily
of a very low order of composition. They say of themselves,
and like others to say of them, that they are very sensitive,
highly strung, which is true in a sense, but they have no
right to count their infirmity a superfine quality, as they are
apt to do. It is a constitutional defect : they have not the
stillness and continence, the quietness and confidence, which
signify strength : the stimulus to which a strong character
responds inwardly in function of a higher order of mental
composition being overstimulation to them, provokes an
outward explosion of tumultuous agitation which is sometimes
almost convulsive. Great irritability is indeed the note of
nervous weakness ; for which reason it is most manifest in
women, in feeble neurotics, in sick persons and young
children.
Many persons are in like manner the victims of their
passions. They cannot control and rule the forces of them
by fit distribution and ordered method at the higher level of
reflection, and though they perform a more complex will
than the low- willed victims of sensations, this is far from
being of the highest order of composition. Wanting the
right composition of passions which exists in the higher
mental organization subserving large reflection, sane judg-
ment, and stable will, they cannot form and perform the
most composite volition, are incapable of attaining to that
calm, strong, rational will which philosophers preach and
poets praise as the aim and crown of wise mental culture.
Nevertheless, when their mental energies are concentrated
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 49
in one passionate aim, a resultant fanatical will may be a
potent force and do great work, good or ill, in the world.
The stronger the stimulus to sense within physiological
limits the stronger, generally speaking, is the excitation of
nervous energy and the stronger the consequent will. But
the general proposition is subject to the qualification that
there is no constant physiological limit, an equal addition to
the strength of a stimulus producing very unequal effects in
different minds, and in the same mind in different states of
health and at different seasons of life ; effects indeed which
differ not in degree only, but sometimes virtually in kind..
Between the impression and the expression there is the
complex individual nature and all therein implied. The
stimulus which produced one effect at twenty-five will pro-
duce an opposite effect at fifty-five years of age, different
effects, too, in different conditions of the atmosphere ; while
an atom gone astray in metabolism may notably so change
the nervous tone of a person, precipitating him from a height
of joyful energy into an apathy of dismal despair, as to
render the impression which in the former case elicits brisk
and strenuous will utterly impotent to excite any will in
the latter case. Compared with the exquisite subtilties and
complexities of the human organism and its fine susceptibi-
lities to jars of structure and function, the most complex and
delicate musical instrument with its easy liabilities to be put
out of tune may perhaps be counted a simple and crude
mechanism.
The effect of the external stimulus is of course increased
not only by direct increase of its force, but also by the co-
operation of other stimuli, as happens notably when an
object is more eagerly desired and more firmly grasped
because it pleases more senses than one — is at the same-
time grateful to the eye, pleasant to the touch, sweet to
smell or taste. Mark, for example, how one sense notoriously
joins with another to kindle a resultant fire of lust when,
liking is inflamed into lust and lust flames into brutal
passion. It may be objected that lust pressing forward to.
£
50 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
passionate gratification is then in the man, as always in the
animal, the expression not of will but of passion in action.
But is not that to make the usual mistake of letting words
govern facts instead of using the facts to govern the words ?
Where is there an utterance of will more fierce, more per-
sistent, more full of devices sometimes, than that exhibited
by lust in the wiles and guiles it employs and the efforts it
makes to gratify its yearning ? If it be then called passion,
it must be allowed to be sometimes passion working by wit
to obtain its wilful end. Let the passion rise to the higher
plane of love, putting on the decent drapery of a delicate
reserve and the graces of refined expression, there is then no
scruple to see and o\vn will at work ; it is when the un-
purified passion presses rudely to its end by coarse and less
complex ways that there is a repugnance to admit any
presence of will in it, or at all events a determination to
ascribe the conduct to a low, debased will, seduced or
enthralled by passion, which is somehow at the same time
will and yet not true will.
All which goes to show how much it might conduce to
deliverance from the thrall of words and to clear freedom of
thought if the truth were distinctly realized that there is
no such thing in nature as an abstract will to be bond or
free, no spiritual entity which, soaring free aloft, is only
lamed in utterance by extraneous hindrance, but always a
particular wall, lofty or low in composition, of inconstant
strength and quality, and that no two wills are ever exactly
equal. Be it lust of the flesh or lust of the spirit, it is not
will which is absent in the one case and present in the other,
but its composition and plane of exercise are different;
in the former an inferior will, coarse and comparatively
simple in composition, works along lines of a lower evolu-
tional level ; in the latter a superior will, finer and more
complex in composition, works along lines of a higher level.
The low-willed man lacks elevation of mind in its literal
sense.
Here again the separateness of names tends to obscure
II ORGANIC MECHANISM 51
the continuity of things. Neither will in its highest form
as the agent of supreme reason, nor the moral feeling which
is then its finest ingredient, is separable from the lower
qualities and feelings of human nature, or could ever have
existed without them ; both are rooted in and cannot be
parted from these, but grow from them by continuity of
development, as flower from stem and stem from root.
Physiologically they import a most fine and complex net-
work of nervous organization which, like each subordinate
network in the nervous hierarchy, has its special sensibility,
is excitable by its proper stimulus, and discharges its own
cun'ents of energy along the paths organized therein by
inheritance and education ; for such network implies not
only a multiplication and refinement of feelings, esthetic
and moral, but specially linked movements, ideal or actual,
together constituting the exquisitely fine apprehensions or
cerebral reflex grasps which take place. Where there are
no such fine plexuses in the supreme cerebral plane, as is
the case in the lowest savages, there can be no refined moral
sentiments nor corresponding wills ; when the plexuses are
defective or defaced in civilized persons the moral feelings
and will are defective or debased ; and when disease erazes
these acquisitions of superior culture the moral feeling and
will are effaced.
When all is said, it is neither passion nor will which is
the real working force ; they are but general names denoting
the conscious outcomes of underlying organic operations ; it
is the concrete person, a compact whole of manifold tissues
and organs who, diversely affected according as they differ,
feels and shows passion more or will more — that is, passion
less or more controlled in form and ruled in expression. As
it is the man who thus wills the will, he is necessarily deter-
mined by his constitution, culture and situation to will good
or bad wills, weak or strong, turbulently passionate or calmly
rational, coarsely and loosely, or finely and compactly com-
pounded. They inevitably represent his essential character,
bodily and mental ; for there is not a particle of his body, even
E 2
52 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
to his finger-tips, not an elemental nutrition or secretion,
which is not felt in mind and does not feel mind in it.
The man's life-history, being the inevitable expression of his
character in his various situations and circumstances, is the
true record of his will ; wherefore a single scientific bio-
graphy, if ever made, must needs be a psychological con-
tribution of inestimable value. Such scientific study of will
by observation and induction may turn out to be a far more
excellent way than to anticipate the voluntary effect and
then convert it into antecedent agent, as the wont is.
The psychologist who abstracts passion or will from the
concrete processes and converts the abstraction into entity
and agent does very much as a farmer might do who should
go to work to abstract and equalize all the dogs, horses,
oxen, sheep, pigs and other living things on his farm as
animals, and thereupon deal v/ith them abstractly and
uniformly, treating each individual not according to its
kind and character, but as abstract animal which could eat
the same food, do the same work, and required the same
handling. An odd sight truly that would be, but hardly more
incongruous than that of the metaphysician who diligently
occupies himself in subliming and abstracting his material,
and in then dealing with his mental sublimates as realities.
As differences of individual character reach down to the
organic depths of mind, the native differences of organic
sensibility with their accompanying differences of reaction
necessarily build up differing reflex mechanisms — that is to
say, differing modes of feeling, thought, judgment and con-
duct. No two persons, even of the same family, resemble
one another exactly in sensibilities any more than they do
in features, voices, or movements ; for no two persons of
different families contain and sum up the essence of the same
ancestors, and no two children of the same parents, though
they contain the same ancestral essences, are begotten
and bred under the same conditions, mental and bodily,
inherit therefore exactly the same complex combinations of
infinitely fine elements and motions, and transmit their
11 ORGANIC MECHANISM 53
inheritance to be developed under exactly the same con-
ditions. Considering that the minute reproductive germ,
apparently almost homogeneous, contains the quintessence
of its long line of ancestral beings and the potentialities of
all the structures and functions of the mature human body
into which it eventually develops, its seemingly amorphous
substance secretly impregnated with their potential forms
and motions, it is easy to understand why differences of
qualities show themselves in the heterogeneities of growth ;
considering again that the microscopic speck, quivering
intimately and intensely with infinitesimal ly subtile and
complex motions, cannot fail to be affected by the special
circumstances, mental and bodily, of the act of fertilization
— to have perhaps the very tone of its Avhole being, har-
monious or discordant, thus determined by the present mood
and action, mental and bodily, of the agents ; considering,
lastly, that two such marvellous condensities of strangely
pregnant substance — ether-whorls of complex motions, so to
speak — meet either to combine lovingly and perfectly, or
imperfectly and discordantly ; — it is not in the least strange
that of two children of the same family one perchance has a
goodly and the other a poor heritage. Instead of wondering
that two sons of the same parents pretty equally endowed
mentally, and living in pretty nearly the same circumstances,
yet develop differently in life, the one succeeding well
where the other fails, the wonder would be if it were not
sometimes so.
If the subtilties of organic processes did not far exceed
the subtilties of observation and exposition it might be
possible to read and interpret mind in correlated structure
and correlated structure in mind — the cat's mind in^the cat's
structure, the sheep's mind in the sheep's structure, the
monkey's mind in the monkey's structure, and every human
mind in the features of its special bodily structure. Give
the tiger the sheep's foot and tooth, and what would become
of its fierce and destructive proclivities ? Give the sheep
the tiger's tooth and claw, and how long would its inoffensive
54 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap, ii
meekness last ? In the conformation, carriage, gait, attitudes,
gestures and physiognom}'- of a person an acute observer
may sometimes detect the distinct or faintly traced likeness
of some animal — of the fox in one person, of the tiger in
another, of the cat, the elephant, and varieties of dogs in
others, and find, if he inquire closely, that the mental charac-
ters correspond. Without doubt the character of every
mind is written in the features, gestures, gait, and carriage
of the body, and will be read there when, if ever, the ex-
tremely fine and difficult language is fully and accurately
learnt. It is language studied and partly interpreted in his
picture by the great Painter who paints a human portrait
which is not merely a mechanical likeness but a living
exposition of the person.
CHAPTER III
THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
I
ITS CONSTRUCTION AND DESPOTISM
The social source of the moral imperative — Benefits of social union —
Social composition of vices and virtues — Social development through
marriage, family, tribe, nation — Individual rights and social
authority— The social necessity of superstitious hypotheses —
Ceremonies, taboos, customs and fashions — The disintegration of
a community — Social variations — Suppression of variations — The
conatus of organic growth and the sun's energy — The self -regarding
passions as motive forces of social progress — The prudence of social
conformity — Morality the selfishness of the species — Immoralities
as natural degenerations — Universal brotherhood and a reign of
righteousness.
How plain and urgent the rules of wisdom and virtue to
be observed in order to strengthen the health, to heighten
the intellect, to refine the morals of mankind ! By diligently
observing them every one is assured that he will perfect
himself and be most happy ; for he will then be the best
example and most useful organ of his kind. But whence
comes the authoritative assurance and what is its worth ?
Immediately from the social body of which he is an element,
whose interest it is thus to prompt and instruct him ; its
natural aim being so to inform him, so mentally to fashion
him, that he shall perform well, and be pleased to per-
form, function Avhich, most benefiting by, it most approves.
56 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Solemnly then with awe-inspiring invocation of supernatural
sanction it proclaims the duty and prescribes the ways of
knowing all he can in order to do all he can for its service ;
and as he cannot do that if he act solely for himself, it im-
poses on him the imperative moral mandate to join with
others of his kind in mutual love and service. Universal
synergy through universal sympathy, that is the ideal moral
end : to effect such an attraction of units by crushing their
egoistic angles and smoothing their altruistic facets as may
fit them to combine into a stable social body, instead of
yielding to the personal repulsions which tend to drive them
apart in pursuit of separate and self-regarding interests ; to
perfect, in fact, such an altruistic transformation of egoisms
that the individual pleases his self-love by doing good to his
kind and does good to himself by pleasing his kind.
Strangely antagonistic are the means which nature thus
employs to develop the human species socially, for it is by
the reciprocal struggle of opposite forces in action and
counteraction that a progressive equilibrium is maintained.
A perpetual tendency to social union goes along with a
perpetual tendency to dissolution ; self-regarding passions
and propensities being in continual conflict with socialistic
passions and propensities. Instability of the forces which
produce it is, indeed, the essential condition of the existence
of social as of all life. The individual, by reason of being
individual, is necessarily egoistic, moved at bottom by self-
interest, eager to apjDropriate things to self as centre, to
force them into compliance with his moods and wishes,
essentially therefore hostile to and inclined to hate his
neighbour who, on his side, has the same fundamental feel-
ings and the same impulses to personal growth and gain.
But two persons meeting in frequent intercourse soon find
out that they cannot enjoy a state of perfect liberty, that
they must needs bear and forbear, and, secondly, that by
living in social union each gains largely in power and com-
fort. Thence it comes to pass in a settled social system
that everybody, losing some personal freedom, gains a larger
Ill THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 57
freedom, profiting immensely by the combinations of forces
and opportunities of action which it puts at his service.
The weakest member who is wronged claims and obtains all
the power of the civilized state to have right done to him ;
the trained skill of its organized police to hunt, capture and
convict the thief who steals his purse, and all the formidable
and expensive array of its judicial machinery to enforce
restitution from the wrongdoer who defrauds him, and to
punish the ruffian who assaults him. It is clearly the
interest of the individual, who is but one and weak, to obey
social restrictions, seeing that it is his interest that others,
who are many and strong, should obey them. For any one
to repudiate such rules and to act antisocially is to become
an alien from the social body, and to be branded by it in
consequence as a culprit who, having renounced civil duties,
has forfeited civil rights. Thus it is that the repulsion of
individual egoism is counteracted by the social attraction,
and the equilibrium, stable or unstable, of the social state
established.
Happily, for the progress of things on earth, it comes to
pass, in the complex composition of a society, that a man
cannot help acting in its interest even when he acts from
self-interest. There is hardly a single private vice which
may not be shown to work immediately or remotely, directly
or circuitously, for the public good ; while every private
virtue, if carried to excess, becomes demonstrably hurtful to
it. The compound social whole is a composition of many
and diverse elements, some apparently having opposite
proi:)erties, yeb all necessary, which it absorbs, mixes and
transforms to make its own compound quality. Little
thought is needed to show that men were not at first bound
together into society by the pure attraction of liking or
love, or that any society would hold long together which
depended entirely on that force for its continued union ;
societies, tribal and national, have owed their formation and
maintenance as much to the compulsion of hostile pressure
from without and their so-called vices within, as to the
58 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
social sympathy which was the effect of necessary rather
than the cause of predesigned social co-operation. In social
as in other sorts of life the coercion and keeping of matter
in form is constantly opposed to a persistent tendency to
dissolution into its elements.
As in the process of humanization, which a progressive
civilization signifies, organic evolution is raised to its highest
power in social growth, it is no marvel that the intricate
delicacy and large complexity of the mental organization
implied by a lofty morality has required a long time and
travail to be effected, or that the process is still incomplete
and at its best unstable. Nor is it to be wondered at if, in
spite of ardent hopes, cool doubts may intrude into a re-
flective mind whether the whole human race ever can be so
knit together in complete unity and amity as to establish
a perfect universal society. Here, however, as elsewhere, it
was perhaps the first step in the ascending series which
cost and counted most — to wit, marriage, the close and firm
union of which, coercing the selfish impulses of the individual
to primitive social ends, wrought that solid combination of
units into the family which was the basic germ of more
complex social unions. Thereby egoism worked in spite of
itself to produce altruism ; the selfishness of the individual,
gratified to be the sole sanctioned possessor of a person of
the opposite sex, stimulated by the need of keeping exclusive
possession, and strengthened by the intimate interests and
uses engendered, expanded into such primitive altruism as
is implied in the selfishness of the famih^ Thereupon in
due course the selfishness of families needing and using
mutual services developed a more complex social body, and
therewith the altruism implied in the selfishness of a tribal
society. And so on to higher and still higher complexity of
social combinations, in which the natural inclinations of the
individual to lawless freedom, compelled to ever more and
more disciplines under the restraints of the social community,
have led to the achievements of arts and culture which
adorn civilized life, and to the moral principles which have
Ill THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 59
been proclaimed to govern it. Beings who have borne the
stress of \yedded union, and grown painfully and tediously
through innumerable ages in the scale of social complexity
of composition, may be destined at last perhaps to attain
the climax of combination into one human family.
Meanwhile the unit in a social state seldom realizes,
hardly suspects, that he is being moulded and ruled and
systematically used by the social body to which he belongs,
or asks himself whether he gets the most he might get out
of life by bowing to its authority and submitting tamely to
its rules and exactions. Here an inevitable, almost insoluble,
difficulty fails not to present itself — namely, how far the
self-regarding individual ought to be curbed, and how far
the authority enforcing restraint is justified. That authority
being the social system in which he lives, what is to hinder
it from being too self-regarding and egoistic, and doing him
\\Tong ? It may lodge its power in one person as its supreme
and sacred representative, ascribing to him a kind of divine
right, or in a special class of privileged persons, or in several
representatives whom it chooses to govern it, but in each
case the power may be, and often has been, abused. After
all is said, it never is an ideal, sometimes is a quite unideal
or anti-ideal society which owns and uses the individual.
Societies notoriously differ much in constitution and develop-
ment, and therefore the unit in a low social community
may have a wretched time of it while he lives, even if he be
allowed to live out his natural life. In the slow and toilsome
travail of human development through the ages men have
gone through dark and cruel stages in which individual
rights have counted little or not counted at all. To be slain
as a solemn sacrifice, whether with merciful expedition or
mercilessly after slow torture, in order to bribe the spirit of
vegetation to make the crops grow, or to propitiate the
demons in wait to inflict diseases and other evils on the
community, or to placate the angry god greedy for the fat of
human sacrifice, and be an atonement for the sins of the people,
might well have made many a poor wretch bethink himself.
60 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
had he been able to make the reflection, that he was not
owing much to the social system which so used him.
Happily for him he could not thus ponder things; the
world in which he lived was the limit of his thought and
feeling; his fate he abjectly accepted with helpless awe as an
ill-betiding event in a fixed order of things, inevitable, in-
conceivable to him otherwise, much as he might have looked
on it had he chanced to have been struck down by a fever
which his fellows were fortunate enough to escape. Withal
he might, because of his poor thought and dull feeling, be
better off than the more tender and reflective social victim
of a later civilization who was subjected to the cruellest
tortures imaginable, and finally burnt alive, for sjoeaking a
truth which, though it was for the world's good to have it
spoken, his world did not then want to hear. The vital
principle of all sacrifices, human or animal, corporeal or
spiritual, being to propitiate the unknown power or powers,
pernicious or protective, it followed that to deviate from the
religious or social system of belief by which they were
ordained was to fall out with the ruling principle of the
social union and to undermine its unity — to sap faith in and
impiously offend the national god or gods whose wrath would
then surely be wreaked on the people.
In its standing conflict with external nature to make,
maintain and increase itself, human nature was driven to
invent and use many such working hypotheses to inspire and
rule its doings ; by placing behind the mysterious and all-
powerful physical agencies which overawe and overwhelm
it spiritual beings of like make and temper to itself whom
it can propitiate and pray to, it creates something definite
to apprehend and deal with, persuades itself that it can
thus influence things for its benefit, gains courage to endure
and hope to act systematically. Before it finds out the
laws of nature and learns to conform to them, what else
can it do but hold to such belief if it is to uphold and
increase itself in its vast and unintelligible environment ?
As one person can only deal with another by supposing a
Ill THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 61
like mode of thought and feeling in him, so man in his
dealings with nature must suppose either that it thinks and
feels as he does, which is the old theological way of using
prayer and magic as its means, or that he thinks and feels as
it does, which is the modern scientific way of submitting the
mind to things and conquering by obeying, as Bacon expresses
it. In both cases the aim was to get into some sort of
reconciliation and union with the environment.
It is an inexhaustible wonder, though the phenomenon be
familiar as a household word, to see how stone blind people
can be to rank unreason of thought and conduct in themselves
which amazes and horrifies them in others. To the Christian
of to-day nothing is more hideous and unspeakably revolting
than human sacrifice by a barbarous people to its national
god or gods; yet what were the innumerable deaths by
torture inflicted on unbelievers by Christians in the name
and for the glory of God but just as truly human sacrifices,
and just as superstitiously motived, as any sacrifice offered
up on Druid altar or by Astec priest ? The Mexican
hierophant who tore out the heart of the human victim and
with outstretched arm offered it bleeding and palpitating
to the god was not more essentially superstitious than, nor
nearly so knowingly cruel as, the Christian who tore out the
tongue of the blaspheming heretic guilty of uttering a
premature and inopportune truth, and then burnt the poor
wretch alive, or who watched with pious thrills of holy appro-
bation the writhing agonies of his tortured victim. To refine
a superstition by making it less gross and revolting is not to
make it less essentially irrational. By its traditions, customs,
laws, usages, ceremonies, education, language, its whole con-
structive and constant influence, sensible and insensible, the
particular society so persistently and effectively moulds and
fashions its units that they, living in, by, and for it, show
forth in function what has been built up in the structure of
their mental organization ; they are, so to speak, its manu-
factured products, its incarnate traditions and customs, in-
capable therefore of thinking and feeling outside the set
62 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
grooves of their manufacture or believing in a better type of
human product than they represent.
Whosoever stays quietly to reflect sincerely on the facts of
human life as set forth in history and presented in present
process may easily discern ample evidence of such social
manufacture, and perhaps find in it the only explanation of
the manifold absurd burdens and painful torments which
the race has persistently devised and wilfully inflicted on
itself, sometime and somewhere, in relation to almost every
event of life from birth to death. So monstrously gratuitous
and often gi-otesquely silly some of them, that they would
have seemed unimaginable had they not been imagined,
and utterly unnatural had they not been actual conditions of
social development. " Thou shalt " has indeed inflicted more
pain than " Thou shalt not " as a social edict. Considering the
various customs, magic ceremonies, taboos, sacrifices, social
rites, oftentimes most irksome, humiliating and painful,
which peoples in all parts of the earth have invented and ob-
served in their progress from primitive savagerj^, as if their
only purpose had been to make themselves suffer as much
as they could ; considering, again, the wearisome ceremonies,
the senseless customs and conventions, the ridiculous fashions
of demeanour and dress, the dreary amusements, the shams
and hypocrisies of social life which civilized people still
invent, endure, and esteem as marks of achieved superiority
over their savage ancestors ; then weighing these considera-
tions impartially, there seems no good reason to wonder at
what men have done formerly, seeing that they do so
absurdly now, and very good reason not to underestimate the
power of social manufacture to fashion the mode of feeling
and thinking of the unit. Reflecting furthermore that
savage peoples in all times and in all parts of the world have
independently invented and observed the same or similar
irksome and irrational customs, and that to-day civilized
peoples in different countries are pleased to endure and extol
their similar ceremonies and fashions, however absurd, the
conclusion seems just that, notwithstanding the incalculable
Ill THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 63
play of passion and the caprices of will, the evolution of human
mind is governed by laws as fixed, natural and necessary as,
though more complex and obscure than, those which govern the
increasing complexities of chemical composition or the evolu-
tion and dissolution of suns and stars ; the more so certainly
when it is borne well in mind in how lame and inept a fashion
primitive reason worked, not having logic enough to correct
the grossest fallacy which was inflicting quite needless suffer-
ing in practice. Viewing which things objectively in reason's
dry light, we perceive that they mark the steps of the
conatus jiendi of organic matter as it rose progressively to
more complex compositions and adjustments, stumbling and
blundering on its tedious and tentative way.
When a social community has fashioned its units so per-
fectly that, like a nest of ants or a hive of bees, every one
does just what is required by its rules of feeling, thinking
and doing, it rests at a stay, being a very stable organic
formation in the circumstances ; and it may continue so ap-
parently for an indefinite time when, being isolated, it receives
no jarring impact from differently organized societies. But
when it comes into contact and has to reckon actively with
a social compound of different structure, too unlike to
assimilate, yet too like to be indifferent, then it is liable
and likely to suffer a disintegration and to break up into
new compounds which, turning out better or worse, develop
or degenerate : a process this which has gone on steadily
from the beginning and still goes on, since nations have
notoriously acted, and still often act, towards one another
very much as tribes of savages which have not attained
to the social state.
The more complex a mental organization becomes as the
level of civilization rises, the more modifiable it is ; the
more apt therefore are variations to occur in the most
plastic and developing substance of it, which is the
human brain. Not only are such variations or new starts of
thought more frequent but in natural consequence they meet
with less antagonism and have more freedom when they
64 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
occur ; the tyranny of the social environment is less rigid
and repressive. Still a mean has to be kept between the
erratic impulses to go off old paths and the sluggish disposi-
tion to stay on them ; for if individual variations are extreme
and active and the social inhibitions not proportionately
strong and effective, it is obvious that the tendency of the
deviations will be to disintegration. The special society,
having the might, has then the right to restrain or suppress,
its too ardent reformers who would disturb violently and
perhaps overthrow its equilibrium ; it would carry toleration,
too far if it tolerated the promulgation and practice of a new-
doctrine subversive of its constitution. A healthy instinct-
of self-conservation recoils naturally and energetically from
change which is not beneficent reform but destructive revo-
lution. Rightly so too for the most part, seeing that the
individual who feels no respect for the past in a present
which is, and he in it, its natural outcome, and from which a
future must proceed by natural order of development, but
despises the wisdom of the long line of his predecessors of
whom his life is, so to speak, the prolongation, must needs be
possessed with such a disproportionate conceit of himself as
is utterly irrational and may well border on madness. That
is the notorious fault of the unstable, fanatical, half-insane
temperament which, although representing sometimes good
impulses and playing a great part in human movements, is
rapt in a delirious enthusiasm, contemptuous of oppositions
and opportunities, incredulous of counter-evidence and of
the honesty of those who present it, unscrupulous in the use
of means, instant to have unrealizable aspirations realized
in a day. The difficulty for every social system to hit on the
happy mean between stagnant conservatism which prevents
wholesome change and the innovations which go beyond
safe development and cause disintegration is all the greater
because the structure of a society, like that of an individual,,
tends to harden into rigidity with age, so that impulses to
variation are then few and weak, and restraints strong, whereas
in youth when plastic substance abounds and structure is-
in THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 65
soft and pliant, impulses to variation are frequent and
restraints weak.
Variations and fitness to survive are one thing in a simple
and comparatively homogeneous organism ; they are quite
another thing in a complex and very heterogeneous
organism. In the former a variation suiting the surround-
ings might grow freely by direct natural affinity, whereas in
the latter a variation, although itself suited to grow directly,
might be checked, or stifled, or modified by manifold in-
hibitions — a thousand invisible threads, so to speak — arising
out of the complex correlations of parts in the organic whole
from which it proceeded, its free growth being incompatible
Avith their intervital functions ; it is not then a case of
outward environment only, but also of the thousand latent
environments which such constitutional correlations imply.
As it is thus in the bodily organism, so it is in the social
organism ; a new idea good in itself is ignored, or sup-
pressed, when, untimely born, its propagation would be
pernicious to the particular social economy. A natural
kindness of heart may compassionate the mart}^:" who uttered
it, and lament that he was not listened to and honoured in
his day instead of being violently suppressed ; but such
tenderness of feeling betrays weak reflection, seeing that
nature spares not the individual when it is necessary to
sacrifice him, the species being its supreme concern, and that
it must be supposed to fulfil its destiny best in its own way.
If man cannot discern the reason or ratio of its course, that
is because his egoism, obscuring his sense of proportion
or ratio, causes him to judge irrationally whenever he is
concerned.
The progressive development of organic matter from the
simple and general to the complex and special in ascending
series one must accept as a positive observation, endeavouring
to trace the Hoio Avithout vainly troubling to know the
ultimate Why. Of all bootless quests for a finite being
who cannot think and speak but in terms of himself, none is
more absurd than to search out the primal motive or first
F
66 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
principles of things.^ This much he can know certainly —
that the earth, as constituted and situate in the solar
system, owes the constitution and progression of its organic
matter, including himself, directly to the silent, constant,
subtile-potent action of the archchemic sun's energy.^ For
as the solar mass holds the revolving planet in its just poise
and orbit, so do its beams animate and maintain the motions
of life on it, inciting and keeping the subservient molecules
in their just poise and movements. Were its fire to go
out to-night, where would life be to-morrow ? Not then
wholly ill-inspired in his adoration was the sun-worshipper,
albeit it might be styled poor philosophy on his part to stay
in secondary causes and worship them as agents. But is
a more abstract philosophy which creates and worships a
primal power in form of human thought so vastly superior
and not, perchance, really a disguised self-idolatry ?
In the mental region the development of new sensibilities
and desires, and the discovery and employment of new means
to gratify them, accompany and evince the addition of
cerebral reflexes and the increasing complexity of organic
structure ; by working together in complex social union
men not only multiply their wants and interdependences,
but sharpen their intelligence, enlarge its range, and augment
their powers. Though the individual loses some freedom b}'
what he gains socially, yet the spirit of individuality is
nowise wholly extinguished in him. All the passions of
self-love come into varied social play to urge him to gain
distinction among his kind : pride, ambition, avarice, envy,
emulation, imitation, admiration, and the rest of them are
so many forces which, gratifying individual feeling, yet serve
by their complex interactions to promote social development ;
the bounds set to their self-regarding actions by the rules
' C'est ce qui a donne lieu a ces titres si ordinaire des Principes des
choses, des Principes de la pihilosophie, et aux semblable, aussi fastueux
en effet (en realite) quoique non en appareuce que cet autre qui creve
les yeux, De omni scibili. — Pascal.
2 Archchemic is Milton's descriptive term.
in THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 67
governing the weal of the community, whereby individual
freedom is disciplined to consort with the freedom of others,
being eventually refined and sublimed into moral principles.
To suppress their self-regarding strivings would be to stifle
the very motive impulses of social gi'owth. The aspiration
after universal concord therefore expresses only the dumb
prophetic longing of organic life for the repose death will
one day give it ; for it is plain that nature, knowing better
what is requisite for the development of the species, ordains
present unrest and discord, strife and struggle, as means of
life and progress. All the apparent evils which spring from
the antagonisms and anti-social tendencies in the social
fermentation, being the necessary counteractions of the good,
are not devil's work, unless it be the devil's special province
to do good work by evil means, they are no less divine than
any other cosmic events.
For his own interest's sake, and to make the most of
himself while he is alive, the individual does well not to look
too far ahead of the spirit of his own social community,
which always takes stern order to enforce on its members
conformity to edicts pronounced by it to be social, moral,
and religious. And although a higher society enforce not its
rules with the ruthless severities practised by lower societies,
yet the mortal who is overmuch individual, coming into
painful collision with its traditions, customs, conventions
and beliefs, will be sure to suffer so much in consequence
that he may prudently deem it to be wiser to go along with
them than to go against them, even when he clearly per-
ceives them to be bad. Self-interest dictates present profit
out of the system by one who lives in it rather than a
doubtful reform of it by self-martyrdom in standing out of
or withstanding it. Besides, he may deliberately persuade
himself that it is more right to go on working quietly in a
system which on the whole and at the time is for the general
good — all the more surely and placidly, too, the greater the
place he fills in it — than to do anything prematurely to alter
it. What matters it that therein he feigns to be what he is
F 2
68 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
not, or dissembles what he is, or, systematically feigning and
dissembling, is himself an organized hypocrisy, so long as the
community is gradually moralized and its progress promoted ?
He has the right, as believer in a universal plan, to expect
that it will accomplish itself in its own good time and way,
and quietly to abide that fulfilment. Nevertheless, a reflecting
unit in a complex social system, thinking closely on the
persistent and prosaic way in which he has been artificially
fashioned from his cradle to think, feel and be as it would
have him do, might from time to time be tempted to
emancipate imagination from the cramping conventions of
his community and to ask himself whether he would not
have been happier as a simple social being wdth fewer
desires, less ambitious aspirations, lower intellect, and ruder
morals.
Such outcry of the natural man would be thought to mark
a low level of intellectual and moral being in him who
uttered it, and the society to which he belonged would be
sure to think meanly of him in consequence. Its self-
interest is to do all the pruning and training of the indivi-
dual necessary to make him serve it best; not otherwise
than as the close and well-trimmed hedge exacts much
subordination, deformation and mutilation of the single
shrub. In the end it comes simply to this — that the
despotism of morality is the self-seeking of the species and
the servitude of the individual, who is expected to find full
compensation for his self-sacrifices in the implicit belief
of its inestimable worth and the knowledge that he is
ministering to its glorious destiny.
It is in like conformity with its solely selfish ends
that it claims and mercilessly uses its right to do just
as it pleases with all other living creatures. Man's
supreme moral law does not stretch itself out to embrace
them ; on the contrary, his moral duty to himself and
therefore to them is to enslave and use them for his
service, and to feed and fatten in order to kill and
eat them. His inhumanity to his kind, when the tale of
Ill THE SOCIAL SYSTEM 6^
it is plainly set forth, is pronounced shocking, odious,
deplorable, just because it betrays a want of fellow-feeling,
a literal unkindness, an alienation from the spirit of the
human hive, pious regard for which, however low and
despicable its particular state, is counted supremely laudable
in theory. How shrill an outcry of righteous indignation
would be raised against any one who in a time of famine
gave food to his starving horse rather than to a starving
man, or did not kill his deserving horse, if need were, in
order to feed an undeserving and utterly despicable man 1
Yet the horse may have been a most patient and submissive
drudge, which never shirked an effort nor spared a strain to
do him willing service, whose faithful servitude no kindness
could adequately repay, while the man was the most vicious,
scurvy, lazy, abject specimen of his species, loathsome to
every sense, whom the world would have been well rid of
at any moment. The regard is not then to the moral
worth of the vile creature, it is to the postulated dignity of
humanity in him who is himself contemptible enough — to the
kind in the particular man, which is glorious and to be glorified
in spite of its wretched example in him : the species thus
exacts that its superiority be respected in its basest specimen,
revering therein a desecrated shrine of itself. Such being
the principle of man's self-worship, he is naturally disposed
to condemn and bewail his past inhumanities, even while
continuing them ; than which nothing can be more truly
illogical, seeing that he, being what he is now by virtue only
of what he has been, the lamentation is no better than a
conceited regret that he was not taken into the council of
creation and permitted to shape its course.
Human morality being effect of the supreme selfishness
of the species urged and urgent to consolidate and promote
its growth to higher levels of collective being, it naturally
follows that the divers developments of immorality are
disowned as degenerations ; for they are manifestly opposed
to and signify the undoing of the slowly and laboriously
fashioned kind. Nevertheless such degenerations are as
70 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
natural as the progressive steps of development, of which
indeed they are the necessary antitheses, the two processes,
like height and depth, involving one another. For in man's
social nature, as throughout the universe, opposing forces
work in reciprocal action and counteraction : a labouring
impulsion towards a higher complexity of being on the
one hand, which is called progress, and a counterworking
tendency towards disintegration, which is called regress.
That he does not clearly perceive and own this truth, but
is apt in present process of living evolution to overlook the
inevitable dissolution of human things, is doubtless owing
mainly to the fact that his imagination is tied to measurable
.and comparatively short periods of time in the immeasur-
able flux of things and cannot well take a large enough
flight.
A legitimate doubt then may well arise whether human
self-worship will at last raise mankind to the height of a
universal brotherhood pervaded and maintained by mutual
love, which shall be the crown of organic creation. The
history of the race on earth thus far hardly warrants the
expectation of such a perfect consummation and bliss ; nor
is it easy to understand how a complex human economy
could hold together in just poise and movement if pervaded
by one force of attraction only, antagonistic forces being
annulled, any more than a solar system could keep up its
just poise and movement if subject to one force of attraction
only. However, the optimistic believer in human perfecti-
bility and perpetuity may reply, firstly, that the fraction of
the human orbit yet known is so small as to afford no
adequate data to predict what the complete whole will be ;
and, secondly, that there is distinctly evident through human
history a slow stream of tendency making for righteousness,
which presages a moral purpose to be fulfilled in time to
come.
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 71
II
SOCIAL ATONEMENT
Individual and social being — Law of social atonement — Reward and
retribution by natural social law — Prevalence and uniformity of
sacrifices — Well-doing the function of a sound social nature — Debt
and credit in the social system — The manifold atonements of social
life — Composition and compensation in social evolution — Vices and
virtues equally necessary — Evil a factor in the development of
good — A temper of philosophical acquiescence — The social source
of the moral mandate — Action and reaction of individual and social
medium — Variable mean between egoism and altruism.
The two ways of looking on the world — namely, either
wholly from the anthropocentric standpoint or, so far as
may be, from an outside station, involve necessarily different
estimates of its events. Man's manifest concern is with self
as centre and its relation to the small fraction of the universe
with which alone it is in touch ; having to live as well and
as long as he can in the world, he must to that end make
the best use he can of that without and around him which
acts on him and he reacts to. So doing he cannot do
otherwise than estimate things practically in relation to self,
however fancifully he may speculate about that of which,
being beyond the range of thought, he can know nothing
and can only talk non-sense.
As it is an essential condition of every commonwealth to
subordinate the self-regarding interests of the unit to the
interests of the whole body, a law of social atonement is a
fundamental principle of its economy. I speak not now of
consciously formulated moral law, but of the pervading law of
social atonement which is in silent and constant operation
as an indispensable condition of social union; whereby all the
members, though having their diverse functions, yet being
members of one body and members one of another, suffer
inevitably for one another's faults and profit by one another's
virtues. A society in which such vital reciprocity of parts an
72 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
functions was abolished would be no society; it would be
literally dismembered or disintegrated, and would have to
be re-memhercd or reintegrated in order to regain unity
and remembrance ; not otherwise than as a dismembered
federation of the supreme brain-tracts would be the abolition
of mind and have to be re-memhered in order to restore
mental unity and remembrance.
That honesty is the best policy is not always manifestly
true for the individual mortal, it might be so were he
immortal ; that a good action is not without its blest reward
is untrue for many a benefactor whose reward is ingratitude
and calumny, for the recipient too sometimes whom it helps
to demoralize. As things are, within the short span of a
life one person suffers oftentimes for virtues in him the
possession of which makes for pains and the absence of which
in another makes for gains. He must have been but a
poor observer of men and things who at the end of a long
life can join heartily in the Psalmist's exultant exclamation
— " I have been young and now am I old, yet saw I never
the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread."
Perceiving the falsification of the saying in this life, yet
eager to uphold its useful credit, men look and long for
another life after death in which amends shall be made,
unrequited virtue duly recompensed, triumphant vice
punished — " Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things
and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted
and thou art tormented." Thus to eternity and immortality
are relegated the postulated compensation and retribution
which a closer and more continuous and scientific view
of things might show to be worked out vicariously and
inevitably by natural social law in time and on earth.
Although his virtues be sometimes a let and hindrance to
the individual in the social struggle, they are without doubt
a good to the civil society. The cardinal principle of the
social fabric is that a virtuous life is good because it is
beneficial, a vicious life bad because it is hurtful, to its
economy ; or perhaps to speak more logically, that the life
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 73
which is good for it is virtue, the life which is bad for it is
vice. The scattered few in the world who severally embody and
perform virtue intone or another of its shapes are the leaven
which leavens the whole lump and is used up in the process ;
of whom, indeed, it may be said in their several situations and
qualities that they suffer for the world's transgressions, the
just for the unjust, that they bear the burden of its sins, that
by their stripes it is healed; the righteousness and strength
of the few making atonement for the frailties and iniquities
of the many. Crowned with applause, perhaps, when, being
no more, they cannot heed it (should some curious inquirer
chance to make a retrospective study of their lives) their
daily wear is not unlikely to be a crown of thorns. The
martyr dies for his kind but his name liveth for evermore.
That is the reward by which his kind, celebrating him, glorifies
itself and inflames others to work for its glory. Thus do
mortals confer immortal fame, glorify a name for evermore,
who themselves can easily foresee, nay, even calculate, a time
when they shall be no more.
The dawning notion of social atonement now gradually
perhaps emerging into scientific clearness, is discernible in
the crude superstitions of primitive social communities and
in the solemn sacrifices made by them with great ceremonies
on special occasions, first of human beings and later of
animals, to obtain good crops, to ward off famine and disease,
to cany away by atonement the sins of the people. As
primitive peoples everywhere, abjectly fearful and adoring,
have notably made such sacrifices, invocations and prayers to
the dread mysterious powers in the encircling gloom, which
to them seemed to work capriciously to help or hurt, yea,
often to kill for their sport, and made them, too, in like
fashion independently in sundry times and divers places by
apparent organic necessity, the conclusion is natural that
they witness to an abiding law of social growth.
That there is found among men a sufficient leaven of self-
renunciation to keep the social structure sound is somewhat
surprising when the cost to the individual is studiously
74 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
weighed ; it would be more so if the altruism were not really
necessity rather than choice. Organic evolution fulfils itself
by various scattered distributions of virtue, some qualities
placed in some and other qualities in other individuals ; and
it is the pleasure of every organization to perform its function,
the pleasure, therefore, of a well-endowed organization to do
well because it would be repugnant and painful to its nature
to do wrong. The essential reward of well-doing, moral and
intellectual, is not praise or fame or profit, present or post-
humous, nothing which the community can bestow or take
away, it is the gratification which a well-constituted nature
feels in the full utterance and perfect fulfilment of its being.
The good man does good work, as the man of great mental
powers does great work, as self-utterance and self-realization
for his own comfort's sake. Pondering quietly the events of
his life when nearing the end of it, many a mortal might,
were he to think of himself and the recompenses of his
work only, see grave reasons to regret the good actions
which he did to others and not to regret the bad actions
which served him at their cost. But it would be a fanciful
and futile reflection : he could not in the interest of his own
comfort have done differently on the whole, and need not
take seriously to heart either praise for the one or blame for
the other.
Small consideration is needed to show any one that he is
inevitable debtor and creditor in the social system before he
thinks on it, and when he little thinks on it, and larger con-
sideration will easily teach him that he is immensely more
debtor than creditor. Whatever reward he merits or claims
for the good which he does to his fellows, he owes vastly more
to the long line of antecedent beings who by their pains
and gains built up the social structure in which he lives,
moves, and has his being ; the little that he can do at best
for those who are to be after him will fall infinitely short of
that which he owes to those who have gone before him. On
that score there is a funded debt so large as to be quite
beyond repayment : let him do all the good service he can to
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 75
the last hour of the longest life, he inevitably dies debtor at
the last. That is a reflection which may serve to console him
for the seeming waste of his well-doings and the pains which
his virtues cost him. Besides, he might bethink himself
whether in relation to his contemporaries he is not apt to be
far more keenly alive to that which he does for them than to
what he owes to them ; his bread cast on the waters comes
back to him fourfold sometimes, it may be by circuitous
and unexpected ways after many days, and he often enjoys,
without desert on his part, the bread which others have cast
on the waters. A singularly lucky thinker is one who thinks
a thought which some one has not thought before him, and
he is intoxicated with a signal self-conceit who is not most
distrustful when he feels most original. The sober-minded
member of the human community will be content, bee-like,
to serve his special social hive, to be one with it while one of
it, without vexing himself with an exact computation of his
debit and credit.
To spend himself for the good of the species, having a
sure faith that his own true good lies therein, is no doubt
work which is hard and sometimes exasperating in practice,
and calls for a strong infusion of sound social feeling in the
individual. Too often in real life events mortify just expec-
tation : sincerity in promise and punctuality in performance
encounter hollow promise and loose or counterfeit perform-
ance, self-denial is coolly exploited by self-interest, magnani-
mity requited by meanness, favours repaid with ingratitude
and exaction, modest merit displaced by honour shamefully
misplaced, forethought thwarted by selfish improvidence,
truth discomfited by falsehood, the morality of the Sermon
on the Mount trodden under foot by the morals of the Stock
Exchange. The father cannot help expiating the sins of
the son, the son those of the father ; the husband bears the
burden of the wife's and the wife the burden of the husband's
error and evil behaviour; the industrious and provident
citizen is taxed to support the lazy and improvident ; the
little leaven of good service leavens the mass of indifferent
76 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and negligent service. Everywhere and always some one
expiates the faults of another and makes social atonement
for him. Were it not that virtue is thus crucified daily by
natural operation of social law, it is certain that triumphant
vice would carry all before it.
The divers moral and immoral qualities variously distri-
buted in individuals meet, mix, and interact in the social
economy to issue in the collective product : the social wine,
so to speak, good or bad, the result of their tumultuous
fermentation. What matters it how the necessary ingre-
dients, sweet and sour — and sour as necessary as sweet — are
distributed ? To the particular person it is no doubt of
mighty moment how he is intellectually and morally con-
stituted, and wins or loses, grieves or joys, in consequence,
but it is small matter to the social body whether the mental
elements are gathered in one or two persons, or dispersed
through several, or how they are mixed in the same person,
so long as they are present in it in proper quantity and
quality and do their ordained workings. Looking on himself
as an end instead of as means in a process without end, and
important only as means, he cannot readily make the be-
littling confession ; yet a straight and Avide look at things as
they are in themselves and as a whole, might easily show
him that when he is lame, or deformed, or stunted, or vicious
in mind or body, he is indifferently used for what he is worth,
and compensation made for his defects elsewhere. Then also
it might appear that he need not consume himself in vexing
regrets and mortifying reflections, as foolish as futile, about
his doings, but tranquilly remit the affair to the charge of
the universal plan to make the right compensations. As the
social system gets the benefit of what he does well, though
he suffer wrong thereby, so he is entitled to the benefit of
its welldoing to cancel what it does amiss, though it suffer
wrong thereby.
The egotistical notion of man that his race is an end in
itself because it is an end to him, not merely a transient
ripple of an endless flux of things, puts it out of his power
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 77
to realize his true position in a social system, and the relation
of his manifold changing social systems to the cosmic pro-
cess. The unceasing conflict of so-called good and evil
amazes and confounds him, because his colossal self-idolatry
likes not to think that they are terms of his relations only,
having no meaning outside such limitations. Yet sins and
sunstrokes, earthquakes and embracements, heroisms and
adulteries, battles and murders, volcanic and national exj)lo-
sions are obviously alike natural and proper events in the
inexorable sequence of things ; neither good nor evil as they
are in themselves, only so in his thinking. A vice in his
constitution is no vice in the constitution of the universe,
nay, hardly perhaps a vice in the constitution of society ;
anger, however wrong in him no more wrong nor unprofitable
in nature than sourness in a salt ; homicide as natural an
event as an eclipse, and however blameworthy when done by
the individual for his own ends, praiseworthy when done by
him in battle for his country, or by his society to get rid of
an anti-social criminal. Like the combination of the acid
and the alkali to form a chemical salt, the union of vice
and virtue in the social organism is necessary to constitute
morality ; vice could not live without virtue, nor virtue live
without vice : for any one to live exclusively in the one or
the other, were that possible, would be to be conscious of
neither. Besides, viewing things closely and impartially as
they interwork positively in the complexities of social life,
it is plain that a vice in the individual sometimes works more
good than a virtue ; which is doubtless the reason why their
respective sums on earth have always remained pretty equal
in quantity and counterpoise.
It will be said perhaps that the evil which man does to
his kind is unquestionable evil, and no verbal sophistry can
make it other^\dse. How can that have been evil, save in a
narrow and false sense, the doing of which has actually been
an essential factor in the development of the race on earth ?
It were a strange thing if that has been an evil to the race
by which the race has so plainly profited ! Those who suffer
78 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
wrong now that it may grow in power and dignity might be
excused if they cry out against the evil they are made to
endure, seeing that their feelings count for much to them, were
it not that they can subdue themselves to, perhaps felicitate
themselves on, their sufferings by taking large enough views
of the principles of social evolution and joyfully expecting
its perfect products in far off times to come. Be that as it
may, the fact that the present spirit of humanity reprobates
and would gladly disown the iniquities and cruelties of past
human doings on earth, although they have been the neces-
sary stepping-stones to a higher being, is just the natural
consequence of the monopoly of the strain of organic evolu-
tion by the race, seeing that its moral ideal is plainly an
essential condition of its self-regarding progress.
If such views of the mode of constitution and develop-
ment of human society and of its position in the cosmic
system seem calculated to breed a state of humiliation and
despair in mortal breasts, the humiliation and despair, should
they some day come, will also be in the natural order of
things. In no case, the love of life being what it yet is, need
a general revolt against human procreation, still less a general
suicide, be apprehended. The " brooding East " has not re-
frained from reproduction nor committed suicide, although it
has traversed the heights and depths of philosophical specu-
lation and found out the nothingness of things ; on the
contrary, it has subsided into a quiet resignation to the will
of destiny, renouncing the turmoil and struggle of life so dear
to a turbulent West still urged on by the lust and force of
vigorous animality. On the other hand, it is possible that a
frank cognition and vital feeling of the existence of a larger
order of things than the human order might help to impart
such serenity of thought, equanimity of feeling, acquiescence
in what is and quiet expectation of what is to be, as shall
constitute the bliss of a peaceful mind. The noxious mortal
being as natural and necessary as the noxious microbe, may
then be accepted without vexation, albeit the hurt done in
either case be deplored and resisted.
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 79
What is apparently wanting to impart the vital touch and
sympathy necessary to generate a real feeling of duty to
the kind is a clear and distinct perception of its solidarity
and of the direct internal derivation rather than the external
imposition of the moral mandate. Two convictions, silent or
express, are indispensable : that the individual clearly recog-
nize his duty to the whole, and believe the whole to be worthy
of his devotion to it. He must not only entertain the some-
what arid moral precepts Avhich are the corollaries of the
principles of philosophy, but feel also the moral inspiration
and sympathy which, though hitherto associated with theo-
logical religions, some are fain to hope may eventually
be derived from a worship of humanity. Reason alone,
not speaking the language of feeling, might peradventure
teach him that the end was not worth the labour. At the
same time a practical conviction of the solidarity of man-
kind, whereby when good or hurt is done it is never an
isolated act, but is a lasting benefit or injury to the whole,
and the fit esthetic or moral feeling which in due course
would be the emotional effluence of such mentally organized
system of thought, could hardly fail to enforce a modest
and fruitful union of the ideal and real in actual life,
and to furnish a more effective motive of well-doing
than a pure ideal floating aloft in shado^vy abstraction
and almost as much aloof from natural things in function as
in its fancied supernature. That theology spurns the notion
of such a natural derivation of the spirit of humanity is no
proof of the truth of the loftier supernatural doctrine which
it would substitute ; it testifies rather to a deep-rooted latent
conviction on its part of the vanity of the best evolution of
the race on earth, which may be well grounded, and of its
hope of a superior human race in a future world, which may
not be so well grounded.
As he who produces a fine work of art or makes a great
scientific discovery has no pleasure nor profit from it if he
keeps it to himself, but obtains a reflected or reverberated
joy from the appreciation and admiration which other selves
80 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
bestow on it, or at any rate which he imagines they will
bestow on it, so he who acts socially with sole regard to self
robs himself of the true pleasure and profit of his doing. A
man never can be his best self as unit of an organized
society unless he lives for as well as in and by it ; therefore
the life is most full and happy which is feeling most with
and doing most for others. Not only does every one need the
sympathy and support of his social medium to enjoy his own
work, but without them he cannot work well for himself by
doing it well. It is wonderful, for example, how silently and
effectively ideas are stimulated, defined, clarified and de-
veloped by social intercourse, in which an hour's conversation
is sometimes more profitable than a week's solitary reflection.
He who, esteeming himself superior to the society in which
he lives, disdains and shuns it, has still an ideal society
which he creates for himself out of the past and the present
and lives in ; and such ideal society which he gladly affects
is seldom so wholesome and invigorating, being complacent
and nowise critical, visionary and not practical, as the real
society which he shuns might well be.
As the relations of man with his social environment
become more special and complex the higher he rises in the
grade of civilization, so the suppressions and renunciations of
self which he must practise in the interests of the society
are more numerous and various. Inequalities of natures
and varieties of circumstances entailing of necessity unequal
fulfilments of social duties, the enforcement of an abstract
and inexorable rule of right and wrong is impracticable ;
equal fulfilments would necessitate natures fashioned as
closely alike in relation to similar surroundings as those of
ants and bees seem to be. Of such uniformity of conduct
two crude savages would certainly be more capable than two
specialized members of a civilized society. It is with moral
as it is with ocular vision ; although there is only one true
point of best vision of an object, yet as this point differs in
different persons, so it does in relation to truth and morals.
Everybody's duty no doubt is to see the object as clearly and
Ill SOCIAL ATONEMENT 81
distinctly as possible, but it does not follow that one will
thus see it best by taking another's point of vision. More-
over, the individual's own focus of vision changes naturally
in the course of years, so that if things themselves had not
several facets, as they have, and thus are seen differently, he
presents different facets of self to them at different seasons
of life and inevitably sees them differently. Morality in
practice is not therefore the pure essence which it is in
theory, not a sublimate of constant quality ; it is in various
degrees a matter of expediency and accommodation to cir-
cumstances. No society could probably exist long in which
everybody made a complete renunciation of self, any more
than a society could exist in which nobody made any self-
renunciation : the problem in the particular case always is to
reconcile individuality with solidarity — to find the just mean
between egoism and altruism, a mean which must vary
according to the individual nature and the conditions of the
society.
CHAPTER IV
IMAGINATION AND IDEALISM
I
IMAGINATION
Rational and irrational imagination — The delight of delirious imagina-
tion — Pathological interpretation — Dissociation of mental func-
tion — Delirium of thought and of feeling — Transcendental feeling
and reason — Imaginative shapings of transcendental feeling —
Imagination in the different mental functions — Anthropomorphic
interpretation of elemental energy — Is the feeling of transcendental
union illusion ? — Imagination a function of organic matter —
Dreams.
It is strange to see how vague and weak is the usual
thought and talk about imagination. The word does duty
for a noble faculty of mind working independently of other
faculties, owing little or nothing to them, needing no
physical basis for its flights, moved by a quasi-divine influx.
Naturally then it comes to pass that the pleasing fashion is
incontinently to image in mind something fantastic or
grotesque, which is not nor could in the nature of things
ever be, and thereupon, enamoured of the monstrosity, to
laud it as lofty imagination. Truly a sort of Jack the
Giant-killer's imagination well fitted to please children,
and adults not yet out of the mental nursery. Sane
imagination always has and must have its solid basis of
being and constitutional rules of proportion or ratio of
structure in true observation of things and right reflection
CHAP. IV IMAGINATION 83
on them — that is to say, in clear and just perception, right
feeling and sound judgment of them in themselves and in
their relations. Imagination in the service of self-satisfied
ignorance or silly sentiment will only create cognate prodigies
of fallacies and follies. No one then need flatter himself
that he can have sound imagination without sound reason, or
the highest imagination without the highest reason. It is
true that in its best plastic work imagination goes beyond
actual observation, not copying but creating, but it cannot
then go against the rules of sound observation and reflection ;
if it does that, it is unruly, fantastic, irrational, the begetter
of deformities and incongruities which are ridiculous. Now
to perform irrational imagination is no more laudable really
than to perform irrational reason, notwithstanding the singu-
lar pleasure of the procreative performance. Moreover, as
irrational phantasy does not evince, so it does not conduce
to, good mental development; those who perform it and
whom its performances please show thereby that they lack a
well-based and well-proportioned or rational mental structure,
and are pleased to enjoy their irrationality.
The dear delight of its delirious flights, which is felt and
adored as a sort of sacred and self-sanctified inspiration,
has no more value in the province of feeling than a delirium
of thought in the province of reason ; it is akin to the ex-
quisite rapture felt sometimes in dreams, which is perceived
on awaking to be the illusion it was ; to the ineffable bliss
of the saint who, rapt out of self in a spiritual ecstasy, no
longer feels it when the transported self returns to its natural
self; to the inflamed joy of flashing thought exhibited in
the mental ignition which often precedes an outbreak of
acute mania ; to the sense of extraordinary mental illumin-
ation, when no problem of thought seems insoluble, produced
by the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas ; in all which cases,
when the elated being sinks back to his sober self, as he is
bound to do, the revelation, for the most part, turns out to
be commonplace or absurd. Yes, truly, it may perhaps be
said, if the illumination be not a spiritual insight, only a
G 2
84 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
convulsive mental strain and illusion ; but what if it be the
exponent of the transcendental real, the transient gleam of a
higher function than reason, a revealing flash of the infinite
real, of which the apparent real is only a poor show ? In
that case men ought, if not deliberately to derationalize
themselves in order to be wise, as Pascal recommends, at all
events to cultivate an occasional strain of delirium, paying
homage to it as divine.
There are indeed two ways of viewing such mental trans-
port and estimating its import — either from the stable
stand-point of the forms and rules of reason common to all
sane minds, or from the shifting standpoint of formless and
ineffable feeling peculiar to the particular mind. Viewed
scientifically in reason's light, the rapture is interpretable as
an over-stimulated tract of the mental structure strained ta
such a pitch of activity as to be severed functionally from
the ties of its normal associations, which now therefore nO'
longer act upon, to inhibit and regulate, the disarticulate,
dissociate, so to speak dismembered tract ; the feeling accom-
panying this supranormal or delirious action being a trans-
port of delight, the rapt tract expresses itself in a rapture
of feeling. Just in like manner, though in opposite feeling,
when a mental organization, much dejected or depressed, has
a special tract engaged in a quasi-convulsive strain of morbid
activity, unchecked and unqualified by the normal associa-
tions from which its cramplike activity wrench it functionally,
the accompanying feeling is then unspeakably sad, an abys-
mal despair, the clean contrary of the ecstasy of delight. In
both cases the ineffable feeling is imbued with a sense of in
finity and eternity, a sort of boundlessness in space and time,
which is the necessary consequence of the disintegration of
the forms of mental function ; for it is the loss thereby of
the normal relations of place, time and proportion on which
definite thought depends. Time, space and order not being
outside but in the mind, no forms of them can exist without
it when their forms are lost mthin it. There is then
only the formlessness of so-called infinity and eternity ; the
IV IMAGINATION 85
external world inevitably loses its meaning, becoming a not
understood language, because the internal world has lost its
key of interpretation, and imagination, serving disjointed
thought and feeling, creates a vague and void without
answering to the formlessness within.
Very notable it is, though not well noted for the most part,
how completely a rapture either of joy or woe can cripple
a mind, so maiming it as to sever parts from their normal
associations and to suspend a whole class of functions : the
transport of joy such as to render the person quite insensible
to any touch of sorrow, the transport of grief such as to
deaden him absolutely to any touch of joy. He then walks
about entranced, distantly conscious of things but not in
living touch with them, seeing them as through a veil, hear-
ing them as though through a partition- wall, hypnotized
by his passion. All which the traditional notion of mind
as a metaphysical entity, one and indivisible, something
super-organic, has hindered and continues to hinder right
understanding and appreciation of.
Viewed from the scientific point of view, then, the apo-
calyptic illumination of the mental transport is illusion, not
a heightening but a dazzling of mental vision. It is not
the infinite but the indefinite, not the absolute but the
dismembered relative, which is revealed. As thought off
the track is literally delirium, so the delight or despair
going along with it is a delirium of feeling. To descry
the divine in it when it is delight, as: is still done, or the
diabolic in it when it is despair, as was once done, is much
like discerning the divine or the diabolic in a mania or a
convulsion, as has often been done ; it is to ascribe to super-
natural agency that which is pathological aberration, to
impute to a power outside nature that which is anomalous,
because not understood, in human nature. As a vertigo
makes the world turn round him who reels in it, translating
the internal disorder into external motion, so the delirious
transport projects its subjective formless feeling into objective
formless being.
86 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
A quite other way of viewing the ecstatic transport is
as an inspiration of transcendental feeling concerning which
reason can have nothing to say, since it does not speak the
same language, but to which imagination may give sublime
shape. Reason, it is argued, is at best but an anthropo-
morphic system of rules and means, a laboured and discursive
process of knowing, not that which is, but the intellectual
machinery by which that which is works through man to be
in him ; whereas the transcendental feeling, being an influx
of primal being, bespeaks a direct communion with the in-
finite, reveals intuitive truth which reason is impotent to
fathom, and it would be utter unreason to try to fathom and
fashion in forms of thought. Still, however infinite and
absolute in essence and beyond all soundings and appraise-
ments of reason such feeling be, it must needs be limited and
relative in its human experience and utterance — anthropo-
morphic, therefore, like reason — since it is manifested
through an individual and limited medium, so far as it is
sensible and expressible. Moreover, in no case can reason
be dispensed with, since reason is invoked to demonstrate
its own impotence.
Thus far all might have gone well had men been content
to stay in surety of feeling and ignorance of thought, since
the transcendental postulate might be true, and, if untrue,
was nowise refutable. So far, however, from resting content
in quiet nescience, the different peoples of different times,
countries, and levels of mental growth proceeded confidently
to interpret the transcendental feelings in terms of their
own thoughts and imaginations, each people counting its
special interpretation absolutely true, supernaturally author-
ized, and then endeavoured to impose its dogmas on others.
Unruly imagination, striving vainly to give form to the form-
less, ran its natural riot in fabulous inventions answering
to the different levels of moral and intellectual culture ;
whence a long succession of diverse fables and myths con-
cerning the creation and government of the universe, which,
although useful provisional hypotheses in their day and
IV IMAGINATION 87
place, became obstructive and pernicious superstitions when
stubbornly clung to after the time had come for them to
be cast off as outworn vestures. They remain memorials of
the wild, fantastic, and often puerile work of imagination
uninstructed by sound understanding, not ruled rationally
but recklessly licensed.
Separate names having made their usual divisions of
thoughts where continuity of things prevails, the custom of
thinking of imagination as a special faculty obscured the
constant and essential part which it plays in the other
functions of mind. So far from being separate from them,
it is intermingled and works regularly with them ; if it be
true that there can be no sound imagination without sound
reason, it is equally true that it is impossible to reason well
without imagination. It is mind as full expression of the
concrete man, not an abstract imagination, which imagines ;
not imagination which performs but is performed. All the
world easily perceives that the poet and the artist imagine
or ought to imagine ; nor is much reflection needed to show
that the scientific inventor and discoverer must use fit
imagination ; or that the general who cannot imagine what
his adversary may be designing or doing is unfit to command
an army ; or that the statesman who cannot see beyond his
nose is ill qualified to govern a country. But it is not so
readily perceived and acknowledged that instructed imagina-
tion is in constant need and use to make a clear perception
or form a definite plan, and that it is owing to the want of
imaginative plasm when people are hardened in prejudices
and formalisms of thought and feeling, and habitually
irrational in their observances and conduct. How few are
they who can put themselves in imagination at another
than their wonted standpoint, so as to see things in their
relations outside the narrow range of their habitual vision,
and fewer still those who can objectify imaginatively and
humorously criticize themselves! It is not, again, to the
instruction of his understanding only, but to the power
of picturing things to his mind's eye that the good thinker,
88 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
whose thought is lucid, logical and vital, and who gives it
fit expression in words, owes his success.
Even memory, which is the present imagination of things
past, contains more than the exact reproduction of former
experience; for which reason no two memories of the
same event by different persons quite match, nor indeed are
ever exactly alike in the same person, delicate differences
giving rise to differences of testimony, however slight.
Subconscious undercurrents of thought and feeling from
the depths of the character, whether stirred by mental or
by bodily impressions, permeate and colour the conscious
reproduction, and, according to their qualities, impart
its mood or quality of imagination to the particular
memory. Such subtile working of imagination in memory
it is impossible to eliminate. One may guess how silent and
constant its activity is by considering how wonderfully it
works in dreams, and with what ease it then creates forms,
faces, scenes, events and dramas more vivid than any waking
experiences. Could the mind when awake create as vividly
as it frequently does, and as logically as it sometimes does,
in dreams many a person of ordinary talents would produce
work of extraordinary merit. In all mental operations, then,
imagination is more or less active — in dreams, in reverie, in
perception, in judgment, in poetry, in style, in invention, in
discovery, in daily work, and aberrantly in madness; nor
could it well be otherwise, since it expresses directly the
productive mental energy of the individual, indirectly the
productive energy of nature.
Man being a unity himself necessarily seeks and finds
unity in the diversities of things. What else can he do but
thus anthropomorphize — that is, interpret in terms of him-
self, be they grossly concrete or finely abstract ? Because
he is individual he thinks the universe to be individual
work, unmindful the while that his individuality is a partial
and temporary separation from the whole, and therefore a
limitation which he cannot predicate and is not predicable
of the universe. In the end, then, he cannot choose but
IV IMAGINATION 89
imagine one primal and universal force or substance —
siibstantia una et unica — of which all known forces and sub-
stances are so many diverse phenomena. The question for
him is in what terms he shall think it, or in what form
imagine it, at his present intellectual and moral level. A
supernatural force it certainly in one sense is, seeing that it
manifestly transcends him and the nature which he knows
or ever can know, and that he cannot think it otherwise
than as infinite and eternal. Here, however, a caution is
needed to prevent the use of the words infinite and
eternal to mean something positive in thought, to mean
more than they really mean — namely, the negation of that
which, being finite and temporary, is thinkable ; otherwise
he may go on to figure an infinite and eternal personality of
more or less mightily magnified human form, and of like
qualities, temper, manner of thinking, feeling and doing ;
not forsooth human only in form and feeling, but human-like
in a colossal personal egoism and self-idolatry, adoration-
craving and self-adoring. Surely a monstrously egoistic inter-
pretation of the incomprehensible and inscrutable : that
man, himself only a passing moment in the eternal process
of things, should take any human function, even the best in
quality, and make it a characteristic quality of the primal
power and substance working in and through all phenomena
to create, sustain, and change them, seems audacious enough ;
but is it not a veritable climax of self-idolatry to fashion the
power in form of a magnified and glorified human self?
It is true that imagination, being the highest productive
energy in man, is the supreme organic expression of the
force working in things, the present culmination of natural
evolution, and may therefore be argued to contain a partial
revelation of primal and absolute being. In that case the
superior mind, by strenuously looking into itself, might
perchance, without being self-duped, perceive or feel itself
in union or identity A\ith the infinite, provided that it
descends not to the concrete but prudently stays in the
general and abstract. Here again, however, it is well not
90 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
to be too swift to judge, seeing that productive imagination
shares in the illusive rapture of delight which accompanies
productive work throughout nature, and is therefore wonder-
fully pleased with itself even when it goes wildly astray
in the production of absurd and foolish phantasies. Not
that its products are then necessarily worthless, although
illusions, since they serve to distract mankind from thought
of the miseries of the real world, to lure them into aspira-
tions and hopes, and to stimulate labours of progress
which unenchanted reason might perhaps interdict as at
last and best only vanity. Now if, as human annals prove,
many such illusions have had their useful day as incen-
tives, and afterwards, their work done, have vanished, it is
obviously possible that the supreme imagination of a union
or identity with the primal energy may also be the useful
illusion of its season. If that be scouted as extravagant
scepticism, one may bear in mind that the custom of
mankind is to call sceptics those who do not share their
illusions.
The truth to be realized is that imagination is just
a function of organic matter, nowise the work of a free
and independent spirit flitting about the brain and play-
ing on its chords, in tune or out of tune, as the capricious
whim seizes it. The notion which has been entertained
of such a spirit leaving the body during sleep and going
through strange experiences which it remembered as dreams,
when re-embodied, was a singular misinterpretation of the
nature of dreams, in which imagination notably disports
so freely and freakishly. Dreams testify as effects to brain-
states ; for it is not a separate and more or less maimed
mind which creates the dream, whether coherent or inco-
herent, but a brain which, according to the measure and
degree of its suspended functions, brings forth compara-
tively orderly or quite disorderly mental products. In such
case consciousness has manifestly nothing whatever to do, as
agent, with the production, any more than it has really to do
with the production of castles in the air and created scenes
IV IMAGINATION 91
of personal exploits during wandering reveries ; the products
create consciousness, are not created by it, are mental
only when they are, not before they are formed. Creative
activity is the law of plastic organic matter in the human
brain; for which reason it proceeds by natural laws of
composition to construct an imagination, an invention, a
dream, and eventually a State, not otherwise than as at a
lower level of development in the organic scale it constructs
a web by the spider, a well-planned gallery by the ant,
an admirable comb of mathematically built cells by the
honey-bee.
Dreams have for the most part been dismissed too lightly
by psychologists, who have thereby missed the instruction
which they are fitted to yield. At all events these facts
ought to be considered well : (a) That dreams, following the
prosaic rules of cerebral construction and function, are some-
times quite orderly and rational ; (&) that following such
rules partially and disconnectedly only, they create wonder-
fully novel scenes, dramas and dialogues, in which individu-
als, strangely placed, yet sometimes act according to their
characters and pursue logical trains of thought and conduct ;
(c) that they may be, as they commonl}' are, quite fantastic,
foolish and disorderly ; {d) that they betray by their dominant
tones and particular creations the prevailing mood of mind,
whether this be caused by bodily conditions or precedent
mental experiences, being, for example, terribly distressing
in times of afiliction and tribulation, and fraught with in-
describable hoiTors of imagination and feeling in brains
inflamed by fever. Assuredly no experience of waking life,
unless in madness, ever reaches either the exulting height of
bliss or the abysmal depth of horror which is sometimes
experienced in dreams. Always the particular dream,
coherent or incoherent, delightful or distressing, is mind,
whole it may be, but mostly maimed ; the diverse dreams
representing the mental functions of differently conditioned
brains, which necessarily produce according to their tones
and proportionately to their degrees of disintegration — and
92 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
it is fundamentally a matter of subtile vibrations, rather
than of any quasi-mechanical association of ideas — corre-
sponding disintegrations of the normal forms of thought.
Whatever their intrinsic value then, whether wonderfully
rational or utterly irrational, dreams are experiments of
imagination presented for observation and induction, which
may be expected some day to yield instruction to a systematic
scientific study.
II
THE IDEAL
'The partial truth of proverbs, maxims, adages — The ideal in theory
and the real in practice — Moral principles idealizations of the
real — Constant war between the ideal and the real — Proverbial
half truths — Indispensable coexistence of the ideal and the real —
Universality of ideals — Optimistic and pessimistic ideals and
temperaments — The mean between ideal and real — The ideal of the
race — A moral equilibrium incompatible with increase of know-
ledge — Over-valuation of knowledge — Knowledge essentially selfish
— Its glorification in the interest of the species — The cement of
society not knowledge but charity— Scientific inventions baneful
as well as beneficial — Can knowledge grow to an ideal perfection ?
— Or moral perfection be attainable ? — Confusion of moral ideals —
Fanatical enthusiasm of humanity — The eternal paradox — Symbols
— Degrees of belief — Worship of symbols — Idols of wood and
stone — Idols of the heart and imagination — The doctrine of the
Trinity — Religious worship of pictures and statues — Decay of
symbols — Transformation, not cataclysm, in organic development.
The various proverbs, aphorisms, adages, maxims and sage
precepts current among peoples through the ages, prove
often when closely examined to be only half-truths, and
therefore essentially untrue seeing that no truth can ever
be only half true. Some of them are true only in the
abstract, would-be-truths, ideals of desire, nowise concrete
truths ; for it is the distinct and pervading note of human life
to profess constantly in principle a number of precepts which
IV THE IDEAL 93
are constantly repudiated in practice. The golden rule to
do unto others as men would have others do unto them, is a
quite ancient precept of well-doing, largely and fervently
lauded in theory and persistently neglected everywhere in
practice. Wisely so too, if they have done right to go the way
of development they have gone. A just and universal
instinct has taught them how ruinous it would be to apply
concretely that which was right abstractly ; so that human
evolution to its present height has not been governed by
the great ethical rule of conduct, but by a quite other
working rule.
The principle on which it has actually proceeded is that,
while it is a good and excellent thing to cherish the ideal as
an inspiration, it would be madness to think it realizable,
seeing that such realization must necessarily be impracticable
so long as mankind falls short of perfection. The function
of the ideal in present human affairs is not realization of
itself, it is idealization of the real — to inflame feeling, not
to teach conduct. Thus it comes to pass that beliefs and
practices subsist quietly side by side with beliefs and practices
which they directly contradict. A cynical spirit might see
therein only the natural effects of human hypocrisy, pleased
to cultivate the noble show as cover or excuse of the ignoble
fact, but a larger and more impartial judgment, looking
beyond the incidents of individual hypocrisy, perceives the
natural counteractions of the ideal and real in the main-
tenance of the mean, and the consequent working value
of half-truths.
It is the everlasting war between the ideal and the real
which keeps man in a perpetual unrest between being and
striving to be. Could he live in the unattainable ideal he
might enjoy perfect truth and happiness ; had he no ideal he
might live peaceably in the real untroubled by the longing
for unattainable truth and happiness. He is restless and
discontented because he is incapable of attaining and at the
same time incapable of ignoring the ideal. That is the
penalty he pays for having usurped into himself the line
94 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of organic development on earth ; for it is the evolutional
force of nature working in him which thus impels him con-
tinually to endeavour after happiness by ways of knowledge,
to believe that the more knowledge he gets the more
happiness he will get, and to be sure, if he cease not his
strenuous striving, he will get it in full fruition somewhere.
The conatus senticndi, the conaUis sciendi, the conatus domin-
andi are they not fundamentally so many manifestations in
him of nature's conahis progrediendi ?
It might be curiously instructive to take one after another
of the proverbial maxims of wisdom and morality and to
inquire closely what it means really, and how far, thus
realized, it is true. Great is truth, and it will prevail, is a
familiar and favourite saying habitually and gladly repeated;
but is it true in fact ? Certainly it is not true, unless that
which prevails is always to be deemed truth, and that which
prevails not is to be deemed untruth. A candid survey of
the course of human things clearly shows that lies, being
many, supple and plastic, not, like truth, one and com-
paratively rigid, do work most subtly and powerfully and
have played an immense part in human progress. The truth
of today might sometimes be grateful to the lie of yesterday,
the lie of today be excused by the truth of tomorrow. To
say that truth will always prevail, then, is to utter an
ideal truth, an idealization of the real, which it is a comfort
to believe ; it is at the same time a salutary deterrent from
lying and a useful incentive to virtuous practice. To explode
it as an illusion, if feasible, would not be advisable. Is
virtue always its own reward, as it is piously proclaimed to
be ? No doubt that is an excellent maxim to impress on
the individual in order to make him virtuous, but he will
not fail sometimes to find the reward exceeding grievous,
unless he be of a temper of mind to feel the joy of reward
in the pains of suffering, as the social organization of which
he is a living element would have him do, and tells him it
will be his perfection and glory one day to do. For it is the
social body which sanctions and extols the idealizations of
IV THE IDEAL 95
the real in order to incite and encourage its members to aim
high in practice and thereby to promote its growth. The
wages of sin is death, it is true, but not to the individual
whose pleasant and prosperous life is the wage of his
successful sin.
As it is not ordained in the nature of things that the ideal
and real accord, their inconsistencies are natural and necessary
events of the human process. Naturally, too, each being one-
sided in its extreme condemns the other, the ideal despising
the coarse and mean qualities of naked realities, the real
ridiculing the quixotic pretences and extravagances of the
ideal. Meanwhile neither can do well without the other.
Logic may stagger at the ensuing gross contradictions and
hypocrisies, but that is no great matter, for logic is a quite
human and relative process to which the universe nor owes
nor shows obedience ; it has a way of striking its logical
course out of the contradictions of human logic and of
welding virtue out of the antagonisms of vices. So pro-
ceeding on its ordained course it is serenely indifferent to
the Kttle adjustments out of its immensity which mortal
men carve for themselves as their petty circles of methodical
function, and, according as they succeed or not, christen order
or disorder, right or WTong, legitimate or illegitimate, nay,
most absurdly, natural or unnatural. On them too it fails
not to impose practically three tacit rules of conduct which
they fail not to obey in their natural course : to ignore what
they have been actually in the past ; to profess and pretend
to be what they are not ; to hope and aspire to be what they
never will be. The happy perfection to come, viewed in
reason's light, is as pure an idealism as the perfect happiness
lost erewhile.
No one could live a day without his ideal, good or bad ;
for there are bad as well as good ideals, ideals in black as
well as in white. Thus every human pursuit, even the
criminal career, has its ideal to incite it no less than its real
to practice. The licentious sensualist, teased and egged on
by the eternal hope and expectation of finding a novelty of
96 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
sensation or interest in the same stale sport of sated lust,
through new fashions of enjoyment and new persons with
whom to enjoy it, would be sure at last, even had he an ex-
perience rivalling that of Solomon or the artistic ingenuity
of Nero in his " spintrian recreations," that his search was
but vanity. In the end the monotonous reality sadly dis-
appoints the lubricities of erotic imagination. The adven-
turous poacher who chants in merry song the delights of his
pursuit in the silence of the shining night gives it a pleasing
representation which is in gross contrast with the rather
squalid realities. The Indian savage by the camp fire,
vaunting in wild yells and grotesque gesticulations the
heroic triumphs which he has gained over his enemy and
the still more splendid deeds which he will do, idealizes the
real and uses the ideal to inflame valiantly himself and his
tribe ; which in fact he does, though at the bottom of their
hearts they know him to be lying at large. So too the
impassioned preacher who pictures in words of burning
eloquence the transcendent glories of heaven and the un-
speakable horrors of hell idealizes magnificently the rewards
of virtue and the penalties of vice, inflaming himself and
his hearers thereby, albeit he and they believe not at heart,
believe only conventionally, what he says. As many as are
the different forms of thought and feeling, so many and
various are the ideals in which imagination shapes desire.
In the two opposite views of life — optimistic and pessi-
mistic — contrary ideals witness to different qualities of
individual temperament. Whichever of the two be the
truer, it is certain that both in their extremes reveal the
defects as well as the effects of imagination. The optimist,
thrilled with the pleasant lust of life, translates impressions
into terms of his own feeling; it is a joy to him to live, and
his joy of life pours itself into his ideal of life ; he is
unmindful of, if not actually blind and deaf to, the perpetual
and all-pervading agonies of nature. Looking out of his
chamber window on a fresh spring morning, when the sun
shines brightly and the birds palpitate in raptures of song,
IV THE IDEAL 97
and all nature leaps joyously to life and revels in the pulse
and sap of it, he is transported into a sympathetic rapture of
being, and cannot contain his admiration and delight ; for he
casts no side glance, at all events no side thought, on the
spectacle of the poor panting mouse on the lawn, which
caught and tormented by the cat, makes run after run to
escape, crouching at rest for a while after each futile attempt,
either to gain breath for a new start or in wistful hope to
have escaped from its tormentor, repeating its desperate
efforts time after time, until, utterly spent, it can respond no
more to the tormenting stimulus and is crunched and eaten
by its sportive enemy, if this be not so glutted as, like a
human sportsman, to revel only in the joy of pursuing and
killing. Nay, such may be the sway of optimism that it
shares piously in the cat's delight, seeing in the spectacle an
illustration of the beneficence which has provided fit food and
sport for all creatures on earth. Again, when the optimist
gazes in admiration on the calm surface of the sunlit
ocean rippling in innumerable laughter, and is transported
into an ecstatic hymn of adoration and praise, it would be
a rude hurt and offence to ask him to picture in mind its
gloomy depths, teeming with innumerable creatures fiercely
occupied in pursuing, killing and devouring one another;
that would be an ill-timed suggestion of a state of things
which would not merely be repulsive to him, but he would
probably lack the imagination to realize. For the life of him
he cannot stretch his imagination to embrace the whole
order of organic nature, animal and human, and realize the
dark and cruel side of it.
The pessimist, on the other hand, being imbued with only
a comparatively weak love of life, realizes vividly the dark
and cruel side of it, and is so saddened by the agonies,
carnage and horrors of it that, were he supreme ruler of
things, he would commit suicide rather than continue to be
responsible for them, and does sometimes so die in order
that, though they continue, he may no longer live to behold
them. Naturally then to him death, which to the optimist
H
98 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
is the dreaded ending of life, is the not unwelcome recom-
pense of it.
Obviously, both views, being extremes, are right in
measure, wrong in excess. As nature goes steadily on its
mixed course of pleasure and pain, that is plainly the right
course ; it is right also that man, who is product and part
of nature, reflect in feeling its differing streams of tendency
and make his optimistic and pessimistic meditations ac-
cordingly. The curious thing to know would be whether
his feelings are to grow more tender and his moral reason
to expand until he revolt against, as he now tenderly shrinks
from nature's plan, and separate himself from it to start a
new and more merciful order on his part, refusing at last,
either for his pleasure or profit, to inflict one pang of pain
on the meanest thing that lives.
As the man has his ideal, so has the race of men. But it
is not easy to discover and state precisely what that ideal is.
Ever-growing knowledge so long as life on earth lasts and a
final standstill of perfect morality ? If so, it is strange to
think that while knowledge is to grow indefinitely through
the ages, the principles of morality are to remain the same,
fixed and unchangeable, the practice of them only improving
until it becomes perfect and universal. Seeing that man, so
long as he is capable of progress, must go on making his
perfecting adjustments to his environment, physical and
human, and can never exhaust its infinite extent and variety,
knowledge has unlimited scope of increase, whereas morality,
having relation only to himself as a social being, is of special
and limited application, and may perhaps be perfected.
Its golden rule is after all a very simple thing : if that
sums up the essence of morality, the range of progress is
limited and visible enough. When he has attained to a
perfect social state in which, personal selfishness eliminated,
nobody shall suffer if anybody can help him, and everybody,
mourning another's woe, shall do to everybody what is kind
and right, finding his own gratification in such well-doing,
there can be no more moral progress. But what certainty is
IV THE IDEAL 99
there that the cessation of the self-regarding struggle to
increase on the part of individual or sectional mankind, which
is and hitherto has been the note of the fierce struggle of
progressive life in the making, will be compatible with intel-
lectual progress, or even with the maintenance of a high
intellectual level ? What is then to hinder the apathy of a
stagnant or regressive life in the unmaking and therewith
an accordant ideal ? That which has reached maturity by
progress perishes at last by regress. History shows plainly
enough that large sections of mankind in different ages and
places have lost their higher ideals and gone backwards,
content in their declension with ever-declining ideals ; and
it is certainly possible that mankind as a whole may get
near uniformity without getting near unity.
Is it credible that an equilibrium of perfect morality can
be unless knowledge also be perfect and universal ? Were
everything knowable about nature kno-svn completely, the
human race might conceivably settle into a stable bee-like
equilibrium in which the moral imperative ruled supreme,
albeit in a sinless world there would be no need for it to
command, no place therefore for the starved-out ought, no
ethical postulate possible ; but it is hard to believe that
there -svill be contented rest at a stay in quiet bee-like
ignorance so long as there is something left to discover and
something to gain by discovery. Would not the beauty of
morality be gone also, seeing that beauty consists much in
flowing lines of motion from one equilibrium to another ?
Now any striving of intellect to grow could, hardly fail to
be an unsettling of the moral equilibrium, for it would be
selfish in its desire to grow, selfish too probably in the
desire to make use of its strength for its growth. If two
branches grow on the same tree in the same direction, they
cannot occupy the same space ; they must collide when they
strive to do so, and if one outgrows the other, the latter
is overshadowed and will be stunted. Were the stronger
branch, altruistically inspired, benevolently to slacken or
stay its growth in order not to outgrow the weaker branch.
100 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that would not be for its good nor for the good of the
whole tree.
Boundless is the praise which men nowadays bestow on
knowledge and stintless the admiration they show of them-
selves for their possession of it, especially when it is called
science. But when all is said, knowledge is fundamentally
selfish. Man's aim is, and his knowledge his means, to get
more and more power over surrounding nature, physical,
animate, and human, by finding out more and more about it
and organizing for his use what he learns. That is the plain
reason of all the searchings out of the secrets of nature by
observation and experiment which he sets before himself as
a transcendentally noble aim and on the success of which he
glorifies himself so greatly. In the prosecution of this aim
all other living creatures are ruthlessly sacrificed — for food,
for sport, for clothing, for service, for scientific experimenta-
tion, for every use that he can selfishly make of them, dead
or alive. Unspeakably horrible would be the record of his
doings to his fellows and other creatures were it possible to
contract within the compass of an imagination and thus vivid-
ly to realize the ghastly and hideous details of the whole ;
so appalling then would the picture be that he could hardly
survive the shock of its realization. Happily oblivion gently
hides procedures which from his point of view were necessary
and right to increase his comforts, heighten his powers, and
promote his exultant development. Still it is the simple
truth that when by minute and patient study of the living
structures and functions of the animal world he has found
out something which serves to alleviate human suffering and
to prolong human life, he has only done in a less gross and
more refined way essentially that which every animal does
coarsely when it kills and eats another. Nay more, when
men and women sit down in company at table to use their
knives and forks to cut the flesh or fowl which they eat,
they too only do at a higher remove — the butcher and the
shambles in the background being interposed between them
and their food — what the animals do which tear their victims
IV THE IDEAL 101
to pieces with tooth and claw and greedily devour them.
Why then fall into such transport of admiration of his know-
ledge and power and refinement, extolling them as divine ?
Why count his lust of knoAvledge so sacred an inspiration
and its acquisition so noble an achievement as to glorify
him exceedingly and to justify his absolute despotism over
the lives and fortunes of all other living creatures less
clever and strong than he ? In his triumphant pride of
march upwards he might not do amiss to stop for a moment
to gaze and meditate on that Avhich is perhaps one of the
most pathetic sights in the wide world — to wit, the antique
face and wizened features of some sadly solemn-looking
specimen of his simian next-of-kin chained to a barrel-organ,
in the dim yearning of whose wistful eyes glow dully the
silent disappointments of a failed destiny, minding the while
the wonderful abortion of himself which the poor creature is
and his triumphant development has probably made it be ;
if he abate not then his conceit of self, he may at any rate
pause to bestow a throb of pity on the animal world over
which he exults and insults so mercilessly.
His growth of knoAvledge is nothing else at bottom but
a growing means of gratifying the two fundamental instincts
of his and all animal nature, the leading and guiding lights
to their larger, more varied and exquisite fulfilments : it
owns the same primal impulses as those which urge the
animal to seek and seize the best food, the best lair, the best
mate, the best place in the sun, to get the best for itself in
the station of life in which fate has placed it. The bound-
less laudation of knowledge is therefore directly the outcome
of the exultant self- idolatry of human egoism joying in
and extolling its gains of power, and remotely the effect of
that evolutional force of nature whose progressive incarna-
tions in its process of humanization are efifected at the cost
of lower incarnations.
If knowledge or science so called be at bottom the self-
seeking of the human species, denoting its struggle to make
the most of itself and to do the best for itself in the world,
102 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
it can yet be truly said of it that it represents not individual
selfishness, but oftentimes individual self-sacrifice, since its
gains are for the whole human race. That is the end which
is held to ennoble the struggle and to cover the innumerable
sufi^erings and sorrows incident to its achievement. The
patriotic work of the great statesman is done for the good of
his particular 'country, he never doubts that its interest is
his supreme concern, and it accordingly keeps his name and
fame in remembrance so long as its history endures ; like the
bee animated by the special hive-spirit and devoted to the
service thereof, he is heedless of, or hostile to, the interests
of other human hives ; whereas the work of the great
scientific discoverer is for the good of all mankind, the whole
human hive, and will last as long as knowledge lasts.
That is its grandeur and glory. Meanwhile the question is
not considered why the self-interest which is condemned as
selfishness in the individual should be glorified as sovereign
virtue in the species ; all suspicion is extruded and no doubt
allowed to intrude of the supreme worth of the collective
selfishness.
Individual gain of knowledge, even when it involves self-
sacrifice, is after all a pleasing gratification of self, made
gladly for the kind, because it pleases the kind in the
individual and is praised by the kind outside him, and few,
if any, are they whose use of it, directly or indirectly, for
reputation or gain is not selfish. While glorifying science,
the eminent scientific man is not unmindful of his own
glory ; in guise of parade of science he is prone enough to
parade himself. See how proudly one whose merits or
importunities have gained for him some coveted title or
distinction wears his ribbon or cross or scarf, or like badge
of social honour, and flatters himself that he is science
in distinguished person, or that science is distinguished
in his person. If he cared only for his service to science
why should he care thus openly to attract the admira-
tion or secretly to exult in the envy of his kind ? Nor
among the unselfish few who in modest seclusion pursue
IV THE IDEAL 103
knowledge for its own sake will there be found one who
owes his unselfishness to his knowledge — this he will owe to
his character ; the tendency of knowledge is all the other
way — to stimulate the greed of increase and the pride of
superiority. Besides, the retired worker is not always so
modest as he seems ; he may have less vanity, but he has
sometimes more pride, than those who strut and pose for
public admiration ; his contempt of such applause bespeaks
his contempt of those who shout it. The truth is that there
is nothing benevolent, however much there be that is
ultimately beneficent, in science. As libido sentiendi, so
libido scietidi may be lust only. The cement of society is
not indeed knowledge, it is charity in St. Paul's sense of
the word. It is quite possible for a profound knowledge of
mathematics to go along with a mean moral character, for a
person eminent in science to be destitute of conscience, for
a distinguished lawyer to be a despicable intriguer, for a
prominent politician to be a mental prostitute.
Concerning science and its glorification, again, there is
this further consideration to be kept in mind : that its
beneficences have their compensatory maleficences. So little
regard has it to the apparent well-being of mankind that
it seldom confers a benefit without some equivalent evil,
indifferently inventing instruments of use and destruction
and with equal ardour searching out poisons and medicines ;
so that it is no absurd question whether, perverted to wrong
ends, its maleficent may not ultimately outgo its beneficent
work — albeit it will not be right then to call maleficent
such destructive work of the cosmic process. In the end
science may be famed for the ill not for the good it did, like
Daedalus of old who, though he was a wonderfully ingenious
architect and built many goodly buildings, is remembered
now chiefly for his devilish invention of the Minotaur.
What then is to be said of the two ideals of human
progress — an ever-growing knowledge and an ever-perfecting
moral practice ? If the first wither in human imagination
that will be because the vital inspiration of mankind is weak
104 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and spent and they are no longer quickened by desire to
increase their being, not because the scope of inquiry can
ever be exhausted by the complete realization of the ideal.
A disappointing end, no doubt, that would be to ardent
hope, but not therefore quite inconceivable, seeing how many
peoples in past time not differing essentially from what men
are now, nor inferior in intellectual and moral powers, are
now names only or lost in nameless oblivion. Hitherto there
has always been a fresh supply of the rude and vigorous
animal plasm of some young and comparatively barbarous
people to seize the torch which was falling from the feeble
grasp of stagnant and decadent mind and to carry it
triumphantly onwards ; but it does not appear that such a
reserve of virgin vitality will always be available, and it is
possible that the whole race may then go the way of the
nations which, having ceased to strive to know more, quickly
lost in degeneracy that which they once knew. Uniform and
constant the stream of human tendency has never been ; like
the river Helicon, it has from time to time, here and there,
sunk underground to reappear at a distant spot or time. Apart
from the legitimate consideration whether ignorance be not a
necessary condition of existence in the future as in the past,
and life could go on without illusion, it is most certain that
the human race is not cajjable of indefinite progress, certain
indeed that, like everything organic, it has its appointed
term. Time was when it was not, and there will be a time
when, the sun extinct, it will not be on earth.
The expectation of a gradual and slow progress to moral
perfection is an ideal which, if one may judge the future of
mankind by its past — and what other grounds of rational
judgment have we ? — is not likely to fail because of a com-
plete realization. Men need not be disheartened practically
from fear of losing that high aim, nor need they perhaps be
too ardent and urgent to reach the stagnation of it, seeing
that stagnation leads to corruption and degeneracy, progress
of desire prompting ever new progress in knowing and doing
having been the motive principle of human development.
IV THE IDEAL 105
Organic life cannot indeed rest at a stay ; it has its period
when, having reached its maturity, it begins to decline :
motion being its life, it inevitably goes back in regress when
it moves not forward in progress. Should men become
so good universally that they cannot be better, they
must straightway begin to be so bad as soon to get worse.
Humanity exempt from mortal fate is a mere abstract
notion ; there are so many concrete human beings of all
sorts and conditions of being, having organic structure and
subject to organic destiny ; and as the life of morality is
not in the abstraction, suspended in air, but in the lives of
the concrete individuals who live it on earth, the plain logic
of thought demands the relegation of a perfect morality to
the abstract life of an abstract humanity. This too of a
surety, notwithstanding it be justly said that although
individuals die. like leaves on trees, yet fresh individuals,
like new leaves, succeed them, so that the life of the race
continues and perfects itself ; for the tree itself dies at last,
and always its life and groA\i;h depend on the leaves and
their lives.
Meanwhile, whatever the future hide in store, the mani-
fest interest and duty of men are to go on seeking the truth
and adoring the moral ideal, content to believe that the
impulse so to do works well in the present to incite and sus-
tain their struggles to reach a higher level of social being,
and that if they continue their strivings to know more
and more and to use for their profit the increasing power
which increasing knowledge gives they will have multiplying
opportunities and means of appljdng what they learn to
the perfecting of moral practice. The result they may be
content to leave to the power above whose concern alone
it is.
The present perplexity of things is that moral ideals are
so mixed and confused, lacking clearness and unity. On the
one hand, men adore in theory as semi-divine the great moral
teacher who, proclaiming the brotherhood of mankind and
the beauty of holiness, urges them to fulfil the grand ideal
106 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of unity of life in the bonds of peace and brotherly love.
That marks the sympathetic and uniting force of the social
instinct in them — the attractive force of the universe work-
ing in their composition as love — and is the inspiration and
aspiration of the future. On the other hand, they extol with
jubilant clamour the great conqueror who in prosecution of
his ambitious aims has cared nothing for human brotherhood
or human life, but treated its morals with heroic contempt.
That marks a latent distrust of the moral ideal to effect
human progress practically, and is the legitimate induction
from the past. How many persons living to-day would be
willing to die to-morrow could they be sure of the everlasting
fame of Alexander the Great ? More probably than would be
content to die could they achieve thereby the fame of the great
legislator or moral teacher. How many, again, who would
not envy " Csesar's bleeding fame " rather than " Aristotle's
wit " ? No virtue is more fervently extolled than national
patriotism, no wretch deemed more despicable than a traitor
to his country ; yet the patriotism may be directly opposed
to the larger worship of humanity and the enemy of his
country be the friend of humanity. To reconcile the ideal
in theory with the real in practice every nation must
persuade itself, as it fails not to do, that its cause is the
cause of righteousness, when it can confidently and consis-
tently invoke the blessing of Heaven on its work of sub-
duing and exterminating its enemies, chaunt a joyful Te
Deiim when it is successful, appoint a day of humiliation
and supplication when it is not succeeding fast enough. All
which, being right at present, is therefore righteous, seeing
that it is by nature-ordained steps of inhumanity that man
rises to humanity. As his fate is thus to travel onwards to
morality through immorality his ideals are naturally and
necessarily mixed. For the speculative philosopher it might
be a curious inquiry whether as mankind attains to moral
evolution by immoral ways it may not be destined to decline
into immoral degeneration through morality.
No rational person knowing well what the process of
IV THE IDEAL 107
organic growth and development is can doubt that for a long
time yet to come the perfecting of mankind must be a slow
and painful business. Could anything be more fatuously
fanatical than to expect an early and sudden transformation
from its past and present nature to a reign of universal
brotherhood ? Those who cherish such a burning enthusiasm
of humanity may justly preach the glorious ideal in order
to inflame feeling, which is the prophet's function, but they
are foolishly and perniciously blind to the circumstances and
conditions of human progress when they clamour for an
instant realization of their ideal. Right or wrong in their
optimistic expectation, they have no right as rational beings
to ignore laws and conditions of growth obvious to cool sense
and sane judgment, and violently to denounce others for not
being as hotly irrational as themselves. Would they, if they
could, have an oak grow up in a single night ? Moreover,
they might not do amiss, trying to see themselves as others
see them, calmly to bethink them whether a human race
addicted to habitual self-abuse of sentiment, and consisting
wholly of the like of them, would be complete in all the
virile qualities necessary to make it thrive and prosper,
or at all comfortable for persons of saner mind to belong
to, either on earth or in heaven.
The end of the matter is that, in accordance with nature's
eternal paradox of a concordant conflict of antagonisms,
one must recognize that there are always two mankinds at
work in human things, the ideal and the real mankind, in
manifold and constant oppositions to one another, the one
or the other low-ebbing or high-flomng in different times
and places. From the beginning of thought on earth much
the same ideal truths have been thought out independently
and proclaimed as incentives to virtuous and deterrents from
vicious conduct. Nor could it have been other\vise seeing that
these ideals were fundamentally the conscious expressions
through and by man, the translations into his feeling and
thought, of the unconscious impulse of evolution thus ful-
filling itself in his ascent, and being so, the necessary
108 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
conditions of such ascent. Many ideal shapes, grotesque
and grand, has this elemental feeling taken in his imagina-
tion in the course of human development through the
ages, but these have all in their times and seasons, as
working hypotheses, served their good office of raising him in
the scale of being through worship — not otherwise than as
the dog is raised to a higher level of being by its worship of
man, however poor a god the particular man — and of thus
promoting organic evolution on earth.
Symlols.
To embody the ideal in forms and symbols which, appeal-
ing to direct apprehension, are then adored in themselves,
not for what they signify, has been a constant need and habit
of the human mind. The musing traveller, sauntering in a
churchyard or cemetery, who sees above a grave the statue
of an angel poised on half-raised foot with uplifted face
and outstretched wings, as though intent to take instant
flight heavenwards, would err greatly if he concluded that
those who placed the statue there, or those who behold it
with pious admiration, really believe in the existence any-
where of such an incongruously shaped being. The winged
statue is the concrete symbol of human aspiration to rise from
a low animal to a moral or spiritual nature, and of a yearning
hope that the aspiration will obtain realization some time
somewhere. Without question then the curious traveller of
a superior race of men perchance to be in far off time to come,
who disinters and examines the broken statue of an angel,
Avill conclude wrongly if he conclude that the men of to-day
were foolish enough to believe in the existence of beings thus
fashioned. He would make the mistake then which those
make now who cite the statues of the Grecian gods as
monuments of the gross theological belief of the ancient
Greeks, or that he would make who should conclude that the
Christian prayer to be covered with the feathers and kept
safe under the shelter of the Almighty's wings implied the
IV THE IDEAL 109
belief in a winged God. Such statues represented not, nor
were believed to represent, concrete beings ; they were works
of fine art symbolizing the mysterious forces, felt but not
known, in the processes of nature, physical and human. As
well tax the sober bishop of an English church with believing
literally all the stories which he devoutly reads as part of the
ceremonial of his worship, or accuse the pious member of a
Greek or Roman church of worshipping the actual picture or
image before which he prostrates himself
Idols of wood and stone, having eyes and seeing not,
having ears and hearing not, were never meant nor ever
believed to see and hear. Not the grossest savage who
invokes the favour of the rudest fetish or idol believes at
heart that it has the power to do what he asks of it, any
more than the little girl believes that her doll actually hears
her praises or heeds her chidings ; the practical proof being
that he scruples not to maltreat it when he gets not what
he prays for, which he would hardly venture to do had he
real faith in its almighty power. He prays to it as symbol
representing the mysterious forces and conditions, over-
whelming and inscrutable, by which he is begirt and on
which his unknown future depends, wishing and half-expect-
ing somehow so to influence their recondite workings and
concurrences as to bring good luck to and turn bad luck
from him. Therein he differs not essentially from the
civilized person who does some trivial act of superstitious
folly when he goes to bed at night or gets up in the morning,
or leaves his house to embark on an enterprise, though at
heart he believes not in the efficacy of what he does. But
it is a comfort to him to have thus obscurely tried and half-
persuaded himself to propitiate or prejudice in his favour
the unknown forces which, working around and on him in
the complicated and incalculable relations of a universal
concatenation of things, co-operate or conflict to determine
the good or bad luck of the day or the adventure ; or at all
events to have secured amid the uncertainties of things and
the turmoil of his own dubieties an indubitable fiat of fate.
110 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
A more sublimed and purified instinct, imbued and illumined
with religious faith, prays to an overruling Providence to be
guarded and led safely on, step by step, " amid the encircling
gloom."
" I believe, help Thou mine unbelief," is the utterance of
a natural state of mind the precise import of which is seldom
adequately realized. Why help that which, if it really be,
needs no help to be ? Make me to believe that which I
believe not, but heartily wish to believe or to believe that I
believe — that is the real prayer. The truth, of course, is
that belief is not something of constant quantity and quality ;
on the contrary, it is diverse in quantity and quality, shallow
or deep, Aveak or strong, obscure or clear ; at one time a
mere conventional affirmation by the lips of that which
it is thought proper to confess and not proper to probe,
at another time an absolute conviction of heart and mind.
Which absolute belief, be it noted, though absolute truth
for him who entertains it, need not therefore be either true
at all, or even true for the time in which he lives, if his mind
has not been constituted by nature and moulded by training
either to think rationally or to think with the spirit of his
epoch and society. Besides, to cover the face of unbelief
by professed belief is a great principle of proper social
behaviour.
After all is said human life consists mainly, and must
consist, in the worship of symbols. When the people rise
in respectful salutation of the judge who, bewigged and
ermined, shambles into court to take his seat on the bench,
it is not the ridiculously costumed old man, who may be a
babbling dotard, but the great office and the principle of
justice which they reverence : not the symbol, but that
which is sjrmbolized. It matters little what the symbol is
provided that the principle represented be sound. Wig
and ermine are ancient symbols sanctified by tradition and
custom, wherefore to show disrespect to them would be to
outrage the dignity of the social sanction which they
symbolize and to weaken the structure of social order.
IV THE IDEAL 111
Meanwhile there are no more real sense and dignity in-
herent in them than in the most monstrous symbol or
" custom " ever hallowed in Dahomey or other barbarous
country. How pitiful and pernicious is the folly of the thing
therefore, when civilized peoples hasten with reckless and
contemptuous violence to destroy all the ancient symbols
of a barbarous people, persuading themselves that they will
thereby raise it to a higher level of being and promote its
progress. All the more senselessly pernicious the folly too
when they proceed forthwith forcibly to impose their own
sanctified symbols on the wreckage they have made and to
expect them to take root and flourish there. To salute
reverently the flag of their own country, which is only a
specially figured piece of silk or calico, without deeming
themselves anywise superstitious, yet at the same time to
discern gross superstition in a similar salutation of some
national emblem by a less civilized people, shows a lack of
imagination which is not to be counted such an achievement
of mental culture as civilized peoples can properly pride
themselves on.
Violent denunciations of idols of wood and stone might
properly be tempered by sober recollection that there are
idols of the heart and imagination, and that these also are
symbolic. As he who, yearning to comprehend the incom-
prehensible, vainly tries to conceive a creation of the universe
of which he is but an atom and a moment, must have some-
thing definite which he can picture in mind, take mental
hold of, feel himself in relation with — since he must
necessarily think everything thinkable in terms of himself
— he cannot help making for himself some kind of individual
power or personal creator. But such personality is necessarily
a subjective Idolism, nothing better than a transcendental
self, a symbol only of that which is incomprehensible
and ineffable ; it is naturally, therefore, of gross human form
and quality in the mental infancy of mankind, becoming
formless and of more ethereal or spiritual quality in riper
growth of mind. Thence another natural development
112 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of things in due course: having risen by gradual ascent
to the conception of abstract power, impersonal and abso-
lute, out of a desire not to degrade the divine into any
human shape, the concrete worshipper pants in the void,
feeling instinctively that he has so sublimed and volatilized
its substance as to have virtually dissipated it, and to have
nothing left which he can pray to, adore, and be in living
relation with ; whence the immediate and instinctive need
of a being who, superior to himself, but inferior to the
Supreme Power, indued with both divine and human
qualities, can by virtue of his twofold nature act as mediator.
Him then he adores, not as the supreme incomprehensible,
but as inspired prophet or symbol. Knowledge itself being
at best but knowledge of phenomena, cannot ever be more
than symbolic and immeasurably inadequate. As the indi-
vidual exists as such by virtue of his partial and temporary
separation from the stream of universal being into which he
is ultimately absorbed, so his notion of creative individuality,
being a term of self, naturally vanishes with him, being
meaningless when he is not.
Has not the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in Unity
been made a darker mystery than it need be by the over-
looking of the symbolic element and the presentation of it
for belief in the harsh and crude language of the Athanasian
creed ? Three persons in one — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
— are symbols representing to finite understanding in terms
of itself the incomprehensible, inscrutable, ineffable power
behind phenomena, which is revealed in part through the
word or reason of the inspired spirit, reason or spirit partaking
of the same nature as that which they partially reveal. That
which was from the beginning, the eternal life of the Father,
manifested to men as the word of life hy the inspired Son
(John ch. i., vv. I and 2) ; the primal and eternal power of
things made known partially as truth to the weak under-
standing of men by the inspiration of the wisest of them.
What else is each succeeding revelation of the unknown, in
the progressive course of man's communion and conflict with
IV THE IDEAL 113
nature, but a revelation, equally divine, of the eternal and
infinite to finite mortals through the seership of an inspired
teacher, who may be called, therefore a son of God ? The
higher the seer stands above the level of common under-
standing, the more use must he make of symbols and
parables comprehensible by them in order to be understood
by and to instruct them ; how other^vise could he plant
in their minds the germs of new ideas which they lack ?
The revelation of the divine in nature and the revelation
thereof through the inspiration of a special human nature
are plainly parallel processes ; for the seer is a part of nature,
a nature-made means or organ.
Considering how necessary to religious worship symbols
are, it is no wonder that such gross symbols as pictures and
statues have always been and still are most helpful to it by
kindling the appropriate feeling and thereby actuating con-
duct ; indeed, they may well have done more for it than
prayers and sermons. Due account is not taken of the
powerful effect on male and female mind resj)ectively which
the ecstatic adoration of the beautiful pictures of the Virgin
Mary and of the exquisitely carved images of the crucified
body of her Son is calculated to produce by kindling a
passion of feeling, and how subtilely in such case the physio-
logical and spiritual passions are apt to commingle. Nor is
the surmise unreasonable that the ecstatic contemplation of
the beautiful face of the Virgin by generations of pregnant
women in their transports of prayer may have so affected
their offspring as to endue Italian women with the grace of
carriage and beauty of features which they often show
to-day.
Obviously it must be right, since it is the constant order
of nature, that men cling to the symbol regardless often of
what it represents, and cling to it long after the soul has
gone out of it. In the fulness of time an awakened and
slowly growing spirit of inquiry moves them to look through
the symbol and see what it really stands for. Then the
wonders, signs, miracles, myths and like shocks to reason are
I
114 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
no longer interpreted literally ; they are discarded aids,
which, once necessary to support the uninstructed mind and
to nurse faith in its infancy, become less and less necessary
as men rise to higher understanding and need more rational
beliefs. At last they take their place in the history of mental
development beside extinct gods, angels, and other obsolete
creations of uninstructed imagination.
A natural impatience of stubborn adherence to the formula,
whose substance has been dissolved or quite transformed, may
be checked by the sober reflection that a stealthy dissolution
of doctrine, the name of which is fervently clung to, is vastly
more effective to change it into something new and more true
than a direct and rude attack on it would be : a dissolution
which may be christened evolution more insidiously sapping
and less provocative of resistance than the revolution which
a violent assault of it could only be. In all organic growth
gradual transformation, not cataclysm, is the rule. Let men
keep passionate hold of the formula, its whole substance may
then be changed gradually and imperceptibly without provok-
ing serious resistance. In the long run it is perhaps more
dangerous to destroy the symbol while leaving the principle
intact than to dissolve the principle while leaving the symbol
intact ; indeed, it fails not to come to pass sometimes that the
sacred symbol is used to signify the direct opposite of that
which it first signified, and is still piously adored. Though
the ancient Greeks had small belief in their gods, who, when
wounded in battle by a mortal spear, yelled more loudly than
any wounded mortal, yet they showed no mercy to the
culprits who blasphemed them, and were -svrapt in a frenzy of
fury at the impiety which mutilated their statues. When
all is said the difference between the folly of the multitude,
infatuated with the formula and clinging to it with passionate
grasp, and the wisdom of the minority undermining it, is not
so great as it appears to be ; for the few wise folk are all too
prone to over-estimate knowledge as exceeding magnifical,
without perceiving it to be at best but symbol, and their
adoration of it, being an adoration of what they think, a
IV HYPOCRISIES 115
self-idolatry. All which, of course, is right and fitting,
seeing that nature's one purpose is to push the species on
to a higher evolution by hook or crook, a higher hook or
crook being fixed when the lower, having served its purpose,
is done with.
Ill
HYPOCRISIES
Habitual hypocrisies — Waves of pessimism — The necessity of hypocrisy
— Its good uses — Self-respect and hypocrisy — Unconscious hypo-
crisy — Mental duality — Hypocrisy concerning the reproductive
organs and functions — Mental disintegrations and disintegrate
developments — Observance of the mean by effective hypocrisy —
Life a mean between extremes — The mean in conduct — Special
standpoints of morality.
From time to time in the procession of things a wave of
self-knowledge drifts over men revealing to them in what an
atmosphere of conventions, formalisms and hypocrisies they
are wont to live. Simulating and dissimulating habitually,
they speak not the truth to themselves nor to others, speak
of one another quite differently in presence and in absence,
so deceive and flatter openly that if they knew what they
think and say of one another in private there would not, as
Pascal said, be four friends in the world. These conventional
masks and hollow formalisms, discerned always by disillusioned
minds, are more widely perceived at times when many
persons are stirred to look through the show of things and
see them as they are ; especially when in due vital process
shams harden into such rigidity as to have no vital hold
of things. Then the several trickling currents of despair
meet in a general stream of pessimism which sweeps over the
spirit of the time. Are they who thus feel and think no
better than weaklings or morbid derelicts of life's full stream ?
Or do they forebode and foreshadow a general state of mind
to come when men shall learn to know more positively and to
imagine less fancifully ? To think so sadly of the human
future would be stigmatized as pessimism.
I 2
116 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
To label a truth pessimism and forthwith to count the
nickname a refutation is a common but not conclusive argu-
ment ; the assumption or pretence that it is disproof being
but another instance of the habitual falsity in which men
love to live. For it is undeniable that they keep up a
continual show and act a perpetual comedy : profess solemn
belief of that which they do not believe, use conventional
words of respect for persons whom and forms which at heart
they respect not, observe senseless and almost intolerably
irksome customs, and employ a language of hackneyed
phrases in speech and writing which is not only without vital
hold on the truth and logic of things but ofttimes not even
in touch with them. So it comes to pass that literature, art
and religion tend to degenerate into conventional forms,
artificial and empty, with no real life in them. Strange
indeed is it to see how minds not wanting in intelligence can
be so completely captured and captivated by forms and
phrases as to rest content in them, and to absorb themselves
in ingenuities of elaborate expression and execution without
any living thought to express and execute. At last, from the
little leaven of sincerity working silently in the mass emerge
open protests against empty formulas, false pretences, barren
professions, and overgrown hypocrisies ; the impatient out-
cries of those who, unable to live quietly in shams, revolt
against them ; the result being a wave of depression from
which a reaction takes place in due time or the apathetic
disillusionment of a declining vitality for which there is no
remedy. For at bottom optimism signifies lusty life fraught
■svith the strong lust to live, naked and not ashamed, so to
speak, pessimism weaker life lacking such transporting lust,
sensible of its nakedness, slack to assert and vaunt itself.
Feeling being the expression of the real force of life, it is out
of feeling, whence springs desire, that the ideal is born. One
may be sure that a Biogenic contempt of the world would be
natural to a people which had spent its lusty vigour and
was in declension, not natural to a people which was in the
full sap and pulse of life.
IV HYPOCRISIES 1 1 7
The prevalence of an organized system of conventionalism,
or so-called hypocrisy, may justly breed a suspicion, nay,
warrant a conviction, of its necessity and usefulness. Its
survival is plain proof that it has the right to survive in the
nature of things. Like the snail's shell, though not in vital
connection with the life beneath, it serves to protect it. Is
not nature itself profoundly hypocritical in the glorious
show which it makes of things and the deceptive promise of
perpetuity ? The two constant counterworking strains in it
— namely, to hold together in cosmic order and to lapse back
into chaos, instil corresponding strains of human thought
and feeling which show themselves dispersedly in individuals,
and collectively sometimes in whole peoples. In maintaining
the organic complexities of social bodies, present and pro-
gressive, hypocrisy is clearly an ordained factor.
Hypocrisy, when one considers it well, is not merely the
homage which vice paj^s to virtue, it is also the social curb
which virtue puts on vice. Did men feel free to lay their
true natures bare, to be openly what they are privily, and to
speak as they really think, it is certain that, emancipated
from the strong restraints which curb and check them, they
would soon become more gross and vicious than they are,
and that a cynical parade of sincerity would wreck the social
system under which they are what they are. The result
might be nothing less than the destruction of the ideal in
human life, Avhich would be humanly calamitous ; for
although nature outside humanity exhibits its lusts, cruelties,
deformities and the like openly and coarsely, disdaining all
soft concealments and apologies, yet in human nature it
takes on the new function of hiding, euphemizing, apolo-
gizing and idealizing. Now although it may not be safe to
judge a society by its ideal, if its professed ideal be high and
its conduct low, yet it is certain that no society can reach or
keep a high level of conduct without an aspiring ideal. For
the ideal acts to exalt the mind by inflaming aspirations and
inciting endeavours to attain it ; and by the unanimous
praise of such high-reaching strivings men flatter and
118 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
instigate one another to become what they wish or would be
thought to be. Can any one withal genuinely and persistently
feign to be what he is not without in a measure becoming
that which he would seem to be ? The pity of it is that his
pious strain to be the ideal is sure to be often rudely
interrupted by the natural practice of being the real.
It would be no easy task to estimate in detail the good
uses of hypocrisy in the social organization. How necessary
its shelter, and how valuable its function to preserve self-
respect and uphold personal dignity ! To the easy but
shallow objection that a person cannot feel self-respect who
is a hypocrite, the just reply is. Why should he care to
dissemble what he is when he is bad, and to simulate the
something better which he pretends to be, if be had no self-
respect ? His self-respect requires that others should respect
him and he feign to be what they respect. A cynical or
abject indifference to the good opinion of his kind would
show that he had relinquished his function in the social
economy ; a desertion which, not conducing to his own health
of mind, might spread much infection through the rapid
contagion of a corrupt example. For while he who refines
and hides his vices works no great public harm, an open and
gross parade of vice works a great deal of harm beyond the
immediate wrong itself, because bad example, being a most
rapid solvent of self-respect and shame, is a more potent
teacher than good precept, and the seed of it once sown on
suitable ground needs no attendance to make it grow fast.
Even the hotly self-righteous person who preaches fervid
righteousness to others while himself doing daily iniquity,
though seemingly a paragon of sanctimonious hypocrisy, is
not really the complete and distinctly limned hypocrite
which he looks ; not so much the clearly conscious self-duper
as he is one who in guise of conscious profession and praise
of virtue masks a lurking protest against the base instincts
which he feels in himself and feels himself to be mostly
actuated by. The hypocritical mask of virtue covers an
instinctive craving of weakness to be protected against itself,
IV HYPOCRISIES 119
and to be fortified by the belief of such protection. In the
depths of his mind besides his real self he harbours and
cherishes an ideal or imaginary self for whom he speaks and
acts, whose approval and support he solicits, whom he exalts
and would persuade others — perhaps persuades himself,
though he may have many dark spells of secret doubt — is
his real self. It is his ill fortune to have united in one
person opposing qualities which would have worked con-
sistently had they been separately bestowed on two persons.
Instead of wondering and grieving then at the frequent fact
that the professor of burning piety and superfine morality is
apt to be tricky, subtle, shifty, self-centred and selfish,
perhaps concupiscent and secretly criminal, an indulgent
judgment may note and applaud his strenuous struggles to
build up in himself an ideal self to supplant and atone for
the real self. As in truth the social judgment often does for
him after his death, if he die in the odour of sanctity without
unlucky scandal ; hastening in the interests of its o^vn
welfare and dignity to extol his fine spirituality and to
ignore his mean actuality.
It is not an inconsistent moral being only who is fashioned
by this process of self-dualization, for it works also to produce
an intellectual duality. Hence the strangest logical in-
consistencies which sometimes subsist quietly side by side
even in intelligent minds. It is notorious that good people
will believe, or persuade themselves they believe, as articles
of faith, preposterous fables which belie the very principle of
reason, and were an impossibility in nature if nature's
fixed cosmic order was not then and there unnatured into
chaos; all the while the validity of outraged reason being
an actual, though unavowed, implication of the article of
faith. The truth, of course, is that they deceive themselves
gladly, and only half believe, as the sa}dng is, veiling the
irreconcilable contradiction in an effusion of formless feeling ;
there is a duality, not a unity, of mind, each half of it
when in function functioning separately and believing after
its kind ; although a reasoning being among reasoning
120 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
beings in customary trains of thought and the ordinary
transactions of life, the dual-minded person harbours a second
self, living apart, dissociate, self-sufficing, which has its own
anti-rational or supra-rational theory and practice of belief.
An intellectual incongruity then, certainly, but nowise there-
fore a conscious monster of hypocrisy. Nevertheless, being
mentally a duality, not a unity, it lacks mental integrity, is
prone to duplicity of doing or double-dealing, nurses a
divided conscience which is apt to condone or approve on
one side of its being what it disapproves on the other side.
Thence an inevitable tendency to wily subtleties, tricky
shifts and sincere insincerities of thought and feeling, which
are evident enough when the particular life is viewed closely,
critically, and candidly as a whole. Such self-dualization has
its counterpart and, as it were, caricature in morbid mental
function, where one may see sometimes the odd spectacle of
grossly absurd delusion and conduct living side by side with
sane reason and conduct, and alternating in function with it.
As many as are the several ideals of mankind in social life,
so many are their several forms of hypocrisy. Nowhere is
hypocrisy more notable and systematic than in relation to
the reproductive function, and nowhere are its benefits
more evidently counterweighed by accompanying evils. It
could not well be otherwise, seeing that the rigid rule of
decent behaviour, taught to infants from their cradles on-
wards, is to ignore the existence of its organs, to conceal
them as a shame or a blame, to make timid use of them in
time of need, and to be so modest as not to name them
directly or without a blush. All the while the passion they
subserve is the strongest passion in nature, effects a com-
plete revolution in the whole being, mental and bodily,
of the individual when it springs up, is the source of
the greatest joys and of a large portion of the propulsive
force of human conduct. The natural and necessary con-
sequence is that it is always felt and often thought of,
though not spoken of, working constantly and powerfully
in secret, while it is openly ignored or tacitly assumed
IV HYPOCRISIES 121
to be continent or even non-existent. How prodigious
and systematic the hypocrisy practised in relation to its
functions, licit and illicit, is credible only to those whose
opportunities of knowing have acquainted them with what
goes on actually below the decent surface of things.
What then is to be said in explanation of so strange a
contradiction between seeming and being ? Here is a
natural force and function Avhich yet is naturally almost dis-
avowed openly, nature working in man almost to disown
itself, at least in theory ; for all the world as if human nature,
secretly ashamed of the coarseness of the function and
dubious of its final worth, were striving to get away from
itself in its rise to higher being. Certainly, if men w^ere ever
really to be what they seem in respect of it, the apparent to
be the actual, the force of human propagation on earth would
be vastly diminished ; so much so, indeed, as almost to pre-
sage the ending of human evolution, which, after all, may
possibly be the cosmic meaning of the colossal hypocrisy
shown in regard to it. Be that as it may, present hypocrisy
performs its natural function of keeping up the show of
reconciliation between two opposite tendencies — the ten-
dency of the refined and spiritual self to reach a higher
evolution, and the tendency of the gross and animal self to
stay at or sink below its present level.
Mind being no abstract and undecomposable entity, as
fancy long feigned, but a complex confederation of parts,
each of which can act with greater or less independence, and
into each of which its energies may be more or less com-
pletely absorbed for a time, such disintegration of itself and
subsequent disintegrate development of the dissociated parts
as self-dualization implies, must be looked upon as a quite
natural — though not, therefore, quite wholesome — process.
Mental physiology presents passing, and mental pathology
fixed, illustrations of it. When any one reads to himself or
aloud, or has read to him, some book, without understanding
or remembering a word of what he reads or is read to him,
because his attention is distracted and his mind engrossed by
122 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
some painful or otherwise absorbing train of thought, the
process is parallel to, though less in degree than, that of a
complete mental dissociation. So likewise is it in mental
pathology : take, for example, the so-called monomaniac who,
though only a common rustic confined in a lunatic asylum,
believes himself to be a royal person ; notwithstanding his
belief that he is so exalted a personage, he conforms quietly
to the real situation for the most part, perhaps doing menial
work placidly and regularly day after day, and claiming no
impossible respect to his latent pretensions ; yet if he be
much excited for some reason or other, and especially if his
delusion be rudely derided or denied, and its quiescent morbid
tract thus stimulated to fierce activity, his whole mind is
then engrossed in its ecstasy and he exhibits a fury of
passionate belief. For the time being his morbid self is his
whole self and the rest of his mind in a state of suspended
life. A very clever man may notoriously be a very poor
geometrician ; so supremely eminent a mathematician as
Newton could and did write the most puerile nonsense con-
cerning the interpretation of prophecies ; and every day
some hysterical young woman, whose supreme nervous
centres are unstable and liable to functional dissociations,
falls to pieces into two differing personalities, either of which
feels irresponsible for — even when it recollects, as it only
dimly does sometimes — the other's doings, thus presenting a
most false and hypocritical spectacle. Nay, it would be no
error to say that this process of throwing the federal con-
stituents of mind out of gear may sometimes go on to a sort
of triplification or quadruplification of the person. It is the
inveterate notion of a metaphysical unity of consciousness
which has led to the stubborn neglect of oft-recorded
instances and still conduces to hinder understanding of
them.
In the matter of personal hypocrisy, then, as in every other
matter, to understand is in a measure to excuse. It has its
proper function in the social economy, and, when kept within
the mean, is a necessary condition of social progress. Nay
IV HYPOCRISIES 123
more, the repugnant spectacle of it when it overleaps the
mean and is overdone does good by provoking a revolt of
healthy disgust, indignation and contempt. No one affects
to admire or ventures to praise, not even the inexpert
performer himself, rank and patent hypocrisy; it is bad
art, and its exhibition a beacon to warn, not an example
to follow. Thus once more one sees how the soul of good
in things seeming evil works laudably in complex social
fermentation to produce a required social product, and
how surely, here as elsewhere, the golden rule of nothing
in excess applies.
It is the fault of logic, which is a human rule, by pressing
rigorously to extremes, to land thought in untenable positions.
Life in every aspect is a mean between extremes that concern
not man, since he is insensible to them. Too low and too
loud sound he does not hear; light too swift or too slow
in its undulations he does not see ; too great cold and too
great heat he cannot feel ; too much and too little food are
alike hurtful ; passion rightly ruled is virtue, and virtue in
excess becomes vice ; prudence in excess cowardice; courage
in excess rashness ; economy in excess avarice ; liberality in
excess prodigality ; liberty in excess license ; submission in
excess slavery ; pride in excess contemptible conceit ; meek-
ness in excess abject humility ; shame a good motive to pre-
serve chastity, a bad motive to infanticide in order to destroy
the evidence of unchastity ; constancy in a bad cause obsti-
nacy, obstinacy in a good cause constancy. Everywhere an
inconsiderate and exclusive pursuit of the ideal would be
the annulment of the real, an entire absorption in the real
the extinction of the ideal. Sincerity and simulation in due
measure are both right, for an excessive sincerity would be
the disruption of society, an excessive hypocrisy the loss of
all vital hold on realities and the degeneration of life into
an artifice of empty ceremonies, formulas, and forms. In
morals, as in the arts, soberly to idealize the real, and there-
after to work soberly to realize the idealized real, that is the
true principle of the humanization of nature. No matter if
124 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the realization cannot be done ; it is the aim and belief
thereof which constitute the spring, the joy, and the glorified
grandeur of human life.
To walk warily in the mean, so balancing between
extremes as to guide well the going, is true wisdom of
conduct. Success in life, as the world counts success, is
notably not due to superior intellectual and moral merit so
much as to prudent observance of this rule. Neither a too
aggressive nor a too retiring nature is best fitted to succeed.
Most successful is the calmly strong and quietly self-seeking
nature which, coldly self-possessed and steadily persistent, has
its definite aim and works definitely for it, sees and praises
the best side of men and things, offends not by criticism
and scorn of errors and faults, avoids outspokenness, is dis-
creet and judicious, makes many friends and no enemies, has
just imagination enough to picture clearly the interests of
self and to see and take the line of least resistance ; which,
in fact, adapts itself best to its environment, using the exact
measure of special hypocrisy needful in the circumstances.
Not perhaps the most noble nature in the abstract nor best
fitted to instigate human progress, which has owed its impulses
to another sort of help, seeing that it suffers abuses prudently
rather than injure its interests by attacking them, and would
rather stand with fools in their folly, if necessary, than hurt
itself by trying to withstand them, but in the concrete an
admirably efficient instrument of personal advancement.
To cherish lofty aspirations ideally but prudently to forbear
going where strict logic of conduct would lead, that is the
good sense of the practical reason ; not overestimating the
virtue of the ideal on the one hand, nor on the other hand
overestimating the viciousness of vice, the foolishness of
folly, the criminality of crime, since such overestimates
spring from a limited regard to the present and do not view
things in a sufficiently large perspective. So doing, the
individual will not make a sacrifice of himself by fighting
against the approved order of things in the quixotic cause
of pure reason and ideal morality, but live comfortably all
IV HYPOCRISIES 125
the days of his life, which is the sober and sage aim of the
practical reason. What advantageth it him to crucify
himself as a social atonement in order to be despised while
he is alive and praised when he is dead ?
The sage advice to avoid extremes and keep the right
mean expresses the need of a just balance of mutual adjust-
ment in the interaction between the individual and his
medium, physical and social, in order to ensure the best
development of himself, and therefore of nature through
him. Neither overaction by him, when he is too self-
confident, domineering, optimistic, nor underaction, when he
is overawed, self-distrustful, pessimistic ; for as overaction or
underaction in the performance of a bodily feat is fatal to
perfection of execution, so is excess or defect of indi\'idual
action injurious in all the relations of mental life. By the
most happy adjustment only of the man and his circum-
stances can the perfect growth and development of his
mental organization be effected. Perfect practically, that
is, not ideally ; for as he cannot control entirely his own
organization nor the circumstances in which fortune places
it, its fate of nature and place being mainly determined for
him, not by him, he cannot vdW an impracticable result,
must learn for himself the right rules of his particular
adjustment. One person's mean, again, not being that of
another, their respective moralities must needs differ what-
ever the circumstances ; and as time and chance happen to
all men, they changing in relation to changing seasons and
circumstances, the mean is thereby altered and the basis of
morality shifted. With moral it is as with ocular vision :
although there is one focus only of best vision, yet the focus
varies for different eyes and for the same eyes at different
seasons of life. A morality which was sincere and right at
one time and in one set of circumstances might be h}-po-
critical show, laudable or not, at another time and in another
set of circumstances. To tell every one that he ought to
control circumstances and not suffer them to control him is
excellent counsel in the abstract, but it is only to tell him
126 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that which a native strength of character, if he has it, will
dictate to him instinctively, and that which, if he has not
such strength, he cannot choose but be deaf to.
IV
LIES — AFFECTATION
Why men love to lie — Lies are idealizations : witness to productive
energy of nature in mind — The liar not wholly and wilfully false —
Justifiable lies — Gradations of quality in lies — The heroic liar —
Veracities necessarily impracticable— Illusions the incitements of
progress — Aflfectation and lying — Artistic and useful aftectations —
Aifectation injurious to character.
In his essay " Of Truth," Bacon, struck by what he calls
man's natural but corrupt love of the lie itself, confesses his
inability to tell why men should love lies where neither they
make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with
the merchants. But is the explanation really far to seek ?
Inspired by the evolutional impulse of organic nature ener-
gizing in them, they love to idealize ; and to idealize them-
selves and circumstances, picturing the ideal as real, is to
lie. When lies then are not made directly for pleasure or
profit, they yet please and are often of present service : in
any case too they spare mental indolence the tedious pains
of finding out the truth.
Lies please in themselves apart from any profit they bring,
because, being effects of the productive impulse in mind,
the elemental force working in the creations of imaginations,
they share the universal joy of nature in generation. Two
great raptures are notable throughout organic life — the
rapture of destruction, when one organism pursues, kills and
devours another life, growing at its cost, and the rapture of
procreation, when two organisms passionately unite in order
to produce another at their cost. Striking historical instances
are not wanting to prove that rabid human lust has some-
times tried to effect a monstrous combination of the two
raptures. Lying being then an expression of the creative or
IV LIES AND AFFECTATION 127
poetic (poietic) force in human nature, men are prompted
thereby and pleased to represent the fact otherwise than as it
soberly is, magnifying and glorifying those features of it calcu-
lated to heighten its impression. If it was pleasing to feeling
at the time, they ignore its faults and glorify its beauties ; if
painful, they magnify its horrors and ignore all qualifying
features : they create in fact the proper ideal in white or
black for the circumstances, an ideal of redundant grandeur
or redundant horror as the case may be. An act of ordinary
courage is translated into heroic bravery, an act of vulgar
cruelty iato transcendent wickedness, a nowise extraordinary
calamity into a scene of indescribable horror. As this is
done under the spell of excitement craving fit food to feed
itself, as every passion naturally does, rather than from pre-
meditated design to speak falsely, the invention is excused
as exaggeration or romance, not branded as simple lying.
Even the barefaced liar who coolly lies to hide his fraud or
other shameful act is not always so wholly and Avilfully false
as he looks on the face of it ; he lies not solely because he
thinks that the lie makes for his advantage at the moment,
but because he also, in a measure, idealizes the circumstances
to suit him and himself to suit them, transforming them into
what they were not, and himself into something better than
the mean person he would be as crude liar, and ending
perhaps by believing his representations to be true.
If it be true that to lie is to idealize, can it be said con-
versely that to idealize is to lie ? When the ideal is noble,
making for human progress, like the moral ideal, it is repug-
nant to call it a lie, but there is no scruple to call it so when
it is base and ignoble, making for human degeneration :
service or disservice to the species the crucial test. Yet it
may be as contrary to the facts in the one case as in the
other, and according to a strict moral code a lie ceases not
to be an essential lie because it serves a good end. There-
fore the loftiest moralists when they descend from abstract
heights to touch with facts are hard put to it to prove that
a lie may not sometimes be justifiable, that is, be a good lie.
128 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Whatever the condoning or cancelling value of the motive
in such case, the lie is not only a violation of the sanctity of
truth, but it is also a breach of the supreme moral law to do
to another as you would have him do to you ; for who would
have another tell him a wilful lie whenever the liar thought
the circumstances made it right for him to do so ? Is
it, again, ever lawful and right to teach lying stories to the
common people as allegories or sacred mysteries which it
is beneficial to them to believe, albeit the allegory, being
taught to and taken literally by them, is actually a lie to
them ? All that the rigid moralist can say when he is per-
plexed by ugly instances of sanctioned lies is that a general
rule of lying would not make for the good of society, and
that a general rule of truth-telling does manifestly make for
its good ; wherefore truth-speaking ought to be the general
rule. Rightly so, no doubt, since the whole quality of a lie,
as immoral consists in being a hurt or a hindrance to the
social body of which the liar is a member ; and when he has
repudiated the obligations of citizenship and become anti-
social, he is an alien who has no longer the right to claim the
benefits which belong to its organic members, among which
the right to have the truth spoken to him is one. Even the
purblind liar, were he to consider well, might perceive that
his real self-interest lies in others believing him and not
lying to him. On such concrete basis rest at last all the
abstract ethical disquisitions out of which substance has for
the most part been vapourized.^
Here reflection, as wherever it turns, is in face of the con-
stant and natural conflict between the ideal and the real,
1 It may be said of course that the criterion of morality is one
thing, the inborn sanction of moral truth another thing, which does
not vary. But that is an absolute distinction which it is not easy
to uphold in face of the consideration, first, that moral truth does
actually exist only in concrete persons, having no universal and
absolute existence, except in theory ; and, secondly, that the result of
an organized system of thought respecting a class of subjects is an
emanation of special feeling, wherefore a moral conscience is just as
natural a product of organization as a sanitary conscience.
IV LIES AND AFFECTATION 129
the abstract notion of perfect and the real apprehension of
imperfect things, the pure reason of the postulated ought
and the practical reason of the expedient and possible.
Whatever they may profess in theory, men habitually use
and practically approve the beneficial lie. Nations lie to
one another diplomatically, accept one another's lies politely,
and show no compunction for the lies they tell, because each
nation, desiring not absorption of itself into the unity of a
human family but preservation of its own unity, works
naturally for its own independent life and growth. A lie
between citizens of the same country, who ought as good
citizens to have wholesome social feeling, is more wicked, or
at all events more culpable (unless it be a duly sanctioned
conventional lie, when it is blessed), because it is a vice which
is hurtful, and would, if general, be destructive to national
organization and unity. A lie between parent and child,
brother and sister, husband and wife, has blacker qualities
of wickedness in itself, though the circle of its evil work-
ing be not wide, because it strikes at the very root of
family unity, which is the foundation of society. Thus
the lie, being everywhere a pernicious solvent of social
union — in love, in friendship, in family life, in citizenship,
in human affairs and intercourse, is naturally condemned as
■wicked and odious.
Meanwhile there is obviously no such thing as an abstract
lie of constant quantity and quality, the ideal lie is itself a
lie ; there are particular lies of all sorts, varying in degrees
and qualities of wickedness from the blackest lie to the lie
which is benevolent and perhaps beneficent, being a welcome
idealization of unwelcome facts, however displeasing in naked
crudity. For in respect of human nature's subtilties and
complexities, its various aspects and shifting inconstancies,
it is not as it is with nature's physical operations, in which,
constant and inexorable, no lie serves, no pretence avails,
where sincerity and veracity of doings are essential to
success, and doings only, not words count. As the subtle
lie which is only half a lie sometimes does more harm
K
130 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
than the gross unmixed lie, and the truth which is only
half a truth more good than the whole truth, so the truth
which is only half a truth may work worse than a lie, and
the lie which is only half a lie be more beneficial than a
whole truth. When a person of illustrious genius appears
on the scene to lead mankind onwards and lies largely in
the process — lawgiver, prophet, conqueror, statesman — he is
excused and admired because of the mighty work which he
did, and could not have done without the means he used ;
nay, he is glorified greatly sometimes because of his genius,
when he was a destructive scourge whose ambitious achieve-
ments were triumphant devastation and slaughter. Human
egotism thus gratifies its self-idolatry by admiration of the
hero ; for which reason it cannot help deploring as sadly
pathetic the tragic spectacle of his fall when, like Lucifer,
he falls to rise no more.
Nevertheless it being necessary to uphold the duty of
veracity as making for the good of mankind in the mass,
these rare and extraordinary constellations are to be regarded
as exceptional beings who, having the might, take by quasi-
divine right their own paths, leaving the beaten tracks of
respectable morality to ordinary mortals, who need a made
road to travel on. Conscience appeases itself by condemning
the hero's lies in the abstract, while acclaiming the man, or
by persuading itself that the hero was transported out of
self in a divine fervour in which, his energy partaking of
and fulfilling the will of destiny, he was himself more
deceived than deceiver.
It is not a little striking to think how much idealizations
of the real, oftentimes with small basis in the real, have
had to do with inciting and sustaining processes of human
-evolution on earth. Truth has been immensely beholden to
the lie, though quick to repudiate the helpful steps after it
has done with them ; illusion after illusion having in turn
been cherished and, its useful work done, abandoned ; lie
after lie worshipped by men in their struggle to live and to
rise to higher life. Is it then a base and entirely baseless
IV LIES AND AFFECTATION 131
suspicion that the impulsion of progress may itself at last
turn out to be a lie in so far as it promises perfection and
perpetuity ?
Affectation is usually a rather contemptible form of lying ;
it is the fashion of one who tries to simulate that which he
would be thought to be but is not, and thereby, when not of
strong wit and character, commonly reveals what he really
island would not be thought to be. Thus he provokes a
derision and contempt which a thoroughly natural character,
even if common, would not provoke. For he who, being
unrefined, is yet quite natural in speech and behaviour, is
not vulgar in a bad sense, but he who pretends to a refine-
ment which he has not and whose pretence does not fit him
is essentially and offensively vulgar.
It is not affectation itself, however, which is always con-
temptible, seeing that when well-studied and well-fitted and
used with proper reserve it may be artistic and imposing
having become so natural as to be no longer affectation. In
that case there must be a pretty strong individuality beneath
it to assimilate the artificial dress which, is judiciously put
on ; it is the weak affectation which being ill-proportioned,
overdone, bad art, is despicable. Social intercourse could not
go on smoothly, if at all, were everybody to leave off dis-
sembling what he is and pretending to be what he is not,
saying what he does not think and thinking what he does not
say ; it is necessary to use the polite arts of saying something
without meaning it, of meaning something without sapng
it, and of saying something which means not what is said.
To go about to denounce violently the hypocrisy of the
scribe and the pharisee would certainly not be good manners.
Everybody, again, must often affect sympathy, interest, belief
which he does not feel proportionately to its show, not merely
out of consideration for the feelings of others but in order to
do well by them when he would do well for them. Moreover,
out of necessary regard to the good opinion of others he
must himself keep up appearances in order to maintain his
own self-respect ; by living in a tub, like Diogenes, he might
K 2
132 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
exhibit immense self-esteem but would hardly preserve
much self-resj)ect. The Roman Emperor Augustus stands
out pre-eminent among rulers in two respects : he was emi-
nent as a sagacious ruler and as an accomplished dissembler ;
and it is most certain that he would not have been the great
ruler he was had he not been the great dissembler he was.
Everywhere it is seen that the clever charlatan who affects a
grave air of authority and speaks dogmatically imposes on
vulgar credulity and that he who would succeed with the
crowd must not despise the art of looking wise to the crowd ;
for what it craves is imposing assurance, not the setting forth
of reasons which it does not understand and, not understand-
ing, suspects as signs of weak conviction or as attempts to
deceive. He will on the whole prosper better with his
fellows in active life by means of his lower rather than his
higher qualities, or at all events will need their help to make
his good qualities tell effectively.
However, the gain by affectation which is good art is not
without prejudice ; like everything else in a world of concor-
dant antagonisms it has its compensations. No one can
pretend habitually to be what he is not without becoming in
some measure that which he pretends to be. So far as he
becomes something better it is well with him. But he is
seldom then perfectly natural, genuinely sincere, a sound
whole ; he lacks complete veracity of thought, feeling
and doing, a thorough integrity of mental being, and is
innocently capable of insidious and nowise calculable self-
deception : a streak of falsity runs through his character
which makes him in spite of himself more or less a lie and
may give him an ugly fall at an inopportune moment.
Though he may do well for himself in his day and generation,
still as falsehood is not barren it is doubtful whether he does
so well for his seed after him. Moreover he is not so stable
always as he looks when he looks strong ; in all he says and
does he has to give a more or less divided regard to his real
self and to his artificial self; and it is striking, almost
pathetic, sometimes to see in converse with him how a rude
IV LIES AND AFFECTATION 133
stroke of veracity, whether in the form of question or answer
or of brutal incident, such as fail not to reveal the strength
of a whole and sound character, may crack the mask of his
art and confound him, yea, produce visibly an instant and
positive collapse and shrinkage of his whole visage and atti-
tude. A weaker person who without strength of wit and
character is full of affectation cannot properly be trusted at
all ; he knows not himself what he is, and no one can depend
upon what he will be at any moment.
CHAPTER V
ETHICAL THEORY AND ACTION
I
CONSCIENCE
An innate tribunal — Difficulties of application in the concrete — No
absolute conscience, but manifold relative consciences — Conscience
the voice of the social kind — The physical basis of conscience —
Conscience in savages — Inchoate and rudimental conscience — Late
evolution and quick dissolution of conscience — Moral defacement
and denudation — Continuity and unity of body and spirit — The
brain-weak neurotic — Moral and motor apprehensions — Lessons of
materialism.
Nothing has been more clear to men since the dawn of
consciousness in them than that there is in every human
breast an august tribunal to judge and give sentence
concerning right and wrong, and that a good conscience is a
comfort and a merit, a bad conscience a burden and a blame,
to its possessor. Conscience is the postulated prerogative of
the human species, the direct instreaming into it of a ray of
divine inspiration, the sacred light to light it on the way of
holiness. Can the wrong-doer be happy, however secret his
prosperous sin, when he carries within his breast an accusing
monitor, incorruptible and inexorable, which will not leave
off tormenting him with its reproachful stings ? As to the
well-doer he possesses in an approving conscience a priceless
stay which, raising him above the ills of life and the fear of
death, bestows the perfect bliss of a peaceful mind.
CH. V CONSCIENCE 135
It is a pretty story in the abstract, but it needs large
qualification in the concrete. Moral principle is a fine
abstraction, a pure sublimate of virtue, the difficulty of
which lies in the particular application. The sinner who
has some conscience often bears up well against its reproaches,
being not seriously hurt, not even disquieted, by its stings ;
they are not sharp enough to hinder him from doing what
he likes to do, and with a little valiant perseverance in ill-
doing they soon cease to vex him. Coward before him who
defies it, tyrant over him who fears it, conscience torments
those most who sin least and are tenderly sensitive to its
rebukes, not stinging the hardened sinner at all. Nay, it is
liable not only to be silenced when it ought to accuse but to be
suborned to approve the wrong-doing. The conscience of the
habitual criminal is not hurt in the least by the crime which
he does unless he blunder badly in doing it, but it is sharply
pricked by treachery to or from a fellow criminal whom he
ought as a citizen to denounce ; his thief-honour being vilely
dishonoured by such a breach of the moral code which is the
vital bond that holds criminal society together. In like
manner, though the moral sense of the servants' hall excuses
or approves or condones many deceptions, dishonesties, petty
thefts doAvnstairs, it revolts indignantly against the baseness
of the traitor whose conscience impels him to make them kno'WTi
upstairs. What more fierce than the scorn and more violent
than the abuse poured on the member of a trades-union whose
sound moral feeling rebels against the iniquities sanctioned by
its collective conscience, albeit that conscience be essentially
antisocial, if not antihuman ? Every sect, party, profession,
trade, creed, corporation develops its special conscience which
recoils not from but placidly approves customs and practices
in it that grossly violate true moral principle. Not that the
individual member does that knowingly ; on the contrary, he
is commonly so imbued with the collective conscience that,
unaware of his thraldom, he obeys it without feeling his o^vn
disgrace.
There is no such thing on earth as an abstract conscience
136 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of constant quantity and quality, there are manifold particular
consciences exhibiting all degrees of strength and differences
of quality ; no simple and uncompounded sense, elemental and
constant, but moral feeling or sentiment which is the complex
and variable effluence of differing mental structures. A
transcendental conscience of divine origin and nature, autho-
ritative judge of right and wrong, has been enthroned in the
hearts of men with the laudable aim of inspiring one another
to do well and not to do ill ; it works therefore on the ideal
man with mathematical precision and certainty in the un-
encumbered region of abstractions, the inevitable difficulties
appearing only when the question of the special application
to the concrete man in the particular circumstances arises.
Herein elaborate metaphysical disputations yield no help ;
occupied with abstract right and wrong, without definition
of what right is and what wrong is in the concrete, they
are mostly suspended in air, void and formless.
A wide and impartial survey of the origin and growth of
conscience in the human race, of its numerous vai'ieties in
different persons and places, and of its different workings in
different circumstances shows that it is practically the voice
of the surrounding kind speaking in the individual, the best
conscience therefore the voice of the best moral sentiment of
the highest races. Though the individual may approve his
own conduct and applaud himself, he is not quite at ease, not
wholly self-content, if he believes that his fellows with whom
he is in social communion think ill of him ; and though he
be uneasy and not well pleased with himself, he is still
immensely comforted if he feel that his society thinks well of
him, even if it be to think him what he is not. So greatly
indeed does he relish the praise of its members that his
conscience may constrain him to give his life for it as a social
duty and glory, notwithstanding that its applause cannot
reach him when he is dead and that they may be of the
poorest quality. Therefore it always has been, and still is,
the case that the moral sense of one age or place or people
approves that which is an offence to another age or place or
V CONSCIENCE 137
people. A sure sense of right and wrong in the abstract,
conscience must needs have, an absolute infallibility being
postulated in the very definition of it, but in the domain
of real things its sense of right and Avrong fluctuates,
is not constant, makes convenient accommodations. Moses,
the meekest man on earth and chosen servant of God,
rebuked two Israelites whom he found contending with one
another, and tried to reconcile them by sajdng, " Sirs, ye are
brethren, why do ye wrong one to another ? " Yet a little
while before he had slain and secretly buried an Eg}^tian
whom he saw strike an Israelite.
Realizing what conscience actually is in the concrete, the
conception of its physical basis in nerve-structure, so long
flouted by moralists as materialistic blasphemy and still
loftily evaded by them as beneath the dignity of philoso-
phical notice, is rendered easy. That basis is of course the
exquisitely delicate pattern of fine cerebral reflexes which
subserve the highest human feeling, reason and conduct —
reflex function at its highest plane of cerebral evolution.
For conscience or moral sense implies, not sensibility only,
but also, as every discriminate sensation does, fit motor
apprehensive reaction, ideal or real, in exact adaptation to
the impression — that is, fine and fit cerebral reflexes ; not
sense or feeling only separate from thought, but the highest
and most subtle reason imbued with the finest feeling or the
most refined feeling permeated by the most subtile reason.
No one could feel fitly moral in the particular circumstances
any more than he could discriminate a musical note or the
quality of an odour, or the shade of a colour, without the fit
motor reaction, overt as movement or implicit in the
acquired motor intuition ; he functions righteously there
and then by virtue of the proper representative reflex, and
could not so function at all if he did not possess it. Obvi-
ously, too, the quantity and quality of such reflexes organized
by inheritance and culture in the individual brain must
answer exactly in number and refinement to the number
and qualities of the impressions made by the social environ-
138 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
ment. The higher in civilization a society is the more civil
it is in every sense ; the more perfect its polity the more do
politeness and policy reign in its structure and manners.
As the conscience of the upright man is the bloom or
flower of his good social stock, it is naturally absent in the
lowest specimens of the race in whom the animal nature
constitutes the whole being, the human nature in its true
social or moral sense being almost or entirely wanting.
Roaming savages, naked or nearly so in body and mind,
destitute of social organization, living only on enough to
keep up animal life, have not the mental qualities of the
social man in them ; indeed, they need not, and are better
without, qualities which would be a detriment or destruction
to them ; all they have at best is a dull, weak feeling of
fellowship with the members of the scattered bands or tribes
to which they loosely belong. The weak and vague con-
sentience betokens the weak and loose co-operation. To
endow them with a sense of right and wrong in any true
sense is obstinately to ignore facts and to be the willing
dupe of words ; for the poor, weak, inchoate conscience they
may have is no conscience of right and ^^Tong as a moral
principle, nor is it the faintest feeling of any right or wrong
in relation to the human kind, not even to a neighbouring
tribe, no glimmering sense of humanity; it is no more
than a purely tribal feeling, a conscience possibly that some-
thing which is truly right is wrong, or something which is
hideously wrong is right. A conscience which thus belies
its nature by condemning the right and blessing the wrong
is no better than the negation of conscience ; it is a con-
science in the abstract which can exist only on condition of
stubbornly shunning realities and remaining nominal. The
postulate of a stern and just monitor in every human breast,
savage and civilized, to approve and condemn might necessi-
tate the inference that there are no fixed principles of right
and "svrong ; that morality, like other organic growth, is in a
gradual flux ; for if this infallible judge acknowledge no
constant principle, but enjoin in one place and people what it
V CONSCIENCE 139
condemns in another place and people — as it doubtless rightly
does — the conclusion follows that what is wrong some time
and somewhere is right at another time and elsewhere.
That is what is presumably meant when the talk is of the
primitive and uninstructed conscience of the savage. Un-
instructed certainly, but not therefore a conscience in being,
any more than an unconstructed house is a house in being,
for the instruction enters into and constitutes the structure
and quality of the conscience. Let its dim dawn be the
faint adumbration of that which is eventually to develop into
clear and distinct being, the inchoate rudiment of something
destined to grow from age to age of the human travail into
full social inflorescence, still the admission does not justify
the transfer of the blossom to the bud and the investment
of this with its brilliant qualities. As well think to find the
fragrance and beauty of the full-blown rose in the not yet
transformed leaves of the incipient bud. Pre-essential to
the flowering of every mental stock is the long and gradual
building up in mental structure ; it is when the fathers
have eaten no sour grapes that the children's teeth are not
set on edge.
As conscience was not implanted ready-made in man from
his beginning on earth, and is not a constant quantity or
quality, but was the slow and painful acquisition of develop-
ment through past ages, the supreme conquest of culture, so
its more perfect development is an ideal to aspire to and
endeavour after in the years to come. With the more zeal
and fuller assurance, too, because the experience of men as
they rise in height of being teaches them plainly that it is the
necessary condition of social well-being and its perfecting
the necessary condition of the best social development.
That they are yet in the thick of the struggle and far from
final victory is shown by the different sorts of existing
societies and the different modes of government in the world,
and by the steadfast endeavours which every progi'essive
society makes by means of new laws and changes of old laws
to mend and amend its structure. That conscience at its
140 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
best, being a late, is still only a precarious possession is shown
by its quick and easy downfall under the sudden stress of a
great catastrophe in every civilized community, and by its
swift effacement then in individuals and peoples ; so complete
the devastation indeed that the whole delicate fabric of moral
culture seems temporarily dissolved and clean swept away.
Amazed and aghast at such brutal explosions of the natural
man when they befall from time to time, for no other reason
than the fond wish that such things should not be, and a
stubborn unwillingness therefore to believe that they are,
men cry out that they are monstrous, unnatural, inhuman,
incredible, and hasten either to draw a veil over them or
to put a falsely fair face on them, or to ignore and forget
them, in any case to say little about them. Meanwhile they
are not incredible, since they happen, nor unnatural, since
they own natural law, nor inhuman, since they are human
doings, nor devilish, since they are divinely ordained ; they
are simply the natural consequences of the frailty and
delicacy of the late-acquired, most finely organized, least
stable cerebral reflexes.
A moral philosophy heedful of its foundations must needs
some day give just heed to the facts of moral defacement and
denudation and consider the bearings of them on its theories.
In the mental disorder of madness and drunkenness the
coarseness, the brutality, the violence of word and deed,
the passion grossly shown, are not new created ; they mark
pre-existent material inflamed and laid bare. The highest
cerebral reflexes subserving the social inhibitions being
paralyzed, and their ruling functions of reason and moral
control suspended, the fundamental instincts and passions of
the coarser nature are exposed. There is neither scruple
nor shame to say and do that which is a gross breach
of good manners, and, perhaps, an offence against morality ;
the arrogant person is rudely insolent, the coarse-bred brutal,
the envious malignant, the sensual bestial, the vain ridicu-
lously vauntful, and the unbridled tongue tells jubilantly the
secrets of self and others. For the same reason it is that
V CONSCIENCE 141
the brain-decay of senility, effacing the finest fibrils of social
feeling, tends to expose the coarser and more fixed qualities
of natural character. In both cases mind-function is reduced
to a lower power by the physical devastation.
Starting from the theory of the fall of man from an original
state of perfect happiness, when conscience was pure and
supreme, into a brute-like being degraded by the lust of an
animal nature, who nevertheless aspires to regain the purity
and bliss he dimly dreams to have lost long since, the notion
of two separate natures, a spiritual and a material nature,
opposed radically to one another, was conceived and insisted
on. The persistently inculcated aim then was to subdue
and suppress a lower nature which was continually warring
against the higher nature. But these are not really two
such separate natures ; there is one nature having two poles,
nevertheless with continuity and unity of being, and so far
from its higher functions being separate from and indepen-
dent of its lower functions, the simple truth is that they
could not have ever been nor could continue to be without
the lower any more than the flower could be without the
root. St. Paul rightly then declared that the material was
first, and afterwards that which was spiritual, but he went
to a wrong extreme when he would have had the spiritual
entirely divested of the lusts of the flesh ; he himself could
never have been the vehement and vigorous spiritual apostle
he was, after his miraculous moral transformation from sinner
to saint, had he not preserved and profited by the passion
and vigour of Saul the persecutor. The appetites and lusts
of the flesh, albeit styled low and animal, are really more
necessary, being fundamental to human existence, than the
so-called good and spiritual qualities; for while man lives
very well as an animal without moral qualities, he could not
live as a moral being without his animal qualities. As he
struggles with his physical surroundings in order to gi'ow
in knowledge and power, so he struggles with his native
instincts and passions in order to grow by their assimilation
and transformation to a higher social and moral nature :
142 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
which in the result is not a self drained of them, but a
self made higher by their gradual sublimation. To think
to make a St. Augustine without the strong sensual nature
of the unsanctified Augustine, or a St, Paul without the
passionate nature of Paul, would be as ridiculous as to try
to distil an essence without the crude substance to extract
it from. The more brute within the man, so long as it is
fitly moralized, the more powerful is the moral man. In
the desire and striving of the human race to reach a higher
and better nature is no obscure reminiscence of a former
greatness and goodness lost long since, there is the yearning
impulse to grow more and more to a perfection in time
to come.
It is the brain-weak neurotic, who, lacking animal nature,
yet deeming himself superficially spiritual because of his
masculine deficiency and his over-sensitive infirmity, is
fundamentally unsound. Lacking full manly structure and
vigour, he lacks also breadth, vigour and proportion of
thought, is incapable of just discernment, good practical
sense and sound judgment ; engrossed in an acute sensibility
and narrow insight, he is self-endeared, self-magnetized, self-
magnified, and interprets the world in terms of such self.
Moreover, he is morally ill -tuned without being aware of it,
for by reason of his constitutional bias and the self-hypno-
tization which it engenders, he cultivates a wilful blindness
to evidence which pleases him not, eagerly embraces evi-
dence which suits him, deforms to his liking facts which he
dislikes, glories in an intense and fanatical self-sufficiency
with its attendant delirium of delight. Such is the real
nature and intrinsic value of the superfine and over-tender
conscience, which is apt to bewail misery and to shun the
miserable, of the convulsive ecstasy too of the narrow genius
which is insensible to everything that ministers not directly
to its self-indulgent development. In the end the emasculate
body in its degree must needs evolve a mind proportionately
lacking in masculinity, and the spirit eviscerated of its fleshly
passions breed degeneracy, if it breed at all.
V CONSCIENCE 143
When the upsurgings of the brute within the man over-
throw his balance of being and make him a pitiful spectacle
of disorder, the explanation is that the currents of inflamed
energy cannot traverse the plane of the supreme cerebral
reflexes along their extremely delicate and complex tracks
of reason and moral feeling, because these, if they have been
properly developed, are now paralyzed and impotent to
conduct. Being functionless, their apprehensions are neces-
sarily effaced ; the man loses his moral memories not other-
wise than as he loses the nicest grasps or apprehensions of
his hand when it is benumbed or partially paralyzed ; or as
fine tones of sound and the finest articulations of speech are
lost when the cerebral reflexes subserving the most subtile
feelings and motor apprehensions of words are erazed by
disease ; or as clear and distinct visions of objects is blurred
by impairment of the fine reflexes subserving the exact
motor apprehensions of their images. Mark well the
slavering infant, the slavering idiot, and the slavering dotard,
how they resemble one another in expressionless face of in-
apprehension : the infant has not yet acquired by practice
the exquisitely delicate mechanism which the idiot is con-
genital ly destitute of and the old man has lost by the
natural decay of age. As it would not be right to say that
a man's spiritual nature is lost and his bodily nature left
when he cannot grasp or speak or see precisely and firmly,
it cannot be right to speak so of him when the finest
reflexes of his mental organization are paralyzed and he
cannot apprehend morally : a one and whole nature has
been impaired in its highest, most delicate, and least stable
developments.
Did timid minds, shocked by the word materialism, really
know what the word means, and what they mean when they
lightly use it, they might perhaps learn and apply many
useful lessons of conduct. As the note of progress is to gain
a future evolution, not to regain a lost evolution, it is in
materialism, understood in its best sense, that the means
and hope of advancement may be found really to lie. If
144 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
man does not obtain perfection through the improvement of
his bodily nature he certainly will not obtain it at all in this
world ; therefore to refine, purify and develop the material
being in obedience to natural laws of cause and effect, in-
stead of trying to despise and degrade it continually as the
enemy of an indwelling spiritual entity, is the aim of a
rational morality concerning itself modestly with real
conduct, not inflating itself with empty abstractions. So
inspired practically, men might, for instance, learn to suspect
the iniquity of begetting new life when so lamed or maimed
mentally as to be only half, and that the lower half, of them-
selves. For it is a sober, and might well be a solemn, lesson
of materialism that as surely as bodies gravitate to the earth
so surely do unwholesome moods of mind and states of body
as well as native lameness and meanness of moral nature
tend to breed infirmity, vice, and madness in offspring. The
ancient philosopher who, when importuned with the foolish
talk of a simpleton, exclaimed, " Verily, thy father was drunk
when he begat thee," spoke what might well have been true,
even if it chanced not to be true in that particular instance.
Yet to think of the monstrous inconsistency between the
exalted notion which men cherish of the immortal value of
every human life and the heedless self-indulgence with which
they go about to launch it into everlasting being ! A merry
spectacle to the cynic, but a rather tragic spectacle to the
enthusiast who counts human life a serious thing. The
quintessential abstract of the individual as he is in mind and
body at the procreative moment, maimed or whole, sound
or unsound, in good or bad mood, discord or harmony, is
launched into new immortal being, not with the least design
or forethought of the momentous import of the function, not
even with any heed or care whether its purpose is fulfilled
or not, but as a mere incident in the oft-recurring sport of
lust. Thus man, whose prerogative is reason, takes no
thought whatever to provide for the production of sound
life, physical and moral, yet takes all the pains in the world
nowadays to nurse and preserve the diseased life which he
V MORALITY 145
recklessly produces ; and thus in blind servitude to an over-
powering instinct to perpetuate life on earth he heedlessly
generates the beings who are to people eternity. He does
well then to exalt love as divine ; thereby he silences
conscience, should it perchance whisper a censure, by shifting
responsibility from himself to the divine purpose which his
lust fulfils.
II
MORALITY
Self-interest the basic motive of conduct — The ten commandments
inductions of experience — Elimination or assimilation of morbid
social elements ? — Sorrow and sympathy — Outbursts of the brute
in the man — Admiration of the immoral hero — Adoration of the
moral hero — Conf ucius's enunciation of the moral law — Retribution
the rule of practical morality — Social approvals and disapprovals —
Conscience bred by law — The ideal and the real — Structural virtue
not self-conscious — The inheritance of a good organization — The
value of a good example — Virtue a prudent wisdom — Conquest of
culture and its rules of intrasocial origin — Different estimates of
vu-tue — Rectifications of laws —Arbitrary rights of the State —
Relativity of morality — Passions essential factors in social develop-
ment — Scientific study of good aiid evil.
As conscience is no absolute and infallible guide in the
manifold, complex and changing circumstances of life, but
diversely qualified in divers situations and persons, it results
that the moral aim of the individual everywhere is to find
out the just mean between his personal rights and the duty-
claims of the society to which he belongs — to reconcile
individuality with solidarity, egoism with altruism. Self-love
being the basis of every being, without which indeed it could
not be, self-interest is the fundamental motive of its passions
and conduct. A hard saying when crudely stated, yet not to
be gainsaid, though its harshness be hidden under fine and
smooth words signifying the refined and abstract develop-
ments of self love. Strike the particular person, be he never
so saintly, aptly to the quick, the stroke perhaps only a
social slight to his special vanity, and the root-passion fails
146 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
not to show itself. He may aspire and strive to love his
neighbour as himself, but he has then a keen and quick
intuition that his nearest neighbour is himself, and that a
wise self-esteem is necessary to his own self-respect and to
his love of others. Let him think to swallow up self-love in
a complete altruism, yet a tender self is the very soul of his
keen altruism. And well it is that it is so, since if it were
not so human progress might come to an early stop.
The more clearly this fundamental motive is owned in
the communion and commerce of individuals and peoples,
the more sure and safe is the footing on which they deal
with one another ; if it be ignored or obscured by vague
phrases, general terms of goodwill, amiable sentiments and
loose understandings, the more certain is the risk of disap-
pointments, misunderstandings, recriminations and quarrels.
Besides, the persistent cultivation of a voluntary ignorance
of it is the nursery of many organized hypocrisies of thought
and conduct. Now to know the fundamental qualities of
human nature there is no need to speculate largely and
abstractly, it suffices to recall and ponder the command-
ments, legal enactments, and moral maxims which have been
necessarily framed, because found actually necessary, to re-
strain and rule the natural impulses of self-interest. " Thou
shalt not" is the prohibitive formula of most of the ten
commandments, which do but utter the simplest moral rules
of self-denial essential to the existence of society; while
iihe numerous and various laws of every civilized country
and the successive amendments of them attest the con-
tinued necessity of curbing the selfish propensities of the
mdividual b}'^ guarding specially against the ingenuities of
bad men apt to devise with increase of knowledge new and
subtler breaches of them. Though the technicalities and
elaborate formulas of legal phraseology in a simple contract
between man and man seem tedious and superfluous, yet
experience has proved them to be indispensable to prevent
the subtle and insidious workings of self-interest. Seeing
then that these moral commandments and legal enactments
V MORALITY 147
were not pre-devised and pre-ordained formulas to prevent
possible, but inductions of experience to correct actual wrongs,
they furnish incontestable proof of the basic motives of
human conduct and of the experimental construction of
morality.
The procession of human things goes steadily on its fated
course and, despite all the altruistic goodwill in it, cannot stay
its march to suit the weak and wretched who fall out by the
way. If brother stayed always to help up and stand by fallen
brother, loving him as himself, progress might be brought to
a standstill : that would be to cancel the impulse of its
motion and to wreck the human venture for the sake of the
impotent. The best he can do for himself and his kind is to
use well his strength for all it is worth, and to succour the
weaklings by placing them in hospital, or asylum, or refuge
of some sort, where they may be cared for outside the current
of life which they cannot breast. For when all is said in
pity or in excuse, the weak and wretched are usually from
one cause or another impracticables, even when not very
abjects who cannot be helped to help themselves, and, being
such, are necessarily a hindrance or a hurt to the social
organization, whose right and interest it is to isolate or
eliminate hostile elements, as a sound bodily organism
sequestrates or eliminates its morbid elements. True charity
to the species consists in the self-love which expels from its
working system the ailing and useless element, not in
vitiating and lowering the constitution and function of the
whole by absorbing weakness and disease into it ; mind-stuff
in its course of social evolution doing in more refined ways
very much what the leading stork of the southwards-migrat-
ing flock does when it spikes with its bill the weakling
unable to continue its flight.
A strange society in the end it would be which eliminated
self-interest, abolishing it not only as theoretical but as
practical motive ; which, for example, deliberately and con-
sistently incorporated into its structure the scrofulous, the
tuberculous, the epileptic, the insane, the criminal ; nay,
L 2
U8 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
perhaps, in wild flight of humane enthusiasm, recommended
or enforced regular interbreeding with savages in order to
raise them by lowering itself. Could the human kind in its
struggle upwards gain by that process of quixotic righteous-
ness ? Though the brotherhood of men be a lofty ideal to
be cherished on earth and in time, and realized after place
and time are not, the pious project of striving to attain it
by intermarriage of its highest and lowest specimens is not
yet approved, nor is the grand atonement likely soon to be
accomplished.
In all compassion there is in the giver, despite his con-
scious repudiation of the feeling, a secret, unavowed tinge
of contempt, in all benevolent help a tacit note of superiority
or patronage, which is or ought to be wounding to the self-
respect of him who needs and receives it. Though the
subtile feeling be consciously rejected, it is latent and has
silently infected words ; for the word compassion is not now
strictly synonymous with sympathy, although its original
meaning was literally the same, but is imbued with a note
of superiority. Why is sorrow lessened by a companionship
of misfortune and misery ? Not so much because one is
then sorry for one's neighbour's sufferings as because one's
own self-love is less hurt by seeing him on the same com-
passion-needing plane of humiliation. Commiseration is
natural in a common misery. He and I may be naturally
sorry for one another's sad situation when we are sore
afflicted, but neither has the latent pride of a superiority
entitling him to compassionate the other. Very different it
is when the condoler can say practically to the sufferer, " I
am sorry at heart for you, and would gladly comfort and help
you if I could. But what would you have ? I have my
work to do and my pleasure to enjoy, and cannot afford to
spend my time and strength in staying by you and doing for
you. Besides, it would not help you effectually yet would
ruin me if I did, seeing that you would probably not
now be in need of help were you capable of being helped
effectually."
V MORALITY 149
The deep affliction which a strong nature feels shrinks
with instinctive reserve from proffered words of sympathy
not only as humiliating, but because it feels too well its
own aloofness and the inevitable hollowness of sympathy,
however genuine the show of it. The spoken words are
heard but do not signify, sound so far off that they carry
no meanmg across the deep gulf between sorrower and sym-
pathizer, seem almost to mock the unutterable feeling, and
therefore aggravate rather than alleviate it. Never was
sadder illustration of that truth presented than by the
memorable scene of sorrow in the garden of Gethsemane,
when the meek and gentle Jesus bearing the sinload of
the human race, His soul heavy and exceeding sorrowful,
on the very verge of the ordained expiation by a lingering
death on the cross, brought His disciples to a lonely place
to watch with Him during His sore agony while He prayed
that, if it were possible, the bitter cup might pass from Him,
but if not, that He might have the resignation to drink it.
Three times He went a little way apart to make His agonized
supplication, and three times He returned to find His tired
disciples fast asleep, who soon after, when He was seized
and led captive away, all forsook Him and fled. Whosoever
thinks to comfort himself in deepest sorrow or in the hour
of death with the sympathy of pitying friends, let him
bethink himself of that mournful scene and resolve to do
his suffering in silence and alone.
Self being basic, always divulges and asserts itself in the
last resort when the individual comes into violent encounter
with the elemental facts of nature, physical or human.
Then all the latest conquests of social culture, all the vestures
of shams, hypocrisies, conventions, reserves, formalisms, are
rudely stripped off; the restraints patiently woven in the
interests of the species rent to pieces by the supreme
selfishness of the individual. Thence, too, the hideous
exhibitions of human ferocity in crises of great panic, of
dire distress and famine, when the fundamental instincts
burst out with brutal violence ; instances gladly ignored or
150 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
soon forgotten, or with dim suffusion veiled by a human
nature aspiring to reach higher being, and happily sustained
in its strivings by occasional spectacles of devoted self-
sacrifice and heroism in the worst scenes of reckless
selfishness.
The strange thing to see is how persistently men adore
a supreme incarnation of selfishness in the person of the
great conqueror who, in pursuit of his ambitious ends,
unscrupulously tramples on truth, right, justice, disdaining
every moral principle which stands in the way of his in-
satiable lust of power, and wasting human lives as indifferently
as nature itself does. Amply justified, too, he is of his
monstrous egotism, since he knows well that what he
selfishly seeks as glory will be deemed glorious by his kind
and secure for him an everlasting fame in their admiration.
What matters a theoretical moral reprobation when he is
sure of the actual approbation of their living worship from
age to age ? Besides, he can feel or persuade himself that
he is an elemental force of nature and, like nature, rightly
conscienceless, even if he do not go so far as to think him-
self half-divine, and the inspirations of his ambition the
voice of the god in him. In the exaltation of him as
a hero public judgment without doubt shows a deeper
instinctive wisdom than it is explicitly conscious of; for if
the mighty work done by him be in the divine purpose,
as it needs must be, and the energy to do it be divinely
given, as it cannot fail to be in a world divinely governed,
the inevitable conclusion is that the man was divine in
that wherein he excelled. As the Egyptian philosopher,
Psammon, according to Plutarch, said to Alexander, " All
men are governed by God, because all that which excels
and rules in any species whatever is always divine."
It is a just logic, therefore, which erects statues and
monuments to the glory of famous conquerors despite
their bad morals, and notwithstanding that they might
not be so good, not even really so brave personally, as the
obscure martyr who patiently suffered torture and death for
V MORALITY 151
conscience' sake, and is as clean forgotten as if he had never
been born.
Nevertheless, another and presumably nobler type of great
man, of quite opposite heroic kind, has enthusiastically
proclaimed a lofty moral ideal to mankind, and been im-
mensely adored in consequence ; not, perhaps, during his life
yet after his death, since it is the human habit to despise
when living and admire when dead those who have done
most for its intellectual and moral progress. Such admiration
is plain proof of altruistic impulse and aspiration in the race-
Conqueror and saint then are both rightly admired; the
former because, acting the real man that has been and still
is, he does that which is right in present practice ; the latter
because, proclaiming the ideal man that is to be, he forefeels
and foretells a more moral practice to come. That ideal
aim of course is to make all men members of one family by
perfecting a universal brotherhood ; to develop such a con-
sentience or sympathy with the kind as that everybody
shall feel another's hurt to be his hurt, and his good to be
another's good ; to absorb and extinguish individual egoism
in the spatious selfishness of humanity, not otherwise than
as personal selfishness expands into the larger family selfish-
ness. For as a good parent's best joy is to make sacrifices
for his child, parental self-love being best pleased by pleasing
it, all that is needed for the perfection of altruism is such a
deep sense of unity and amity between men as will make
everybody feel in relation to everybody else as the parent
feels in relation to the child. Then all people on earth may
act from self-love, because it will be the self-love of all, as it
is of a few now, to do good to others, and would be a hurt to
it not so to do, even though the help given might be more
hurtful than helpful in the long run.
Although such altruistic transformation of egoism be the
expected consummation of a perfectly constituted social unit
in a perfect social medium, it is certain that for any one now
to endeavour to make the whole human race his family is
to grasp so widely as to embrace nothing palpable. The
152 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
consequence is that he who tries and thinks to do so is apt
to deceive himself with forced and false sentiment, which is
at bottom for the most part keen egoism masquerading as
humanitarianism, and to delight in the debauch of delirious
feeling, being himself the while perhaps nowise unselfish
in the relations of his daily life. Another instance this of
the frequent irony of nature — that those who would do best
for the species are far from being always the best specimens
of it ; persons to be praised, therefore, not for what they are,
but as symbols of its best aspirations.
Confucius pronounced the moral law to consist in not
doing to another that which you would not have another do
to you ; that, he said, was the only necessary law, for it was
the foundation and principle of all morality. Unlike the
Christian precept teaching men to bless those who curse and
to do good to those who do evil, and even inviting the smiter
of one cheek to smite the other also, he taught that it was
no duty to return good for evil, benefits for injuries ; for if
men acted so, he asked, how could they recompense benefits ?
The right thing to do was to repay hatred and wrongdoing
by strict equity, well-doing by doing well. If I bestow the
same benefit on one who does me a great wrong as I do on
one who does me a great benefit, I do an injustice, for I
violate the very principle of justice on which the security of
a society rests.
A rule of retribution in the conduct of life is the only
practical moral rule ; it is the moral rule which always has
been and necessarily is practised in every state. Christian
or Pagan. No civic body could subsist in health for a day
which did not expressly punish wrongdoing by laws framed
purposively to check it ; nor could a family even hold well
together which acted always on the principle of rendering
good for evil. The ideal might suit well if the wrongdoers
would begin well by putting it in strict practice, but so
long as they flourish the consistent application of it could
not fail to foster wrongdoing and eventually to exterminate
welldoers.
V MORALITY 153
In order to impart substance to reflections on morality, it
is incumbent to bring them down from abstract heights and
to consider its actual working forces in the doings of social
life. There the motive persistently instilled into every
member from his cradle onwards is to be well thought and
spoken of by it, by doing that which it approves, its praise
being a recompense, its dispraise a shame. That it is wrong
to do it wrong ; that a good act is its own reward ; that it is
more blessed to give than to receive ; that the truest happi-
ness consists in making others happy ; that the recollection
of a life spent in well-doing will be a solace and support in
the last dark hours of it ; that such a well-spent life obtains
the esteem of all men, and leaves a sweet memory after it ;
— these and similar moral maxims, like rules of polite be-
haviour, have been diligently instilled and extolled as fitted
to make men good social beings.
Society's method of stimulating the pride, flattering the
self-esteem, enkindling the sympathy, and enlisting the co-
operation of the individual to do its service is all the more
effective, seeing that it has and uses the power to supple-
ment its praises and dispraises by the penalties which it
inflicts on conduct which it disapproves. Self-interest is
thus engaged to go along with self-esteem to serve it. More-
over, the undoubted effect of a law and of the steady in-
fliction of punishment for a breach of it is not only to instil
a fear of offending, but by degrees to breed a conscience in
respect of the particular offence. A rebel is unwise, too,
even in his own interest, albeit his revolt may sometimes be
in the true interest of the society which knows it not. Sore
situate is the Avise man in an ignorant and foolish society
who is under the sad necessity, if he will earn its approval,
of praising and doing that which he feels and sees to be
wrong; he must be either a fool among fools of his time in
order to be wise for himself in it, or knave enough to exploit
fools for his profit, or martyr for his inopportune wisdom.
Notwithstanding the actual prevalence of immorality in
practice there is a strenuous human struggle to atone for
154 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the evil by persistent laudation of morality in theory. Let
men cheat, lie, spoil, defraud, oppress, kill one another, they
still fail not to extol honesty, truth, equity, kindness and
humanity; and the greatest scoundrel does not think ill,
will even speak well, of the good man whose throat he
would willingly cut for his gain, if he was sure he could
do it secretly and safely. Because it is praised and neg-
lected, virtue is not a useless sham, not the mere homage
of hypocrisy paid by vice ; its ideal implies a real to be
transformed and the impulse to transform it. The indi-
vidual then does quite naturally to hold to both his ideal and
real, keeping up a belief of continuity and unity between
them, despite the remoteness of their extremes, without
heeding the reproach that he has two different rules of life,
the one as fair seeming for outward show, the other for
inward use. Though he toil after the unattainable he still
has the joy of present pursuit and future hope, and may
obtain unlocked for good in the process. How much worse
might the worst hypocrite not soon be were he to cease to
kee23 up the show of virtue ? Foolish as futile are the writh-
ing endeavours which man is continually making to turn
himself inside out and to get rid of one aspect of him : he
will always have two faces, and might as well look for expir-
ation without inspiration, systole without diastole, flexion
without extension in his bodily economy, as expect virtue
without vice in his social economy.
Little good in practice comes of the elaborate expositions
and formal preachings of morality ; they are futile for the
most part, except in so much as they serve to keep alive the
ideal. Virtue is no complex thing, it is simple and plain
enough, so that everybody who has the root of it in him can
see and follow it without laboured rules of instruction. Those
who need to proclaim and praise rules of righteousness con-
tinually show thereby that they have not the root of right-
doing in them, that they lack the essential principle in their
mental structure : if they do it for their own edification, it
is proof that morality is not yet made in them, is only in
V MORALITY 155
process of painful making ; if they do it for the edification
of others, they are prone to deceive themselves b}'^ the love
of preaching openly what they do not practise privately,
since nothing is more tempting than to compound for weak
practice by flaming precept and ostentatious show. To talk
largely of loving the good is to talk loosely and at large ; the
sole proof of such love is to live it, good life not trite talk.
That men do habitually celebrate the precepts and neglect
the practice of virtue is without doubt because they are not
yet constitutionally moral ; they have made but little way
on their slow and tedious progress to that thorough struc-
tural moralization when moral impulse, being instinctive,
will do righteousness automatically.
Virtue again is made harder work than it need be by
the abstract and absolute way in which it is preached
as an ever-fixed ideal of constant value which everybody
should, and could if he would, attain to ; which is absurd.
Here as elsewhere, it is needful to descend from generalities
and phrases to concrete facts and a direct study of them.
The individual is not a metaphysical constant, uncaused or
self-caused, but a physical variable ; just a special organic
mechanism which has been fashioned definitely by rule of
natural law to be what it is exactly and no other organism
exactly is. To be so perfect therefore as to perform per-
fectly virtuous function he needs the sound basis of a good
organization, which he must get by happy inheritance from
a sound stock ; such organization in that case implying not
only a sound moral basis, but also a good understanding
to discern the true reasonableness of right-doing. On that
foundation of good natural capacity may then be reared by
good habits of exercise the superstructure of an intelligent
and virtuous character. How teach general maxims of virtue
to the congenitally deficient being who has not in him the
moral sensibility to feel them nor the understanding to
comprehend their far-reaching utility to himself and the
community; or even to the great majority of persons who,
although of average intelligence, yet use general terms
156 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
without vital sense of their meaning and cannot see beyond
the first link in a logical chain. Considering calmly how few
are they who can realize the universal and inexorable con-
catenation of things, it is abundantly evident how necessary
to moral stability and progress the inventions of Heaven
and Hell have been as reward of well-doing and punish-
ment of evil-doing, and how indispensable the direct pres-
sure of penal law on the individual still is to effect a vital
realization of acts and their consequences and to develop a
conscience in relation to them.
Far more effective than any abstract doctrine is the con-
crete lesson of a good example which appeals to sense and
the multitude can grasp. To extol the moral instance, to
persuade them that they can imitate it, and so to incite them
to earnest emulation, that is the way to get most good out
of them. There was nothing essentially new in the moral
principles proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth, which, had they
stood alone, might not have had the immense influence they
have had on mankind, notwithstanding their promises of
eternal joy and threats of eternal pain ; it was the pitiful and
pathetic story of His meek and lowly life, and of His cruel
death on the cross as an expiation for the sins of the whole
human race, appealing forcibly to heart and mind, which
helped to fix in the reverence of mankind all that He said
and did during His brief career. Those, therefore, who reject
the legends of the story, and deny the attributes of the God-
head, still gladly revere the signal and sublime example of
social atonement.
The result of preaching an abstract virtue has been to
refer it to an abstract conscience, and to divorce it from a
practical commerce with things ; for which reason the lesson
of it has been much in the air. Besides, to connect it, being
so majestical, wdth the common and rather mean realities of
men and things, was deemed such a WTong to its dignity as
to be denounced as base utilitarianism. Yet it is e\T.dent
enough that to sacrifice a present desire to a future good
is often only common prudence, the obvious wisdom of a
V MORALITY 157
rational selfishness. Who but a fool would knowingly wail
a week " to gain a minute's bliss," or " sell eternity to get a
toy " ? Yet how many the fools who daily perpetrate that
folly! In the mean interest of his personal well-being the
member of a social community, whose gains and losses,
sorrows and joys, necessarily come to him through others,
must practice self-restraint and self-denial, must bear and
forbear, doing for another that which he would have another
do for him, and not doing to another that which he would
not have another do to him. That is not self-sacrifice, it is
good arithmetic, seeing that by virtue of the social solidarity
he gains a fuller life for himself in subduing the impulses of
rude self-assertion to the fine restraints of altruism. It is
also good economy, for the A\4sely virtuous person lays up for
future use treasure which the foolishly vicious wastes prodi-
gally. To exalt virtue, then, so high that nobody can attain
to it, and to preach duty as if it were a painful self-sacrifice,
is to make the lofty lesson of virtue unreal and the duty of
it hard and sad, whereas a lowlier and wiser sermon would
demonstrate true self-interest to be at one with the interest
of the community.
Without doubt, confusion of thought and obscurity of
language might often be prevented whenever virtue is dilated
on, were an exact definition given of that which then and
there is meant by the general name, and thereupon the
definition were rigorously substituted for the word in the
subsequent reasoning. It is not to be believed at the present
day that full-formed virtue descended on men as a perfect
gift from heaven ; it has plainly been a painful acquisition
of culture, made slowly and gradually through innumerable
years, and is now an organic nature in them incorporating
potentially at its best their best reason and feeling. No
mortal, whatever the source or value of his inspiration,
ever did or could foresee and deliberately premeditate the
edifice of the social organization ; its principles are inductions
of vital experience which now instruct and guide the
individual member of it. " Art thou He that should come,
158 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
or do we look for another ? " might be described as the
express question of a silent travail of development awakened
to a lively expectation of immediate birth. Where, then,
ought rational inquiry to seek for the real motives and rules
of virtuous conduct ? Definitely within the social organism ;
not in any divine right outside it, but in the divine right
springing vitally within itself When its rational basis in
realities is thus clearly understood, virtue will be seen to
grow slowly in living touch with men and things, and to
bear fruit accordingly in good works ; then also will the
vindicated rights of the understanding be reconciled with
the rights of conscience and supreme reason.
If such view of things involve the acknowledgment that
virtue or morality must change in time and place according
to the level of social development, that is only to acknow-
ledge that which has been. There have been as many
fashions of virtue as of beauty, and no one has ever loved
virtue in the abstract, any more than he has loved beauty in
the abstract. The virtue which is loved is that which in the
existing social atmosphere pleases and is idealized as an
inspiration. Chastity is no virtue where unchastity is no
vice ; to prefer loss of life to loss of chastity is therefore a local
heroism. When virtue meant valour, it was because valour
was the true virtue of a barbarous people ; if it now mean
meekness and self renunciation, that is because these are
esteemed the proper virtues of a complex and refined civil-
ization. It is the living social spirit of a people which
informs their moral character : what had the religions of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, calculated as the tales of their
gods were to sanction every vice, to do with implanting and
nourishing the real virtues which distinguished them ? The
strange thing is that people are so hot to despise and per-
secute one another because of their differences of opinion,
notwithstanding that doctrines and customs which are
natural to and good for one people at one stage of its being
would be positively bad for another people, or even for the
same people at a different level of its civilization. Yet not
V MORALITY 159
really so strange as it seems superficially, seeing that the
hatreds, enmities and strifes of peoples have been ordained
factors in the process of human development through the
ages : alike in the courses of the stars, in the order of the
seasons, in the events of the world, and in the feelings and
doings of men is the will of destiny accomplished.
Rules of morality drawn from experience and meeting the
practical needs of social communities have living force and
reaKty, because, being rectifiable, they are continually rectified
in accordance with the development of a progressive society.
As increase of knowledge produces increase of power, being
a progressive increase of special sensibility to and answering
methodical action on nature ; and as self-interest is strong
and persistent to use power for its profit, new laws and
amendments of old laws are continually called for to check
abuses which would surely luxuriate if not restrained by fear
or force. The best code of laws in the world cannot be final,
since new cases will occur requiring special adaptations of
old principles in a progressive society : a just use of casuistry,
in its original sense of the discrimination of new cases, one
might say, had not the word now got an ill meaning. Pro-
gressive specializations of prevention and penalty therefore
are devised to meet progressive specializations of cunning
and corruption, all too apt to breed secretly and spread
stealthily, and thus morally to develop fresh consciences ;
for no community can continue in a sound state where an
accompanying moral invigoration does not go with an in-
crease of knowledge and the power for evil as well as good
which such increase confers. Here then it is seen how the
cunning and crime of bad men, ever intent to evade or
infringe good laws, serve to fulfil the work of human de-
velopment ; being the exciting causes of new laws to check
special evils, they are the ordained means to build up the
complex social structure. The clever scoundrel is verily an
ally of morality, without any virtue on his part ; by using
his intellect to cheat his neighbour he excites his neigh-
bour's hostility to fraud, and by using his intellect to prevent
160 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
his neighbour from cheating him he helps his neighbour's
morality.
In all the circumstances of real life, impartially and clearly
viewed, similar evidence of the relative nature of morality is
manifest. There is certainly no abstract justice in a half-
witted citizen born in one house inheriting privilege and
power which another person born in the next house never
obtains, however great his merits ; yet such superiority and
inferiority of position have been found necessary by experience
to the organization and development of society ; the abstract
injustice, though it eventually become demoralizing and im-
moral, being preferable to the strife and anarchy which might
otherwise ensue. If two persons wish to go through the
same narrow gate at the same time, one of them must give
way or they must fight for precedence ; the State therefore,
to prevent disorder, ordains that one shall have an artificial
precedence until the time come when, a perfect politeness
prevailing in a perfect polity, everybody shall be endued
with such an innate civility of nature as instantly to yield to
another a courteous preference which he is glad to offer and
the other to refuse. It is obvious that a State may for its
own order's sake rightly enact and enforce a less just, if not
an unjust law, when it has not the wisdom or power to enact
and enforce one which would be more just : not being able
to make right might, it does right in the interests of the
commonwealth to make might right. That may be right
for it which would be wrong for the individual to do ; for
while he may not wrong another because that would hurt
the State to which he belongs and which he must serve,
the State may do wrong to him because its Avelfare is the
supreme law and it cannot concern itself with minute par-
ticulars. Moreover, that which would be wrong if done
by the individual for himself may be right if done by him
for the State. The special gods invented and adored in
times past by different peoples were not mere idle fabrics of
fancy, they symbolized the several modes of national vital
• growth ; therefore in their name were solemnly proclaimed
V MORALITY 161
laws and ceremonies the need and value of which were
instinctively felt, though it was impossible to discern the
true social origin and sanction of them. Now as the god
might do as he pleased to the man, he being its creature,
and the revolt of the man was an impious offence to the
god, who had the right to his adoration and praise in any
case, so it is now with the state and the individual, although
happily in less arbitrary and absolute fashion.
Morality being relative, not absolute, will not in any case
bear much stretching beyond human relations. When the
bird eats the caterpillar, does the caterpillar suffer wrong ?
To the bird it would seem absurdly wrong for the caterpillar
to think that it was wronged by being swallowed. For a child
to eat a lamb is as natural and right as for a wolf to eat a
child ; therefore the wolf may think the child wrong, as the
child may think the lamb wrong, to protest against the
iniquity of being eaten. The unlucky mortal who is killed
by a stroke of lightning at the most critical moment of his
life, perhaps just when he was on the point of successfully
accomplishing the great work for which all his previous life
was a patient and laborious preparation, suffers no wrong
because morality has no application to non-human things.
Forasmuch as he was not present when the foundations
of the world were laid, nor had fashioned the sinews of
leviathan and could not loosen the bands of Orion nor guide
Arcturus with his sons, Job was taught emphatically out
of the whirlwind that he had no right to complain of his
unexampled and unmerited afflictions, or to charge with
injustice the power which was experimenting upon him to
the uttermost just to confute a mocking Satan's doubts.
Morality again is notoriously planed down to the thinnest
layer when it is a question between the civilized people
which covets and the uncivilized people which own what
is coveted. Not that the stronger nation then devours
the weaker out of naked and openly declared greed ; put-
ting a fair seeming on gross fact, it does it for the latter's
good, as the bird doubtless devours the caterpillar for the
162 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
caterpillar's good, aspiring to spread the blessings of civili-
zation and to hasten the good time of organic development
towards which the whole creation moves, when men shall
no more hurt and destroy — when the lion shall lie down with
the lamb, and the young child thrust its hand unharmed
into the cockatrice's den.
Candid reflection must needs allow that men are not
properly grateful to the passions and vices of their lower
nature for the good which they get from them ; else why,
while needing and using them in the progressive building
of their social fabric, continually accuse and condemn them ?
Whatever the ideal future has in store for the race, the pure
moral law did not prevail in the making of the past and
present, for the vices of individuals and peoples were
necessary factors in the construction of the virtues which
have been evolved by them. Still, too, for the most part
they take great -pains to pursue that which they style
unworthy or wrong, while praising and neglecting that
which they call worthy or right. Multiplicity and variety
of wants, with corresponding variety of reciprocal services in
gratifying them through the manifold processes of industry,
barter, and the like, are the means of developing a complex
social organization, which never could have been thus formed
without the existence, nor could continue to exist without
the continuance, of such passions as pride, ambition, avarice,
emulation, envy, to actuate and sustain it.
Good and evil, right and wrong, and their intermediates
have their natural causes, functions and consequences?
which are not outside the scope of scientific inquiry, and
ought, therefore, to be studied, not as abstractions but as
concrete processes. The criminal is not inscrutable nor
.inexplicable, any more than a chemical compound, though
the inquiry be more difficult ; the sinner equally with the
saint is a product of cause and effect in a fixed order of
things ; the fall of an individual or a kingdom as natural a
consequence as the fall of a leaf or a thunderbolt. Were
things diligently traced in their consequences, it Avould not
V PATRIOTISM 163
be so easy as it seems to estimate the moral value of any
act ; for it would then often be seen that an act which was
good in its immediate was bad in its later effects, and per-
haps good later on, and that an act which was bad in its
immediate eifects went, in like manner, through alternations
of bad and good workings. Whatever be man's right rule in
the world, nature certainly does not forbear to do evil that
good may come ; it uses the fit means for the end without
troubling about any other justification. Why anywise call
those means bad which fulfil an end more than equal in
goodness to their badness? Or why not condemn good
means when they fulfil ultimately a bad end ? Because it is
not the criterion of utility, it will be said, but the moral
state of the individual actor which constitutes the essence
of right or wrong doing in human affairs, and he is endowed
with a conscience qualified instantly and infallibly to censure
the wrong and approve the right. If that be so, it has
evidently been ordained by the course of human events that
the monitor should keep much silence.
Ill
PATRIOTISM
Patriotism and morality — The religion of patriotism— Narrow and
bigoted patriotism — Humanity before patriotism — A growing
humanization.
Reflectioxs on the good and evil which co-exist in the
spirit of patriotism teach the same lesson as to the mixed
and mutable constitution of morality. How could patriotism
ever exist without the passions which an ideal morality is
bound to reprobate ? The patriot who claims the world for
his country and mankind for his brethren is no patriot at
all ; if he yearns to embrace the whole human race, his love
must be so much stretched out and attenuated as to lose its
patriotic substance. Love of his own country necessarily
M 2
164 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
implies preference of it, and, if need be, hostility to other
countries which hinder its expansion or uphold conflicting
interests ; and the respective self-conservative instincts of two
national bodies must needs resent and resist the merging of
their individualities into a common blend. Hence the bitter
enmity shown by a nation to those citizens in it who are not
entirely of it, who, professing a universal love of mankind,
would postpone its special interests to the larger interests
of humanity. Notoriously it was not so much because of
his religion that the early Christian was persecuted by the
Roman emperors — of that they might be contemptuously
tolerant as a foolish superstition — it was rather because he
was deemed an enemy of his country,^ professing doctrines
which if carried into effect would entail nothing less than
the dissolution of the civil organization. So also is it in a
measure with the hostility provoked by the extreme socialist
of the present day, in whom the world discerns not one really
consumed by a burning love of his kind, but one whose keen
self-love masquerades gloriously in that guise, and whose
wild theories involve the impracticable folly of treating men
abstractly, as if they had the same appetites to enjoy, the
same measures of joy, the same desires to be, the same
capacities to do.
The bond which binds men together in unity and amity,
whatever it be named, is essentially religion, and the highest
religion that which unites them in bonds of highest truth and
justice. It is not called so when it holds a nation in unity,
because, the word having been consecrated to an abstract use
of its own, its concrete meaning is lost sight of The cardinal
tenets of religion in Christendom are God, immortality and
freewill, and as these words have not a natural but a super-
natural significance, the notion of religion has been abstracted
from natural things. Whether the vital bond of a nation be
called religion or not, it is certain that to weaken or destroy
it is to go to work to dissolve the unity of the nation ; for
^ Hostis patrite, ininiicus deorum et hominum, Iiostis humani
generis.
V PATRIOTISM 165
which reason patriotism and perfect morality cannot go along
together at the present stage of human development. Is
there any Christian nation which dreams of practising the
lofty moral principles which it religiously professes, or could
keep whole and sound for a year, if it went on to act as well as
talk them ? It does not, for the very good reason that they
are impracticable. The logic of facts requires that the religion
of patriotism be stronger than the religion of humanity,
because it is a pre-essential step in the long and lingering
process of humanization ; to dissolve its close and strong
bond in the nations in order to substitute a wide and loose
bond of humanity would not make for progi'ess ; on the con-
trary, it would be the undoing of what has been slowly and
painfully done through the travail of the ages, and the prob-
able scattering of mankind in confusion and anarchy. The
fervent cosmopolitan who preaches to his country the duty
of strict righteousness on every occasion is an impracticable
idealist, who would do incalculable harm were he not sum-
marily repudiated as a negligible quantity when the real
interests of his country are at stake ; even at his best he
overvalues his own righteousness, for he reflects not how,
unawares, he may all the while be gratifying a disguised self-
love keenly pleased to think itself the special friend and ally
of righteousness. If he asks in sorrowing wonder, as he is
prone to do, why the distinguished warrior who has won a
great victory and done great slaughter is eminently honoured
and liberally reAvarded, while the civilian who has made a great
discovery which has benefited the whole human race obtains
no such honour and reward, he might bethink himself that
the former has served well the vital interests of the nation,
which is real and present, while the latter has served only the
interests of humanity, which is ideal and always what is to be.
If patriotism be essential to the formation and well-being
of a nation, it is none the less hurtful to it when it is narrow,
bigoted and unintelligent. The good patriot is not he who,
blinded by national self-love to the merits of foreigners and
to the faults of his own countrymen, vulgarly extols what is
166 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
national just because it is national, deeming no higher praise
possible than to say of some quality, if it be English, that
it is truly English, if French, that it is French, if German,
that it is German, and despises what is foreign simply because
it is different, but he who endeavours to enrich his own
country by importing into it from abroad the good which he
finds there. There is no narrow patriotism in art and science,
which belong to the human race and ought to be universally
assimilated and admired ; there will be no patriotism in com-
merce when nations are wise enough to perceive the benefits
to all of its entire freedom ; there can be no patriotism in
morality when moral principles attain to universal and
rigorous application ; notwithstanding that at the present
time each nation would, if it could, have its special patriotic
use of the sun, of the air, of the sky, as it has of the soil —
nay, even of God Himself as " our God." The higher the
intellectual and moral culture of a people, the wider and more
sympathetic will its mental outlook be, and the weaker
its hatred or dislike of other peoples who are unlike. The
lower in mental level the citizens of a country, the
more narrow, fierce and bigoted is their patriotism : savage
tribes hate and fight one another at sight simply because
they have different customs, or different dialects, or different
self-inflicted deformities of features, just as the two most
virulent factions of the middle ages in Italy did because they
wore difi'erently coloured ribbons ; and nations which have
risen much above barbarism are not only blind to the merits
of other peoples and the faults of their own people, but are
passionately proud of their vulgar stupidity as a strong
patriotic virtue. Meanwhile, as such national self-conceit
is essentially as ugly and offensive as individual self-conceit,
and no less contemptible a mark of bad breeding, it may be
expected to dAvindle and die as nations grow in the height,
breadth and refinement of feeling which they aspire to and
expect.
Montesquieu said that if he knew something which would
be useful to his country but hurtful to Europe and the
V PATRIOTISM 167
human race he should think it a crime to make it known ;
he would, that is to say, prefer the good of mankind to the
interests of his country. A charming philanthropic senti-
ment, no doubt ; yet it is possible that one so situate as he
imagined, not being Providence, might do better to reveal
what he knew, not only for his country's good, but for the
good of the human race. As the individual is but the
tiniest ripple on a boundless main of being, he may well
do more good in the end by doing the good within his
reach to his continuing country for the short time he con-
tinues in it, than by thinking to take the whole human
race into his purview and protection ; content to leave it to
the universal plan which includes him and them in its
eternal order to care for the right distribution of the sum of
good and evil in the separate national developments which
are the steps of its cosmic jDrocess. Had Montesquieu known
something which was useful to Europe and the human race,
but detrimental to his own country, would he have deemed
it right to conceal it ? He would have shown clearly how
selfish a thing patriotism is if he had concealed it, though
he might have been denounced as antipatriotic, if not un-
tenderly treated as a traitor to his country, had he made it
known.
A development of mankind slowly and irregularly, still on
the whole positively, towards concord and unity, notwith-
standing national separations with their jealousies, rivalries,
antipathies and enmities, seems to be foretokened by a
fundamental community of spirit and aim in those which
survive well and seem likely to survive in the struggle of
life. It looks indeed as if, in the constitution of human
nature, its molecules had been prefigured to moral issues
and fate had thus given to human growth a moral trend.
In all civilized peoples there is manifest the same growing
feeling of humanity ; they look forward, however dimly and
distantly, to the same sort of ideal future, and they are going
through similar social ameliorations. One family of human
beiags living peacefully on earth in brotherhood and happy
168 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
unity is the blessed issue which imagination fired by the
enthusiasm of humanity foresees the whole creation to be
groaning in travail for ; yet to sober sight the vision may
not be undimmed by mists of apprehension lest with increase
of civilization the seeds of corruption may increase also, and
constellations of intellect and morality be destined to rise
and set in the future as similar constellations have risen and
set in the past.
IV
WAR AND PEACE
Condemnation of murder and glorification of war — The inter-human
struggle for existence — The law of organic construction through
organic destruction — Natural inconsistency between theory and
practice — Self-valuation and nature's valuation — Cessation of war
and transformation of human creature — Is war a benefit or a
bane ?
It is plain proof how much overestimated a thing mortality
is and at the same time how limited and relative a thing
morality is, that men solemnly denounce the private killing
of one another as murder, and jubilantly glorify the whole-
sale slaughter of themselves by thousands in war. Justly
too, from the scientific if not from the humanitarian stand-
point, seeing that the killing is actuated by the self-con-
servative instinct in both cases ; the social organization
impelled to maintain its well-being in the one case by for-
bidding private murder, which, if allowed, would endanger
its existence ; the national organization, in the other case,
impelled to maintain its being by exterminating hostile
neighbours, the pressure of whose hostility meanwhile has
helped to weld and keep up its unity. In both cases the
right hygienic rule is observed.
Although other species of animals war not with their kind
in order to devour them, it is characteristic of man's supre-
macy that he has always done so, and, notwithstanding
fervent professions of brotherhood, continues to do so, doing
V WAR AND PEACE 1G9
it, too, under the positive sanction, if not in the name,
of a religion which theoretically condemns it. Why is
that ? Because he, being the only branch of the animal
kingdom which is growing and developing — the channel
through which alone evolutional energy now takes effect,
other species having been stopped in development by his
predominance on earth — he is brought into mortal competi-
tion with his kind in the struggle of life. His own species
is the only species of living creature that can seriously com-
pete and contend with him for superiority ; therefore, in
accordance with the natural law of the survival of the fittest,
the strongest tribes and nations have preyed on the weaker
and grown thereby, not otherwise than as the stronger species
of animals have prospered by preying on the weaker species
in the struggle for existence. Inspired by nature's elemental
force of becoming — its conahis progrediendi — he is urged and
sustained by it yet to become on earth. Naturally then, when
one people has subdued or nearly exterminated another
people, it glorifies itself mightily, much as a cat does when
it has killed a rat and lays it proudly at its mistress's feet
or as the eager boy exults triumphantly when he has stoned a
squirrel to death, or as the enthusiastic sportsman in Africa
glorifies his heroic exploit when, himself usually in safe
hiding, he has sent explosive bullets into a herd of browsing
elephants.
It is plainly false to say that mankind have ever heartily
desired peace on earth. They have often loudly said so, no
doubt, but their true spirit is shown rather by what they
have done than by what they have said. Infants, being
heirs to the ages of human tyranny and selfishness on earth,
exhibit in their constitutions the historical instinct of the
race when they fight in the cradle and endeavour to destroy
life as soon as they are out of it. History is in the main a
monotonously hideous record, and pre-history without doubt
a long oblivion, of successions of wars and slaughters, of
improvements in the means and weapons of warfare, of the
glorification of those who have successfully made war.
170 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Through the succession of the ages, in the revolution of things
which is christened evolution, peoples have sprung into being,
grown great, then declined, and finally perished in conformity
with the law of organic construction by means of organic
destruction. In the same breath in which prayer is made to
Heaven for peace on earth it is made also for victories over
enemies in battle, and with the same voice with which men
loudly deplore war they loudly extol the triumphant victor
and victory. Does any other event in the history of a people
produce half such madly exultant excitement and frantic
jubilation as the news of a great victory ? The consecrated
church bells ring triumphant peals, the sacred spires are
decorated with flaunting flags, archbishops and bishops, with-
out misgivings, hasten to give devout thanks to Almighty
God, although the church is the place, and its ordained
ministers the persons, specially consecrated to celebrate the
gospel of peace on earth and the brotherhood of mankind.
All which, though it seem oddly incongruous, is the natural
and necessary effect of the belief which works actually in
practice ; it is the faith proven by works.
To be amazed and aghast at the spectacle of monstrous in-
consistency between profession and practice is to exhibit
shallow thought and idle wonder. When was it ever ordained
that men should be consistent ? They have not been so
hitherto on earth, and it is clear that for an incalculably long
time to come they must, unless they leave off the aspiration
to rise to higher being, while taking care also to live success-
fully the present being, continue at the same time to pray
for, and prey iipon, one another. What matters it to the
universe, which is itself an equilibrium of antagonisms,
whether human nature is consistent or inconsistent, so long
as by its consistencies and inconsistencies the cosmic work is
done and the will of destiny accomplished ?
When one thinks of the wonderful succession of develop-
mental processes through which a human being goes from
the moment of his conception as a speck of quasi-homogeneous
protoplasm to his full maturity of growth, the long series of
V WAR AND PEACE 171
regularly succeeding states of evolution from the simple and
general substance to the ever more and more complex and
special structure, and of the exquisitely fine and intricate
unions of different structures and organs into the complete
organic mechanism ; much more when one thinks of the long
and tedious steps of organic development on earth through
past ages up to the perfect formation of the human body, of
which steps its embryonic processes furnish a sort of abridged
sketch ; — it seems natural to a being so long prepared, so
patiently perfected, so wonderfully made, to esteem himself
mightily and to conceive high notions of his dignity and
destiny. Is it credible that he should pass away like the
summer's rose or the winter's snow ?
Yet were he to consider curiously how little it takes to
kill him — a minutely mean bacterium, the stab of a pen-
knife, the scratch of a cat's claw or of a rusty nail being
enough — what a small thing is enough to console or afflict
him, and what trivialities suffice to amuse and occupy his
life, nay, how he is driven everywhere to invent and pursue
all sorts of frivolous amusements to dispel the weariness and
distract from thought of the vanity of it, he might justly
perhaps suspect an overvaluation of himself The value of
a life is not its self-valuation, it is the value of the function
which it performs while it is in being. A quite other
estimate of human value in the universe is sho^vn practi-
cally by man himself when deep throes move him and great
issues are at stake ; for as nature holds individual life very
cheap, so he, being nature, then voices its elemental spirit
in the contempt which he shows for human life. When he
goes to war therefore, and magnifies himself, because, like
David, he has slain his tens of thousands, he naturally
troubles himself as little about their fate in the eternity after
death, as about their nothingness in the eternity before they
were born.
For the present the perpetual peace among men is not
likely to be realized on earth outside the churchyard or the
cemeteiy ; so long at any rate as man continues to be the
172 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
actual being which he is, and not an ideal something which,
whatever else it might be, would not be man. When cats
take to feeding and nursing mice, instead of killing and feed-
ing on them, and kites brood over chickens, as Mandeville
said, they will furnish pretty spectacles of animal piety, but
they will no longer be cats and kites, and the existing order
of nature will have undergone a marvellous transformation
into something new and passing strange. Not otherwise
must it be with human beings when, ceasing at last to make
war any more they beat their swords into ploughshares and
their spears into pruning hooks.
Meanwhile they are strangely divided in opinion as to
whether war is the curse it seems or really a blessing in
disguise. The doubt is but an instance of the eternal puzzle
which perplexes them ; for while they would always have
evil to be good in the making, yet they would always, if they
could, get rid of the evil which is working the good. On
the one hand are those who condemn war utterly as immoral
and hurtful, and foresee a time to come when the human
race shall progress smoothly on ethical paths of peace ; on
the other hand are those who see in war and in the heroisms,
self-devotion and sacrifices which it involves a purifier of
nations from the corruptions which peace and prosperity
engender — an unrighteous way of going the way of righteous-
ness. Viewing the facts in reason's light, it is impossible
not to see in its prevalence and continuance among man-
kind plain proof of its necessity : it has been because it
was inevitable and right it should be, since it has been the
indispensable condition of the progress of organic matter in
human form to loftier heights of being. That the wars
which have been on earth were sad cosmic blunders which
ought not to have been is just the transcendent conceit of
human megalomania. The simple truth is that the develojj-
ment of higher life is at the cost of lower life, however the
crude fact be embellished in the highest organic sphere by
talk and show of gallantry, chivalry, heroism, devotion and
the like ornaments of conduct ; for it is plain that the
V WAR AND PEACE 173
victories, heroisms and glories of war on the one side can
only exist at the cost of the defeats, deaths and shames of
the other side.
Still the question remains whether war must continue to
be a necessary condition of progress among peoples who
have reached a pretty equal level of respectable moral
being. Can they raise or even maintain their moral stature
without war ? Or is the inevitable effect of accumulated
organic matter, simple or complex, to breed in itself cor-
ruptions which, if not discharged critically in some violent
way, initiate and promote general degeneration ? That is
the problem which, despite optimistic assurance, experience
alone can solve, and the event will in no case fail to solve.
Meanwhile, in the present condition of the most civilized
peoples there is certainly some excuse for the pessimist who
may think that, savage, brutal and cruel as men were in the
past, they are baser, meaner and more secretly corrupt now
— that the savage who openly scalped his enemy in war was
a less ignoble animal than the unscrupulous financier who
with subtle fraud ruins confiding thousands.
CHAPTER VI
RELIGION— PHILOSOPHY— SCIENCE
I
RELIGION
Vitality of religion — Its root in the feeling of cosmic unity — Religion
and religious sj'stems — Survival of the fittest — The elemental feel-
ing in art, poetry, philosophy — Every religion a fitting vesture
— Hebrew personification of the Divinity — Mental duality in re-
lation to religion and reason — Unjustifiable religious persecution
— Religious persecution sometimes justifiable — Hostility of re-
ligions to knowledge — The follies of men the wisdom of the world
— Knowledge and the lust of life— Sublimity and impracticability
of the Christian ideal — Self - idolatry of the secluded sage — The
conclusion.
Considering the witticisms, epigrams, sarcasms, satires and
cogent arguments which have been discharged against reli-
gion, the wonder is that it is still alive, and the conclusion
natural that it somehow possesses a stronger element of
vitality than the reason which its theological vestures and
dogmas often grossly and grotesquely outrage. Religion, like
life, has continued to live notwithstanding the conclusive
demonstrations of reason that it was not worth living. What
then is its strong vital element ?
Obviously its vitality lies fundamentally in the relation
of finite man to the infinite whole of which he is and knows
CH. VI RELIGION 175
so infinitesimal a portion, in his absolute dependence on, and
his consequent attitude of humility towards, the mysterious
immensity around him which, being unfathomable, is the
natural home of fear, faith and fancy. Religion is not
morality simply, it is morality infused with elemental feeling
and suffused with awe. Beneath knowledge which makes
human limitation plainer the higher it rises, there lies the
deeper fact of feeling, the fundamental testimony of reality
for man, who could never know, if he did not feel, that
he lived : he feels indeed in his inmost more than he can
know, something beneath his moment of being working in
and through it in an infinite flux of things from everlast-
ing to everlasting — from an unknown past without begin-
ning to an unknown future without end. In the deep
instinct or intuition of this communion of being with the
primordial and transcendental lie the source and force of the
religious feeling which he translates into the terms of his
own thoughts and imaginations.
It is obvious that religious feeling is one thing and that
religions or religious systems are quite another thing. Two
unities imply twofold human relations : the unity of the
cosmic system which includes man's relation to the all and
translates itself in mystic feeling ; and the unity of the social
system which includes his relations to his fellows, these
having their special forms of moral expression in dififerer )
societies to meet different needs and conditions of time and
place. In vain has each society in turn strenuously striven
to sanctify and eternize its own forms as the best, if not as
exclusively good. Forms and fashions being perishable,
knowledge-fashioned vestures only, change as it changes,
whereas the feeling, being absolute, lives through their
death and springs up afresh despite all the assaults made
on it. If one thing is proved plainly by the history of the
human race it is that a form of religion good for one age and
people would be bad for another age and people ; wherefore
a revolt against the established religion, though it be no
more unwarrantable than a revolt against a particular fashion
176 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
■of dress, may be an inopportune and rash attack on the unity
of the social system.
The notable thing is that each creed is passionately
urgent to identify religion with itself, hooking the absolute
and eternal cosmic energy on to its special car, and deems
the rejection of its fashion of thinking a denial of the
inspiring feeling : like other living things, it cannot choose
but obey the instinct of self-conservation while it is alive.
However, weak religion, like weak life, must needs die
when it comes into conflict with stronger life, and die
that the stronger religion may live ; in conformity with the
law of survival in the struggle for existence, effete religions
give place to fitter survivals, just as simple industries which
meet not the wants of an advancing civilization are suc-
ceeded and supplanted by more complex industries. The
height, form, and beauty of the magnificent cedar of Lebanon
necessitate the deaths of innumerable branches which had
not the fortune or the force to reach the light and thus to
grow to be evident part in the grace and towering grandeur
of its wide-spreading verdure, howbeit they did their little
work for it in their brief life-seasons.
The elemental feeling which seeks and gets exposition in
the doctrines and ceremonies of a religion finds utterance
also in other forms of human activity. It is the quickening
spirit of poetry, of art, of music, of mystical and ecstatic
transport, yea even of science comprehended and felt in its
largest sense ; for all these attest the essential communion
between mind and nature, felt yet not fully communicable,
ineffable — so to speak transcendental — a transporting thrill
of mystical unity of being, nowise a definite conception;
a melody of feeling in fact never perfectly interpreted by
the finest creations of art, whose best excellence is not
finitely to realize but infinitely to excite it. Boundless
desire, infinite aspiration, the promise evermore of an ever to
be which never is, that is the principle of the ideal ; and such
indefinite terms as transcendentalism, illumination, divine
ecstasy, ineffable transport, absorption into the infinite and
VI RELIGION 177
the like, though they have no definite meaning, are strain-
ing efforts vainly to communicate the incommunicable. In
such raptures too is sometimes a kind of divine madness
when the over-strained mind breaks down under its burden,
the wreckage being then plain proof that the function of the
finite is nowise to apprehend the infinite but allwise to be
merged into it.
Admirable as science is so far as its little grasp can
reach, there is just ground for impatience of pretensions to
denounce offhand as worthless all that cannot be included
within its precise categories. Man lives to feel as well as
to know, feels before he knows, always feels more deeply
than he knows, and will feel probably after he knows,
seeing that his instincts are likely to outlast his know-
ledge ; if it is a good thing to know, it is a good thing also
to feel and a wise thing to give feeling a fit and beautiful
form. That is what every particular life might well strive
to do in the conduct of itself ; for a well-proportioned and
well-graced life intoned with fine feeling is a good work of
art, which few, if any, lives advisedly try to be.
The custom of religions having been to translate and
shape transcendental feeling into relative forms of thought
and, perishable superstitions thus created, to pronounce them
absolute and immutable, each religion made its God
according to its o^^^l sacred patterns, fitted his edicts to
its own moral measure, constructed a fabric of supernatural
events after its own fashion of thought. Even the sublime
Deity of Moses reflects in the main the qualities of his
own character. And forasmuch as men are prone to believe
most where they understand least, there was no hindrance
to abject belief in superstitious fables, however monstrous,
and in miracles directly contradicting reason. Notoriously
nothing has ever been too absurd for the faith of a creed
to embrace. A strange thing truly to reflect on, yet not
so strange as it looks at first sight. For the form was
not the reality, it was the then selected symbol of the
living force beneath the changing vestures woven for it on
178 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the roaring loom of time in the succession of the ages.
Besides, it is most certain that men always have been, and
still are, capable of beliefs which are only half-beliefs, —
sometimes not even so much as that — in the creeds which
they profess.
Assuredly the great creative Power beneath phenomena —
the natura naturans beneath the naVura naturata — has never
been fashioned in a form of such personal grandeur, so
calculated to inspire human awe, so consoling to hope, so
strengthening to belief, so encouraging to endeavour, and
extolled in such sublime language as by the Hebrew Psalmist
and Prophets; and it is simply incredible that it ever can
be again personified in so awful and majestic a form, yet all
the while so intimately concerned and in such special and
direct vital relation with man and his doings. It was truly
a legitimate boast that no peopl e has a God so nigh to us as
our God. That chapter of human development is presumably
closed for ever. Even were the Jewish God accounted but
a magnificent creation of Jewish egotism, the illusion of a
glorious optimism, the illusion must be owned to have
worked mightily to promote human progress to its present
height in Christendom ; and if it fade and vanish at last, as
other vestures of divinity have done, one knows not where
an equal force to inspire human doings on earth is ever to
come from. Yet sober reason calmly reflecting on the con-
trast between the impassioned feeling of the Psalmist and
the cool wisdom of Solomon can apprehend that it may pass
away, for while the former expresses transcendental feeling
in the sublime language of inspired passion, the latter sets
things forth clearly in the dry light of inspired reason ; and
it may be that human reason when emancipated from the
gross lust of life and thus adequately disillusioned, will
arrive at the same conclusion as that in which the wisest
of men summed up the value of human things. Cer-
tainly it will need an extraordinary faculty of hope or
of amiable self-deception to believe that any natural en-
thusiasm of humanity, self-engendered, can do for mankind
VI RELIGION 179
what the supernatural invocations of David and Isaiah
have done.
It is strange to think how constant in human history has
been the contradiction between reason and religions, and
how servilely reason has been compelled to succumb to faith.
As the fruit of the tree of knowledge was the bane of happi-
ness and increase of knowledge increase of sorrow, it was
ordained that knowledge should linger, lest perhaps other-
wise the lust to live might weaken in men and they cease
to aspire and strive. For a religion to demand belief of a
fable or formula bel}'ing reason, as it always claims the right
to do, seems on the face of it to undermine the foundations
of understanding and to annul reason. Is it possible for any
one to assimilate such positive contradiction into real unity
of thought ? If he think to do so by calling the contradic-
tion a contradiction of the understanding only and postulat-
ing a superior reason which transcends and reconciles the
contrarieties, is that really to do anything but make an
impossible breach of nature between understanding and
reason and to dupe himself with words ? On the whole it
seems more probable that in so doing he is really a dual
being mentally, so fashioned artificially by training as to
function contradictorily in the two faces of him, lacking
basic sincerity and unity of nature.
All the more probable is this explanation, seeing that
experience in such case often shows the moral condvict to
be inconsistent with the lofty profession, and the faults or
vices of character to be rather augmented than amended
by the demoralization of such self-duplication. How in-
deed can a perfect moral integrity exist without a complete
mental integrity ? By its separate artificial culture the
religious part of the duplicate being luxuriates in a weak
overgrowth unchecked by the wholesome associations and
sound restraints of the dissociated rational self whose en-
thralled forces it uses to support and maintain itself; the
result being that if the man has a hard heart it is made
more hard, if he be prone to guile he is made more guileful,
N 2
180 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
if he is self-righteous he grows more pharisaical, if he needs
a good motive or excuse for a bad deed he is singularly
ingenious in finding one. All this, too, %\dthout being
distinctly conscious of his inconsistency, because, being a
dual creature, he is actually a living and, so to speak, con-
sistent inconsistency and functions as he has been fashioned.
It is not the triumph of reason in the assimilation of contra-
dictories and an accompanying exaltation of mind which he
exhibits, it is the subjugation of reason and mutilation of
mind to the service of faith with its accompanying delirious
delight of feeling. Meanwhile the time is not yet come, if
it ever be to come, when reason shall dominate belief
No wonder then that the hideous annals of religion are
replete with horrible stories of oppression, persecution,
cruelty, bloodshed : that in the name of religion deeds of
devastation and torture were done which were the grossest
outrage on religion. Nowadays it is almost an axiom that
religion is divorced from its true spirit and loses the ver}^
essence of morality when it is made an engine of persecution ;
forgetting that men are men first and creed-holders after-
wards, it then treats them in contempt of humanity, in the
sole self-interest of a dominant creed struggling to maintain
its supremacy and preferring that before the interests of the
society which it sacrifices to its lust of life and rule. Nothing
is so essentially anti-religious, it is said, as a persecuting
religion. Yet when a stronger people thrusts its special
creed on a weaker people to whom it is utterly repugnant,
being unassimilable by them, and among whom, being in-
compatible with their civil structure, it causes inevitable
resistance and, if resistance be unsuccessful, political disin-
tegration — and then with pious perseverance in due course
summons the armaments and artillery of superior power to
crush the resistance which it provokes — it is just as truly a
persecuting religion as if it had used direct violence in the
first instance to force its intrusion and support its pernicious
work. A bacterium noxious to an organism can be as destruc-
tive as open violence. The zealous missionary may deceive
VI RELIGION 181
himself with the belief that he is doing divine work by en-
forcing the only true creed, which is always his own creed,
on the benighted barbarian, crammed though it be with
incredibilities that choke his own faith, even after he has
subtilized fables into allegories and miracles into mysteries
or metaphors; but that is a gross and complacent self-
deception to which he is too apt to cultivate a stubborn
blindness. The true character of a religion, like that of an
individual, is revealed truly by its works, not by its pro-
fessions ; and if these works have been the spoliation and
destruction of the people which it has invaded, it will be
judged finally and justly by them. What wonder then at
the currency now in Eastern countries of the saying which
is the induction of experience, — First the Missionary with
his Bible, then the Consul with his ledger, after that the
General with his artillery.
Though it be admitted that the violent imposition of the
religion of one people on another people is a WTongful perse-
cution, it does not therefore follow that the State has no
right whatever to persecute active disbelief and denunciation
of its established religion. Would any State have been what
it is had it not thus persecuted ? When religion is a living
force and vitall}'^ bound up with the unity of the State,
reckless and open attacks on it may do much mischief by
dissolving the ties of civil unity and thus disintegrating the
national life. It is another matter, and matters not, when
there is no vital religion of the State, only a nominal or
conventional religion, divorced actually from the principle
of national unity ; it is not then moved to persecute, because
its vitality is waning, and it lives on as a sort of excrescence
on the body politic, loosely tied rather than organically
united to it.
All religions, high and low, have been naturally and bitterly
hostile to knowledge because its progress was inevitably
hostile to their systems ; while they were sectarian it was
bound to admit no separations in nature. They, on the other
hand, could not choose but cling to their forms and tenets as
182 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
sacred, by necessary law of self-conservation, and therefore
stubbornly resist new truths, disown reason, arrogate infalli-
bility, persecute heresy. How, otherwise, could a constant
something, such as the special system of religion was postu-
lated to be, maintain itself in an inconstant flux of things ?
So, indeed, it does commonly for a long time after its tenets
and ceremonies shock sober reason and are oppressive, for
it is upheld by the self-interest of its priests and the consent
of the multitude. Such consent of the many, however, is
notoriously of no worth, seeing that they have neither the
leisure, nor the inclination, nor the instruction, nor the
understanding to form a rational judgment for themselves ;
in the matter of a creed or doctrine they eagerly crowd
and rush together like a flock of sheep after the leading
bell-wether, not because they know why they thus run,
but because of some passion or prejudice which their leader
cunningly plays on, or of some antic or gesture of his which
piques and pleases them, or, most of all, because of some clever
nickname by the apt use of which at the right juncture
he takes captive and leads in triumph their minds ; for it
is incredible how great is the mesmerizing power of a
neat phrase fitly devised and opportunely applied. Yet
the mass and momentum of their blind support in sustain-
ing and maintaining a doctrine or custom and in crushing
rational dissent is a ponderous and irresistible conservative
force. One person here and there out of ten thousand
persons may perchance doubt, disbelieve, question, resist
the current of opinion, but what is he among so many?
The voice of wisdom crying unregarded in the street, and
with no language but a cry since there is no one Avho heeds
and understands it.
Although it seems natural to wish that men would all
strive for a better understanding, and sincerely use the
understanding they have to see themselves steadily and as a
whole, when they might leave off howling together in union,
if not in unison, under the sway of the present passion or
belief, inflamed the more by the collective noise and the
VI RELIGION 183
infection of sympathy, and howling against him who will not
join in the blatant chorus, yet as they have never done so it
was clearly right that they did not so. The apparent foolish-
ness of men has been the wisdom of the world : if each sheep
had always gone its own separate way on the occasion of a
startling incident no flock of sheep could have existed ; self-
sufficing individualism would have precluded any growth of
social spirit. So unfailing are the compensations of nature
that men are ordained to believe and act together passion-
ately in foolish as well as in wise ways ; sympathy and synergy
in going wrong and howling applause of their ill-doing being
the necessary counterpart and compensation of their feeling
and acting together in going right and of loud laud of their
well-doing. Without doubt the absurd fables they have
believed in different ages and places concerning the creation
of the world and themselves have been necessary crutches
of belief in their day, to be discarded as irrational in due
course as minds reached a riper growth of reason : they
have put faith in useful untruths through the travails and
transitions of their development and been justified of their
irrationality. The trite saying that the truth, like the
fashion, of one age is the laughing-stock of a succeeding
age is oft quoted with a sort of pride as a triumphant
tribute to human progress, albeit that, considered well, it
implies that knowledge cannot rest at a stay, that truth is
only provisional and transitive, that human achievements
are but small steps in the great cosmic procession of things ;
which is not so flattering to human conceit. Perhaps of
all fond hopes which humanity has cherished the largest
and vainest is the colossal hope it has conceived of itself
As man lives before he knows, and lives not to know, but
knows in order to live, life counts for much more than know-
ledge ; so long as its strong lust lasts, knowledge will be glad
to increase and will find good reasons to think life worth
living. But if it come to pass in the process of things that
knowledge grows too penetrative, analytical and critical while
the lust of life wanes, then life will not seem so good and
184 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
pleasant a thing and the love of it will weaken. For the race,
as for the individual, life cannot fail to be a poor and dreary
business when it loses its illusions. It is the animal force in
the man, his organic vigour, which supplies the motive power
of life — its conatus progrediendi — and the motive to live;
therefore the happiest person is not he who knows and thinks
most but he who lives most. After Adam and Eve had
plucked and eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the
Garden of Eden, there was ample time for them, before their
expulsion, to have plucked and eaten the fruit of the tree of
life, had they been so minded, But they made no such
attempt, either because they were sunk in the inert apathy
of despair, or perhaps because, profiting by the knowledge
which they had unhappily gained, they forebore to inflict the
penalty of eternal life on their posterity. So, likewise, when
Divinity took human form in Nazareth of Galilee, mortality
was the expressly and mercifully prescribed condition.
Ascribing immense value to human life as an end in a world
to come, and little or no value to it in this world except as a
means, religion is vitally concerned to hold man to a continu-
ance of being and progress ; whereas knowledge as it grows
reveals more and more clearly that he is not the mighty
concern in the universe which he has fancied, insinuates from
time to time doubts whether life is worth living, conceives
suspicions of its immortal destiny, and even hints that it
is no great matter whether he goes on living or not, since it
foresees an almost calculable time when he will cease to live
on earth. Meanwhile, as lusty life subjugates reason to its
service in this world and spiritualizes itself in expectations
of a life of everlasting felicity in another world, it supplies
an effective present motive to continue.
Although it be true that Christianity introduced no new
principle of morality into the world, it is undeniable that it
raised the principles of social morality to a higher spiritual
level, subliming the best social feeling and thought into a
finer moral feeling and thinking. Moreover, it attached to
its moral ideal the captivating expectation of a future life
VI RELIGION 185
and the tremendous motives of eternal happiness and eternal
torment as a means of actuating, directing and ruling human
doings. Thence the good work which it has done to further
the progress of morality among men. But not without the
inevitable offsets ; for its proclaimed moral ideal was im-
practicable, seeing that the realization of it would have been
the subversion of civil government and the dissolution of
society. It was the burning faith of a set of people who,
believing that the end of the world and the coming of the
kingdom of Heaven was close at hand, expected soon to
reign in eternal glory, and cared nothing for the temporal
interests of the commonwealth. To make it the vital faith
of people who believe no such thing, but seek their welfare
by the civil organization of a State in this life, is necessar-
ily to produce gross inconsistency between profession and
practice and to make men hypocrites in spite of themselves.
Therefore the advent of Christianity helped to precipitate
the dissolution of the Roman Empire, in the decay of which
mighty structure it found a favourable soil for its growth
and disintegrating work ; therefore also the establishing,
settling and strengthening of it was the cause of a long
succession of wars, persecutions and slaughters such as have
hardly been exceeded, perhaps never equalled, in an equal
period of human history. Comparing Nature's processes of
work, in which the function of a microbe, whether styled
noxious or innocuous, is just as divine as that of a saint, one
may see a parallel process of events when the microbe finds
its fit soil in the weak tissue — for if it light on sound and
strong tissue it does no harm, being successfully resisted by
the vital energy — generates fast its poisonous products in
the spnpathetic medium of decay, and so jjromotes actively
the degeneration and destruction of declining life. As,
moreover, the final triumph of Christianity owed much to
the myths and fables bound up with its moral doctrines
and long accepted literally as essential part of the creed, we
have again a notable illustration how natural and necessary
to human progress in their appointed day and work have
186 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
been error, evil, folly, hypocrisy and their like; no less
necessary, indeed, than truth, virtue, sincerity and good-
ness. It would surely go ill with the constitution of virtue
wdthout the vices indispensable to its construction and
maintenance.
The sage who, despising the Avrangle of warring creeds,
aspires to rise above them all and live aloof in the serene
contemplation of truth, goodness and beauty, might not do
amiss to bethink him whether he too is not at bottom
almost as much idolater as any of their votaries. Peradven-
ture more self-idolater, seeing that the truth in which he
rests placidly sure is just that which he thinks truth, the
goodness he approves that which he thinks good, the beauty
he extols that which he thinks beautiful. Is he not then as
abstract and self-centred a being as the saint or mystic who
devotes himself to a similar life of empty contemplation ?
As he is an organ, he ought to be a function, of the social
organism, which he can only fruitfully be in, for and by it,
not in, for and by himself; his duty being to perfect it,
perfecting himself in the process, which is, in fact, to perfect
himself, perfecting it in the process. In order to do that he
must be acted on by the constant influences of the social
medium, silent and express, and react fitly on it — must
have its supports and restraints, lest, like a proliferating
ceil in the bodily organism which gives rise to a tumour, he
expand into a riotous growth ; therefore it is that the
superior person who noui'ishes himself on his own thoughts
in seclusion, without having ever nourished his thoughts
well in working contact and converse with his kind, runs
great risk of making a poor and empty business of it at the
best. He is not unlikely to people his imagination with
shadows not substantial things of thought, phantasies of
one fashion or another, and to become either hypochondriac
or megalomaniac or self-inflated mystic. After all is said,
the dreariest and most blighting exile is to be exiled on
the island of self. Let the would-be-wise recluse, then,
recognizing that sound intellectual and moral texture can
VI RELIGION 187
only be formed by reactions to the actions of other minds
in vital communion with them, possess his soul in patience
and meditate quietly amidst the noise and turmoil of the
tumultuous croAvd. For as man is not born to comprehend
the universe, still less to govern it, but has to live and work
in it among his kind, such as his kind in time and place is
where fate has chanced to put him, he may school himself
to live a fool's life outwardly among fools, pleasing himself
to cherish inwardly a fervent ideal of humanity and to make
sacrifices for it, like the soldier who is proud of his scars,
and glories to die for his cause even when it is a bad cause.
The conclusion of the whole matter regarding religion is
that man is thrilled by the profound feeling of a communion
of being with the primary elementary power, an ineffable
feeling of cosmic unity ; that such feeling, under whatever
transient name and vesture, impels the process of humaniza-
tion on earth, and that when it ceases to inspire him he will
cease to strive and progress. Nor is such cessation incon-
ceivable or in the least incredible. History records plainly
enough that the energy of progress has often died out in
past peoples ; that it has not been mankind in the mass
which has risen uniformly, but only a section of it which
has progressed here or there, now or then ; and that it has
always shown as distinct a tendency to go back rapidly as
to go forwards slowly. Moreover, as increasing knowledge
reveals more and more clearly how small and transient an
affair in the cosmic course human life and function on its
little planet is, so it fails to point clearly to any perfect fulfil-
ment. For as the single mortal is inspired to live and
strive in hope by his illusions, finding life dreary, bitter,
barren and worthless when they are dead, so may it be at
last with the race of mortals : it too may lose its illusions
as it begins to die, and die when thev are dead.
188 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
II
PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy essentially a simple matter— The true and the good in-
separable — The exposition of truth — Vagueness of metaphysical
thought and language — The vitality of metaphysics — The philo-
sopher not self-sufficing — Clear and distinct ideas — Lost thoughts
rediscovered — The mystery of life — Conduct the end or purpose of
life.
Philosophy, though a word bulking large in human speech,
is essentially a simple thing. For what else is it but
to like to know ? Just to do on a grand theatre and in
more special and complex fashion that which everybody
does on a mean theatre and in a simple and plain way —
namely, to observe causes and effects in the workings of
nature, and principles and actions in the doings of human
nature, and thereafter to act with good sense in relation to
them. One says of a person who, perceiving events, whether
foul or fair, to be the necessary effects of their causes in a
natural order of things, accepts them with quiet stoicism,
neither fretting nor grieving, that he is a philosoj)her, all the
more so if he oppose reason to custom when custom is foolish
and oppressive; and one may justly say the same also of
the wayfaring man who, though he have small learning,
recognizes natural law in his daily work and endures stoically
what he cannot cure jin his daily lot. To clothe common
things with fine words is not to make them fine : it were
well indeed to speak fine words only of fine things and not
to speak words which mean no things. In many a humble
life there is a latent fund of dumb philosophy and quiet
fortitude more genuine than the ostentatious expositions of
the philosopher who extols grandiloquently the stoicism
which endures sternly, is not afflicted by griefs nor vexed
by injuries, disdains envies and ambitions, is serene amidst
calumnies and calamities, and so on in easy and empty
laudations of the abstract. For in the end philosophy is not
VI PHILOSOPHY 189
learnt from elaborate expositions of volatilized principles ; it
is learnt silently by sincere observation, firm hold and stead-
fast endurance of things as they are in the concrete. The
better the philosophy too the more clear and simple are its
principles, which do but sum up the lessons and meet the
wants of experience. To teach men to know systematically
in order to do, to foresee in order to provide, to frame for
themselves ordered experience in the comprehensible portion
of the unknown vast process of things of which they and
their knowledge are but a small part, that is the aim of
wisdom, whether it be styled philosophy or science or common
sense.
Enquiry into things may be said to have two spheres of
function — the one to find out the true, the other to find out
the good in them. Yet at bottom the true and the good
are not separable but one, the true being what is good and
the good what is true ; they appeal to the different facets
of one self, which, if well instructed and well intoned, fails
not to judge and feel morally the right action. False
apprehension of things is bad and the cause of ensuing
badness, and bad morality is falsity and the cause of
ensuing falsity of thought. No violation of natural, intel-
lectual and moral law by any one in an organized society
but is inevitably followed by wrong to himself or others
who then make atonement for him. The curse of all evil,
whether of thought or doing, is not merely that it is bad in
itself, but that it is endless in its bad consequences, as the
blessing of all right thinking and doing is also its endless-
ness ; though the one sinner who destroyeth much good is
happily mortal, the evil which he does is immortal. The
two functions of philosophy, then, which look separate are
included in its one function to search out the truth every-
where — that is, to be the true interpreter of nature in all
its aspects, which in the end is to lay a sound and solid
basis of physical and social well-being, and so to promote
that healthiness which is essentially holiness of life in the
individual and in the society.
190 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
It is not enough to find out a truth ; the next thing to
do, having found it, is to express it clearly — to discover and
use, if possible, the one best way of doing that ; for while
there can be only one perfect way of doing everything,
there are many ways of doing it imperfectly. Simplicity
and lucidity of expression imply truth thought out in its
essence and relations, not clear and distinct ideas only but
right order and proportion in the conception, disposition and
exposition of them, which is beauty. When a supposed
truth, being at bottom good sense in a special language,
cannot be so expressed as to be understood by a person of
ordinary intelligence and fit education who understands the
language, it is because it has not been adequately thought
down to clear and distinct simplicity.
That is the inherent fault of much so-called metaphysical
philosophy ; it is thought in the void, unthought out,
shadowy and undefined, not mutually understood by the
persons who dispute about it, perhaps only half understood
by the person who puts it forward. None the less is it
vastly pleasing to him and those who think that they can
think with him ; the mental performance is like a difficult
and skilful athletic exploit, the objective value of which he
is apt to think equal to the subjective delight he has in
doing it ; whereas the truth is that the rapture is worth no
more than the rapture of a dream or a delirium, which is
notoriously sometimes ineffable. This kind of philosophy
shares also with delirium the features of ever-shifting pre-
mises and ever-active motion without progress ; so different
in that respect from the slow, steady and gradual gains of
positive science which, being patient processes of adaptive
mental growth, presuppose close observation, well-weighed
comparisons, methodical calculations, exact measurements,
strict verifications, and, once settled, are an organic posses-
sion, the fundamental principles of which every new-comer
does not think he has the right to question and determine.
The remarkable vitality of metaphysics despite its bar-
renness cannot, any more than the singular joy of it, be
VI PHILOSOPHY 191
claimed as proof of its worth : first, because being occupied
with subtilties of nature which positive science has not
yet explored systematically, and cannot possibly explore
until its means of investigation are improved and the pre-
essential steps firmly laid, its unknown domain is the
natural home of and affords infinite scope for inexhaustible
and unverifiable speculations — such as have notably pre-
ceded all the sciences before they were definitely constituted ;
secondly, because the erections of such unsubstantial fabrics
of speculation is a wonderfully pleasing exercise of the
imagination uninformed and unruled by positive knowledge;
thirdly, because of the organized means to keep it alive by
special professorial chairs in the Universities, and by special
magazines in which its disciples contentedly criticise, praise
and comment on one another in their special tongue ; and,
lastly, because those who make a professional study of it
have not been without honour and profit, it being the habit
of the vulgar mind to admire and revere what it cannot
understand. Incapable of thinking for themselves the mul-
titude notably crave to be ruled by authority, tradition,
custom, words and phrases ; and the eminent examples of
the schoolmen, whose obsolete ingenuities of mental athleti-
cism still provoke admiration of their intellectual powers,
prove plainly how effectively that may be done and how
pleased the performers may be to do it.
Pretty in the abstract is the profession of the philosopher
to see things as they are, to uphold the natural against the
artificial, to oppose reason to custom, to set up conscience
against opinion, judgment against error, to be resolutely
self-sufficing; yet when all is said the sober truth is
that no mortal is or can be either self-sufficing or infallible.
Private judgment must necessarily confront and compare
with the general reason, A minority of one may be fanatic or
lunatic, a person lost to all sense of proportion and of the
right relations of things, and neither is a safe guide to follow.
Moreover, the philosopher who sees clearly into, around,
and ahead of things, having to live in unphilosophical
192 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
surroundings, will find it make more for his comfort in
practice to consent with unwisdom than to dissent from
it. He must be of the world while he is in it, else the
world hates and receives him not. If his principles are too
rigid and his conscience too tender to make intelligent obser-
vation and appreciation of the natural forces of ignorance,
error, passion and folly in the world, and then, as he would
with physical force, rationally to reckon and deal with them,
but impel him to act as if they were not, because he thinks
they ought not to be, then he had best keep out of practical
affairs and shut himself up in his closet where he can have
things ideally his own way ; for assuredly it is not good
sense to resent and ignore the most powerful human forces
because they run counter to his abstract theories of things
and he does not like them. No doubt, as any one might
attend a market not to buy and sell or do other busi-
ness but to look on only, and find amusing interest in
watching the various shifting scenes of the drama, so it
may be pleasing and instructive for one not engaged in its
turmoil and strife to watch the drama of human life, albeit
he cannot observe it to any instructive purpose unless he
has previously lived actively in it ; he must then, too, take
good heed to abstain strictly from all active concern in it,
standing aloof indifferently and watching, as he watches
the market, quite objectively, otherwise his feeling will not
fail to infect his contemplation, to trouble his serenity, to
deflect his judgment from the straight line of truth.
To increase the number of ideas, to form clear and distinct
ideas, and to associate or, as it were, articulate them in their
just connections, that is mental growth : it is the silent and
systematic formation of a perfecting mental organization.
The dazing multiplicity and confusion of things in the sur-
rounding world are owing to the want of such clear and duly
ordered ideas ; for by correct analysis, exact collation of
analyses, and the reduction of the results to general prin-
ciples, the complexities and confusion of things are gradually
thought into simplicity and order. Obviously the analysis
VI PHILOSOPHY 19?
ought to be sound and thorough within the special compass
of the individual mind, whether this hold much or little ; if
unsound and inadequate, it is not useful but pernicious ; for
it is then the cause of obscure and not clearly distinguished
ideas, of the loose and equivocal application of such ideas,,
yea, of the employment of one idea for another which is not
only not equivalent but of positively different value, and thus
eventually of infinite obscurity and confusion of thought-
No wonder then that the work of good analysis necessarily
proceeds slowly, considering how crass is the ignorance of the
many, how insensible they are even to the problems to be
solved, how abject their servility of thought, how disturbing
the vitiations of feeling, and how urgent the impulses to rash
and unsound conclusions in the few who can think. The
problem being nothing less than the gradually progressive
adjustment of the whole organism of mankind to its environ-
ment it cannot possibly have a quick solution.
It is a pleasing fancy, though it is fancy only, that a true
thought, once acquired, is not lost ; that though it may be
lost for a time, it will be found some day by a curious
searcher into forgotten recesses, duly put into circulation,
and its owner glorified. Because that notably happens now
and then, the conclusion is that it happens always and that
no such thought remains undiscovered and uncredited. But
it is surely an erroneous conclusion, for nature wastes pro-
ducts prodigally, nowise makes much of the individual's
performance, has ample store of similarly fashioned organiza-
tions to repeat the performance. Thousands of thoughts
pass into oblivion and have done so ever since thought
began. The wisest thought launched unseasonably, when
men are too busy to mind it or too ignorant to understand
it, passes like an unlucky seed fallen on unsuitable soil.
That the thought is not lost for ever is not because it was
lost and is found again, but because it is rediscovered in
the course of the mental development of the race, being
re-thought by somebody at a time when it takes its fit
organic place therein, or affirmed with such demonstrative
o
194 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
evidence that it cannot be ignored, but lays hold of men's
minds and compels them to think it ; for then, like the fitly
sown seed which grows successively into stem, branches and
flowers, the new principle grows naturally into its sequences
of mental developments by organic law. That is the reason
why minds of large capacity and wide outlook, reflecting on
many subjects with insight into their connections, indicating
their obscure relations, and diffusing far-reaching luminous
ideas, do not gain the fame which a narrower mind does
which makes a single clear and definite discovery, drives
it into the understanding of the people, and gets it aptly
labelled. For it is wonderful how much a lucky phrase may
do to perpetuate a mortal fame.
The problem of life may, as the wont is to say, remain
for ever insoluble ; all the more certainly too if there be no
really rational problem to solve. Still, a prudent reflection
will note that hitherto in the history of human knowledge it
has always been ignorance, not knowledge, which has shown
itself most confident. Creeds have never been wanting in
assurance, however much they may have been wanting in
sense. The more a man sees and knows, the more he per-
ceives that there is for him to see and know, and the more
modest is his estimate of the value of that which he knows ;
whereas the less he sees and knows, the more sure he is
of what he sees and knows, and that what he cannot
know no one will ever know. Those who magnify mightily
the grand mystery of human life, exalting it transcend-
ently to abase themselves abjectly, are, after all, only self-
idolaters in guise of humility; for where would be the
transcendent mystery to be astonied at if they had not the
prodigious conceit of themselves as beings of supernatural
concern, and of the life belonging to them as something of
such mighty moment as to require a special explanation and
destiny ? Where is the great mystery in the life of the road-side
weed or worm, or in that of the meanest microbe, the con-
densed and subtile physics and chemics of whose vital con-
stitution are so easily resolved into virulent chemical toxines
VI PHILOSOPHY 195
that express its life-function. It is the mystery of man's
own life, not of the mean life of the monad, which specially
strikes his imagination ; for he cannot abide the thought that
his species, like weeds and microbes, are destined only to
come and go in the eternal flux of things. Therefore his
wailing cry is, " O, remember how short my time is : where-
fore hast thou made all men for nought " ?
The awestruck wonder so often expressed at the Whence,
What and Whither is not really a wonder concerning his
own origin, nature and destiny on earth. That has always
been plain enough to him : out of the dust was he made,
dust he is, and to dust he returns. It is a wonder as to the
Whence, What, and Whither of created things, with which
he has nothing properly to do and concerning which he
cannot think, and can only speak in unmeaning terms. He
may, it is true, utter magniloquent exclamations about the
immensities, eternities and infinities, beginnings and ends,
and find consolation therein because such turgid verbosities,
although indefinite, afford the ease of ample discharge to
turmoil of feeling. To speak of the beginning or end of the
universe is to make a term of relation, which has meaning
as such, a term of non-relation ; which is absurd. Those Avho
occupy themselves with such high-reaching speculations are
no better employed than were the four learned men in the
kingdom of Quintessence, called Entelechy, whom Panta-
gruel found hard at work for four livelong days disputing
on three high and most difficult propositions : the first being
concerning a he-ass's shadow ; the second, concerning the
smoke of a lantern ; the third, of a goat's hair, whether
it was wool or no ; and who did not think it a bit strange
that two contradictions in mode, form, figure and time should
be true. Why indeed should they be troubled if, having
reached the pinnacle of philosophy, they christen the con-
tradictions of reason antinomies of thought or, being theo-
logically inspired, call them mysteries of religion, and there-
after in each case pronounce the word a solution of supreme
reason ?
o 2
196 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
When all is said the function of life is conduct — to do well
among the persons and things one is in touch with, learning
from philosophy to do consciously and deliberately on a
higher plane of being that which every creature does uncon-
sciously or automatically on a lower plane. Wisdom is good
sense ; and good sense consists in observing nature, physical
and human, learning its lessons, and obeying them in prac-
tice. These lessons are just the lessons which were enjoined
on men of old when they were adjured to learn the Command-
ments of the Lord and to observe His statutes to do them ;
for these statutes are written in the laws of nature and
interpreted by discerning men who get understanding by
observing them. However they be named, whether laws
of nature or divine statutes, man's sole and whole duty is
to find them out and to conform to them ; so will he do
best to promote the progressive humanization of nature —
in fact, to naturalize self and to humanize nature. He may
conveniently divide this large work into several branches
and to each branch give a big name, classifying the grand
aims of philosophy under such headings as {a) the Nature
and limits of knowledge, (&) Cosmology, (c) Ethico-religious,
{d) Consciousness ; all which at bottom come down to the
wise learning of his relations to men and things and his
fit adjustment to them.
Ill
SCIENCE
The little that can be known — The pioneer of science — The specializa-
tions of science — Need of a scientific synthesis — Organic unity of
science — The scientific method of observation and experiment —
The reform of scientific nomenclature — The questioning spirit of
science.
As growing science steadily widens and deepens the domain
of the known it reveals more clearly the immensity of the
unknown and the small fraction of it which can ever be
known. The toiling climber painfully mounts step after
VI SCIENCE 197
step to find other steps above him, perceiving always the
higher he ascends yet higher ascent to be made. As a man
must have some intelligence to know that he is ignorant, so
the more intelligent he is the more sure he is of the limit
of his knowledge and of the unlimit of his ignorance.
The first discoverer in a province of knowledge may be
likened to the adventurous explorer making his tedious way
with much toil and sweat through an unknown country by
rough paths which he laboriously makes for himself ; after
him follow others Avho, using the track which he made,
widen, straighten and improve it, or, knowing now where
they are to go, make new and more direct paths, so that his
work is absorbed and transformed and he himself perhaps
forgotten ; at last in the fulness of time straight well-planned
roads traverse the completely surveyed country. It is then
a simple and easy matter to travel quickly where the
struggling pioneer, now perhaps only a silent memory, made
his painful way formerly. As Bacon said, when the Sphinx,
its riddle solved, is killed, an ass can carry its body easily.
The pathos of it, too, is that the labouring pioneer sometimes
foresees clearly and points clearly where the great road must
go when it shall some day be made, but is ignored as a
dreamer or scorned as a theorist who did not understand
what he meant by those who, following after and entering
into the fruits of his labour, are busy doing methodically
what he presaged and attempted.
As with the scattered researches of early travellers in un-
known lands so it is in a measure with the many and minute
specializations of scientific research at the present day.
Each separate section is so exclusively engrossed in its own
study, so full and proud of its doings, that it recks not how
its work stands in relation to the works of other sections
and to the Avhole field of knowledge, nor considers how
co-ordination of parts and unity of result may be brought
about. If it did consider well it is certain that each section
might vastly enrich and simplify its own knowledge by the
instruction which it would receive from other sciences, and
198 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
help much likewise to enrich and simplify them by the
instruction which in turn it would yield them. Meanwhile,
as things are, the many specializations of science and of the
various sciences are like so many persons speaking so many
mutually unintelligible languages, a very Tower of Babel,
predestined perhaps to end like it ; all the more so as each
science has its special nomenclature which it uses to stamp
its products, whereby it does not fail to happen sometimes
that the same article of thought, being differently named by
different sciences, is not recognized to be the same.
There is apparent need now of a superior scientific or
philosophic society, a select council of wise men conversant
with all the sciences yet engulfed in none, an organ of
scientific synthesis, to understand, interpret, co-ordinate and
blend their different knowledges — in fact, to make them
wisdom. Until that be done, although knowledge grow,
wisdom will linger. For knowledge and wisdom are not one
and the same thing either in the individual or in the race :
there may be much knowledge with little wisdom and much
wnsdom with little knowledge. As it is bad education to
stuff the mind with matters which, not understood and
assimilated, do not really inform it and are not therefore
instruction, so it is scientific unwisdom to make absolute
divisions and distinctions in nature and, forthwith labelling
them specially, to deem them settled and permanent.
Ne\^ertheless that is an error perpetually done and a danger
to be perpetually guarded against. Though growing science
steadily lessens ignorance, yet the constant tendency of each
branch of science is to impose new ignorances of its own
by means of its fixed categories and formulas ; unmindful
that a well-instructed science, like a well-instructed mind,
rests not at a stay in divisions of knowledge and in the
worship of any idols. The pity of it is, however, that
men are so captivated or hypnotized by names imposed by
authority and sanctioned by tradition that they consider
not well what or whether they signify, but go on mechanic-
ally from generation to generation to busy themselves with
VI SCIENCE 199
their separate and settled provinces of knowledge, without
realizing how far the divisions are artificial and the names
arbitrary.
Is there no remedy, then ? There is none yet visible.
The strange irony of the situation in England is that the
highest scientific Society is entirely occupied with the
prosecution of minute researches, doing nothing whatever
to co-ordinate results, yet calls by the name of " Philosophical
Transactions " the huge volumes in which it accumulates
the scattered gleanings of labourers who, if they were all
congregated in one room, would hardly understand a word of
each other's language. Heaped up aggregations of co-ex-
istences which never combine, and honours to the individual
who brings a new stone to each separate heap — to the man
who, diligently occupied in studying the constitution of a
star, supplies a minute fact from his province, to the patient
inquirer into a complex chemical formula who makes his
happy contribution, to the enthusiastic investigator of the
anatomy of a flea who jubilantly adds his discovery. Mean-
while, as the combining of ideas is indispensable to the
growth of individual thought, and as every new principle
evolved from their interaction simplifies thought by classify-
ing multitudinous details according to their essential re-
lations, so the union of the sciences in organic interrelations
and the discovery of common principles tends surely to
advance and immensely simplify scientific knowledge. It
is the spirit of true philosophy, the still and steady under-
standing behind and looking through the eye, which ought
to rule and direct progress in every branch of science, not
the shallow and monkey-like spirit of eager curiosity, the
restless, inattentive, uninstructed eye which characterizes a
sort of monkey-mind in science ; else the bereaved science is
likely only to limp and trail mechanically until it is immobile,
not only then unprogressive itself, but an obstacle to progress.
Of the individual it may be truly said that he who occupies
his whole life in the minute researches of a single science
will turn out but a poor scientist in the end.
200 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
The rule of right scientific inquiry which its followers are
wont to magnify mightily, as if it were something new,
special, invaluable, and wonderfully arduous, is just the rule
of common sense in daily life which everybody follows to find
out what he wants to know or how to do what he wants to
do. It is to observe and try before he concludes, to look
before he leaps ; which is to observe facts, to change con-
ditions experimentally and watch what happens, to form a
conclusion or induction accordingly, and then to verify it by
trying whether it invariably fits the facts — to prove or
demonstrate by proving or testing it. If the conclusion be
right, it will not be contradicted by any fresh instance,
there can be no instantia contradictoria ; it will be a sound
generalization, or, in other words, a correct general state-
ment or description of the things and their ways, nowise, as
many persons are apt to imagine, an executive law of nature
compelling them so to be and go. And just as experiment
is observation under a definite change of conditions in order
to see what then happens and form an induction accordingly,
so practical invention is the deductive application of the
inductions obtained by observation and experiment to de-
liberately arranged materials and conditions : a wonderful
machine being just the working of laws of nature imprisoned
under precontrived conditions of structure.
Now to make a sensible experiment, whether in simple or
in complex things, it is not enough only to shuffle at random
the facts to be observed, in the hope or expectation that
they will take a fit order of some kind and reward the
inquirer with a discovery ; nothing good is likely to come of
such haphazard trying, be it never so plodding, patient, and
conscientious ; it is necessary to put duly instructed mind
into the work, to have the intelligent thought suited to
frame the intelligent question or pregnant query (the prudens
questio on which Bacon insisted), to conceive the sensible
guess or directing hypothesis necessary to give definite aim
and method to the inquiry. Such clever guess or pro-
visional hypothesis may of course turn out to be right or
VI SCIENCE 201
wrong ; the essential thing is to abandon the wrong guess
which fits not the facts or they contradict, and then to make
and try experimentally a better guess. The qualities required
in the investigator are the competent intelligence to conceive
the idea — the idea in the mind being correlate of the law in
nature and the idea in nature the correlate of law in mind —
and the patient and persevering industry carefully to prove
it ; qualities which all too seldom go along together in the
same mind.^ Though a large and well-instructed imagina-
tion sometimes lights on a true theory by a happy conjecture
or brilliant intuition from the basis of a few facts, it is not
right to proclaim the theory as a general law or principle
until it has been tested and verified by adequate observation
and experiment. For the intuition of divination has personal
value only, which may be much or nil according to the mental
capacity of the diviner ; to be accepted absolutely without
proof or against proof it must belong to the theological
domain and have the guarantee of divine authority ; and in
that miraculous case there is still always to be taken into
account the inherent and inevitable fallacy springing from
the fact that the inspired person is the only Avitness to
the divine source and unadulterated transmission of the
inspiration which he claims and proclaims.
The customary cautions and injunctions given to the
scientific inquirer, good so far as they go, do not perhaps go
far enough. The knowledge has not to be acquired only, it
has to be expressed; and therein lies a grave difficulty.
For the new knowledge must be expounded in the known
language of the science, else it would be quite unintelligible ;
and that language may be not only inadequate to express it,
but positively misleading because of its settled meanings
and associations. Thus it falls out sometimes that the
nomenclature of a science is a bar to its progress, and needs
to be supplemented where it is wanting and rectified where
1 "Even the experimental method itself," says Buffon, "has been
more fertile of error than of truth, for though it be indeed the surest,
yet it is no surer than the hand of him who uses it."
202 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
it is amiss, to give freedom of growth ; otherwise it is liable
to dominate and enthral men's minds, who are prone then
to seek council of it, not of things. Too often in the history
of science a special name, sanctified by authority and usage,
has been accounted a fact or principle when there was no
true fact or principle beneath it, only perhaps a misprised
fact or unsound inference. How can the old name be used
rightly in the exposition of new knowledge ? Used in its
wonted sense, it renders right apprehension of the new
truth impossible ; imbued with the new meaning, this mean-
ing has to be made intelligible to minds prepossessed with
the old meaning and not yet possessed of the new ideas
which it is desired to signify. On the other hand, if a new
name be invented, it is either not understood at all, and is
forthwith spurned or ignored, or so much meaning as
glimmers in it runs the risk of being rejected as inconsistent
with the truth which the old name is held to mean and
guarantee.
Thus it is that it is impossible to dissociate a science from
its nomenclature. It is indispensable to make a science of
the nomenclature by rational reform of it as the science
progresses ; which clearly ought to be a methodical, not a
mere haphazard, business. As every special science and
every section thereof requires its own names to denote its
special facts, and as names are separate in the different
sciences, though the facts denoted by them are not separate
but universally bound together, least and greatest, there is
evident need of a philosophic body to frame and settle a
progressive nomenclature in conformity with the progressive
revelations of new truths.
The right spirit of scientific inquiry is not a spirit of
finality, not a " God spake these words and said," it is
rather an ever-questioning, almost ever-doubting, spirit, an
implied and eternal " Why ? " It not only forbears to accept
a conclusion as true until it has been verified thoroughly,
but then receives it not as absolute and necessarily binding
for ever, but keeps in reserve the silent question, Why is
VI SCIENCE 203
this truth ? Therein its method is just the opposite of
that which prevailed in prescientific days, especially of the
theological method which postulated the supernatural in-
fusion of authoritative and immutable truth into a trans-
cendentally illumined mind. Not preconception, but patiently
progressive adaptation to external nature by persistent in-
terrogation of and response to it ; that is the true note of
science, the moving spirit of its perpetual becoming, the
vital principle of growing mind in a world of inexhaustible
inquiry.
CHAPTER VII
NATURE— MIND— REASON
I.
NATURE AND MIND
The becoming of things — Structural organization of mind — Discords
in the universal concord — Lucky and unlucky events — Providential
circumstances — The study of mind as a part of nature— Nature and
free will — The opinion of free will a useful illusion — Mind the
supreme organic harmony — Organic sympathy and repulsion —
Interaction of body and mind — The unity of mind and nature.
Of the world of sense Plato said truly that it is not leing
but constant hecoming, which was the original meaning of
the Greek word we now translate Nahtre and think of as
evolution. It has taken mankind more than two thousand
years to rediscover in more exact form and to demonstrate
in detail a principle which was perceived in general then.
In like manner it has taken them as long a time to discover
the persistence of matter through its multitudinous trans-
formations and the principle of the conservation of energy
which Democritus distinctly enunciated in general terms.
The delicate balance having now proved to sense that which
was previously a conception of the understanding only,
modem science claims the whole honour of the discovery,
in conformity with its canon that the discoverer is not the
speculative genius who first intuitively sees and dimly
CH. VII NATURE AND MIND 205
conceives the truth, but the patient demonstrator who later
on proves it and drives it into the vulgar understanding.
Aristotle tells us that Leucippus and his disciples were
wont to compare the atoms of matter to the letters of the
alphabet, seeing that with the same letters may be formed
an infinite number of combinations producing quite different
results — tragedy, comedy, history — all depending on the way
in which the letters are arranged and used. Now these
combinations of a few letters into many words and of many
words into many sentences, and the various structure of
sentences according to the rules of grammar, considered
well, teach a pregnant lesson concerning the structure and
function of the mental organization of the human brain.
For these outward combinations and arrangements of images
and sounds appealing to eye and ear are represented inwardly
and invisibly in its special structure, being contained in the
innermost, and only by virtue of such representation appeal
intelligently to it ; their grammar imports the grammar of
its structure. To the brain not thus fitly instructed — i.e., in-
structured — they are meaningless. Every letter, whether
seen or heard, implies its special, fine and definite motor
reaction to the special impression on sense, the formation of
its fit cerebral reflex. If I hear not an accustomed noise,
though it be loud enough to distress an unaccustomed ear, it
is because, not attending — not making the requisite nervous
tension or polarization of molecules — I do not react mentally
to it, do not listen, do not respond so as to grasp or apprehend
its waves ; and as all such fine and exact reflexes with their
innumerable combinations are structurally registered in the
mental organization, it is plain how inconceivably delicate,
intricate and complex that structure must be, and how far
from exhaustion its possible combinations may be. Per-
adventure there is yet a large reserve of undeveloped
mentality in mankind to draw on for realization in time to
come. In the order of nature mind is not something
detached, proceeding not from it, independent of its laws,
intervening and acting from without ; it is itself nature in
206 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
process of becoming, originating in and informed by it, the
nature- made means of organic progress in obedience to fixed
laws of cause and effect.
In the perpetual flux of nature, constant in all its seeming
inconstancy, nothing is spontaneous, nothing casual, every-
thing causal, nothing out of order, nothing wrong ; whatever
is, good or bad, comes to pass by necessary sequence which,
when perceived and admired, we call law and order, but
when not so perceived we ignorantly call accident and dis-
order, or perhaps view with awestruck reverence as sublime
mystery and inscrutable wisdom. Very strange it would be
if the narrow and shallow portion of nature which can alone
be reflected or represented in human thought and feeling
did not present many seeming accidents and anomalies,
chances and disorders, gaps and exceptions, seeing how
infinitesimal a fraction of the whole it is and how super-
ficial the knowledge of the little that is knowable. As
accidents necessarily decrease in number with the increase
of knowledge, and would disappear entirely were knowledge
of their hidden causes and conditions perfect, so horrors,
cruelty, pain, ugliness, vice, crime, disease and death are
quite as natural factors of the vast whole as their opposites ;
just the essential constituents of that grand harmony which,
as Milton says of the music of the spheres, though mortal
ears cannot hear it, the ears of God hear with delight. How
can a feeble fraction of mortal mind in process of becoming
by tedious steps of discursive travail of reason expect to feel
delight in the transcendental music which delights the
universal and intuitive mind ? Were it not too gross even
to hear it, there would be no more delight in it than a
centipede or a savage feels in hearing a sonata of Beethoven.
As the universe exists for the individual mortal only in
so far as he thinks and feels it, events which befall within
the little circle of which he is centre he may sometimes
from his standpoint rightly call accidents or chances, luck,
unluck, and the like. If two impulses out of the infinite
and eternal, after inscrutable wanderings there, enter into
VII NATURE AND MIND 207
and traverse the very finite and temporary world-sphere of
human relations, and eventually through incalculable refrac-
tions, reflections, transformations and circuitous windings of
energies meet at a critical moment in some fatal conjunction
of events which overwhelms a hapless mortal, he has certainly
the right to accuse his evil chance or fortune and to speak
of an unlucky accident. Their origin was inscrutable, their
manifold tracks and sequences incalculable and uncontrollable,
their conjuncture in the particular catastrophe at the par-
ticular moment unforeseeable and irresistible. Alas for his
evil fortune which was to be is all that can be said. At a
given moment he was struck down because he chanced to be
at a particular spot where nobody through all eternity might
ever chance to be again at an exactly similar juncture; it
was an event predestined from everlasting, unshunnable as
death, brought to pass inexorably at its inevitable moment.
Although it be true that a continuous chain unites all
beings and things, whereby everything acts on everything,
no particle of matter nor fact being isolated, yet such words
as fortune, luck, chance, accident, have their rights of usage
and right uses within the circle of human relations, their
existence being indeed proof of their present necessity.
Even the phrase " Man of Destiny " is not unlawful when
we think of the imiumerable unknoA\Ti antecedents which,
meeting in him from the ends of creation, have conspired to
produce the special capacity, and of the happy coincidence
of the special capacity with the fit circumstances ; for always
the time and the man must coexist, else the man will be
abortive. Did ever a true man of destiny, then, really feel
personal responsibility for what he was and did ? He may
believe more at heart in his fortunate star than in his own
foresight and devices, and certainly, when he reflects quietly
on his doings, frankly confess to have owed more to the
unpremeditated impulses of his unconscious self than to his
conscious premeditations.
Here it may be noted by the way how impiously, when
they would speak piously, people are wont to speak of Provi-
208 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
dence. The event is providential when the person chances
on the happy occasion which, aptly seized, leads him to
unforeseen success, even when that occasion be the death of
some one else, and it is a providential escape when some one
is rescued marvellously in a shipwreck in which all on board
save himself perish in the sea ; but there is no such talk of
Providence when the unlucky chance of a malignant disease
or a blundering accident dooms a person to a painful death
and so opens the profitable way to his successor. That is no
doubt because the special concern of Providence is supposed
to be for man's welfare and progress, nowise equally for his bad
fare and destruction on earth ; which is impious absurdity.
For there is equal Providence in the death of him who dies
miserably and in the life of him who survives merrily, in the
murderer's cruelty and the victim's pain, in the treachery of
Judas Iscariot and the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
Then, again, when some one has succeeded in a hazardous
adventure which, given his faulty knowledge of causes and
conditions, seemed more likely to fail, he speaks of having
tempted Providence, as if Providence did not foresee and
predestinate any better than himself, or could be tempted
specially to do him an ill or a good turn. All which comes
of conceiving Providence as a magnified personality ruling
the world in the interests of the human species, subject to
like passions with it, and capable of being moved by like
appeals.
If all things are inexorably bound together in a mysterious
universe and a leaf fall not to the ground without sending a
thrill through it, nor a molecule move without the sympathy
of a solar system, it is surely time to purge a vision dimmed
with traditional prejudice, and, looking facts fairly and
squarely in the face, to begin to see that the human mind is,
and is to be studied as, a part of nature subject to its laws of
cause and effect. And in that case clearly to acknowledge
and realize that not only the lower functions of mind, its
passions and instincts, but all its highest functions, moral and
spiritual — reason, will, and conscience — are included in the
VII NATURE AND MIND 209
natural process. Two hitherto stubbornly stifled truths must
needs then leap to light : first, that the study of mind ought
to be prosecuted patiently by the objective method of
scientific inquiry used in all the other sciences, the hope to
know its true nature and function by the purely subjective
method of introspection being given up as exhausted, if not
as barren ; secondly, that any theory of the glorious freedom
of the will and of the dazzling sublimity of the moral sense
must be brought into strict accord with the conclusion of
their inclusion within the domain of natural law. The main
moral of which will be, that if a sane person cannot reason
well nor feel righteously he may seek the fundamental reason
of his defect in the unreason and unrighteousness of his
ancestral stock, and justly accuse its bad strain.
When the ancients described Nature under the person of
Pan (the All of Things), they could hardly have anticipated
a time when mind was to be reckoned no part of nature and
its absolutely separate study extolled as supreme philosophy.
A free power in nature, such as its function in will has been
proclaimed to be, is difficult enough to conceive anyhow ; all
the more so as it is then a power acting in and through
nature, yet free to fulfil laws above or contrary to nature.
That a mortal who is brought unasked into a life which he
would never have sought to enter had he been given a choice,
and thrust out of it arbitrarily at any moment without his
consent and commonly against his will, can act with perfect
freedom for the short time that he is alive, is too large a
demand to make on the credulity of any faith Avhich falls
short of the highest metaphysical or religious flight. When
all is said, common sense cannot but perceive and own that
it is the self which determines the will, not the will which
determines the self, and that the self is not uncaused and
unconditioned, but implies in its constitution potential energy
which has been stored and modes of exercise which have
been graven in it from human beginnings on earth. Whence
then its illusion of freewill, if it be an illusion ? From the
obvious fact that consciousness illumines only the immediate
210 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
self-determination, not the remote causes and conditions
which determine the self ; it witnesses to the feeling of power
in the actualization of potential energy, but takes no account
of the far-reaching line of antecedents by which the power
has been acquired and stored in the individual structure.
It will be said, however, that to believe that men have
acted always under an illusion is quite incredible. Why
incredible, when the indisputable fact is that they mostly act
under illusions, and that the great movements of their pro-
cession on earth have been determined not by reason but by
passion and illusion ? The very lust of life to live in spite of
the daily disillusionment of experience and the final dis-
illusion of death inspires the continuance of illusion. Now
the opinion of freewill has clearly been a demonstrably useful
agent in the natural order of things to promote human
progress. In a vast and incomprehensible environment where
man had to reckon with uncontrollable force and unforeseen
chances and accidents, it supplied him with a measure of
assurance owing to belief in his power, an incentive to strive
owing to hope of his end, and a bravery of self-assertion
owing to his conceit of independence, all which the loss of
the illusion might paralyze.
Every living organism, though having unity, is still a
plurality, and the human organism the most complex
plurality of all; for the whole is composed of innumerable
minute cells and colonies of cells of divers kind having their
own lives in their fit intrabodily media. Not a cell is born
or dies but in vital sympathy with the whole, for the whole
works in each part and each part in the whole : the nerve
cells cannot say to the epithelial cell, " Thou art not my
brother," the less lawfully so since they proceed in original
birth from the same embryonic layer. Therefore, when a
unit in the vital organization is hurt, the mental organization
is necessarily touched by the jar, such sympathy being the
very spirit of the vital tie, and when mind thus feels ever so
low a discordant note it cannot choose but react, in however
small a degree, on the rest of the constituent elements. As
VII NATURE AND MIND 211
a bodily disorder tends to produce sad thought, so a sad
thought tends to produce bodily disorder — it may, perchance,
be the very same sort of bodily disorder producible by an
organic poison — albeit a physical hurt from deranged mental
function is less easy to picture in mind than a direct chemical
hurt. Mind, in fact, represents the unison or harmony result-
ing from the inconceivably complex interplays of the infinitely
numerous and various forces of the bodily units ; wherefore
the ancient Greeks had good reason for making Apollo the
god of medicine as well as of music, and his son Esculapius
the healer of a disordered bodily harmony.
What happens in the body when the discord of a disordered
part is felt ? Either such helpful sympathy from the sur-
rounding elements of the sound whole through the vital
medium in which it is situate as strengthens it to right itself
— for that is how disease is best cured — or, if the disorder be
past remedy, and there is no longer a possible sympathy,
then a wholesome repulsion instead works steadily to isolate
it in or extrude it from the organization in which its presence
is a hurt. It is an unlucky circumstance when, as happens
sometimes, the requisite isolation or expulsion cannot be
effected without such secondary damage to the organism as
eventually proves fatal to it ; then the healing power of
nature striving to put things right in the organism succumbs
to a fatally opposing obstacle in its mechanism. Anyhow,
the primary care of the organism is for itself ; for the unit
it cares only so far as this performs its proper function in it :
in the self-preservation of the collective organism, as in the
civil body, reasons of State override the interests of the
individual.
Let the conception of the organic relations of mind and
body be as positive as possible, it still remains more difficult
to imagine how mind acts on organic unit to animate or
depress it than to picture the action of organic unit on
mind. The obvious reason is because the habit is to speak
and think of the mind as an abstract entity, instead of
speaking and thinking of a mental organization vitally
212 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
connected with the rest of the organism of which it is part,
thus making a separate kingdom of mind, and that a king-
dom of supemature. But as mind is not an abstract unity
functioning always as a whole, but as diverse in constitution
as the divers organs of the body represented in it, its different
parts can and do act almost separately and in various com-
binations when the rest of it is nearly or quite at rest. The
consequence is that just as the healthy organic tissues around
a disordered part stimulate or inhibit its energies, so in the
mental organization of the brain a disordered representative
centre is subject to the elevating or depressing influences of
its fellows of the confederate structure. When mind then
animates a diseased organ so as to help it to get well or
depresses it so as to deepen its disorder, this is the pre-
sumable sequence of events : the several stimulated parts of
the whole mental confederation act on the faulty organ's
special cerebral representation, which thereupon itself reacts
on the special bodily organ directly, while they also act
directly on their several represented organs or parts of the
body either to stimulate helpfully or depress hurt fully. Thus
it is that the diseased part itself and its cerebral representa-
tive are both influenced immediately by surrounding struc-
ture of strong or weak vitality, sympathetic or antipathetic.
The sick man who, although sick nigh unto death, believes
and asserts that he will recover, is prompted by a strong vital
inspiration the aspiration of which is a prophecy, whereas
the sick man who, dejected and abject, feels sure that he
will die, albeit he does not appear to be then doomed, utters
a secret despair which perhaps forebodes death : the anima-
tion is the exponent in feeling of a sturdy and tenacious
vitality, the dejection the exponent of a weak and slack
vitality.
Viewing the organization of mind then from a natural
standpoint as the latest and highest becoming of nature
through man, derived from it and merging again into it, the
positive facts of its birth, growth, development, decline and
death are natural and intelligible, and the laws of their
VII REASON 213
succession proper subjects of scientific inquiry. How could
such sequence of events be othenvise than natural and neces-
sary if mind contain in its constitution and represent in
function the supreme harmony of all the bodily parts and
organs raised to their higher power ? If, however, the body
be only the passing tenement of a portion of the universal
mind temporarily so imprisoned and conditioned in time and
place, to be set free when the bodily habitation perishes, the
necessary inference is that the disembodied mind then
loses its mortal individuality and is merged into the universal
mind. For how can the special music continue when its
special instrument is destroyed ? And what concern in that
case to the individual is a non-individual immortality ?
II
REASON
Implicit prior to conscious reason — No division in natiu-e between
reason and instinct — Com^jlex reason like complex reflex action
and instinct an organized acquisition — Equivalent ideas inter-
changeable in reasoning, like equivalent parts in machinery —
Difliculties of substitution of mental equivalences — Men commonly
reason from accepted premisses, without testing the reason of
them — Irrationality of men and bees compared — The ideal and the
real man — Animal tendencies and angelic aspirations — Reason a
limitation and constructive process, and its limitation a boon —
Universal reason a nonsense in words — ^The heai-t and the head :
feeling and reason — Special feelings not original and elemental but
derived and secondary : bespeak precedent culture of reason.
The reason which man vaunts and magnifies so mightily
just because it is his pre-eminent faculty is, as before said,
at bottom only the conscious acquisition of that which, m
singularly special and perfect forms, is instinct in many of
the lower animals — to wit, the doing of the fit thought and
deed in the circumstances; a doing necessarily more and
more complex as they are more special and complex.
If he perform the simple act well once and on the next
214 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
occasion modify it to suit a change in the circum-
stances, learning thus to do it with the requisite nice
apprehensions and adaptations, mental and motor, and
thereafter on every subsequent occasion habitually, and
instantly actuates the right motor intuition and action, that
is essential reason. For it is a strange thing, as many do,
to behold labouring reason in the perfecting endeavours
and to find it clean gone when it is instinct in the perfect
product. If he make no such fit adjustment to changed
circumstances but obstinately use the old act to do what it
is unfitted to do, he is an awkward bungler, for he profits
not by experience. Now the reason in no case determines
the organization, it is the organization which is prior to the
conscious reason ; the reason is implicit in the structural
ratio or proportion of parts, and the mind thinks it in con-
sequence, displaying in function that which is incorporate in
structure. As the purposive function of a locomotive at rest
could not be revived if the fit parts and nicely proportioned
adjustments of its ingenious (rational) mechanism did not
continue in being then, so the suspended function of inactive
mind could not be revived if the reason were not present,
implicit and unconscious, in the structure. The reason is
invisible organization, the organization visible reason. Man
makes not his progress through the ages designedly step by
step on a preconceived rational plan ; it is the stream of
things which, in so far as he discerns purpose in its natural
course, reveals itself in him as reason ; the purpose is not in
external nature, it is in his nature, and the reason is his
mind's being.
A labour fit to have driven Hercules to despair, who might
have found the cleansing of the Augean stable an easy task
in comparison, will be to cleanse the human mind of the
metaphysical prejudices and falsities vnth which it has been
stuffed so as to enable it to see facts simply as they are and
in their natural order. The theory of a separate spiritual
entity, indwelling but not in continuity and unity with the
body, independent of it in origin, nature and destiny, and for
VII REASON 215
the most part in internecine war with it, has ascribed to mind
qualities as original and special which are actually deriva-
tive, and having thereupon converted the consequents into
self-sufficient antecedent entities, has led to the formation
and constant use of a special language to describe their
operations ; the ultimate result being to divorce mental from
bodily functions, to divide by denominations things not
divisible, often to disguise out of recognition the same thing
under different names. Thus the reason which is instinct in
organic structure — the so-called instinct made into an entity
— has been quite separated from the conscious reason which
is also instinct in it and, when completely acquired or
organized, is manifestly seen to be so.
In every acquired reflex act which fulfils a definite end
there is as essential reason as there is in the drawing of
a logical conclusion ; a syllogism being a corresponding re-
flex act at a higher cerebral remove. A boy who diligently
learns to play cricket or any other game of skill develops
reason step by step in his mental structure just in proportion
as he gradually acquires by practice exact attentions to and
accurate judgments of speed, time, distance, direction, force,
and perfects the proper movements of eye, limbs and body,
to meet the nice discriminations which he makes ; for he is
all the while organizing the proper cerebral reflexes of his
nerve centres and tracts in such right ratios or proportionate
relations — in such forms of structural synthesis, that is — as
shall exactly and intuitively meet and fulfil the desired ends.
A metaphysical cricket-teacher who, admonishing his pupil
that he was a rational being, and ought not therefore to learn
experimentally and tediously, like a horse or a dog, should go
about to expound to him with mathematical precision all the
play of forces at work in the game, and bid him then go forth
and play it by rules of reason, would soon find out that the
reason must be patiently learnt and gradually embodied in
mental structure before it can be used in mental function.
Men no more learnt the rudiments of reason by conscious
premeditation than they learnt to build a modern battleship
216 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
by distinct preconception of the principles and deliberate
pre-ordainment of the details of its complex structure ; they
learnt to build it through a succession of tentative and
gradually progressive endeavours, trying this and adapting
that, doing and undoing, proceeding from simple fittings and
adjustments step by step to more complex combinations,
until in their mental organization was effected a series of
structural syntheses as complex and special as its principles
of structure. Had the predesigning consciousness of all the
best mathematicians and engineers in the world been applied
for the first time to a canoe in order by observation of its
structure and function to design the plan of a modern
battleship, all the intermediate forms of structural evolution
being left out, they would have been utterly incompetent to
do it. The reason of the complex mechanism had to be
organized in mental structure before it could be consciously
conceived and definitely embodied, and never could have
been so conceived and embodied had it not been so infixed
structurally. In the gradual growth of the requisite intelli-
gence each succeeding gain of knowledge was a gain of
power, and power so gained craved and gained in turn
further knowledge.
If the capacities and cultures of two minds were exactly
equal the idea beneath the name would have the same clear
and distinct form, the same contents, and the same value
in each mind ; then the ideas, being equivalent, might
rightly be substituted for one another in every process of
reasoning in which the name was used, and every possibility
of dispute thus obviated — the Red Indian's idea of God, for
example, be the interchangeable equivalent of the civilized
European's idea ; the substitution being a substitution of
exact equivalents, the logical calculation could not fail to be
done with the precision and certainty of a geometrical
demonstration or an arithmetical calculating machine.
When two skilful billiard-players are equally capable of the
exact judgments and nice movements necessary to perform
with equal success the most difficult strokes of the game,
VII REASON 217
it is evident that in that respect the skill of one would be
an exactly equivalent substitute for the skill of the other ;
and in like manner when two minds working on the same
syllogism reach the same plain conclusion by natural
necessity, their respective functions are exactly equivalent
and woukl be physiologically interchangeable. The indis-
pensable physiological basis of all reasoning being an organic
process of the finest and most subtile physics, it might be
likened crudely to the gross machinery of complex engines
made after the same j^recise pattern, in which, correspond-
ing parts being interchangeable, every part can be fitly
replaced out of a store of exactly similar patterns. Such a
substitution of similars is what is done now in the con-
struction of complex engines, though it has taken men a
long time to discover and use the simple method of uniform
manufacture and the economy of it. It will take them a
long time too, probably, to conceive the notion that there
can be any similarity between the ratio or incorporate reason
of an ingenious machine and the ratio or reason of their
minds, notwithstanding that such machine, which does the
intelligent work of ten or a hundred men steadily and
regularly, without hurry and without worry, without shirking
and without blundering, without envy, hatred, or any other
of the passions which disturb human activity, signifies
fundamentally structuralized reason. By putting such a
machine at the service of the individual he is furnished
with a goodly heritage of implicit reason which he could
not alone acquire for himself were he to live for a hundred
or perhaps a thousand years.^
Obviously it is a vastly more difficult business to make
1 Of the machine which produces intelligent results we may say that
it works mechanically, and of the insect which does its intelligent
work that it acts instinctively, just because in either case the mind in
the mechanism is perfect for its purpose and functions unconsciously.
"VMien man produces the same or a similar eflFect by tentative steps
and imperfectly, we properly perceive will in the process ; we might
perhaps also justly perceive will-in-the-making by due composition of
feeling and reason.
218 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the substitution of equivalences in reasoning which it is
comparatively easy to make by standardization of machinery,
and for two principal reasons : first, because of the numerous
and exquisitely delicate differences of quality of material,
and of the exceeding complexity of structure in the mental
fabric, no two minds being ever exactly alike and having
therefore the component ideas exactly interchangeable ;
secondly, because of differences in the quality and force of
feeling by which the intellectual machinery is propelled in
function, no two persons ever having exactly the same
quality and strength of feeling. It is in mathematical
reasoning only, where men have to do with definitions and
abstractions, not concrete things, that they contrive to get
something like the same mental machinery in action and
reach inevitably the same conclusions ; when they endeavour
to do so in real life they are compelled likewise to make
abstractions and to deal with ideal feelings, ideal under-
standings, ideal wills, ideal beings — in fact, to construct an
ideal psychology, and, doing the work differently, to arrive
at different and often incompatible conclusions.
Man in the abstract may be called rational because
as such he is an ideal representing the abstract notion
of humanity, that which hope-born faith would have him
be ; but man in the concrete is for the most part very
irrational. To say that he is even potentially rational is
almost to speak too well of him individually. Nature's
concern is not to make the individual rational, it does not
suffer him to live long enough to become so ; its apparent
trend being to make the species rational some day, and its
certain operation to ensure the continuance of it meanwhile
by subjecting reason to passion. The individual notoriously
owes his opinions to tradition, custom, convention, creed,
law, education. If these are rational (and they are often
absurdly irrational), it is not because he has reasoned them,
or sees the reason of them, but because of the reason silently
implicit in them ; wherefore when facts conflict with or
contradict them he is usually unable to change them so as
VII REASON 219
to suit the facts which, impatient of contradiction, he then
blindly ignores or irrationally rejects, notwithstanding that
he might profit immensely by making the required change.
He has got his set mental reflexes which cannot respond to
and apprehend the unfitting facts, and his so structured
mind, from the mere instinct of self-conservation, passionately
and stubbornly repels the assault on its structure which
the new ideas would be. All the reason he practises is to
reason more or less correctly from these fixed premisses, not
otherwise than as the monomaniac in a measure does ; they
are prejudices or prejudgments by which, if they are false, he
misjudges facts ; his reason cannot correct them any more
than the monomaniac can correct the premiss of his fixed
delusion. Such and no more is the value of reason in the
great majority of persons : they accept blindly an opinion
and use it more or less logically, without knowing how they
got it or what it is worth. Well then might Seneca say that
every time he went forth among men he came back less
human ; though he might still have gone on to reflect that
their irrationality served the cause of their progress, acting
as a great conservative force to maintain the stability and
unity of the special social community. When all is said,
it is indisputable that states have hitherto been most stably
founded on the ignorance of the multitude.
Could men view themselves impartially from outside as
they actually are, they would behold a spectacle as pitiful
and ridiculous as that of a honey-bee stupidly and violently
beating itself to death against a pane of glass when there is
close by an open door or window through which it might
easily fly, had it the sense to try, and through which, per-
haps, a blundering bumble-bee or bluebottle fly, recking
not what it does in its tumultuous and adventurous flights,
does chance to escape. Irrational prejudice, obstinate and
persistent to get into the air of free thought by its own
impossible way, is just as stupid as the bee and as impotent
to mend its ways unless accident or assistance comes to its
aid. It is but a shallow wonder that the bee thus beats
220 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
itself senseless, for the truer wonder would be if it did not ;
the engrossing instinct of its nature, the ratio of its whole
special structure, is to strive automatically for the light and
fi-eedom which it sees directly before it ; and how can it,
thus specially fashioned from of old, having no larger reason,
no other ratio of structure, know and realize the invisible
glass — a quite recent invention of the human process — to
be an impassable wall of separation ? Its very virtue be-
comes its defect ; for did it behave as the bumble-bee or
the fly, it most certainly never could have attamed to, nor
still maintain, the complex social life of the hive. Is the
man who strives painfully and pathetically to get into the
air of free thought by way of some fixed creed which he
believes to transcend reason, yearning thus to reconcile its
dogmas with the principles of reason and truths of science,
any more rational than the bee ? In both cases fixed
organic tracts function as they needs must : in the bee
absolutely and excusably, since there is nothing available
in its structure to acquaint it with a better way; in the
man relatively and inexcusably, seeing that his mental
structure contains unused tracts which, if reclaimed for use
and duly cultured, would teach him how to check and
correct his wrong ways, and he might perceive, were he to
look intelligently around him, to be in good use elsewhere.^
Wonderful is the contrast between the ideal and the
actual man, the being who is now and ever has been and
the perfect being who is to be some day somewhere. On
the one hand, a sublime creature, noble in reason, splendid
in form, straining always to hold himself erect and look
heavenwards, lofty in imagination, divine in love, the
1 Seeing how clever such insects as bees and ants are within the
environment to which they have made such admirable adjustments, it
seems strange at first sight how destitute of intelligence they are out-
side their fixed instincts. But why strange ? Being in a state of
stable equilibrium with their surroundings, they have no new wants,
are not tormented with the restless desire to be more than they are,
feel not the nisus of organic process which has now been usurped into
quite another line of development.
VII REASON 221
paragon of animals, and although bound to earth by his
lower nature, yearning ever to break the humiliating tie
and soar to divine heights of spiritual being — such is the
ideal man; on the other hand, an animal among animals,
and the only animal that is wicked for the pure pleasure of
being wicked, not only without profit but often with
positive hurt to himself; who ruthlessly uses, slaughters,
eats, and exterminates other animals, not necessarily from
any need he has of them but for the mere lust and sport
of killing; unlike other species, scruples not, yea, joys
exultantly, to war with and slay his own kind ; drinks not
because he is thirsty, but to intoxicate and brutalize him-
self; stupefies or excites himself 'svith drugs which he
diligently discovers and manufactures for the purpose ;
gorges himself with varieties of food, not for the sake of
appeasing hunger but for the pleasure of gluttony ; gratifies
sexual lust immoderately, and inflames it artificially -wdth
the sole aim of further lustful gratification, to the frequent
ruination of his health ; wilfully frustrates the reproductive
purpose in order to have the sensual pleasure without the
burden of production ; magnifies reason, yet uses it with
persistent ingenuity to make himself sensually more
brutal than any brute and spiritually to stultify himself
in a pious self-annulment — such is the concrete man. As
is the height of idealization, so is the depth of possible
degradation.
The natural inclination is to think that reason, being a
noble endowment, must always do noble work. But that is
nowise so : ingenuity in ill-doing is just as much a function
of reason as ingenuity in well-doing ; it is not from reason,
which illumines indifferently the paths of progress and re-
gress, that the motive impulse to go upwards or downwards
springs. Were it so derived, the contrast between the ideal
and the real man could hardly be what it has always been
and still is. Small thought is needed to show that if virtue
is human so also is vice, and larger thought plainly shows
that both have their rights of being, the one growing as the
222 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
other grows, and the evil being the inseparable counterpoise
of the good.
The two different and almost opposite types of human
thought — whether called spiritualism and materialism, Pla-
tonism and Aristotelianism, or whatever other names are
given them — which have always coexisted under one garb or
another since man began to reflect on himself, represent the
two sides of human tendency, and they will continue to exist
so long as he is an animal who yearns and strives to be
an angel. If angelic aspirations wane in him, he will sink
downwards towards the animal level ; if the animal nature
wanes in him, he will wax more spiritual, albeit his place in
a material world may then be somewhat out of keeping with
its low conditions. Perhaps reason will do its best work
here, as elsewhere, by teaching him the modest lesson to
keep in the mean : not to try to oust the animal, which
would be futile, nor to lose and forget the spiritual, which
would be brutal, but, like the planet in its orbit, to keep the
just poise of sane function between the pulls of opposite
forces.
Because men have found out many inventions by which
they have steadily increased their knowledge of and power
over nature, to their immense satisfaction and comfort, they
can never sufficiently praise and admire their own reason ;
they laud it as magnificent, which it cannot fail to be seeing
that it is their magnification of it which makes it magnificent.
Nevertheless, this noble reason-endowed creature who con-
templates in awestruck admiration the starry heavens and is
transported in ecstasy at the grandeur of his own moral
sense, and whose words, if not his thoughts, stretch out to
eternities and immensities, may at any unforeseen moment
be so absorbed in a petty misery as to be able to contemplate
nothing else. So much is he at the mercy of accident that
he cannot tell what he will feel, think or do the next hour or
day. If he know that he has an immortal soul, he may well,
like Plotinus, thank God that it is not tied to an immortal
body. Withal, the very happiest part of life he owes to his
VII REASON 223
feeble foresight ; for if he could always foresee that which
^vill befall him he might soon lose his desire to go forwards.
Reason might indeed do him an ill service were it as perfect
as he would fain have it be : its better function is rather to
consolidate what lies near than to foresee far, to effect
construction rather than to impel growth. Though it teach
him to accept the event with resignation and equanimity,
seeing that in the inexorable order of things that which
must come will come, and things without remedy ought to
be without regard, yet such equanimity and indifference
before the event would not be calculated to promote progress
in life. Therefore he is moved by springs beneath reason,
being made to feel that things can be mended by him, and
thereafter to strive earnestly within his sphere for what
he thinks true, what pleases him as beautiful, what profits
him as good.
As knowledge is but a narrow chink of light between two
dark infinities, between the eternal before and the eternal
after, the infinitesimal minute and the infinite great, and
only penetrates a little way into that which it illumines,
reason may justly learn its modest limits and abate its signal
pride. Being purely relative, just a human means of conscious
adaptation to so much of the medium as relation is possible
"with, it is a meaningless word when stretched to reach
beyond these relations. If I forego what I cannot possibly
know, I must also forego to use the finite means by which I
think to know that which I cannot know, and not absurdly
think to project it into the infinite and eternal. To talk of
infinite reason, in any human sense of the word, is a ridiculous
contradiction in terms — contradictio in adjectivo — no better
than it would be to speak of a boundless boundary.
The obscure intimations of feeling which seem limitless,
are they of more cosmic value than knowledge ? Is it right
to forego feeling, as it is to forego reason, concerning the
infinite and unknowable ? Being loth to do it, men feel and
conclude that to be a reason why they should not do it,
albeit that aversion may really be an invalidation rather
224 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
than a justification of the conclusion, being nothing else
but the illusion of human egotism. To a soberly reflecting
mind it is not quite evident how the unknowable can be any
more proper concern of human imagination than of human
knowledge, or how imagination without knowledge to back
it can fail to be fanciful and futile. Moreover, a fact which
ought to be well weighed when vaunting the priceless worth
of feeling is this : that the feeling of any thinking person
at the present level of human culture is not primitive and
elemental, but secondary and derivative ; it being actually
grounded in and emanation of such knowledge and doing
as have been consolidated in his mental structure, and
varying according to the quantity and quality of such struc-
ture. Had man never learnt painfully and slowly through
the ages to know as he knows, he could not feel as he feels
now, either socially or morally.
That being so, it may be said that the feeling thus
emanating from improved knowledge has all the more value
because of its development from an enlightened basis, how-
ever superficial, narrow and faint the enlightenment. The
spiritualist naturally lays hold of it and presents it as irre-
fragable evidence of his personal relations with a super-
natural power, the evidence of faith transcending reason and
needing no justification by it : he makes confident appeal
to the heart against the head, caring not to inquire how
much the head has done in the structure of the heart's feel-
ing. Granting that the feeling can thus transcend in value
infinitely that from which it is derived, it nowise certainly
follows that the spiritualist, who has absorbed from his cradle
onwards a special sort of theological creed and received
a quite inadequate training in knowledge of real things, and
who must perforce therefore leave out half the data, has the
right to claim his specialized feeling as final.
Before admitting such claim proper notes should be taken
of these facts : first, that many minds of greater powers than
he possesses, and more adequately trained all round, have not
had this specialized feeling, for it is not the universal instinct
Til REASON 225
which, because he has it, he declares it to be ; secondly, that
those who are lauded and admired most for the pre-
eminent possession of it are not always men of sound judg-
ment, nor indeed admired most by those who possess most
knowledge of them in the intimate relations of actual life,
being prone to be shifty and amazingly self-deceptive : the
real very different from the ideal person, though it would
be unpardonable bad taste to proclaim and prove it in
the particular case; lastly, that feeling in the general
and abstract is but a name, not a reality, the reality being
always the particular feeling, which is never quite the same,
and never more ecstatic than when it is drug-produced.
What the extreme spiritualist does is to induce and indulge
the rapture of a debauch without being aware of it, and,
like the opium taker, to take glad refuge in such transport
when confronted with facts which hurt his special sensibility
and he cannot assimilate. To indulge feeling in disregard
of reason is always a pleasure, and such keen and exclusive
spiritual self-indulgence is the natural proclivity of a mental
structure which has been built up egoistically by his fore-
fathers or himself ; built up, be it understood, not necessarily
by crude selfishness in the relations of life, but by a process of
incontinent indulgence of narrow sentiment and a constant
marshalling of thought in its service, whereby it comes
to pass that the most ardent philanthropist is apt to be the
most extreme egoist.
CHAPTER VIII
HABIT— INTONATION— EXPERIENCE— TRUTH
HABIT
Habit the growth of a nature — The incorporation of function in struc-
ture — The formation of a fit nervous reflex — Its large part in
mental structure — Habit of belief and renunciation of reason —
Mind divisable and able to act in parts — Difi"erent minds are
different organs — ^The destruction of a mind by destruction of its
habits of belief.
How trite the usual talk of the force of habit, yet how
shallow for the most part the thought of what habit means !
Prompt enough to call it second nature, people are equally
prompt to shirk or shun the necessary conclusion that its
mental effects signify definitely formed tracts of physical
organization. Familiar with the Avord, they are content to
say that habit does this or that without ever probing that
which lies beneath it.
Notable in the formation of habit are, first, the disposition
to do and the power to do more easily an act which has been
done before ; secondly, the gradual growth of ease and power
by practice, until at last after many repetitions the act is
done automatically, perhaps unconsciously — done in fact so
naturally that it is instinct and a second nature. The
process is not the mere putting on of a habit as a dress is
CH. VIII HABIT 227
put on and can be put ofif ; it signifies a structural modifica-
tion of mind — a special mode of its in-formation — it growing
to the mode of its exercise by incorporating growing function
in structure. It is the same process at work now by virtue
of which in the remote past the habits of prehistoric
ancestors have become the instinctive and reflex faculties
of to-day.
A special habit of function could never be acquired but by
the special organization of a nerve-track which is its neces-
sary physical agency : such track effaced, there is an end of
the function. That is the vital truth expressed in common
language when it properly speaks of " growing into a habit."
Meanwhile men are content to " grow " in mind so long as
they are not challenged to think and say clearlj- and
definitely what they mean by such growth. Fundamentally
it is the gradual formation of fit nervous reflexes in a process
of mental structuralization, such reflexes increasing in
number and in speciality and complexity with mental
growth ; nowise the function of a ready-made and detached
metaphysical entity stirred up from time to time to perceive,
record and remember what is going od in the particular
brain.
Cut out of the individual mind all that which it owes to
habit — habit of thinking, feeling, and doing — and how much,
nay, rather how little, would be left ? So enormous would
the shrinkage be that it would be robbed of the very
mechanism of its being ; a poor and helpless remainder only
being left, the bare foundations of a lost mental super-
structure. Every mind being a social unit, fashioned in the
mould of its special social organization, is substantially a
manufactured fabric answering to the traditions, customs,
modes of feeling and doing of the social body in and by
which it lives. Therefore it is that between the mind of an
Andaman islander and that of a cultivated European there
is as much structural difference as between a mud-hut and a
mansion, and therefore it is that the impassioned philan-
thropist, who is consumed with a burning zeal to unite all
Q 2
228 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
people in one human family, warily forbears to advocate the
union in marriage of the civilized inhabitants of Christendom
with the Christianized inhabitants of the Andaman Isles. He
clearly perceives an extreme incongruity of mental structure
forbidding the brotherhood in this life on earth and post-
poning it to an ideal future life elsewhere.
It seems incredible, until the facts are considered well,
what an incongruity, nay, what a monstrosity, habit may
make of even fairly developed minds. A calm survey of
the beliefs and doings of mankind, so far as their records
reach, shows clearly that there is nothing however self-
contradictory or contrary to reason, however puerile and
personally burdensome, however monstrous and terrifying,
which has not been believed sometime somewhere ; nay,
more, that nothing has been believed more fervently as an
article of faith than that which was incredible as a matter of
reason. Wonderful, too, and not a little instructive is it, to
watch the mental attitude of those who, shocked at the
absurdities which their forefathers believed and adored, or
which savages now believe and adore, placidly believe and
adore equal or greater absurdities. How is it that a being
claiming reason as his supreme prerogative and aspiring to
be pre-eminently rational has consistently been, and still is,
so preposterously irrational ? It is not owing to ignorance
only, although ignorance has no doubt been a powerful
factor, forasmuch as men have always believed, and still
believe, flagrant contradictions of reason in subject-matters of
which they were not, or at all events had not the right to
be, ignorant. Eminent thinkers in theology have notoriously
been quite childish thinkers in science, even when they have
not, as some have done, deliberately formulated and practised
the principle of systematically derationalizing themselves in
order to believe piously that which was rationally incredible ;
and it is equally notorious that eminent thinkers in science
have been quite childish in their thoughts about theology.
So likewise it is in other departments of thought — in poetry,
politics, law, medicine, and in the various callings of life ; a
VIII HABIT 229
person of conspicuous excellence in one subject may be weak
and puerile in another.
Viewing the facts fairly and frankly, it would hardly be
untrue to say that man is the essentially irrational animal,
since without reason there can be no unreason ; for while
the lower animal's instinct is for the most part implicitly
rational, he, having conscious reason, which it is his noble
prerogative to develop, indolently or wilfully abdicates it,
and is content to think and act in direct defiance of it.
An odd spectacle to behold, whether saddening when there is
a Heraclitus to weep at it, or amusing when there is a
Democritus to laugh at it.
The truth, of course, is that mind, having extension in
time and space, and being subject to natural laws of cause
and effect, can act much in compartments, and that it is
possible to keep a separate order or class of ideas as a
reserved ground not to be intruded on by reason at all, or
at all events by a whole and sound reason ; the consequence
of which is that an understanding strong and rational in its
own department can believe in other domains of thought, or
in some private reserve of faith, that which contradicts the
general principles of observation and reason on which posi-
tive knowledge rests. Therein is an illustration of the fixed
formation of mental structure by habit of exercise, a right
habit being sound reason, a wrong habit unsound reason, in
process of organization. A similar process of effective mental
dissociation is frequently exhibited in mental pathology ; and
although the mental result is then called morbid, yet it is
only an extreme instance of a mode of mental ill-working
which is common enough in less marked degree. The moral
of the whole matter is that it is not legitimate to cite the
instance of a person who achieves this feat of mental disso-
ciation and partial disunity, sound though his judgment be
in some sphere of thought where it has been fitly trained
and matured by practice, as authoritative in other spheres
of thought where it has not been duly developed. As well
cite a deformity of body — which might after all suit certain
230 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
special work — as evidence of perfect formation and function,
seeing that a mind, like a body, may contract good or bad
habits of function. The wiser thing to do would be to see
and note an instance of the law of mental dissociation and
the natural consequence of its working in a want of mental
integrity.
A positive study of concrete minds shows plainly that the
several minds are the several organs or instruments, fit or
unfit, in the various spheres of thought and action : so many
diverse mechanisms of thought, feeling and doing fashioned
by habits of function in the different situations and relations
of life. Thrown off their settled lines of function, special
minds are sometimes almost as helpless as a locomotive
thrown off the rails. Now, as it is required of a tool that
it be fitted to perform its special function, its excellence
being to do that perfectly, and it wovild be absurd to employ
a razor to cut wood, so it is with concrete minds : it would
be as absurd to employ one mind fit to do its own work to
do another's work for which it was unfit as to employ a razor
to cut wood. Every special instrument can be used well only
to do its special work. Consider, on the one hand, the arti-
ficially and patiently fashioned mind of a Jesuit priest, which,
set apart from its early dawn to follow a set vocation, is
subjected exclusively to a special class of impressions in a
special mental atmosphere and systematically moulded to
function in relation to them ; on the other hand, consider
the mind of an ordinary Chinaman as it has been long
fashioned from generation to generation by the traditions,
training, customs and laws of his country ; comparing then
the two steadily formed beings, it is evident that though
they belong to the same zoological species, and differ little
in general bodily organization, yet that they differ so widely
in mind as hardly to be of the same mental kind. Each
mind has been framed fitly to do its proper work in its own
sphere, but would function badly if set to do the other's work
of thinking, feeling and doing in its sphere. Notoriously
there is no deeper gulf between minds than that which
VIII HABIT 231
separates Christian and Moslem, intermarriage between
whom is a terrible shock to sentiment, the strange irony
of the fact being that the principle which ought to bind
them together most closely in brotherly union as members
of one human family — to wit, religion, is that which actually
divides them most completely.
Racial differences, again, which signify only certain un-
important differences of manufacture, are a tremendous
hindrance, well nigh insuperable, to community of thought
and feeling, even where common interests exist to dictate
union and make antagonism little better than madness.
Because you think and feel and speak not as I do, therefore
3' ou are an alien and we are natural enemies ; my duty
therefore is to distrust, hate and, if need be, fight and kill
you because you are different, such is the patriotic cry of
instinctive enmity. As ants and bees, notwithstanding the
wonderful altruism shown in their social solidarity, exhibit
a similar limitation of moral feeling when they savagely
attack an alien intruder from another community, we may
justly conclude such spirit of hostility to be the natural and
necessary condition of separate social unions in the ascending
scale of evolution.
As racial differences of mental nature represent different
modes of mental organization through a series of incalculable
generations, witnessing to different habits of function em-
bodied finally in different structures, one might justly say
of habit, which makes a second nature in the individual, that
it made also the first nature, and even perhaps expect that,
as it gradually improves, it will perfect a rational and moral
nature of the human species. Realizing what it means and
does, it is at all events easy to understand how puerile and
pernicious a practice it is to attempt to force the habits of
one level of civilization on people who are on a lower level,
especially on those who are on a level of barbarism. How-
ever, as the thing is persistently and pertinaciously done by
the higher people moved by a holy impulse to confer the
blessings of their civilization and religion, albeit at the cost
232 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of the destruction of the lower peoples, we may conclude that
the disintegration of the social structure inevitably produced
and the demoralization of the people by the disorganization
of the cerebral reflexes constituting their mental fabric and
serving their needs, are the ordained means by which nature
degrades and finally eliminates the weaker races of men and
promotes the survival and growth of the stronger races.
And although the lower peoples may not feel happy to serve
only as organic steps to build up a higher people, yet there
is no help for it, they must suffer and die that the race may
live and be strong.
II
MENTAL INTONATION
Associations of sense and sentiment — Revival of associations in
memory — Transforming eflects of custom — Formation of special
cerebral patterns of structure — Effects of exclusive education —
Adaptations to social medium — Organic hardenings of mental
differences — Exemplification of nervous fashioning — Consolidated
thought develops its appropriate effluence of feeling — Exemplifica-
tion of that law — Analogy between association and dissociation of
ideas and movements.
It may help to illustrate, and thereby facilitate, under-
standing of, the silent, steady and effectual process of fashion-
ing individual minds to a fixed pattern by means of habit,
to consider briefly the effects of association of ideas in mental
structuralisation ; not only, that is to say, in binding them
together into complexes, but also in developing the fit tone
or, so to speak, the essence of feeling of the special com-
positions. Edification is the word one might use rather than
structuralization had it not, like so many more words, now
lost vital meaning by familiarity of use and abstraction from
realities. For the right edification of a mind does not mean
only the building it after the best plan which its native
capacities admit of, but the building of it in the best harmony
of proportions and grace of structure which that plan admits
of — the good intonation of the good mental fabric.
VIII MENTAL INTONATION 233
Were a mother to smear her breasts with assafcetida, so
that the child at its first sucking and ever afterwards
associated the disgusting smell with her milk, her smiles, her
fondlings, her caresses, there would probably be no more
pleasing odour in the world to it as long as it lived. Not as
a mere sensation of smell, but as a vague expansive excita-
tion of blended sense and sentiment imbued with the silent
memories of a mother's care and love. Then even in old age
a whiff of the once familiar scent would revive mixed
memories of hardly distinguishable sensation and perception
that seemed lost in oblivion, and strike a tone of feeling
suffusing and surprising with a pleasing sadness the world-
weary old man.
Bring the aged and disillusioned cynic, soured and seared
in the sore strife of life, into the ivyclad village church,
where as a little child he learnt to kneel by his mother's
knee and felt the silken rustle of her dress, and let him hear
the music of the sacred chaunt or hymn which he was wont to
hear then, and he cannot choose but be thrilled with a tender
solemnity of feeling, diffuse and sweetly sad, such as no
other experience in life could ever give him. What he was
then when thrilled with the vague enchantment of hope,
what he is now after life's hardening experience and harsh
disillusionments ; the present and the past in mixture and
contrast of solemn feeling — these sound the hidden chords of
memory and strike the note of a strange and bitter-sweet
melancholy.
The deep-reaching effects of wont or custom to change,
almost transform, a nature, though acknowledged in the
general, hardly obtain due appreciation in the particular;
not in respect of the particular mental whole only, but also
of the several particulars which enter into its construction
and texture. Circumstances cannot transubstantiate a nature,
it is true; but their manifold varieties, being adapted to
develop one or another of the several facets of a mind,
count for much in the formal development of it. To assume,
as is sometimes tacitly done, that everybody who is not
234 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
manifestly deficient mentally comes into the world endowed
with faculties which put it in his power voluntarily to be,
when he chooses, what he is when he is at his best and
circumstances are propitious, that is the very climax of
optimistic fatuity. Take the best-endowed infant of the
most civilized parents in Christendom, and place it from
its birth in a tribe of Red Indians or lower savages to be
reared exclusively by them, the product would be a Red
Indian or the like in modes of thought, feeling and conduct ;
for the child would easily lose by want of use any superficial
and loose-fixed aptitudes to the conquests of culture which
it might have inherited, and revert to the deeper, more fixed
and stable qualities of the human animal. In like manner
if a child be born and bred among the savages of civilization
— a nowise negligible quantity in any country — it witnesses
necessarily to its bad birth and training ; not that it reverts
to the comparatively crude simplicities of Indian savagery,
for it probably exhibits worse, because degenerate, qualities
representing the corruptions of what was innately better in
it ; and inasmuch as these depravations are brutally insti-
gated by the fundamental animal instincts, they then present
a rather hideous human spectacle. Nay, the very qualities
of mind perchance present in such a child, which might in
propitious surroundings have grown to a lofty height of
honourable distinction, are then ambitiously perverted to the
bad use of excelling in vice and of pride in the performance ;
so that an eminence is reached as criminal which might in
other conditions have been heroic.
Because the child's mind is nearly a blank, and because it
has a strong initiative instinct, there is no limit to its young
credulity ; such being the effects of early and systematic
special training that it may be taught to think and believe just
what is wished. It is a matter only of exciting to function
and by repetition fixing in structure the cerebral reflexes of
a selected pattern of mind. When the cerebral area has been
diligently filled with such organized reflexes, any conflicting
or opposing reflex having been studiously excluded, then a
VIII MENTAL INTONATION 235
product is brought about which functions according to its
structure and cannot function otherwise. Therefore, there is
not the least reason to be surprised when a mind instructed
or constructed carefully and wholly on one system of think-
ing and feeling cannot think and feel on a different system
— when a mind, for instance, built on lines of theological
dogmas and so preoccupied with a set structure is quite in-
sensible to the principles and method of scientific knowledge,
and with the best will in the world only debases when it
would embrace them. The earnest aim of the most logical
Christian sect is advisedly and sedulously to preoccupy the
ground by building up betimes a special religious structure of
mind, before reason's time of development, so as to prevent
reason from ever getting root there and developing fully;
whence the unswerving claim to conduct the entire education
of its children in its sectarian system of belief, and the solemn
prohibition against adult reason meddling with the reserved
area of mind sacredly devoted to matters of faith. Thus it is
that the Roman Catholic type of mind is assiduously con-
structed and thereafter persistently nourished by ordinances
of prayer, meditation, and ceremonial observances carefully
devised and adapted to animate and sustain the ordained
functions of thinking and feeling : to believe nothing which is
contrary to reason except in matters of faith, where it is
necessary to believe blindly and servilely however contrary
to reason the required belief, that is the fundamental principle
of its construction. The number of Roman Catholics in the
world at the present day affords ample proof how successful
the process of mental manufacture continues to be.
As the individual is built up and held together as a social
being by the special social environment in which he is bred
and grows to maturity and in communion with which he
lives, which is in, through, and around him — an organ, good
or bad, of it essentially — the associations of feelings and ideas
are naturally pleasing to him which signify the ease, main-
tenance and growth of his social nature, and, as naturally,
strange and opposing experiences are unpleasing and repug-
236 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
nant because they clash with the order of his mental structure
and cause unease. He thinks them bad or foolish or inferior,
though they may be better and wiser than those which he
has grown to in his own social medium, and it repugns him to
conform to them. If, peradventure, he adapt himself
thoroughly to them, then he grows to be like those who live
in them ; not much otherwise than as when the head of the
Hydra polype is cut off the cut end becomes a foot if allowed
to attach itself to a rock, a head when it is left to float freely
in the water.
Such a great transformation, however, is possible only in
organic matter at an early and low stage of being when it is
mobile, pliant and plastic ; in the developmental complexities
of human nature differences harden by degrees and get fixed
structurally, and primal structureless plasticity is limited. It
is notorious that racial and even national distinctions, them-
selves the immemorial products of organic manufacture,
divide peoples more than the moral cement of a common
humanity unites them, and of course divides them the more
the less moral they are. Religious creeds, too, which are like-
wise manufactured articles, not only separate men into
different mental kinds on earth, but have the amazing
pretension to separate them through eternity ; each creed
being the expression of the deep feeling of sectarian unity is
necessarily the strongest bar to human unity ; which is a
tolerably conclusive argument that religions must die before
religion can be. Moreover, as not one in ten thousand persons
of a community ever thinks of the real meaning of what he
thinks, feels and does, but mechanically receives and expresses
that which the social system grafts in and engraves on him,
performing automatically, while perceiving not, the reason
which may be implied in it — and that so necessarily that he
believes it all to be in the order of nature and cannot conceive
it otherwise — therefore to think, feel and do as he is thus
inspired seems natural, to do differently monstrous and un-
natural. All which works well for the peace and stability of
the social economy ; for if everybody went about curiously
VIII MENTAL INTONATION 237
and closely to reflect on his position in it and to examine
critically why he should be content to occupy it, instead of
tame acquiescence there might be an ugly upheaval and
dislocation of social order.
Here a brief stay may fitly be made for the purpose of
apprehending clearly and formulating distinctly that which
is a constant law of mental development. It is this : that
the effects of associations of ideas and movements nowise end
with the mere concatenation of them whereby one idea or
movement calls another into concomitant or sequent action ;
on the contrary, that every consolidated system of thought
develops its appropriate effluence of feeling. When a definite
system of ideas has been formed and practised in relation to
a class of objects, conditions and relations of life, and so finiily
organized as to be subconscious, a special tone or flavour of
feeling is generated which is a sensible emanation when they
are unconscious — an emotional spirit or essence of them, so
to speak — and, being attended with an intuitive judgment in
relation to their objects, resents ideas at variance with them
as an instantly repugnant jar to feeling as well as thought.
To say that the illumination of feeling imparts the sublime
intuition, as is the religious wont, is to err by overlooking the
composition of thought which has gone before the feeling.
Such composition of thought and effluence of feeling being
nowise a conscious process, but belonging to the organic pro-
cess of subconscious formation in the brain, it naturally
results that the metaphysical moralist is quite at sea when
he tries to probe into the depths of mind and find out the
beginnings and base of the moral sentiment.
Moral sensibility is not a matter of mere feeling any more
than is sensibility to good manners ; its formation implies an
antecedent organization of refined apprehensions, whence the
variety of social sentiments rising in scale up to moral sense
The instinctive repugnance to filth which a sound sanitary
sense feels was not infixed as a ready-made sense, it has
been gradually and partially acquired, and is still in process
of acquisition, by the organization in cerebral structure of
238 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
systematic apprehensions and reflections — by improved know-
ledge in despite almost of natural instinct. Compelled at
last, after long and stubborn resistance, to admit the exist-
ence of unconscious mental processes, psychology does nothing
more meanwhile with organized thought than drop it into
the void of the unconscious mind, not minding any more what
happens to it there ; it may be expected, perhaps, in the ful-
ness of time, to perceive and own that while thought is
invisible extension cerebral organization is visible thought.
Be that as it may, the association of ideas in definite classes
of thought which goes on from the very foundations of mind
in sense, upwards in ascending scale to the highest mental
inflorescence, certainly is not a mere ligation of ideas, it is
such a fusion or union of them as develops the appropriate
mental intuition and fit flavour of feeling.
Take another and simple illustration of the physiological
process: when the old hunter, as it jogs quietly with its
rider along the lane, instantly pricks up its ears on hear-
ing the distant cry of the hounds in pursuit of the fox,
quivering all over with excitement and eager to start off at
a gallop, it shows a memory like that of the aged cynic who,
thrilled with ancient feeling, bows low his head to the
superstition which he reverenced in his childhood. The
horse might show similar restlessness which is suddenly
startled by a strange cry heard close at hand, or meets a
tame bear for the first time on the highway ; but it would
not then be thrilled with the special feeling derived from
experience incorporate as silent memory and now revived
by the special stimulus.
The enunciation of the doctrine of the association of ideas
was undoubtedly a distinct advance in psychology when it
was first made, seeing that it brought speculation down
from the clouds nearer to the realities of things, and so
gave form and body to it. But it did not bring it down to
contact with the basic facts. Much was made to rest on
association of ideas, but it was not explained on what such
association itself rested — that was left unsupported, the
VIII MENTAL INTONATION 239
process of association being converted into a sort of meta-
physical principle which thereafter did duty as agent.
Seeking the analogy and lesson of the association of ideas
in the mode of association of movements and the ensuing
structural nervous organization, as we may rightly do, the
process is seen to be one of gradual nervous organization
progressing in speciality and complexity from the simple and
general ; for which reason it comes to pass that just as the
fit experiment or disease severing the connecting nerve-
tracks of two movements destroys the association of them,
thus erazing the memory of their co-operation, so may a
similar fit experiment or disease sever the association-track of
two ideas and thus eraze their memory. Having been dis-
membered, so to speak, they cannot, unless re-membered or re-
collected by repair of damaged track or substitution of a
collateral track, take their place in mental function as
remembrance or recollection. The individual is as impotent
to think them together as he is impotent to join in action
the two severed movements. In abolished movement as in
abolished mind there is essentially the same loss of memory,
albeit on a lower physiological plane. Man being funda-
mentally an organic mechanism, mentally as well as physic-
ally, though the mental mechanism undoubtedly implies a
yet inscrutably fine and complex physics, his mind is sound
when its mechanism is sound, lame when it is lamed, lost
when it is destroyed. Moreover, its mechanism may be well
or ill constructed, and intoned with good or bad quality of
feeling.
240 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Ill
EXPERIENCE
Experience must be vital to be instruction — The inexperience of youth
and the experience of age — The hurtful provokes attention and
inquiry — The historian without practical experience of men —
Beliefs and scientific theories which are not based on experience —
The fool and the wise man — Failure in an evil environment not
blameworthy — The quenching of enthusiasm by experience — The
solid wisdom of proverbs — A systematic exposition of proverbs —
Experience the basis of sound psychology.
That experience is the best teacher is a truism enshrined
in the sayings of all peoples. It is, to be sure, the only
efficient teacher, for it is a notable rarity for any one to profit
by the experience which has not been self-made — to make
his own in fact that which has gone to make another. Now
to speak so is only to say in other words that the experience
must be taken to heart, made a vital part of the mental
structure, not known only by the head but felt by the heart ;
the thing so vitally apprehended and fitly reacted to as to
become a definite cerebral reflex, an organic plank in the
mental structure, so to speak, a solid instruction. So formed,
the instructed reflex or notion then responds by the fit grasp
of instant apprehension on the proper occasion ; if not so
formed, the appealing would-be-instruction appeals in vain,
passes unregarded, elicits no real apprehension, because there
is no fit structure within to respond to its stimulus. To
think a thought vitally without experience is no more
feasible than to do an act well which has not been done
before ; the thought must be living, life in mind, not merely
float in it as a vague phantom ; in feat of thought as in feat
of action learning comes by doing. Then itself an organic
possession, it is the nucleus and means of further instruction ;
though it seem to be unrelated, isolated, useless, it never is
so, for soon or late, shooting out or receiving impulses, it gets
viii EXPERIENCE 241
its fit connections and may irradiate a whole province of
knowledge.
If youth could take up the ^visdom of age where age leaves
it off, without having to go through the tedious experience
needed to acquire and structuralize it in its own mental
organization, the progress of humanity in its tedious travail
upwards might doubtless be much faster and the unknown
end sooner reached. But that would mean a full inheritance
of acquired faculty which nature has denied to mortals.
Though in respect of such skilful feat as the art of sucking,
and at a later period of life the singular art of procreation, it
has endowed them with the aptly instructed instincts, its
present will manifestly being that they should not fail to
maintain and continue the species, its rule is that other
wisdom should not be so inherited ; either because it would
not have wisdom increase too fast among men for fear that
they might not then be beguiled by their illusions gladly to
go on striving, or because it would be wrong to stereotype
much of that which, though one generation counts it wisdom,
a succeeding generation discovers to be un>visdom. In pro-
portioning, as it has done, the sequent seasons of youth and
age in a human life, it has no doubt done best to secure the
gradual process of the species in the right mean , for as the
qualities of youth and age, although both necessary for such
progress, are so different and incompatible that they could
not coexist in the same person at the same time, their re-
spective periods are thereby so distributed and proportioned
as to obtain the full benefit of both in the life-work.
The wisdom of the race is the slowly gained product of its
pains and toils : because men have suffered they have striven
actively and purposively to avoid suffering. To s hun what is
hurtful is the obvious motive of self-preservation ; for as
that which hurts is pain or evil it necessarily provokes
attention, inquiry, and active efforts to elude it, whereas
that which is not hurtful, being pleasant and placidly
accepted, provokes no such close inquiry and active endeavours.
It is to unease, discontents, pains, conflicts therefore that
E
242 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the impulses and actions issuing in the sciences, arts, and in-
dustries are fundamentally due, and these gradually evolved.
Nature has goaded rather than enticed men to progress,
forcing them to bethink and bestir themselves to find out
what hurts and what helps them and to make profitable use
of their knowledge. And as it is in physical so it is in social
nature. The good qualities of the species, were they uniform
and universal, would leave society in a perpetual content,
peace and repose ; there would be no need to guard against or
counteract them, nothing to do but quietly enjoy or endure
them ; but the bad qualities, causing a constant unrest and
fermentj necessitate unceasing efforts to prevent and thwart
them, whence the inventions of manifold commandments,
codes of law, conventions, prescriptions, customs, and the
like. Because that which hurts provokes keen attention, it
comes to pass too that wrongs are remembered and benefits
forgotten, and that while gratitude is rare and transient,
resentment is apt to be frequent and lasting. To feel grati-
tude for that which, being naturally and quickly absorbed
into the growth of self, becomes its being and seems its own,
requires such retrospective reflection and effort as a narrow
soul is incapable of; whereas that which offends and hurts
the self, hindering or lessening its being, is immediately
resented, and the more keenly the narrower the egoism.
How shadowy and empty is the knowledge of human
nature which is got by only reading about it ! There is
hardly anything in the world more fanciful and false than
the grave judgments passed on men and things by the
historians and the philosophers of the closet who meditate
abstractly on them at their ease, having themselves had little
or 'no active commerce with and experience of real men by
mixing and competing with them in affairs and thus learning
how they actually feel, think and act ; for which reason it is
quite natural that no two of them ever agree. The philo-
sophical result in such case is an elaborate tissue of barren
abstractions and speculative generalities which yield no
real instruction ; the historical result, a theoretical exposi-
VIII EXPERIENCE 243
tion of motives and conduct which is no better than the
fanciful ftibric of inadequately informed and prejudiced
imagination : products which, like painted fruits, only look
beautiful.
Wonderful it is to watch the austere and solemn pedantry
with Avhich this type of historian criticizes and blames the
benighted ancient or the primeval savage because he did
not apply the rules of modern parliamentary procedure to
the government of his country or his tribe, or gravely
censures the statesman who in dealing practically with men
and things reckons with and manages them as they are
really, not as they ideally should be. Ludicrous again is it
to see how the great actor in great events, who perhaps did
not see far beyond his nose, or acted from the meanest motive,
or was influenced by such a medley of obscure motives that
he could not himself tell what his efficient motive was, is
pictured as having discerned clearly, devised deliberately,
and steadily prosecuted with farseeing aim and consistent
endeavour some definite plan of action to accomplish that
which he did achieve ; the sober truth being that if the man
had not been wiser unconsciously than he could consciously
explain, or perhaps more foolish or knavish than he could
rationally excuse, he would never have fulfilled his great
mission. History being for the most part, as it has been
truly said, little more than fiction, in which while names,
dates, places and events are real, the rest is imagination
and should be read as such, it is not so truly informing as
the well conceived drama or novel in which, though every-
thing is confessedly fictitious, the instructed imagination of
the great author knows how to lie truthfully.
As it is with historical so it is with scientific theories
which are not based on and proved by observation and
experiment ; they are then vague, hollow, speculative, un-
informed by the reality mth which a close and firm hold
on facts can alone imbue them, and ought at best to be used
only as provisional hypotheses or directive guesses. Whereas
speculation is always cheap and easy, neither coming from
244 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
nor working on the heart, the lessons of experience are not
to be bought cheaply at any stall — they must be wrung at
much cost from the heart and the head. Every vital belief
imports feeling as well as thought, being no mere pictured
conception but a welded product ; when clear and sound, it
is right thought imbued with right feeling. Persons often
think and say they believe when they really believe not at
all, or only believe half-heartedly, or just imagine that they
believe ; therefore they are content to rest in conventions,
vague generalities, lifeless phrases, insincerities and hypo-
crisies of thought and speech, taking them seriously without
minding so to test them by experience as to find out what
they really mean.
A constant tendency of habitually accepted truths or
opinions is to harden and at last to become so rigid that
they lose their living quality or power, after which they are
repeated by rote A\'ithout thought of their vital meaning ; for
which reason they need to be put into other language or
translated into action in order to become matters of experi-
ence and have their meaning freshly perceived. Thence it
frequently falls out that a person himself thinks and is
thought to express a new thought when he only vivifies an
old thought by putting it into new language or demonstrates
its working in a particular case. The novelty of the form
startles the custom-dulled mind into a vital apprehension of
the substance.
As the present is a natural development of the past, and
the future in due course proceeds from it by natural develop-
ment, so present knowledge is the product of past experi-
ence, being vitally rooted in it, and grows to new knowledge
by continuity of organic process. The fool all his life long
is he who, profiting not by experience, since it cannot take
vital hold of him, and blind to the inexorable sequence of
things, always looks for the causes of his failures and follies
everywhere but in himself Is he perchance fortunate ? His
self-love ascribes his good luck to his merits. Is he un-
fortunate ? He ascribes his misfortune to bad luck, not to
VIII EXPERIENCE 245
his demerits. For the life of him he cannot see the past
nor foresee the future in the present. Therefore when he
fails he is full of excuses which are accusations, of ex-
planations which are condemnations, and has not the least
suspicion that it is because he is a fool that he needs
them, and that he is a fool to use them. Always it is some
unlucky circumstance, be it ever so trivial or incidental, but
for which the misfortune would not have happened, when all
the while the very circumstance which he accuses was owing
to his own slovenly attention, indolent carelessness, impatient
temper, or loose and straggling application. Just the con-
trary is it with the wise man who, if he be not formed by
his faults and failures, at all events observes, studies, and
uses them for self-formation. Thus it is that while wisdom
can teach folly nothing folly may teach wisdom much.
Is the cause of failure then always in the individual ?
That would be true no doubt in most cases if it were his
duty always to get on well with his kind and to succeed in
whatsoever surroundings he might chance to be placed.
Yet to fail in bad times and in a corrupt environment might
from a purely ethical standpoint be a praise rather than a
blame to him. The good seed which by ill chance is wafted on
to barren ground, what can it do but fail to grow well ? There
are times and circumstances when what the world wants is
not the good man who is meek, modest, and tenderly scru-
pulous, but the strong man who is coarse, bold, and fiercely
unscrupulous ; for it is not yet gi'own so moral as to be able
to do without devil's work in it : in a garden overgrown
with rank and noxious weeds, it would be ridiculous ruth to
spare the weeds and to sow good seeds ; the right thing to do
is ruthlessly and thoroughly to extirpate the weeds, as the
good gardener diligently does. After all is said, it is not
the person of tender moral feeling, commonly reckoned an
amiable impracticable, but the person of coarser fibre, the
approved man of the world, who succeeds in its practical
life and is crowned by it.
Experience in its capacity of stern master implacably
246 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
moulds the individual to the approved social pattern and
rigorously crushes his vagrant enthusiasms and impulses.
It would not go well with the world if the conduct of it were
in the hands of the young vaunting in their youthful zeal
and serenely sure that they were rightly inspired and inflamed;
but it is a little sad perhaps to see how surely prosaic ex-
perience quenches the ardent fire, the naive and generous
enthusiasms, the frank sincerity and expansive confidence,
the brilliant hopes and buoyant audacity of youth, and sternly
enforces a quite unheroic accommodation to the mean interests
and intrigues, the reserves and reticences, the deceits and
calculated prudences, the common-place maxims and con-
ventions, and the polite hypocrisies of social life ; so that the
grown man, fitly moulded and shaped, at last looks back in
amazement, perhaps with tingling ears or blush of shame, at
the frank simplicities and enthusiasms of his immaturity.
Nevertheless his follies may have proceeded from his virtues :
he acted foolishly because he naively believed that the true
and good were not ideals only but real. The smiling and
kindly contemptuous indulgence shown by old age to the
enthusiasms and follies of youth is the indulgence shown
to inexperience and illusion ment by the experience and
disillusionment of life ; it is like the half-contemptuous, half-
admiring indulgence which Sancho Panza, einbodying the
proverbial wisdom of homely experience, showed to the
idealistic and chivalrous extravagances of Don Quixote.
Were any one to preserve the qualities of youth through
manhood — immaturity in maturity, that is to say — he would
certainly be no success, probably a flagrant failure, though he
might then console himself by thinking that it was nobler to
soar on the fine wings of enthusiasm than to creep on the
base feet of calculation.
He who could quietly assimilate the wisdom contained in
the pregnant axioms, adages, maxims and proverbs which
concisely sum the essence of human experience, without
having to make it his own vitally by living it himself, might
be a wonderful philosopher before he began to live actively
viH EXPERIENCE 247
among men, or without ever leaving his closet to live among
them. The pity of it is that he realizes the truth of the
proverb only by application after he has made the experience,
when he can use it to instruct him not how to act but rather
how to endure. But the proverb is not therefore profitless :
in the first place, its terse and pregnant sentence, well-
tempered and sharp-pointed, penetrates easily and illumines
into clear understanding that which previously was lurking
obscure and undefined in his mind ; in the second place, it
comforts and helps him by revealing to him that he is not
alone and exceptional, whether in ill fortune, in which it is
an abatement of sorrow by soothing self-love to have fellow-
sufferers, or in good fortune, in which it may temper his
pride to have fellow-sharers, but in common case with his
kind ; and, thirdly, being short and pithy, it sticks in and is
easily recalled to mind. Not one in ten thousand persons
can pursue a line of reasoning link after link from the
premiss to the concatenated end and draw the logical con-
clusion ; whereas the right proverb in which this is done and
registered involves no labour of sequent thinking, but is
ready at hand for use on the required occasion. After all, it
is not wdsdom any more than moral truth which is wanting
in the world ; ample store of it is laid up in compact maxims
available for use w^hen needed ; what is wanted is the apt
knowledge and application of it at the right juncture, and
therein the sage proverb or adage is helpful.
Here may be made another reflection : as the proverb
represents the concentrated experience of the race, so the
words by which it is expressed represent the definite cerebral
structure which has been gradually acquired by the human
brain through the ages to embody and utter it. That which
is expressed outwardly in function of wisdom has its physical
counterpart in that which is contained inwardly in structure.
Therefore it is that the human brain notably possesses special
convolutions which are absent in the highest animal brains,
and defective or absent sometimes in the lowest specimens
of the human brain ; they are the incarnations of its
248 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
experience through the ages. In vain would the simplest
proverb be spoken to the wisest creature of the simian
species, because it has not the requisite structure within to
receive and respond to it, and in vain is wisdom spoken to
the natural fool who is similarly destitute.
One may wonder that it has never occurred to some
curious psychologist, leaving his abstractions and generalities,
carefully to ponder the proverbs of all nations and to set
forth the wisdom of them in a learned and systematic way ;
for he might then produce a body of philosophy and morals
which, springing from the experience and meeting the actual
wants and instincts of human nature, imbued too with the
modes of their repression, regulation, guidance and gratifica-
tion in the course of social development, would probably be
of more value than most of the disquisitions and specula-
tions, philosophical and ethical, with which the world has
been and still is laboriously deluged. All the more surely
too if he took exact account of the various kinds and degrees
of crime and of the special laws enacted to check and punish
them, considering well what faulty mental states they
denoted and what were the means thought necessary to
correct them.
If it be thought incredible that many learned men
possessed of great mental powers should still be diligently
employed all their lives in barren speculations, neglecting the
basic facts of experience, it will not be amiss to call to mind
how much ingenuity, what keen subtlety and great power of
reasoning, and what learned labour men of such exceptional
intellectual powers as St. Thomas x\quinas, Dun Scotus and
other great schoolmen once bestowed on barren discussions,
which were useful only in so far as they served as means of
intellectual exercise and skill, and it would be thought waste
of time and mind to dispute about now. As is amply
proved by the history of every science, want of experience of
things about which they speculated eager and actively has
notoriously never yet hindered men from speculation and
from a delirious delight in their gymnastic exercises.
vm TRUTH 249
IV
Truth
What is truth ? The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth — Truths perish as well as prevail — Wisdom and folly
reciprocally necessary — Free development of thought — Feeling
more fundamental than reason — Truth beneficial to society in the
long run— Eflicacy of the lie — Comparison of truth and light —
Innate love of truth — The relativity of truth.
If it was a "jesting Pilate," as Bacon says, who asked
What is truth ? he asked a wiser question in jest than
philosophy has yet answered in earnest, and if, as Bacon
adds, he would not wait for an answer, it was perhaps
because he might be waiting still had he lived to wait
so long.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
that is what the witness in a Court of Justice is solemnly
sworn to speak. Yet how straight and swift a dissolution
of society would ensue were the injunction obeyed strictly
in human intercourse. So special and formidable is the
obligation to speak the whole truth that it is reserved for
Courts of Justice and requires the solemn belief and
invocation of supernatural oversight to help without at all
ensuring its fulfilment. It was a pretty conceit therefore
on his part who translated the maxim in vino Veritas thus
— that a man must be drunk to be mad enough to speak
the truth.
A soothing adage declares that truth is great and will
prevail, that once known it does not perish. It is a saying
which need not be questioned if only it be understood that
when the thing prevails not it thereby proves itself not to
be truth. The sober truth is that truth often fails to prevail
and that kno\vn truths are not seldom lost. As the persons
who really understand and can defend them are few, they
250 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
are in precarious case when left to the protection of the
many who embrace them by prescription and corrupt them
by their embraces. Moreover, error and prejudice have their
habit of stubborn survival ; though regularly destroyed in
the course of progress, they fail not regularly to revive, albeit
in somewhat different guise and new garbs ; for the expan-
sions and specializations of the fields of knowledge inevitably
multiply the occasions of their recurrence in new places and
circumstances. As long indeed as men are prone to believe
that which they desire or fear, which they will do while desire
and fear last, so long will they be liable to believe wrongly ;
for belief does not signify the white light of pure intellect
untinctured by feeling — the lumen siccum of Heraclitus or
' dry light ' of Bacon — it implies feeling fulfilling itself well
or ill in thought and deed through the fit intellectual means
or mechanism. All sorts of feeling and beliefs have their
rights of existence in human nature just as all sorts of colours
and forms in organic nature. Hitherto in human story folly
has run a pretty equal race with wisdom ; though the one
has had chief sway at one time or place, yet the wisdom of
to-day has been the folly of to-morrow and in the end neither
has gained a sure and lasting supremacy of dominion any-
where.
Wisdom and folly might no doubt do without one another
if only they could exist independently, which they manifestly
cannot do. A world of entire wisdom would be sure to be
wrecked by its own prevailing and unopposed force ; as
surely indeed as the existing universe would be wrecked by
the sole and exclusive action of the one force of attraction.
Indeed, the wise man has perhaps more need of the fool than
the fool has of the wise man ; for while the way of progress
has been opened by the insight of the discerning person who
has defied or used the prejudices and passions of the crowd,
their unreflecting force having needed his illumination, his
discernment has still needed their blind force to make and
keep open the path. To know will avail little without the
power to act : the hundred eyes of Argus to see need to be
VIII TRUTH 251
supplemented by the hundred hands of Briareus to do. The
attitude of the vulgar mind towards a new truth is always
much the same — hate and distrust of it at first as something
strange, suspicious, without precedent, dangerous; to be
followed in due course by blind and perhaps abject adoration
of that which it has accepted without understanding and
admired the more the less it was understood, faith being
wilfully glad sometimes to find wisdom in the folly of the
understanding.
A genuine thinker has to think as though he were almost
alone in the world ; not by authority or fashion, nor thinking
what others think of what he thinks, but by quiet mental
digestion of the material which he has diligently and intelli-
gently gathered. Nay, to think best, he had best not recol-
lect that he is in company with himself; for if he think of
himself as thinking, and let not the thing speak spontaneously
in his think, he runs great risk of spoiling his thought.
Liberty of thought is no less necessary than strength of
thought, for what good is strength employed in the service
of tyrdnny ? And what greater tyranny is there than that
of vulgar opinion, which is all the more effective the more
ignorant the slave is of his thrall ? Let a man go the way
of his nature if he have aught in him worth developing,
even though the mob howl in protest or the heavens fall.
If he thinks amiss and goes wrong, nature charges itself
with the due rectifications and compensations.
Though reason be so noble and vaunted a faculty, it is
still not the moving force of mind. Not to bow^ before
authority nor to accept a principle except so far as it is
established by reason, that is a fine-sounding maxim of proud
self-reliance, Avhich, however, overrates the rdle and value of
reason in human affairs. A general faculty of reason is an
abstraction, not a real thing ; there are as many particular
reasons as there are particular minds and particular exercises
of mind in the different domains of thought and situations
of life ; and always the whole and strong reason is a rarity
of nature. Besides, the brave maxim has this fundamental
252 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
flaw: it does not justify men in going on living. Neither
does it account for nor justify falling in love, as people do,
wisely or foolishly, by secret attraction, perhaps at first sight
by overpowering elective affinity, and then propagating their
kind on earth without the least thought why, or the least
regard to consequences. Reason only devises the means,
nowise supplies the motor principle of living and loving.
In the composition of a strong character which, true to itself,
goes resolutely the way of its natural development is con-
tained more than a high and comprehensive reason.
Although habitual and excellent use is made of the lie in
all grades of its development, yet it is properly condemned
in principle because, if useful for the moment, it is deemed
hurtful in the long run ; whereas truth, if hurtful at the
time, is beneficial in the long run. The pity of it is that
the run is so long ; for so it often comes to pass that the
individual who suffered martyrdom in the cause of truth
has been dead a hundred years before the world perceives
that he was an atonement for it and ought to be adored.
Truth's great triumph now concerns him not who, being not
now, cannot heed it, whereas his triumph through the lie
when he was in being would have concerned and served him
much.
It is not to be denied that men overrate the power of
truth in the general and underrate the power of the lie in
the particular, being wont to talk as if the former was a
constant, beneficent and all-potent force, the latter an occa-
sional maleficent and transient force ; for they would fain
have the lie to be pure devil's work and sterile. A lie breeds
opinion, as Bacon says ; opinion actuates doing, and doing
makes history ; and human history, individual and national,
would surely have been far other than what it is had the lie
not wrought so largely as it has done. Besides, truth is not,
as its loud laud assumes, a constant something ; it is a variable
product ; it is invariable only as an abstraction, differing
actually in the concrete in different times and places, for
VIII TRUTH 253
different individuals, and for the same individual at different
seasons ; wherefore to estimate it practically recourse must
be had to a common standard based on the general experience
of mankind at its best. The rule which the best collective
organization of humanity prescribes and practices as the
right rule of development, that is the living truth for it.
Yet to apply such high truth to the loose organization of a
tribe of primitive savages who need a much lower truth
would be a colossal untruth.
The likening of truth to light is a trite comparison : truth
is intellectual and moral light. When it shines brightly the
groping mortal sees his way, avoids wrong turns, runs not
against obstacles nor falls into a ditch ; which is to say that
he thinks clearly, avoids errors of thought, shuns impractic-
able paths, is not entangled in the snares of words, yields not
to the seductions of bias — in fact, keeps clear of the common
and potent causes of bad reasoning. Withal, the light of
truth, like physical light, is not good only by dispelling
darkness and illumining the road, but, like sunlight, it is
positively beneficial to health. For as the light of the sun
is directly hostile to miasmata, ba.cteria, and like secret and
pestilent enemies of the body and directly quickens its
energies, so mental light contributes positively to health
and wealth of mind, not only by killing superstitions, false
prejudices, and the like mental poisons, but by positively
healthful influence on the whole intellectual and moral life
which it animates and exalts. As there are notoriously
persons and classes of persons who love darkness because
their deeds are evil, so likewise there are persons and
classes of persons who shun intellectual light because the
concealing darkness serves to protect and nurture their
prejudices and the profitable mysteries of their crafts. Not
that all who shun intellectual light do so wilfully because
their intents are deliberately evil ; some do it instinctively
and self- protectively because their weak mental vision cannot
bear its rays ; others out of pure indolence of a sluggish
254 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
nature averse to exert itself actively ; some again cannot
overcome a sensitive and selfish dislike to have their minds
disquieted by doubt ; others of set purpose refuse to think
beyond the ruts of convention, because they conscientiously
persuade themselves that the authoritative upholding of
certain false beliefs by them is for the good of the people
at their present stage of development. All which hindrances
to the rapid diffusion of truth, sad as they might seem, are
yet conservative helps that serve well to maintain the
stability of society which always rests most firmly on a
solid basis of ignorance.
No one can have a full, fixed, constant love of truth if the
liking of it be not thoroughly ingrained in his nature. When
such liking is instinct in him he cannot ever be indifferent
to truth, cannot choose but pursue it for his own comfort, is
uneasy if he is not on its trail. On the other hand, when the
intrinsic affinity is not in him he is indifferent whether he is
on the right path or not, is not disquieted by doubt, has no
painful self-questionings, nay, joyously pursues a wrong path.
Men then blame the immoral function when they ought
rather to bewail the ill-fashioned machinery ; for the lack of
the liking for truth is the effect and exponent of a structural
inability to assimilate it.
After all is said it comes to this, that truth is only a term
of human relation, absolute truth a pure abstraction : there
is nothing absolutely true, or if there be, a limited and
relative being cannot know it. That beyond all Avhich he
can know, little or much, there is an infinitely great and
infinitesimally small which he cannot know is as plain and
simple a truth as that he cannot fly to Sirius nor creep into
a molecule, and needs no more wondering comment. Know-
ledge being the product of the fixed and definite interactions
of the self with the surrounding not-self grows in specialty
and complexity as they grow more special and complex ; it
is therefore always capable of gradual improvement and
increase, never a finality. To suppose that any under-
VIII TRUTH 255
standing can ever comprehend the universe is to make the
ridiculous supposition that a part can comprehend the
whole ; it is to suppose that a local and limited mental
organization can adapt itself exactly and perfectly to the
infinitely numerous and various facets, mighty and minute,
of the cosmos, whereas the very condition of any and all
knowledge is that it is a severance from the whole, and at
the best the severance of an infinitesimal fraction only.
CHAPTER IX
EDUCATION— MENTAL CULTURE— CHARACTER
I
EDUCATION
Mental mechanism constructed by education — The innate forces of
individual character — The beginnings of ills to be stopped — The
mischief done by parental partiality — Educational effects of
custom — The evils of early over-cramming — Uniform scholastic
methods — The use of special studies to correct special faults — Wry
minds sometimes must grow awry — Psychological ignorance and
ignoring of organic structure and function — Unconscious education
by the environment — Education in knowledge of physical nature —
Education in relation to body politic and social — The pi*actical
instruction of reason — The danger of little knowledge— Man not
rational but potentially rational — Over-estimation of the value of
education — Good use of such over-estimation.
How ancient the conviction of the uses of education to
perfect human nature, yet how partial, inconstant, and in-
consistent the various changing systems framed and em-
ployed for the purpose, and how diverse the products •
Moulding themselves sedulously after so many different
patterns into so many organic machines to repeat automati-
cally that which they have been carefully constructed or
instructed to feel, think, and do, men are yet surprised that
they agree not wholly in nature, are not of one heart and mind,
feel and think and act so differently. Having done that,
too, from time immemorial, and thereby built different racial
CH. IX EDUCATION 257
structures of mind, they naively wonder at the strong and
apparently ineradicable racial sympathies and antipathies
which separate them. It were as wise a wonder that each
special type of machine performs its own functions and not
those of machines constructed on quite different models to
perform different functions. Yet as there can at last be
but one perfect type of human development, the perfect-
ing of the race by means of education will be done only
when all people on earth adopt the same system which
they agree to be the best, and then agree to apply steadily
and uniformly from generation to generation and from age
to age to the final effacement of racial characteristics of
mind.
The stronger the native forces of individual character
and capacity the greater is the need of education to rule
and direct them well in a complex society, for being bound
to spend themselves somehow in work, they must run other-
wise to bad issues : the large force poured as feeling into
the tracks of the mental organization will discharge itself
along such as are available. The great criminal in a civi-
lized society represents power gone amiss which another
education and training might sometimes have guided to a
respectable eminence ; for which reason the greater the sin-
ner the greater the saint when, baser converted into better
nature, sinner turns saint. Strong feeling is a force of ex-
cellent social use in a state when it is not unruly and tur-
bulent, but is wisely subdued and ruled to right channels of
working. For the rest, too, the state, like a becalmed yacht,
is in a poor way when it has not force of feeling to fill its
sails.
If there are manifest defects of the mental organization
which no education can rectify, just as there are irremediable
defects of the bodily structure — variously crooked minds, as
there are variously crooked bodies — it is no less manifest that
there are mental faults which may be mended by suitable train-
ing, if only their beginnings be discerned keenly and the proper
means steadily applied to counteract them in the germ. To
258 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
counteract happily in the germ is oftentimes quite to cancel
mischief. What a host of ills in every province of life
would be prevented were men to give just heed to watch
and stop their beginnings when it imports most and is most
easy to check them ! That is wherein the wise man differs
mainly from the fool everywhere and in all things ; foresee-
ing effects in their causes, when they are preventable, he
prevents them ; whereas the fool only feels, without even
then recognizing, causes in their effects, when the unfore-
seen mischief is done and there is no remedy. It is during
the first years of life then that the arrest of bad beginnings
by fit mental training must be done if it is to be done well,
seeing that what is done well or ill then gives a life-lasting
bent to organic growth ; a wrong bent growing gradually to
a deformity which can never be put straight afterwards. To
reform a nature which has been maturely formed, it would
be necessary to unmake and re-form it from the outset, if not
actually to regenerate it.
The pity of it is that what is done in early education
is seldom done with discernment, foresight, and steadfast
execution. The task falls naturally and is left almost wholly
to women who, biassed by baby-love in general and by
maternal love in particular, and for the most part habitually
irrational themselves, employ no wisely steady discipline of
thought and feeling, often indeed infect the child by bad
example and an unsound moral atmosphere, and at a later
stage accuse and perhaps assault the schoolmaster or school-
mistress who tries by mild chastisement to eradicate the
faults which they have nurtured. Most parents are notably
so fond and proud of their children just because they are
theirs that they give no heed to the beginnings of faults of
character, nay, fatuously admire and foster them — most
fatuously perhaps the worse they are — when they see in
the faulty trail a likeness to one of themselves, as if that
were then an ornament or a merit which is a pitiful
obliquity. Poor dear ! it is so like its father or mother, says
the admiring parent who, delighted with the self-flattering
IX EDUCATION 259
likeness, blames not, perhaps applauds, the fault ; parental
self-love, embracing the child as part of the self, thus pleases
and exalts itself in a seeming altruism. The consequence is
that, foreseeing not the effect in the cause, but waiting
stupidly until they are confronted with the calamitous
event, they are dismayed by the irreparable ruin at twenty-
five, the beginnings of which they might easily have
eradicated at five years of age.
To realize truly what custom can do to make a nature
would help to the understanding how much education may
do to make or mar a character. What indeed at bottom is
education but a systematic formation of custom or habit ?
Imitation and reflex action make special doing, doing makes
habit, and habit becomes second nature ; for habit, if we
consider it Avell, does not mean the construction of modes of
conduct only, it means also the construction of modes of
feeling and thought. The conditions of every life and the
mental atmosphere pertaining to them are a continual
training and edification of thought and feeling, consciously
or unconsciously done. Put a clever surgeon and a clever
butcher into one another's place, and the surgeon would be
painfully revolted by the butcher's work, while the butcher
might faint clean away to see the surgeon operate. Custom
or feeling has made indifferent to the one that which
horrifies the other. The \ictorious general, again, who has
surveyed calmly the bloody horrors of the battlefield may
swoon at the sight of a simple surgical operation or of a
post-mortem examination. Yet in face of innumerable such
instances of human beings thus plastically fashioned to feel
and think and do specially and differently, the custom is to
speak and act in regard to education as if it did no more
than fill the understanding with materials and teach rules of
thought to use them. It were well if it always did well so
much as that. Too often, far from being the means of instruct-
ing and developing the mental faculties by instilling positive
ideas, it is no more than a vile art of teaching words.
If a boy for the first ten years of his life were to learn
s 2
260 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
little more than to feel and think rightly on a few subjects,
undergoing steadily the while a well-ordered and well-toned
discipline in a good moral atmosphere, but learnt that little
well, he would certainly turn out better instructed in the
end than if crammed with the superficial smatterings and
technical terms of many subjects ; for such shallow, fragmen-
tary, and scattered ingesta can never yield vital nourishment
and become knowledge. To instruct vitally, indeed, one
subject of study suited to exact and enforce close attention
and clear thinking, which brooked no loose application nor
confusion of thought, might serve best as a solid foundation
of good training. It being certainly more hurtful to teach a
child too little than too much, the right aim should be so to
lay down in its mental structure the basic lines of right reason-
ing and feeling as to fashion the well-tempered instrument
of thought which, being the same for all provinces of know-
ledge, will not fail, once perfectly formed, to be applied easily
and quickly to all new material to grasp, sift, and classify it
— that is to say, in other words, so to stimulate and train the
understanding by a fit instruction as to enable it, when duly
applied, at once to apprehend the subject firmly and to
reason of it rightly. After all, it is not the multiplicity of
subjects in the environment which confounds logical appre-
hension, incomprehensible though its infinity be, but the
want of the well-constructed logical instrument to deal
definitely with them within the compass of apprehension.
The powerful intellect works well in whatever province of
thought it is properly used : in such rarities of nature as
Alexander and Caesar great thoughts go along with great
deeds. To stuff the young mind with a mass of matter
which it cannot digest and assimilate is not only to produce
unease, disorder, and confusion in it, but it is to hinder and
hurt, perhaps fatally blast, its tender shoots of development,
and thus to render full rational growth impossible after-
wards. For to every mind there appertains its fitly rational
instruction, which is right proportion and disposition in the
building of it, just as its fitly rational construction to every
IX EDUCATION 261
building of brick or stone — in both cases right rules may or
may not be followed in the edification. It is a pity perhaps
that an over- or ill-loaded mind cannot, like a stomach, eject
the mixed crudities of unfit food in the face of the adminis-
trator.
As mental natures differ and each nature has its par-
ticular facets, it is plainly not ideal wisdom to force the
same impressions in the same form and measure on all
minds, just as if all had the same qualities and the same
capacities to receive and assimilate the same contents. Yet
as schools are organized on a large scale to teach many
pupils they cannot chose but apply a uniform system to all ;
they cannot study minutely the specialities of individual
character and modify the system of culture to suit every
variation: for which reason their effect is to mould indi-
viduals to a common set pattern, to form a kind of type or
species, rather than to develop fully a particular nature. In
the long run more is probably gained in the general than is
lost in the particular by such enforced uniformity, since the
chief aim is to make good citizens of the country ; and the
effect of a common association, discipline, and tone of thought
and feeling is to manufacture the required product ; not
otherwise than as in the training of a pack of hounds the
rule is to mould the individual to suppress its par-
ticular tendencies and subordinate them to do its co-
ordinate work in the unison of the hunt. The world likes
not to be troubled with many and marked individualities ;
it prefers to have the sharp angles of individuality worn
down in the process of making the man, as can be done at
an early stage with comparative ease. But it is none the
less certain that individual development is sometimes
grievously maimed by the want of discrimination and the
rigid application of the same rule to all alike in school-
training, and nowise a quite unfounded fear that the fine
special properties of a mind are sometimes rudely hurt or
crushed thereby. Nor is it certain that the type of citizen
thus persistently formed is necessarily the best.
262 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
One might conceive an ideal state of things in which by
help of a perfect individual psychology the special faults of
a particular mind were advisedly corrected by studies and
exercises specially adapted to correct them, just as special
bodily deformities are sometimes successfully counteracted
by specially suited exercises. A volatile and fickle mind
could not well make a close study of mathematics without
losing some of its levity and gaining application, coherence
and gravity ; and the early learning by heart of a little
simple and touching poetry might perhaps insensibly infuse
a tone of tender feeling into the stolid and unemotional
mind. Notable in the few minds which undergo real intel-
lectual development is one of two different leading tenden-
cies — either a tendency of sense as well as intellect to react
quickly to resemblances, and consequently to make hasty
generalizations both of perception and inference, or a tendency
to react to differences, and therefore to stay so much in par-
ticulars as not to rise to a general conception ; both tenden-
cies necessary in proper balance to the best intellectual
development, but either prone to go wrong in excess. What
could be more beneficial in either case than to note the
special fault and to use the special means of exercise by
studies adapted to correct it ? Other instances might be
given of natural differences, intellectual and moral, where a
knowledge of individual psychology and rules of instruction
based thereon might help to perfect the formation of a
mind — that is to say, its in-formation. No doubt the proper
aid is sometimes given now in a partial, uncertain, hap-
hazard, quasi-instinctive way ; but it cannot be systematic
and thorough until ps3^chology ceases to concern itself with
words and generalities only, and betakes itself seriously and
sincerely to the stud}' of concrete organic beings as products
of development by natural laws, to be investigated and
expounded scientifically like other natural products.
Here, however, as elsewhere it is well to forego the pleasing
temptation to carry the general principle into its extreme
effects. If the purpose of nature were to produce and
IX EDUCATION 263
perfect individual minds — which it manifestly is not — it
would doubtless be a good thing sedulously to watch, foster,
and develop the faculties of every mind all round, and to
temper them to a just balance of functions. But the course
of things being what it is, such persistent endeavour would
sometimes prove disastrous. Many minds, so treated, would
be injured not benefited thereby ; they would lose their
special bent along which alone they could develop, ^vithout
gaining any complementary advantage. Forcibly to prevent
a %vry mind from growing awry might sometimes be to pre-
vent any growth of it. On the whole it might be wiser not
to undertake to rectify nature's misfits, but to let the wry
mind go its wry way, and to trust to other minds to make
the necessary compensations in the universal plan. If the
purpose of an increasing reason through the ages is dis-
cernible in that unknown plan, as the belief is, its perfect
development in time to come may perhaps be expected ;
but it is no less plain that such progress has been slow,
gradual, irregular, by tentative essays through innumer-
able generations, and that no individual life is long
enough to permit the perfecting of reason within its short
span — that it is the development of the race not of the
individual which nature is aiming at ; aiming at, too, in
floundering fashion through all the stumbles and blunders
and grotesque absurdities of human thought, not otherwise
than as in its course of organic development through all the
various and often grotesque forms of animal structure.
The generations of mankind from their first beginnings
have existed only for the sake of the generations which
succeeded them, and the generations which exist now exist
only for the generations which will succeed them. Nature
is building up an immense complex human edifice of some
sort, and generations after generations of mortals are used
up in the process, just as generations after generations of
leaves are used in building up the edifice of a great tree.
All that the individual has to do is to help to fulfil the
unknown purpose by fulfilling his nature, to find out what
264 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
he is fit to do and to do it, leaving to other minds to do that
which his mind is not competent to do.
That so much has been written about education and with
so little profit is not strange when we reflect that the writers
have not only had no conception that mind is an organiza-
tion, but have for the most part been devoid of the least
knowledge of what a living organism is. They have laid
down the rules and undertaken the work of cultivating and
directing the development of the highest, most delicate and
complex organic structure in the world without caring to
know what is the nature, mode of growth, and manner of
function of the simplest organism — what in fact organic life
means — and above all what is the essential physiological
constitution of every human mind.
Education begins so soon and goes on so continuously and
imperceptibly from the cradle onwards that people seldom
realize how much a child has already learnt before its
systematic instruction is begun. Like its simian next-of-kin,
the human baby, by virtue of its complex nervous structure,
is a signally imitative creature, responding promptly to what
it feels and perceives around it ; action and reaction go on
continually between it and its surroundings, every sensible
impression made on it being followed by reflex movement
which, fitly formed by degrees in structure, goes to consti-
tute a mental organization. Smiles and frowns and other
facial expressions, gestures, words, tones, manners, habits are
instinctively copied and contracted by it from the persons
who attend on it; they are models which it is continually
studying and copying without knowing it, the instruction of
them gliding insensibly with stealthy motion into sense and
getting incorporated in structure. The mental atmosphere,
so to speak, penetrates and permeates subtilely below the
level of sense. Thus a silent formation of mental structure
goes on, not in gradual addition of material only, but in such
ordering or disposition of it as makes mental tone of feeling :
a tuning of the parts intoning the whole fitly to fine or un-
fitly to coarse sentiment, to harmony or dissonance. The
IX EDUCATION 265
dumb lesson of example is learnt before words are learnt and
more intimately than they are ever learnt. To teach the
true, the beautiful, and the good by precept, and to expose
the child meanwhile to the instruction of the false, the ugly,
and the bad by example, is pretty sure to root the bad in its
nature and to root it so firmly as to be ineradicable. If the
tone of feeling be spoilt before the child is fifteen years old it
will not be made good by fifty more years of life ; for once a
mental structure is set, its tune cannot be altered. Might it
not be truly said, then, that the important education is that
which is not consciously given ?
Neglect of the silent education of the surrounding medium,
physical and mental, is nowise the entire evil of the sj'stem
of rearing children. Not content with leaving to chance the
models set around the child to copy while it is learning un-
consciously, the custom is to inculcate precepts of conscious
instruction which are often either quite unintelligible, mere
meaningless words, or, so far as they are intelligible, directly
contradict what it observes in daily experience and sometimes
contradict one another — precepts which, being the positive
negation, involve the paralysis of reason. It is taught on the
same day, and almost in the same breath, by the same teacher
to prize and develop reason as the invaluable human attri-
bute and to discard it as valueless in the highest concerns of
thought and feeling ; a disowning procedure which obviously
cannot be as beneficial or harmless to its immature mind as
to the mature mind Avhich is able to discern in gross fables
the symbolizations of subtile spiritual truths, or which has
so persistently and successfully suspended reason in regard
to certain special reserves of thought as to have produced
the natural pathological consequence — namely, a partial
paralysis of it. Well might a much enduring teacher protest
sometimes that the human material was not delivered to him
for instruction in its virgin state, undefaced by inscriptions
which it was impossible ever to efface.
Education has of course the twofold function of fitting the
learner well for converse with physical and with human
266 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
nature ; converse not of intellect only, but of feeling also.
For assuredly it will make everybody a more complete being
not only to know the laws of physical nature, but to attain to
that feeling of oneness with nature, that intimate sympathy
or communion of being which the poet and artist feel, but
the specializations of science tend rather to obscure or
destroy. As regards knowledge only, it is plainly impossible
to teach the several sciences and unwise to teach chaotic
smatterings of them, seeing that full knowledge of one
science will occupy the labour of a lifetime. By engrafting
the principles of observation and reasoning pertaining to all
sciences and involved in one well taught science, and so to
fashion truly the fit intellectual instrument and teach the
right use of it, that is the education which others should
give to the individual ; the acquisition of special knowledge
for which it has fitly furnished him is the education which
he will afterwards give himself and by the elective affinity
of his nature, if he has capacity, choose rightly for himself,
and if he has not capacity, no education can give him.
The second purpose of education being to fit him to live
well with his kind, its character will be determined by the
traditions, customs, public opinion, laws, conventions and
moral code of his country. The aim and method pursued
therefore are so to shape the child's mind from its earliest
years as that it shall grow and function in conformity with
the surrounding habit of thought, feeling and doing — to form
the proper mental structure of the citizen. There being no
common and universally approved rule of formation for all
mankind, the different social moulds, according as they differ
in different peoples and place, turn out different types of
mind having different sentiments and modes of thought —
a Chinese type in China, a Japanese type in Japan, a French
type in France, an English type in England. There are not
even universal moral principles, for there is no single im-
morality, whether theft, unchastity, adultery, murder or any
other breach of abstract morality, which has not been, or is
not now, sanctioned somewhere ; while the good principles
IX EDUCATION 267
held in common are so fast hooked on to the special theolo-
gical tenets of the particular people, being declared to depend
vitally on them for their sanction and authority — albeit they
actually are the natural and necessary conditions of being
and growth implicit in any decent social organization — that
the education based on them is calculated not to enlighten
and strengthen but to darken and weaken reason. Morality
cannot be taught as a universal science to be studied by
scientific methods, just because it is tied to different theo-
logical doctrines, all which are confessedly anti-scientific in
method and some of them proudly anti-rational. The natural
and necessary product of such teaching is a mental structure
which is not wholly rational but inconsistent and unstable,
lacking integrity and unity, which cannot choose therefore
but be ill-reasoning, inconsistent and insincere in function.
What wonder then that men hold different beliefs in different
countries respecting the same facts, and that fools are the
majority in every country ? The just wonder is perhaps
that they turn out on the whole as rational as they do,
when so much pains is taken to make them structurally
irrational.
The truth, of course, is that the necessary vital converse
with men and things in the real conduct of life necessitates
and enforces a practical instruction of reason ; whatever
fanciful theories a man may cultivate in his closet, he perforce
puts them aside and uses quite other theories in the market.
And herein it appears how immensely men are beholden to
the capitalized experience which they have inherited from
their forefathers, who have transmitted to them a hard-won
fund of solid reason in the traditions, customs, laws and codes
which they for the most part blindly follow and fortunately
need not test. For if the custom or tradition be fossilized the
multitude are too dull and slow of understanding to perceive
it ; rational enough perhaps to reason fairly from the accepted
data, not one in ten thousand is rational enough to test the
reason of the data and determine whether they are true or
false. Therefore it is that, apart from the wisdom which
268 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
they have inherited and use unconsciously, the multitude
are habitually and placidly irrational. Necessarily and
fortunately too : necessarily, because being wholly occu-
pied in the struggle for the bare necessaries of life, like so
many living automata, they have neither the leisure nor the
opportunity to investigate the foundations of their beliefs ;
fortunately, seeing that if everybody thought deeply and
freely about things the stability of the social system might
be much imperilled, unless everybody thought alike and
perfectly. Which after all does not seem likely to happen,
when one reflects, for example, how the sectarian enmities
and jealousies of Christians professing one faith and having
one hope of salvation disturb national peace and prevent a
rational system of general education.
It is a misfortune when the little knowledge which is a
dangerous thing is largely prevalent ; for it is seldom that
such little knowledge leads to larger knowledge. One may
hope to teach understanding to a quite ignorant person,
because, his mind not being pre-occupied, its soil is free
to receive good seed, and expect to come to an understanding
with a well-learned man, because he has a mind so instructed
as to know the need and be capable of further compre-
hension ; but the complacent stupidity of the person with
a little knowledge and a large self-conceit is impenetrable
and impregnable. Of the fool who is conscious of his
ignorance there is some hope ; there is none whatever of
the ignorant Philistine who is imprisoned in his own fatuous
conceit of knowledge.
Though one people can never sufficiently marvel at the
absurdity of a creed which another people holds sacred, and
one person never cease to wonder at the gross irrationality of
another's belief, yet there is a general consent in the interest
of human dignity to describe man as a rational being — at all
events, at his present height of development in civilized
countries. In which assumption there seems no small assur-
ance when one considers what sort of literature is most read,
what sort of book it is which counts its sale by tens of
IX EDUCATION 269
thousand of copies, what sort of nourishment it supplies to
rational thinking, and what sort of mind it must be which
finds suitable nourishment therein. What is to be said too
of the bitter divisions and furious disputes about many
questions of politics and religion which Avould vanish were
the disputants capable of looking into the things instead of
being governed by names ? Consider, again, how eagerly
the people rush to adopt some foolish fashion of dress or
behaviour, be it never so irksome and ridiculous, and how
persistently they disquiet and distress, perhaps ruin, them-
selves out of the silly desire to possess things which do not
add one whit to their real comfort, nay, actually cause them
much anxiety and discomfort, and that only because other
persons have them. And lastly — not to continue an enumera-
tion of follies which w^ould be endless — what of the spectacles
of innumerable congregations all over the earth which
assemble reverently to listen to and piously profess dogmas
of faith that most of them do not understand, and most of
those who do understand them only imagine they believe, or
believe not at all ; dogmas, moreover, which sometimes
blankly contradict and excommunicate one another ! Calmly
and impartially perpending these things, it seems hardly
legitimate to style man rational ; it would be more correct to
describe hira as potentially rational ; not otherwise than as
he is potentially a talking animal, but will not talk unless he
diligently learns to make the potential actual. Though it be
the wished-for and long-expected work of a perfect system of
education to develop this rational potentiality in him to the
full, yet a foreboding apprehension, not perhaps whollj-
fantastic, might suggest a suspicion either that a cooling sun
\vill have ceased to sustain life on earth before that happens,
or that, when it happens, mankind may voluntarily put a
continent stop to their continuance on earth.
There is reason to think that optimistic enthusiasm
expects too much from systems of education. Prone always
to believe in magic, the tendency now is to believe in the
magic of education to effect wonderful transformations of
270 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
natures. Wave but its magic wand, and straightway thorns
shall produce grapes and thistles bring forth figs. Yet
education can have no such magical effect ; it may direct
in a measure the paths of development of the forces of a
nature, but it will not implant them ; and if it try to direct
them out of measure it will hurt, not help, individual
development.
How much it can do and what it cannot do to change
a nature it is not easy to say. On the one hand, it is
thought to act only superficially, leaving the character
fundamentally unaltered ; on the other hand, it is sup-
posed capable of eradicating the worst faults of a
character and practically regenerating it. Certainly, the
success of the educational methods by which a perfect
Jesuit priest is sedulously and steadily fashioned with the
definitely pursued aim of producing a particular type of man
is remarkably instructive. Here, however, one sees only the
outward and visible man as he appears to the world in the
steady performance of the fixed functions for which he was
patiently and specially fashioned ; it would be rash to
conclude therefrom the elimination of secretly working
envies, jealousies and other passions, and to infer the
deep and intimate change of a nature which was born with
bad tendencies. Just as a man may perform quietly and
regularly the duties of his office in daily business without
notable show of an evil disposition, yet have many vices in
his private life and be hardly tolerable there, so the monk in
his monastery may exhibit all the faults of his real nature
within that narrow compass, while performing his regular
offices decently, and prove himself a man outwardly disci-
plined but not inwardly transformed. He has been manu-
factured into a special-functioning machine which works
automatically in its sphere of operation, but his education
has not ousted his particular nature, any more than the
.education of a bear which is taught to dance ousts its nature
or makes it anything more than a dancing bear. The secrets
of monastery and convent are not revealed publicly, but he
IX EDUCATION 271
whose opportunities have given him glimpses into the inner
life of such institutions knows well that all the ordinary
passions of human nature seethe there, and all the more
meanly and acridly because of their narrow range.
A surer way than any Jesuitical or other devised system
of education to ingraft good feeling as well as right thought
into a character may perhaps eventually be found when men
learn how to breed it into a nature ; when, going farther
back than the individual, they discover the causes of con-
genital goodness of quality in the sincerity, veracity, good
feeling, and well-doing of the ancestral stock, and of badness
of quality in its falsities, hypocrisies, base feeling, and ill-
doing. And herein one may perhaps descry a justification
of the hope of those who expect that by transplanting the
child of debased parents in a civilized state into a sound
moral atmosphere, and subjecting it steadily to a good
discipline of thought and conduct, it will grow into a sound
citizen, unless hopelessly ill-constituted ; for, bad as it may be
bred, it must needs still inherit in its nature some social
traces of precedent generations of civilized development,
which may be supposed to represent a latent moral germ
in it capable of being solicited to growth in favourable
surroundings.
To question whether education can increase the natural
moral and intellectual stature of a person any more than
it can increase his bodily stature, is not mere wanton
scepticism. Without doubt the circumstances of life in
which fortune has placed him may give a good or bad
direction of growth to his native qualities, and so make
him a good or bad citizen ; but it is always quite possible
to be a good citizen and yet a bad man, or the better man
although the worse citizen. If one who has in him a fair
store of the bad qualities of the criminal rises to eminence
in his trade or profession, having prudently and sedulously
suppressed the gross expressions of them and craftily used
their forces in secret and subtle ways to promote his career,
he has only refined their distributions, not eradicated them.
272 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
from his nature ; they may have been the very means by
which he was able, in the struggle of competition, to beat
another who, having a finer and more tender moral nature,
could not stoop to use, and could not have used well had he
so stooped, the self-seeking means and base arts which
achieved eminence. Before the bar of a final and perfectly
just judgment it may be a question whether the criminal
or the judge was really the more moral or the more immoral
man; wherefore it is sometimes a pretty spectacle of
nature's irony when the outraged virtue of the judge rails
at the vicious criminal whose sentence he pronounces. Ex-
cusably so, too, no doubt from his standpoint as an eminent
citizen, seeing that he has used well his talents to promote
the weal of his particular social system in promoting his
own weal, whereas the criminal has used his talents anti-
socially, although his state-ordained education ought to
have taught him better.
It is a part of the inveterate optimism of human nature
permeated with its present sap of development, and looking
forward to an ultimate perfecting of the race, to believe
that its eminent social products witness to moral merit, and
thereafter, ignoring faults or putting a fair face on misdoings,
to use their instances to excite the vanity of men in the
interests of its morality. Therefore also it is inclined to
overestimate the value of education, its hope and belief
being that men, persuaded that they can be, will incite
themselves to be, that which it would have them be.
IX MENTAL CULTURE 273
II
MENTAL CULTURE
Self-education — The pleasures of sense and intellect — Knowledge and
pleasure — Native bias of character — Self-love — The development of
knowledge by human converse — Special mental facets and special
developments — The tyi-anny of organization — Mental exercise an
invigoration of vitality — The conditions of good mental health —
Interactions between body and mind — The lessons of moral de-
generacy — The theatre as means of mental culture — A means of
amusement — Effects of occupation on individual nature — Freedom
from social trammels impossible — If only the individual had two
lives ! — Danger of leaving off the routine of a lifelong occupation-
Increase of human specialisms.
When a person has done with learning directly from
others, he has still to teach himself, which he can in no
case fail to do well or ill. The misfortune is that he has
to commence this self-education just at the critical age
when, full of self-confidence yet devoid of experience, he
enters actively on the complicated business of life, and is
bound therefore to make the mistakes which will be his
later instruction. Soon or late, anyhow, he will need to
form some definite notion of what he would be, and pursue
his aim more or less definitely. At the outset he will do
well to discriminate between real aims which are practic-
able and ideal aims which are impracticable, and to rule
his practice accordingly, otherwise he may be a trouble to
himself and a trouble to others. Naturally, too, he Avill be
of good comfort if he then go on to persuade himself that
he has made the best of himself.
Notwithstanding the perpetual protestations they make
that true happiness lies not in the pleasures of sense, men
are indefatigable in their persistent efforts to find their
pleasures there. It is pretty to say, as Plutarch said, and
others have said in like strain, that high birth is an excel-
lent thing, but only the virtue of ancestors ; glory admirable
274 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
yet inconstant, oft got without deserving and deserved
without being got ; beauty a precious possession, but soon
faded; health more precious still, yet easily lost; vigour
enviable, but surely sapped by age ; that good qualities of
mind alone are superior and imperishable, reason and know-
ledge being the greatest good which a man can possess and
the true solace of life whatever and wherever it may be.
All which sounds mighty fine, yet is subject to two consider-
able reservations : first, that glory, beauty, health, and the
like are good things in life while they last, and life itself
does not last long ; secondly, that the best qualities of
mind are developed only by much labour and pains, and are
then likewise precarious and perishable. Instead of being
the sure consolations of age treading the aching steps of its
decline, which they are promised to be, their failures are
often the sore affliction of it. At any moment it needs only
the smallest conceivable mishap in the very subtile and
complex process of nutrition to paralyze the power of mind
and plunge its radiant activity into a dismal despair ; such
an infinitesimal and invisible mischance as a molecule gone
astray in metabolism suffices to undermine vigour, virtue,
intellect, and to bow the strongest will in abject prostration :
the best and the worst in man alike at the mercy of the
meanest accident.
That being so really, the ideal maxims of a pedantic philo-
sophy sound somewhat barren, and it is hard to contest, easy
to endorse, the lusty recommendation of the wise Preacher
who had given his mind to learn understanding, " Rejoice, O
young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in
the days of thy youth," for the Preacher, having tried many
ways of pleasures and pursuit, discovered at last, as every
one not infatuated with the lust of life must needs do, that
knowledge and wisdom equally with pleasure and folly are
vanity. It might indeed be a nowise illegitimate inter-
pretation of his words that although knowledge be an
excellent thing, a more excellent wisdom would be to do
without it.
IX MENTAL CULTURE 275
Good as the counsels of wisdom are, they require always,
to be effective, a good recipient capacity. To some natures
it is as futile to preach good counsel as it would be to
address sound-waves to the eye or light-waves to the ear.
As every mortal represents in his structure far-back-reaching
lines of ancestors joined in marriage from generation to
generation, his mental organization being the incorporation
of multitudinous silent memories, his basic modes of feeling
and action are the expression and exponent of the con-
solidated experiences of the stock : he owes an inevitable-
bias of mental constitution to the mode of his being's forma-
tion through the past. No education therefore can make
one species of mind produce the same fruit as a different
species, no reasoning make that which is a truth to the one
a necessary truth to the other. And not only is the
particular person thus fundamentally fashioned, his character
being ancestral predestination, but his special bias may be
determined by the merest chance at a supremely critical
moment — that is to say, by some trivial circumstance, or
transient passion, or accidental infirmity, or unlucky jar, on
the occasion of his own generation. As his life is at the
mercy of the molecule gone astray in metabolism so his mind
is at the mercy of the least twist or jar given to the minute,
fine, plastic substance with its many millions of contained
molecules which the microscopic germ is ; or if not that, yet
to some accidental impression from the thousands of maternal
influences, mental and bodily, to which it is constantly
subject during gestation. Though his noble head strike
the stars in its human pride, his fate lies in the humble
atoms. Let him spend his life in studious and strenuous
struggle against a native bias of character, in the end he
will probably spend it ineffectively and unhappily. Nor
will the sober retrospects of age then avail much to console
him ; on the contrary, they are more likely to afflict him
with bitter recollections of what has been and exasperating
conceits of what might have been. If a man know well
himself and his forefathers, he may perceive plainly perchance
T 2
276 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that he owes the dominant strain of his nature to a grand-
father whom he never saw — since his bones have long
crumbled to dust — yet whose latent spirit in him dictates
in the main that which he says and does.
No bias of nature can work well, though it be strong and
of good quality, if it altogether lack sense of proportion.
As self-love estimates things in reference to self, doing that
unconsciously, doing it indeed surely when it is consciously
sure that it does not, it must necessarily, when too pro-
nounced, see them out of proportion and out of tune, because
it magnifies itself out of proportion and out of tune ; for
which reason it is then irritated and mortified by any
hindrance to itself as if that were a personal offence, is
sensible only of the circumstance and of personal calculations
respecting it, revolts impetuously against the check to its
■own expansion. The function of a larger and less self-
regarding intellect is to look more widely and deeply, to
perceive events in relation to their causes, to apprehend
iheir relations all round to self and other selves, and to
set them in due proportion both in sequence and co-
existence — to strive in fact to make the logical order of
thought and feeling reflect justly the physical order of
nature. Therefore it is that a strong self-love unaccom-
panied by a strong understanding, possessing not possessed
by it, is prejudicial ; it is a thick veil which hides personal
defects and forbids the light of instruction to enter the
mind ; and it tends to such overgrowth and disproportion of
mental structure as sometimes ends in positive insanity, the
chief note of which is an overweening estimate of self and
an utter lack of sense of proportion. An excellent corrective
always is the possession of a sense of humour; for such
sense implies not only a duly proportionate view of self in
relation to other things and selves, but also in relation to
the whole of which it and they are so insignificant a part.
Wholesome communion with the kind in thinking, feeling
and doing is almost indispensable to prevent the growth of
mental deformity. The communication of knowledge is
IX MENTAL CULTURE 277
indeed, like mercy, twice blessed, blessing him who gives
and him who receives. So far from there being loss or
sacrifice in giving, there is positive gain of mental culture
to the giver; a silent clearing, condensation, and definition
of it taking place in the process. Knowledge which cannot
be reflected or, so to speak, reverberated by another mind,
is apt to be cloudy, diffuse, undefined, and pretty sure to be
overprized by its owner in proportion to its vagueness and
want of simple precision ; whereas the more clearly and
exactly it is so reflected the more substantial and vital a
possession it is. Therefore it is that to teach well is to
learn well, instruction of others good self-instruction. In-
telligent conversation about a particular subject with another
person who has thought about it not only helps the embryonic
thought to leap suddenly into full form and light, but to
clothe itself definitely in simple and lucid words, not loosely
in diffuse and lifeless verbiage. At all events the wise
use of sound human intercourse in giving and receiving, in
argument and counter argument, in interplay of sympathy
and satire, will prevent any one from expounding in diffuse
expatiations or elaborate artificialities of language a com-
monplace platitude of thought and imagining it a novel
discovery which he has made.
To say of any one that he is a rough diamond is still to
imply that he is a diamond which, if properly cut and
polished, will perhaps shine brilliantly and thus acquire
its proper social value. But as the cutting of the diamond
must be done with skill and discretion, otherwise an extra-
ordinary stone may be made very ordinary, so the mind
should receive its fit culture. For there are all sorts and
qualities of mind : minds which would be irretrievably
damaged by too much and a too set mode of instruction,
which obtain by elective affinity their o^\ti best instruction,
needing only a wise general guidance and full opportunity ;
minds too of average capacity which can come to nothing
without systematic and sedulous instruction ; minds again
of such low native capacity as to be incapable of any
•278 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
real instruction ; and, lastly, minds having their special
facets which ought to be specially developed by their fit
culture, if the best is to be made of them.
As the eye sees only and the ear hears only that which it
has the capacity to see or hear, so every mind will see just
so much as it has been moulded and fashioned to see, and be
blind to that which lies outside its principles of structure
and fixed tracks of function : because another mind sees
something clearly is no sufficient reason why it should see
it ; without the fit receptive structure behind sense it is
futile to endeavour to impart the special instruction. The
fit mental organization "wdll obtain large instruction from a
few facts ; the unfit will not be informed by any number of
facts. In whatsoever conditions of life a person is placed,
he moves only in the orbit of his nature, be it large or small,
can in no case go out of it : an inexorable tyranny of organi-
zation compels an inevitable obedience. He may be so
constituted as that he will go on to the end of life believing
a lie which is proved to be a lie by the most conclusive
arguments in the world, or will himself go on lying his whole
life long without motive, without aim, as a mere natural
exercise of his mental energy. Withal it is no indwelling
abstract self, self-determined and unconditioned in time and
place, but the particular mass of flesh, blood, bone, and nerve,
product and process of natural law, which settles his special
manner of thinking, feeling, and doing. Nor again is it in the
main what actually befalls him in the changes and chances of
life, but how he feels and thinks of events and circumstances
that makes his pleasure and his pain, his profit and his gain.
Sinner or saint, rich or poor, sage or silly, high or low in
station, he can function only in the special basic modes or
forms of his own mind and be happy or wretched, wise or
foolish, virtuous or vicious accordingly.
If a person has no relish or a particular study, nor any
pleasure in it, he had better not prosecute it as his life-
work, for he is not likely to labour in it to good profit. The
special taste points to and may wisely direct the special
IX MENTAL CULTURE 279
study ; the pleasure of its pursuit and of the instruction
which it imparts is then the pleasure of the growth of life
in mind, which mental growth is. The fullest development
of individuality consistent with human solidarity, that is the
right aim to attain, and, attained, the best product. For any
one to let his faculties waste unused is not only wilfully or
negligently to abridge his capacity of life, but perhaps to forego
his best life ; a life which, not being at the mercy of opinion
and circumstances, might do much to ensure a sober happi-
ness, making him a citizen of every country and companion
of the great men of every age, but, being the complete
development of his intellectual and moral being, is posi-
tively healthful bodily. For such exercises as intelligent
observation and study of things, right reflection on them,
the formation and practice of definite wills, hopes, joys,
affections and the like are as proper exercises of mind as
varieties of bodily exercise, and, being so, wholesome not to
mind only but to the whole organism whose health and
growth they animate, sustain, and promote. He who, con-
fronted by a sudden calamity or the prospect of a life of
painful endurance, braces himself resolutely to fight bravely
and steadily, not only acquires a certain serenity of mind
and pride of fortitude, but positively strengthens his whole
organic vitality. Happy is the man, however, on whom
nature has bestowed such a well-balanced composition of
faculties and equable temper of mind as intrinsically qualify
him to perform all its exercises quietly without the wasting
wear of anxieties, worries, regrets, apprehensions ; for his mind
is then like a machine which wastes no force in working.
As the simple conditions of good bodily health are proper
exercise, plain food, pure air, so the conditions of good mental
health are regular exercise, right mental nourishment, and a
sound moral atmosphere. And the conditions of a strong,
well-composed and healthy mind is a strong, well-organized
and healthy body adapted and apt to seek the most pleasure
Avith the least pain. Was there ever more gratuitous folly
in the world than the perverse ingenuity of the ascetic
280 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
fanatic who wilfully macerated his body and mutilated his
mind on set purpose to destroy in himself everything which
naturally gave him pleasure and to obtain the most pain he
could ? This he did in order to sublime a lofty strain of
spiritual feeling and to let into himself rays of transcendental
vision, out of the fatuous conceit of an irreconcilable enmity
between body and mind ; therein acting not unlike a foolish
boy might act who, when his kite was flying aloft, should cut
the string which seemed to hold it back, in order that it
might soar still higher. What he actually achieved was a
pernicious weakening of bodily health and therewith a
psycholepsy or mental convulsion, the delirious delight of
which he joyed in as an ecstatic spiritual rapture ; a semi-
morbid state neither healthy nor therefore truly holy. The
ascetic who, like St. Jerome, fled to the desert to mortify
himself there was tormented with dreams and visions of
lubricity which would never have tormented any sane citizen
going about his active business and spending his energies
healthily in the work of their natural functions. To under-
stand and rightly interpret such aberrant beings a knowledge
of physiology and mental pathology is indispensable ; all
discussions about their spiritualisms, without such know-
ledge, are little better than empty and fanciful disquisitions
in the air, shows without substance.
A thoroughly sound mind being the supreme harmony of
all the functions of a thoroughly well-constituted and sound
body, a knowledge of the physiology of the bodily organism
is an obvious necessity to the serious student of psychology ;
for it is not possible to him, lacking that, to realize how
many, subtile, rapid and incessant are the minute activities
of its multitudinous incorporate organisms, and how natural
constant and active the essential interactions between its
different parts and between body and mind. Not such
general knowledge only, that is to say, as that grief depresses
and joy quickens the circulation of the blood, that bad
passion disorders and good humour aids digestion, that fear
quenches and rage fires the bodily energies, and the converse
IX MENTAL CULTURE 281
effects of bodily states on the elevation and depression of
the animal spirits — facts which have been familiar ever since
observation began — but the exactest conceptions possible of
the infinitely subtile and complex physio-chemical processes
of tissue-building and tissue- waste whereby all the processes
of nutrition, secretion and other functional activities are a
continuous flux of vitalization and growth on the one hand
and of devitalization and disintegration on the other hand ;
the products of devitalization and disintegration here being
perhaps the materials of vitalization and growth elsewhere,
not otherwise than as the bad passions of individuals minister
to social growth. The thyroid gland, having no external
secretion, was long thought to be functionless ; it is only
lately that its destruction has been shown to produce a
steady cretinous degeneration of body and mind ; and it
always has been known, without the patent lesson of it being
learnt, that the removal of other special organs was in the
result a definite mutilation of mind as well as body. Instead
of wondering then that the incalculable combinations and
decompositions of the infinitesimal processes of bodily
functions affect the mind and are in turn affected by it,
the real wonder would be if the interaction was not constant
and essential.
Another wonder might fairly be whether elaborate rules
of mental culture are ever of much use, or at all events ever
nearly so useful as they are thought to be. For the most part
they are the explicit need of him who has them not implicit in
his nature. Well indeed would it be if the rules were always
agreed and never the means of mental deformity. More
effective lessons might perhaps be learnt and taught through
a steady and systematic study of the several modes and
courses of mental degeneration ; for by showing plainly the
wrong roads to be avoided on pain of inevitable calamity
the right roads might then be taken from a natural selfish-
ness. That would be a lesson which could not well remain
abstract, it would have a vital hold on conduct. That vice
is wicked and virtue righteous is no doubt an excellent
282 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
general maxim to inculcate right doing, but so general as for
the most part to touch nobody very sensibly and thus become
a vital motive of conduct. What is wanted is not only a
plain demonstration of the growth and degenerative course
of a particular vice, fault, or bad passion in its working on
individual character and on the social medium, but also
an exposition of the mode of vitiation of a family stock
whereby the vice or fault has been or may be introduced
into it, and the mode of purification by which it can be
expelled from it. For that purpose it would not be necessary
to go to the gaol, or the lunatic asylum, or the workhouse
only for examples; the lives of eminent persons, sincerely
examined and honestly expounded, might sometimes supply
pregnant and instructive material. What is still wanted
indeed is that which Bacon noted and frequently insisted
on as a lamentable deficiency in his day — namely, an
individual jy^ychology .
Perhaps the theatre might be made a more valuable
means of such instruction than it is if it were to fulfil its
ideal function of instructing by pleasing and pleasing by
instructing, as all good art should do, instead of for the most
part pandering to what is bad, debasing in order to please
and pleasing by debasing, as bad art does. Hatred of WTong,
disgust of vice, sympathy Avith virtue, pity for suffering,
approbation of good deeds, admiration of heroism in ordinary
life, and like noble sentiments are worthy feelings to be
excited by dramatic presentation of the fit spectacles. But
are such feelings really roused nowadays or did they ever
last after the play was over ? Does any one come away
from a play truly edified ? Was ever a Tartuffe made one
whit different by seeing the part of Tartuffe admirably
played ? To make faults and vices odious by presenting
vivid examples of them in ridiculous light and situation
would be an excellent instruction if people were really
affected morally by the picture, seriously edified by the moral,
not merely amused by the spectacle. Certainly as there is
nothing that a man dislikes more than to be made con-
IX MENTAL CULTURE 283
temptibly ridiculous — he had rather perhaps cut a heroic
figure in being hanged than a ridiculous figure in being
canonized — so there is nothing he enjoys more than to see
some one else made ridiculous on the stage ; he fails not then
to apply the lesson of instruction to his neighbour and is
pleased to laugh at another's expense. Had TartufFe been
among the audience when Tartuffe was well played on the
stage he would probably have been the most pleased person
there ; and were an accomplished Pharisee so minded he
might doubtless preach the best sermon against hypocrisy.
The truth of course is that people go to the theatre to be
amused, and that its chief purpose is to interest and amuse
them. The play is a performance in which the actors have
their several entrances and exits, each playing his part well
or ill ; and when it is over the spectator leaves as uncon-
cerned and indifferent as if he had attended at a puppet-show
when, the play over, the puppets are packed away in their
box. Meanwhile he has been more innocently employed in
the life-show than if he had been engaged in idle gossip and
slander, or in ruining his health in debauchery. As for the
meretricious arts, elaborate dresses, splendid upholstery,
gorgeous scenery, ear-splitting declamation, passion torn to
rags, writhing gestures, uncouth contortions and grimaces by
which the popular actor attracts his audience to the ignoble
representation of a noble drama, they have their fit reward
in the applause of those whom they fitly please.
Few lives really lend themselves to a full mental culture.
Every profession, trade, or special appointment, being a sort
of limitation, tends in a measure to cramp or deform the
particular mind ; for it necessitates a definite range and special
class of ideas and adjustments, large or small, which,
becoming fixed and rigid, hinders a free and whole intellec-
tual expansion and development. Then, indeed, a full mental
freedom and fine culture are hardly more possible than a full
freedom and fine culture of conduct. The man may be an
excellent social machine or oi-gan to perform a special
function, but he is a specialization of humanity, not a whole
284 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and complete human being. The more devoted he is to his
work and the more wholly he is absorbed in it the less is he
worth outside it. The close-clipped beech or thorn helps to
make an excellent hedge, but it is then a poor specimen of
what a free-growing beech or thorn can be. However, as the
farmer wants close-clipped bushes, not full-grown trees, for his
hedges, so society wants the artificial not the natural man.
To be ideally free it would be necessary for a man to be
free to think and speak as he can about every subject, and
to live as he likes in the world without conciliating the good-
will or averting the ill-will of others whose opinions and acts
he could then regard or disregard with indifference. But
that is a sort of Olympian aloofness which it is not given to
mortal to attain to on earth, and it is no small peril to aspire
after. The sober fact is that no one can think truly and
fruitfully about men and things unless he has imbibed their
modes of feeling and doing by the actual experience of work-
ing among them in the struggle of life ; so only can he know
them really and speak real truth of them. If his feelings
have not been thus vitally moved and his practical under-
standing developed, his expatiations will have little more
body in them than the expatiations of a eunuch concerning
lechery. The chastity of the monastery and the convent
may sometimes be of superfine quality, but it is a fair ques-
tion whether it is ever worth the pains taken to preserve it.
Could a man live a life of successful work among men and
things in the world, and at the end of it begin a new life of
detachment and contemplation in the same world, using
therein all the stored capital of his former experience, he
might be fit for the freedom of a full development as an
ideal philosopher, being then in excellent case to profit by
his past life. But nature has willed otherwise ; it has not
risked the disillusionment and exposure which the formation
of such an instrument of perfect reason might be, for it
plainly would not go well with mankind were reason always
to dominate feeling ; the lust of knowing might end by
killing the lust of living.
IX MENTAL CULTURE 285
A reflecting person, considering that he has not two lives
to live and the wearisome monotony of doing the same thing
over and over again his whole life long, might conclude to
give up an uncongenial employment and to live himself out
naturally and freely. Why pass the whole of his one life
in an irksome bondage ? Happily or unhappily for him it is
usually his necessity not his will which constrains consent ;
he has given hostages to society in the shapes of wife and
children which render it impossible for him to throw otf the
yoke of his daily routine of labour. Herein appears a good
reason of the observation made by Bacon — namely, that the
great works of the world have been mostly done by childless
or unmarried men. The function of those who marry and
beget children is to continue the kind who shall do the
world's ordinary work, among whom from time to time may
haply be bred one whose only posterity will be the extra-
ordinary work which he does.
Another consideration to be gravely weighed by one who,
when he can afford to be himself, is minded to relinquish
an uncongenial employment which has become the habit of
his life, is whether he is now any longer a self capable of
other employment ; whether, in fact, he has not grown to
such a fixed mechanism of feeling, thinking and doing, such
a settled form or deformity of mental structure, that he
cannot function out of his fashion, cannot be another self
His only pleasure then may be to perform his only function,
and if he rashly leave that off he runs the risk of life-
weariness and melancholy madness. Labour being the surest
and safest means of occupying his mind and diverting his
thoughts from the vanity of things, which advancing age
fails not to make more plain day after day, ought not then
to be lightly relinquished. So it comes to pass that the poor
unit is constrained, despite himself, to go on working in his
wonted way until he collapses at his desk or drops down in
his counting-house ; he is used to the last by his social com-
munity and his end so fulfilled.
Viewing matters soberly and sincerely in reason's light,
286 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap
it is a fair question whether it would be well for all persons
to have a complete mental culture, seeing that it might unfit
them for the several specialized functions which they are
required to perform in the economy of the human hive. For
the present, at all events, there must be scavengers, button-
makers, coal-miners, weavers, clerks, and other human
specializations, multiplying and becoming more minute as
society grows more special and complex ; and so keen is the
increasing competition in an increasing population that it
tends more and more to exact the whole service of the
individual in his special department of work. What will
the end be ? The period of highest intellectual ability
known in the history of the race was notably in ancient
Greece, where the mean and rough work of life was done
by slaves whose duties did not include mental culture ; that
was the province and privilege of the superior class who,
freed from low material cares, had nothing else to do but
promote their own mental development.
Ill
CHARACTER
Character the basis of conduct — Conscious suppression of character
futile — Diversities of racial character — Constitutional vitality and
character — Moral and vital energy — The revelation of character —
Subconscious mental currents — Character and circumstances —
Formation of character by action — Intellect and moral feeling dis-
sociated — Vices proceeding from virtues — The prospects of human
society — How to know self.
As good health is true wealth of body and mind, and no
painful labour of philosophy can give the happiness which it
gives easil}', so a sound, well-built and well-tempered char-
acter is the foundation of a good conduct of life : there is
no surer basis of well-being and well-doing. A steadfast
substratum beneath consciousness, constant in silent work-
ing, evincing, though not fully expressing, itself in imagina-
IX CHARACTER 287
tion, thought, Avill and conduct, the strong character is
always in silent reserve beneath overt display, felt instinct-
ively by others behind any mode of conscious utterance
which the individual shows or they perceive. Not an act
probably but reveals character had we but eyes to read it ;
yea, a single act will sometimes do that as surely as the
history of a life would do, if only the intelligent eye be there
to interpret it. The revealing light may not come from any
extraordinary circumstance ; for it is not in great things
only when he is roused to exceptional efforts that its
qualities are shown, but in the petty things of daily life,
albeit a great crisis of danger or adversity, pressing on the
deep springs of a nature, tests well its foundations, whether
they be weak or strong, regular or irregular, unstable or
steadfast, and perchance elicits latent and unsuspected force.
By stringing the bow tight its strength is discovered, the
force of reaction tried and measured by action.
Persistent and steady endeavours to hide or change
character by habitually checking or suppressing its mani-
festations may succeed in a measure or for a while, but the
constrained force is pretty sure to burst the bounds at some
moment and at once to undo all that solicitous pains have
patiently done to mask it. Though haste be then made to
reduce it to settled rules of expression, yet it is sure, if it
have force in it, to break out again at some time or other.
Confucius spoke truly when he said, " Tell me your past
and I will tell you your future ; " for the foundation of char-
acter changes not, and therefore a right induction from the
past is the best prediction of the future.
The fundamental distinction of characters being manifestly
as true of races as of individuals, it is a pity that the fact is
not more frankly acknowledged and the proper inferences
drawn from it. Diversities of racial characters cannot be
welded in the same educational mould ; as they have their
distinctive modes of feeling and thinking they must have
their suitable educations. It is notorious that they differ so
much in different peoples as almost to constitute a difference
288 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of mental kind, or at all events such a difference of degree
as disqualifies them for interbreeding at all, or if they inter-
breed from generating good offspring. Nor is the barren-
ness or the degenerate product of such unions because of the
incompatibility of the germs at all wonderful seeing how
great is the mental antipathy. People of one type of mind
notoriously dislike the type of another people; the un-
likeness is repugnant to them and they can scarce abide it ;
at best they look down on it as something inferior, and at
worst deem it sufficient provocation for them to fly at one
another's throats on the least occasion of quarrel. So it comes
to pass that instead of mankind marching peacefally onwards
towards unity by conciliation of differences, they have
hitherto progressed thitherwards by destructive warfare in
which the strong have subjugated or extirpated the weak.
Were the prediction of the human future to be based entirely
on induction from the human past, the outlook would not be
bright. But it is not so based exclusively ; for time and the
principle of evolution bring into play factors for the operation
of which the brevity of individual and even national life
afford but little scope.
Diderot made it a reproach to physicians of his day that
they paid no attention to moral sentiments in their dealings
with sick j^ei'sons. He might, were he living now, still
reproach them that they pay little or no attention to the
mental signification of bodily movements and the mental
symptoms of bodily diseases. They perceive well enough
that when a man is very ill he loses his natural gait, carriage,
gestures, and the firm forms of his bodily acts, but they do
not take exact notice how in regressive course he loses traits
of character — his gait and carriage of mind, so to speak — and
recovers them progressively as he recovers. In all illness
the factor which makes most for recovery is character; abject
prostration of mind denotes prostration of vital force ; the
sick man who is sure he will not die and is resolutely minded
to get well often recovers, because the confidence and de-
termination are the exponent of his character — that is to
IX CHARACTER 289
say, not the cause but the concomitant effect of a strong
constitutional vitality. Vitality weak nigh unto extinction
cannot feel the desire and force necessary to inspire the
belief or hope of recovery ; imagination cannot therefore
figure it. Herein would be nothing to wonder at were it not
for the stubborn habit of violently divorcing mental character
from bodily nature and regarding them as belonging to
separate regions of being. Every mood is at bottom the
mental translation of a bodily state as every mind is the
translation of a body : a man is fervently in love because he
silently lusts ; if he has no lust, his love is only a platonic
semblance or an imaginative diversion.
When any one is said to fail in life because his character
is indolent, apathetic, wanting in moral energy and will, the
failure is ascribed to moral causes and blame imputed to him,
whereas the truth may be that his constitution lacks the
requisite vital energy which he cannot infuse into himself
by merely wishing it. How can he will by wishing to will,
if he cannot vitally wish ? If a weak heart and languid
circulation send not a strong enough blood-stream to the
brain to maintain and sustain its energy, the moralist will in
vain preach steady energ}- to it ; for it is then the heart not
the head which ought to be taxed with indolence and
admonished with vigour. Such brain is perhaps capable
only of being temporarily stimulated to an average level of
vitality of thought and feeling when it is specially excited
by good ^^-ine or good news, which is a nowise infrequent
reason for an unwise recourse to some alcoholic stimulant ;
unwise because the immediate and helpful effect is transient,
and the dose of stimulant must be repeated and increased,
the consequence being exhaustion and lassitude. Natures
are many and diversely constituted : some in which no desire
they are capable of feeling is strong enough to inspire stead-
fast resolution and action ; some again which, habitually
indolent and inert, can be kindled by temporary enthusiasm
or passion to occasional great efforts by which, when repeated
from time to time, they keep themselves fairly forwards in
290 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the race ; and others so happily constituted as to have the
steady supply of a good stream of vital energy whereby,
without anxious strain, they can maintain a good and even
speed and enjoy it. The moral is the natural exponent of
the physical energy acting through its appropriate organic
mechanism.
It is not by its thoughts but by its feelings or feeling -
infused thoughts and by its imagination, which denote the
fated inclinations of a nature, that a character is truly
revealed. In the order of mental development, whether in
the race or in the individual, feeling is prior to and deeper
than reflection ; its expressions in cries, exclamations, ges-
tures go before words. Therefore when an event strikes the
mind suddenly and affects it deeply, first impulses are the
most natural and genuine, second thoughts more artificial
and prudent. Still it is not by observing and divining a
person's thoughts and feelings, so far as they can be discerned
and judged, still less by hearing what he says they are, but
by observing and pondering what he does that the truest
revelation of a character is obtained ; for the history of a
life is the infallible demonstration of a character, and this is
nowise always in accord with M'hat the possessor of it de-
clares or even believes it to be. He may be deceived himself
in what he thinks, shows, and says ; the course of nature's
life of which his life is a nature-made part can nowise
deceive.
The individual being a nature-made instrument or organ,
he no more makes himself essentially than the special instru-
ment makes itself, at best only modifies himself through the
directions given to his development; the native forces of
character work deeply, silently, constantly as undercurrents
below the level of consciousness. Of high imagination
itself, which is rooted in the depths of character, being the
flower of mental growth, it is plainly true that it has no
more knowledge or control of the mode of formation of its
products, of the processes of their gestation, and of their
conscious birth in due season than, in bodily reproduction of
IX CHARACTER 291
the kind, the female has of the conception of the embryo, of
its manner of growth in the womb, and of its maturity at
the due time of birth. He who has not imagination
ingraft in his nature can never acquire it deliberately by
any labour of thought though he take all the pains in the
world ; it is the one faculty which never can be acquired
and is therefore most admired. Now a fine and noble
imagination is not only the supreme blossom of mind, it is
the highest function of nature working through man in its
process of hmiianization ; it differs not in degree only but
even in kind from the low-working astute imagination that
never rises above the deliberate calculations of self-interest
in the affairs of daily life, yet is very serviceable to its
possessor there ; it is the spontaneous grace or gift of a nature,
made for the man not by him, a gift from the gods — " the
spirit of the holy gods " in him, so to speak, — coming
when it listeth and knowing not whence it cometh nor
whither it goeth.
Though the character be made essentially for the in-
dividual not by him, yet as each character has several facets,
and as the circumstances of life, being infinitely various,
may be fitted to solicit and elicit the special development of
one or other of them or of a special combination of them, a
great deal can be done by training and culture to direct,
guide, and promote its lines of growth : if its vital nature
cannot be suppressed or radically changed, its mode of
expansion may be partially determined by the conditions in
which it has to live and thrive, for grow it vnli into good or
bad structure. Though well-based itself, unpropitious cir-
cumstances may still hinder it from growing into a well-
built structure ; though ill-based, propitious circumstances
may help to build up a fair, if not always very stable,
structure. That is a fact which gives scope and hope to
educational efforts. But a fact which ought to be taken
account of also in any scheme of education is that there
are some characters of such narrow and intense bias that
they cannot adjust themselves anywise to circumstances
u 2
292 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
repugnant to them, they must meet with fitting circum-
stances or have circumstances fitted to them, if they are to
thrive at all ; so strong being their natural bent or tAvist
that to try to straighten them forcibly would be to break
them, and to oppose their drift wholly would be to prevent
any growth and use of thein.
Another fact to be borne in mind is that the formation of
a character, so far as it can be done effectively, cannot be
done in seclusion and by reflection ; it must be done by
action among men in affairs, by doing not by thinking only.
The politician who has made a modest fortune in some kind
of business or profession, or been otherwise diligently trained
in real affairs, is pretty sure to show a practical sagacity and
a solidity of judgment which the professor who has perorated
to a class of students, or the literary man who has lived by
his pen, will be destitute of. The one will have a real ap-
prehension of things gained by observation and experience,
while the other will deal abstractly with notions ; for it is
no more possible to acquire a practical sense and judgment
of things by mere thinking than to cure disease by merely
reading about it, or to learn to swim without going into the
water. Perhaps there is no more mischievously impractical
being in the world than the pedant who believes himself
practical. Even the average-minded member of a privileged
class which has enjoyed the function of ruling shows an
hereditary sense of proportion, a balance of judgment, a
steadiness and quiet stoicism of feeling — a fundamental
rationality, that is — which are hopelessly wanting in the
conduct of the impatient theorist and doctrinaire. To
speculate and theorize about men and things without having
lived and worked among them in active converse and con-
flict, is much like theorizing about physical phenomena
without using observation and experiment in scientific re-
search ; it is to do without the observations and experiments
indispensable to acquire, test and verify real knowledge and
to govern sensible practice.
Though intellect and conscience are great qualities,
IX CHARACTER 293
yet they fail many times to go together in the same
character ; and it is pretty certain that, as the world has
gone and still goes, more good has been done sometimes by
great intellect with little conscience than would ever have
been done in the circumstances by much conscience with
small intellect. Especially is this true of work done in
complex co-operation by parties of men, where the tender
scruples of a cloistered virtue must needs incapacitate its
possessor for fruitful practical work. The over-sensitive
theorist Avho cries out against the iniquity of measures
which are ideally reprehensible would, were he listened to,
wreck a social system, pleased probably the while to gratify,
under the guise of superfine virtue, the keen sensitiveness
of the disproportionate self-esteem which is the natural
morbid product of a life chiefly spent in seclusion and
meditation. For the life of him he cannot stretch his view
to see in the succession of things how good develops out of
evil and evil develops out of good, and would wreck the
good to prevent the evil. What right has he to claim that
his tender moral sense is superior to the practical sense of
the strong man who, seeing things as they are in them-
selves and seeing them as a whole, is able to act with, and
on, men usefully ? Has the world gone wrong always hitherto
because at every great juncture in its history it must
certainly have gone differently had he or his like been
there to determine its course ?
Every character has its inborn and its contracted vices,
the latter naturally thriving best when grafted on the con-
genial stock of the former. The paradoxical thing is that
acquired vices sometimes proceed logically from inborn
virtues. An amiable nature pleased always to please can-
not, in face of the actual experiences of life, choose but lose
thorough veracity and become more or less insincere ; an
open, frank, and generous nature is driven by the pains of
experience to become reserved, suspicious, even cynical
perhaps, for cynicism may be the shield and mask of sensi-
bility. As the social body pitilessly subordinates the
294 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
individual member to its larg'er interests, aiming to produce
a perfect citizen, not an ideal moral man, it recognizes that
perfect sincerity between man and man would be incom-
patible mth its holding together in organic union ; therefore
it enjoins as rules of polite behaviour and tokens of good
breeding conditions of being which necessitate a mental
mutilation or deformation of the individual inconsistent with
entire sincerity of speech and conduct. So it coines to
pass at last that an old and complex society is prone
to become so artificial and conventional a structure, and
so much out of touch with basic realities, as gradually
to disintegrate. Always too, then, the characters of its
members answer to its character; the more artificial and
frail it is, the more weak and artificial they are. It is by
no means possible to have a majority, not even an adequate
leaven, of noble characters in a rotten social structure ;
the sane minority can then do no more than cry out
unheeded, Cassandra-like, powerless against the over-
whelming trend of things. Meanwhile, though societies
do not last or propagate themselves continually, it is
evident that the natural underljdng the social man, such as
he was before the acquisitions of culture and shows himself
to be now when stript of them, does continue very much
what he was in the beginning and perhaps ever shall be.
Socrates, adopting the Delphic maxim, enjoined on man
as the aim of wisdom and moral excellence, " Know thyself."
But how ? No man will do that by looking into himself,
even if he live in a closet and occupy his life in a continual
self-examination ; he would be likely in that case to be the
person in all the world most ignorant of himself Fruitful
reflection needs ample and proper food for reflection, for
reflection cannot feed on itself; and that food is to be
obtained only through a good knowledge of the not-self,
human and physical. He must know himself in nature —
know something of the constitution of the physical world
and of the physical constitution of his own being, else
his self-knowledge will leave a large part of self unknown.
IX CHARACTER 295
He should know also other selves in order to know him-
self, and know them as he can only adequately know them
by work among them, for he will see reflected in them what
he cannot see in himself by introspection. Social life is, as
it were, life-reflection of self in others and of others in self;
in which interaction lies perhaps the very origin and
principle of conscious life, conscious and self-conscious. As
the mental constitution of a present self contains quint-
essentially many selves which have been (many millions,
perhaps, if we count five hundred years back), this capacity
of knowing others and himself — that is, of his reflecting
them and being reflected by them — will depend on the
quality and quantity of these quintessences and their
reciprocal action. Evidently, then, to know self by prying
into self will not carry any one very far in self-knowledge ;
a more modest and hopeful way of discerning the main lines
of his character will be by observation of, and reflection on,
his doings in nature — what they have been and by what
natural laws they became what they were.
CHAPTER X
FRIENDSHIP— LOVE— DESIRE— GRIEF— JOY
I
FRIENDSHIP
The value of friendship — Friendship a limitation — The good uses of
a friend — Unions of cliques, clubs, associations — Material and
spiritual views of friendship — The ruptures of friends — Common
interests in friendship — Perfect friendship an ideal.
Man being a social unit living in, by, and through a social
medium cannot stand alone ; having need of others, he
joins with them in feeling and doing. It is his weakness
when he thinks to be self-sufficing and his strength when
he profits by union which make him crave for and enjoy
friendship. Thence the eloquent praises in which its joys
have time out of mind been celebrated : his friend one to
whom, as to a second self, he confides grief and so halves its
weight, communicates joy and so doubles its delight, from
whom in weakness he obtains support, in strength sympathy,
who praises and pushes him when he cannot decently praise
and push himself, rejoices with him in prosperity, condoles
with him in adversity, inspires hope and energy into de-
spondence, is the timely admonitor to temper with prudence
the ardour of elation. To have such a friend is, as it were,
to double self for action and to double its pleasure in action.
How help being prejudiced in favour of one who is so
helpful ?
CH. X FRIENDSHIP 297
That being so, friendship must be owned to be a proof of
self-insufficiency and in itself a limitation. Being, too, a
sort of self-flattery of a double self, it tends necessarily in
proportion to its strength to blind a man to the faults of a
friend and to the merits of other perhaps really more
worthy persons who are not his friends. If friendship halve
a sorrow, it will also halve a fault. The biographer of a
dear friend, emulating the arch-flatterer self, is prone to
wTite as elaborate a tissue of fiction as the autobiographer
commonly does. Renan professed that he was sometimes
tempted to say to himself that friendship was a theft done
to society and that it would disappear in a higher human
world ; but he might have consoled himself for the sin of it
by reflecting that any one who tried to take a wide human
embrace would embrace nothing but a sentimental shadow,
and that the friend of all mankind would have no friend but
himself. Limitation is necessary to real friendship as to
real love ; the man of many wives must needs spread out
his love very thin. If I halve my grief or double my joy
by loving a friend who is pleased to reflect what pleases me
and is pained by what pains me, I do not by loving ten
friends increase my joy tenfold in making them sharers of
it, nor lessen my grief in proportion as to be well nigh rid
of it ; nor could I in the end afibrd a friendship which
obliged me to take on myself a tenfold burden of grief or a
tenfold joy.
In his " Essay on Friendship " Bacon enumerates and
lays stress on the good uses of a friend, who may promote a
man's rise in the world by saying or doing for him many
things which he cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or
do for himself; allegations of merit and supplications for
advancement being " things that are graceful in a friend's
mouth which are blushing in a man's own." Certainly if
self-interest be not the foundation of friendship, it is wise
self-interest to make a friend and not to make an enemy.
" If he have not a friend he may quit the stage," Bacon says ;
to which one may add, that if he have an enemy he will
298 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
need, in order to quit himself well on the stage, constantly
to look behind to guard his rear as well as to look before
to see his way.
As the union of two friends is a junction of forces to
j)romote a single interest, so the larger union of several
friends into cliques, clubs, sects, societies, associations and
the like is a still more powerful means to further individual
interests. The self-interest of the society is engaged to
push the interests of its members, every one profiting by
the common exertions and in turn exerting himself to help
every other member, whose merits he is bound to esteem
above those of an outsider. Thereby of necessity judgment
is vitiated and partizanship engaged to do injustice. All
the more so when, as fails not frequently to happen in such
a communion, the moral atmosphere becomes vitiated by
the conditions and necessities of the work — the insincerities
that are deceptions, the agreements that are intrigues, the
co-operations that are conspiracies. In such unions the
mutual love which in some measure binds two friends in-
dependently of mere self-interest vanishes, whereas the
interested motives, which are almost dormant between two
real friends, luxuriate and predominate. The result is that
a spirit of the society is engendered, a spirit of the hive so
to speak, which is a vitiated emanation of the consolidated
interests, and perhaps would not commend itself to the
frank moral sense of any individual member. Congrega-
tions of beings breed through contagion of sympathy an
overpowering motive of feeling and conduct which not a
single individual member would conceive or honestly
approve separately. If all friendship, then, despite its
blessings and advantages, is still infected with a radical
bane, the strong and sincere man might nurse a casual
\vish to be superior to it and to stand alone. But if he
would do that he must be very strong, strong enough to
bear the loss he must necessarily suffer by doing without
sympathy of feeling, contributory thought in thinking, and
co-operation in doing.
X FRIENDSHIP 299
Bacon's opinions about friendship have been criticized as
those of a shrewd man of the world who was concerned only
to point out the good uses of it in furtherance of. worldly
interests, without any appreciation of its nobler spiritual
aspect. No doubt that is the main purport of his essay,
the truth of which, however, is not vitiated thereby ; for if
psychological analysis go deep enough to the root of things,
it fails not to show that social feeling, however divine it
might be, is based largely on thought which is not divine,
and cannot be clean divided from it. Many a feeling which
seems to be instinctive liking or repugnance is really the
effluence and expression of long- forgotten thoughts which,
having undergone solution of their forms, have been pre-
cipitated and consolidated into unconscious mental structure.
If friendship have its primal root in self-interest, there is
nothing to wonder at in the bitter and pessimistic sayings
concerning its hollowness when adversity strains or breaks
it ; sayings which, after all is said, are no fewer in number
nor weaker in authority than the praises of its felicity. Men
have always extolled its grandeur and always bewailed its
frailty. When half the double self is hurt and no longer a
help but a hindrance, the other half is often selfish enough,
by instinct of self-preservation, to shrink or get away from
it. Should the halves then unhappily become enemies,
pursuing contrary instead of common interests, then the
cynical maxim to treat a friend always as though he may
some day be an enemy is abundantly justified. A cynicism
revolting to fine sentiment, no doubt ; still not to be dis-
missed as wholly false by those who calmly reflect that the
most cynical sayings are not mere inventions of caustic wit,
but inductions based on practical experience of concrete
human nature.
The friendship of two women, it has been cynically said,
is but a plot against a third woman, the result being that
when she disappears from the scene they fall out. That is
an extravagant statement, yet it is not altogether baseless,
seeing that the friendship of two persons is sometimes
300 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
founded not so much on mutual esteem as on dislike or
hatred of a common rival or enemy. A fellow-feeling of
hostility helps to make men wondrous kind. It would be
difficult for friendship to subsist between two persons who
had no common interest, or at all events whose interests
constantly clashed. The ruptures of friends, no less in-,
frequent than their knittings, are notoriously caused by
hurts which the one does, or is thought to do, to the self-
love or self-interest of the other. Everybody is prone to be
a greater lover of himself than of anybody else, and self-love
wants a friend to please and not to hurt it.
The conclusion of the matter then seems to be that perfect
friendship is an ideal which it is good to believe in and aim
at, but not good to think realizable in practice, and that when
two persons are fast friends neither loves the real but the
ideal other, which love the shock of reality is liable at any
moment to shatter. It is not possible for anybody to be
perfectly satisfied with any other body, for the best friend
can never be quite perfect ; and as nobody ought to be
perfectly satisfied with himself, so he has not the right to
require anybody else to be perfectly satisfied with him.
II
LOVE
Its strength and subtilty — Infra-sensible undulations of energy — Love
an overwhelming physical attraction — The harmony of reciprocal
love — Beauty and ugliness — Love rooted in the productive energy
of nature — Love- marriages and marriages of interest — The self-
sacrifice and selfishness of lovers — -The transcendental rapture of
love — A delirious transport of egoism — Its eternal illusion.
If it be good to fall in love, it might oftentimes be still better
not. But there is practically no choice, because nature has
not left it in man's power to abstain. The one passion con-
cerning which he has not become wiser through the ages of
his long travail on earth is the love-passion. It triumphs
X LOVE 301
over other passions, is stronger than ambition, stronger than
hatred, stronger than the fear of death, counts for more than
all other pleasures. It cannot be concealed where it exists,
cannot be feigned where it is not, speaks most subtily by mute
eloquence of attitude, gesture, eye, which is more penetrating
and appealing than any spoken language. Let two persons
meet in a room between whom love is just springing up or
just beginning to wane, and the embarrassing tale is told
instantly by a subtile and sure impression which goes before
words and is more sincere than words. One might even ask
one's self whether inter-communication is not by more rapid
and subtile undulations of the cosmic ether than the senses
can take account of; the mood of mind, whether accordant or
ever so little discordant, exciting an exquisitely fine thrill
in the permeating ether of the one brain which is flashed
instantly to the other and received by it.
If a strong man may have a peculiar idiosyncrasy whereby
he turns pale, shudders, and faints because of the unsuspected
presence of a cat in the room, when he sees it not, nor hears
it, nor touches it, nor, so far as he knows, smells it, there is
nothing to wonder at in the instant transmission of a thrill
of love or anger by undulations imperceptible by sense. To
conceive the minimum perceptihile to be the limit of inter-
active influence between matter and matter is a most rash
and absurd conceit.^ As there are invisible rays of light
which penetrate the human body and inaudible vibrations of
sound which nevertheless strike on it, and unperceived smells
which affect it, and possible influences from the unknown
which act secretly on it, so there is a surrounding mental
atmosphere which is the effluence of the mode of thought
and feeling of the people of the country, time and place to
^ After all, the several special senses, albeit excellent for their
purposes, are only rather coarse means of dealing with coarse practical
surroundings, being insensible to the intimate subtilties of things,
Although by their special developments his special senses have raised
man to his pre-eminence, it is a question whether through their
specializations he has not lost more general and subtile susceptibilities
which exist in some of the lower animals.
302 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
whom the individual belongs. Is there not something present
in the mental atmosphere of a great city which is absent in
that of a quiet village ? The patient, silent brooding of
superior thought which issues eventually in a great discovery
or invention, or other mental creation, signifies perhaps
continual emanations of outgoing undulations seeking fit
recipients in objects and their relations and a continual re-
inspiration by assimilation of the ingoing impressions from
them, whereby the thought is gradually matured and in- due
time brought forth. For thought, like life, is product of the
subtile interrelation, and is unconscious in its actual travail
of production, conscious only when it is produced. Thinking
on matters after this fashion, it is not difficult to conceive
that intimate and silent relations subsist sub-consciously
between the individual and his social medium.
' At bottom love is a most intimate physical attraction
between two persons translating itself into concordant
thrills of feeling, whereby they strain to merge into one
another's being and to give origin to a new being. There-
fore it is sometimes a sudden stroke and surprise, indepen-
dent of observation and reflection, love at first sight, an
overwhelming elective affinity, just the capture of an
enrapture, a fascination, ecstasy or enchantment, a pos-
session or obsession — anything you will, which is not
deliberate and voluntary, but impulsive and quasi-convulsive.
The last thing necessary for a man to know in order to fall
in love with her is a woman's qualities ; for the passion fails
not completely and absurdly to transform her into some-
thing rare and delectable, endowing her with all the quali-
ties it desires and seeing no quality which it desires not to
see. Cupid being a blind infant, behaves like a blind and
unreasoning infant. What can be more unworthy of a
rational being endowed with the power of looking before
and after than to be thrilled to the inmost and instantly
transported out of himself by the glance, or the tone of
voice, or the touch — nay, the slight brush of her dress will
suffice — of another being less rational than himself, and so
X LOVE 303
foolishly fascinated as to translate every quality of her into
terms of his mad ecstasy ? A short-lived madness for the
most part, it is true, since when passion is spent he is
demagnetized or dehypnotized and comes to himself Still,
never quite to the old self, since he absorbed into his being
for a while another self which has made a change in it that
he cannot ever quite unlearn.
When love is traced down from its fine spiritual flowering
to its root in lust, the direct ph^'sical attraction is grossly
manifest ; for there is then a denudation of the refinements
of feeling, the decent draperies of reserve, the delicate graces
of behaviour which clothe its brutal nakedness and exalt its
human dignity — of all those specialized developments which
have been put on through the ages and are now struc-
turalized in the highest nerve-reflexes of the civilized brain.
In that coarse case the violent unease of mere sensual
passion presses to the ease of a gratification. Now when
love is not reciprocal, it is no better than lust on the one
side and unlovely tolerance on the other side : the response
to the kiss of love is not merely to kiss back again, it is to
blend two kisses in unison and draw two beings into mutual
self-abandonment ; the finest affinities and sympathies of
feeling and the nicest responsive expressions, striking each
to each in mutual harmony, being necessary to the perfect
marriage of minds and bodies. The endless rhapsodies of
poets about love are nothing else but lame attempts
to represent in words and rhythms the dumb melody of
that inaudible music. The varieties of music and dancing,
again, what do they represent fundamentally but mimic
love when they represent not mimic w^ar ? La Bruyere
makes the observation, which had been made before in a
Greek epigTam, that if an ugly woman is loved she Avill be
loved most thoroughly, either because of a weakness in her
lover, or because of secret and invincible charms in her.
He might have added, because of the salve to his self-love
who, having identified the woman with himself, rejects any
hurt to it her defects might seem to be ; which is the
304 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
reason, doubtless, why the libertine who marries his mistress
is notoriously prone to praise her virtues.
But why should it be weakness to love an ugly woman ?
There is often character — a style and distinction, so to
speak — in ugliness which there is not in beauty, and in any
case ugliness does not necessarily descend to the feet. No
doubt beauty of face is immediately attractive, but such
beauty may notoriously accompany dulness of feeling, awk-
ward and ungraceful gait, rhythmless movements, and
stolidity of thought ; a regular fashion of features go along
with a mere mechanical fashion of feeling, thinking and
doing which is fatal to the full fruition of love and soon
satiates or disgusts ; whereas irregularity of features
may sparkle with mind and be accompanied by animation
of feeling and movements. True love is not kindled and
sustained by the shallow attraction of a pretty or hand-
some face, it signifies the deep constitutional attraction of
the mutually polarized elements, mental and bodily, of the
whole beings ; and for that reason an ugly woman may
be loved passionately by a man, not because of a weakness
in him, but because of subtile constitutional affinities and
sympathies which meet in full harmonious fruition. Love
of a mindless face can at best be only a mindless love, and
love which includes not mind is but a step above lust.
The attraction of love, albeit fundamentally physical,
bespeaks a deeper-lying, more subtile and mysterious force
than ordinary physical attraction. Having its root in the
productive energy of organic life manifest consciously in the
spirit of man, it marks the strain or aspiration of that higher
becoming of things which we designate evolution. Think
on all the bravery of its manifold displays of form, of colour,
of sound, of odour, by which it proclaims and reveals itself
in nature — all so many hymns of praise to the creative sun
— on the sweet scents, bright hues and varieties of innumer-
able flowers ; on the many rapturous lays and brilliant
plumages of birds in spring; on the reiterated love stories
which mortals, generation after generation, never weary to
X LOVE 305
tell and hear; on the rhapsodies and raptures of words,
tones and rhythms, poetical and musical, which they delight
in; OE ■"'^^ religious pomp and ceremonial ynth which they
consecrate, the ornaments and apparel with which they
bedeck, and the feasting -with which they celebrate the
nuptial union ; all these witness to the deep throb and joy
of the productive power in its highest organic domain.
When in spring the young man's thoughts turn instinctively
to thoughts of love, and the bird puts a gayer plumage on,
and the frog's coaxing croak is heard near the pond, and the
field-mice squeal love in the hedgerows, they also testify of
it. No marvel, then, that the love-passion has proved itself
so overpowering in human history and oftentimes turned
the course of it. The profound passion of organic nature
proclaiming its pulse of life, its conatus jprogrediendi, in
the mind of man, it is not a motion to be frustrated by any
selfish rules of reason which might, nay, would logically
oftentimes, rule it out of being.
A question emerging here is whether the productive strain
acts to produce, not increase of quantity only, but superiority
of quality also when circumstances are favourable to its best
operation. If that be so, as it needs must be, then there is
reason for the opinion which many persons hold implicitly,
and some maintain explicitly, that when two persons are
passionately in love they belong to one another by an
elective affinity which is a sort of divine right entitling them
to scorn the counsels of reason and violate the edicts of
society. Silently or expressly, to the rights of the heart are
conceded greater value than to the precepts of the head.
Marriages of pure love, being dictated by nature, ought then
to favour good generation and the improvement of the species.
The frequent misfortune in that case is that passion is soon
spent and disillusion breeds discontent, and that as either
married the ideal of the other and find themselves deceived
in the real, while the bond holds fast, the harmonious con-
ditions of good generation are no longer present. On the
whole there is reason to believe that prudent marriages of
306 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
interest turn out as well as love-marriages, though the
interests of the future kind seem to be sacrij&ced by them to
individual or family interests ; for if the children have not
quite such good chances of generation as when the parents
combine passionately by elective affinity, they obtain better
breeding and education when adequate parental means
supply the favourable conditions of life in a mental atmo-
sphere free from domestic worries, sordid anxieties, mean
and ugly surroundings.
As man is not naturally prone to self-sacrifice it is all the
more wonderful to see what a transformation of him love
works instantly. He is then positively imbued with a
craving to make a sacrifice of himself, even perhaps the
heroic sacrifice of his life, for the beloved being, albeit the
sacrifice is then really to the passion in which himself is
absorbed. Not only is the passion thus sometimes stronger
than love of life, but it is capable of the more prosaic but
scarcely less hard victory over ordinary self-love and va,nity,
since the infatuated lover is the more pleased the greater
the fool he makes himself, and suffers gladly the ill usage of
the woman he hopes to win by his devotion and the derision
of outsiders who watch his folly. Transported out of his
rational self into an ecstasy which summons and musters to
its support all the faculties of his mind, he exhibits
an exalted and exaggerated egoism which is utterly
conscienceless, superior to circumstances, heedless of past
and future, entirely absorbed in the present, disregardful of
the interests of others, regardful only of the means to
gratify its present craving — nay, sublimely contemns also
time and space : no language but hyperbole will serve to
utter its inflated raptures ; these it eternizes in terms of in-
finite duration which still fail to express adequately their
intensity, while the space of the whole ynde world is not
enough to compass their immensity. Time is never too
long for lovers' meetings, who tire not of being together
because they are always flattering one another silently or
expressly, nor interspace ever too small since they can never
X LOVE 307
get sufficiently near one another. It is the only case, as
some writer has observed, in which two pei-sons talking of
nothing but themselves can bear to be long together without
weariness.
All this because the nervous molecules of two brains thrill
intensely in unison ! But of course that is not quite all.
Beneath the physical attraction lies the productive force of
nature, immortal and irresistible, inspiring and firing the
mortal to fulfil it, translating him out of self and as it were
transcendentally absorbing him into itself for the nonce.
Thus, like the ecstatic saint ravished from self in a spiritual
transport, he thinks to see or at all events to feel super-
naturally something which is not in the phenomena of nature,
triumphantly disdaining or ignoring that which is plainly
visible and sensible in them.
After all is said, the delirious transport is a simple trans-
port of egoism. Though it render the individual capable
of any self-sacrifice, it is really not self but for self that he
sacrifices ; he has made his beloved a part of himself, and his
adoration of her is an exhibition of supreme self-love, a
stupendous self-idolatry. Therefore he cannot bear the
hurt to his self-love which any suspicion of her fidelity is,
but often in that case torments his ingenuity to find out
evidence and excuses for disbelieving what he too well
suspects, constraining himself to believe her though he
knows she lies. When she deceives and deserts him
for another, it is not his love for her which is hurt, since she
may be doing better for herself, and he ought therefore to be
pleased ; it is his self-love which is keenly offended, for if
she deceive and desert another for him he is proud and glad.
Love is not so much blind naturally as it is wilfully blind,
obstinately bandaging its eyes so as not to see that which it
does not wish to see, but keen enough to see what it wants.
Naturally, like every other living thing, by the law of self-
conservation it seeks what pleases, shuns what hurts it ;
therefore it is eager to feed and maintain itself, craving to
reassure itself, when shaken, by seizing on every circum-
X 2
308 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
stance suited to uphold a belief against conviction, and
resenting any unwelcome fact which would make it not be.
All which goes to show how extremely absurd the love-
passion would be were man really the nobly rational and
finely spiritual being which he is ever prone to picture
himself Through the succession of untold ages, and despite
the innumerable and incalculable calamities which have
fallen out by its agency, it has continued to beguile him, so
that young life to-day is just as foolishly bewitched by
it as if the experience of the race had never been made.
Nature takes good care to inspire in the organic portion of
it which his nature is the eternal and invincible illusion
which the passion is, notwithstanding that it lives in him
only so long as it is desire and that disillusion follows ful-
filment. In the insect world there are notably creatures
which, like flowers, live to love once only and then die ; born
at sunrise, the ephemeral insect performs its single act of
procreation, and, the purpose of its brief life done, dies of old
age at sunset. Not essentially otherwise is it with man, if
we rectify our notions of space and time. On him have been
imposed, it is true, the longer labours of a longer and larger
life, in which grossly in fact and ideally in art, poetry, music,
and other graces of life, he can give elaborate expressions to
the productive passion of nature in him ; yet in the end it
comes to this, that his longer life is but a process of gradual
disenchantment ending in an inevitable dissolution. Howbeit
here one cannot help making the reflection that nature has
been kinder to the insect than to the man; for instead of
placing the illusion and joy in the youth of life, and then
prolonging life through a period of laborious activity and
anxiety in maturity, and of weakness, weariness, and sorrow
in the decline of age, it has given ^ the caterpillar all the
gluttonous pleasure of nourishment at the beginning of life,
and bestowed on the butterfly the supreme passion and joy of
love at the end of it.
X DESIRE— HOPE 309
III
DESIRE — HOPE
Desire insatiable — Its boundlessness — Multiplications of desires and
their gratifications — Present enjoyments spoilt by desire — The
vital basis of desire and hope — The love-passion and its glamour —
The ideal and the real — The role of feeling in belief — Ultrafidianism
and supra-rational reason — Men believe as they feel — Reality of
pleasure — The cultivation of illusions — Consecrated lies — Idealiza-
tion of the real.
How many times, and by how many mortals, has the trite
wisdom of the Spanish proverb been uttered — to wit, that
nothing satisfies a man except that which he has not ! The
law of human things is in desire to pant for enjoyment, and
in satiety to languish for desire. Every fresh thinker
coming on the scene makes that discovery for himself in
turn, and having made it proclaims it bravely as if it had
never been said before. The new-budding poet weaves the
eternal refrain into the strained elaborations of a sonnet or
wails it in a tuneful lyric, sure then that he has found a
precious stone and set it so artistically that it can never be
either excelled or equalled. Some day, perhaps, the trite
truth will be taken for granted and allowed then to stand in
its naked simplicity.
Implicit in desire is a vague sense of eternity and infinity
which there is not in any function of the understanding ; for
while intellect is relative and finite desire is boundless.
That is because desire is effect and expression of the funda-
mental eonatus or nisus of organic life which, reaching back
to an infinite past and stretching forwards to an infinite
future, is instilled with silent memory and prophetic fore-
feeling; therefore alwaj-s aspiring, never satisfied, a per-
petually urgent impulse to be, an ever-to-be-better to-morrow.
It is the source and sustenance of that formless longing
which the imaginations of men, labouring to shape in form
and misforming, have translated into so many and diverse
myths of the supernatural.
310 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
It results from the nature of desire that it is ardent and
urgent so long as, vitality being strong, the red blood of
lusty life pulses in it. Then it is instant to sprout and
shoot in special desires and to prompt endeavours to gratify
them, notwithstanding that the desires are oftentimes neither
natural nor necessary, but essentially artificial and not
worthy the pains their gratifications cost. To forbid some-
thing or to let one person enjoy what another has not in a
society of human beings suffices to provoke instant desire to
have it. It was not so much, perhaps, because Eve mshed
to be wise as because it was forbidden that she plucked
and ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and
evil. Were adultery not a forbidden sin it might lose a
spice of its attraction ; like scanty clothing artfully designed
to suggest what it conceals, the prohibition fires desire ; and
-without doubt the curiosity to try an unknown experience,
just to sip the forbidden cup to know how it tastes, has
counted for much in many a trespass of the kind. The
wonder, perhaps, is that murder is not sometimes done — it
is nowise certain that it is never done — out of a curiosity to
obtain the intense and special experience.
The interrelations and interactions of men in the com-
munion and commerce of society must needs breed new
desires while the organie impulse to grow and ascend in
being continues ; and the endeavours and means used to
satisfy them constitute the progress of civilization. Even
desires seemingly mean and unworthy in themselves have
their good uses, seeing that at the lowest they yield interest,
occupation, and distraction from the ennui of life where
nobler wants are wanting. So it is that in a civilized society
old age is rendered less wearisome than in a simpler and
more primitive society with its few desii-es and interests, the
extinction of which leaves the individual stranded in apathy
and despair ; and so it is that the native New Zealander of
to-day, having more distractions, does not, as his grandfather
was wont to do, kill himself because of a single great
sorrow.
X DESIRE— HOPE 311
Another natural effect of the nature of desire is that it is
not satisfied by fruition. How, indeed, can it be seeing that
it is the longing by which the organic nisus expresses
itself? Whether that which it obtains be worth much or
little, it still craves; by lending enchantment to what it
woos, as its manner is, it feels illusion in what it wins, and
so presses forward through the present to a better fulfilment.
If the present were not always sacrificed to the future, it
would be strange how little men ever really live in the
present. They are always expecting — indeed, for the most
part idly waiting for what will come next : one after another
of the customary things of daily routine — dinner, bed, break-
fast, to-morroAv, next week, next month, next year, and so on
in monotonous sequence day after day and year after year ;
spend life, as Seneca said, in preparing to live, and are sur-
prised at last by the day which has no to-morrow. All the
while they thus waste and would hasten life by getting
through the time they complain bitterly of the shortness of
life. No doubt many a maker of this reflection has solemnly
said to himself. What folly is this ! Henceforth I am resolved
to live in the jjresent and make the most of it, yet a minute
afterwards has found himself brooding over the past, or
musing of the future, or poisoning the present with regrets
for the past and frets for the future.
As desire is the basis of hope, life without hope is pretty
much organic life without desire, life with no smile on its
face, life so low as to be only still life scarce living or worth
living. Hope in mind and spring in nature own the same
fundamental origin, gloom in old age and bareness in winter
the same fundamental conditions ; for as in spring all organic
nature notably thrills with hope and productive pulsing, so
hope and productive impulse are the predominant passion of
man's spring-time. So unspeakably sad is life without hope
that it might well be a daily prayer, " Give us this day our
daily hope." How grey a gloom steals gradually over life as
desire and hope wane naturally in the decay of age, and how
dark is the enveloping cloud of woe when, owing to a collapse
312 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of nervous vitality, there is a fall into the dismal abyss of a
profound melancholy madness ! What is then the natural
ending of things ? Either gradual death by process of in-
creasing decay in the one case, or in the other case abrupt
death by suicide perhaps, which is then also a quite natural
event, although full-throbbing life hasten to denounce the
deed as unnatural and call the doer mad. Infuse into the
weak structure a full current of organic energy, and imme-
diately the restored vital elasticity expresses itself in the
renewal of desire and hope, in a revival of the lust to live
inspiring the will to live ; this, too, temporarily sometimes
even in the decaying structures of age, as is most remarkable
in the extraordinary mental ignition of senile mania, and
permanently perhaps in the revived energy of the morbidly
depressed brain of melancholia.
Nothing in mental pathology is more striking than the
instant transition witnessed sometimes from an abject state
of impotent apathy, or from a terrific panic of despairing yet
indescribable anguish, suicide-urging or even suicide-com-
pelling, to bright spirits, brisk and busy action, cheerful
interest in life, and eager desire to live ; the sudden trans-
formation marking a restoration of nervous energy so subtile
and swift that we know not yet how it takes place, though
it no doubt marks an instant molecular change. Without
such physical change the fortifying precepts of philosophy
and the consoling assurances of religion would be alike
utterly impotent to infuse the least ray of hope ; with it
they are mostly superfluous, since it is there without them.
Desire and precept speak different and mutually unintelli-
gible languages, the one being the expression of the indivi-
dual's present feeling, the other the exposition of the wise
thotight of others, or of the self when it was perhaps quite
another self; therefore it is that thought cannot speak of that
which it does not feel. Neither for religion nor for j)hilo-
sophy is it difficult to subdue desire when decline or satiety
has quenched its fire.
Whosoever will have a clear notion of the enchantment
X DESIRE— HOPE 313
which desire of an object lends to it cannot do better than
ponder the love-passion and its effects. The prescriptive
language of love-poetry is extravagant hyperbole, than which,
viewed in reason's light, nothing could be more ridiculous.
Ruby lips, teeth of pearl, golden tresses, eyes that outshine
the stars, a breath whose sweetness the violet would gladly
steal, cheeks that outblush the roses and make the lilies pale
with envy, such and such-like are the poetical absurdities in
which the delirious rapture extols and embellishes its object,
straining vainly to express in words the boundless and inex-
pressible in desire. The extreme ecstasy is but an instance
of a common performance — to wit, the perpetual creation
and persistent pursuit of illusions which fade as soon as
grasped. Always to grasp at, yet never to grasp, the ideal,
that is nature's spur to progress and the play of its wonted
irony.
That is one way of viewing things. But another and
better way, it may be said, is to look on the ideal of desire
as the true real, the seeming real being only the passing
show or symbol, or at all events as something quite as real
in human things as the so-called real. In that case the
illusion fades naturally because it is only phenomenal, a
passing fashion of the ideal, temporal and belongmg to
things temporal, whereas the real lives and lasts in the
continuing ideal, which is divine, belongs to the eternal, and
is known not to the understanding but spiritually discerned.
For it is through the ideal that man is in communion with
and rests upon the primal and eternal force, unknown and
unknowable, from which the mighty stream of being runs
through its multitudinous channels ; feeling and faith are its
sure witnesses ; and it is by striving consciously for absorp-
tion, more or less perfect, into it, whatever it be named, by
merging the conscious part into the unconscious whole, that
the wise man obtains a tranquil resting-place of thought and
feeling amidst the anxieties and griefs, the doings and suffer-
ings, the agitations and apprehensions, the regrets and the
remorses, the failures and errors, the incalculable changes
314 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and chances of this mortal life. He who finds no such haven
of repose for his troubled soul must bid good-bye to happiness
when the common illusions of life cease to be realities for
him ; he who finds it gains a peace of mind in the negation
of living while he is still alive, attaining to a more and more
complete absorption of self into the infinite whole in pro-
portion to the success of his process of mental suicide. As
separation from nature through the rise of self-conscious-
ness was the source of living woe, so restoration to nature
through the abolition of self-consciousness is the happy issue
of life.
Psychologists for the most part have hardly appreciated
the important factor which feeling is in human judgments
and beliefs ; having treated them too much as if they were
purely intellectual affairs, to be acquired by rules of abstract
reason and held on purely rational grounds, they have not
examined closely how vitally desire enters into the formation
and force of individual beliefs. Yet simple observation of
concrete persons and things shows plainly that every belief
is fortified or weakened, cleared or clouded, even formed or
destroyed by desire. The true consoler of one sunk in the
depths of a greab sorrow is not he who proves to the sufferer
by unanswerable arguments that it is remediable and will
pass, but he who by apt sympathy infuses a solace and
support which strengthen the sorrowing mind to find the
argument of its own remedy. It is the desire or feeling in
belief, proceeding from the special constitution of the
individual mind, not any abstract pure reason, which is the
force that gives it strength and compels assent. When the
feeling preponderates over reason in it, the belief may be
strong yet wrong ; when the reason is infused with weak feel-
ing only, the belief may be weak but right. Who believes so
fiercely as the fanatic who believes what is plain folly ? His
desires concentrate the energies of his whole nature into a
few special tracts of mind. Do not numbers of persons be-
lieve earnestly that which is clean contrary to reason with-
out being a whit shaken in their belief or bating one jot
X DESIRE— HOPE 315
of it because of the plainest demonstration of its iiTational-
ity, nay, believe it the more fiercely the more irrational it is
proved to be ? It is a marvellous comfort to them, and at
the same time a sort of self-sanction of their faith, to lament
with Sir Thomas Browne that there are not impossibilities
enough in religion, and, like him, they rejoice to believe a
thing not only above but contrary to reason. Constituted as
they are, it is the instinct of their mental self-conservation
to which rationality would be destructive.
This attitude of mind, which he called ultrafidianism, did
not altogether commend itself to Coleridge, who tried to
save the situation and uphold the credit of reason by dis-
tinguishing between reason and understanding as faculties
different not in degree but in kind, and ascribing to reason
an inward and spiritual beholding of absolute truths above
sense, having their evidence in themselves. Therefore to
believe a thing true because it was impossible, according to
Tertullian's maxim, was not to contradict reason, which
might actually approve the belief, it was only to contradict
the understanding whose highest functions are relative and
comparatively uncertain. But was there not perchance
some bias of desire in that distinction prompting and postu-
lating an absolute difference of faculties by names which
had no existence in things ? ^ Is the tremendous postulate of
this absolute and God-like reason which is a negation of
natural reason quite uninspired by the desire and untinc-
tured by the pride of human egoism exalting its mortal and
expecting its immortal destiny ? And the absolute truths
revealed by it to the individual being, are they not at bottom
truths to his liking, truths which he, constituted as he is
mentally, would have be truths of supreme reason ?
Of sages, saints and savages, it is in the end true that
they believe very much as they feel, believing sincerely only
when they feel the belief — have the force of feeling in it
* Here, as always, Pascal was more logical ; he felt and taught that
it was necessary to stifle reason — to do that which " vous fera croire et
vous abetii'a."
316 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
which makes it living — not when they merely think it or
think they believe it. Therefore it is that they are not
logical in their beliefs, but can fervently believe that which
is contrary to reason, the more ardently the more intensely
personal the belief is, and are not shaken in their conviction
that black is white by the plainest demonstration of reason ;
for they feel an implicit reason in their faith transcending
explicit reason. If it be not true to them, what matters it
how true it be ? The structures of belief are nowise
spontaneous growths of an hour, they have been built into
the individual nature by inheritance, tradition, education,
custom, law, and other powerful and constantly acting
influences of the social environment, and they vary infinitely
according to the particular constitution and character. How
can the emasculate mind which lacks a whole province and
kind of feeling, the mental answering to the bodily depriva-
tion, possibly admire and approve masculine thought, feeling
and conduct ? Life so inspired must needs be repugnant to
it. And like-inspired art, too, since the business of good art
is to represent that in things which by abstraction of the
best in their qualities makes the ideal ; wherefore the
emasculate art critic cannot choose but be repelled by the
over-masculinity of Michael Angelo. Fate favours mortals
in very different measures, bestowing on some superior
endowments whereby they can like and assimilate variously
and widely, and on others inferior endowments whereby they
are limited to special likings and assimilations ; but perhaps
the unkindest gift which it bestows on any one is the gift of
a strict and tender conscience along with a penetrating,
critical and logical intellect; for while the former is
perpetually afflicted by the wrong doings, the latter is
perpetually offended by the irrationalities, it encounters.
Pleasures are bewailed as illusions because they continue
not at a stay, and after enjoyment leave behind them desire,
their brevity and the satiety they produce alike disappoint-
ing expectation. But where is the illusion ? The pleasure
was real while it lasted ; and it is only because insatiable
X DESIRE— HOPE 317
desire craves for more than the real can ever give, nothing
less than an unrealizable ideal, and bounded enjoyment
necessarily foils short of unbounded anticipation, that men
are not content to enjoy the present for what it is worth.
What an exacting madness ! Is love an illusion while it
lasts because they cannot always be in love ? The eternal
law of nature is transition, a constant flux not a constancy
of things : why not then wisely accommodate the phases of a
changing self to the changing phases of things ? Instead of
grieving that life is short and joy so transient, or dreaming
ideally of eternal life and endless joy, the wiser mind may
lengthen life by putting into it as many illusions as possible
and enjoying them to the utmost while they last — even
perhaps, if so minded, by deliberately fostering the illusion
in order to increase the pleasure of it, regardless of the
eventual disillusion to be quietly expected and philosophically
endured.
The unfailing hindrance to the systematic cultivation of
illusions and the multiplication of pleasures thereby is that
everybody is prone to take himself and his doings too
seriously ; although he plainly sees change and decay and
disappearance in all around, he cannot reconcile himself to
his own change, decay and disappearance. He would be an
end in himself, not a mere passing show in a cycle of things
without end. He wants to be quite happy and quite
rational, angel and at the same time animal, which is
absurd ; whereas he might be happy if he were sensual
and irrational, or at any rate sentimental and irrational, even
though sadly sentimental, since in such sadness there often
lurks a secret note of pleasure. Reason certainly will not
make him happy, for it is not reason but feeling which
speaks that language. But he may be very happy irration-
ally. Consider the many and various marks of distinction
which he can create for himself, then value mightily and
strive for passionately — the ribbons, the garters, the crosses,
the stars, the medals, the titles, the orders, and the like :
these are of small Avorth in themselves, being just as
318 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
ridiculous and childish bedizenments as those with which a
naked savage ornaments or disfigures himself, and at best
of local and quite arbitrary value only ; a Chinese statesman
might be no prouder to wear the English Order of the
Garter than an English statesman to wear the Yellow
Jacket or Peacock Feather of China ; yet they are manifestly
most useful to incite and urge individual vanity and ambition
to serve the purposes of the special body-politic which
confers them, and to glorify and gladden those who seek and
gain them. Although money is notoriously a most powerful
incentive to endeavour, yet it does not so easily conquer the
love of life as vanity does ; for how eagerly will men venture
their lives for a ribbon or a cross ? It is politic wisdom then
to create many social values in life, because thereby the
people, being solicited by many ambitions and occupied in
eager strivings, are distracted from realities and made
happy. He who soberly considers what enthusiasm, devotion,
self-sacrifice and reckless contempt of death Napoleon
evoked in multitudes of men by the passionate desire to
gain a cross of honour which he devised, may well cease to
wonder at his colossal indifference to the value of human
life and his cynical contempt for it when it was not his own.^
As the social body flatters the vanity and fires the ambi-
tions and emulations in many ways to make them serve it,
so it idealizes, and embellishes, and in the end quite falsifies the
lives of men who have served it. Although lies in general are
to be deprecated as hurtful, yet there are " consecrated lies "
which are deemed laudable. The story of the life and death
of a person of great eminence seldom, if ever, fails to bubble
or boil over with flaming praise of his noble character, his
great talents, and his splendid virtues, all which are celebrated
as the implied cause of his glorious service and the explana-
tion of the eminence which he achieved ; whereas the real
1 See Chateaubriand's Memoir es de V Outre Tombe for a graphic
description of the mean and abject cowardice shown by Napoleon
when he was conducted through the hostile mobs of certain towns on
his way to banishment in the island of Elba.
X GRIEF— SUFFERING 319
truth perhaps was that he was mainly, if not quite, destitute
of the virtues ascribed to him, and would never have climbed
to the position he held and done the service ho did but for
the possession of other qualities nowise so laudable. The
just comment on his life is sometimes that which is made
quietly in private by those who knew him well. " So that
acute, pertinacious, selfish and intriguing fellow is dead.'
As the world has hitherto been and still is constituted, it
must be confessed that honours, titles, dignities and the like
have not been always titles of real honour ; in an ideal state
governed by true principles of justice they would sometimes
be titles of shame, because the rewards of unworthy arts.
But to idealize the man, however mean in some respects
he was, is to uphold fine social principles, and to incite
love and practice of them. Therefore the lie is consecrated.
As they cannot realize the ideal, men no doubt do well to
idealize the real ; so they stimulate one another to aspire
and strive after something higher than is. To feign and
believe themselves to be what they are not is not the hypo-
critical anomaly in human things which many persons, view-
ing matters superficially, vex and distress themselves to think
it ; on the contrary, it is the proper order of things, being
the natural means and steps of a progressive development.
Human life is nature's art, good or bad, and human art in
turn is the beautification of nature and development of
its art.
IV
GRIEF — SUFFERING
Grief increased by imagination — The transport of a grief— Outward
show of grief — Physiological limits of grief and pain — Pain an evil
in itself, not merely in opinion — The sure cure of grief — The
permanent effects of grief— The unity of the physical and moral
nature — The good use of suffering.
A TRITE reflection, though it seldom abate an anxiety, is
how vastly the tribulations, vexations and pains of life
would be lessened did men not magnify present troubles
320 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and fret themselves with the imaginations of troubles which
never come. As the poet says : —
' ' Fear is more pain than is the pain we fear,
Disarming human souls of native might,
WhUe each conceit an ugly figure wears
Which were not evil, well viewed in reason's light."
Therein man pays the price of his pre-eminence over the
lower animals, which suffer less in the present and are not
tormented with anxieties about the future : it is his pre-
rogative to think, and his penalty to suffer the pains of
thinking and the necessary increase of sorrow which in-
crease of thinking is. To be happy, or at all events not to
be unhappy, he must abdicate his prerogative ; whether it
be by not using his God-like and most sovereign reason for
what it is worth, but staying in placid ignorance, or by
absolutely renouncing it in favour of a reason-spurning
faith when its exercise would be too disquieting.
The show of grief is often greater than the grief itself.
He who is wholly absorbed in a passion of sorrow cannot
see and speak it ; its violence transports and, so to speak,
hypnotizes ; when its ecstasy abates and it is beginning to
pass, then it can be looked at and talked about, it is no
longer engrossing and unspeakable. Now, as every ecstasy
implies a state of divorce from the natural associations and
successions of ideas, a self-absorption forgetful of the past
and heedless of the future, there is haply less suffering than
there appears to be in a transport of grief or fright, just
because of the rapture out of self and the consequent in-
sensibility to everything else. The hysterical woman who
rends the air with shrieks and appals the spectator with
her bodily writhings does not suffer much ; indeed, the per-
formance of her grief often yields her a degree of secret
gratification. Furthermore, there is always this alleviation
of real pain of mind — that it inevitably decreases when it
does not increase. Let it be never so tragic, it has its
unfailing remedy ; time is the sure and prosaic consoler.
Though the cause of grief remain the same, yet the in-
X GRIEF— SUFFERING 321
dividual changes, and in a little while is no longer the self
who was afflicted ; its pang then is the remembrance of
what another self suffered.
Sobs, shrieks, cries, wails, and weeping are nowise pro-
portional signs of suffering; they are rather the explosive
vents and ease of it, issues rather than measures of it, and
therefore a relief which is almost a luxury when it is in-
dulged excessively. As there is no greater ease than that
which the natural reflex discharge is to an internal com-
motion, bodily or mental, so there ensues a tendency, be it
ever so subtle, to prolong the outward display of sorrow as
an indulgence ; a tendency most evident in weakness — there-
fore in women, children, and sick persons. Invalids are
naturally prone to self-pity ; it is a sign of their demoraliza-
tion by nervous weakness and a cause of further demoraliza-
tion, for the physically undermined will is then in a bad
case. Still less is the outward display of grief proportional
sign of inward pain when there is a side-glance of self-
conscious regard to the effective modes of its expression and
the sympathy of onlookers ; a nowise exceptional event,
seeing that it is characteristic of nervous prostration,
whether merely functional or due to serious disease, not
only to give way to moaning self-pity, but purposely to
exaggerate and even simulate symptoms in order to produce
an adequately pitiful impression. So infused is it with, and
dependent on, its social medium that it craves its sympathy
and support when sinking in the infirmity of sickness and
the dissolution of dying.
The pain of a grief, like the irritation of sense by a
stimulus, has its measure ; neither below its minimum nor
above its maximum is it felt. Within the limits, too, of its
measure it has its time-limit, this being short if it be
violent, long if it be slight. Whether it be great or small
depends not wholly on its external cause but in part on the
person's nervous constitution; the less pain of weakness
equals the greater pain of strength, so to speak, because it
represents equal suffering by reason of the native strength
322 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
of vital resistance being weaker. In the last extremity
pain is limited by the limits of the natural resisting power
of the nervous fabric ; for when the cruellest tortures that
human ingenuity could devise and inflict on the human
body, by exhausting all the possible varieties thereof which
its structure could lend itself to, exceeded the fixed limit of
endurance, either they caused a local destruction of sensi-
bility or the victim swooned and no longer suffered. The
cleverest torturer was he who could elicit all the notes of
agony possible within that physiological limit. Perhaps he,
too, failed to be as cruel as he would fain have been,
pleasing himself with the imagination of causing greater
pains than his victim actually felt. Thus happily and only
has the inhumanity of man to man through the ages been
haply baffled.
When the philosopher tells me gravely that it is not the
things-in-themselves but the opinions I have of them which
afflict me, and that I ought therefore to change my opinions
of them, he bids me practice a pretty sort of self-dupery.
What the thing is in itself concerns me not who am con-
cerned only with what it is to me, it being only to me so
far as I feel and think it ; what it is in itself is the concern
of the universe at large and of the transcendental philo-
sopher in his closet who knows its secrets. No doubt my
opinion may change, nay, will inevitably change with the
changing seasons and phases of me and my changing
circumstances, and I may come to think good what I once
thought bad, but it is then a changed " I " or ego who holds
it, not my past ego, and it is still the thing I think which
afflicts me. So likewise when the Stoic bids me defy pain
as no evil in itself but an evil in my opinion only, though I
obey him and defy it, I still have the painful feeling and
opinion of it, and am little eased by the verbal negation.
Could his injunction and my assent make another " me " of
me then and there, things would be different, and all
might go merrily as marriage bells. When all is said, a
fanatical enthusiasm like that which transported the early
X GRIEF— SUFFERING 323
Christian martyr, even the young and tender maiden, to
suffer gladly the most atrocious torture, would do more to
render me insensible than all his stem counsels of fortitude,
seeing that its ecstasy would be a dismemberment of mind
and a suspension of its sensibilities, whereas his resolutions
of reason would be rather a compact keeping together of its
structure and functions.
In the end the surest cure of grief is neither the pious
resignation of the saint nor the stern stoicism of the
philosopher ; it is the simple quasi-physical expulsion of it
by another grief or by a new joy. Though it be hard to
endure a toothache patiently, yet nobody would feel a tooth-
ache who was racked with the worst torture of a cancer. A
new love after a short time consoles and compensates the
sorrow-stricken young widow who, precipitated suddenly
from the height of bliss into the depths of despair, seemed
and sincerely felt heart-broken at the time. Neither in
thought, nor in feeling, nor in action is it possible for two
separate tracts of mind to be in full activity at the same
time ; only when one subsides can the other perform fully.
The cessation of a woe is nowise the complete cancelling
of it, for after it is past and gone things are not exactly as if
it had never been. Physiology and physics are not one and
the same thing, albeit there could be no physiology without
physics. When a finger is thrust into the sea and with-
drawn, the hole is instantly filled up as if it had never been,
though it has no doubt made its cosmic record ; but a past
grief does not so vanish — it leaves its scar behind it, which,
like the scar on the child's finger growing as the body grows,
continues as the mind grows. Besides, as the grief-scar
witnesses to the grief-fever which has been, so it witnesses
also perhaps to lasting effects on character ; like the disease
which, once recovered from, protects the body against its
recurrence, it modifies the mental constitution and protects
against a similar and equal grief-fever. If it confer not a
complete immunity, the second fever will not have the
violence of the first, while recurrences, making habit, so
V 2
324 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
enure the mind to it at last that it is borne ahnost uncon-
sciously. Incongruous as such a statement seems concerning
mind as a spiritual entity, it is nowise so when applied to
mind as a most delicate and complex mental organization, to
be studied fruitfully by the light of conceptions drawn from
the study of physiological organization.
Much foolish surprise has been expressed concerning the
action of the moral on the physical and of the physical on
the moral nature. As though they ever had acted, ever did
act, or ever could act independently ! Every moral sensibility
and energy implies its special physical structure, both when
the moral affects the physical and when it is manifestly
affected by it ; without the requisite mental organization in
nervous structure there could be no proper mind to act
morally, any more than mind could act outwardly without
the requisite nervous and muscular structure. What a
singular conception, if conception it be, that of a loftily-
detached mind imbued with noble feeling and fraught with
sublime moral energy, self-determined and self-sufficing,
owing no obedience to natural laws, disdaining any bodily
means of sustenance, growth, and utterance ! When pro-
tracted moral depression initiates and gradually induces
bodily disease, as it certainly may do, it does so because
there is native constitutional weakness ; the low moral level
reflects a low level of nervous vitality, and the consequences
are a failure of the proper supply of nervous energy to
animate the nutrition and function of the bodily tissues, and
a concomitant moral weakness. Always the most helpful
physician in sickness is he who can treat the body through
the mind as well as the mind through the body. No doubt
the moral fibre maj- be strengthened by exercise, just as a
muscle may be likewise strengthened, but only within the
set limits, quantitative and qualitative, of its native struc-
ture ; and it is undeniable that there are constitutions
which, though their general functions are fairly good, yet
lack the latent reserve of moral energy which a luckier
lineage might have endowed them with. The effect of a
X GRIEF— SUFFERING 325
moral shock, then, is not to be measured by the quantity
and quality of the external impression ; it represents the
internal commotion produced, which will be greater or less
according to the strength of the vital resistance to dissolution,
such resistance revealing itself in the strength and quality
of the moral nature. How strange and foolish to be so
passionately and needlessly moved by so trivial a mishap,
one is tempted to say sometimes when watching the tragedy
of a tumult in a teacup, whereas the marvel and miracle
would be if the person so constituted then and there were
not so violently affected. To be the pattern of all patience
implies a stability of intimate nervous structure which
cannot ever be acquired either by wishing or praying for it,
albeit that as structure grows to function much may be done
by consistent and steady discipline.
As life is a sort of conflict with external nature in which
self-maintenance and growth are the conquest, and as moral
progress is the growth of life in mind, it is evidently good to
be taught by suffering how to go the right way and not
astray. To have life without suffering is inconceivable ; it
would be to have no appetite and therefore no relish for
life. The first thing the new-born infant does is to cry, and
the next thing to try instinctively to ease the unease of
hunger ; and the first thing which the conscious mind does
is to try to abate some unease of life and so ease its growth.
If hunger were not felt, which is inchoate pain, where would
be the care for food, which is pleasure ? If men did not
relish food, what would they care for the sport of killing ?
If they had no lust, where would be the delight of love ? If
they were never tired, how could they enjoy rest ? If they
never suffered because of ignorance, what motive would they
have to wish to know ? Even the blessing of health is not
known until health is lost. Compassion, sympathy, benevo-
lence, and the like humane feelings would be um-eal, if not
impossible, to one who was incapable of suffering like
passion, for to feel a kindred grief is to weep for one's self in
the kin by weeping for the kin in one's self. While the way of
326 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
descent, then, is broad and easy, the way of ascent of life is
hard and narrow, being victory through tribulation, growth
in virtue through patience and long-suffering, perfection
through suffering. Every pain is pregnant with its proper
instruction, every virtue perhaps sown in pain. A tearless
life would be no better than the life of a well-fed mollusc in
its sheltering shell ; therefore the righteous man is taught to
joy in soiTOw and sing his psean of praise to pain.
JOY — LAUGHTER
Joy denotes vital energy — -Constitutional weakness of vitality — The
expression of vitality in feeling and thought — The physical basis of
mind — Reception and response of mental undulations — Futile
discussions about the sumnmni honum — The varieties of laughter —
Subtile emanation of character.
Psychologists have been wonderfully persistent to put the
cart before the horse, making that a cause which was really
effect. Spinoza defines gaiety as a disposition of mind which
sustains and augments our powers to act, as it certainly does,
sadness a state of mind which inhibits and lessens our forces,
which is true also. But whence the energy which reveals
itself consciously in the joy ? And whence the lack of energy
which shows itself in sadness or dejection ? Gladness is the
effect not the cause of buoyant vital force, and sadness the
effect of low vital force. The frisking lamb, the playful
kitten, the jumping dog owe their joy to no abstract dis-
position of mind but to the overflowing force of bounding
life in them. Elevation or depression of spirits bespeaks
active or sluggish nervous energies, and good humour of
disposition signifies the happy composition as well as activit}'
of them. To separate the spirit from the matter is an in-
vention of metaphysical philosophy, not an induction of
experience ; for the word spirit was used, and may perhaps
again be used some day, to denote the extremest subtile
X JOY— LAUGHTER 327
matter — in fact, the essence or active principle of the sub-
stance, as it does still when used in the plural as spirits {e.g.,
spirits of wine); and the now disused, though once much
used, terms contraction and dilation of spirits witness likewise
to its physical origin. The best sign in serious sickness is
undoubtedly the dawn of hope : why ? Because hope is
then possible, its upspringing being a pulse of the reviving
life-throb and signifying the reaction of the vital force
against the oppression of disease. Howbeit it is not hope
which creates the energy, but energy which creates the hope.
To infuse joy and hope from without when there was no
vital reserve force within to respond would be to elicit what
is not implicit or potential ; which is absurd. As well try
" To enforce the painful impotent to smile,
To move wild laughter in the throat of death."
A sluggish vitality may of course be due to occasional
causes arising out of passing states of health, but it is not
seldom temperamental or constitutional and therefore lasting.
The poet makes one of his characters finely say —
"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."
But it might just as truly be said that the gods are also
unjust, for they make the innocent child bear the sad burden
of the parent's sins. There is no more effective a constitu-
tional cause of a low nervous vitality than the inherited
infection of syphilis, for it is a loathsome poisonmg of the
very springs of life. Even the new-born babe in that case is
born foully infected, and perhaps dies punj^, wasted, wizened,
whining, reacting in wailing pain to every impression made
on it. And if it die not young in consequence of its polluted
vitality, it may still throughout life expiate its father's sin
by a low nervous energy which, hardly ever rising to the
level of a brisk feeling of pleasure in life and a joyous outlook
on it, saps the vigour, elasticity, and enthusiasm of character.
Mental philosophy, when it is less abstract and more wise,
will take better note of such facts than it has hitherto done.
328 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
It is as futile as it is foolish to expect one person to
feel and think life in the same modes as another. Weak
nervous vitality cannot choose but evince itself in a tendency
to indolence, apathy, melancholy, and pessimism. If a piece
of good news or a glass of good wine temporarily excite in it
the desire and augments the power to act, the reason is
essentially the same ; they both act as stimuli to excite and
elicit physically the latent energy of the nervous element,
and the quickened feeling and force are the transitory result.
But neither good news nor good wine will call these out if
the energy be not there in reserve. The joy of glad tidings
lies in the brain, like the jest's prosperity in the ear of him
who hears it ; it is no more use to tell them to one who is
prostrate in abject melancholia than it would be to tell them
to a dying man ; though he hears quite well what is spoken,
the words to him are mere empty sounds which mock his
state.
If it be alleged that wine is a chemical stimulus
which acts demonstrably on the nervous element, whereas
good news acts purely mentally, then the not impertinent
question may be put, " Why not tell the news to a man
stone-deaf, or at any rate deaf mentally (as he may be) to
words which he hears perfectly, and expect him to rejoice at
it " ? Of course it would be useless to do so, for the plain
physical reason, in the first case, that the message of vocal
vibrations, though they impinge on, cannot affect and tra-
verse, the delicate nerve-fibrils of his obstructed ear ; and in
the second case, for the strictly parallel reason that, though
received and transmitted by these fibrils, they strike inert on
auditory centres in the brain which have been so damaged
as no longer to be able to receive and interpret the message.
In vain will the finest or strongest vibrations strike on nerve-
terminals as insensitive and impenetrable to them as a block
of coal to undulations of light or, one might add, a block of
human stupidity to fine thought and feeling. When the
hearer has not the intelligence to understand what is intelli-
gently spoken — that is to say, has not the fitly organized
X JOY— LAUGHTER 329
cerebral pattern of structure to receive and respond — he is
stone-deaf mentally, though he hear well enough with his
ear. That is what all men are to a novelty of thought or
feeling until the fit cerebral reason or ratio of structure has
been gradually organized in them : they are deaf mentally,
not because they have lost their hearing but because they
have not learnt to hear.
If it be said, as it often is said, that the undulations of
nerve-currents through the various organized forms or
patterns in the brain are only the material means or in-
struments by which a non-physical mind behind them acts
and is acted on, the answer may be made that if it never act
otherwise than through them and is never acted on otherwise
than through them, it is all one from a scientific point of
view whether it is there or what in itself it is there. The
simple question is whether mind is in and part of nature or
not. If it be, then it is subject to natural laws and is
itself a subject of scientific enquiry ; if not, it is outside
the domain of such enquiry, supernatural, a mysterious
something to be discerned only, if discernible, in a mysterious
spiritual fashion.
Scientifically we know well that definite forms of nervous
complexes, simple and complex, are organized in every
thinking brain, that from them proceed definitely formu-
lated motions, which, when they emerge into conscious-
ness, are notions, and that these motions, whether it be
by visual, auditory, or some yet intangible mode of access,
are received, and, as it were reverberated, by the like-
fashioned forms or patterns of another brain tuned sym-
pathetically. The working agent is no abstract mind, it is a
bodily organ quivering throughout in the finest and most
intense vibrations, which may be supposed to radiate the
most subtle undulations through the pervading universal
ether ; most of them will be lost in space, so far as we know ;
many will impinge on objects which, being indifferent or
antipathetic, will stop or refract them ; some, however, may
impinge on the elastic ether permeating and conditioned by
330 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
similar forms of cerebral structure thus tuned exactly to
respond sympathetically to them. Then the receiver under-
stands and renders back what is sent, and the sender, by
virtue of being thus reflected and understood, understands the
better himself Without the mutual harmony of structure
and function the intelligent words and gestures of one person
would produce no more intelligent effect on another person
than they would if addressed to an ostrich or an owl, nor his
finest moral feelings any more response in kind than if
wasted on an Australian savage or an ourang-outang. Are
these unperceived undulations always dissipated and entirely
lost in space ? ' Or, are they perchance, as fancy has fondly
feigned, sometimes received and rendered back by subtile
aerial spirits, inhabitants of the empyrean ?
Descending from abstract notions to concrete beings, it is
easy to see that joy or happiness is entirely relative to the
person, and to understand why discussion about Hedonism
and the summum honum for the most part are empty talk.
The joy of men in social communion must depend on the
respective qualities of their minds and the stimuli they
respond to in the infinitely various aspects of things; so
much so that what is one man's pleasure will be another
man's pain. Can there be a greater affliction to any mind,
lofty or low, than to be placed in an environment which is
completely unsympathetic or actually discordant ? The
higher mind no doubt thinks it the duty of the lower mind
to rise to its level and to be pleased with the mental
atmosphere which pleases it, and is quite ready to lay down
its authoritative standard of perfection, but the higher mind
is nowise free from the bias of egoism and is sure to
pronounce best that which it likes best. It might perhaps
be the worst thing that could happen to the human kind for
all its members to be of one liking and one mind, seeing
that mind might then be stifled in such an atmosphere of
uniformity.
Considering what a sure expression of joy or gaiety
laughter universally is, the wonder is that no one has yet
X JOY— LAUGHTER 331
set diligently to work to observe and study the varieties of
laughter among men and to find out exactly what each
variety signifies mentall}^ Were these rightly discriminated
and understood, they could hardly fail to reveal what they
partly express — namely individual character, or at any rate
individual tone of character. A difficult and tedious study,
no doubt, since no two persons laugh exactly alike, and a
person may be known by his laugh as surely as by his face,
yet not more difficult, after all, than the patient and pains-
taking study of physiognomies and their meanings, which
will be made some day. Meanwhile it is quite easy to
recognize certain broad types or kinds of laughter. The
spontaneous hearty laughter of sincere feeling is very
different from the affi^cted and constrained laughter of in-
sincerity, and one justly suspects the humanity or sanity of*
a person who cannot laugh. Moreover, there are laughs
which betoken peculiar constitutions of mind and character :
laughs that are mechanical, being risible contorsions rather
than true laughs, nervous spasms expressing nothing, and
expressed when there is nothing to laugh at or perhaps
something not to laugh at ; laughs that are signs of neurotic
instability when they have not been acquired and are
unconsciously performed, sure signs of guile when they are
affected and consciously used, untrustworthy anyhow as
laughter. Another quasi-pathological laugh is the abortive
and incoherent laugh of the person of insane temperament,
which is laughter pulled up abruptly half-way by a sudden
facial seriousness, or which affects only a part of the features
while the rest are unmoved. Then there are several notable
varieties of genuine laughter — the shrill crow, the jerky
cachinnation, the long-drawn whoop, the bow-wow, and
others, all which without doubt have their special mental
meanings. The best laughter, being the graceful expression
of a fine harmony of nature, will be musical, as graceful
movement is the dumb music of the body. Some day
perhaps the phj^sicists who deal with the infinitesimal will
make known the exact measures and combinations of the
032 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT ch. x
subtilized motions which constitute the tones and qualities
of the different laughs, if they do not perhaps construct a
machine capable of reproducing all the varieties of human
laughter.
Notable it is how exasperating and painful the discordant
jar of a particular laugh can be, as bad as the rasping of any
file ; so thoroughly antipathic and piercingly grating as
almost to provoke and excuse an assault on the performer.
Whether the so-called telepathists be right or wrong in their
speculative theory that the thoughts and feelings of one
mind can be conveyed to another even distant mind, and
arouse sympathetic thoughts and feelings in it without any
intervention of organs of sense, it is certain that the
character of one person may instantly affect another person,
either sympathically or antipathically, by first sight, or first
sound, or first smell, if not by an effusion too subtile to be
perceptible by an}^ special sense. It is not of course the
formal apprehensions of thought but the delicate and subtile
tones of feeling emanating from character which thus
penetrate and thrill to the inmost. As there are invisible
rays of light which penetrate bodies impenetrable to visible
light, so may there be infra-conscious vibrations which affect
the mind. The blind man who cannot see an object before
him is yet capable of a certain facial perception of it when
he comes near it.
CHAPTER XI
I
Organic Variation and Heredity
1. Organic Variation
Organism and medium — Organic variation — Evolution and involution
— Variation and external stimulus — Law of organic development —
Organic modifiability — Mental variations — Vicissitudes of families
and variations — Persistence of organic qualities — Family names
and family characters — Bodily and mental variations — Aptitude to
variations.
It is misleading to look on the organism and its environment
as at unconditional war with one another, for thereby their
essential interrelations of being are overlooked. No organism
could exist without the coexistence of its medium ; though
in conflict it is at the same time in communion with it, living
in and by it. What surroundings exist for any organism,
bodily or mental, but those which, translated into its ex-
perience, it apprehends and assimilates — in fact lives ?
Self-made so far is everybody's external world, the self being
what it is by virtue of so much of the environing whole as
it is in relation with and assimilates — that is, takes and
makes into itself. Therefore the world is not precisely the
same for any two persons, because no two persons are
fashioned exactly alike, albeit it is on the whole the same for
all mankind, because, all having the same kind of senses
and the same general structure, they feel and think it much
alike.
334 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
To speak of an organism adapting itself to its environ-
ment by means of occasional and perchance suitable among
many abortive variations is also apt to mislead. Funda-
mentally the adaptive variation is as much effect as cause ;
to use language implying spontaneity and purpose in it is to
ascribe to it that which belongs only to conscious experience.
At the same time, though not spontaneous and purposive,
the organic variation cannot be fortuitous ; it is a vital
product signifying, as all life does, definite form with its
definite natural causes and laws of being. The particular
variation, abortive or productive, is necessarily determined
not by the organism only, nor again by the external im-
pression only, but by their co-operation according to im-
manent laws and forms of organic development, the actuation
and rule of which, derived from its parental structure, are
implicit in its substance. As in physical nature so here,
there is action and fit reaction, only the reaction of the
patient substance is less seeming-passive, more active and
seemingly self-active, more circuitous and complex than in
ordinary physical matter, and of course much more self-
active in a complex organism than in a speck of protoplasm
reacting to its simpler conditions.
How get out of living organic matter by any process of
so-called evolution that which has not been somehow put
into it potentially by some antecedent process of what might
be called involution ? How evolve in gross and visible dis-
play that which has not been involved by process of infinitely
minute and invisible concentration ? develop that actually
which has not been enveloped potentially ? As the chemical
compound implies its definite chemical elements and laws of
combination, so must an organic variation imply its special
fixed definite antecedents and laws of being, in no case be a
capricious, indefinite, fortuitous becoming of things ; for as
there are types or forms of chemical combination, and the
elements combine not otherwise, so may there be organic
types or forms determined by the properties and relations of
the organic factors, not to be formed otherwise whatever the
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 335
conditions of the environment chance to be. So formed, if"
outer conditions suit, they will survive and grow ; if not, they
will wither and die, or at all events remain abortive.
When the occurring variation grows by so-called natural
selection (external nature selecting it), or by natural election
(it electing what suits it in external nature), it does so by
growing to the conditions of its environment, as it is the
nature of all living matter to do ; and forasmuch as such
growth implies a precedent function of interrelation between
it and the suitable external conditions, and as the exercise of
function involves formation of structure, the natural effect is
the increased function of the added structure and further
increase of growth so long as the conditions remain favour-
able. It is hard to conceive how the variation can either
occur in the first instance or increase afterwards without the
co-operation of the fit external stimuli.
To speak of an organism as a product of evolution, and
thereupon to count the statement an explanation, is obvious
nonsense. Evolution being nowise an agent, only a general
name denoting a process of evolving or becoming, the state-
ment amounts to this — that the organism is the product of a
process of becoming. The exact law of such organic de-
velopment was formulated by von Baer as a progress from
the simple and general to the complex and special ; and it
may be questioned whether real knowledge has not been
hindered rather than promoted by the substitution of the
word evolution for the word development, and the enuncia-
tion of the law as a change from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous by progressive differentiations and integra-
tions. The big words are taxable with a tendency to make
the would-be thinker stay content in their imposing vague-
ness without finding out what they mean, or if he discern a
meaning in them, to be so pleased with the discovery as to
suppose that everything has been said which can or need be
said. Besides, to call any organic matter homogeneous is
hardly legitimate when substances that seem homogeneous,
probably only because one cannot look into them, develop
336 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
very differently, and when the minutest speck of seemingly
structureless protoplasm is confessedly an aggregation of a
multitude of very active molecular mechanisms below the
TiiiniTnum visible either of aided or unaided eye.
Were an organism in such perfect adjustment to its
environment that there was a constant equilibrium it would
be fixed in structure and function, settled in the even
activity of quiet automatic function, passion and action in
exact equipoise. The fewer and more simple its constituent
factors and the closer their facets to one another, the
more stable will it be ; whereas a complex organism with
the many nice-fitted facets of its manifold constituents
must needs be in a less stable equilibrium, more susceptible
to, and more moved intimately by, changes in its more
complex external conditions. Being then disturbed by
internal unrest when stimulated from without, because of
the complex correlations of its numerous and diverse parts,
it seeks its ease or pleasure in external activity not in repose,
which at its human best is in varieties of doing and in many
inventions. As the external stimulus or impression, be it
never so simple in itself, produces subtile, wide-reaching and
complicated effects through long, intricate and circuitous
chains of causes and effects, the resultant functional motion
or structural variation, which seems casual, is not a transla-
tion of the external impression into any simple term of
action, but the culminating effect and formal outcome of the
manifold excitations of the latent qualities and their correla-
tions in the complex organic whole. Thus, perhaps, it is
that the greater the complexity of internal structure and
energies the less is the external modifiability of form b}'
conditions of the environment, and that any variations are
most apt to occur in the brain of the human organism just
because the human brain, which now is the most complex
organic substance in the world, is plastic and has usurped the
force and path of organic development on earth. In it, there-
fore, or in its ethereal quintessence in the reproductive germ,
must be sought the principal ground of productive variations.
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 337
If an organic variation, by virtue of its proceeding from a
definite organic structure, represent a condensed involution
of its elements and parts, containing in its essence silent
memories of them, it is easy to understand that it will be
capable of definite evolution only in definite relation to its
surroundings. In that respect it might be likened to the
ovum, the developments of which, repeating in brief sketches
the prolonged stages of organic development on earth — being
a sort of abridged summary of genealogical evolution — could
not take place were it not indued potentially with their
various forms and kinds of substance. That every organic
unit of a vital whole contains implicitly a quintessence of
the whole is perhaps an extravagant speculation, but it is
certain that no such unit can be fully comprehended without
a knowledge of the chemistry and physics of the whole to
which it is vitally bound.
In this relation it might be helpful to consider the instance
of a concrete mental variation and what it implies. When
in a small, narrow, and comparatively isolated society of
persons subject year after year to the same round of external
impressions and following the same monotonous routine of
life, one of them conforms not to the settled manner of
feeling, thinking and doing, but feels, thinks and acts in a
novel way, he is a variation, a new start, good or bad ; an
eccentric moving out of the common orbit, who may turn out
well or ill ; a sort of alien from his kind, who, if too aberrant,
may be taxed with mental alienation. He is pretty sure,
indeed, whatever his merit or demerit, to be looked at
askance with suspicion or dislike by the staid members of
his community, perhaps despised as a social outcast or pitied
as half mad. How came the tendency to variation in him ?
Whence did he get his novel impulse to leave the common
roadway ? Immediately, no doubt, from his ancestral stock
in which was latent somehow a tendency to variation, prompt
to disclose itself on the least external occasion, perhaps
revealing itself when no sufficient external cause was
apparent. But then arises the further question, How came
z
338 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the tendency in the stock ? Whence its aptitude to change ?
In the generative succession of organisms is notable not only
a law of reproduction whereby the offspring exhibits features
and qualities like those of its parents, but a law of production
whereby it exhibits different features and qualities ; so that
every organic stock contains in itself the factors of organic
variations, and one stock, of course, in different measure from
another. We may be sure, too, in the case of a particular
variation that the law of conservation of matter and energy
has ruled in its formation as everywhere else in nature ; in
no case was it created out of nothing or in contempt of
natural law. Now, if it be true, as previously argued, that
a pre-essential condition of unfolding is a folding-in, there
must in this case have been such a process of involution in
the past history of the stock, some former assimilation in its
structure of a variation of medium and adaptive reaction
thereto which is now instinct in it, either to lie there dormant
or to develop openly at the fit juncture of circumstances.
It is not difficult to conceive how such involution may
happen in the many changes and vicissitudes of families and
circumstances. Suppose a family which has lived in and
grown to the circumstances of a superior social position,
and enjoyed the privileges of high birth and station, to sink
low in the social scale so that its members gain modest
livelihoods in humble ways, and to remain at that level for
several generations, would it then have so completely
assimilated itself to its mean and monotonous surroundings
as to be in complete physical and mental sympathy with
them ? Probably not. A secret unrest in the nature of the
stock even after centuries might declare itself in reserve of
character, in instinctive repugnances, in rebellious impulses,
in tendencies to variation not shown by family stocks incor-
porating no higher past in their natures ; a deep, sombre
self-esteem derived from silent memories of past social
esteem resent present social superiorities ; and from time to
time through generations an individual might be bom who,
being a remarkable reversion, had the latent aristocratic
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 339
instincts so strong in him as to be utterly out of tune with
his present surroundings. Not easily effaced, indeed, is a
fixed bent of organic structure; the tame beaver kept in
domestic captivity never forgets its building instincts, but at
the proper building season shows them in unrest and uneasy
distress prompting it to escape ; the Jewish millionaire has
sometimes a keen pleasure, secret or sensible, in gaining a
pound or a shilling in some petty bargain ; and there are
persons who, although losing a hundred pounds with com-
parative indifference, yet fret and fume beyond measure at
the loss of a sixpence, and that because their forefathers
parsimoniously laboured to save sixpences.
Consider again the opposite case of a hitherto low-born
family which is raised abruptly in the social scale ; it is
notorious that generations must pass before the vulgar
instincts are wholly bred out of it. The tradesman's spirit
fails not to show itself mth silent persistence or sporadically
in the noble family which has clean forgotten or tried hard
to forget its distant tradesman-ancestor ; for the commercial
tincture not only blends with and modifies other qualities,
thus producing variations which relish of it, but sometimes
comes out distinctly in its own crude nature, inspiring a
particular quality or even a general tone of character which
is a startling reversion. It seems surprising then that a
well-born man can have and exhibit a meanness of nature so
unbefitting his station, but the surprise vanishes when one
recollects the thick drop of trade-blood ia his veins.
An unexplored field of research which might perhaps
yield some curious results, if duly garnered, is the study of
family names in relation to family characters. On the one
hand, note might be taken of the names which mark the
original trades, occupations, or services of the progenitors to
whom the name was first given, and close inquir}' made
whether in every person of the same name, whatever his
present social position, there was not detectable some trace
of the mental habits of the original occupation. On the
other hand, note might be taken of the names of common
z 2
340 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
persons in humble stations which, now corrupted in spelling,
mark a superior ancestry, in order to find out whether the
traces of finer mental habits and bodily carriage did not still
linger in those bearing them.
Evidently in the changing circumstances of families from
generation to generation there are the occasions of internal
differences which lead to differences of external action even
in surroundings apparently the same ; and these variations
in their turn are developmental or degenerative according to
the external conditions in which the fortune of life places
them. And as the organism puts forth a variation in its
mental domain not otherwise than as it does in its lower
organic domains, an understanding of the import of a mental
variation may help to throw light on the import of a purely
bodily variation — at all events may serve to show that there
is more in it than a simple and fortuitous outcome of circum-
stances — that it is in fact essentially a bud with immanent
laws of development at whatever part of the stock it bursts
out.
To compass in imagination and picture there vividly, were
that possible, all the varieties of animal shape and structure
on earth would be to excite curious reflections on the
processes of organic variation that have gone on through
the ages to issue in such manifold and often strange-looking
products. What a number of odd animal forms of different
species, and of odd structures in different organisms to
perform the same function ? Consider, for example, one
function — that of reproduction, and the singular mechanisms
of its performance to be seen throughout the animal kingdom :
the extraordinary contortions and peculiar formations of
structure in some creatures, just as though nature had some-
times gone about in the most roundabout ways imaginable —
indeed, ways unimaginable were they not actually visible —
fantastically to fashion the oddest, most ugly, and even
clumsy mechanisms for the purpose. Certainly the means
by which, in spite of the obstacles presented by the form of
their rigid structures, the strangely twisted, contorted,
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 341
convoluted, and otherwise deformed bodies of some of the
lower creatures unite the plasms of their reproductive germs
to propagate their kind do not naturally suggest the fore-
thought and intelligent execution of definite purpose, or
prompt a rapturous admiration of the marvellous fitness of
every animal organ for its purpose ; they rather betoken the
blind and slow flow of organic plasm propelled from behind
through numberless channels which it forms for itself
according to the obstacles it meets with and the favourable
conditions it profits by in its inevitable course of conflict
and communion with its environment. Like water trickling
slowly downhill through a thousand irregular channels, or
perhaps more like the slow stream of a glacier, the mighty
stream of being follows the lines of least resistance and most
favour ; whence the manifold and sometimes singular products
which, though they may be ascribed to survivals of the
fittest by so-called natural selection, are calculated to run
counter to human notions of fitness of things.
That " nature does nothing superfluously and in the use of
means does not play the prodigal " is a saying of Kant's
which is strangely inconsistent with facts. Nature's prodigal
waste of material is notorious, constant, and reckless, and the
multitude of tardy and tentative essays made by it before an
organic end is reached incalculable in number. That it
always then makes an organ perfect for its purpose is again
utterly untrue, as it is untrue also that it never makes that
which is fit for no purpose. How often is a face otherwise
handsome spoilt by one bad feature, a long body badly
furnished with short legs, a mind ruined by disproportion of
its parts, a man killed by a useless organic appendage I The
human eye has been the fi^equent cause of admiring ecstasies,
yet it has defects of structure which a competent optician
would avoid in making the perfect instrument for its
purpose. The variety, delicacy, and complexity of the
human organism and the amazing harmony of its com-
plicated functions justly excite admiration — wonder, indeed,
that it ever holds together so long as it does; yet they
342 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
furnish so many and easy occasions of defects and disorders
that an organism without some natural defect is a singular
rarity of nature, and that diseases are such common incidents
of life as to be as natural as good health. To the objection
that such a view of things proceeds only from the low stand-
point of human conception of design, which is just as relative
as any other human function, mental or bodily, the legitimate
answer is that if human reason, being so limited, has no right
to censure the constitution of things it has equally no right
to pronounce them perfect; impotent to judge in the one
case, reason is impotent in the other also. The truth
perhaps is that the organic matter of the human brain in its
mental functions has attained to a more complete and
intelligent adaptation to its environment in some respects
than is exhibited by many examples of its constructive work
in the animal kingdom, which it therefore perceives to be
sometimes awkward and bungling.
2. Heredity
Reproduction and production of qualities — Reversion to ancestral
forms — Vice and virtue bred into or out of a stock — Shakespeare's
composition of parental elements — The reproductive act — The
affective element in heredity — Male elements in female, and female
in male nature — Seasonal development of hereditary qualities —
Fundamental type and its variations — Stable and unstable mental
compositions — Various aspects and inconsistencies of character —
Non-inheritance of genius — Unknown laws of heredity — Insanity
and heredity — Special talents in imbecile or insane persons —
Fundamental law of human development.
That a man inherits mental as he does bodily qualities like
those of his father or mother is obvious ; it is obvious too
that he displays qualities which they had not in the same
form. There is production as well as reproduction, descent
of character with modification, the process involving either
an increase or decrease of like qualities, or an apparent
neutralization or cancelling of qualities, or the production of
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 343
new qualities which, though new, are still products of old
qualities. Certain stable forms or patterns of the mental
organization — mental compositions or configurations, so to
speak — presumably pass without change in the transmission,
while other mental forms of structure, being less stable in
constitution, undergo decomposition in the vicissitudes of
descent to enter into new forms and thus to originate varia-
tions or inventions. With mental forms in fact as with such
forms of bodily movement as attitude, gait, gesture, hand-
writing, facial expression, some are distinctly, parental in
character, others different, whether superior or inferior.
The variations are sometimes notable reproductions of
qualities which, albeit not parental, are yet ancestral ;
memories perchance of a grandfather or grandmother or
of some more remote ancestor. They are then said to be
latent, more properly perhaps potential, in the intermediate
ancestors who exhibit them not. There is an evident
tendency of mental forms in a family to revert to old and
stable combinations — to what might be called the stock-
forms ; not otherwise than as in the hybrid offspring of the
zebra and the ass the reversion of skin-stripes is towards
those of the common ancestor of zebras. In the line of human
descent, notwithstanding the frequent introduction of new
elements and possibilities of new combinations by every
marriage, the stabler stock-forms from time to time meet
with the conditions favourable to their reproductions and
recur in successive generations. The popular saying in
respect of a vicious person that he comes of a bad stock,
which is held to explain and in some measure excuse his
shortcomings and wrongdoings, is an instinctive acknowledg-
ment of this law of reversion. It is, after all, but a particular
instance of the constant tendency of matter coerced into
special and complex developments to revert to more simple
and stable states.
As the graftings into the family stock of different mental
qualities from generation to generation by succeeding mar-
riages tend to produce different strains of thought, feeling
344 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and doing, these in turn may meet with conditions favour-
able to the composition of new and more special forms of
mental organization. They become then inward variations
or inventions, new starts, whence in due course proceed out-
ward inventions in arts, science, industry, and the like. So
likewise it comes to pass that vice can be bred out of a family
and virtue bred into it by selective breeding through genera-
tions, as vice may conversely be bred into a family and virtue
bred out of it when the course of compositions goes the
wrong way of degeneration instead of the right way of
development.
In the changes and chances of mental composition it came
to pass once upon a time that parents of no remarkable
distinction produced Shakspeare ; and elsewhere men of
extraordinary genius have proceeded from family stocks of
no extraordinary mark. There was manifestly then a singu-
larly happy combination of elements in the product whereby,
fit external conditions luckily co-operating, the law of organic
development from the more simple and general to the more
complex and special was eminently fulfilled. For genius is
the outcome of that principle of development in the most
special and complex organic structure in the world — the
human brain; just a new and special incarnation of the
elemental energy of nature betokening its conatus fiendi, be
it then named divine as a partial embodiment of the Power
" that is," or left unnameable.^ Not that such a well-endowed
brain as Shakspeare possessed can be justly counted a
mysterious special creation, a quite exceptional freak of
nature, something which it never did before and, having done
once, could never do again ; on the contrary, it may be taken
for granted that many times in other provincial towns minds
of equal capacity have been produced which, having not had
the fortune to light on the exact time and conditions propi-
tious to their perfect development, never grew into such
conspicuous eminence as to be accounted quasi-divine and to
1 " I am He that is," not " I am that I am " being presumably the
right translation of God's words to Moses.
XI ORGANIC VARIATIOX AND HEREDITY 345
have wonderful inspiration discovered in their worst as well
as their best performances.^
It is a popular opinion that a man of genius or other
person of eminent distinction owes his superior qualities to
his mother. But it is not always so. He may, it is true>
have had a mother of good mental quality, but it is often
true that, like Alexander the Great and other notable men,
he had a father well endowed mentally. It is not so much
the possession of extraordinary mental qualities either by
father or mother as the happy combination of sound stocks
of good quality which results in the excellent mental con-
stitution of the offspring : the happy and harmonious com-
bination perhaps of the good intellectual elements of the one
with the good affective elements of the other. Without doubt
the properties of germ-elements and their laws of combina-
tion are as definite as, although vastly more complex than,
the properties of chemical elements and their laws of com-
bination ; and the products may be good or bad. To breed
a genius out of the union of two idiots, even were they
capable of breeding, would be a vain endeavour, because the
potential mental elements are wanting in their germ-plasms ;
but a genius may proceed from the union of two peasants
who, though uncultured and undeveloped mentally them-
selves, proceed from a sound stock and possess brains of good
native power and quality. For the present, the exquisitely
fine laws of germinal combination are inscrutable, nor are
they likely to be knoA\'n until an exact knowledge of organic
physics and chemics shall have laid the positive basis of a
science of human nature dealing not with speculations and
words, but with the facts of individual character and the
effects of combinations of characters in breeding. Mean-
while, many an altar might rightly be raised to Fortune by
1 The lucky circumstance in Shakspeare's case was the happy
combination of elements into extraordinary mental stature ; in another
case it may be a combination of elements issuing in extraordinary
bodily stature, as when a giant in body proceeds from parents of
ordinary height.
346 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
the fortunate, seeing that sometimes an unfortunate child of
a family, by mysterious chance, inherits the bad qualities and
a fortunate child the good qualities of a parental stock, and
either thereafter degenerates or develops in life.
The exceeding delicate and complex nature and the tre-
mendous import of the reproductive act are overlooked by
viewing it in the gross. In it may lie the predestination of
the progeny. The male and female germs which then blend
in union contain in quintessence all the elements, organs,
properties, qualities, the whole mental and bodily characters
of the individuals from whom they proceed ; they may there-
fore suit well or ill for composition, or hardly suit at all.
Why wonder then at a discordant or deformed product, or
no product at all, from the repugnant union of constitutional
antipathies ? Besides, the reproductive act itself is not
simply a gross and mere indifferent function which may be
done well or ill anyhow ; at all events when it is not the
conjunction of lust, as in the animal, but the union of love,
as it aspires to be in the man. At its best it is the perfect
harmony of the motions and moods of two minds and bodies,
summing up in itself quintessentially the motions, as the
germs do the qualities of their elements ; a harmonious
transport in fact, far exceeding in the subtilties and com-
plexities of its notes and composition any instrumental
musical performance. How easy then for the harmony of
its exquisitely fine and complex combinations to be spoilt
by discordant jar, want of sympathy, coarse lust, grating
feeling, distraction of mind, the casual mood, natural indif-
ference, and a thousand unknown or unregarded bodily con-
ditions ! So stuffed is man with conceit of his spirituality
and contempt of his animality that he wilfully ignores or
stubbornly neglects the essential conditions of the production
of spirituality in him ; instead of refining and subliming the
coarse lusts of the flesh into the fine graces of spirit, he would
fain stupidly reject and suppress them. With all his long ex-
perience on earth and his many diligent researches into the
relations of body and mind, he has no better understanding
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 347
now of the requisite qualities in two individuals for the
most successful breeding than his primeval forefathers had :
cannot say how far there should be unlikeness rather than
likeness of qualities for the most perfect love-product ; cannot
predict a single feature or even so much as the sex of the
offspring; cannot do what the bees easily do to ensure
fertility when there is barrenness in the hive.
To obtain the best mental product in the ofifspring it is
probable that the affective element of the parental structure,
the strength and quality of feeling, is more important than
the purely intellectual element. For as feeling is the
expression in mind of the essential nature, testifying to
the stock-quality, it acts to fuse and weld the elements in
construction ; whereas the intellect, being means and in-
strument, is apt to be critical and destructive. If good
parental feeling be not the main factor in the production of
good progeny, it is undeniable that bad and perverse parental
feeling is a very effective cause of idiopathic insanity, moral
weakness, viciousness of disposition in the offspring ; in
truth, a more efficient cause of such degeneracy than actual
derangement of intellect in the parent. Superior intellect,
without the requisite fit feeling, notably does not serve well -
in the highest works of mind, whatever it may do in the
baser functions of life ; in fact, a good force of feeling may
do more with a comparatively simple intellectual instrument
than inferior feeling will do with a complex instrument.
Other things being equal, the size of the brain is an im-
portant fact ; but a well-toned, well-tuned, and well-informed
brain, though of moderate size only, will sometimes produce
a richer activity and finer melody of thought than a big
brain which is not so well-equipped in proportion.
To have inherited well, mentally, is then perhaps to have
inherited excellent qualities from the mother just because
the affective element usually predominates in the woman. ^
Yet it may chance that the affective qualities are inherited
from the father, if not immediately and evidently, at all
events in intermediate and occult ways from the ancestral
348 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
female element in him — from the woman latent in the man.
For no individual is exclusively and absolutely man or
woman ; in the mind as in the body of either there is the
rudiment of that which is fully developed in the other ; the
male nature containing implicitly something of the female
qualities and the female nature something of the male
qualities of the stock, to be transmitted to the progeny in
which it develops explicitly. If it were not so, how could
the daughter ever reproduce the features, bodily or mental,
of her father's mother, or the son those of his mother's
father ? In the progress of organic development a division
of labour has been made for fertilization by the separation
of bodies which yearn passionately to be again reunited in
the reproductive act. Nor has the specialization entailed an
absolute separation of qualities ; the male body, for example^
has not so far got rid of the purposeless appendages of its
female nature as to suppress the rudimentary nipples, nor
forgotten to retain its useless and sometimes mischievous
rudiment of the uterus.
Here note may fitly be taken of a fact inadequate appre-
hension of which has helped to confuse the difficult study
of heredity — namely, that as the male or female nature
respectively can only be expected to show visibly its here-
ditary qualities at the particular seasons of their natural
development, maturity, and decline in the individual, their
absence before that time can nowise count against their exist-
ence. The male who inherits sexual mental qualities from
his female parent, and the female who inherits such qualities
from her male parent, will not exhibit them, though
latent, until the seasonal period of their development, nor
exhibit the special bodily or mental qualities of a parent
of the same sex until that crisis. Heredity being the
memory of ancestral function, it is obvious that the function
can be remembered only when it wakes into action. Then
it is sometimes that one sees with surprise the predomi-
nance of the feminine qualities of mind in the man, and
of the masculine qualities of mind in the woman. As the
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 349
individual from birth to death is never fixed but ever becom-
ing not a constant, but an imperceptiblysteady flux, an ances-
tral quality may leap into evidence at any moment : a person
notably reveal plainly, perhaps for the first time, a parental
feature in the process of dying, just as a facial expression
soon after death may disclose a singular parental like-
ness which it had not shown during life. In this case,
however, the mould of the firm ancestral structure is clearly
defined, because it is no longer concealed, effaced, or defaced
by the play of the features in their varieties of expression
during life ; which, for example, might be memories of the
mother, or mixed memories, not always congruous perhaps,
of father and mother, while the mould represented the
father. Without doubt, an intelligent and duly instructed
person who observed closely the different expressions of his
features at different times, and in different moods and
circumstances, might discover the memories of a dozen
ancestors did he but know their features exactly; might
perhaps perceive once or twice only in his lifetime under
special conditions of health or of strain and stress, and be
startled by, a special expression which he could not even
simulate, however he tried, but which was plainly an unex-
pected ancestral reminiscence.
If all his ancestors be quintessentially contained in the
individual, as the very structure of his organism implies, he
need not mightily wonder at nor seek excuses for impulses
which spring up unexpectedly in him from time to time and
he cannot in the least account for. Being such a wonderful and
inscrutable complex, the small part of him which rises into
consciousness is but a partial revelation of the multitudinous
subtile activities going on continually below its level and
constituting the real forces of his character. Let him take
comfort then in all his aberrations and inconsistencies; in
fulfilling the strangest impulsion he is living some ancestor
or some ancestral quality latent in him. Has he a thoroughly
well constituted mind-substance below the level of conscious-
ness by virtue of a good ancestral stock ? It is their virtues
350 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
which support him if he is virtuous, their counsels which
instruct him if he is wise, their good feelings which inspire
him if he is good. Obviously in no case can he exactly
repeat his forefathers, for not only does he contain some
different compositions of elements, but, his brain being
brought into relation with the circumstances of a new and
different environment, he cannot for that reason act in-
stinctively and automatically, he must needs make fresh
adjustments. The result is that he is not, as he otherwise
would be, an instinctive and intuitive being exactly adapted
to his medium, but that a reflection of nerve-currents takes
place — that is to say, a mental reflection with its consequent
consciousness. He represents in fact one of many variations
of the fundamental type.
As mental compositions may be complete and stable, or
imperfect and unstable, according to the qualities of the
combining parental strains, it comes to pass that all sorts
of minds, sound and stable, strong and wise, erratic and
unstable, weak and unsound, are generated. There is no
greater absurdity than to speak of mind as if it were always
of equal strength and -quality; for nature makes as many
abortive and imperfect products in its mental as in its other
works. One instance of instability is notable, although it
has been little noted : I mean when the paternal and maternal
elements are mixed rather than completely combined in the
individual, retaining their respective characters instead of
blending and losing them in a new product with different
and, perhaps, superior qualities, so that sometimes the one
and sometimes the other nature predominates in the feel-
ings and doings, whether at different seasons or at different
junctures of life. Such a one then is not a firm compound
whole, not a consistent unity, but a mixture or binding
together rather than a vital composition of organic factors ;
for which reason, witnessing now to the one and now to the
other parental stock, he surprises others and himself too,
perhaps, by his different explosions of character. It would
seem that there had not then been in generation the
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 351
requisite antagonisms and aflSnities of elements whereby,
like positive and negative electricity, they are reciprocally
attracted and blended in explosive union. It might be
curious to enquire whether, in such case of imperfectly
compounded natures, there was not an unsymmetrical con-
formation of the two sides of the head — a nowise uncommon
feature — or perhaps other common lack of bodily symmetry,
the outer asymmetry being not, of course, cause or effect
but natural concomitant of the internal asymmetry. Be
that as it may, it is certain that the Avant of a thorough
unity of being, a perfect mental integrity, is the cause of
vacillations, inconsistencies, worries, regrets, self-criticisms
and other self-consciousnesses to the ill-compounded mortal,
and likely to hinder him, however conspicuous his talents,
from ever reaching the loftiest mental eminence. He will
have too much of the conscious, too little of the unconscious,
mental productivity.
Not that any mortal is thoroughly consistent. Every-
body contains so many ancestors and such a variety of
ancestral experience implicit in him, and is subject through
life to so many and diverse influences in the sundry and
manifold changes of circumstances, that it is impossible to
say what latent factor of so complex and many-faceted a
being may be called into action ; for any one of the facets
may be stimulated to growth by the several aspects and
changing conditions of things. The truth is that the vast
majority of persons are habitually and grossly inconsistent ;
believe one day what they disbelieve another day, without
any other reason than a change of mood, tranquilly hold
side by side inconsistent or actually contradictory beliefs in
their minds, and are so inconstant in feeling and conduct
that no one, not even themselves, can be sure to-day what
they will say or do to-morrow. There is nothing strange in
that ; the strange thing is to think it strange and to expect
consistency in character, as though the individual was a
constant not a flux, an end in himself not merely a passing
means to a far-off end or no end at all in a process of things
352 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
which consistencies and inconsistencies alike fulfil. To the
whole it matters not how the forces of human being and
doing are distributed individually, nor what the individual
feels, thinks, suffers, so long as they do their work in the
mass ; nor perhaps as much to human society as it seems,
which just uses the individual in its service and abounds in
inconsistencies and misjudgments, oftentimes condemning
the cynic who is actually tender-hearted and sincere, while
it praises tender-heartedness and sincerity in the abstract,
and belauding the impassioned trader in philanthropy who
is actually vain, selfish, and h}'pocritical, while it condemns
hypocrisy and selfishness in the abstract.
The factors of most importance in the reproductive union
of two minds being the basic qualities of the stock, not the
overt qualities displayed by either of them, the deep
implicit subconscious mind-substance, not its express con-
scious manifestations, it is no surprise that genius is not
inherited — the genius, that is, which, using up the vital
sap, blossoms in full flower, and that genius proceeds some-
times from the well-structured and rich-sapped stock which,
having made no explicit show, has not exhausted itself in
flowering many times. The obscure father or grandfather
has been a person of larger innate capacity, of greater
potentiality mentally, than his eminent son or grandson
who flowered brilliantly at the fit season and in favourable
conditions. As the accomplishments of a particular mind
are individual developments, they can be no more inherited
than the athletic accomplishments of a particular body ;
they tend rather to spend the capital of funded force in the
stock, which is then unfit to produce well again in the
direct line, fit only, perhaps, if not finally exhausted, to
produce another genius through another branch after a long
spell of quiet, self-denying, humbly heroic growth.
The little that is yet known of the laws of heredity is
just enough to make it certain that there are such laws,
and that, were they fully and exactly known, it would be
possible by selective breeding and training to form in
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 353
process of due time a required character. The more strange,
therefore, it is to think how very little has been done to
find them out, seeing that the facts to be observed were
always in evidence and the instructive experiments being
constantly made; yet not so strange as it would be had
not the human mind been severed absolutely from nature
and deemed exempt from natural laws of organic produc-
tion, growth and decline, and had not each type of human
creature always thought itself the best and done its best
to preserve and perpetuate itself
A few patent and striking facts of heredity could not
escape common observation — for example, that genius is
seldom or never inherited, and that insanity often is
hereditary. Yet little is kno'wn definitely concerning the
inheritance of insanity : one child of an insane stock be-
comes insane, while other children of the same parents go
through life without becoming insane ; and we cannot tell
why. Nay, there are not a few instances I could adduce to
prove that one brother may rise to eminent distinction, or
even show a large measure of genius, while another is under
confinement as a hopeless lunatic. In the very instability
of a neurotic family stock, indeed, there lies the possibility
of greater mobility and freer combinations of elements,
whereby in the vicissitudes of composition either a happy
variation or an unhappy aberration may chance to be pro-
duced. It is no surprise when an insane parent has an
idiot child, yet it might prove, were exact enquiries made,
that idiocy proceeded more often from parents who were of
a mentally unsound stock, albeit not themselves insane,
than from an actually insane parent; and it is certainly
generated sometimes without any evident defect in the
parents or their stocks. There is nothing to wonder at in
that if we reflect how surely an untoward shock or jar may
spoil the subtile combinations of the germ-elements, and
how utterly unknown to us is yet the invisible world of the
infinitesimal. One thing is pretty certain — namely, that
there are varieties of unsound moral temperament, not
A A
354 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
accounted technically insane, which are perhaps more likely
to breed insane offspring than actual parental insanity;
such temperaments, in fact, as are in their essence mean,
miserly, avaricious, distrustful, suspicious, deceitful, narrowly
and intensely egoistic, oftentimes specially fanatical. That,
too, is natural enough, considering how essentially feeling is
the exponent of character, and how surely narrow or base
feeling in proportion to its intensity alienates the individual
from his kind and from the wholesome welding force of
social union. Of such bad mind-stuff a positive mental
alienation is the natural degenerative product in the next
generation. Always, sound and whole feeling denoting good
foundation of character is more important than great
intellect.
Another certain fact is that an insane parent or a parent
proceeding from an insane stock may beget or conceive a
child whose insanity consists mainly or almost wholly in an
absence of social or moral sense ; a creature so destitute con-
genitally of moral feeling that it is impossible to implant
even the germ of it by any culture, the highest province of
mind, the moral structure of its organization, being entirely
wanting. Here once more is no cause for wonder ; for it is
not reasonable to expect mental alienation from the kind in
one generation, or that deficiency in the stock, whatever it
be, which individual mental alienation betrays — severation,
that is, from communion of thinking and feeling — unless it
be happily and mysteriously counteracted in reproduction, to
develop the sound social feeling of community with the kind
in the next generation. A complete absence of moral feel-
ing is then in the natural order of pathological evolution,
which is the order of physiological degeneration.
An observation which those who are conversant with the
varieties of mental degeneration have frequent occasion to
make is the possession sometimes, by a member of an insane
stock, of a signal special talent or aptitude, innate since it
is not acquired by any labour and often shows itself very
precociously : an extraordinary memory perhaps for words or
XI ORGANIC VARIATION AND HEREDITY 355
dates or other details, a wonderful talent for music or draw-
ing, a singular rhyming aptitude, or other remarkable special
gift — when all the rest of the mind is little better than
imbecile. Although the parents in such case may not be de-
ficient in intelligence, one or the other perhaps possessing
a notable talent — artistic, musical, or poetic — yet they are
usually unsound in feeling, being intensely egoistic, self-
centred, wanting in true social reciprocity of feeling, devoid
of sense of proportion, quite unable to see themselves as
others see them — exceeding sensitive and high-strung as they
say of themselves ; strung on an exclusive string of self,
as others might say of them. It is this sort of innate
special and partial talent, this singular streak of genius in a
general waste, which has helped to give vogue to the saying
that genius is akin to madness and only divided from it by
thin partitions.
To study such instances scientifically and fruitfully instead
of helplessly wondering at them as mysteries, it is necessary
to substitute for the vague notion of mind as an abstract
entity, one and indivisible, the positive conception of a
confederate mental organization in which, as in the general
bodily organization, one part may be in excess or defect, lame
when the rest is sound or sound when the rest is lame. Nor
need an exaggerated notion of the moral dignity of mind deter
men from such patient and positive study of it, for the certain
result will be to prove that the moral decadence of one genera-
tion is a rotten foundation on which to expect to build the
moral and intellectual sanity of the succeeding generation.
Science, confirming and reiterating the lesson which the
Hebrew prophets solemnly and passionately proclaimed, will
reveal and expound the natural laws of organic growth from
generation to generation by which it is ordained that through
righteousness and not through iniquity shall man's seed
prosper on earth ; it may then also soberly preach the duty
and prescribe the method of finding out how to do that
successfully in the particular products.
A A 2
356 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
II
GENIUS AND TALENT
Difference between genius and talent — Tlie man of genius — Special
kinds of genius — Sanity of highest genius — Subconscious creative
activity — Quality and tone of brain — Genius excites suspicion and
enmity — Unhappiness of genius — Native differences of mental
faculty — Sympathy and antipathy of minds — The seemg mind-
Sociability and sincerity^ — Want of sympathy with the kind — A
life of detachment — The proper part to play in the drama.
The difference between genius and talent, although not
definable in words, is instinctively and quickly felt. On the
receptive side genius is sensitive and intuitive, on the reactive
side productive or creative, whereas talent is systematically
ratiocinative and constructive : quasi-instinctive intuition
and heart in the one as against conscious excogitation and
invention in the other. It is the difference between the
unconscious working of a brain well-instructed and well-
intuned by nature and the discursive working of a brain in
process of laboured formation and tuning. Successive steps
of generalization are the proper quasi-mechanical helps
which the latter has constant need of ; the former can largely
dispense with them because a happy inheritance and pro-
pitious circumstances have consolidated them in good mental
structure which now functions subconsciously. Therefore all
the strainings of talent, however strenuous and diligent, fail
to strike the note of genius, and, resenting failure, are prone
to strike enviously at it. Howbeit genius and talent are not
in the end separated by a distinct line of division in nature :
they merge by insensible transitions where they meet.
To say that genius does what it must, talent what it can,
is to speak a large measure of truth ; to say that genius is
only an infinite capacity of taking pains is to speak a large
untruth. The man of talent does what he has consciously
learnt to do and others can be taught to do, and might,
like him, do were they similarly situated, although, having
superior mental powers, he does easily and well that which
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 357
they only do less easily and well ; the man of genius does
that which nobody but himself can do; his work is the
essential and unique expression of himself, and he does it
without being aware how he does it ; he is conscious of the
mature product, not conscious of the throes of productive
travail. Being by gift of his happily endowed nature in deep
and true sympathy or tune with the nature in, by, and on
which he works he shares its natura naturans. Whosoever is
obliged deliberately to concoct a good mental product before
bringing it forth, whether in poetry, in painting, in sculpture,
in true art of any kind, may be content with modest achieve-
ments, for he can never be the great artist, he is rather at best
a clever artificer. To humanize nature by making thought
nature and nature thought in art, such is the work of the true
artist who, to do it well, must himself be a good nature-made
organ, a person of genius.
Not that the genius need be a complete all round whole.
A person of genius in one line of mental activity may
notably not rise above, may indeed fall below, the average
level of general intelligence, which is what a man of talent
could not well do. The different qualities of genius, being
as many and diverse as the special qualities of different
minds in their relations to diverse circumstances and
conditions of life, are incomparable. How compare the
genius of a great conqueror with that of a great musician ;
that of a great mathematician with that of a great poet ; that
of a great painter with that of a great inventor ; that of a
Rousseau or a Chateaubriand with that of a Shakspeare or
a Goethe ? Wonderful is it how special and limited, yet
positive, a streak of genius there may be in a mind Avhich
is otherwise commonplace : notable imbeciles sometimes
exhibit singular special aptitudes, and extraordinary calcula-
ting powers or remarkable musical instincts are met with
where, so far from being a measure of intellectual super-
iority, they are quite out of keeping with a moderate or
even low general level of mental powers. Even madness
is illumined sometimes by a streak of genius. Wholly
358 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
different, however, is the well-textured and well-tuned brain
of the large genius which reflects nature as a whole, not
merely such narrow, partial, fragmentary tracts of it as the
specially attuned brain-tracts of these inferior brains re-
spond to, for all the world as though one string of a com-
plex lyre were tuned well while the rest were slack and
tuneless. The vulgar saying that genius and madness are
near akin is fallacious, although sure of continual iteration
in spite of continual refutation; for it is just the gross
logical fallacy of making general a statement which is true
only of some particulars. A kinship of genius to insanity is
met w^ith only in those ill-compacted and malformed brains
which, weak and unstable, yet evince a special quality of
genius. Such brain-structures, being badly proportioned —
that is to say, essentially irrational in structure — cannot
make quiet, steady, full social adjustments and assimilations ;
for which reasons their unstable and eccentric owners,
lacking the restraints of discipline which, duly assimilated,
are the supports of strength, resent checks as offences and
engross themselves in the exclusive function and delirious
delight of a special faculty which they feel to be divine.
Hence the frequent wail of the so-called artistic tempera-
ment clamouring to be specially protected, aided, coddled, as
a marvel of nature, which, were it allowed to perish, nature
could never produce the like of again. The genius of
highest order is under no such childish illusion and narrow
limitation ; he sees himself and things in their right pro-
portions and sees them as a whole, is deeply and wholly
rational, fundamentally the sanest and most self-controlled
of men.
The creative power of genius illustrates v/ell the silent
and constant thought-work of brain, its under-currents of
productive activity beneath the level of consciousness. The
product owes its excellence to the excellent qualities of
the brain, as these have been determined, first and mainly,
by its native organization, and, secondly, by the incorporated
effects of growth in suitable circumstances. Without the
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 359
special gift of nature no labour or training will avail to
produce the fine flower of genius. Yet in no case can
labour and rules of right mental culture, conscious or
unconscious, be safely neglected. Close and active attention
in observation and resolute practice of clear thinking are
essential preconditions of the mental precipitation of the
extraordinary product ; just the same qualities of steady in-
dustry and patient preparation in fact as are necessary to the
development of great talent, which are just the qualities lack-
ing in the mad genius. Mind being organization, it obviously
can be developed only by the silent, gradual, continuous
processes characteristic of organic growth. Although genius
is not then merely a capacity of taking pains, yet it is
necessary to take pains to develop its capacity, narrow or
large ; knowing naturally, however, how to see, it sees much
in a little thing and sees far in a short time. The pity of it
is that the mind of a narrow genius never can be properly
cultivated, because a proper mental cultivation implies the
cultivation of the whole brain by steady labour, not of a
special tract of it intermittently ; whereas the special tract of
the one-stringed brain craves and by natural affinity selects
its own special nourishment, the rest of the brain being left
waste and untended. Given the exceptionally well-organized
brain duly nourished by observation of facts and occupied
in silent brooding on them, and the excellent product is
wrought unconsciously ; there is no need of forced labour
and inventive agony ; in a most delicate and complex organic
mechanism tuned to fine harmonies the right notes are
struck, fitly respond to one another, and combine in true
concord and melodies.
Psychologists for the most part have not duly noted and
appreciated the import of quality of feeling, of native tone,
in the construction of the superior brain ; they have thought
too exclusively of mental power or faculty. Yet the brain of
the born musician is notably tuned from infancy in a very
special way. In like manner a well-toned brain feels its
thoughts finely as well as thinks them clearly. These call
360 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
one another up unconsciously by delicate sympathies of tone
rather than by deliberate associations of ideas, which are
coarse in comparison ; for which reason they are adapted
by fine and unerring art to arouse similar thoughts and
feelings in other fitly endowed brains. Melody rather than
meditation is the note of genius, and therefore every great
work is a great harmony ; there is heart as well as thought
in the work, and heart and thought are in unison ; thought
being fitly infused with continual feeling, nowise so defused
by it as to be mere formless incontinence and delirious
rapture. The true poet sings as the bii'd sings, because it is
the natural, free, spontaneous utterance of himself It is not
a question whether the brain be big or little, it is rather a
question how it is constructed and tuned.
That genius is apt to be a disturbing element in a settled
social system is nowise surprising. It necessarily implies a
detachment and freedom of mind from conventions of thought
and feeling, whereby things are seen freshly, directly, sin-
cerely, in their true relations and in their causes and
consequences — a liberation from the formalisms, circum-
scriptions and routines of the vulgar mind. As it therefore
feels, thinks and acts differently from the common herd it is
apt to surprise and startle unpleasantly, even to provoke
suspicion, distrust, hostility; people do not understand it,
are disturbed by it, and therefore dislike, fear, hate, even
calumniate it. Nay, it is possible sometimes to tax it with
bad taste when, being sincere and in dead earnest, it revolts
against the accepted social reticences and hypocrisies of
polite speech and behaviour which decently cover the
insincerities and smooth the intercourse of social life.
Though it be true, it is not always truly becoming, to call a
spade a spade in polite circles ; rather than call it so men
gladly run the risk of not thinking a spade a spade, and so
by natural declension of losing hold of realities, of lapsing
into shows and shams, and of stajdng content in conventional
formalisms of speech and conduct. The lower animals —
with the exception of the dog whose immemorial association
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 361
with man's social life has taught it a measure of necessary
hypocrisy — are and can afford to be sincere and genuine in
the utterance of themselves, because they are not social as he
is ; they have no need to dissimulate what they are and to
simulate what they are not, seeing that they are not obliged
in their own interest to subdue and mould their natures into
conformity with a complex social system, as men must do
who have to live a double life — the basic life of the animal
nature actuating them to live accordingly, and the super-
structural social nature Avhich, urging developments that are
to be, make them seem to be what they are not. For they
have not yet reached that j^erfect social stability of the
beehive in which all disturbing impulses of individualism
are extinguished and every member of it subdued absolutely
by the spirit of the hive.
As genius is essentially sincere and true, it inevitably
comes to pass often that the particular man of genius is
unhappy in the world, its fulfilment entailing a kind of
martyrdom. Being the nature-made means to do a new
thing which nature wants to have done, the variation to
subserve a new development by new assimilations of nature,
he is inevitably more or less out of tune with things as they
are and must break through the hardened conventions of
thought and feeling, suffering in the pains of such travail
the resentment and hostility of the opinions and customs
which he rends ; therefore the incompletely developed and
unstable brain traversed by a thin streak of genius is prone
to howl aloud and to call on men and angels to witness how
it is afflicted. But the strong and well-fashioned brain of
large genius endures calmly, reacts justly, assimilates steadily,
and so makes its suffering its gain ; in quietness and confi-
dence is its strength ; having all its faculties well-knit in just
balance and seeing things in their just ratios and as a whole,
it has the insight and outsight to view life as a spectacle —
in serene aloofness and with genial humour at the best, in
sombre isolation and with cynical disdain or bitter satire
when less strongly built and less happily tuned.
362 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
The absurd opinion that men are born equal mentally,
and that their differences of intelligence are due to differ-
ences of education, so long heedlessly held by the vulgar and
even sanctioned by philosophers, is still covertly favoured by
many who extol beyond measure the value of education, as
if, properly waved, its magic wand could make all minds
grow to the same height. Men differ actually as much and
as variously in mental as in bodily stature, and no one can
by taking thought add either to the fixed height of his mind
or body. One day of the wise man's life, says the Oriental
proverb, is worth more than the whole life of a fool ; and it
would require more than Oriental wisdom to compute the
number of fools' lives which are the mental equivalent of one
wise man's life. When a commander of eminent capacity in
war wins a great victory and saves an empire, his life is worth
more than the lives of the thousands slain in the battle,
who only count as so many subordinate and easily replace-
able units of low vital dignity whose humble fate it is to
serve the national life ; all the sadder, therefore, is it when
his incapacity loses the battle, and thousands are killed
whose minds together, or perhaps some separately, exceeded
his mind in value.
Superiority of intelligence and feeling in two casually
meeting minds is quickly and mutually felt ; an instant note
of sympathy which is pleasing being struck, or a jar of
antipathy caused which repels. It is only when correspond-
ing chords in two brains are tuned in concord that they
vibrate in unison of thought and feeling ; therefore, to dis-
cern intelligence it is necessary to have it, and to appreciate
the quality of intelligence a congenial quality of intelligence
is indispensable. Accordingly, when two persons meet and
talk together, they fail not to make a quick and subtile
valuation of their respective mental powers and to feel a
relative superiority or inferiority. Now although it is hard
for a superior mind to find pleasure in serious converse with
an inferior mind, as it is hard for an expert player in a game
of skill to enjoy playing it with a poor player, yet he may
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 363
find instruction in it if, instead of regarding seriously what
the person says and being repelled by it, he uses the occasion
to make a psychological study of the defects of knowledge,
fallacies of reasoning, and bias of prejudice which the silly
talk reveals ; if the fool cannot teach him wisdom, he may
learn wisdom from the fool's want of wisdom. The inferior
understanding in converse with a superior understanding,
whose notes it cannot reflect or reverberate, being sensible
of something it cannot comprehend and perhaps of a secret
humiliation, feels a sort of repellent jar and is apt to suspect
and dislike, even to fear and hate ; not otherwise than as
when in the physical world some strange and extraordinary
event, confounding customary apprehension, produces a kind
of panic of mind. All which is quite natural, since it is
nothing else but the action of the self-conservative instinct
of a narrow mind resenting that which is a threat to its
special self-preservation. The superior mind on its side,
seldom meeting its peer, is prone to slide into seclusion and
self-absorption, the evil effects of which are disproportionate
exaggerations of thoughts and feeling ; for it is certainly a
rare mind which can enjoy what Wordsworth extolled as
" the self-suflicing power of solitude," without suffering
deformity and deterioration by the isolation.
When the superior mind has thought out some invention
which, once found, seems simple and obvious, the world
wonders that it did not find it out before, or persuades itself
that, after all, the invention was not really so new as it
claimed to be. Not new perhaps had there been the intelli-
gent eye to see it ; a dumb sort of instinct has been trans-
lated into clear thought which has therefore a not quite
unfamiliar look. But it was the interpretation of the seeing
mind behind the eye which was wanting, the due mental
ordering of the scattered facts ; and the merit of the dis-
coverer is to reveal to men that which they are mentally
blind to and but for his discernment might long continue
blind to. Developing nature in himself he then develops
an answering development of nature in their minds. The
364 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
so-called accident which he, knowing how to observe when
he sees, and seeing much in what seems a small thing, appre-
hends the meaning of, becomes an invention. It is certain
that mankind did not foresee and deliberately plan the manu-
facture of wine ; they were no doubt confronted with the
accident of its occurrence many times before some curious
inquirer chanced to investigate the process of fermentation,
and thereafter made methodical use of knowledge to bestow
on them a boon which, his name long forgotten, they fabled
to be the gift of a God. Suppose that an intelligent in-
quirer had bethought himself long ago to examine curiously
how it was that a dog's w^ound which it often licked healed
soon, whereas his own wound perhaps suppurated and took
weeks to heal, he might perchance have discovered the
virtues of aseptic or antiseptic cleanliness and anticipated
the great practical achievement of modern surgery ; a dis-
covery which had to come late and indirectly after it had
been found out that corruption ensued when noxious germs
got into an unclean wound, and did not take place when they
were kept out of it or killed in it.
To call the man of superior understanding who leads a
life of solitude misanthropic and to blame him for lack of
love of his kind is not always just. In the first place, it is
not perhaps the human kind in general but the j)articular
section of it in which his lot is cast which he lacks love of
and shuns. How can he enter into real converse of heart
and mind with those among whom, if he is to be sociable, he
must force himself to superficialities and unveracities of
thought and feeling, to affectations of sympathy, to irksome
irrationalities of conduct, to calculated reticences and in-
sincerities of speech, to banal phrases that mean nothing or
nothing clearly thought out — must in fact for the time be not
himself but an artificial creature of convention, an approved
social formalism, answering like a machine to each special
impression. The continual practice of such performances
until they become the habit of a nature must needs be
hurtful to the sincerity, veracity, and wholeness of any mind.
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 365
which in the end is pretty sure to be subdued to the medium
it works in, although an occasional performance might not
be without value as an exercise and a discipline. To live
sjanpathetically and sociably in the crowd without being of
it is no doubt an excellent counsel of perfection, but in
practice it will exact a strength and serenity of nature more
God-like than human, and a degree of mental detachment
incompatible with real sympathy ; for it is virtually a
demand that intellectual insight piercing through the show of
things and emancipated from illusions shall take illusions in
earnest and preserve a serious interest in them, or be falsely
earnest enough to pretend well to take them in earnest.
When all is said, the dispraise of a particular society might
be true praise.
In the second place, a man may perhaps be excused rather
than accused for not being fervently in love with his kind
when, not being engulfed in and biassed by its colossal
egoism, he sees it soberly and steadily as it actually has
been and is on earth, not as ideally it would be or feign
to be. Although all people are of one kindred, yet they
certainly present many varieties, some of which differ more
in degree than do some kinds. No more terrible reproach
can be hurled at any one throughout Christendom than that
no Christian would act as he does, whereas in Moslem lands
to be counted a Christian is to be counted no better than a
dog of an infidel. The single Christian among Moslems, if
he had a genuine faith, and the single Moslem among
Christians, how could either choose but be solitary? To
love mankind in the abstract is an ideal aim which neces-
sitates an ideal life of love in seclusion ; it can exist on no
other terms ; for love of mankind in the concrete, when the
concretes differ so immensely as to be almost opposites, is
incompatible with the experience and necessities of practical
life among them. The Chinese philosopher, studying in
seclusion the lofty moral precepts of the Christian religion
as set forth in its sacred books, might feel his heart glow in
sympathy with so sublime an ideal of conduct; but the
366 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Chinese statesman who has been the sorrowful witness of
the spoliations, devastations, brutal outrages, and savage
slaughter of men, women, and children perpetrated by
Christian soldiers in the name of their religion, cannot
well be expected to feel a like glow of brotherly sympathy.
He might perhaps be excused if he felt more love of a
member of a lower animal species than of a Christian
member of his own species.
As man is neither angel nor brute but a mean between
angel and brute, he cannot incline overmuch towards either
pole of his nature without suffering detriment in conse-
quence ; he ought neither to get rid of his passions to become
angel, nor to live in them to be brute, but to find out and
keep the just mean. The natural results of a mental detach-
ment whereby the goings and doings of men were surveyed
with a cool impartiality, much as the scenes and acts of a
play are watched by an indifferent spectator, would, according
to the degree of detachment, be either a towering egoism of
contemplative serenity, which might not, however, protect
him altogether from frets and follies at home, or an acrid
cynicism springing from greater intensity of feeling and less
detachment of intellect : in the one case, a coldly indifferent
or smilingly tolerant outlook on the follies, frauds, vices, ab-
errations, aspirations, ambitions and achievements of men
by virtue of a sublimely isolated self-centralization ; in the
other case, a bitterness of resentment and criticism because
of real earnestness of sympathy turned to sour satire, nowise
wholly diverted to and engrossed in a supreme egoism.
After all, there was probably more heart, a keener sympathy
with his kind, more real unselfishness of feeling in the
savage satire of Swift than in the cool serenity and calcu-
lated selfishness of Goethe ? However that be, it is certain
that the man who aspires to attain such a detachment from
human concerns stands on a giddy height where sense of
proportion and relation are likely to be obscured, and from
which he may easily slide either into a megalomania or a
hypochondria. The greatest genius, being human, has the
XI GENIUS AND TALENT 367
same human basis and must develop along the same human
lines as other beings of his kind, and for that reason cannot
occupy a very safe situation when he thinks to stand aloof
and either contemplate indifferently or criticize scornfully.
The prosaic conclusion is, then, that as everybody has to
play the part set for him by nature and circumstances in a
drama of mixed tragedy and comedy, of which he neither
knows the beginning nor can foresee the end, and has done
with it and is himself done with when his part is played, he
ought not to take himself and the business too seriously,
but should make up his mind quietly to act it to the best of
his ability with all the goodwill and good humour he can
command. Bad humour or overmuch self-consciousness will
only fret and hurt himself and spoil the play. If he be so
constituted that he cannot help taking the business in dead
earnest, let him throw his energies into a transport of im-
passioned enthusiasm — an enthusiasm for humanity, if he
can reach that ecstasy — prompting and pleasing himself with
the belief that he is acting a great part in a great cause, the
effect of which will work silently or resound loudly through
the ages. The melancholy thing is when, being half-
emancipated and half-infatuated, he cannot play either part
consistently through, but, distracted between them, does
neither well and makes himself ill.
CHAPTER XII
FATE— FOLLY— CRIME
I
FATE AND FORTUNE
The little hinges of great events — Estimates of events — The way of
development the right way — The epoch-maker — Epoch-maker or
epoch-made ? — The dependent fate of a great movement— In-
calculable operation of mental forces — Power, not wisdom, in the
multitude — Fortune and providence — Homo magnus or homo felix
— The fate of organization — Christianity and Paganism.
On what little hinges ofttimes turn the mighty events of the
world ! Had St. Paul died from the severe cerebral stroke
which befell him on his way to Damascus, when for three
days he was unconscious, neither eating nor drinking all that
time, what would the fortunes of Christianity have been ?
It is incredible that, wanting his fervid zeal, his vehement
energy, his indomitable perseverance, his sagacity and
subtlety, and his great organizing capacity, it could ever
have made the progress which it made; nowise incredible
that after flourishing for a while as a local sect, as the like-
doctrined Essenes did, it might have waned and ultimately
died out. If Pharaoh's daughter had not caught sight of
the Jewish woman's babe lying naked in the bulrushes and
taken pity on it, Moses could not have risen up to lead the
Israelites out of Egyptian bondage to found a kingdom of
God-chosen people. Had Proserpine not chanced to have
unwittingly eaten three pomegranate seeds before her mother
CHAP. XII FATE AND FORTUNE 369
Ceres descended into hell to rescue her from Pluto's em-
braces, how dififerent would her fate have been. Amazing
indeed, almost awful sometimes, is it to think how trivial
and accidental a circumstance at the critical moment has
turned the whole course of a life. A momentary caprice, a
petty accident, a letter gone astray, a chance-visit, the
inclination of a hair's-breadth, ever so small an incident
determining this turn or that may change and fix a life's
career. The battle lost or won because the general's liver
was functioning ill or well has lost or saved a kingdom ; and
a single mortal's death owing to a wasp's sting, or a stray
bullet, or a microbe wafted here or there has determined the
course of human affairs through the ages. Now if so small
a thing may involve so momentous an issue, it is surely
strange to question, as is sometimes done, whether the
exceptionally strong man exerts any great influence on the
course of human events.
Viewing things calmly and at large in reason's light, where
lies the littleness or the greatness but in human thought ?
Why should the sting of a wasp be a little thing and the
life of a man a big thing ? The wasp which has killed the
hero nowise prides itself on having done a great deed. To
man the catastrophe at the time, though oblivion fails not
soon to ingulf it, is strange, awe-inspiring, a mysterious dis-
pensation of Providence ; the meanness of the cause is
deemed nowise to detract from the magnitude of the event ;
deeming the universe to have been created and ordained
for him, he cannot bear to look on his greatest calamity as
a small event in a larger order of events, no bigger in the
long run perhaps than the killing of a wasp on a summer's
day. It is the wasp that is the implicit philosopher,
the man who is the explicit self-idolater. In the far-
reaching, subtile, and complex interworkings of the
mysterious universe there is nothing great or small save in
quite human sense ; all things being indissolubly bound
together, the least are felt in the greatest and the greatest
in the least. Destiny rules alike in a living molecule and in
B B
370 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
a solar system, in the fall of a leaf and of a kingdom, in the
constitution of a character and of a planet, in the death of a
microbe and of a man.
Because the living world has gone the way of development
it has gone, the belief is that this was the right way, as no
doubt it was, things falling out as they did, but it does not
therefore follow that it might not conceivably have gone
another and perhaps better way. Still less does it follow
that man might not have been so constituted as to perceive
it in quite other fashion ; for a new sense in a sense-fashioned
world would entirely transform the world. Had it gone a
different way, or he been framed to perceive it differently, he
would still have thought that the right way, and have dis-
covered admirable aim and purpose therein, because aim and
purpose are the necessary conceptions of his mode of looking
at things in relation to himself. Meanwhile men have tried
hard for a long time, and still persistently try, to make the
world go a more righteous way. What they naturally want
is to make it better for themselves, and as means thereto —
since they multiply fast and have to co-operate more and
more — themselves better towards one another ; and in doing
so they deal with the notself as if it were made solely for
them, no otherwise than as a nest of busy ants does on a
smaller scale. What matters it to man or ant that the
cosmic system shall go on its inexorable and endless way
when the drama ends, so long as each plays well his part in
it while the play is on the stage.
The epoch-making mortal arising among men from time
to time whom they glorify greatly is one who, having in-
stinctive feeling of the forces at work around him, insight
into and foresight of their operations, and sagacity and
capacity to direct them, gathers them into himself, and by a
happy intuition gives a turn or push to their line of action
at a particular time in a particular place. Having gone that
way and prospered in it, they declare it to be the right way,
indeed the way of righteousness, and cannot choose but
think him an extraordinary man, wonderfully inspired, and
xii FATE AND FORTUNE 371
celebrate him accordingly — consecrate him perhaps as semi-
divine, assign him a special day of commemoration, erect
statues of him in marble or bronze, apotheose him in poem,
in history, in fable, in the end perhaps make a quite
mythical being of him. As all this is essentially a magnifi-
cation and adoration of the collective self in a concrete
symbol of it, a colossal human self-idolatry ; and as different
sections or types of mankind have their different ideal
types of self-worship, it comes to pass naturally that
each section owns and reveres its own type of superior
being and deifies him. Each human hive is self-sufficing,
nowise deeply concerned with the economy of another hive,
unless it be to rob it ; the hero of one hive, therefore, not
necessarily the hero of another hive. So fierce, indeed, has
fchis spirit of the hive been hitherto that the struggle for a
higher humanity has always been at the cost of a lower
humanity, whose dethroned God, the personified symbol of
its national unity, has then been degraded into a demon.
Does the epoch-maker make his epoch, or is he made by it ?
That is an old question which, many times debated, is not
solved because, like other questions put in such inexact form
as not to admit of solution, it is not rightly put. In seeking
the answer a neglected distinction ought properly to be kept
in mind — namely, the distinction between the epoch-making
thought or discovery, philosophical, or scientific, or mechanical,
towards which the general mind is in slow and sure travail
at a particular time and place, and the much more complex,
more uncertain, more variable, less predictable action of man
on men. Mind working on the properties and relations of
ordinary matter is one thing ; mind working on the minds of
men is quite another thing. Had Harvey not discovered or
demonstrated the circulation of the blood — an achievement
which nowadays looks childishly simple — or had Darwin not
formulated the doctrine [of evolution by means of natural
selection, it is certain that the discoveries would soon have
been made ; indeed, in respect of them as in respect of most
discoveries, there are contending claimants to priority,
B B 2
372 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and the eternal dispute arises whether they had not
already been made. As a machine can be constructed to
perform the mental operations of arithmetical calculation,
and to do them better than most minds can, and a machine
might probably be constructed to perform the operation of
reasoning if only the facts and relations to be operated on
and their equivalences could be definitely and exactly fixed,
so it is not difficult to conceive that among several similarly
trained brains working on the same material in much the
same environment more than one may reach the same
conclusion at or near the same time. The strange thing
truly would be if in such conditions a concomitant jumping
of wits did not take place at the due season. Widely sepa-
rate peoples in time and place have therefore naturally made
independently very similar myths and proverbs, just as they
have necessarily made similar tools to do similar work, and
done similar deeds to maintain and continue themselves :
how indeed could like organisms at the same stage of growth
in similar circumstances help doing so, any more than
machines constructed on the same plan can help doing the
same kind of work. A record of the common fallacies of
human thought, everywhere alike though certainly not
borrowed by one people from another, discloses a similar
mechanical jumping of faulty wits into similar errors of
reason, the same modes of function implying the same modes,
of going astray in function.
But when one thinks of the momentous action of such men
as Alexander and Caesar on the fortunes of the human race,,
it is incredible that the course of human things would have
been what it was and is, had they died in their cradles ; in-
credible, too, tliat the history of England would have been
the same for the last two hundred years had Cromwell not
lived at all, or had the ague let him live twenty years longer
than he did ; incredible, again, that France would be the
France it is now, had not a poor, sallow lieutenant of artillery,
out of work and out of elbows, disheartened with his prospects,
and gloomily minded to enter into the service of the Grand."
XII FATE AND FORTUNE 373
Turk, been persuaded casually to call on the Director Barras,
whose mistress he subsequently married. If each of these
men was the product of his epoch, as of course he was, having
been born and bred in it, yet he so grasped, directed, guided,
and used the forces then at work as to make an epoch in
human events which was largely his product. No doubt it
may be said that he, fulfilling the organic nisus, expressed
and gave effect to a silent ideal struggling blindly for utter-
ance in the people at the time ; but had he not chanced to
have been there to utter it fitly, the utterance, if not stifled,
might have had a much different direction, at any rate for a
century or more, even had the ultimate issue been the same.
Nothing seems more certain than that the issue of a great
social movement, nay, the very fate of a nation, may depend
on the lucky chance of the right man being opportunely
there at the critical time to defend, guide, and govern the ven-
ture. He truly in such case is often greater than he knows,
because, embod3dng unconsciously the elemental forces at
work, he partakes of the natura naturans which is accom-
plishing the natura nahirata ; for which reason his very
blunders perhaps are converted into strokes of genius.
As an organism is the more modifiable intimately the
more special and complex it is in structure, and as the most
complex organization in the world is the mental structure of
man, it is impossible to estimate, hopeless to predict with
the least certainty, the many subtile and far-reaching effects
which the impact of a great mental force shall produce in it.
Still more futile would it be to attempt to estimate and pre-
dict the effects of such a force on a multitude of such mental
organisms bound together in the unity of a national organism.
The prudent and sagacious statesman soon learns that he
cannot foresee what will be the play of the limited political
forces amidst which he works from hand to mouth in a groping,
uncertain, almost haphazard way as best he can, and proceeds
warily; though he may still accomplish much of what he
wants if he has a definite aim in mind and works definitely
and resolutely for it, not paralyzed by over-meditative musings
374 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
nor craven fears of responsibility, nor weakly terrorized by
conventional scruples of conscience. He certainly will do
most who, feeling himself in a sort of tacit compact vnth
destiny, and disdainful of the fine moral fetters befitting men
in ordinary social life, deals with them, if necessary, as ruth-
lessly as nature does in the fulfilment of its ends. Though
he seem rash, impetuous, even dangerous, yet the audacity
which plunges him into the enterprize may imply the vigor-
ous energy which shall bring him well out of it, and his
conduct in the circumstances be less pernicious at worst
than that of the musing impotent who, drifting aimlessly in
difficulties, actually attracts them about him and is over-
whelmed by them. And when all is said, activity impelled by
conscientious motives is sometimes exceeding mischievous,
while unconscientious activity may be very beneficent.
Emerging into general acceptance at the present day is
the theory that in the impulses and opinions of the multi-
tude lies the nation's way of salvation ; not the might only,
that is, to propel its course, which is indubitable, but the
wisdom also to direct and rule its course, which is question-
able. No less wise, perhaps, might it be to believe that in the
gross appetites and desires of the body lies the right instruc-
tion of the individual for the conduct of life ; both for the
maintenance of life, which is evidently true, seeing that he
must gratify them to live, and also for the contrivance and
regulation of means, which is manifestly absurd, seeing that
they are blind. The impelling force lies in the multitude,
but not the guidance of the impulse to wise execution. It
is from the superior understanding of the few wise men,
whether from the east or west, who interpret and rule the
dim, blind, inarticulate impulses of the jDeople, that the light
must come to guide the many who are for the most part
ignorant and foolish. Unless human nature has been vastly
transformed since Moses, Mahomet, and like men of light and
leading, instructed, beguiled, dominated and used the multi-
tude for its good, we must accept the facts of their lives to
warrant inductions that still hold true. Education of the
XII FATE AND FORTUNE 375
democracy, it may be said, will teach it the wisdom necessary
to rule well. Did the cultured Athenian democracy, which
spent most of its time in listening to the harangues of its
instructors, show much wisdom in government when it
thought the best use it could put its wisest to was to
ostracize or poison them ? Is it quite so certain, then,
that there will issue out of the low average of under-
standing a higher knowledge to illuminate better ways of
progress than could ever come from the inspiration and
foresight of a few superior minds which it is pretty sure to
ostracize if they flatter not its foibles nor regard its imme-
diate interests ? Will the many-headed Hydra belch forth
wisdom from its multitudinous mouths ? It is hard to be-
lieve that a groping multitude on the same low level, sub-
ject to simple and violent passions and incapable of sustained
reasoning, Avill manage to feel its way more wisely and safely
than the individual insight of the superior mind raised aloft
can point it out ; or that its blind force has no need to
be manacled and directed, lest, like a blind Samson, it pull
the State down in ruins. The best, perhaps, to be expected
from it is that it will become more prolific in the production
of superior men and more intelligent to appreciate and follow
their wise guidance. Then it may not in time to come be so
much at the mercy of a bacterium in a great m.an's blood as
it has been in time past, and it can never more happen that
the chance-turn of a microbe shall affect much the course of
human events. The worst to be expected, on the other
hand, is that it may steadily pull down the superior from
their seat and exalt the inferior, until, bringing all to one
level, it brings the nisus of development to a stop and
initiates a degeneration. Then it will not matter much
what turn a wandering microbe takes.
The ancients paid a homage to Fortune which the
moderns, with their greater insight into and power over
the forces of Nature, are not inclined to pay. Fortune was
represented by them as a woman standing on a globe, with
bandaged eyes and a rudder in her hand ; signifying thereby
376 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
that it was variable as a woman, unstable as a station on a
rolling sphere, blind steerage in the tempests of life : the
whole a perfect symbol of instability and dark uncertainty.
The truth, of course, was, it was they who, being blind to
the causal, ascribed to Fortune a casual course of things.
Thinking as they did, however, they naturally raised altars
to a goddess whose ways were so uncertain, capricious, and
unpredictable. As the modems cherish the fast belief of
no blind fortune, but of an all-wise Providence over-ruling
everything, so that not even a sparrow falls unheeded nor a
microbe goes astray on its mission, they might be expected
to show a tranquil resignation to whatever happens, in full
assurance that everything is ordained rightly in a rightly
governed world — in any case, not to " argue against Heaven's
hand or will," but always "to bear up and steer right
onward." All the stranger, therefore, is the inconsistency
when they fret and fume habitually, vex themselves with
regrets and remorses, distress themselves with anxieties,
invent devils to torment them and disturb the divine order,
consume their hearts in ambitions, envies, competitions and
strifes more hotly than the ancients apparently ever did.
Knowing not what a day or a night will bring forth — whether
when they go to sleep they will ever wake, or whether when
they wake they will ever go to sleep again — yet sure that all
is foreordained for the best, they still disquiet themselves
pei^etually in vain about what is to come, just as if the day
without a to-morrow w^ould not soon come to them ; and
while perceiving plainly that the race is not always to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to men of
understanding, nor fortune to men of skill, but that time and
chance always and one event at last happen to all, they
bitterly resent the fortune which has favoured others and
not favoured them. Two very positive uses they persistently
make of the reason by which, being exalted, they exult and
insult over the brutes — namely, to use it on occasions to be
more ingeniously brutal than any brute has the ingenuity to
xn FATE AND FORTUNE 377
be and to torture themselves by follies of reason in a way
no brute is irrational enough to do.
That " the worst pig picks up the best acorns " is a Spanish
proverb which, proverb-like in its one-sidedness, embodies
the common fallacy of making universal a conclusion from a
few cases. So also does the proverb that " fools only are
fortunate," which were better used perhaps to mean that
fools only rely on fortune. No doubt the worst pig some-
times does get the best acorn without merit on its part or
demerit on the part of better pigs; withal, the poor pig
which then perchance prides itself on its merit is no worse
than the foolish person who always links his good fortune
inseparably to his merit. Let any one look back impartially
on his own life and on the lives of men known to him who
have reached emiaence, or take a cool survey of the histories
of eminent men in the past, and he must needs see, if he
have insight, and own, if he have candour, that fortune has
often counted for more than foresight in the event. Be-
falling accident or opportunity, the apt occasion suiting the
capacity and the sudden impulse to seize it, the folly or
death of another person, the casualty of a call, the rude push
of unreflecting audacity or the weak halt of meditative
timidity, a stroke of favour or disfavour, the opportune turn
at the critical juncture, — these or the like incidents were
perhaps the determinants of a career which without them
would have gone quite differently. Biassed by self-love, the
successful man is prone to think otherwise and to ascribe
the prosperous event to his own wisdom and merit ; he would
rather be the Homo magnus than the Homo felix, and he is
perhaps only mock-modest when he expressly disclaims merit
and praises his good fortune. All the more probably so
when such praise is only an indirect way of putting him-
self under special favour and care as a man of Destiny or
divinely-inspired person and priding himself on his genius.
What good reason is there for pride in that fortunate case ?
Why should he be more proud of his genius, as a woman
378 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
is of her beauty, which is a gift of Nature, not acquirable,
than of a virtue which could be acquired and would be
a merit. It is strange to think a person should be most
proud of that in which he has least part.
Besides the destiny which things outside him make for
every one, there is the fate, good or bad, which his own
organization makes for him. That is a fate which he can in
no case elude. In the interaction between organism and
circumstances the more powerful its action on them the
more manifest is the fate of his nature and his apparent
merit ; the more he is acted on by circumstances the more
evident the fate of his fortune and his seeming demerit when
it is bad fortune ; for although the fortune of circumstances
and individual merit play their respective parts in every
life, yet it is on the whole certain that the greater the merit
the less is the scope for fortune's play. Every one has a
certain power and freedom of action "vvithin the circle, small
or great — small enough at the best — circumscribed by his
individual organization ; but the circle is inexorably fixed.
If such a view of things seems calculated to encourage a
kind of pagan fatalism, it is only necessary to substitute the
word Providence for the word Fortune and the doctrine
becomes good theology.
In that case, however, the substitution would not be a
substitution of words only. The Pagan equally with the
Christian may acknowledge the vanity of striving with
anxious mind to foresee an uncertain future, in which that
which is not expected happens as often as that which is
expected; may discipline himself steadily to endure with
resignation and fortitude the caprices of fortune, since where
it gives little it can take little away and may give more ;
may patiently resolve to do his best to develop his nature in
the manifold changing uncertainties of things ; but he
cannot, like the Christian, pray in faith, and feel in prayer
that the " everlasting arms " are beneath him to support
aspiration and sustain endeavour. That is the reason doubt-
XII FATE AND FORTUNE 379
less why Christianity has excelled Paganism as a working
force of civilization, and why Marcus Aurelius who lacked
the illusion to live looks a more pathetic figure in history
than Jesus of Nazareth who brought life and immortality
to light.
380 LIFE m MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
II
FOLLY AND CRIME
Fools constitute the majority — Need no compassion — The criminal —
The anarchist — Clever and Tveak-minded criminals — Reasons and
attractions of crime — Routine of respectability — Criminal, epileptic,
insane, and fanatical temperaments — Degeneration by natural law —
Organized nervous substrata — The lesson of punishment — The aim
of punishment — The prevention, or reformation of criminal —
Nature's possible irony — Crime evidence of organic vigour.
AuGUSTiXE spoke well when he said that wisdom in the
world is driven to place itself under the protection of folly,
for fools are in a preponderating majority. Whosoever
would rise high among his kind must so contrive as to get
the preponderant force, which is the force of ignorance and
folly, at his back ; in one way or other, whichever suits his
temperament best, openly or insidiously, directly or circuit-
ously, by intrigue or by force, must subdue and yoke it to
work for his ends. Not one of the great leaders of mankind,
whether prophet, legislator, conqueror, statesman, charlatan,
great man of any sort, but has taken skilful pains to enlist
the battalions of fools on his side. For what avails right
without might ? And as might is not with the wise few
but with the foolish many, to be wise among fools, if not wise
enough to use their folly for his profit, is a positive
calamity to a mortal. That is how the pedantic purist
comes to fail and wail ; he would have the ideal end without
willing the non-ideal means. Duper and dupe, the one to
prey on and the other to be preyed on, such has been the
ordained means and method of nature to accomplish its
organic evolution in the human kind through the ages. But
ought he to be deemed unqualified knave who unscrupulously
dupes the fool for the fool's good ? Surely he would be
himself a fool to present intelligent reasons only to one who
had not the intelligence to comprehend them. No, he has
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 381
the good sense to treat the innocent according to his sim-
plicity, instructing him wisely by practising on his credulity
and luring him into the right way by guile. As it is the
nature of man to believe, he must believe something, and
will believe the false if he has not the true to believe. For
wisdom, then, to imagine that it can do without folly in the
world is just the folly of wisdom.
How unjust and unwise to be impatient of stupidity !
That against which the gods themselves fight in vain every
man must perforce suffer patiently ; not to speak of the sheer
good sense in any serious struggle of having the blind force
with him, not against him. Besides, as the fool can in no
ctise by taking thought add to his natural mental stature,
he is rightly to be pitied, not to be blamed, for his defective
or deformed mind. That he obtains not the compassion
which he deserves for his natural stupidity as he obtains it
for bodily deformity or infirmity is because, unconscious of
his defects and perhaps proud of them, he irritates and
exasperates by his extreme self-satisfaction, which may even
go so far as to persuade him that it is he who is sound and
others who are lame in mind. The bigger the fool, therefore,
the less is he usually in need of pity ; while smaller fools are
compensated by not lacking the soothing fellowship of a
multitude of like-minded fellows and a congenial mental
atmosphere. It is curious in this relation to note how much
easier is indulgence to intellectual than to moral defects, the
reason no doubt being that the former hurt less obviously,
because their effects, if at all distant, are not discerned by
the average mind unused or unable to look beyond the first
link in a chain of effects and content to believe in accidents ;
whereas moral faults are immediately felt and resented as
wilful. Yet the vain, the envious, the jealous, the malignant
person might well be pitied, for he has an ever-festering sore
at heart, an abiding moral fault, which renders him perpetu-
ally unhappy.
And what of the criminal who, antisocially constituted, is
alien from his kind and will not or cannot conform to the
382 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
rules of the society of which he is a member ? Ought he
also to be pitied as obeying the tyranny of his organization
or blamed as a wicked person ? Foolish he plainly is, since
he foolishly fights a power which is vastly stronger than he
is and by which he is sure to be worsted in the issue.
Common intelligence, did he possess it, might teach him
how stupid was such an unequal combat. No, cries outraged
society, he is not wanting in ordinary intelligence, he wants
only the wish to do right ; he is selfishly immoral because
he will not subordinate vicious desires which please him to
the social interests and welfare. But where is the selfish-
ness of making a victim of himself? Certainly he would
show a more intelligent self-love to conform to rules which
he cannot break without pain and degradation to himself.
If a short-sighted and uninstructed selfishness prompts him
to gratify his present inclination without heed of conse-
quences, it makes him his own enemy, and does so because
his self-love is stupid and he so far a natural fool. Society,
then, may rightly pity while punishing him, compassionating
the criminal while castigating the crime.
Violation of the laws enacted for its own self-preservation
society cannot choose but use its right and power to penalize,
if it is to continue in well-being; for the offender is a
noxious antisocial element who, like a morbid element in the
bodily organism, must be isolated or extruded or destroyed.
Though it style its action moral and his action immoral, it is
the self-conservative law of organic nature which operates in
either case ; the criminal being moved by the egoistic instinct
of his antisocial nature to develop itself freely and fully, the
society moved by the egoistic instinct of its self-preservation
to cancel or eject the hurtful element in its economy who
would live by it without living for it. Should the criminal
ask indignantly " Why should I obey your law of loving my
neighbour and doing to him as to myself?" society simply
replies " Because it is for my good, of which I am supreme
judge and you are only a humble function, whose whole duty
is to do rightly in your situation." Should he thereupon.
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 383
being a fanatical socialist or enraged anarchist, demand
further " Why, then, am I treated as an enemy of the human
race, a sort of antihuman monster, when my whole ardent
aim is to destroy grinding oppression, to abolish unjust
inequalities, to make men loving neighbours, not in words
and pretence only, but in deeds and sincerity ? " society's
imperious answer is tantamount to this : " Because you are
either an impracticable fool or scoundrel who would, had you
your mad way, destroy my present social order. If that order
be not good, though it suits me, so much the worse for you,
who would mend it in a way which does not suit me."
Thus it comes to pass now that the anarchist who is
outraged by the inequalities, oppressions, and injustices of
the social system in which his lot is cast, and explodes in
violent revolt against it, is naturally execrated as an anti-
social monster. Thus, too, it once came to pass in a former
social system that "the divine Communist" of Nazareth,
proclaiming inopportunely and importunately the universal
brotherhood of mankind, was condemned and crucified by
the upholders of the existing system. Now, as the modern
-anarchist, however foolish or bad he may be, is a social
product within and of the civil organization, nowise a
strange intrusion into it from without, his furious action is
the natural convulsive reaction of an element of it; a sign
of unease, therefore, to be taken note of and the lesson of
it duly pondered even when he is promptly extinguished.
Moreover, he is still human, despite the easy execration of
him as inhuman ; and if it be right to reverence the sanctity
of the kind in the most abject specimen of it, and to protect
and succour him solely because he belongs to the kind, it is
not logical to thrust the anarchist outside the human pale
and repudiate responsibility for his production and function
in the social economy ; for when all is said, it is not he that
has made himself, he is the creature of its manufacture.
Having bred him in its womb, society has the right to
destroy him for its own safety's sake, but it may justly
consider whether it were not a better way so to amend the
384 LIFE IN xMIND AND CONDUCT char
social conditions as not to generate him. When it declares
again in its exasperation that he is moved by nothing else
but an outrageous morbid vanity to do an exploit which
shall astonish mankind and make him talked about every-
where, it might reflect, too, that such motive verily testifies
to his human nature and sympathies — being just an instance
of the bad working of a principle whose good working makes
much for society — since he is so mightily pleased to astonish
and interest his fellow mortals, and that if he were ignored,
and no more interest shown in his exploit than by a flock
of sheep, the motive would be forceless. Scientifically one
might place the anarchists in a small and special class of
spasmodic or convulsive criminals as distinguished from the
common class of defective or deformed criminals and the
large class of occasional criminals ; their passionate revolts
against the established social system being, so to speak, so
many repulsive fragments throMTi off from the regular social
orbit. He is really not far removed in kinship from the
philanthropic fanatic whose keen vanity is equally eager
for notoriety, though it has found another convulsive
outlet.
A cursory survey of criminals suffices to show that how-
ever foolish they may be in the conduct of life they are not
all wanting in intelligence. Some of them certainly are
more or less deficient mentally. Not to speak of the plainly
imbecile or positively insane, whose manifest defects are
allowed to excuse their deeds when they do wrong, there is
a large class of criminals who, degenerate in greater or less
degree, are more or less weak in mind and perhaps in body,
lacking sufficient reason to check, rule, and guide their
gross instincts and passions. The more complex a civilized
community is, the more difficult it is then for such ill-
organized persons to adapt themselves to its special require-
ments. They form, indeed, a pretty constant body of
habitual criminals who are seldom long out of prison, since
they have no sooner expiated one offence than they commit
another and are again incarcerated. It is their bad fortune
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 385
to be badly born and bred, without blame to them, as it is
the good fortune of the great genius to be well born and
bred, without merit to him, albeit the social body naturally
regards very differently the one who is a help and a credit
to it from the other who is a hurt and a discredit to it.
But to say that all criminals bear the visible signs of
physical and mental degeneracy is untrue. There is a large
class who show no such stigmata, most of them possessing
average mental powers, and some of them a grasp of intelli-
gence, a tenacity of purpose, and a strength of will in the
plan and execution of crime which, had they applied their
powers and industry to social ends in conformity with social
rules, would have raised them to virtuous eminence.
Though crime, then, often be the outcome of vicious passion
which a low intelligence is powerless to guide and control,
yet it may also denote a will served by an acute and entirely
self-seeking intelligence, sagacious to devise and skilful tO'
execute criminal enterprises. The want, then, is not in-
tellectual, it is a lack of that finest feeling of social responsi-
bility which is known as moral sense. Now it is undeniable
that a great lack of moral sense may coexist with extra-
ordinary intellectual powers, despite the inveterate incli-
nation and desire to believe that they must somehow go
along together. History, on the one side, supplies striking
examples of their independent existence, and mental patho-
logy, on the other side, exhibits not infrequent instances
both of great moral defect or perversion with comparatively
undamaged intellect and of weak intellect with good moral
feeling.
As a clever criminal cannot properly be called an intellec-
tual fool, the explanation of his crime must be sought in a
large and close survey of the circumstances. Three principal
explanatory reasons may be taken into account : first, an
innate weakness or want of moral sense which, however
much the plane of moral may be higher than that of social
sentiment, is just as real a physical deprivation as intellectual
deficiency — an asocial deprivation of nature leading^to active
c c
386 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
antisocial conduct; secondly, the special circumstances ot
the particular temptation which put a critical strain on
a weak moral nature, either because of the urgency of a
present need, or because of the strong provocation of the apt
opportunity, or because of an unlucky conjuncture of need
and opportunity — in all cases a greater or less degree of
inward proclivity no doubt coinciding with the outward
temptation ; thirdly, the thrilling excitement of the adven-
turous game of crime with its fierceness of struggle and pride
of success. As the eager huntsman does not hunt for the
value of the fox, which he would not care to have given
to him dead or alive, but for the keen joy of the uncertain
chase, so the clever criminal delights in the excitement,
ardour, and danger of his hazardous pursuit. Knowing well
the risks and difficulties of his career he believes himself
strong, bold, and cunning enough to surmount them, or at
any rate to make it worth his while to hazard the venture,
and his nerves are stimulated and braced by the fierce passion
and peril of the combat out of which he hopes to come winner.
Successful too he often is as a matter of fact. Because the
world will gladly have it so, or have it believed so, the belief
being most useful socially, it is loudly proclaimed that crime
seldom goes unpunished, that " murder will out," and the
like ; whereas the truth is, as many a criminal has occasion
to know, that crime is often undetected and when detected
often unpunished, that murders are done which are not
suspected, murders suspected which are not detected, and
detected murders not always duly punished.
To the ordinary sober and decent citizen whose mind is
caked in the customs of respectability it seems inexplicable
that any one should be willing to be the scorn of his fellows
and suffer pain and degradation as a criminal when he might
live an honest and respectable life in social harness. But
to the criminal it seems incredible that any one can so
esteem the opinion of men as contentedly to endure day after
day the dreary drudgery and dull routine of the ordinary
citizen's bald and insipid life — to be, in fact, like the working
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 387
bee, from birth to death the contented slave of his social
system in a mean occupation. Such an atmosphere of
honest respectability is stifling and suffocating to one who
has once tasted fully the excitements and chances of a
criminal career, its uncertainties of luck and unluck, its
surprises and risks, its anticipations and apprehensions, its
contrasts of privation and plenty, its captures and escapes,
its keen interests and exertions. Gambler-like, he stakes
desperately and eagerly expects the result ; and if he loses
as often as he gains, he still deems one hour of fierce life
compensation for a month in gaol. This is a motive which
works in criminals more generally and powerfully than is
suspected by those who have not made themselves intimately
acquainted Avith their ways of thinking and feeling, and is
probably the main reason of the frequent relapses into crime
by those of them who at great pains have been put into the
way of earning an honest livelihood. What wonder that the
dull grinding monotony of respectability is intolerable to
them ? Considering indeed what a dreary and squalid
routine that life for the most part is, it speaks volumes for
the efficacy of social manufacture that multitudes do endure
it patiently.
Still a surviving instinct of primeval freedom lurks deeply
in the breast of the civilized man and from time to time
flares openly, overladen and hidden though it be by many
layers of culture-conquests through the ages. The revolt
against the cramping fetters of social bondage, which
increasing and multiplying divisions of labour continually
make more special and minute until the man is contracted
and absorbed in the specialist, and the urgent impulse of the
natural man to burst through them into a freer life, are
notably sometimes the effect and evidence of a temperament
in the criminal near akin to that which is met with in some
epileptic and insane persons. It is organically explosive ; its
several parts not being compactly knit together by fit bonds
of interrelations and interinhibitions, outbursts of decomposed
fractional and quasi-convulsive Avills are prone to occur.
c c 2
388 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Hence the kinship which has been shown to exist between
insanity, epilepsy and crime, and the frequent occurrence of
their morbid neuroses in the same family.
Nowise distantly related is the narrow, sensitive and hotly
fanatical temperament which, wanting balance of structure,
is absorbed in one idea or project, devoid of all sense of pro-
portion, utterly unable to get outside the small illuminated
area of self and to see things in full light, sure that the grati-
fication of its passionate self-love is the sublimest altruism,
burning to take all humanity into its embrace so long as it is
a humanity which disagrees not with its special digestion.
The tender sensitive who is distressed beyond measure at
the sight of the bleating lamb which has lost its mother,
sits down soon afterwards to feed on the leg or loin of that
or another lamb, denouncing the while with intemperate
passion the vivisector who, instead of mutilating the lamb in
order to make good food of it — without giving it chloroform
— cuts a rabbit or a guinea-pig under chloroform in order to
find out something which may alleviate suffering and save
life. Such a temperament is badly bred and likely to breed
badly, for it wants mental ratio, is unstable and untrust-
worthy; and v/hether its possessor become, on the one hand,
the fanatic of a wise or foolish cause, or on the other hand a
criminal of some kind, overt or secret, depends not so much
on natural virtue in him as on the circumstances of his
breeding and fortune in life. Should ill fortune cast him
on a criminal career and he perchance later undergo a
conversion to better ways, be may be as zealous a fanatic as
he Avas formerly a criminal. The revolution is not then
really a revolution of character, as shortsighted reflection is
apt to conclude, it is only the turning of its fierce and
narrow energy into another channel.
A weighty fact which is overlooked by moral philosophers,
or ignored by them as below the dignity of their notice, is
that this kind of temperament furnishes very bad stock to
breed from ; for unless it be happily, though mysteriously,
counteracted in marriage it is pretty sure to produce
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 389
degenerate offspring. When Plato said that knowledge was
remembrance, he might have gone on to say, and to say
more truly, that conduct, which at bottom denotes character,
is remembrance. For it is not by accident but by natural
law that offspring turn out insane or criminal or other-
wise degenerate ; they are then necessary products marking
nature's judgment on ancestral character which was not
compounded in right proportion of parts, lacked literal
integrity therefore, was more or less deformed. In due
course of pathological degeneracy a more disproportionate
or irrational product is wrought out in the succeeding
generation : that is the Nemesis of nature. Wonderful in-
deed it is to see how stubbornly, in spite of experience,
people go on wondering that unreason in a stock does not
breed reason in its offspring, guile in conduct and character
not issue in sincerity and veracity of nature ; as if unreason
and guile incorporate in silent structure could ever speak
aloud in function as a conscious memory of reason and
truth.
Metaphysical psychology has always postulated, rightly or
wrongly, three mental planes or levels in man : (a) The
lowest plane of social obligations and offences on which the
lower mind functioned ; (b) The higher plane of moral duties
and vices, which was the province of the higher mind ; (c)
The superlative or spiritual sphere of holiness and sin, in
which the soul had its life and being. It has gone so far
indeed as to assign reason exclusively to the last, allowing
understanding only to the other two. If its postulates be
granted, still no adequately informed mind will now deny
that each plane of mental being has its necessary nervous
substratum, and that the highest mental structure is not
separate from, but is superposed on and organically con-
nected with the lower structures, representing, so to speak,
the sublimed evolution of them, and comprehensible only
therefore through them. As the Apostle Paul said, " the
natural comes first and afterwards that which is spiritual " ;
which is to say in other words that the root and stem are
390 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
prior to the leaves and flowers. Now it is the latest acquired
fine nervous tracery ministering to the most spiritual func-
tions of mind which is damaged or effaced first in the course
of degeneracy — that which, being the last put on, is the
soonest put off and being the most delicate is most easily
hurt.
As the right of society to punish the criminal is its self-
conservative right to keep itself in well-being, it advisedly
makes a painful and dramatic example of the wrong-doer, to
the intent that it may perchance instil into him who suffers
and others who witness his degradation a fear to do wrong
by the spectacle of his punishment. If it be objected that
the offender could not help doing as he did, his nature and
circumstances being what they were at the conjuncture, the
answer is that its concern with him is as a means not as an
end, and as a means to its end, and that the preventive aim
of its punishment, so far as he is concerned, is to change the
balance of things at a similar conjuncture in the future by
adding to the right scale of the balance the weight which
the memory of the punishment may amount to — by the bad
aftertaste to spoil the appetite for crime. Though the
circumstances and the temptation seem exactly similar at
another crisis, yet he at any rate will be so far different ; for
he has had a sharp experience infixed into his nature, the
memory of which inevitably affects the incidence of the next
temptation. Freewill or no freewill, it is undeniable that
punishment works to hinder crime, and that the effect of
law is to breed conscience. How, indeed, could it be other-
wise, seeing that the case is simply one of organic moulding ?
No doubt the infusion of a sounder and more lasting social
feeling would be done best gradually by good breeding and
systematic culture from generation to generation, but when
they are wanting it may suffice to bring the sharp motive of
a fear to do wrong, by the present apprehension of a quick-
following pain, to bear in the particular instance.
The primary aim of punishment being to preserve the
weal of the society, the punishment inflicted by it on the
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 391
criminal is essentially retaliation ; being hurt, it resents the
hurt and strikes back effectively in its own defence. But
its self-conservative action is not therefore vengeance ; there
need be no deliberate desire nor angry delight to inflict
undue suffering because of the offence, albeit that its
judicial instruments of execution fail often to show the fit
serenity of spirit. To the noxious member its protective
measures must in any case be a punishment, seeing that
they deprive him of his liberty to do what pleases him, and
make him do what he does not like. Even when its justice
endeavours scrupulously to proportion punishment to the
gravity of the offence against itself, it is still ultimately sole
judge, just or unjust. It certainly does more than is neces-
sary to protect itself when it takes the criminal's life, since
it might protect itself without killing him ; but the stem
exaction of a life for a life is then justified by a belief in the
protective effects of the terrible example. Whether capital
punishment be really a more effective deterrent than per-
petual imprisonment is a question on which opinions differ
and every State has the right to decide for itself; whether,
again, if it be the most effective deterrent, it is wholly
iustifiable for that reason, may also be a matter of dispute,
seeing that the justifying reason might be extended to
sanction the torture of a criminal as a tremendous terror to
evildoers, and therefore a surer deterrent from crime. The
truth is that human lives are of different value in different
social states, and that the question of dealing with them is
one of calculated expediency. Meanwhile, as civilization
progresses the manifest tendency is for opinion to become
more tender towards the criminal, not only because humanity
grows more sensitive to the pain to itself which the suffering
of one partaking of a common nature is, but also because of
a growing perception on its part that the criminal is funda-
mentally a manufactured product for which society is mainly
responsible and which it ought to reform and reabsorb into
its sound life.
Considering well what the reformation of a nature really
392 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
means — literally its re-formation — it is no wonder that the
small success of reformative measures have hitherto been out
of all proportion to the pains they have cost, and that more
hope is entertained of the systematic adoption of preventive
measures. Not to form the criminal at all will clearly be
much better than to try to reform him when once formed.
Protective all punishment is bound to be, reformative it
seldom is or can be, preventive it ought deliberately and
persistently to be. It is strange how little serious thought
is ever given to the question whether it is wise and just to
absorb the criminal, whether wholly or partially reformed,
into the constitution of the social body, Avhich would pre-
sumably be saner and stronger without such an element of
weakness. When the industrious bee returns to the hive
maimed and spent after a long and perilous labour of honey-
getting, it is mercilessly ejected as a useless unit and the
health of the hive thus maintained. The frequent and
numerous executions and transportations of former times,
whatever their moral aspects, were certainly an effective
means of extruding the noxious element from the body
politic and keeping it in a sound condition. The more kind
a society is to the wicked by loving and assimilating instead
of hating and repelling them, the more in proportion must
its constitution needs be weakened or vitiated. Even the
reformed criminal at best preserves the weakness of moral
fibre which made him criminal and, if assimilated, adds to
the social constitution that which it would be better without.
" Let him who is without sin cast the first stone " was a fine
sublimation of morality, if it were not an Oriental ex-
travagance of expression not intended to be interpreted
literally ; but its rigorous application in practice would not
only be incompatible with the health, it would entail the
subversion, of any civil organization.
It is then an odd contradiction which reflection seems
to strike against — namely, that the increase of social tender-
ness and practice may be accompanied by a deterioration of
the social organism ; which would mean that the progress of
XII FOLLY AND CRIME 393
humanity may be checked by the keener developments of its
moral sentiments. For if morality requires socially the
doing what is good for the social body, and at the same
time the doing good individually to the weakest and worst
member of it, the tendency Avill be to kill social by moral
development. Happily optimism can cherish brighter hopes
— namely, that the great organism of humanity may, like
the bodily organism, possess a vis conservatrix naturce,
whereby in absorbing the vicious substance it cancels the
vice of it. In any case there is the consoling thought that
if it is always to be a blessed thing for the wise and good to
be reviled and persecuted, as it has been hitherto, there will
be no overgrowth of morality, since they must needs continue
to be in a minority.
Meanwhile the explosive criminal may be excused, if not
welcomed, as a proof of organic vigour, albeit badly con-
trolled and directed, which might be lost in a community of
perfect moral beings of sheep-like placidity, ant-like industry,
machine-like uniformity. And although his absorption into
a settled and complex society may be pernicious, yet in a
new and thinly peopled country, a ruder society, and a
simpler life, where there are freer outlets for turbulent force
and less exacting specializations of adaptation, his unruly
energies might find scope for outward discharge in useful
work, and so be ruled inwardly to right developments. It is
notorious that the person who has done badly in an old
and settled country has often done well in a new country,
and that communities have been largely founded on the
criminal and other turbid overflow of a complex civilization,
without smacking too grossly of their origin.
CHAPTER XIII
PAIN— LIFE— DEATH
I
PAIN
Pain a necessary condition of existence — Endurance not complaint —
Increasing susceptibility to pain with increasing complexity of
organization — Types of organic structure according to need of
killing and not being kUled — Pain a danger-signal serving self-
conservation — Not remembered as it was, only that it was — Lowest
organisms feel little or no pain, and instantly forget — Pain attends
the organic decay of old age — Although felt in, not felt by, the
part — No fixed and constant consciousness, but so many several
consciousnesses — Manifold varieties of pain — Useless and exhaust-
ing pain — The pains of parturition — Consciousness of pain and
curiosity to know — The erect posture and the bodUy conditions of
labour-pains — Fable and allegory — Unconscious wisdom or wisdom
consciously obscured — The design of pains of parturition — The
negation of the desire to live — Pain a natui'al effect of organic un-
doing — Spontaneity or attraction : sensibility and susceptibility —
Pleasure and pain as motives of action — The reconciliation of in-
dividuality with solidarity, physiological and social — The design of
pain — Avoidance of pain the prime motive of conduct — Voluntary
infliction of pain — The moral good of pain — Over-sensitiveness to
pain and over-sentimentality — Human*optimism.
Though pain is a condition of coming into the world, of
living in it, and of going out of it, yet man can never
wonder enough at the mystery of pain ; living a pain-stricken
life he is yet perplexed and perpetually troubled in mind by
the anomaly of pain. Such is the mighty conceit he has of
CHAP. XIII PAIN 395
himself as an end, and of a world divinely created and ruled
for him and his uses, that he ceases not to puzzle his wits to
find out why pain should be, to demonstrate that it serves
wise purposes, and in further course piously to persuade
himself that it is not the evil it seems, but somehow his
good in the making. Nay, he is even capable in a stoical
transport of the proud declaration or fatuous self-deception
that pain is not pain.
If instead of the tremendous postulate that the universe
was created for him he start with the modest acknowledg-
ment that he is but a transient step in an endless flux of
things, a brief phase of the becomings and unbecomings
without beginning and without end, he may perceive and
own that he being made for the whole and not the whole for
him, it is a small thing whether he wails or joys, is sad or
glad, so long as he goes on living and performs his ordained
function for his brief span. The one thing which matters
is that the pain be not too great to prevent him doing his
work, yet sharp enough to make him do that. Though it be
grievous from a self-conscious standpoint to suffer ills now
that others may enjoy good in time to come, and in any case
that the will of destiny may be accomplished, yet a stoical
temper may steadily school itself to view the vast un-
intelligible process of things from the standpoint of a
negation of self, and so be subdued to resignation. After
all is said, man has small right to complain of pain when he
recollects and reflects on the incalculable amount, the
ingenious varieties, and the excruciating qualities of pain
which his inhumanity to his fellows and to other living
creatures has wilfully devised and inflicted ; why should he,
the chief sinner, commiserate himself and alone claim the
right to protest ?
As pain is a constant accompaniment of the evolution and
dissolution of things throughout animate nature, the same
rule of life-devouring life thrilled with the same note of
agony being in force from the bottom to the top of the scale,
it would be a strange thing if man who inflicts most pain
396 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
and devours most life were exempt from it. So far from
being exempt he pays for his superiority of organization by a
greater capacity of pain ; not only in being sensible to moral
pains and imaginative apprehensions which other creatures
feel not, yet which cause worse suffering than they can ever
feel, but also to keener, more special and various bodily pains
by reason of his more special and complex nervous organiza-
tion. If he be not higher in organization because he is
capable of more pains, he certainly suffers more pains
because he is higher in organization. To say, as Sha,kspeare
says, that the poor beetle which we tread upon suffers a pang
as great as when a giant dies, is as untrue as it is un-
physiological ; it is pretty certain that the beetle does not
feel so keenly such pain as it feels, if it feel any, and quite
certain that it cannot feel the variety of pains which man
feels. Specialization and complexity of nervous structure
importing manifold intimate and recondite sympathies of
parts implies a corresponding intensification and specializa-
tion of pains, the compensations of which are more various
and keener pleasures. As self-consciousness begins with com-
plexity of nervous organization, so increasing specializations of
consciousness accompany its special and complex increases.
Nature has provided another and remarkable counterpoise
to pain in the pleasure attached to the infliction of it.
Rapture of delight in the killer goes along with ecstasy of
fright and pain in the victim. Here again, however, there is
probable qualification of the suffering in the very ecstasy of
the fright, which there is good reason to think entails more
or less insensibility; for the absorbing quasi-convulsive
strain of a nervous ecstasy is always attended by partial or
complete suspension of the dissociated nervous functions.
Not only the wellbeing of one species of animal, but its very
type of admired form, its fearful symmetry of organic
structure, is owing to the growth of parts adapted to pursue,
kill, eat and digest other creatures ; while another species
owes the characteristic features of its graceful form and
agile structure to its ever watchful care and alert efforts to
XIII PAIN 397
escape the pain and death which its natural enemy is always
seeking or lying in wait to inflict on it : the whole life of the
hunted a constant exercise of anxious caution and cunning
to frustrate the constant ferocity which is the pleasure and
whole life of the hunter. Instincts have thus been pro-
videntially infixed and organs framed in one animal, by
exquisite adaptations, to avoid the destruction which the
instincts and organs of another animal have been provi-
dentiallj^ infixed and framed to do it. The present aim of
organic nature being the maintenance and increase of life,
not care for individual life, its pervading law is that one
creature must suffer pain to spare another's pain, must die
that it may live : a signal instance of the discordant concord
of the grand cosmic harmony.
Recognizing pain as a constant agent in the natural order
of things, without which the order could not be, one may go
on to inquire what are its special uses in human life. Being
an organic effect, whatever else it be, it testifies, like all
organic effects, to survival by natural fitness to survive ; it
has survived because it had the right and might to survive.
A principal use manifestly is to help to keep the body alive
in its struggle of life ; for pain signals danger and prompts
efforts to escape from it. Were there no pain when a
person's toe is inflamed he might go on walking on it until
inflammation lapsed into suppuration and suppuration into
gangrene ; did the touch of a red-hot body not cause an
instant pain, a man might burn himself fatally before he
was aware of his danger, as the insensible general paraljiiic
sometimes does ; if hunger were not pain he might not care
to eat ; were it no pain to keep a muscle in protracted con-
traction, the limbs might get fixed in a rigid cramp ; if it
were not painful to stare at the sun at noonday, a svnft
blindness would deprive his eyes of the benefit of its beams.
Subserving as it thus does the self-conservation of the
organism, pain is a useful danger-signal, the outcry of hurt
and life-threatened organic element which has no language
but that cry.
398 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
That is the reason perhaps why pain has a short and bad
memory ; it imports disorganization, imminent or actual,
whereas conscious memory implies functioning organization
— definitely organized associations whose dissociations are
dismemberments and therefore not rememberable. Nobody
recalls a pain as he really felt it ; in fact the keener the
pain the less keenly can he revive it in memory ; he can, it
is true, recollect that he suffered it, that it was excruciating
at the time, and all the circumstances of his suffering, but
to remember it as it was in feeling would be to revive it so
vividly as actually to re-feel it — to have it over again.
Being disorganization, there is nothing with which it is
connected by organized associations, and therefore when it
is past its pang is lost to memory. In this respect pain
resembles other simple sensations of the special senses, which
are not actually remembered as such unless they be so vividly
revived as to be virtually re-felt ; only that in the case of
pain there is temporary dissolution of function, a passing
dissociation, whereas in the case of sensations there is a
natural want of associations on their low nervous plane, their
associations being organized on the higher nervous plane of
ideas. It is no unreasonable surmise then that the lowest
organisms, if they suffer pain, never remember what they
suffer, that they feel and instantly forget it, living from
sensation to sensation without sense of connection or succes-
sion ; in which respect they may be paralleled by the person
who, having a surgical operation performed on him under
chloroform, sometimes shrieks, howls, struggles and gives all
the signs of suffering terribly, but is utterly unaware, when
he comes to himself, that he cried out or felt any pain or
even that the operation has been done. In such case one of
two things may be supposed : either that the chloroform has
paralyzed the higher parts of the brain, but has not gone
deep enough entirely to suspend sensibility, the brain of the
higher creature being for the time brought functionally to
the brain-level of creatures which have no cerebral hemi-
spheres, so that he suffers but remembers not ; or that the
XIII PAIN 399
chloroform has paralyzed sensibility but not abolished con-
sciousness, so that he watches the mutilation of himself and
resists it, as in a dream, without feeling it ; in which case,
however, one might expect him sometimes to remember the
scene when he regained consciousness.
If the function of pain be self-conservative by giving
warning of menace to life, why does it not cease its function
when, the danger being natural and inevitable, and self-con-
servation no longer possible, the warning is futile ? Many
are the ways of death, nearly all of them more or less paths
of pain ; even a green old age low-ebbing calmly to its end
is accompanied by increasing aches and pains. To the
supposition that things might have been so benevolently
ordained that when the inevitable ending began the unavail-
ing pain always ended, the obvious answer is that thereby
the very function of pain would have been annulled. It
signals danger and destruction, and what greater danger and
destruction to an organism can there be than its decay and
death ? Therefore it does not cease its dull and weary
plaints then. That the organism no longer does anything
to preserve its being when warned is not the monitor's affair ;
its work is done when it has given the warning, which is
after all a warning to prepare to go decently out of being.
Notably the warning becomes less urgent, duller, more faint
as gradually increasing decay feels neither the care nor the
power to attend to its call.
It is necessary, for the sake of clear insight, to distinguish
between the pain and the physical condition of which the
pain is conscious sign. Though the condition of the affected
part is local and the pain is felt there, yet it is not felt by
the part but by the organism. It is felt in the part because
the part is vitally one with the whole, but it is to the organic
whole that the local alaim and appeal are sent — to the unity
to which the hurt unit belongs. The hurt nervous fibre —
whether an ordinary tactile or a special fibre is not yet
known certainly — conveys the message to the cerebral centre
where it is received and noted. Just as in every well-
400 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
constituted society or state due provision is made to protect
and succour the member who is in peril or suffers wrong, and
to defend itself from the anti-social member who does wrong
and is a hurt to it, and no state nor society could subsist
save on such terms, so in the physiological organism the hurt
unit must be helped to take its place in the ordered flux of
life or be quietly extruded from it when it cannot be so
helped. Pain then is a function of the organism, not of any
part or organ of it : a subtile, sharp message from the dis-
ordered part to the brain as the chief central office of inter-
communication, where it becomes con-sense or con-science and
therefore conscious.
" Presented to consciousness," " emerging into conscious-
ness," " rising above the threshold of consciousness," such
and suchlike are the expressions used habitually with respect
to consciousness. Yet they mislead much when they are
understood to mean that consciousness is a sort of special
and superior region into which mental states rise to be
illuminated. There is no such elevated region of self-sub-
sisting and constant consciousness apart from the particular
act or state of consciousness. When a shooting nerve-thrill
manifests itself on the mental side as a pang of pain, the
particular pain is not something thrust into consciousness,
it is the consciousness. The pain and the consciousness are
one and indivisible, not two separables, co-existent and so to
speak conterminous ; if there be a keener particular conscious-
ness elsewhere in the body, the pain is not felt although the
conditions of it continue in being, for consciousness cannot
go bej'Ond its immediate excitation to be in two places at
the same time. Nevertheless, though a state of pain be one
in feeling, it is not simple and uncompounded in nature.
Just as consciousness at its high removes of thought denotes
more than a simple element, a complexity of things, in fact,
so pain is not single in essence but composite ; it is the
resultant of a physiological sympathy of parts, a complex
organic effect, and varies in quality according to its consti-
tuent factors. An organ severed from its special organism,
XIII PAIN 401
or an element apart from its organ, could not feel pain even
though it continued to live, as it might do for a little while ;
a person suffers no pain when he cuts his hair or nails which,
although not quite detached from his organic life, have no
nervous communication with or part in the economy of the
whole, being no more than excreta retained by a weak vital
thread for external use or ornament ; and in like manner if
the supreme mental confederation in which all parts of the
body are represented were rent into sundry and separate
parts, a completely dissociated part or organ of it would not
be conscious at all — at any rate would not, if it regained its
associations, remember its conscious state.
The right question to put concerning pain is not the
general question why it exists, nor the futile question what
its mystery means, but the exact question, What are the
physiological conditions of the particular pain which exists ?
What is the nature of the special local disorder which it
signals ? How is the message of disorder transmitted to the
central nervous office ? Where is it delivered and what are
the reactions which it elicits ? Now as these conditions
are more or less special in every case, pain cannot rightly
be discussed as if it were always one and the same in kind ;
there are many varieties of pain, each of which needs to be
discriminated and analyzed so as to find out exactly what it
signifies. In the natural course of a disease, whether to
death or to recovery, there is sometimes a sequence of char-
acteristic pains ; so that its history might be written in the
appreciation and description of the qualities of its pains,
were these accurately interpretable. Common language,
untainted by the theory of an abstract pain-consciousness,
has always distinguished diversities of pains, speaking of
them as dull, sharp, grinding, boring, burning, throbbing
shooting, lancinating, and the like ; and common observa-
tion recognizes the different meanings of the dull, heavy pain
of oppressed vitality, the quick, keen pain of vital revolt
against dangerous hurt, the tender tingle-tickling pain of
reviving life as it regains reactive vigour. What are the
D D
402 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
diverse physical conditions of these diverse pains ? Clearly one
cannot expect to measure pain by any instrument, however
delicate, seeing that it is not a matter of degree only, were
that objectively measurable, but of kind or quality also.
Perhaps the nearest approach to a physical expression of
its qualities might be found in the notes of agony which an
expert musician can wring from his violin.
The theory of the self-conservative function of pain,
plausible as it seems, fails not to encounter diflficulties when
it is applied in particular cases. Though the pain of a
rheumatic or an inflamed joint does well when it enforces
the rest requisite to ensure healing, and then looks for all
the world like a beneficent provision for the purpose, yet if
its plaint be too closely and too long listened to the result
is permanent stiffness and incapacity. By over-attention
to a nowise serious pain a person can convert that which
might be temporary disorder into permanent disease, whereas
by distracting attention to fix it elsewhere in wholesome
exercise of mind and body, the physical conditions of the
pain are rectified and it disappears. In that case the sound
sense of the whole organism takes due note and hold of the
natural proclivity of pain to self-indulgence : like an indi-
vidual in a society, the peccant part needs and profits by the
supports and restraints of the economy. What, again, of the
beneficent function of pain in some serious morbid dangers ?
An inflamed patch of the lining membrane of the intestines
provokes violent spasms of the intestinal muscles which
aggravate the disorder and cause agonizing torture, notwith-
standing that rest from motion is the one thing then needed.
The whole feels and detests the pain acutely but cannot
restrain the ill-doing part ; the unintelligent reflex action
going on with its mad work when the implicit intelligence
of the organism can only look on impotently at the destruc-
tion which is being done. Far from being beneficent, the
pain then kills by its protracted torture, however benevolent
the import or its violent outcry. As it is no doubt right
it should kill when it does kill, it is then good to the cosmic
XIII PAIN 403
whole, bad as It may be to the individual whom it kills.
Presumably there was good reason in the nature of things
why other reflex functions were not, like breathing, put
partly under the control of will so that they might be
slackened or quickened or stopped for a time, yet it is no
unfair surmise that a measure of such subordination might
have added immensely to the comfort of human life. Con-
sider, for example, how vastly the sum of human happiness
would have been increased and the sum of human misery
lessened, nay, how different might have been the fate of
individuals and even nations, had the colon been so far under
the control of "svill as always to act promptly when urgently
bidden.
It is hard to see what good function the pain of child-
bearing serves. Nature has not left that important function
to the conscious efforts of the Avoman ; it has done with it as
it has done with all the fundamental functions of life by
putting it under the dominion of involuntary reflex action ;
silently bent on excluding any uncertainty whether mankind
would go on living and multiplying as they do, had they
to do so voluntarily with deliberate foresight and determina-
tion. Would women ever willingly make the painful
parturient efforts now made in spite of them had they to do
so with clear foreknowledge and voluntary endurance of the
attendant pains ? Good care has been taken to make the
process independent of human wills. Yet the pain is
neither necessary nor useful ; it serves no apparent end ; for
the labour of child-birth might have been done, as it is done
sometimes now, especially in savages and the lower animals,
with little or no pain. Why then is pain such a constant
condition of so natural a function ?
So strange and needlessly gratuitous an adjunct to a
natural process did it seem, that it was ascribed to a primal
curse on womankind for the sin of the first woman in eating
the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge in order to be
wise. In which story there was perchance couched an ex-
cellent substratum of truth allegorically expressed. Not
404 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
otherwise than as in other now obsolete fables — for example,
in the luminous fable of Prometheus lighting his twigs at
the sun's chariot, and thus bringing down fire from heaven
to ungrateful mortals ; and in the obscure fable of his
enchainment to a bleak Caucasian rock, where his daily
regrowing liver was daily gnawed away by a vulture : the
probable allegory of humanity chained to the world-rock
and heart-gnawed there ever more by the knowledge which
it more and more covets and adds to. Out of the curiosity
to know in the Garden of Eden came the consciousness of
suffering, the birth of consciousness being the penalty of
knowledge ; for then it was that man lost his primal inno-
cence, perceived that he was naked and was ashamed,
made his first acquaintance with pain, knew good from
evil. On other grounds it is probable that the first dawn
of consciousness in organic life was through pain — the
pain of a hurtful impression and the co-ordered endeavour
to escape from it, they together signifying the commencing
discernment of difference which, translated into terms of
understanding, is the beginning of knowledge. Moreover,
it is in certain developments of the bodily structure which
have gone along with the developments of mind in the
highest animal form that we may seek the true cause of the
pains of parturition.
To question what is the design or purpose of the pains is
to put a vain question ; the right question is. What is the
cause of them ? Whatever their use, if they have any, they
are the direct and evident consequence of the superior
bodily organization of the parturient woman, who suffers
more than any other parturient female simply because her
anatomical structure is such that labour is hard and pro-
tracted and pain therefore its accompaniment. The special
structure is the apparent penalty which the human body
pays for the erect posture which it acquired long ago, but
to which it is not yet so completely adjusted in all its parts
as to be exempt from troubles and incommodities incident
to the strain of it — such troubles as hemorrhoids, uterine
xin PAIN 405
displacements, varicose veins, as well as difficulties of par-
turition ; such sustained effort, too, as must be steadily kept
up to prevent the erect body from falling suddenly forwards to
the ground. Now, as the erect posture requires a contracted,
firmly compact, not easily yielding structure of parts to sup-
port the gravid womb, such as is not necessary in an animal
going on all fours, the changes which have been effected
gradually through the ages to give that requisite basis of
firm support have had the effect of increasing the labour and
pains of parturition to overcome the structural resistance.
If, then, it is to the superiorities of organization which his
erect posture implies, and especially to the freeing his hands
thereby for mental purposes, that man owes his mental
development, the connection between knowledge and labour
pains is evident. Because Eve was curious to know, there-
fore woman was condemned to bring forth children in pain.
There are two ways of viewing a fable sanctioned by im-
memorial tradition, either of which is consistent with the
recognition of a hidden vein of truth in it : either as
dumb undeveloped wisdom involved in fantastic and perhaps
monstrous form, to be discerned, defined, and made articulate
at a riper stage of conscious thought — myths of magic to be
made science some day; or as the essence of wise insight
which was on purpose so 'WTapped up to suit and teach the
simple understanding of the multitude — truths of knowledge
purposely mythified. If fable, then one may suppose that
when mental development was inchoate and weak, and men,
like children and savages, were incapable of abstract thought,
capable only of reasoning from the particular to the par-
ticular, a mixed feeling and perception, instinctive and un-
defined, that knowledge was the bane of happiness, prompted
them to construct a fable involving an implicit wisdom which
they could not perceive and set forth definitely. For it is
surely an error to think that there cannot be reason in a
childish fable unless the reason has been consciously infused
and can be logically expounded. As well declare that there
is no reason in the bee's hive, in the spider's web, in the
406 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
varieties of floral structure and form, in all the ordered
operations of organic nature. Reason is the conscious
irradiation, the discursive exposition, of the ratio which has
been unconsciously learnt.
Man never found out by reason that he was naked and
unashamed, any more than he invented a steam-engine
with all its embodied reason by the projected light of
predesigning consciousness ; what he did was to learn by
gradual experience and reflection thereon the good uses of
clothing and shame, thus building into mental structure,
tentatively and implicitly, the reason which he can now
set forth explicitly. It would go ill, too, with the brilliant
genius if he were obliged to see and judge by discursive
process of reason; he sees the truth intuitively without
knowdng how he sees it, and sets forth or leaves to others to
set forth openly the reasons of it afterwards ; the operations
" differing but in degree, in kind the same."
If, on the other hand, the traditional myth be not mere
fable but allegory, one may suppose that wise men — whether
of the east, west, north, or south — having discerned a truth
which it was not wise to lay open plainly, or not possible to
convey intelligently to childish understanding, designedly
wrapped it up in a form suited to the mental digestion of
the ignorant multitude. For it is no more credible that wise
men did not live before the dawn of history than that the
sun shines for the first time when the last-born person first
beholds it. That being so, it might well be that remnants
of their "vvisdom, though they are sunk in oblivion, still
linger in human traditions and fables ; not otherwise, in fact,
than as remnants of animal structure still, after countless
ages, linger in human structure, as the simian-like ancestors
survive in the toe-grasping propensities of the human baby,
as the quite primitive beliefs of the race are still extant
in the vulgar superstitions of the country-side. The inner
mysteries of knowledge Avere notoriously concealed on purpose
from the people by the priests of ancient Egj^t ; it is nomse
improbable, therefore, that Moses, who was initiated in their
XIII PAIN 407
mysteries, wrote the story of the creation and fall of man (sup-
posing him to have been the author of the Pentateuch and the
recorder of his own death) in allegory as the fittest way to
instruct and rule the Israelites. After all is said, it is no
more possible to feed babes in knowledge with the intellectual
food of wise men than to feed sucklings with the meat which
full-grown men eat and thrive on ; in one way or another,
crudely or astutely, the multitude must be gulled for its good.
Hitherto in the story of the world's great movements lofty
aims have not been carried out by altogether lofty means.
Considering the pains of child-birth from the human stand-
point of preordained ends it is hard to see what the design of
them can be. Not certainly to make men leave off walking
erect, nor again to infix such a dread of parturition as to make
women leave off having children, although that happens some-
times, may happen oftener in time to come, if parturition
become more difficult and painful, and might happen oftener
now did both sexes share alike in the painful process. To
prevent such an event and to ensure the continuance of human
life on earth, nature has implanted in both sexes an over-
mastering passion of love, which is absorbed in the present,
an ecstatic abandonment, wholly self- regardful, inhibitory
of or overswaying counsels of reflection ; it is nothing less
than a translation of the blind productive force of organic
nature into mortal lust almost equally blind, just the corre-
sponding mental evolution of the organic transport which
renders the procreant frog insensible to the mutilation done
to it during the ecstasy. Wonderful is it to see how quickly,
the pangs of labour over, the woman forgets them in the
joy of maternity, and instead of repelling, turns eagerly to
embrace, that which has cost her so much ; in the birth
of life the past anguish counts as a negligible by-effect,
to be remembered no more for joy that a man is born into
the world.
Nevertheless, considering curiously this association of
pain with the production of life, and of the most pain with
the most complex life, one may perhaps see in its outcry a
408 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
deep significance, fundamentally indeed an exclamatory pro-
test against life. An inarticulate and quite ineffective
protest, it is true, yet perhaps essentially akin to that which
has found conscious expression, religious and philosophic, in
doctrines and lives of absolute self-renunciation and of the
negation of the desire to live. Evermore in a full survey
of human life, past and present, is there evidence of two
opposite states of feeling — to wit, the strong lust to live and
propagate life, which is still general, and the negation of the
desire to live and to propagate life, which emerges here and
there occasionally in theory and practice. It is a curious
question, then, whether the conscious protest against life,
which is weak and infrequent now in comparison with the
general lust of life, may be destined to grow some day to a
stronger, more effective, and more widespread negation.
Certainly the fundamental note of all religions is a profound
conviction of the misery and vanity of life and the negation,
implicit or explicit, of the love of life as it is ; for to live it
as a sort of self-annihilation, or not as the real life, but as a
pilgrimage to future and better life elsewhere, is practically
to disown its present value. As every composition in the
ascending organic scale has its period, containing within
itself the seed and silent prophecy of its disintegration,
and one cannot think of the organism of humanity as
exempt from the universal law of organic undoing, so it
perchance is that alike in the conscious negation of the
desire to live and in the organic pain-protest of parturition
lies a prophetic intimation of the ending of mortality.
As pain signals impending and accompanies actual pro-
cesses hostile to life, pleasure imports unity, pain disunity.
The instinct of an organism, its natural strain and aim, is to
continue in unity, for unity is life ; it is its pain to suflfer
disunion, that is to disintegrate and die. Therefore to shun
pain is the fundamental motive of self-preservation. Crea-
tures so low in the scale of life as not to feel pain, still by
natural repulsion shrink from and shun the offences or hurts
to their structures which would be attended with pain in
XIII PAIN 409
higher organisms, and by natural affinity turn to the impres-
sions suited to stimulate their growth and maintain their
being. Pain then is simply an effect just as natural and
necessary in the order of things as the undoing of that
which has been originally done or the great organic undoing
which is death. Where would be the mystery of it were it
not for man's stubborn belief that he was created not to
sufifer but to enjoy, and that there must be an exceptional
reason special to him among animals why he, like them, has
to undergo the pains of living and of dying. So it comes to
pass that his colossal egoism will not take death of himself in
good part except it be not as the end of life but as a transi-
tion to a higher life.
When an organism so low in life's scale as to be insensible
to pain shuns that which hurts it, does it turn actively and
as it were spontaneously from that which is a hindrance to
its life and growth or, being hindered, does it turn mechani-
cally elsewhere to an impression which, being agreeable, it
can assimilate and embody in structure ? The shoot which
grows straight upwards towards the light, or turns obliquely
if it can get more freedom and light that way, does it thus
grow because of an active quasi-spontaneous impulse in it
to strive for the needed light, or does it so tend because,
being repelled by that Avhich hinders, it cannot help turn-
ing to that which favours its growth ? The simple truth
perhaps is that it reacts to the stimulus which excites
physio-chemical processes in it, not to that which does
not. Experiments have been cited to show that a vine-
tendril swaying to and fro in the void will bend towards
a support pui-posely fixed at a little distance, though it
has then to turn away from what seems its direct and
natural line of growth. In that case it looks as if, being
somehow sensible of the neighbourhood of the needed prop, it
elected to reach it, not otherwise perhaps than as the stamen
of the flower bends purposely towards the pistil. Why not
indeed ? As the growing shoot must needs radiate subtile
waves of energy answering to every motion of growth in it,
410 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
infrasensible yet not entirely insensitive, those of them that
meet with no response will be dissipated while those which
meet with a fit receiver will react responsively. Anyhow, it
seems to respond to a stimulus favourable to its gi'owth.
Such are the subtilties of nature's motions in the regions
of the infinitesimal that we have not the right to deny
a possible susceptibility to impressions which take effect
where human organs with all their instrumental aids
cannot perceive them ; for as special sensibility signifies
only special susceptibility to a particular order of vibra-
tions, so assuredly insensibility need not be insusceptibility.
However that be, instead of speaking of spontaneity and
election in the vine-tendril, and thinking of its motions of
growth in those terms of thought, it might be a wiser
way perhaps to search beneath human will and choice for
the cognate determining physical conditions to those of the
tendril's unconscious motions which are sensible physically,
so to speak, albeit below the level of conscious sensibility.
He need not count himself iirational w^ho when he gazes
on a distant star, and still more when he feels himself
in a sort of mysterious self-abandoned sympathy with it,
believes that it may affect him by a secret influence which
is imperceptible, intangible thus far ; for it would be no
greater mj^stery really than his vision of it, still less than the
vision of it thousands of years after it was extinct, or than
the vision of a star by one eye which another eye cannot
see, or than the disquieting of the magnetic needle by a
sunspot. To limit nature's subtilties of motion to such as
affect human consciousness and are translatable into its
terms is a supreme conceit of intellectual egotism.
Is it the seeking of pleasure or the avoidance of pain
which is the real organic motive and therefore ultimately
the conscious aim of life? When one digs down to the
fundamentals of motive it is hard to distinguish between
the avoidance of what is painful and the endeavour after
what is easing or pleasing, the one involving the other. It
is just as hard perhaps to distinguish between pleasure and
XIII PAIN 411
pain where they meet and merge, seeing that there are pains
which in their beginning and endings are ahnost pleasant,
and pleasures which in some circumstances are almost pains.
One thing is certain — that all organic life in its normal state
evinces an affinity, elective or not, for the stimulus which is
profitable for self-preservation and growth, pursuing and
embracing it, though it may be not otherwise than as one
chemical element shows an affinity for another. Withal,
this is true, not only as a general motive of human con-
duct, but true also in a measure of the inclinations or
properties of every individual mind ; for when any one hurts
himself by pursuing that which is not his true good — as it is
his privilege and habit as the most rational being consciously
to do — he does so not because he thinks evil to be good, but
because of the temporary domination of some passion or
mood in the mental confederation which strives naturally
to maintain and increase its being by selecting and feeding
on that which, being suited to nourish it, is good to it ; not-
withstanding that such egoism be to the detriment of the
whole which it has captured and leads in triumph. There-
upon comes in the use of pain whether of body or mind,
which, signalling danger to the whole, is a warning and at
the same time a motive to check and rule the culpably
egoistic and therefore unruly action of the part : there is an
appeal to the unity of the whole to regain its ease by
stopping the disruption threatened by an overgrown egoism
and self-seeking action of the part which, being its unease or
pain, may otherwise become disease.
Running parallel courses on different planes of organic
being, the physiological and the social organisms have much
the same problem to solve — namely, the just reconciliation
of individuality with solidarity in the increasing specializa-
tion which goes along with increasing complexity — of the
organ with the organism and of the individual with society.
An organ in an organism, whether organ of body or faculty
of mind, is not free any more than an individual in a society,
or a society of individuals in a state ; it performs its perfect
412 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
function only with fullest freedom, therefore, when it does so
within the physiological limitations imposed by its nature
and situation, which it can in no case ignore. Within those
circumscribed bounds it is free to fulfil its individuality to
the utmost, to make the best of itself, but it is not free to
transcend them and so do the best for itself So likewise
each individual in a society has the freedom of will to will
what he can will, but is not free to will any will ; for when
all is said it is the real man who wills the real will, not an
ideal will which is free to will the man, and every man as
well as every will has a particular organic basis.
As the avoidance of pain is a motive urging man to
higher function and structure, the theological design-finder
fails not to see and seize his opportunity. He proclaims
pain to have its benevolently preordained purpose in the
economy of nature as a spur to his development, by prompt-
ing the avoidance of those things which cause it and the
pursuit of those things which mitigate or abolish it, albeit
that by one of nature's paradoxes the higher he rises in
the organic scale the more sensitive he becomes to it. To
shun sensualities which cause pain, remote if not immediate,
to cultivate such loving-kindness and courtesy as conduce
to social amity and unity, to find out and settle the physical
conditions which best promote health and comfort, to strive
for such increase of knowledge as will more and more subdue
nature to human uses and lessen human pains, to cultivate in
affliction a patient spirit of endurance and fortitude, by which
the whole moral character is raised and strengthened ; —
could pain serve all these excellent uses were it not specially
designed by overruling Providence as a means thereto ? It
is plain that it has so wrought, and that if it had not, the
effects would not have followed. Mankind therefore owes a
psalm of thanksgiving to pain for the useful spur which it
has been in the process of humanization of nature. Only
mankind, it is true, since the lower animals receive no com-
pensation for the pains they suffer, which cannot serve now
to raise them in the organic scale, seeing that the way
XIII PAIN 413
upwards is completely blocked by the dominant ascendency
of man, who has monopolized it and deems animal pains to
fulfil their purposes when they serve his purposes.
As the work of human development is done mainly in pain,
man being brought forth in pain, learning Avisdom through
pain, eating his bread all the days of his life in labour and
pain, it would appear that pain, not pleasure, was the original
and principal motive of conduct. How indeed could he ever
know and desire pleasure until he had once enjoyed it ?
Labour he calls a duty and finds a pleasure just because,
occupying his mind and body, it distracts him from reflection
on the monotony, weariness, and miseries of life, flattering
him with the feeling that he co-operates and counts as a
factor in the world's progress ; and he is driven to invent and
pursue a variety of diversions to prevent or alleviate the
pains of inactivity and life-weariness. If the avoidance of
pain then be not the prime motive of conduct, pain is cer-
tainly the real thing which he shuns and often gets, whereas
pleasure is the ideal which he seeks, often does not get,
and not seldom disappoints him when gotten. Strange it
is to think what a course of perpetual illusionment and
disillusionment he follows as he proceeds from pain to
pleasure and out of pleasure generates pain. For the very
pleasure gained becomes in secondary development a motive
to avoid pain, seeing that, once enjoyed, it is a want or pain
to be without it, and the want then operates as a motive
to further endeavour. Desire strains to enjoy, and enjoy-
ment, causing satiety, pants for desire. Yet it is in the
multiplication of desires and of the means to gratify them
that the progress of civilization consists : to multiply pains
which are real in order to multiply pleasures which, soon
fading, are more ideal than real and by such alternations to
achieve progress. No wonder that a deep basic note of
sadness sobs throughout the process of human things. Let
the jubilant optimist exult as he may in his bounding delight
of life at its prime — and he sometimes exhibits a pitiful
spectacle of melancholy despair and futile revolt when, his
414 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
vitality at last nearly spent, he is being dragged downwards
against his will to death — sober experience fails not to
convince the reflecting mind that mortal life is on the whole
a pilgrimage of cares and fears, regrets and tears, illusions
and deceptions, labours and sorrows, vexations and vanities ;
no abiding rest for human aspirations to stay in, but at
best a warfare and discipline either to prepare and fit the
chastened mortal for a joyful immortality or to fashion a
better life of mortality in time to come on earth. For in
no case will he willingly entertain the suggestion that he
can never change much, but will ever be essentially what he
has been immemorially and still is, in spite of all the good
that pain may continue to do for him ; pain too so incalcu-
lably lavish in quantity and excruciating in variety of quality.
How terrible indeed, could we contract it within the compass
of imagination, the aggregate of pain, bodily and mental,
which one generation only of the thousands of millions of
men on earth endures !
Notwithstanding the good uses of pain, man is strenuous
in his endeavour to get rid of as much pain as possible ;
though he is sure it is for his good, he is sure it is good for
him to do away with it. In his conflict with nature he
therefore uses diligently the powers which he gains over it
by successive discoveries of its secrets for his own ease and
well-being in the world. What sense is there in suffering
pain which he can avoid, or of making for himself gratuitous
pains ? Yet many pious persons notoriously condemned,
and would gladly have prevented, the use of chloroform in
midwifery when that drug and its virtues were discovered,
because the abolition of the pains of parturition was an
impious defiance of the divine sentence passed on woman
for the primal sin of Eden. Perhaps they were not, after
all, so uncommonly foolish as they are now commonly
thought to have been ; for if nature has made pain a
necessary condition of organic development on earth, the
abolition of pain by man may be no sign of human progress.
Many pious men and women, too, have spent their lives in
XIII PAIN 415
inflicting on themselves all the sufferings which ingenuity
could devise, just to have the merit of enduring them, and
have been canonized in consequence. Monastic vows of
poverty, chastity, and servile obedience are solemn renuncia-
tions of those things which are the very motives and essence
of progressive life — to wit, property, love, liberty ; and,
whether wise or foolish, such collective renunciations, and
the approbations which they obtain, are remarkable pro-
tests against human life as it has been and is lived. Do
they really testify, as supposed, to the right means of
obtaining a better human life in a world to come ? Or do
they signify that pain and renunciation are the necessary
conditions of a perfecting human life in this world ? Or
are they, perchance, fundamental protests against the value
of any sort of human life ?
Considering what pain has done as a spur to wise action
in the process of human adjustment to surrounding men
and things, how it has helped to ingraft courage, fortitude,
patience, self-sacrifice, devotion, sympathy, charity in human
nature, its seeming cruelty being really masked kindness, it
is hard to see that its abolition could be a benefit, and that
men could be strong and thrive without it. Hitherto,
sorrows and sufferings have been the nurseries of \'irtue —
iradrjfjbara /jbaO^fiara — affliction's good teachers ; purified
minds are chastened, disciplined, and perfected by tribula-
tions, trials, and pains; the deepest and most vital truths
have been uttered by those who " breathed their words in
pain." Still, too, that must be wrung from the heart which
is to work on the heart. Prayer to be delivered from pain,
natural as it may be to mankind, is really contra-natural
unless it be qualified by the prudent prayer to ask only for
that which is foreordained.
The question might fairly be asked whether, out of
exceeding self-pity, men are not nurturing a tacit self-
persuasion that they ought not to suffer pain at all. For
the evident tendency nowadays is to a straining and
sharpening of sentiment which is ever ready to explode
416 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
instantly in passion of pity and horror at the imagination
or the spectacle of pain, and a clamorous cry for its instant
abolition : instead of choosing to suffer and be strong, as
men of old did, they had rather be weak and not suffer,
sentimental and self-pitying, not stoical and self-suppressive.
Though it has been the fate of countless myriads of mortals
through countless ages to suffer incalculable pains without
any qualm disturbing nature's serenity, yet now, for the
first time apparently, it shows a revolt against the hideous
horrors of its past course in its human horror of the in-
fliction and suffering of pain. Progress in the discovery
of means to prevent or alleviate it has bred a growing
feeling of repugnance to the sight or thought of it. Is,
then, human progress likely to find out a way to dispense
with the good work of pain as a means ? Or is it, per-
adventure, that a growing sensitiveness to pain will end by
making mankind painfully sensitive to that which ought
not to be pain ? And if so, what will the end be ? On the
whole it does not seem probable, when we consider calmly
the human outlook, basing a forecast of the future on an
induction from the past, that organic life is destined ever
to reach perfection on this planet, whatever it may be
destined to do on some nobler planet. That is an event
which may perhaps come to pass, if it has not already come
to pass, in the immensity ; for as nature brings to maturity
only a few out of the teeming myriads of seeds and germs
on earth, the rest being prodigally wasted, the universe may
well afford to waste planets in like proportion. Now if such
perfection ever has been reached in the past, it might be a
curious conjecture whether the story of Paradise was not an
obscure organic reminiscence in man of an event of the
cosmic process.
Certainly it is an odd spectacle which the world now
presents to serious contemplation. For what is it that we
behold ? Nature out of harmony with itself, protesting by
its human mouthpiece against the horrors of its way of
evolution, by painful travail evolving a moral sense which is
XIII LIFE 417
shocked by the prevalent immorality of things. How dis-
solve this apparent discord except by one of two conclusions ?
Either that man, as he attains to a more complex social
organization in the progress of his civilisation, is getting out
of tune with the fundamental natural law, and so, by grow-
ing too tender, is losing the fierce energy of organic evolu-
tion, in which case regress -will eventually take the place of
progress ; or that a quite new order of events is to supervene
and reign at last in organic evolution — at all events, in its
human sphere — when the glorious ideal shall be realized of
a life of righteousness and peace on earth in which sorrow
and suffering shall be no more : an aspiration of the race
which prophetic enthusiasm has translated into a glorious
expectation — "Behold, a king shall reign in justice and
princes shall rule in judgment. The fool shall no more be
called prince, neither shall the deceitful be called great.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie
down with the kid. They shall not hurt nor kill in all my
holy mountain."
II
LIFE
The lust of life — A drama of mixed tragedy and comedy — The love of
life despite the vanity of it — The routine of life — Self-renunciation,
religious and stoical — Christianity and stoicism — Nature's wonted
irony — Unadaptibility of the fixed structure of age — Old age and
youth — Praise of the past by old age — The pleasures of old age.
However unhappy the days of a man's life, he can always
comfort himself with the assurance that his happiest day is
yet to come — the day which ends them : in no case can he
miss the day of his death. It is the organic lust to live
which gilds in mind the misery of life and hides the happi-
ness of death; inspiring the strong illusion, while it is
strong, that happiness consists in life, it is urgent to go on
living, doing in mind consciously what it does in every living
creature unconsciously.
E E
418 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
Impartially viewed, the conditions imposed on life are not
cheerful : the long imbecility of childhood, the ignorance
and errors of youth, the labour and anxieties of manhood,
the regrets and remorses of memory, the fears and appre-
hensions of expectation, the aches and infirmities of age, the
humiliations and pains of dying, the gradual realization of
the utter vanity of life with the gradual waning of it.
Being by nature a conflict with hostile forces to maintain
and increase its being for its fixed period, while they go on
for ever, every hour hurting and the last hour killing, the
drama of life is one of mixed tragedy and comedy in its
growth and prime, a dull and protracted tragedy in its
declension.
It is wonderful how little the many wise saws concerning
the vanity of life from time immemorial have done to lessen
the desire to live. Not to be were the best, the next best
thing soon to cease to be ; the happiest day of life is the day
of leaving it ; he whom the gods love dies young ; weep not
for a person's death but for his birth ; if you hate a man
pray that he may live ; give thanks to God for the deliverance
of this our brother or sister from the miseries of this sinful
world ; what is life but a brief period of poor being between
two eternities of nothingness, a span of illusive importance
between the prattling imbecility of childhood and the
babbling dotage of senility ? — these and the like pessimistic
sayings have not hindered mortals from loving life well
enough to go on living it. The folly of reflection is to
reflect too widely and deeply, not to accept life quietly for
what it is worth and to make the best of it while it is ; the
folly of boundless desire always to expect it to be something
better than the bounded thing it is ; the folly of both to
utter outcries of lamentation concerning it. If it be no
more than a dream, it is still good sense to dream it well ;
for a dream may be pleasant or unpleasant, and it is better
to have a good than a bad dream. Though happiness be a
phantom which soon vanishes away, yet it is happiness, or
would not be so called, while it lasts. In no case was it
XIII LIFE 419
meant to last, any more than life whose mortality it shares ;
withal it would soon cease to be happiness if it did continue
at a stay. The plain rule of good sense then is to play the
game of life well while in it or to leave it off, not to grumble
and play badly. He who would excel in it must take good
care of his health so as to be in the best physical condition,
govern well his temper so as not to allow bad temper of any
sort to spoil his performance, know well the rules and
practice of the game so as to play skilfully — must in fact
have knowledge, self-mastery, health, which Spinoza declared
to be the true conditions of happiness.
The ordained course of every human life is simple and
regular: to hope, love, joy, suffer, sorrow, sicken and die.
To resent the sad side as not quite natural and proper is
singularly unreasonable ; it proceeds from the self-adoring
egoism which makes man think himself an end, everything
wrong which hurts him, and the event which ends him not
the end which it seems. Let him limit the boundlessness of
desire and he will have less cause to lament the limits of its
fulfilment ; if instead of getting up every morning in antici-
pation of some fresh joy, and going to bed every night in
expectation of a brighter to-morrow, as from cradle to grave
he fatuously does, he bethink himself that every day will be
on the whole as much like another as each getting up and
going to bed, and that a second life, could he have it, would
be in essentials a repetition of the wearisome routine of the
first, with a succession of the same passions, follies, virtues,
strifes and struggles — in fact the same theatre with the same
plays, the actors only changed — he may view and value more
justly the part in nature he is ordained to play by living.
All the less inclined too will he be to bewail the vanity of
human things in sad plaints if he reflect that both songs and
wails, easing as they are to him, count for no more at last
than the rapturous songs of hope which in spring the birds
pipe on every tree, or the subdued trills of memory which
they warble in autumn.
Theological dogma apart, is there not a more genuine self-
E E 2
420 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
renunciation, a deeper sympathy with elemental nature, a
closer feeling of unity therewith, in the abject resignation of
religion to the " power above " than in the self-conscious
frigid maxims of stoical fortitude, or in the rational demon-
strations of the pessimistic philosophers who go on living
against all reason ? To act well one's part in the world, to
make life a work of art not of analysis, that is the main con-
cern and the secret of such happiness as can be got out of it.
Schopenhauer might have practised better philosophy,
perhaps, if, instead of translating cosmic force into -s^dll, and
supposing that he had advanced matters by stretching words
out of definite meaning into equivocal vagueness, he had gone
definitely to work to translate will into cosmic life. Nor might
Marcus Aurelius have done amiss if, instead of schooling
himself to a sublime patience and fortitude of endurance, he
had not tamely endured and condoned the excesses of the
infamous Faustina.
The immense advantage which religion had over philosophy
was that it inspired hope and stimulated endeavour by
creating a glorious ideal. In the fight against Stoicism,
Christianity was bound therefore to win. Though both
doctrines frankly accept the doctrine that whatever is must
needs be right, yet the practical consequences are very
different. Stoicism fortifpng itself jDainfuUy to suffer
patiently, nay, even persuading itself that ills were no ills,
could not go along mth the dissatisfaction, unrest and revolt
which incite fierce and ardent struggles to better things,
whereas such revolt and struggle against the evil tares sown
in the world by a malign power were expressly sanctioned by
religion as motive and means to better things ; the sufferings
of this present life in the process being of small account in
comparison with the exceeding glory to be attained in a
perfect life to come. Religion, thus exploiting the strong
lust to live which Stoicism ignored, therefore triumphed
easily; for it is certain that the active motive to do must
prevail over the passive motive to endure so long as the
organic conahts fiendi works in human nature to inspire
XIII LIFE 421
ideals and incite progress. Looking back on the mighty
movements of mankind which history records, it is pretty
evident that not one of them, not even probably the slow
upward movement of unrecorded savage life through the
ages, but was effected under the sway of illusion ; the
multitude was inflamed, fascinated and energized by feeling,
not moved and governed by reason ; the illusion witnessing
to the strong throb in mind of the organic life aspiring to
fuller and more complex being. The special prophet of the
epoch was he who incarnated and expressed the obscurely
brooding and instinctively lacked ideal of the people and
the time. Another obvious advantage therefore which
Christianity had over Stoicism was that, by deepening and
widening the feeling of humanity into that of one great
brotherhood to be aspired after, it Avas linked on to the
elemental law of organic development from the simple and
general to the complex and special as it works in the
progressing organization of human society.
It is one of the many instances of nature's wonted irony
that just when an individual attains to the maturity of its
powers the body begins to decline ; for the result is that as
life consists in action and the fullest life in the fullest action
of all the faculties, mental and bodily, it never can be enjoyed
in full perfection. When the pleasures of sense and feeling
are most keen the understanding needed for their best
management is wanting, and they are abused or not wisely
used ; when the understanding to govern well their gratifica-
tions has been gained, they are growing dull and sluggish.
Nature, indeed, takes good care to provide for its human con-
tinuance by a full and free stream of unrecking enthusiasm
in youth before it forms and uses the chastening reflections
of age ; its course one of a perpetual rehabilitation after
perpetual exposure of illusions.
That life is short is an oft-reiterated complaint which men
are rather pleased to make, as implying that they would do
great things were it long. Yet it is in every one's power to
make it long or short, according as he puts much or little
422 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
activity into it ; for by the use which he makes of time he
may contract ten years into one year or stretch one year into
ten years. Therefore it might be no unjust answer to his
complaint, Cease your damnable iteration and henceforth
begin to live. Thought being life in mind, it follows that
sound and active thought is not only a wholesome invigora-
tion but also an actual augmentation of life ; wherefore to
think much and well is to live long in a short time. Those
who, spending time in wasting it, thus employ life in not
living, have no right to accuse its brevity. Moreover, calm
reflection on the sort of work which men do who continue
to live after they have done their best work — which was
done, perhaps, when they were comparatively young — may
conclude it a pity that individual life is sometimes so
long.
The time comes in old age when life is but a habit of
action in an accustomed medium and the pleasure possible
to it consists in the exercise of the fixed faculties. The
hardening and decaying mechanism can go on doing quietly
its wonted work, but it has neither plastic substance to make
new adjustments to new experiences nor pliability of structure
to make accommodations to changed conditions ; therefore
an abrupt change into new circumstances, especially if it be
a complete transplantation necessitating a change of habits,
is apt to turn out badly. So in parallel way the rigid struc-
ture of an old and complex civilized society cannot lend itself
to novel adjustments ; for which reason a new law imposed
on it, though it seem called for by circumstances to correct
patent wrongs, yet by disturbing settled habits when new
consequential adjustments can only be partially and im-
perfectly made, runs the risk of doing more harm than good.
There is no greater absurdity than to accuse a decaying
nation of dpng slowly because it will not adopt measures of
reform which it could only assimilate and profit by were it
capable of being regenerate or formed afresh ; if adopted in
the actual circumstances they would only hasten its ending.
As well ask the stiff impotence of age to perform the vigorous
XIII LIFE 423
exercises of elastic youth as require the rigid tissue of an
old national structure to adapt itself plastically to a new-
order of being.
If wisdom be not always the attribute of old age, at all
events it is assumed that they ought to go together. Taught
by experience and reflection, age can view things calmly and
reasonably, seeing them in their due proportions and foresee-
ing their consequences, whereas impetuous youth, vaunting
in its vigour and unrecking of consequences, acts impulsively
and boldly ; destitute of the after-thoughts which would
qualify it to perform prudent forethought, its boldness is apt
to be foolhardy rashness. It is indeed by virtue of this its
natural function that, as history shows, on the one hand, many
or most of the great things done in the world have been done
by young men ; and, on the other hand, that the greatest
calamities have been brought on their country by them.^ But
it is not w^holly experience which disillusions old age ; losing
by natural decline the passions w^hich give fire and force to
youth, age undergoes a steady detachment from hfe, as decay-
ing leaf from branch, and so far from being tempted by their
objects is indifferent to or repelled by them. When that
which once provoked ardent desire now excites aversion, nay,
perhaps turns lost desire to disgust, it becomes easy to look
on it calmly and clearly in the cold light of reason and to
perceive its vanity. Assuredly the old man who does not
realize the vanity of life must needs have an immense fund
of vanity. Howbeit, there could be no wisdom in youth thus
viewing it ; that which would be the folly of age is the wisdom
of youth, whose rich sap, happily for the march of human
things, bursts out in innumerable buds, though few of them
ever come to growth. Some do so thrive ; and as it is almost
certain that indurated age cannot perceive their value and
will probably despise and oppose them, there is apt to be
^ " But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given
him, and consulted with the young men that were gi-own up ^vith him,
and which stood before him." — I Kings, Ch. xii. v. 8. So all Israel,
save the tribe of Judah only, revolted from Rehoboam.
424 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
something wanting in its wisdom when applied to the enthu-
siasms of youth ; though it give good counsels of regulatioL,
it cannot impart or share the impulses of production and the
energy of execution. Life is essentially action and the very
pulse of active life illusion, so that the waning of life is
the necessary waning of illusion. The persistence of an
exceptional vital glow in the ashes of decay is nowise always
an edifying spectacle. Consider, for example, how it infatuates
the old man who falls violently in love with a young woman,
blinds him to the patent evidences of his decay, even deludes
him into the belief that warm lust may joy in the freezing
embrace of sapless December; consider, again, how tenaciously,
limpet-like, weak senility clings to a post the duties of which
it cannot properly perform, utterly unable to conceive the
notion that it now represents a weak and foolish old man.
Certainly wisdom does not always accompany old age; as
there is sometimes wisdom without grey hairs, so there are
sometimes grey hairs without wisdom.
If wisdom were a constant accompaniment of old age, how
could old age be, as it commonly is, the laudator temporis
acti ? As things have presumably gone right the way they
have gone on earth, the universe being ruled on rigorous
lines, the usual praise of the past and disparagement of the
present must for the most part have been wrong ; for the
present is the mould in which the past is fused into the
future, the past becoming the present and the present
instantly being the past. The reason of the prejudice is
obvious. Because dull and rigid life cannot feel interest in
and take vital hold of the present ; because in fact the most
real to it is not the present experience, which it can but
partially assimilate, but the experience when, full of sap, it
lived most, and when desire, inspiring hope, imbued life with
the glamour of illusion ; because it is not the life that now
is, but the life of apprehension and assimilation which was
an addition to life in structure, that constitutes the most
important part of the present life. Therefore, too, it is in old
age that recent events soon seem distant, and distant events
XIII LIFE 425
are vivid in memory ; that a day spent seems a day sub-
tracted from life, whereas in youth a day spent seems a day
added to life ; that the thought of age is, How shall I get
through the day ? whereas in manhood it is, How shall I get
done in the day Avhat I have to do ? No marvel then that
the old man likes to talk of the past, to recount and magnify
his doings in it, even though they may have been of a
questionable sort — and sometimes most triumphantly those
which were most questionable — and if perchance, happily for
himself though not always so happily for others, he retain
extraordinary physical and mental energy, to assert and
utter himself in a way which is apt to be more detrimental
than beneficial. He may admire himself and be admired by
others because of his senile vigour, but it is after all senile,
unfitting him to keep up with the stream of events which is
running past him ; for let him think what he will, he, leaf-
like, undergoes a gradual detachment whereby he cannot
deal fitly with the fresh forces of the present.
The pleasures of old age on which philosophers sometimes
descant at length are just the colourless pleasures which the
senile conditions of weakening life permit. They amount
pretty well to this — to walk slowly because you cannot walk
quickly, to think quietly of your happiness in not wishing to
do the things which you cannot do, nowise to wony because
there is nothing worth worrying about, to cultivate a serenity
of mind which detachment from the vital current makes easy,
if not inevitable : to have done with ambition, envy, hopes
and fears, toiling and moiling, and to rest quietly in a calm
contemplation of men and things. All which are no doubt
excellent things in the circumstances, only they signify life
in the process of undoing or unbeing, not life in the doing or
being; and if they have advantage over the full life of
passion, turmoil and activity, it is because their slack and
slackening motions prophetically anticipate the rest of death,
and its day is better than the day of birth. He Avho is
pleased to set them forth elaborately for human edification,
instead of modestly keeping them in silent mind, shows how
426 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
self-gloriously the vigour of vanity in life can survive the
vigour of life in mind. He is then perhaps capable, like
Cicero, of thinking, and being happy in the thought, that
his doings in life could not have been done better and that a
letter from him would suffice to immortalize its recipient.
Ill
DEATH
Death the natural ending of life — The waning of desires with the
waning of life — Religion and philosophy augment the fear of
death — The gloomy ceremonials of the scene of death — Thoughts,
feelings, and behaviour at the point of death — The preservation of
character in dying — Social dependence in dying — Deception and
self-deception of the dying person — No special illumination, but
gradual weakening of mind before death — Death a necessary con-
cern to the individual — Continuance of life against reason — Praise
of death — Death a necessary condition of life.
Mortals perpetually fear death yet perpetually tell them-
selves they have nothing to fear. By its very nature life
must revolt against that which is the negation of it ; most
of all when it is in full vigour, less when it is weak and dull,
least of all when it is so sluggish, faint and feeble as, being
scarce alive, to resent not but rather to crave its ending.
But that natural instinct hardly justifies imagination's panic-
stricken picture of death as the terrible enemy which, ever
lurking in ambush, seizes at last on the quailing mortal who
has been all his life anxiously trying to bafile it, and the
dressing of it in a panoply of horror. Death being simply
the end of life, the cessation of the infinitely subtile and
complex motions compact in the particular bodily form and
structure — its motions of aspiration, sorrow, joy, fear and
other energies — comes naturally to mind and body as that
natural event when they are spent. Life is the something
which ends, death not the something which begins. What
people cannot help doing is inveterately to think of the
XIII DEATH 427
ended life as if it were still somehow and somewhere in cold
being beyond the warm precincts of mortality, and so to pity
it and scare themselves. Picturing death as something
more than the absence of life, as children imagine darkness
to be more than the absence of light, they, like children,
fear to go into the dark. That is the chief reason of the
vulgar dread of death, as it is the triumph of the exultant
faith which can exclaim, " death, where is thy sting ? O
grave, where is thy victory ? "
Another reason of fear is the habit of the lookers on at
the agony of death to ascribe to the dpng man, whose
struggles they pitifully watch, the feelings and thoughts
which they, strong in life, have now and imagine they would
have still if they were in his situation, notwithstanding that
they would then be quite other selves with quite other
feelings. The feelings belonging to one situation they
cannot help transferring to another and quite incompatible
situation. As life wanes, the feelings and thoughts which it
inspires necessarily wane also, and end when it ends, a pro-
gressive effacement of its passions and interests steadily
taking place : first, pleasures die, then hopes and desires, and
last of all the very love of life and repugnance to death. It
is while life is strong and militant that its instinctive vigour
in mind finds and frames conscious arguments against the
prospect and fear of death ; for its being is to be, and its
instinct of feeling in mind therefore to wish to continue to
be, notwithstanding reason's foresight of the inevitable
not-being.
Religion and philosophy, being concerned to make men go
on living, have conspired to augment the fear of death by
the solemn array of fortifying counsels which they have
mustered and ostentatiously marshalled to confront and
conquer the fear of it. By frequent and solemn adjurations
to courage, and inculcations of the fortitude becoming
human dignity in face of the inevitable, they have lent the
unnatural proportions of an awful adventure to a quite
natural event which occurs every instant, and thus magnified
428 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
mightily the terror of it. Hoav can a weak mortal help
thinking formidable that which is pictured in such dire
shape of horror as to require all the stimulated bravery of
his nature to encounter it ? Besides, theology has gone on
to add supernatural to natural terror by investing death
with new and special terrors of its own, and thus augmented
immensely the awful import of the natural event.
Then, again, there are the dismal circumstances of death
and the gloomy ceremonial of sorrow : the spectacle of the
process of dying, the moans and groans, the gaspings and
distortions, the coughs and chokings, the spasms and con-
vulsions, the humiliating impotences of body and mind, all
so distressing and pitiful to behold ; the soft tread and con-
ventional hush of ministering attendants, the solemn
whisperings of weeping friends feeling or feigning a decorous
woe — all the surrounding gloom and pageantry of a tragic
scene in which the chief actor, if he be strong and self-
conscious enough to play up to it, is admired and applauded.
To add to the conscious repugnance to death are the
grjiesome thoughts of what follows it as the body goes
through the successive steps of putrefaction and destruction.
Organic life in active being has a natural rejDulsion to the
putrefactive processes of its undoing, a repulsion which in
its most conscious being translates itself into disgust and
horror. The hideous contrast between the body as it was in
its strength, beauty and activity of living form, and as it is
in process of dissolution is well calculated to produce a
shrinking hoiTor of death in the mind of the living, Avhose
natural sympathies are with living not dead matter.
The thoughts, feelings and behaviour of persons at the
point of death have been the occasions of many gross fictions
and foolish moralizings. When a person of great eminence
meets his fate without fear or faltering, calmly stoical or
piously resigned, sustained withal it may be by the belief
that he is lea\ing the miseries of time to enter on the
felicities of eternity, there is a pleased murmur of
admiration, especially if the last half-caught words he feebly
XIII DEATH 429
uttered can be interpreted into a fine sentiment of some
sort. Yet the spectacle then exposed to public gaze as
singularly noble might be seen every^ day on a humble
theatre in many a poor cottage where it is quietly attended
on as the simple and natural departure of one Avhose time is
come. From time to time again a fiery preacher, eager to
believe fables which slake desire, may be heard to set forth
in flaming horrors the terrible mental agonies of the
hardened sinner, or the impenitent infidel, as if they were
fated consequences of an ill-spent life or a wilful unbelief.
Such stories suit well with the settled principle of social
policy to make men the moral or religious citizens which it
is Avished they should be, by kindling their admiration,
flattering their vanity, and working on their fears. But is it
true that the good man always welcomes death piously and
that the bad man recoils from it ? Not in the least true.
The moral firmness or weakness shoAvn at that mortal
juncture depends on the person's character and the nature
of the disease which is killing him rather than on his piety,
or his philosophy, or on the remembrances, good or bad, of
his past life. When agonies of torturing pain or the
prostration of abject nervous exhaustion leaves no scope for
heroic moral display, the ease produced by a benevolent
injection of morphia is more blessed to comfort and support
than either the maxims of jDhilosophy or the consolations of
religion ; whereas they are ideals which appeal to imagina-
tion and may perchance help, the pain is a real something
which he can nowise doubt that he feels.
It is a common and amiable opinion that the deathbed is
a scene of sincerity and freedom from self-deception. Then
at last the dying man is supposed to put off the social mask
which he wore and to show his true self But it is a fanciful
and quite false notion. Self-love usually lingers as long as
life lasts and does its deluding work to the end. The dying
person keeps his character in dying, whatever abrupt change
thereof take place after death : if a liar by nature, he lies
with his last gasp ; if a hypocrite, dissembles to the last ; if
430 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
avaricious, clings with his last gi-asp to his possessions, " loth
to part with a penny who must soon part with the whole " ; if
vain, perhaps calls for the looking-glass ; if penurious, grudges
the expenses of his sickness ; if vindictive, nurses his ven-
geance to the last, or, like King David, bequeathes it to his
successor. The principal feature of a character, being
deepest-rooted, keeps its vitality when qualifying and less
stable features are effaced by the far-advanced decay. How
could it well be otherwise seeing that the fibre of strongest
vitality in the man must last the longest ? We are told tliat
Vespasian, like Rabelais, died in making a jest, Tiberius in
his habitual dissimulation, Septimius Severus in despatch of
business ; and we know that David charged his son Solomon
not to let Joab, the son of Zeruiah, go down to the grave in
peace, and to bring down the hoar head of Shimei, the son of
Gera, with blood to the grave, notwithstanding that he had
solemnly sworn to hold him guiltless.
It is curious to note the form which deathbed retrospect
sometimes takes in one whose working life has been a con-
sistently grasping and little scrupulous self-seeking. Is he
repentant and remorseful ? Far from it ; not only does he
not sorrow much for what he has done much amiss, but he
may naively congratulate and comfort himself with the
recollection of some good work which he can think he has
done, and of a hidden sympathy with his kind which he had,
notwithstanding the small show he made of it. As he feels
himself sinking through the foundations of his individual
being he clings to a bond of social unity which he tries now
to think was more real than he ever really felt it, and would
fain die in charity with all men ; a striking illustration of
the existence of the social nature in his nature and of his
craving to reconcile his ending self with its continuing life.^
^ He has lived in and by, and as he would faia think for, his social
organism, like the bee for its hive. Let a bee be captured and
isolated, and although supplied with ample provision and kept in a
favourable temperature, it dies soon of solitude ; it is an organ of its
society and dies when separated from it. So the man, when he dies,
XIII DEATH 431
Though every one has himself to do his dying and can get
no part of it done for him, yet his social dependence manifests
itself then, for there is hardly any one in a civilized com-
munity who feels not the need of some support, who would
choose to do it quite alone, who craves not a friendly presence
as he sinks into the void of unbeing. Such solemn ceremonies
as the administration of the last sacraments of religion to the
dying man — which, when his vital tenacity is strong, he is
apt to put off until they are forced on him or until it is too
late to administer them except as a solemn show — represent
a grand function of social attendance, absolution, and vale-
diction, and are therefore a wonderful support and solace to
him when the end is imminent. They soothe him with the
pleasing notion that he is not being quite extinguished.
" Farewell, you are absolved from all that you have done
amiss ; happy be your journey, and may you rest at last in
blissful peace " — such is the implied social valediction to its
detached unit. Belief in the efficacy of prayers for the dead
carries the consolation beyond the tomb.
When all is said, however, most deaths take place without
the dying person being aware that he is d}dng. Friends
conceal the fact from him if they suspect or know it, usually
comfort him with cheering assurances of recovery, and he
with an amazing self-deception conceals it from himself until
advancing disease has so dulled his senses that he cannot
realize it. Strange indeed it is to see how little able dying
persons, even though they may themselves have seen many
persons die, are to apprehend their real state, and how per-
sistently with all their wits about them they believe that
they are going to recover when, if it were the case of another
person, they would see at once that there was not the least
chance of recovery. An occasional though happily rare
spectacle, pitiful to behold, is presented by a dying old man
feels mainly the social separation, and is comforted by the social
support; " for that man is esteemed to die miserable," says Jeremy
Taylor, " for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear or pays a solemn
sigh."
432 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
who, having been always busy, selfish, intriguing, energetic,
never sick till now and still tenacious of life, revolts
vehemently against his ending, is obstinately incredulous
of its approach, resents as humiliating insult, while rabidly
exacting, the necessary services and attendance of his feeble-
ness. That is, however, before disease has wholly quenched
the strong and still militant vital resistance which it fatally
threatens ; even he sinks at last into the apathy of resigna-
tion or stupor.
It is an error bred of fond desire to suppose that when
death is near the mind gains an extraordinary freedom and
clearness of insight which it never had before. Being weak-
ened as the body is weakened, its functions then usually
belong to mental pathology rather than to mental physiology.
Therefore it is much at the mercy of the surrounding
influences brought to bear upon it, which it has no longer
the grasp of judgment to weigh justly or the strength of
will to resist. Two practical conclusions are thence to be
drawn: (a) that stories of deathbed illuminations, repent-
ances, conversions, and the like, so far from witnessing to
phenomena of extraordinary mental value, reveal the ordinary
infirmities of mind going through the morbid process of
dying ; (b) that wills or testamentary dispositions made
under such conditions are often dictated by the suggestions
of those about the dying person, who can then exert an
influence which, though it might be no more than due were
he strong and well, easily becomes undue influence on a
weakened mind incapable of recalling and weighing all the
proper facts and their relations.
Epicurus asked the pretty question : Why should death
concern me, since when it is I am not, and when I am it is
not ? But the answer is not far to seek. Because it invades
and threatens me while I am, and as I like to he I cannot
like the process of my unbeing or undoing. When I am so
far undone that I mind it not, then it will not concern me,
but until it is I am ; and in no case can I like the weakness,
the helplessness, the sufferings, the humiliations of the
XIII DEATH 433
process of dying. For the pity of it is that it is in some
measure while I am, and is more and more until I am not.
But that is always free choice, it may be said, seeing that
there are many ways out of life, some of them easy enough,
and one of Avhich may be taken at any moment. He who
consents, like a sentry, to stand in starless night and wait
the appointed hour of relief has no right to complain of a
situation which he voluntarily keeps. What greater folly
can there be than to live when life is and must surely to the
end be a constant pain ? to live in agony when life is only a
futile gradually lessening resistance to death ? That may
be true as a question of pure reason, but what has feeling to
do with folly ? Reason and feeling speak different languages
and cannot speak to one another intelligibly ; for as folly is a
word signifying the violation of reason it has no meaning
when addressed to feeling. The truths of feeling are dis-
cerned by feeling, and the life and joy of it are to be folly
sometimes ; therefore irrational sentiment often prevails
over rational judgment and is justified of its irrationality by
the cosmic sanction. Reason never taught man that he fell
from a perfect state of bliss long ago, nor does it teach him
that he mil ever attain to a perfect bliss in time to come ; yet
these two beliefs have been manifestly most potent motives
of his toilsome and painful struggles to recover the Paradise
which he lost on earth by fitting himself for a Paradise to
come on earth or in heaven. When any one voluntarih"
kills himself it is because he is so weary of the burden of life
that he likes not to go on living — he does that which he
likes best ; when he goes on living it is because, however
miserable he may be, he still likes to live. Though it be,
then, from a personal point of view, quite contrary to reason
to go on living in conditions of continual and hopeless pain,
it is quite as contrary to reason to judge feeling by reason's
measure.
If every one did not necessarily regard death from the
egoistic standpoint of his precious self, all people might join
together with one consent to sing its praises and laud its
F F
434 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT chap.
blessing. Thus bravely indeed has its panegyric been pro-
claimed sometimes. Hail ! all-conquering Death, just, bene-
ficent, divine ! Thou that extinguishest the exaltation of
pride, the insolence of arrogance, the greed of rapacity, the
cruelty of oppression ; annihilatest the parade of pomp, the
ostentations of luxury, ,the triumphs of wrong ; givest rest to
the weary and heavy-laden, peace to anxiety and anguish,
and blessed end to suffering. Without whose omnipotent
immortality the crimes, vices, cruelties, wrongs, and follies of
mortality would have been eternal, the strong the eternal
oppressor, and the weak the eternal victim. Though hostile
to the individual yet friend to the species, blessed be death,
seeing that life dies that life may live and grow into fuller
life, and higher death evermore be the condition of higher
life. Such-like is the chaunt of the altruistic paean befitting
the on-struggling and perfection-craving race of men; in
which, if the individual cannot join heartily, so much the
worse for him because of his present hardness of heart and
contempt of the future good of his species.
Without death the moral and intellectual progress of
mankind could no more go on than life in any particle of the
body without daily death. Neither the word life nor the
word death has any meaning apart from the other. There-
fore the words " eternal life " are a contradiction in terms ;
as unmeaning as a " liquid solid " or " a boundless boundary,"
and only not perceived to be so because no clear and distinct
ideas are resolutely formed of what life means and what
eternal means, as distinct ideas are formed of what a solid is
and what a liquid is ; they are in fact a feat of self-deception
whereby to a substantive is joined an adjective which is
the negation of its very substance, and the ligation of
opposites afterwards treated as a transcendental reality.
It would be no greater paradox to call death the last
function of life, seeing that it is the natural event which
ends it when life has fulfilled its ordained period : just the
inevitable transformation of matter and energy which takes
place when its special formal composition undergoes de-
XIII DEATH 435
composition and the elements thereof enter into other com-
positions of the ceaseless flux of things. Because " I " begin
and end, therefore the terms beginning and end can be
applied to the universe — that is the supreme absurdity of
human egoism.
F p 2
CONCLUDING CHAPTER
END AND AIM
The doctrine of final causes — Order and disorder, goodness and bad-
ness — Mental products purely relative — Sin, evil, disease and
death nowise anomalies— Every death a natural and necessary
event — The good use of revenge — Anger justifiable socially —
Ambition neither vice nor virtue — No evils from standpoint of
pure reason — Absurdity of seeking for the origin of evil — Im-
mortality, personal and impersonal.
Spinoza, whose fortune it has been to have been more
often commented on than comprehended, pointed out clearly
the errors of thought springing naturally and directly from
the notion of mankind that the world was made specially for
them, all things therein being purposely created and ordained
for their uses and ends. Thence came the invention of final
causes, the pride of reason to discover them, and the
magnification of itself for its discoveries : the final cause of
the eye to see, of the eyelid to wink, of the winds to fill
the sailor's sails and to turn the miller's mill, of the sun to
give light by day and the moon by night; nay, as must
needs follow in further logical issue, did not logic come to an
abrupt stop, of a spasm to torture, of a microbe to kill, of a
straight line to be the shortest distance between two points,
of a triangle to have the sum of its angles equal to two right
angles. As knowledge grew, it inevitably came to pass that
many final causes thus invented in the course of its growth
receded in distance, faded in form, and eventually vanished
— that the stars, for example, which once had special control
END AND AIM 437
-over human nativities are now only parts of a universe of
"vvhich man is end and aim, cro^vn and consummation.
Viewing creation in that light it was natural for him to
count good, orderly, beneficial, beautiful, that which was
pleasing and useful to him within the sense-bound and
sense-framed minute fraction of the inscrutable whole, and
to call bad, disorderly, pernicious, ugly, that which was not
to human use and liking, but disagreeable or hurtful. As
the order is not in the things but in the individual mind,
it follows that order beyond the limits of the order per-
ceivable by him, being that to which no mental adjustment
can be made, confounds apprehension, defeats recollection,
offends as disorder, yea, sometimes appals as mystery. Yet
the so-called disorder, although jarring upon and confounding
human systematizations, is quite as truly order in the whole
outside their narrow apprehension as the fractional order
discovered and utilized within it. So is it also with regard
to good, beautiful, virtuous, and their opposites; which are
terms of human relation only, just the mental language in
which by reason of their forms of mental structure men in-
terpret things ; being reactions of feeling by fit means to that
which, being pleasing, they affect and like, or, being dis-
pleasing, they dislike and reject in their interactions -svith
their surroundings. Fundamentally the thing is good or
bad according as it pleases or repugns sense and feeling.
To think and speak of any mental product, even when
raised to its highest power, as if it had value outside human
limits of thought — as being ever the final and absolute truth
of things-in-themselves — is not to think and speak in terms
of understanding. The bee would do much the same which
should deem its buzzing to be of like transcendental import,
as at heart doubtless it unconsciously yet exultantly does.
Let a creature buzz, hiss, howl, roar, sing, crawl, fly, creep,
walk, or talk, as its mode of living self-expression, it must
needs translate the world into the terms of such mode of
being, shape the things thereof accordingly, and feel or find
therein the foundations of its beliefs. That is a truth which
438 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT
every one who would interpret rightly the minds and doings
of such creatures as ants, bees, and other clever insects, \vill
do well to keep in mind, in order that, so far as possible, he
may think on them not in terms of his mode of mental self-
expression, but in the terms of their beings and doings as
they live in a quite different world of sense. The reflection
might serve also to teach him the narrow limits of the
conclusions which he has the right to draw from the data
his own senses supply.
It is because of the inevitable strong bias of judgment
owing to man's conceit of his position and value in the
universe that sin, evil, corruption, decay, disease and death
are anywise anomalies or mysteries to be W'Ondered at as
needing explanation. His towering egoism prompts him
naturally to look on disease w^hich sickens, weakens,
humiliates and ends him as a continually recurring calamity
which he would fain abolish. Yet from a wider point of
view than the anthropocentric standpoint they are seen to
be good, seeing that they are natural and necessary events
in the ordained sequence of things. Not a microbe but has
its right place on earth even when that is the suitable soil of
a man's body where it multiplies joyously ; when it kills him,
that is an evil to him whose chief concern is to live as long
as he can and to be as much alive as he can while he is
alive, but it fulfils its ordained function and works its maker's
praise by killing him. When he kills the microbe, which
perhaps implicitly feels the universe to be made for it and
everything evil which hurts it, he rightly fulfils his function
in nature, howbeit the microbe which he kills might, like
many more living things on the earth, in the sea, and in the
air feel him to be the greatest evil in the universe. The
quality and value of every creature depend on its o\\ti
nature, not on the likes or dislikes, the uses or hurts, which
another creature feels in regard to it. Mankind count
disease and death the greatest evils, because disease is
hostile and death fatal to them, yet disease and death are
of excellent use in nature, which could not continue its
END AND AIM 439
progress without them, and, being necessary and beneficient
workings of it, may well be beautiful to it. Though the
stink of putrefaction is repugnant to man as an organic
being, because it is associated with his and other organic
dissolution, it may well be a grateful odour to nature, which
rejoices to fulfil its course of evolution by his death and
decomposition.
Did ever mortal, mighty or mean, die except when it was
right he should die ? Sorrowing friends loudly lament his
untimely end, and bitterly bewail the inexpressible and
irreparable loss of a life so good, so noble, so invaluable, and
what not besides, especially when he was a person of some
eminence ; but that is only the pleasing ease of an emotional
discharge on their part, for it was certainly better for a
human race wishful to go on living and perfecting that the
man, who was nowise indispensable, should die as he did
than that there should have been a suspension of the laws of
the universe -svith the consequent instant ■wreck thereof,
which would have been the tremendous alternative. It is
obvious that mankind are all too prone to lament unwisely
what is wisely done, and that they are yet far from having
learnt the stern lesson of renunciation and resignation which
is the solemn-sounding refrain of every passing hour.
Equally obvious is it that the lower passions of human
nature are not the unqualified evils they are vulgarly
declared to be ; for they perform their useful function and
therefore fulfil their ordained end in the maintenance and
development of the social economy. A close consideration
of the workings of a particular passion might correct the
shortsighted observation which sees the evil and does not see
the good in it. In truth things might go badl}' on earth
without revenge, or anger, or ambition. When the startled
bee, instant in impulse of defence, stings the offender and,
leaving its sting in the wound, dies (animasque in vulnerc
ponunt), it spends itself in the stroke, sacrificing its life to
its retaliation. What profit is there in an act which entails
the bee's death ? None certainly to the particular bee, but,
440 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT
great profit to the race of bees, which owes its continuance
on earth to this power of deadly retaliation. Had not bees
time out of mind defended their lives and hives by stinging,
it is certain that they could not have survived as they have
done : honey and honey-makers might long since have
vanished from the earth. They have formed and kept up an
admirable social union, peaceful, industrious, stable, through
innumerable ages, because, inspired by the social principle of
atonement, they have been faithful members of one body
and members one of another. Had the bee selfishly tried
only to save its own life when the hive was attacked, like a
coward in battle, or hesitated to take instantly the place of
another slain in the battle, the society must have undergone
swift dissolution.
Were mankind to consider well the courage and self-
sacrifice of the bee for the good of its society — neither for
an instant ever at fault — when they glorify these qualities in
themselves as if they were their quasi-divine prerogatives,
they might perceive that nature did not wait for the dawn of
a moral sense in man to start and exhibit morality in
function for the first time in the animal kingdom ; and were
they to consider the admirable structure of the hive, and the
perfect social economy of its industrious inhabitants, they
might own that organic matter did not wait for its embodi-
ment in human form to learn the principles and practice of
social life. Nay, they might extract a yet larger lesson of
self-renunciation from the conduct of the bees, which notably
sacrifice the present to the future life of the species in a
way exceeding that which the human race is yet capable of.
Bacon called revenge a kind of wild justice which the law
ought to weed out, since it putteth the law out of oflice, and
moralists are wont to denounce it as sinful. Nevertheless it
has its good use in the social economy which without it
would hardly run so smooth a course. The fear of a person's
revenge works directly and effectually to protect him from
injury and thus acts indirectly, 3^et largely and widely, to
check ^vrong-doing in a community ; indeed, like many small
END AND AIM 441
vices and virtues, the humble workings of which philosophy
is too loft)^ to notice, such fear operates more powerfully and
generally as a preventive force in the conduct of life than
the exalted precepts of morality. An act of revenge is no
real benefit to the doer, sweet though it be at first, since it
rouses retaliatory passion and detrimental hostility, but it
makes for the welfare of the social body ; the private vice
becomes in a measure a public virtue ; the avenger, like
the angry bee, sacrifices his private interest to the larger
interests of the community. It is not then the whole truth
to say that revenge puts the law out of office, for it works
deejily and widely to execute a humble and effective kind of
social justice Avhich the law cannot condescend to and lofty
moral precepts hardly touch.
Moralists weary not in their righteous denunciations of
anger, but they might bring things to a sorry pass if they suc-
ceeded in abolishing it. Anger has its social justification, as it
has its physiological basis, in the roused energies of theorganism
reacting against an impression hostile to its self-preservation
and self-expansion; and its kindling in that case is self-
assertive evidence of vital vigour in mind. Its discharge
being natural and useful, the whole question of its wisdom
or folly, of its benefit or hurt to the individual and society, is
a question of degree and rule, of its wise dispersion and
guidance, of the maintenance of the just mean. A mind
insensible to anger would be nerveless and impotent, as a
society in which everybody was meek and placid would be
unprogressive, stagnant, and liable to corrupt. The right is
the trite rule of nothing in excess ; for a society in which
everybody was self-assertive, aggressive and revengeful must
needs issue in tumult and disruption, while faithful ob-
servance of the rule to turn one cheek after the other to the
smiter until he tired of smiting, could not fail to put good
men at the mercy of knaves and to strangle honesty in a
wild growth of knavery.
Ambition, again, is a passion which is neither vice nor virtue
exclusively ; it is the quality of a nature and may be either
442 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT
vice or virtue. An earnest and vigorous character infused
with the strong passion of selfhood, is bound to be self-
assertive, strenuous, ambitious, openly and rudely or secretly
and subtly, for its natural impulse is to appropriate to itself
in self-growth and to discharge accumulated energy in action :
it must find food and vent, good or bad, be it in conqueror or
criminal, saint or sinner, according to circumstances. Small
matter is it what the aim of action be — a toy, a crown, a
medal, a title, a fortune, a great score at cricket, an immortal
name among mortal men, so long as it is deemed worthy of
attainment. The ambition to be a great actor on the stage
of the theatre seems a strange vanity to one who aspires to
be a great actor on the political stage, yet one stage-player
is consumed with jealousy of another and one statesman pines
with envy of another. For a self-respecting human being to
make himself a mime in order to elicit the applause or laughter
of the gaping crowd, looks humiliating to the ambitious person
who craves and strives for admiration and applause on what
he deems a superior stage, though he knows at heart, if he
be not himself a naive fool, that the applause of the crowd is
commonly ignorant and foolish. Why should their shouts
be raised in quality by the raising of the stage on which the
performer plays ?
It is fortunate for the performer of every sort and for the
public to which he appeals that the higher motive to
instruct and benefit goes, or can be believed to go, along
with the personal ambition. Such happily is the solidarity
of the social organization that when a person of real capacity
gratifies his ambition to fulfil his nature completely, he does
well for his society. Nevertheless, he has to suffer detri-
ment in the process of arriving, because, as society is yet
constituted, it is often necessary to wade through dirt to
dignity, and it not seldom happens that those whose chief
merit is to wade cleverly through dirt arrive at great
dignity. He must suffer and do many unworthy things that
are hurtful to character, for he must reckon and deal with
the meannesses, the guiles, the intrigues, the interests of
END AND AIM 443
those with whom and against whom it is necessary to act.
The fine-textured, tender, and scrupulous nature which
cannot bargain with and manage that which revolts its
sensibilities as wrong, mean, or unclean, is not practical
enough to succeed well ; it would have the ideal to be the
real, which is madness, and things behind the scenes to look
as they do on the stage, which is absurd. If it be pain and
grief to any one to hurt another by pushing before him,
there is an end of ambition ; for, as Seneca said, ambition
looks not backwards at those whom it has beaten, it suffers
by seeing a single person before it on the track of its goal.
Withal, its very nature is still to rise, for its horizon ever
widens as it mounts. To count ambition a vice would be to
imply that man had risen to his present plane of being
mainly by means of his vices.
Obviously then, diseases and passions and other seeming
evils are not the absolute evils they appear superficially.
Whatever their final causes may be, their actual workings
have been necessary and useful factors in human progress.
Of all vain quests in which ingenuity has laboriously busied
itself, there is perhaps none more futile than the quest after
the origin and meaning of evil. If there be no evil but
that which, being for the good of the whole, mankind
wrongly call evil, there is no myster}' to unravel ; the proper
wonder is the tremendous postulate which, assuming the
universe to be created and kept going for them, concludes
that it must always be working in their interest and finds
something anomalous in that which hurts and ends them.
And that, too, in spite of the unavoidable confession which
sincere insight must frankly make, that their past records
yield no sound reason to hope for a perfect human end on
earth until organic nature in its evolutionary progress
through man has risen so much above present human nature
as completely to transform it.
It was natural for humanity urged by the organic impulse
to strive for a state of higher being, to hope that its end was
not on earth, and to expect a real end of perfection and bliss
444 LIFE IN MIND AND CONDUCT
beyond mortal life. Immortality being thus called in to
supplement the brevity, compensate the sufferings, and
perfect the development of mortality — notwithstanding the
difficulty of logically ascribing immortality to a mortality
of which it is the literal negation — failed not to be a
powerful incentive to strive evermore. If a perfect humanity
is to be achieved sometime somewhere, those who expect it
elsewhere than on earth through a miraculous individual
transformation may perhaps claim that they have as good
reason for their belief as those who, despite the record of
human doings, look for its ultimate perfection on earth by a
process of natural development.
An impersonal immortality will hardly satisfy any but
those who, learning the largest lesson of self-renunciation,
can reconcile themselves to an immortal abnegation of self
Nothing in the universe being created out of nothing, and
nothing being ever annihilated, the matter and forces which
the mortal embodies must needs continue when its unity is
dissolved and the work which he has done, good or ill, in
the humanization of nature, be eternal in its human effects.
As the spirits of those who have lived yet live in him, so he
in turn will live in the spirits of those who live after him ;
and thus he, being dead, shall yet speak in that wherein,
being alive, he did well or ill. Feeling or dimly perceiving
the eternity of things, the natural cry of individual egoism,
which has found expression in so large a part of the human
race, is to be eternal individually rather than eternally
merged, and its self-conservative instinct, despite all
doubts of reason, to trust in some deeper reason of the heart
to justify the belief of a personal immortality. Such absolute
conviction of feeling is the natural expression in conscious
mind of the instinct of organic life, while it is in being, to
continue to be.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
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