The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy

The Roman philosophers adopted the principle of a life strictly natural. Seneca, for instance,* enunciated the maxim : " Take nature as your guide, for so reason bids you and advises you ; to live happily is to live naturally." Without following through the centuries the develop- ment of the idea in detail, I may content myself with saying that resort has been made to it, wherever there was sought, outside the sanction of religion, a rational principle to guide human conduct. It recurs even among those convinced Christians who rebelled against the asceticism and hatred of human nature that became prevalent in the early cen- turies of the Christian era.

The Greek conception of a life in harmony with nature found its most complete development in the rationalism of the Renaissance, and of the centuries that followed it. Hutcheson,f a Scotch philosopher of the eighteenth cen- tury, insisted that right was with the thinkers of the naturalistic school, and that the realisation of their ideal was to be considered as the highest virtue. He thus placed himself directly against the Scotch clergy who asserted the greatest contempt for human nature. Buckle J proclaimed that it was a high honour for Hutcheson to have been the first Scotchman to raise his voice publicly against the degrading views of his time.

The French philosophers of the eighteenth century, who sought to replace the religious foundations of conduct by rational principles, again had recourse to human nature. Not long before the French Revolution there appeared a treatise in three volumes, written by Baron d'Holbach, and entitled, " Universal Morality, or the Duties of Man based on Nature."* Frankly a materialist and atheist, that writer laid it down as an axiom that "to be universal, the moral law must be founded on the essential nature of man, that is to say, on the properties and qualities found constantly in the human being, and that distinguish him from other animals." To be well assured, " morality presumes a science of human nature." f

The principle of ancient philosophy reappeared in the works of rationalists of the nineteenth century. Wilhelm von Humboldt declared that " the ultimate ideal of man, the ideal prescribed for him by the irrefutable and eternal laws of reason, consisted in a development as harmonious as possible of all his qualities in their entirety." The modern historian, Lecky,* defines the aim of life as the full development of all that exists in the proportions deter- mined by nature.

Philosophers and historians are not alone in the adoption of Greek rationalism. Many naturalists, and among these some very distinguished authors, have spoken in the same sense. It is easy to see the Greek principle in such phrases as those of Darwin § when lie wrote : " The term general good may be defined as the means by which the greatest possible number of individuals can be reared in full vigour and health, with all their faculties perfect, under the con- ditions to which they are exposed."

Georges Seidlitz, || an advocate of the great English naturalist, got still nearer to the conception of the ancients. J " History of European Morals," Third Edition, London, 1877. § " The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex," First Edition, vol. I., p. 98. According to him, the moral and rational life consisted in " the accomplishment of all the functions of the body, in due but full proportion." Herbert Spencer,* in analysing the aim of existence, came to the conclusion that morality should be adjusted so as to make life as full and complete as possible. As a criterion of physical perfection, the English philosopher would accept only the complete devotion of all the organs to the accomplishment of all their functions, while his criterion of moral perfection was contribution to the general good. These views are plainly, if not exactly, expressions of the Greek ideal.

While, then, rational philosophers in all the ages have sought the foundation of morality in human nature itself, and have held human nature to be good, or even perfect, many reli- gious doctrines have displayed a very different view. Human nature was regarded as being composed of two hostile elements, a body and a soul. The soul alone was to be honoured, while the body was regarded as the vile source of evils. Such a view led to the flagellations and torturings of the body which form so strange and so wide-spread a phenomenon. The Hindu fakirs who swing themselves on hooks, the dervishes and Mussulman Assouans who beat in their skulls with clubs, the Russian Skoptsy who emascu- late themselves, and many other instances make it plain that natural perfection is not taken as the basis for conduct.

Buddha f in the clearest way showed his belief that human nature was base. Coming out from the apart- ments of the women, there came to him a " vivid idea of the impurity of the body, a feeling of repulsion from it, t The " Lalita Vistara," translated from Sanscrit into French by Foucaux • " Annales du Musee Guimet," vol, VI. p. 183. 1884. and oi blame of it ; regarding his own body and seeing its wretchedness, he, began to despise it, and to formulate conceptions of impurity and purity ; from the sole of the feet to the crown of the head, to the limit of the brain, he saw that the body was born in impurity, came from impurity, and always let itself be drawn to impurity" These reflections led him to the conclusion : " What wise man, having re- garded his own body, will not see in it an enemy ? "

Towards the end of the old world, the Greek theory of human nature yielded to a very different conception. The opposition between the opinions of the Stoics on morality, and their admiration of human nature, led Seneca, one of the last Roman Stoics and a celebrated contemporary of Jesus Christ, to break completely away from the ancient doctrine. Convinced of the moral weakness and imper- fection of man. and of the persisting power of evil, Seneca declared that human nature contained a vicious and essen- tially evil element. This element was seated in the body, which he regarded as so essentially vile that it is to be despised. Our body was no more than the dwelling of the soul, its temporary home, a place in which it cannot be at rest. The body was a burden which the soul would be rid of, a prison-house from which it would escape. Accord- ing to Seneca * the soul must wrestle with the body, for the body brings to it nothing but suffering, while the soul is essentially pure and spotless, and as much above the body as divinity is above matter.

A dualism still more pronounced was characteristic of the early Christian view of human nature, and led to the depreciation of the body as compared with the soul. In the fourth and fifth centuries of our era such a view was so dominant that a struggle against the material side of * Zeller, loc. cit. p. 633, our nature became a rule of life. The most absolute asceti- cism spread throughout the Christian world.* A struggle against hunger, thirst, and desire for sleep, rejection of all pleasures that come from impressions of sight, of hearing, or of the palate, and, above all, abstention from sexual intercourse, became, in the opinion of believers, the true aim of human life. The conviction that human nature was essentially corrupt led to a declaration of war against it ; all the pleasures were forbidden, even the most innocent of them being thought vicious. What could be more in contrast with the calm and joyous philosophy of the Greeks, for whom there did not exist the idea of a struggle against the supposed corruption and imperfection of man ? The dualistic theory made such demands on its proselytes that these, absorbed in the salvation of their souls, sank from the physical point of view to the level of wild beasts. Hermits resorted to the lairs of animals, abandoned their clothing and went about naked with shaggy and disordered hair. In Mesopotamia and a part of Syria there arose a sect of eaters of grass ; these were people who had no dwellings and who ate neither bread nor vegetables, but wandered on the hills and fed on the herbage. Cleanliness of the body was regarded as an indication of corruptness of the soul, and among the most highly venerated of the saints were those who took no care of the body. Athanasius relates with approval that when St. Antony, the father of monks, became old he never washed his feet.f

Such doctrines soon brought about a most serious per- version of the innate instincts of the human race. The senses of family and of society became so weakened that fanatical Christians were more than indifferent to their kinsmen and countrymen. One saint was venerated because he was hard and cruel only to his relatives. It is told of the Abbot Siseuss that on a believer asking to be received into the convent, he inquired if the suppliant had any one akin to him. " I have only a son," said the Christian. " Well, then," said the abbot, " take your son and cast him into the river, for thus only may you become a monk." The father set about to do the bidding of the abbot, and it was only at the last moment that the order was recalled. For admission into a Christian community it was necessary to renounce one's country.*

Such ideas have struck a deep and enduring root. In the opinion of the ministers of the Scotch Church of the seventeenth century, according to Buckle,f there was nothing so surprising as that the earth could contain itself in the presence of that horrid spectacle, man, and that it did not gape, as in former days, to swallow him in the midst of his wickedness. For certainly, in the created universe, there could be nothing so monstrous and so horrible as man.

It was to be expected that when such conceptions prevailed, celibacy and repudiation of the reproductive instinct should have been made obligatory on the clergy. The words, reported by St. Matthew (xix. n, 12), that " there be eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake " were interpreted by some as implying a voluntary renunciation of marriage, while others insisted on the literal meaning and in consequence mutilated themselves more or less completely. The breasts of women were removed to eradicate the maternal instincts. But it is only the sect of Skoptsy, by

no means a small body in Russia, that applies the gospel command in this stringent fashion. The wish announced by St. Paul (Corinthians vii. 7), " I say therefore to the un- married and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I ; but if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn," soon became a command, and since the fourth century the Catholic Church has advo- cated celibacy of the clergy, although it was not enforced until the eleventh century (under Gregory VII.). A low view of human nature has survived in the Catholic Church even to our own times. Pope Leo XIII., in his " Ency- clical on Freemasons," proclaimed it.* " Human nature," he said, '' was contaminated by the Fall, and as it is there- fore much more prone to vice than to virtue, in order to attain virtue it is absolutely necessary to restrain the wild impulses of the soul, and to control the appetites by reason." Art has reflected the Christian conception of human nature. Sculpture, which played so great a part in the ancient world, and which was intimately associated with Greek ideals, began to decline rapidly in the Christian era. It lasted longer in the Roman Empire of the East, but in Italy it was almost completely forgotten by the eighth century. Painting survived, but not without undergoing an extraordinary degeneration. All the Italian works of art of the Carlovingian period, displayed the utmost indif- ference to natural form, and a loss of the sense of harmony and beauty. Later on, Italian art fell lower still. " No one dreamed any longer of studying nature or of observing the human body. An epoch in which the interference of supernatural forces was generally accepted, and in which

the conception of the universe was founded on a contrast between the natural and the supernatural, could not admit in its art the rule of natural law or a natural order of events." * The intimate connection between the depreciation oi human nature due to Christian doctrine and the inferiority of the art of the middle ages cannot be denied. Taine f writes of the period as follows : " If one considers the stained-glass windows or the images in the cathedrals, or the rude paintings, it appears as if the human race had become degenerate and its blood had been impoverished ; pale saints, distorted martyrs, virgins with flat chests, feet too long and bony hands, hermits withered and unsub- stantial, Christs that look like crushed and bleeding earth- worms, processions of figures that are wan, and stiffened, and sad, upon whom are stamped all the deformities of misery and all the shrinking timidity of the oppressed."

The art of the middle ages fell lower and lower until the Renaissance, with its return to the Greek ideal, brought new vigour. The great masters of the Renaissance were in addition scientific men who had studied mathematics and who employed the technique of mensuration ; such were Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel Angelo, and others. The return to the Greek ideals and to nature brought with it the taste for beauty. When the ancient spirit was born again, its influence reached science and even religion, and the Reformation was a defence of human nature. The Lutheran doctrines resumed the principle of a " development as complete as

possible, of all the natural powers " of man, and saw in that ideal a guide for humanity. Compulsory celibacy was abolished, and free play was given to all the tendencies in conformity with the laws of nature.* Besides those whose religion led them to despise the human body, there have been many savage races and tribes who have practised mutilations of the body. It would be a long list were I to set out all the modes in which the human body has been disfigured. Treatises on Ethno- graphy and the volumes of travellers contain a multitude of details of this sort. The hair, the teeth and the lips have been subjected to treatment with the object of making them as unlike the natural condition as is possible. Many of the lower races discolour their teeth, or remove some of them, or file them to points. Others insert in the lips pieces of wood, of stone, or of bone. A whole chapter might be occupied with an account of the disfiguring devices of tattooers. The skull, the breasts, and the feet, have all been subjected to deforming treatment.

Although there is not enough evidence to set down these practices to the existence of definite and self-conscious religious or philosophic doctrine, it is at least certain that the people among whom they occur are far from revering human nature in the fashion of the Greeks, but rather attempt to distort it in accordance with their own taste. Discontent with the natural conditions of existence is, as we have seen, so widespread that there is good reason for an inquiry as to the existence of some general principle underlying this diversity of opinion regarding human nature. I have already shown that this question of human nature has for long interested mankind, and has shared

largely in the formation of ideas of the good and the beau- tiful. It is not too soon to submit the problem to rational investigation, using those rigid methods of science which have been learned in our epoch. I shall try to give an exposition of human nature in its strength and in its weak- ness. But before passing to man, I shall survey the lower forms of life, hoping to fix some landmarks that will be useful in the study of the larger problem.

The organised world before the appearance of man on the earth — Absence of a law of universal progress — Fertilisation of vanilla — The part played by insects in the fertilisation of orchids — Mechanism by which insects carry the pollen of orchids — Habits of fossorial wasps — Harmonies in nature — Useless organs — Rudiments of the pollinia of orchids — Disharmonies in nature — Unadapted insects — Aberration of instincts — Perversion of sexual instinct — Attraction of insects by light — Luminous insects — Law of natural selec- tion— Happiness and unhappiness in the organised world

LONG before man appeared on the earth animals and plants were distributed over it. Some of these were endowed with but vague senses, while others had well-developed instincts, and some even a certain degree of intelligence which they applied for their self-preservation and for the propagation of their own kind. Many species, well adapted for the resistance of external influences, have survived from very early times to the present day. In the Carboniferous period birds and mammals did not yet exist, and the thick forests, with undergrowths of gigantic ferns, were inhabited by large numbers of arti- culated animals, amongst which were scorpions and insects. The scorpions of that time resemble in every way those that actually live at the present day in tropical countries ; and amongst the insects of that early epoch were some very

like the cockroaches of to-day. Certain tree-like ferns of the present time are also very similar to those of the coal period. Amongst the animals the bodies of which are pro- tected by a shell, such as foraminifera and mollusca, certain species have survived even from an earlier time than the coal period. In cont ast with this extraordinary survival, there are instances of the complete disappearance of numbers of spBcies of animals and plants. In early times, during the Tertiary epoch, the virgin forests of Europe were inhabited by a large number of monkeys, of which fossil remains are now found, especially in Greece. These formerly existed even in Europe, and some anthropoid apes (Dryopithecus) have left traces in the tertiary deposits of France.* These animals, notwithstanding that their organisation was supe- rior to that of scorpions and cockroaches, have not been able to adapt themselves to the altered conditions of modern Europe. A similar fate has come upcn some of the higher mammals, such as the mammoth and the mastodon.

These facts do not bear testimony to the prevalent idea that there exists in nature a law of universal progress tending to the production of organisms more and more perfect from the point of view of complexity of structure. It is incon- testable that forms higher in the scale of life have developed only after the appearance of lower forms. But it does not follow that development always takes a progressive march. Man is one of the later species that have appeared upon the earth, but there are others of still more recent date. It is very probable that certain species of lice have appeared subsequent to man, particularly the clothes-louse (Pedicidus vcstimenli). Amongst the true parasites which live only in the human body are some that have acquired their * Gaudry, " Mam mi feres tertiaires," p. 235, 1878.

specific characters after the appearance of man. Snch are certain tape-worms and microbes, such as a species of gono- coccus. It is therefore amongst parasites and not to man that we must look for the latest products of creation. In nature, then, there is no blind tendency towards pro- gress. Organisms almost innumerable are born every day with variable characters. Those amongst them which are adapted to existing circumstances survive and produce off- spring like themselves, but many do not reach maturity, and, living only for a short time, die without leaving issue.

To give the reader a better idea of adaptations and of their importance to living creatures, it will, perhaps, be as well to devote some space to an account of examples of them. Amongst organisms that attract our attention by their pleasing aspect, there are not many that can rival flowering plants. Every one admires the great beauty of the blossom of orchids. There can be no doubt that these flowers have not been developed to satisfy the aesthetic tastes of man. for the simple reason that orchids existed for a long time before man's appearance.

Among orchids there is one which, for more than half a century, has been cultivated by man in many tropical countries. This is the Vanilla, the fruit of which produces one of the sweetest of spices. In former days the pods of only the wild vanilla, which is an undergrowth of the forests of Mexico and South America, were gathered. But the employment of vanilla to flavour chocolate has rendered its artificial culture lucrative ; consequently the plant has been transported to several warm countries where it could be acclimatised. It has flourished and borne numerous blossoms, but it has never produced fruit from which alone the aroma is obtained. As the question of the sterility of the vanilla was of great

practical interest to the cultivator, the matter was inves- tigated, and it was found that the flower remained sterile because the female and male parts could not come in contact. The pistils and stamens of the flower are well developed, but between these sexual organs is a membrane which prevents fertilisation. After this discovery was made, the idea occurred that the pollen of the vanilla flower might be transferred artificially to the stigma of the pistil so as to bring about " artificial " fertilisation. A young black slave, Edmond Albius, a native of Reunion, discovered in 1841 a practical method by which the male and female elements of the vanilla could be put in contact ; and from this discovery there came a great extension of the cultivation of the orchid in many countries. At a certain period a small bamboo point or the tooth of a comb is introduced into the vanilla flower, and in this way, in a short time, a quantity of flowers may be fertilised and so made capable of bearing mature pods.*

In the original home of the vanilla the intervention of man is unnecessary. In Guiana and Mexico fertilisation of the flower is the work of small bees (of the genus Meli- pona). They frequent the vanilla flowers to extract nectar, the material of their honey. Small humming-birds also hover over the vanilla blossoms, and by introducing their bills into the sexual organs of the flowers bring about con- tact of the male and female elements. Sterility of the vanilla in the countries to which it has been introduced, before the employment of artificial fecun- dation, is easily explained by the fact that in these countries there are no insects nor humming-birds capable of trans- porting the pollen.

But it is not only the vanilla that requires the co-opera- * Delteil, " La Vanille, ' Paris, 1897. tion of living beings to produce its fruits. It is the case with many other orchids. In the flowers of these the pollen is massed together and cannot be transported by the air. It needs the aid of insects, as had already been pointed out by Sprengell in the eighteenth century, and above all by Darwin, whose splendid investigations are the basis of the following passages.*

Insects, belonging to different groups, such as bees, wasps, flies, certain beetles, and many butterflies and moths, visit orchids to sip the nectar produced by the plants and stored in definite parts of the flowers. In order that their proboscis may reach the stores of sweet juice, the insects inevitably touch first the upper parts of the flowers, where the anthers are present. The pollen grains are clustered in masses, known as pollinia, and these adhere to the body of the visiting insect by means of an adhesive fluid which is secreted by an organ of the flower known as the rostellum. In this way the pollinia adhere firmly, it may be to the proboscis of butterflies, or to the head or any other part of the body of insects. They can leave the flower and fly away without losing the adhering pollinia, and in this manner they serve as the agents for sexual contact and for fertilisation of the orchids. Meniere relates that a person who kept bees near the garden of the Faculte de Toulouse complained that they returned from the garden with their heads covered with tiny yellow bodies which he was unable to clean off from them. It was easy to recog- nise in these bodies the pollinia of orchids very firmly attached to the bees' heads.f