The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy

The prevention and treatment of disease, which for long was in the hands of religious authorities, is now passing in'.o the care of those who employ the methods of scientific medicine. It is now only in the case of certain nervous maladies, which can be treated by suggestion, that religion has any important part to play. I have not thought it necessary to expound at length the work of science in the struggle against disease, because the evidence on this point is extremely clear and precise. Every one must accept it, and even the passionate enemies of science have to bow before the fact.

However, the problem has been changed. Science they now admit, is capable, no doubt, of assuaging humanity in its sufferings from this or the other disease. But there is another question. Disease is only an episode in human life, and the great problems remain unsolved by science. It is not enough to cure a man of diphtheria or intermittent fever ; it is necessary to explain what the destiny of man is, and why he must grow old and die at a time when his desire to live is strongest. Here, plainly, all science must fail, and here must begin the beneficent work of religion and philosophy. But as science is constantly casting doubt * " Deutsche medecin. Wochenschrift," October 30, 1902, p. 798'

on the dogmas of religion, and criticising adversely the systems of philosophy, it is plain, that so far from being of service, science is actually harmful to mankind. The campaign against science was opened long ago. In the eighteenth century Rousseau* opened it with brilliancy and zest worthy of his reputation. He defended his theme with vigour and eloquence and the following quotations may serve as an example, " Know O people," he wrote, " that nature has desired to preserve you from science as a mother tries to snatch a dangerous weapon from the hands of her child ; that the secrets which she has hidden from you are evils from which she would preserve you, and that one of her greatest gifts is the difficulty with which knowledge is acquired. Human beings are perverse, but they would have been worse had they had the misfortune to be born learned men.f Our sciences are futile in so far as they fail to attain their objects, but they are worse than futile in the results that they bring about. Born of idle- ness, they cherish their mother — Tell me, illustrious philo- sophers, you from whom we know why matter attracts matter, the relations of the orbits traced by revolving planets, the mathematical properties of curves, what stars may be inhabited, what insects exhibit curious modes of reproduction ; tell me, I say, you from whom we have gained such marvellous information, if you had never learned of these things, should we have been less numerous, less well governed, less flourishing, or worse disposed ? " $

Such words were capable of impressing men because of their eloquence and sincerity, but they could not arrest the continued and triumphant advance of science, which indeed, precisely at the end of the eighteenth century, began its modern and lasting progress. For it was then that Laplace described the system of the heavens and that Lavoisier laid the foundation of modern chemistry and of our knowledge of the indestructibility of matter. In the nineteenth century, science has made a revolution in life by its application of steam and by its other triumphs. None the less it has not satisfied many distinguished persons. And to-day we find a writer of genius, in the manner of Rousseau, raising his voice against the science of the nine- teenth century.

Tolstoi, in an essay of which the title is, " On the Aim of Science and Art," has attempted to show the incompetence of science with regard to the great problems that occupy humanity. The task set himself by the Russian writer was much harder than that of Rousseau, for with the passing of a century science has become much more powerful. Tolstoi is convinced that theoretical investigations into the origin of life, the intimate structure of living matter and so forth, are of no importance to human beings, and serve no other purpose than to flatter the pretensions of the learned. " All that we call culture," he affirmed, " our sciences, our arts, improvements in the amenity of life, are no other than attempts to deceive the moral cravings of mankind ; all that we call hygiene and medicine are no other than attempts to deceive the physical and natural cravings of mankind."*

The whole progress of science "up to the present time, has not only not improved the lot of the majority of man- kind, that is to say of the labourers, but has made it worse, "f Tolstoi thinks that the epithet " true science " could be given only to " knowledge of the right aim and true * Loc* cit, p. 437. t Loc. cit. p. 397. happiness of each individual and of mankind as a whole. Such a science would serve as a guiding thread in determining the proper sphere of all knowledge " ; " without knowledge of the proper aim of life and of the real good of humanity, all other knowledge and every art become merely amuse- ments idle or even harmful."*

The chief grievance of the great Russian writer against knowledge, culture, and progress can be resolved into the powerlessness of these to explain the most difficult problems of humanity, that is to say the real aim of human life, and what really constitutes true happiness. In this connection, Tolstoi gives expression to a view which is shared by many thinkers. Some years later, Brunetiere,f a well-known French writer and public man, under the influence of a recent journey to Rome and visit to the Pope, made public a similar opinion, and proclaimed aloud the fallibility of science.

Brunetiere made his criticism as follows : " For the last two or three centuries, science has promised to change the face of the earth, to dispel every mystery ; she has not done so. She is powerless to resolve the sole problems that are essential, that concern the origin of man, the rules for his conduct, and his future destiny. We know now that natural science can teach us none of these matters. Thus, in the battle between science and religion, science has been defeated, because she has had to admit her powerlessness precisely where religion is most strong. For religion gives the solutions that science has failed to supply. Religion teaches us what we can learn neither from anatomy nor from physiology, that is to say, what we are, whither we are

going, and how we ought to act. Religion and science supplement each other ; and, as science can do nothing for morality, it becomes the duty of religion to take her place." It has been replied to Brunetiere, that his recriminations are unfounded, first, because science has never undertaken to solve the great problems of the aim of life and the proper basis of morality ; next, because it is probable that these problems will never be solved by the human understanding. Charles Richet, a well-known French physiologist, made a vain effort to find any written evidence that science had promised to solve the great problems which have absorbed the attention of Tolstoi and Brunetiere as well as of quite a large section of humanity. " In what standard works has science made the astonishing promises that M. Brune- tiere recalls with so much bitterness ? " asked Richet.* " I have now before me," he proceeded, " the Manuel du baccalaureat es sciences (Guide to a Degree in Science). It is a summary of contemporary scientific ideas. I have looked through it in vain for promises — it contains no promises, "f

The promises referred to must be looked for in scientific treatises that deal in generalisations. It is not to be dis- puted that, since the renaissance in Europe of the rational and sceptical spirit, that is to say, in the last two or three centuries, the view has been proclaimed that all human life may be regulated by natural laws without the interposition of dogmas, either metaphysical or religious. Attempts of this kind have been numerous. Biichner, in his treatise on " Force and Matter," in which he tried to give a general conception of the universe based on the scientific knowledge of the nineteenth century, made very plain statements on

this point. " We must seek the foundation of morality," said the German populariser, " elsewhere than in the time- worn and fantastic belief in the supernatural. Science must replace religion ; belief in the real existence of a natural and immutable order in things must displace belief in spirits and ghosts ; natural moral law must take the place of artificial or dogmatic morality."* Biichner even tried to indicate what natural morality is. According to him it is " the law of mutual consideration of the equal rights of each person, both from the general and the individual point of view, so as to assure the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Everything that damages or destroys the common good is 'evil ; ' everything that favours it is ' good.' "

The other question, as to whither we are going, finds an answer in the materialistic and scientific breviary of Biichner. He disputes the idea of immortality, which has been sup- ported by nearly all the religions, and comes to the con- clusion that "there is nothing appalling to a man, "imbued with the principles of philosophy, in the conception of the annihilation of the individual life." "Annihilation is perfect rest ; it is freedom from all pain and escape from the sen- sations that torture the body and the mind — as was ex- plained so clearly in the great religion of Buddha ; it is not to be feared, but rather to be coveted when life has reached its normal term and when old age has come with its inevitable assemblage of infirmities."

I do not wish to suggest that the views I have just quoted are peculiar to Biichner. That writer has served to a large extent as the mouthpiece of ideas current among the materialistic and positivist men of science of his time. In Haeckel's book, " The Riddle of the Universe," which * Loc. cit. p. 511. appeared nearly half a century after the first edition of " Force and Matter," the same ideas are to be found. He also has found answers to the questions that absorb man- kind. In his opinion also, as I have shown in chap. v. the problem of natural morality resolves itself into the social instincts of man, and has nothing to do with religious dogma. As for the destiny of man, he concludes as follows: "The best end we can desire after a courageous life, spent in doing gcod according to our light, is the eternal peace of the grave."*

There is a very close resemblance between the views of the two great popularisers of the nineteenth century. Just as Biichner, to show the stupidity of the idea of eternal life, repeated the legend of the " Wandering Jew," so Haeckel, with the same object, related the legend of the unhappy :< Ahasuerus " who sought death vainly, finding his eternal life intolerable. " However gloriously we may depict this eternal life in paradise, in the end it would be a fearful burden to the best of men."

While there is no doubt but that such ideas are shared by many men who rely on scientific arguments, there are others to whom the problem presents itself differently. The German physiologist, Du Bois Reymond, after reflect- ing on the general problems of knowledge and the universe, proclaimed an " Ignorabimus " as a warning that a whole series of problems of the highest importance to humanity were outside the range of human knowledge and incapable of solution. These problems were precisely the seven "riddles of the universe" that Haeckel claimed to have solved in his book.

Many learned men think that the great problems, those, according to Tolstoi, that constitute the only true science, * Loc. cit. p. 212. can never be solved. " Every day there comes a new conquest," said Richet,* " but we are no nearer solution of the ultimate enigma, the destiny of human life, an enigma probably never to be solved." Philosophers have taken the same view. " It cannot be from science," said Guyau, " that personality is to require the proofs of its own dura- bility.''!

The answers given by science as it exists to-day, have failed to console the spirits that have applied to her. When Richet, in the discussion on the " bankruptcy of science " recalled the discovery of treatment of diphtheria by specific serums as an instance of the value of scientific research, Brunetiere replied, " Serum therapy cannot prevent us from dying, nor tell us why we must die." The problem of death always recurs. What is the use of saving the life of a child smitten by diphtheria only that it may grow up, and by learning the inevitability of death become filled with terror ?

If science be really powerless before the gravest problems that torture mankind, if she has to excuse herself by admit- ting her incompetence, if she can do no better than to extol the silent annihilation of the grave, it is not surprising that many minds and these not the least capable, turn from her. The desire to find some consolation in the miseries of a purposeless existence throws them into the arms of religion or metaphysics. Here lies the explanation of the actual return in these days to faith. People plunge into mysticism hoping to find there something more comforting than the annihilation offered by science.

In all ranks of modern society there are signs of this craving for the supernatural. It is therefore extremely interesting to follow the intimate steps of such an * Loc. cit. p. 35. -j- " Irreligion," p. 460, abandonment of science and return to faith. The " Confessions " of Tolstoi gave one of the best examples of the metamorphosis. Having reached the conclusion that life is meaningless because it cannot be harmonised with the fear of death and the prospect of absolute annihilation, Tolstoi (see chap, vi.) asked if it were not possible to solve the great problem of human existence by means of the facts of science. " I searched in all the sciences," he said. " and not only found nothing myself, but became convinced that all who sought would find nothing. Not only would they find nothing, but they would see clearly precisely what had driven me to despair, the fact that the absurdity of life is the sole indisputable bit of knowledge open to man." " For a long time, observing the grave and solemn tones of the exact sciences, which indeed, hardly touched the problem of life, it seemed to me that they must be concealing something that I did not understand."

All the while, the question that Tolstoi put to himself seemed simple enough : " Why am I to keep alive ? Why am I to do anything ? " or, in another way : " Has life any object that is not destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits me ? To the one question, put in many ways, I sought an answer in human knowledge." " From my earliest youth the speculative sciences interested me deeply, Later on, the mathematical and physical sciences attracted me, and until my question rose up clearly before me, day by day growing larger, and imperatively demanding an answer, until then I was satisfied with the semblance of an answer given by science." " I said to myself ; every- thing is evolving, differentiating, moving towards com- plexity and amelioration, and the progress is under the guidance of law. You, you yourself are part of this whole."

"Although I am deeply ashamed to confess it, there was a time when I thought myself content with these things. My muscles grew and became stronger. My memory added to its stores. My ability for thinking and understanding increased. I grew and developed, and feeling the growth within me, it seemed natural to believe that the solution of my own life was given by the law of the whole universe. But the time c^me when I stopped growing. I felt that I was no longer developing and even that I was slipping back. My muscles weakened ; my teeth dropped out ; and I felt that this law not only explained nothing, not only had never explained anything, but had not been a law at all ; that in fact I had taken for a law what I found in myself at a particular stage of my life."

" As I found no explanation in science," Tolstoi went on, in his poignant narrative, " I began to look for the answer in life, hoping to find it in the men around me." " My intellect was at work, but also something else, some- thing that I can call only the consciousness of life, like some strong force that compelled my intellect to turn in another direction and to rescue me from my desperate condition." The new direction was the feeling of faith. " However I might put to myself the question : how must I live ? the answer was — by the law of God. Whither tends my present life ? To eternal pain or to blessedness everlasting. How is my life not destroyed by death ? By eternal union with God, by heaven. And thus I was led inevitably to see that quite independently of human knowledge, which formerly seemed to me the only guide, mankind had another guide, a guide that is irrational ; faith which makes life possible. Faith seemed to be as irrational as ever, but I could not but recognise that faith alone gave mankind an answer to the problem of life, and in consequence made life possible.

Reason had led me to the conviction that life was absurd, and so, there being no longer a reason to live, I had wished to kill myself. Looking at mankind as a whole, I saw that men kept alive by assuring themselves that they saw a meaning in life. I myself came back to that point of view. I had reached a time when there seemed to me to be no meaning in life. But as to other men, so to me, life and the possibility of living were offered by faith."

Driven in the direction of faith, Tolstoi reached the following conclusion : " The object of a man's life is the salvation of his soul ; for that, we must live in God, and to live in God it is necessary to give up the pleasures of life, to work, to submit, to suffer and to be charitable." And this conclusion led to the other that " a faith has value in so far as it gives a meaning to life which is not destroyed by death." It is plain then that all this evolution, the beginning of which was the fear of death, ended in belief in something beyond death. And it is also plain why Tolstoi should have been as bitter against science as I have shown him to be. Tolstoi does not afford the only example of a case where the failure of science to solve the problem of death has led to the abandonment of science in favour of religion. Brunetiere, if it is possible to judge from his published writings, traversed similar paths in his journey to the Catholic religion.

However, even an intellect so positive and so sceptical as that of Zola has been unable to resist the lures of taith. There is a very interesting note on this subject in the Journal of de Goncourt, dated February 20, 1883. " To-night, after dinner, at the foot of the bedstead of carved wood, where coffee was served, Zola began to talk of death, on wiiich his thoughts have been fixed more than ever since the death of his mother. After a short silence, he said that death had made an in-road on the nihilism of his religious convictions, as he could not face the possibility of an eternal separation."

In strata of society less impregnated with rational and scientific thought, it is plain that the return to religion must be more common. I recall the case of a woman of the people, a work-woman, who declared that she formerly had had no belief, but that, since the birth of her son, she had begun to believe in the good God, as she was convinced that it was only by such a belief that she could guard the life of her child from the evils of the world.

As things are, it is not wonderful that many people decline to educate their children in an exclusively scientific spirit, which is destructive to faith, as they cannot substitute for faith something equally consoling. Perhaps ideas of this kind lie behind the story of the apple of the Garden of Eden and the invention of the woids of Jahveh : " But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " (Genesis ii. 17). The legend of Prome- theus, who stole fire from heaven, and was chained to a rock, is in the same category.

Solomon gave voice to the same idea, in the clearest way, in his words : " I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem ; yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. "And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know mad- ness and folly : I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. " For in much wisdom is much grief : and he that in- creaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow" (Ecclesiastes, i. 16).

Much later, Shakespeare offered to us in Hamlet, the type of a man very highly cultivated, in whom reason and reflection had arrested action. As he could not solve by reason the problems that haunted him, he asked if it were worth while to remain alive. Then followed the famous lines : " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." As so many men of genius have taken the same point of view, it becomes necessary to inquire carefully as to whether or no too much knowledge be harmful to human happiness. If science do no more than to destroy faith and to teach us that the whole living world is moving towards a knowledge of inevitable old age and death, it becomes necessary to ask if the perilous march of science should not be stayed. Is it that the attraction of mankind to knowledge is as dangerous to the race, as the attraction of moths to the light is fatal to these wretched insects ? The question demands an exact answer. But before giving the verdict, the facts of the case must be examined. I shall proceed to this in the chapters to follow.

General account of old age — Theory of senile degeneration •unongst unicellular organisms — Conjugation amongst infusoria — Old age in birds and anthropoid apes — General characters of senile degeneration — Sclerosis of the organs — Phagocyte theory of senile degeneration — Destruction of higher elements by macrophags — Mechanism of whitening of the hair — Serums acting on cells (cytotoxins) — Sclerosis of the arteries and its causation — Harm done by the microbes of the alimentary canal — Intestinal putrefaction and the modes of preventing it — Attempts to prolong human life — Longevity in biblical times