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THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO DARWIN

" The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament
sheweth his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth
knowledge.

There is no speech nor language where their voice is not
heard." PSALMS xix. 1-3.

" For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the
things of the law, these * * are a law unto themselves : which shew
the work of the law written in their hearts." ROMANS ii. 14.

"And as Natural Selection works solely by and for the good of
each being, all corporal and mental endowments will tend to pro
gress toward perfection. There is a grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers having been breathed by the Creator into a
few forms as into one ; and that while this planet has gone cycling
on according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a begin
ning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been
and are being evolved." DARWIN. (Origin of Species).

THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO DARWIN

BY

WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M. D.

CHICAGO A

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY ^ / \

LONDON AGENTS ^ / \ ^

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUEBNER & CO. (~\

*

COPYRIGHT, 1898

BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO

STfjc Uakraifcr tyrtw

R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY
CHICAGO

TO
MY WIFE,

WITHOUT WHOSE SYMPATHY AND

ASSISTANCE

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN.

PEEFACE.

THE purpose of a preface is twofold. First, to
disarm, in advance, the criticism of the reader
not to mention the reviewer. Second, to explain
what the author would have done if he could. ^

To the former end I wish simply to say that it
is in no sense the purpose of this little volume to
furnish a system of ethical or religious thought,
or the germ of a new religion, as perhaps its
title might lead some to infer, least of all to
enunciate truths which are original with, or
peculiar to its author. It is merely an attempt
to get a bird s-eye view of a few of the influences
affecting human hope and human happiness from
the standpoint of that view of and attitude to
wards the universe which is best expressed by the
term Darwinism.

This term is not used of course in the narrow-
sense of the personal views of Charles Darwin in
contrast with those of other evolutionists, be they
his predecessors or his successors, but simply as
typifying the evolutionary movement and its
wonderful consequences by the name of its great
est thinker and ablest champion, who first made
the theory of evolution credible or even think
able.

Its effort is to show that this attitude pos
sesses a broad and secure basis for courage and
happiness in the present and hope for the future.

vii

Vlll PREFACE.

In other words, that its faith is as steadfast, its
" consolations" as great, and its spirit of worship
as profound and as powerful as those of revealed
religion. That the message of the gospel accord
ing to Darwin, is in truth "good news," " glad
tidings ; that the natural is as wonderful, as
beautiful, as divine, as the supernatural.

It is no longer necessary to limit our worship
to the mysterious. No conception of Heaven,
which has ever been formed, represents as great
an improvement upon the existing state of affairs
as has occurred every two thousand years in the
actual history of the race. A triumphal, upward
march, unbroken for fifty million of years, and
which still continues, in which we are keeping
step, every day, is at least as worthy of our grati
tude, our worship, our trust, as anything super-
naturalism has to offer.

Far from destroying or antagonizing the re
ligious instinct, the spirit of worship, Darwinism
broadens and quickens it. But while recogniz
ing its wonderful value, and according it a high
rank in the parliament of instincts, it absolutely
declines to recognize it as perpetual dictator.

Religion is but one of several great influences
which make up human life and determine human
conduct. Like any other instinct, indulged in
the proper place, it is beneficent, ennobling in its
results ; but carried into spheres where it has no
authority, it becomes injurious and degrading.
Darwinism has no quarrel with religion, only
with its excesses.

UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO, April, 1898.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE FIFTH GOSPEL.

Supposed Irreligiousness of Darwinism Broader and Truer
Basis for Worship View of the Power of Good and Evil-
Progress thro Conflict New Aspect of Pain and Death
Happier and more Hopeful World-view 1

CHAPTER II.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD.

Man s Conceptions of the World-Spirit : Worship of Evil as
Supreme Worship of Evil and Good as Equal Worship
of Good as Supreme Supremacy of the Good among Physi
cal Forces Supremacy of the Good among Vital Forces
Supremacy of the Good among Moral Forces Disappear
ance of Evil Deity Unthinkableness of Absolute Evil. ... 19

CHAPTER III.

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT.

Supposed Duality of Man s Nature The Relativity of Sin-
Any Impulse followed to Excess Immoral Instinctive
Origin of the Moral Sense Our Virtues Older than we are
Value of Instinct as a Guide in Health Value of Instinct
as a Guide in Disease The Naturalness of Morality 36

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH.

Misconceptions of Death Death as a Factor in Progress
Dependence of Life upon Death Death as an Economist
Painlessness of Death" There is a Time to Die " ........ 59

CHAPTER V.

LIFE ETERNAL.

Injurious Effects of Belief in a Future Life The Ruin of
Hamlet The Bitterness of Death the Dread of a Future
Life Origin and Development of the Idea of an Afterworld
Happy Hunting Ground Olympus Valhalla Paradise
Nirvana Heaven. The True Zw/) aluviog ................. 71

CHAPTER VI.

LOVE AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

The Natural Origin of Love The Great Forces of Attraction
and Repulsion Combination in the Physical World Com
bination in the Planet World Combination in the Animal
World Affection Necessary for any high Development
Love the Basis of Intelligence Mammals Highest and Most
Affectionate The Pack, the Cattle-Herd, the Horse Mob
Affection in the Training of the Dog and the Horse
Hatred Makes Savagery Law Makes Civilization ...... ... 96

CHAPTER VII.

COURAGE THE FIRST VIRTUE.

Neglect of Courage by Christian Ethics Fatal Effects of the
Cowardice of the Good Courage the Glory of Calvary
The Worship of Courage Need of an Extra Christian Code 133

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRENGTH OF BEAUTY.

Misconception of Beauty as Weak Strength of the Sun
light, the Grass, the Birds Beauty a Mark of Purity and
Vigor No Life without Color Outlines of Beauty and
Health Identical Beauty " Goes to the Bone "One of the
Noblest and Safest Aims of Life ............ .14-4

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.

THE BENEFITS OF OVERPOPULATION.

Pressure of Population the Mainspring of Progress Density
of .Population a Test of Civilization Competition the
Mother of Invention Cities always the Leaders of the
World The Collapse of the Malthusian-Theory Bubble 166

CHAPTER X.

THE DUTY AND GLORY OF REPRODUCTION AND ECONOMICS
OF PROSTITUTION.

Outlawry of the Sexual Impulses by Morality Reproduction
the Foundation of Morality The Training of Parents-
Ignorance of our Sexual Functions Immoral Evil Effects
of Limiting Size of Families Origin of Prostitution Char
acter of Women Involved Effect upon their Fertility and
Longevity Value of Alcohol as an Eliminator Prostitu
tion a means of Sterilizing the Unfit 180

CHAPTER XI.

THE VALUE OF PAIN.

Pain Necessary to Life and Progress Value of Inflamma
tionValue of Pain in Disease Pleasure Impossible with
out Pain Discomfort as a Factor in Progress Discomfort
the Mother of Science 206

CHAPTER XII.

LEBENSLUST.

Joy as an Aim in Life Essential Nature of Pleasure
joy Harmony with Environment A " Life of Pleasure "
necessarily Moral Natural Impulses balance each other-
Pleasure a Stimulus to Adventure and Vigor 222

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN

CHAPTER I.

THE FIFTH GOSPEL.

EVERY revelation granted to man ia at the outset
denounced as atheistic and sacrilegious. The flash
that follows the " Let there be light " sadly changes
the faces of the gods, whether they be the Dagons
born of man s fingers, or the Dogmas of his fancy, as
they stand in their twilight shrines, thick with the
smoke of incense or hazy with the " dim religious
light" of mystic contemplation. Not only this, but
the dazzling glare pains to the blinding-point the eye
of faith, until the familiar features, nay, even the
majestic outlines of the Divine Form seem utterly
lost, and it is little wonder that the shuddering cry
goes up, " Great Pan is dead ! "

The instant impulse, almost too strong to be resist
ed, is to turn the back upon the light which has
wrought this havoc, declare it a bale-fire, an ignis
fatuus, a lying illumination, and thus save both eyes
and theology. There is plenty of darkness left to
construct another shrine. And this is the course
usually taken, in point of fact; but is it wisest, not

2 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

to say bravest, or manliest? Whoever follows it,
proves himself to have been worshipping, not the
Deit} r , but his own pet conception of Him ; Light
cannot alter Being, only its appearance. And yet
"Thou that destroyest the law and the prophets" is
the denunciation hurled at every new light-bringer.

A courageous few, however, turn and unshrink
ingly face the dazzling ray of golden sunlight, which
has shot unbidden across the purple twilight of the
sanctuary, proudly secure that whatever is true can
not be altered, whatever is untrue is unworthy of
their homage. As ever the bravest course is the
happiest, and although the shrine is seen shattered
and empty, while the rich vestments, brain-woven
and fancy-dyed, with which, with unconscious irony,
divinity has been "adorned," lie folded upon the
floor like the grave-clothes at the feet of Lazarus, yet
the roof is found to have been but a veil of twilight
and shadows, and heaven above is revealed.

And as their glad eyes gaze up into the sapphire,
star-sprinkled vault, they are again aware of a Pres
ence of far lovelier, though vaguer outline, and though
more remote, of a grandeur never before conceived.

This is peculiarly true of that great burst of eternal
truth which broke upon the world chiefly through
the work and genius of Charles Darwin. Its dawn
ing was heralded by a shudder and a shriek from
every pew and pulpit, and " Darwinism " became a
synonym for blasphemy. Its truth was vehemently
denied, its logic mercilessly ridiculed, its "debasing
tendencies" furiously denounced. It was to be

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 3

given no quarter, for if tolerated for a moment it
would utterly destroy every vestige, not only of
religion, but of the religious spirit, and yet I venture
to herald it to-day as the long-missing " Fifth Evan
gel," " The Gospel according to Darwin." Instead
of destroying the religious spirit, it reanimates it,
and places it upon stronger foundations than ever
before.

This may seem an extravagant and extraordinary
statement, but it can be shown to be far from un
founded. In the first place, it restores the grand
unity of the universe, and proves the fundamental
harmony of its conflicting forces. There is no hanging
in the balance between the forces of good and evil,
no perilous and often doubtful conflict between a
beneficent World Spirit and a malevolent one : no
such thing as abstract or essential "evil : nothing
but a magnificent scheme of glorious progress through
conflict. Storm and darkness, hunger and cold, Avar
and wanderings, nay, even pestilence and famine, are
seen to be spurs to progress, mothers of invention,
and the stern nurses of all the virtues. Never has
the doctrine of the Old Gospel that "all things work
together for good to them that love the Good"
received such tremendous endorsement. Instead of
gazing upon a world of blind, remorseless chance, or
inevitable fate, so full of cruelty, injustice, and need
less suffering, as to absolutely require the conception
or invention of " another world," to even partially
remedy its inequalities, the Darwinist sees all things
and all forces moving steadily forward in one grand

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

and gloriously beneficent scheme of advancement.
Nature s only and unvarying war-cry is " Excelsior ! "

The old Evangelists did at times catch glimpses of
this truth from the mountain-peaks of their loftiest
spiritual raptures, but it was soon lost sight of, in the
mist of the valley and fog of the fen, into which the
churches were plunged in that palsied time which
heralded the death of the great Roman Empire.

None of them, however, even dreamed of a light
which should reveal a harmony and an order in that
far more bitter, more hopeless and perplexing conflict
which is incessantly present in the soul of man itself.
Even to Paul s magnificent intellect, the only pos
sible result is that one of the conflicting forces must
and inevitably will utterly destroy the other. " The
carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. . . . To
be carnally minded is death." In the mild radiance
of the Fifth Gospel even this struggle, like every
other, is seen to surely and inevitably result in prog
ress, to which both forces are absolutely necessary.
The " enmity " between them is merely that between
the steam-chest and the driving-wheel in the great
engine, or, more accurately, between the panting
young giant in the cylinder and the piston-rod, each
fiercely asserting itself against the other, and between
them driving the great wheel. Browning has caught
the same ray of dawn when he cries :

" As the bird wings and sings

Let us cry, " All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 5

Our passions and appetites are seen to be the great
driving forces of our nature, and even the term
"animal," as applied to them, carries with it no
stigma of degradation ; on the contrary, it suggests
much that is brave, faithful, and self-denying. By
far the longest, and not by any means the least noble
part of our pedigree lies outside of the human family.

One of Darwin s greatest services was the proving
that our moral impulses are derived, not from educa
tion nor external revelation, nor from the cold calcu
lations and experimental deductions of " refined sel
fishness," according to either Bentham or Spencer,
but from the warm and beautiful family affections,
those ties of blood, whose golden links are alike bind
ing upon the dove upon its nest, the deer in its
covert, the lioness in her lair, and the mother by the
hearthstone. The courage, the patience, the cheer
fulness, the affections, that are in us are just as essen
tially " carnal " as are the " lusts of the flesh " and
the " pride of life," and what is more, are more
numerous and more powerful. Our deepest and
strongest instincts in the long run are found to be on
the side of right.

The most exquisite result of this perception is a
delicious sense of harmony and sympathy with nature
and all that she contains. The world is no longer
either " vile " or " unfriendly " in either its human
or its physical aspects. " The Prince of the Power
of it" has disappeared ; all men of all races, become
brethren upon the common ground of the great, noble,
primitive instincts, and even the beasts of the field

6 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

and the fowls of the air are glowing with that " touch
of nature " which " makes the whole world kin." The
only tiling in it that we could profitably alter is our
own conceited, babyish selves.

Another proof of the inspiration of the Fifth Gospel
is the calm and rational view which it enables us to
take of death. To remove the fear of this has been a
leading aim of all former revelations, but it is to be
doubted whether they have not the rather intensified
it, as they all unite in characterizing it as the King
of Terrors, the bitterest of evils, and the great enemy
of the race.

The new light pierces these grisly, ghostly draperies,
woven of fear and darkness, and shows behind them
a gentle, painless, grandly-beneficent process of
mtture, by which the old is tenderly and reverently
laid away to dissolve and reappear in the new.

Bracken dies and enriches the mold so that the
anemone, violet, and the primrose may lift their
dainty heads and scatter their perfume through copse
and glen. Here is the Resurrection of the Body.
Nothing is lost, but much is gained by the change.

The Mexican aloe lives a century, scatters its myr
iad seeds, then peacefully fades and dies, but its seeds
take root upon its very grave, and give birth to other
winged seeds, and so on through thousands of cen
turies. The vital spark has never once gone out, but
burns with a brighter, richer, intenser glow in each suc
ceeding generation. The primitive aloe is still alive
and in a fuller, richer sense than ever before. This
is Life Eternal, and what is better. Life Improving.

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 7

Is not this a nobler, higher, more unselfish conception
than that of an indefinite prolongation of our own
petty, personal existence ? This is an immortality
worth having, for it provides for progress.

We are immortal physically, in the course of na
ture, and mentally and morally in our influence, so far
as this is for good. All that is true, all that is good,
in us and in our influence, will survive to all the
ages ; all that is false and base will be ruthlessly
crushed and destroyed, ground into powder by the
mills of the gods. It is not a question of whether
we, as a whole, will be " saved " or " lost " but of
how much of us.

Even if I have been heard this far without indig
nant interruptions, a dozen voices which can no
longer be restrained, now burst out with the question,
" But what possible claim to the title of a Gospel,
a Good News, can be made by a revelation, the
chief factor and very essence of whose 4 plan of salva
tion is a fierce conflict of physical force, a contest
of tooth and claw, in which of necessity mere brute
strength and selfishness must prove the victorious
qualities ? "

But is this last apparently self-evident conclusion,
a logical one ? It most emphatically is not ! And
further, strange as it may seem, is flatly contradicted
by the facts. Not only has the decrease of selfishness
and the growth of the affections been one of the most
prominent features in the upward development of the
forms of being, but it has also been a most important
factor in that progress. The supremacy of intelli-

8 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

gence in the struggle for existence is universally ad
mitted, and the chief training-school, if not the very
birthplace of this intelligence, is in the care for
others, first inspired by parental affection.

Nothing but the lowest degree of intelligence or
development is possible without affection. The
crocodile, the shark, and the viper are models, not
only of cruelty and ferocity, but of stupidity and dul-
ness. It is no mere coincidence that that great king
dom of living forms whose distinguishing and
proudest characteristic is the possession of a milk-
gland (a purely altruistic organ) should far outrank
all others in beauty, vigor and cerebral development.
If they could be said to have any rivals in this last
characteristic, it would be those patient but brilliant
little toilers, the ants and the bees, whose whole
existence is literally a slavery to, or martyrdom for,
others.

War and conflict are extraordinary breeders of
intelligence, but co-operation and protection are even
greater. Not only are mammals far superior to all the
other classes of life of living forms because they
suckle their young, instead of leaving them to the
tender mercies of the waves and the sun, but among
them by far the most intelligent and most secure
from hostile attack are those which group themselves
together in more or less firmly-organized packs or

herds.

Compare for a moment the dog, the horse, the
elephant, with the tiger, the bear, the wild boar.
Indeed an accurate classification of the intelligence

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 9

and perfection of living forms could be made upon
the basis of the degree of care they take of their off
spring, and of unselfish interest in their kind. The
same truth holds good through the different grades of
the human family itself. The mere fact that the
weak cannot command justice, not only stamps any
tribe as barbarous, but just as certainly keeps it so,
and as we go down the scale, we finally reach a point
where justice, humanity, and even family affection
sink to the very lowest ebb, and with them inexo
rably culture, intelligence, and fighting power. The
very name of the " man-of-the-woods," the " homo
silvaticm" " salvage," " savage " has become a syn
onym for cruelty and ferocious indifference to the
rights of others. The savage is the very incarnation
of aggressive, remorseless selfishness, the beau ideal of
the man most likely to " survive in the struggle for
existence " according to popular and theological con
ception, but does that make him even the best fight
ing-man in the world ? The question answers itself.
A mere handful of civilized troops can scatter swarms
of savage bowmen or even riflemen, simply by virtue
of their confidence in one another. Selfishness is a
great force, but affection is a greater. Sweetness,
and light, and love, and beauty abound in the higher
types, both animal and human, because they are em
phatically the winning qualities in the upward
struggle.

Stronger far than the crashing sweep of the hurri
cane or the thunderous rush of the storm-stirred
Atlantic, keener and more penetrating than the

10 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

blackest and bitterest frost, or the jagged spear of
the lightning is the sweet, golden sunshine, the love
liest and the strongest thing in the world. Beauty
and morality are abundantly able to take care of them
selves in the fiercest struggle without any assistance
from either academies or religions.

Let no one, however, imagine for a moment that
a flabby eestheticism or weak amiability can fill the
requirements for survival. Far from it. Valuable
and powerful as are love and beauty, the one virtue
which is absolutely indispensable, and separated from
which they are of little avail, is courage ; clear, in
domitable, inexhaustible. Though the former are
unquestionably the controlling and molding influ
ences of progress, the latter is the great positive
motive force. The one unpardonable sin is cowardice.
Kind intentions, without the courage to carry them
into effect, are of but little value either to their object
or their possessor. Courage is not only the basis, but
the very mother of the virtues. The thoroughly
brave man is almost never cruel, treacherous, or un
truthful. Its absence is not only the provoker, but
the very essence of the majority of the vices. It is
cowardice that literally makes the liar, the cheat, the
traitor ; courage, the Washington, the patriot, the
reformer.

In spite of his harsh features and rude manners,
this fierce, reckless, battle-loving, but warm-hearted
old Titan is clearly the chief of all the virtues, in
stead of a creature to be ignored or even discounte
nanced, except in certain " moral " forms, as he is

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 11

regarded in that effeminate mysticism which has
grown up chiefly out of the Fourth Gospel.

One of the strongest claims to recognition of the
Fifth Gospel is the light which it throws upon that
problem, " The Origin and Relations of Evil." By
its rays evil is seen, and can even be demonstrated to
be mainly one of the necessary accompaniments of
the development of Good into Better. If movement
is to occur, it must be possible in all directions, and
the power of advancing inevitably carries with it the
possibility of retreat. The possibility of growth
must include that of decay. Evil is the shadow
thrown by the sunlight of the good. Good is
positive and absolute, evil negative and relative.
Almost every evil, viewed broadly and attentively,
is seen to be at bottom mainly a relative or temporary
absence of good, and in many cases, repulsive as it
may be at first sight, to be ultimately beneficent in
its nature.

More than this, much of what we term evil is a
necessary part of the scheme of progress. To use a
mechanical illustration, not only is falling an in
dispensable corollary of, or antithesis to, rising, but
also an essential factor in forward motion. That in
carnate poetry of motion, the flight of the lordly
eagle, consists of a quick, short dash, with a few score
strokes of his powerful wings to a dizzy height, fol
lowed by a circling, swooping, triumphant descent
on motionless, outstretched pinions, a veritable riding
upon the wings of the wind, covering half a country
side in its sweep. Here progress is attained, not so

12 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

much by the rise, as by the long, sweeping descent
which follows it, and both movements are alike in
dispensable.

To soar aloft merely to brave the eye of the sun-
god, or to excite the admiration and reverence of the
rest of the feathered tribes, as the classic myth of the
kingly bird supposes, would be simply a fruitless and
foolish waste of energy ; and yet in the spiritual
realm, many a pinnacle of saintliness, many a state of
ecstasy, has been attained from highly similar mo
tives, and proved equally barren of results. Much of
what we term absolute good would be sterile unless
mixed with apparent evil. The whole process of
human locomotion, not only physical but mental, is
literally a series of interrupted falls. Our only
chance of advancing is to fall in the right direction
and keep at it. Our only struggle should be, not to
avoid falling, but to fall forward.

Of all the innumerable forms of evil probably
none is so obtrusively self-evident, or so universally
denounced and deplored by philosophers of every
system, priests of every creed, and observers of every
age, as pain. On its presence and frequency alone
have been founded most of the doubts and denials of
the goodness of God, or the benevolence of the uni
verse. It is generally accepted as almost pure evil,
and by its mere presence, a standing reflection upon
the intelligence and competence of the Great Archi
tect. The sight, or even thought, of suffering is
abhorrent to us, and we are sure that " Providence "
ought not to "permit" it in any form. But is not

THE FIFTH GOSPEL.

this, after all, a somewhat short-sighted and childish
way of regarding the question ? Pain is indeed hard
to bear, and harder to look upon, but is there no
harvest which its sharp sickle reaps ? Of a surety
there is, and a golden one, which can be gathered by
no other means.

First and foremost of all, pain is the great danger-
signal of nature, the spark struck from the clash of
the organism against its environment. Heed its
warning, avoid or remove its cause, and all will be
well; neglect it, and a worse thing will befall us.
It is the cry of the frightened tissues for help, and
there is usually plenty of time for this to reach them
if we send promptly on hearing the alarm. Without
pain, in times of danger, we should be half dead be
fore we knew we were ill. Cut the nerve which
supplies a rabbit s eye and lids with common sensa
tion, leaving everything else untouched, and what is
the result ? The eye soon becomes suffused, then
the crystal cornea becomes clouded, next inflamed,
and finally suppuration sets in, and the eye is lost.
What can have caused this, for the sight was still
perfect, the lids uninjured and active as ever, and
the circulation unimpaired? Simply the fact that
sensation being destroyed and pain prevented, the
lids did not know when or how to close, nor the lach
rymal glands when to secrete, and the delicate cornea
was dried and cracked by the air and rasped by the
dust till it blazed up into fatal inflammation. The
presence of pain is distressing, but its absence is fatal.

Again, it is impossible from a philosophic point of

14 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

view to ignore the fact that pain, or the dread of it,
has been, and yefc is, an extraordinary, a most powerful
and constant stimulus to progress. Take for in
stance the milder forms of it, known as discomfort,
such as hunger, cold, etc., and what an important
part of our actions do they even yet determine.
How much work would we do if we were suddenly
removed from all fear of them ? Fully two-thirds of
the turrets and battlements of that magnificent pile
which we call modern civilization have been reared
under the lash of these stern but beneficent task
masters. Considered as a motive power alone, hun
ger has few equals.

If necessity be the mother of invention, then pain
is the father of scientific discovery. So long as the
influences of our surroundings and the workings of
our own internal mechanism are productive of pleas
urable or indifferent sensations, we are content to lie
at ease, like a basking cat in the sun, or like the
lotos-eaters " careless of gods and men," without
troubling our heads for a moment about the nature,
structure, or causes of these things. "Let well
enough alone " is our motto. Let discomfort occur,
however, and we are at once acutely interested in
finding out all about them, and science is born. The
healthy man doesn t know lie has such a thing as a
stomach, the dyspeptic doesn t know he has anything
else. In the realm of morals, the " sweetness " of
the " uses of adversity " has been universally admit
ted, while in that part of the physical field which
terms itself the spiritual, the value, nay, even es-

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 15

sential, meritoriousness of suffering has been so sadly
exaggerated, that I almost fear to bring discredit
upon my argument by alluding to it.

And here is where the Fifth Gospel gently but
decidedly parts company with the Fourth. Although
it goes even further in the direction of proving the
necessity and even the beneficence of pain, it stops
far short of exalting suffering into a virtue, or regard
ing it as the dominant and commonest element in
the lot of mankind. The essential benefit of pain
lies in the avoidance of its cause, and the reward is
to be reaped from the thorny barrens of discomfort
by determined effort and incessant struggle and not
by tame and pulpy submission. It has no sympathy
whatever with the morbid delusion that suffering is
per se purifying and exalting, and the mere endur
ance of it a grace ; still less that the submission to it
is the one principal duty of man. It declines to
regard this sun-kissed, grass-carpeted, flower-gemmed
world of ours as a " vale of tears " or " wilderness of
woe," and instead of holding that the more disagree
able anything is, the more likely it is to be " good for
us," it would deem the fact of any object or action
being repugnant to our natural tastes and instincts as
at least good presumptive evidence of its injurious-
ness.

It furnishes a scientific and rational basis for
Pestalozzi s dictum that " we do not desire certain
things because we believe them to be good, but we
hold them to be good because we instinctively desire
them." It unhesitatingly declares enjoyment (har-

16 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

mony with environment) to be the normal condition
of organized being, suffering the abnormal comfort
the rule, pain the exception ; in short, our appetites,
impulses, and instincts are the exquisite fruits of the
experience of myriads of ancestral generations. If
anything about us be divine, they emphatically are,
and may be, freely, boldly, joyfully followed in
stead of sternly repressed and distorted.

That strange distortion of the teachings of the Mas
ter known as orthodox Christianity, too often alas
a mixture of one-fourth Christ, one-fourth Paul, and
one-half pure superstition, regards our passions and
appetites as our chiefest enemies, necessary evils,
only valuable for the discipline gained in fighting
them, permits their indulgence only under protest
and with an air of apology, and would like to crush
them out entirely were it not for the trifling draw
back that life itself would be destroyed in the pro
cess. And even this consideration has been, alas, no
bar to its zeal, especially in the case of other persons.
From this belief more than from any other have
sprung those dark and disgraceful shadows of monas-
ticism, self-torture, and persecution, which have
always dogged and too often utterly dimmed its
shining course.

Nature s revenge for this contemptuous treatment
of her heralds and prophets is swift and signal, and
the carrying out of this belief must logically, and al
ways has, resulted in either asceticism or hypocritical
licentiousness, and generally in both.

From the standpoint of the Darwinist, our passions

THE FIFTH GOSPEL. 17

are our best friends and trustiest servants, and our
instincts and appetites our safest guides. The one
may be humored too far, and the other followed too
blindly ; but in the long run they will be found to
haxe done us at least ten times as much good as
harm. Like Solomon s " virtuous woman," they will
" do us good and not evil all the days of our life."
This once recognized, the pleasure which comes from
their legitimate gratification becomes something to
be freely and frankly enjoyed as a mark of nature s
approval, instead of a thing to be ashamed of, ac
knowledged with apologies, and indulged in with
grave misgivings.

In short, joy becomes as integral a part of the Fifth
Gospel as grief is of the Fourth.

The grand old Greek " joy of living " comes back
in broader, manlier, more enduring form, and is of
itself a sufficient reason for existing. Once more the
mellow glow of the golden sunlight becomes the
smile of the great heart of the universe. The mist-
wreath upon the blue mountain, the silver flash of
the rushing river amid the rich green of the reeds,
the gorgeous, crimson pageantry of the hosts of
heaven in the western sky, and the amethyst light in
the eye of woman, are but reflections of His beauty ;
the warbling of birds, the song of the wind in the
pine-forests, and the murmuring of pebbly brooks,
are the echoes of the music of the spheres ; and the
joyous response which all these stir up in us is part
of the grand sympathy of the universe, the love be
tween those of one blood and one lineage. Nor does

18 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

" Lebenslust " stop here: far from it. Deeper, but
even sweeter and more lasting than any of these is
the stern joy of battle, the warm throb which answers
the touch of the frost-king, the breath of the storm-
wind, the dash of the salt spray over the bulwarks,
the plunge of the frantic steed. Best of all, the
glorious ecstasy of taking our lives between our
teeth, and looking danger and death in the face, of
daring everything in defence of our loved ones, the
fierce music of the clash of swords, and the rattle of
musketry, the sweet " smell of the battle afar off."
Life is a brave, red-blooded, warm-hearted, joyous
thing, which needs no sickly phantasmic " after
world " to render it worth the living.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 19

CHAPTER II.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD.

MAN S conceptions of the World-Spirit have varied
with the stage of his progress. They are almost as
numerous, and quite as diverse, as the individuals
who hold them ; yet there is a strong family-likeness
between them all. A hasty review of the order of
their evolution, if its triteness may be pardoned, is
logically necessary to a proper statement of the
Darwinian position.

In the infancy of man, the controlling forces of
the world about him were conceived of as numerous
and purely local demons or sprites.

So limited are they, that they are conceived of
primarily, as actually inhabiting and inspiring cer
tain objects or animals. The black, sullen snag
that breaks the meshes of his rude fishing-net, the
tree that falls crashing across his mud-hut, the tiger
that pounces upon his flocks, the breeze that frightens
away the buffalo which he is stalking, these are
each and all supernatural beings that may be pro
pitiated by sacrifice and pleased by worship. They
are nearly all, oddly enough as it would appear at
first glance, more or less malevolent, or at least
mischievous, in disposition, and the earliest worship

20 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

and ritual aims purely to secure a policy of non-in
terference on the part of the divinities, by flattering
and coaxing, or even by frightening them. A
moment s reflection, however, will show us that this
curious tendency is merely the result of the much
more vivid impression produced upon our senses by
pain and ill-fortune, than by their opposites. The
latter we take as a matter of course, a necessary
reward of our merits, no amount of them disturbs our
equanimity ; the former excites our liveliest interest
and resentment, and compels our respect and attention.
" Good luck " may be left to take care of itself ; no
need to worry ourselves about it ; " bad luck " de
mands our immediate personal attention and prompt
est and most vigorous action to prevent its recurrence.
Consequently the dominant idea in the savage con
ception of nature is a distinctly unfriendly, if not
actually spiteful, one. As Sir John Lubbock declares,
" It is not too much to say that the horrible dread of
unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage
life, and embitters every pleasure." If there be any
other powers at work, they may be neglected with
safety, especially as the evil ones are so much more
powerful and active.

The nixies, kelpies, and Loreleis, which lurk for
their prey at the bottom of rivers and pools, the
witches of the Brocken, the grisly " Wild Huntsman "
who sweeps through the forest on the wings of the
midnight storm, the gnomes, bogies, and fetches that
hide in the mountain-glens, the ghouls of the lonely
churchyard, the banshee and " will-o -the-wisp " of the

THE OMNIPOTENCE OP GOOD. 21

mists and marshes, and the cluricans of the black bog
are the ghostly scattered survivors of the earliest
deities of our ancestors. And to this day such in
fluence as they are supposed to possess is almost
universally dreaded, and their very apparition the
foreboder of disaster or death.

As the family, tribe, and clan gradually organized
themselves in slow succession, these explanatory con
ceptions got classified and simplified somewhat. In
stead of each individual, family, or valley having its
own particular " familiar spirit," as was still actually
the case scarcely three generations ago with the " Bo-
dach glass " of the Mclvors and the " banshee " of the
O Donahues, some two or three are agreed upon as
the gods of the tribe or country. And this increase
of dominion and dignity on their part is accompanied
by some improvement in disposition. Though, like
their earthly prototype, the embryo Napoleon of the
tribe, they may oppress and plunder their own people,
they will at least protect them against their enemies,
and even administer a rude justice among them.
This is the stage in which the Ark of the Covenant
is carried into battle and the Philistines explain their
defeat on the ground that the battle was fought among
the hills, the " native heath " of Israel s gods, while
" our gods are the gods of the plain." From this it
is but a step to the conception of gods who, except
when their vengeance is roused or cupidity excited,
are comparatively indifferent to mankind, and whose
attention should be consequently avoided as com
pletely as possible. Prosperity, especially, provokes

22 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

their jealousy, and it is still popularly regarded as
" dangerous " to be too happy.

A little further we have the powerful group of
deities, such as inhabited Olympus, who could be
friendly or hostile, according as their interest or
whim suggested, and whose general attitude Avas that
of a feebly good-natured tolerance of mankind. The
first dawning of the idea of a general unity is here
seen in the presence of a presiding deity in the person
of Jove, who, though of distinctly doubtful moral
character, on the whole checks the worst excesses of
his subordinates and maintains a sort of rude justice
among and between both mortals and immortals.
But even Jove may be bullied by Juno, tempted
by mortal women, and threatened by conspiracies
of the lesser gods, while ever behind him, vague
but terrible, is the huge black figure of resistless
Fate, of M<npa, of Ate, which whirls him helplessly
along.

So far malevolence and benevolence, good and evil,
have been inextricably mixed together in every con
ception, the evil on the whole predominating ; but
now comes the noble step for which we are mainly
indebted to the great Semitic family, of separating
the evil and spiteful from the righteous and just,
under the figure of the " Powers of Light " and the
" Powers of Darkness." At first these powers are
almost equally divided, waging an incessant conflict
with varying chances, man s assistance being often
sufficient to turn the scale. Traces of this last curious
idea are to be found in both the Old and New Testa-

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 23

ment, in such expressions as " Coming up to the help
of the Lord against the mighty. . . . The kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
by force," and in the presence of the saints at the battle
of Armageddon.

One of the simplest forms of this theology is the
religion of the early Persians, where the Powers of
Light are marshaled under or personified by the great
" Spirit of Good," Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda), while
those of Darkness are similarly represented by the
great " Spirit of Evil," Ahriman.

Both of these beings are regarded originally as
divine, immortal, and entirely independent of each
other, and are even represented as making agreements
and treaties with each other, as in the first chapter of
Job, or assisting one another, as when the " lying
Spirit" is permitted to enter into the prophets of
Ahab to lure him on to his death at Ramoth-Gilead.
But first they are regarded as practically equal in
power and authority, evil if anything, being the more
active, and certainly much more to be dreaded of the
two, but as the intellectual and ethical standing of
the race improves, the latter gradually diminishes in
power and importance until at last it owes its very
existence to the sufferance of the good, and degener
ates into a mere officer of vengeance, or " roaring
lion," ready to pounce upon all offenders the moment
that the favor of the good power is withdrawn from
them.

In the earlier stages, man prayed and sacrificed to
or made his peace with the Power of Evil directly, a

24 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

sin whose enormity and alarming frequency was
inveighed against by every ecclesiastical tribunal up
to the eighteenth century, and whose possibility is
still to this day admitted wherever the belief in
witchcraft, or " selling oneself to the Devil," exists.
In later stages he prays and sacrifices to the Powers
of Good, that they may protect him against the
Powers of Evil. There is, alas, too much of this
motive, even in the worship of the nineteenth century,
while to the medieval Christian, the principal use of
God would seem to have been to protect him from
the Devil. Indeed, so much is the latter personage
feared and dreaded in all ages, in spite of his fallen
and degenerate condition, and so incessant and tre
mendous is the struggle to escape his clutches, that
one can hardly help wondering whether he has not
practically become the real object of worship to the
shivering and self-tortured monk, the Jesuit with his
torch and rack, the beauty-hating, witch-burning
Puritan, or the modern camp-meeting exhorter with
his hell-fire and brimstone. Judged by their frenzied
excesses and their fruits, Satan, rather than Jehovah,
is their god.

Both Christianity and Mohammedanism, while the
oretically declaring that God is omnipotent, all-wise,
all-loving, with the noblest of attributes and loftiest
character, a being who compels our worship and ad
miration, yet find themselves practically very much
concerned with a certain greatly inferior and defeated,
but extremely active and malignant, Evil Spirit, who,
for some mysterious reason, though utterly base by

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 25

nature and of wholly injurious influence, is permitted
to exist, although a vague hope is held out of his
ultimate extinction or disappearance.

This hope, Darwinism fulfils. The Fourth Gospel
declares that the universe consists of an Eternal God
plus an Immortal Devil. The Gospel according to
Darwin rings out the trumpet-call, " There is no God
but The Good." It bases this, its faith, upon no docu
ments save the broad pages of the Book of Nature,
with their hieroglyphics of green and gold : no mir
acles, save the old but ever-new ones, of the sunrise,
the springing of the grass, the egg in the downy nest :
no voice save that eternal choral in which the thun
derous diapason of the surf upon the crags blends
with the singing of the morning stars. And " there
is no speech nor language where that voice is not
heard."

In the realm of the great physical forces, its sup
porting evidence amounts almost to a demonstration.
Here are giants indeed, fierce, resistless, terrible.
Which is the greatest, the most powerful ? First of
all, the eye picks out instinctively the dazzling helm
of the messenger of Jove, the lightning with his glit
tering spear, and his black-browed brother, " Ba-im-
Wa-Wa," the thunder, at the sound of whose awful
voice " deep calleth unto deep." But there is A
Mightier far than these. The glance is next caught
by the towering, threatening, form of the Storm King
in his mantle of black cloud, edged with snowy fringes
of sea-foam ; he bows the giant oak like a bulrush,
and crushes the iron-clad leviathans of war like egg-

26 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

shells, but there is one who feels him but as the
draught of his fireplace. Scarce can we turn our
heads ere we are met by the deadly tiger-like rush
and swirl, and sulky foam-crest of the flood-fiend with
his familiars, the hissing, seething waterspout, and
silent shroud of the snow in its soft but resistless and
fatal folds.

Surely here is the " Prince of the Powers " chisel
ing out the canyons, leveling the hills, filling up
the valleys, and building the continents out into the
deeps of ocean, but in the eyes of the King lie is a
mere gutter-flow. What then is the greatest among
the physical forces, the Chief of the great blind
Titans? Like the "still, small voice," it is neither
in the sweep of the whirlwind, the throb of the earth
quake, nor the glare of the lightning, but is gentler
and greater far than any of these. More penetrating
than the thunderbolt, stronger than the storm-wind,
more irresistible than the floods of many waters, is
the gentle, laughing, golden Sunshine, to which the
flowers lift their faces, and little children stretch out
their tiny hands. Here is the Greatest Thing in the
physical world, and behold it is Good.

Let it withdraw itself, and the light of the world
is gone, let it appear, heat quickly follows, and with
it life in all its forms. Without the vortex-rings
born of its warmth, the winds could not stir, and the
very air would rot in a stagnant pool thirty miles
deep ; without its ever-plunging force-pumps, no
clouds could form to refresh the earth and grind
down the mountains into meadows, not even the blue

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 27

glitter of electricity would relieve the deadly gloom ;
in fact, all these tremendous forces are but puppets
moved by the Sun God s ringers. And yet they have
been worshipped far oftener than he has, and serious
ly regarded as not only independent, but even greater
than he.

Man is inclined to worship chiefly those things and
influences which can make him uncomfortable, for
obvious reasons, hence his idea of their relative im
portance. It may be only a curious coincidence, but
the cynical suggestion makes itself, that the light-and
life-giving Sun-God has been most devoutly wor
shipped in or upon the borders of the tropics, where
droughts and sun-strokes were to be dreaded.

In the realm of animate existence, what is the
greatest thing ?

Watching the tiny shoots and delicate tendrils of
spring life, trembling in the blast or bowing before
the rainstorm, they seem the feeblest, frailest things
in the world. In comparison with the birds and the
animals, the robin scudding South before the breath
of the Frost King, or the wolf crouching in his lair
till the storm has abated, they seem like pygmies in
the grasp of Titans. By thousands they fall at our
side and tens of thousands at our right hand, shriv
eled in the glow of the forest-fire, flattened by the
wind, buried by the floods, blighted by the frosts,
withered by drought, every element seems their foe.
Their destruction is by wholesale, their reproduction
by retail. Surely, they cannot long escape extinction !
They seem to have done so, however, for some bil-

28 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

lions of years, and not only that, but have grown and
increased in that time from a mere handful of tiny
gray lichens, clinging to the inhospitable surface of
the granite, into these myriads upon myriads of
forms, ranging from the most delicate beauty to the
most majestic grandeur, in the very teeth of just such
hostile conditions.

They rise alike upon the ruins of the grandeur of
empires, and upon the rotting fragments of the very
rock ribs of Mother Earth. Yielding to everything,
they conquer all things at last, even Time himself.
They achieve eternal life. This generation withers
and dies, but not before its life has fallen back into
the soil to become the seed of the next. Mountains
change their form, their granite crags crumble under
the frost and melt beneath the torrent ; the " white
and wailing fringe of sea" is continually changing its
sandy curves and steadily receding oceanward, but
the carpet of living green which robes the one and
borders the other smiles on forever, unchanged
except by increase. It is not only as everlasting as
they, but gains on them century after century.
And strange as it may seem, the softer it is, the more
intensely alive, and the more irresistible ! The ivy
will destroy the oak ; the pine root cleaves the solid
rock ; the worm pierces everywhere.

In our own bodies, the hard and ivory-like bone,
and the flinty tooth, soften and melt before the ad
vance of the soft, jelly-like " granulation tissue " of
healing processes, or the attack of the polyp-like os-
teoclast, while the rigid skull is molded upon and

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 29

by the soft and delicate brain within. Here again
" organized sunlight," which we call " life," is the
greatest, the strongest, the most enduring thing in
the world. And behold it too is Good.

In the world of moral forces, which is the greatest ?
Is it the great, positive, noble, sunshiny forces of
Love, Truth, Honor, Courage, or the fierce, narrow,
bitter, crouching impulses of Hatred, Falsehood,
Dishonesty, Cowardice ?

The question answers itself. With the exception
of Hatred, all of the latter group are essentially
negative, merely the absence of the virtue which is
their opposite. Alone they would fall by their own
weight, and can only exist or have influence at all as
exceptions to a general rule. A man must tell the
truth at least ten times to be able to lie once to any
advantage, and it is only those swindlers who have
earned a high reputation for probity by years of
honest living who can do any serious harm. No one
would think of trusting an habitual liar or cheat.
Even from a mere commercial standpoint, " honesty
is the best policy." As to the relative strength of
Love and Hatred, the general opinion would hesitate
somewhat before deciding. But it would not be for
long. In the average human mind, there is a dread
of hatred, a fear of arousing enmity, which is posi-
tivelv superstitious in its intensity and out of all
proportion to the real power of the passion. Very
much for the same reason that our savage ancestors
first worship the hostile influences of nature, because
they make such vivid impressions. Probably the

30 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

lyric Wizard of the North voices pretty nearly the
popular sentiment upon this theme when he makes
the fierce-eyed bard chant,

" Kindness fadeth away,
But vengeance endureth forever."

Then again an enormously exaggerated importance
is ascribed to hatred from another cause. It is so
much more soothing to our self-respect to ascribe our
misfortunes and failures to the malice and machina
tions of real or imaginary enemies, than it is to admit
them to be due to any deficiencies in ourselves. The
justly defeated candidate blames the spite of his
opponents or treachery of jealous friends, not his own
unfitness ; and the moral transgressor ascribes his own
sin to the malicious wiles of the Devil.

Indeed, in this respect the Evil Spirit is a positive
comfort. Fully a third of his " bad eminence " in
the theology of the day is owing to it, and Darwinism
like Buddhism lias no substitute to offer for him,
though heredity may possibly be twisted to fill the
gap by a little ecclesiastical treatment.

But these views of the power of hatred are mere
optical illusions which vanish on careful inspection.
Hatred is the leaping flame of the brushwood camp-
fire, capable of much damage at times, but fitful,
short-lived, temporary. Love is the clear, steady
glow under the boilers of the great engine, purposeful,
constant, undying. Even that much-denounced pas
sion, selfishness, the motive power of civilization and
the ruling impulse of the great bulk of human action,

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 31

is essentially, trite as it may sound, a form of it, viz.,
love of self and not hatred of others, as one would
imagine from the vehemence with which it is preached
against. It is a tremendous factor in progress, and
within reasonable limits is not only legitimate, but
highly commendable. Even the Golden Rule does
not forbid it, but merely demands that " love of thy
neighbor" shall equal it, because it is the highest and
most reliable standard to be found. It is the love of
freedom and of justice that makes nations great, the
love of country or devotion to gallant leaders which
wins great battles, the love of truth that inspires a
Galileo, a Newton, a Columbus ; in short, love is the
mainspring of every great achievement.

What trophies can Hatred show ?

Even in battle the best soldier is not he who most
bitterly hates the enemy, but he who most dearly
loves his country. Hatred is not even the ruling
spirit of warfare. Far from it. A dozen other im
pulses are more potent here, love of country and
home, of glory, ambition, emulation, obedience, sym
pathy, comradeship, desire to succeed.

Love is far the Greatest Thing in the moral world,
and that pretty nearly includes the universe.

Sweetness and Light are again triumphant, entirely
on their own merits.

In fine, wherever the glance falls, whatever realm
we scan, we find the Good, omnipotent and constant,
positive the Evil, feeble and cringing, negative.
Evil is the black shadow cast by the sunlight of the
Good ; the exception to the rule of goodness, nay

32 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

more, in most cases only a lower form of it. As
Browning chants :

" The Evil is null, is naught,
Is Silence implying sound ;
What was good, shall be good
With, for evil, so much good more."

If this be the case, what need is there, then, of the
conception of an Evil Spirit ? Or what scope remains
for the exercise of his powers ?

It is curious to notice how the extent of his do
minion has steadily shrunken with the progress of
knowledge. In the earliest days, he was master of
the greater part of the universe, for his sway was ab
solute during the hours of darkness : indeed, he is
known as the " Prince of this World " to this
day. He was a personification of that fear of the
dark which even yet casts a gloom over the infant or
ignorant mind. But darkness was soon found to be
just as necessary to life, and almost as beneficial as
light ; and the night-demon is changed into an angel
whose wings softly hover over the bosom of tired old
Mother Earth. In a like manner, also, the storm,
the lightning bolt, the ocean surge, the bitter tooth of
the frost have had their devils cast out and sit,
clothed in their right mind, at the feet of man, his
best friends and most powerful servants. Driven
from these domains, the evil spirits crave permission,
as it were, " to enter into swine," and appear next in
the human body. The pangs of hunger are attrib
uted to them, and to this day the nineteeth century

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 33

pagan of the Whitechapel slums will gravely assure
you that she has a " tiger in her inside," to whose
claws she lays the pangs of hunger and the gnawing
pains of indigestion. Then disease becomes his special
manifestation, and the " medicine-man " is summoned
with drum and sweat-bath and evil smells to drive
him out of the sufferer s body. Traces of this belief
are yet to be found in popular medicine. Finally in
this stage, death becomes his peculiar triumph, and
charms are worn, vows are paid, and pilgrimages
undertaken in the hope of avoiding it as long as pos
sible.

But now, in the clear, white light of even such
knowledge as we have obtained, hunger is seen to be
one of the greatest and most constant spurs to prog
ress ; disease, but health-processes run riot, life out
of place ; and death, but the kindly welcome return
of our tired bodies to the warm crucible of Mother
Earth, thence to emerge again in higher, lovelier
forms. As the darkness clears away, the gruesome
shapes that it has conjured up disappear with it.

Last of all, the Devil entereth into the hitherto
undiscovered forces of nature, the realm of theology,
and the regions of the future. He has been com
pletely dislodged from the first stronghold, but only
partially so from the second and third, which offer
peculiar facilities for his occupancy, " being a thing
ethereal, like himself." Everything that good Father
Boniface couldn t understand was " of the Devil."
Roger Bacon was in league with him when he pro
duced those tremendous explosions in his cell, as was

34 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DAUWIN.

evidenced by the sulphurous smell which followed
them, and many a noble discoverer was denounced
as a wizard, or even burned at the stake, for availing
himself of his aid. Had Edison lived but two centu
ries ago, he would surely have been stoned like the
rest of the prophets. In fact, the whole realm of the
mysterious was the peculiar domain of Satan, as our
colloquialism, " the Devil is in it," still reminds us,
and to a considerable degree it is so yet, but as fast
as the mystery retreats, so does he.

In the theological world the Evil One still holds
an important place, as the author and instigator of
what is technically known as " Sin," but as some
human individual is held to be fully responsible and
is severely punished for every particular and specific
item of this transgression, it is a little hard to see
just exactly what part the agency of His Satanic
Majesty plays in it. If sin is the work, not of man,
but of an Evil Spirit, why punish the former for it ?
If, on the other hand (to which science cordially
assents), every instance of wrong-doing is the volun
tary act of some free human being, and further, in
most cases, the effect of a primarily-beneficent im
pulse run wild, a superhuman " Father of Sin " be
comes little more than a figure of speech. In fact,
his principal remaining function, even here, is that of
the phantom warder of a ghostly future or under
world, in which congenial limbo we may leave him
for the present.

To conclude, a being or influence absolutely and
essentially evil is a thing of which the Darwinist can

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOOD. 35

find no proof or trace whatever. It would be inca
pable of continued existence, even if brought into
being, is contrary to the whole tendency of the uni
verse, and is absolutely unthinkable. This gives him
the whole universe to love and to worship.

The Darwinist s God is neither a " jealous " God,
nor a petty or revengeful one, for he worships the
Weltgeist, that great calm, loving impulse which un
derlies all the forces and pulses of nature. Every
thing in nature to him is sacred, and any "place
whereon, he standeth is holy ground."

The forests are his temples, the mountains his
altars, the birds his choristers, and the flowers his
censers.

The Darwinist alone can truly cry :

" O world, as God has made it,

All is beauty !

And knowing this is Love
And Love is Duty."

36 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

CHAPTER III.

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT.

THE soul of man has commonly been regarded as
the battle-ground of two opposing influences. These
have been often conceived as extrinsic, namely, angels
and demons, Evil and Good ; but more frequently as
intrinsic and inherent, as elevating impulses upon
the one hand, against degrading on the other ; soul
against body, immortal against mortal.

The latter views fall mainly into two great classes,
one in which both conflicting forces are regarded as
equally immanent and indigenous ; the other, in
which the higher or spiritual contestant is regarded
as acquired or imported at comparatively late stages
of development, " breathed in," as its name implies,
by some superhuman power. According to the
former view, the nobler impulses of man s nature are
proofs of his fall from a higher estate remains of an
Edenic condition of purity; traces of a lost innocence
and holiness. This is the view of the Old Testament
theology, and has probably found its highest and
most beautiful expression in Wordsworth s familiar
ode " On Recollections of Immortality."

" Trailing clouds of glory, we do come
From God, who is our home."

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 37

The other, which is that of the New Testament,
and of the Fathers and dogmatic theologians gener
ally, is that of the two warring elements one is prim
itive, carnal, animal, sinful, while the other is
secondary, spiritual, ethereal, holy. For example,
Paul declares : " I know that in me, that is in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing ; " urges us to " mor
tify the flesh with the affections and lusts," and cries
out in despair: " Who shall deliver me from this
dead body " (literally, " body of death "). And not
only Christian theologians, but Buddhist monks,
philosophers of all creeds and of no creeds, poets,
mystics, dreamers of every sort and age, have reveled
in it and re-echoed it until it has become a part
of the household furniture of the thought of the
world.

The twofold constitution of man s nature, from a
mere figure of speech has come to be regarded as a
literal, material fact.

The higher part, generally known as the soul, is
popularly assumed to have become joined with the
lower part or body, much as a flower-seed might have
taken root in a patch of soil. It is admitted that
they are absolutely dependent upon one another, the
soul for its existence, the body for its graces, and not
a scrap of ponderable evidence can be adduced of the
possibility of the existence of either apart from the
other, and yet, in flat contradiction of every other
similar instance in nature, the bitterest enmity is
supposed to exist between them. The impulses of
the body are, above all things, to be distrusted, re-

38 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

pressed, and dreaded by the soul. "Whatever is
flesh is sin," while the aspirations of the soul are
equally certain to be opposed, thwarted, and, if pos
sible, brought to naught by the body. " The mind
of the flesh is enmity against God." The most
favorable view that we are permitted to take of the
body is that it is a slow, stupid, extremely exasper
ating, but useful servant ; a necessary evil which
must be tolerated and even humored to some extent,
because it would be difficult to get along entirely
without it. This was the feeling of the monk Fran
cis d Assisi, who, though so full of love for all others
of God s creatures that he actually conceived and car
ried out the beautiful idea of formally preaching the
Gospel to the birds and the fishes on the lake-shore,
could only find it in his heart to say of his own body,
when told that it had been so weakened by fastings
and vigils as to be hopelessly diseased, "I have
sinned against my brother, the ass/

But even this amount of contemptuous toleration
is rare. More commonly the body is described and
regarded as u a dull clod," a "house of clay," a
" sepulchre," a prison against the bars of which the
imprisoned soul beats its wounded pinions until
Death comes to its release. All of which is about as
reasonable as if a buttercup should revile the soil
which hung about its roots and forcibly prevented it
from floating off across the meadow-lands with every
zephyr that blew. The soil has not only produced
the buttercup, but will produce, after it has passed
away, thousands of nobler, grander forms than any-

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 39

tiling its shallow, little, golden pate could even con
ceive of.

" And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account and mine shall know the like no more.
The eternal Saki from the Bowl has poured
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour."

Even so the body-stuff of these ecstatic dreamers
lias not only produced them, dreams and all (though
how much to its own credit is to be doubted,) but has
within itself grander and lovelier possibilities than
even the loftiest imaginings can depict, to say nothing
of the morbid, childish phantasmagoria which form
the bulk of such " visions."

" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered
into heart of man to conceive the things which God hath pre
pared for them that love him."

But the truly " spiritually-minded " of all creeds
have not stopped even here. It is not enough for
them to regard the body as a mere clog upon the
flight of the soul, a passive hindrance to spiritual
progress, but they openly declare war upon it as their
soul s bitterest enemy, and as something actually sin
ful in itself, a creature so degraded and so essentially
vicious, that to deprive it of its comforts, thwart its
impulses, nay, even torture it and refuse to supply
its simplest wants, becomes positively meritorious.
The renunciation (in plain English, cowardly deser
tion) of wife and children, parents, in short, of all
family and social ties, the abstaining from food, from
drink, from shelter and warmth, scourging the back

40 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

with chains until the blood comes, cutting the feet
into ribbons by barefoot pilgrimages over stony
roads, lying stark naked upon icy pavements all
night long, and even such well-nigh ludicrous " mor
tifications" as wearing hair shirts, walking with
pease in one s shoes, refusing to wash, comb the hair,
change the clothing, have been accepted as deeds of
saintly odor. In fact, the principle appears to have
been that the more a man can humiliate and torture
his body, the more he will glorify and please the God
who made it.

To such an extreme has it been carried, that not
only are the selfish appetites and impulses of the
body to be repressed, but even its kindly, altruistic
ones. Paul commands us to " mortify the flesh,
with the affections " as well as the lusts thereof ; and
even in our own century grave and learned theo
logians, after much deliberation, have decided that
" natural goodness " and the " graces of nature " are
sins in the sight of God, and even deeds of righteous
ness by the unregenerate will be counted against them
as sins in the great day of judgment. To say that such
utter antagonism between plant and soil, egg and
nest, fish and water, child and mother, is not only
absolutely unparalleled but flatly contradictory to
everything else in nature, would be simply waste of
breath, for we should be promptly informed that we
were " no longer under nature, but under grace. *
Fortunately the retort " Deliver us from such grace,
though instinctive, is unnecessary, for the remorse
less logic of events has already accomplished this.

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 41

Wherever this belief has gone, it has written its
progress in letters of blood. Its true nature stands
revealed, in the filthy, degrading hermit-craze, in the
black plague of monastscism, with its fever fits, the
inquisition, Jesuitism, St. Bartholomew s Eve, and
" religious " murders and persecutions of every de
scription, and has left a broad, black, shameful brand
across the pages of European history, which has come
perilously near stamping a bar-sinister across the es
cutcheon of Christianity.

By experience utterly discredited, practically dead,
it survives only in the formal theology of the modern
church, though, fortunately, like many of its asso
ciates there, it has become pure theory which every
one believes, but no one dreams of living up to.

The dual conception of man s nature, with its con
flict between two great opposing forces, is strikingly
similar to that which is held in regard to the world
about us. And like it, will, I think, be found upon
closer study, to be based upon a misunderstanding,
a judging from appearances, without investigating
the real nature of the phenomena.

When we come to weigh the question systemati
cally " which is the greater," good or evil, passion
or virtue, love or selfishness, we are promptly driven
to the unexpected and even unwelcome conclusion
that there is no ground for debating the question, as
absolutely all of these " opposites " are found to be
merely varying intensities under different circum
stances of one and the same set of impulses. Passion
is but blameless, healthful appetite run riot. Hatred

42 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

is but righteous resentment become morbid. Envy
is a jaundiced desire to excel.

When it conies to specific deeds and actual instan
ces, the essential identity becomes even more obvious.
The fault of gluttony, for instance, does not lie in
the impulse to eat, for that is one of the great primal
appetites, without which the race would soon cease
to exist. Nor in the kind of food consumed, for that
may be both wholesome and nutritious ; nor in the
absolute amount, for that might be easily digested by
a more vigorous or needy individual, but simply in
the relative excess, the failure to control an originally
beneficent impulse.

The crime of theft consists, not in the impulse to
appropriate, for that is thrifty as applied to material
objects, and saintly as directed toward spiritual graces ;
not in the nature of the thing appropriated, nor in its
position, size, or color ; nor even in the uses to which it
is to be put, or its usefulness or uselessness to the ac
quirer. A man may take anything, of any value, by
any means, without becoming a thief, providing that
lie does not know or reasonably conjecture that it be
longs to some one else. He has a right to anything
that he can find, providing no one else has a prior
claim. His liberty in this respect leaves off only
where some one else s begins. The crime lies solely
in an actual or possible injury to somebody else, a fail
ure to balance self-love by love of one s neighbor.
Adultery and fornication are indulgences of the great
sexual or race-continuing instinct under unlawful
conditions, in other words, under conditions which

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 43

experience has shown to be injurious instead of bene
ficial to the race. Even the crime of crimes, murder,
which with its horrid front and gory locks almost ap
pears to have a demon-like existence of its own, an
essential, self-evident atrocity, consists not in taking
the life of a fellow-being, for this is justifiable, nay,
even at times commendable, in war, in defense of
country or loved ones, as an officer of the law, to
protect the rights and property of others, even in the
defense of one s own life, nor in the time, manner,
or circumstances of the deed, but solely in the de
struction of another s life and happiness for inade
quate, selfish, or malicious reasons.

In short, the " principle " of every sin that can be
mentioned, except lying, is a natural, beneficent in
stinct. Crime is simply lack of control. Right
and wrong are broadly considered purely relative
terms.

Absolutely no impulse is primarily and essentially
evil or sinful, though any may become so, if uncon
trolled. No action is of itself wrong, the circum
stances under which it takes place alone determine
its moral quality. This statement will appear like a
truism to all who have calmly considered the ques
tion, but its converse may not be quite so readily ac
cepted, though equally true and important, viz., that
there is no impulse so high or holy that it may not,
if followed to an extreme, become both degrading and
sinful, and no action so beneficent or so saintly that
it may not under certain circumstances be both harm
ful and immoral.

44 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

Take for instance, the noble instinct of parental
affection, the purest and most unselfish flame which
burns in these earthen lamps of ours, a grace which
blesses alike the possessor and the receiver the
very corner-stone of morality ; and yet the relentless
ferocity of the tigress who has cubs, the tragedies of
Lear and Pe*re Goriot, and the hundreds of humbler
instances, familiar to us all, of spoiled sons and petted
daughters who have been utterly ruined and brought
shame and bitterness upon their families, solely from
the unreasoning devotion and blind indulgence of a
fond mother or doting father, would at once suggest
themselves as illustrations of how even the most
sacred affection, in excess, may become immoral.

The injustice which affection may work to those
outside of its scope, and the corruption even, which
it will introduce into public life, have been epitomized
in one word, "Nepotism."

Again, take the religious impulse, the instinct of
worship, the adoration of the mystery of the universe,
it is a feeling inspiring in itself and ennobling in its
tendencies. It has covered the world with its prayers
in stone, the noblest architectural achievements of the
race, its temples, its shrines, its mosques, its cathe
drals. It has been the nurse of poetry, painting, and
literature, and the very mother of music. But when
the student of history turns to the reverse of its
medal of honor, and reads its deeply-cut record of
persecutions and penances, of wars and of massacres,
of crusades and inquisitions, of burnings and tortur-
ings, of fanaticism, intolerance, and oppression, he is

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 45

driven to admit that even this lofty impulse uncon
trolled, rapidly becomes a hurtful and degrading
one.

Indeed, the line is so easily crossed that he is in
sad doubt at times which side of the medal should be
hung outward.

Even our sense of duty, our enthusiasm for the
right, which is supposed to be our most nearly divine
attribute and to lift us furthest above the brute, is
capable of sad perversion. It has inspired some of
the noblest characters and grandest actions of history,
and would appear to be the one safe and absolutely
trustworthy guide for humanity. " Only follow
this," we are assured by philosophers, prophets, and
priests of all creeds, " and all will be well." It is
propably the safest single guide, but there is not a
folly or a crime into which blind and unreasoning
obedience to it has not led.

It is a sense of duty which leads the Brahman
widow to cast herself upon the funeral pyre of her
husband. It was a sense of duty which drove the
best of the later Roman emperors to persecute the
early Church, that inspired the obliquities and atroc
ities of Ignatius Loyola, that impelled Calvin to
burn Servetus, and urged the Puritan to banish and
hang the Quaker, and burn and torture helpless old
women. Indeed, the " higher " and more " spiritual "
an impulse, the more capable of perversion it would
seem, if not constantly checked by our " lower " but
kindlier and healthier instinct and affections. If it
were not for the vigorous and incessant opposition of

46 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

our bodily tendencies, our spiritual ones would soon
exterminate the race.

Which are really the " higher"? Morality, like
sanity, is everywhere and always a question of bal
ance, of control, of moderation.

Love of self impels us forward until we are checked
or deflected by the other great natual instinct, second
only to in power, love of others, beginning with love
of offspring and extending and broadening to love of
the family-circle, the clan, the nation, the race. For
every passion nature has provided an affection as a
countercheck ; for every spring of action, a balance-
wheel. Nay, more, if one passion becomes overbear
ing, all the others unite to oppose it. The path
of Goodness, Sweetness, and Light is most surely
reached and best followed, not by the deification of
any one of our impulses and tendencies, by an intelli
gent and reverent balancing of the promptings of all.
That the resulting motion will always be in the right
direction, is the Faith of the Gospel according to
Darwin.

This brings us to the question of the source and
origin of what we are pleased to term our moral
sense, those instincts which influence our condnct
with regard to the rights and feelings of others
rather than to our own, our altruistic impulses, the
"sense in us for conduct," as Matthew Arnold terms
it ; and here is where the ray of the Fifth Gospel
becomes far brighter and more cheering than that of
the Fourth.

The position of St. John is a perfectly simple one.

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 47

Conscience is the direct voice of God, " the Light
that lighteth every man," a principle far above and
utterly different from anything which could possibly
have developed out of poor, sinful, selfish human
nature. It is to over-ride, not only the passions, but
also the affections and sympathies of humanity; nay,
more, that all these are utterly contrary to and in
opposition to it. " Whoso liateth not father or
mother, for my sake, is not worthy of me." " Who
soever forsake th father, or mother, or wife, or chil
dren, for my sake and the Gospel s shall receive . . .
Eternal Life." Every natural instinct is thus prac
tically placed upon the side of Wrong, and Right
can only be saved from defeat by the continual inter
position of the Deity. Human nature, which this
Deity is supposed to have created in his own image, is
not to be trusted for a moment. With such a view, is
it any wonder that it has proved a " religion of suffer
ing," of sadness, and of despondency. " Narrow is the
gate and strait is the way that leadeth unto Life, and
few there be that find it." " For if the righteous
scarcely be saved, where shall the sinner and ungodly
appear?"

On the other hand, we have the "utilitarian"
theory of Spencer, the "greatest happiness" theory
of Mill, the " refined selfishness " one of Bentham, all
of whicli derive this exquisite faculty from the purely
selfish impulses of man s nature. It is an enlightened
self-interest, modified by experience, in fact. And I
regret to say that modern evangelical Christianity
has practically swung round to the same ground, in-

48 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

asmuch as the main incentive to right doing which it
urges, is the hope of escaping hell or gaining heaven.

Compare all of these with the view "from a
natural standpoint," developed by Darwin in his im
mortal chapter on the moral sense in " The Descent of
Man." Here is absolutely the only conception which
does not compel us to regard it as either beginning
or ending in pure selfishness. How much more
noble, satisfying, and adequate it is can only be ap
preciated on careful study and comparison with the
others. The source of morality is seen to be in the
social instincts and sympathies which are derived,
not from tempered greediness or chastened self-inter
est, which has been whipped within the bounds of
decency by repeated bitter experiences, but directly
from the warm, beautiful, and unselfish family affec
tions. Here is a source and a sanction as truly
divine as anything imagined by John. And, best of
all, it is nothing foreign or hostile to the rest of our
nature; but, on the contrary, a part of it. Every
other faculty of our being subordinates itself to it,
and shares and glories in its triumph. So far from
the lower instincts being hopelessly at war with and
anxious to destroy the higher, they are their origina
tors and faithful friends, so faithful, that in many
cases they save the latter from its own excesses.
There is no " crucifying " to be done, for we could
not possibly afford to dispense with either. The im
pulses of the "flesh" within their proper limits, are
seen to be just as holy as those of the " Spirit."

The love of the mother for her babe, of the bo} T for

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 49

his careworn mother, of the husband for his sweeter
self, are as divine as the devotion of the saint and the
self-denial of the anchorite, and infinitely more beau
tiful and wholesome. No tendency can be condemned
simply by calling it human ; not even by stigmatizing
it as animal, for these beautiful, natural graces are
by no means confined to the human family.

We sometimes forget that the affections and em
bryo moral instincts are just as truly "animal" as
are the passions and lusts. Humanity can boast of
no nobler, truer emotions than the love of the doe for
her fawn, or the dove for her nestlings, the reckless
bravery of the bear in defense of her cubs, or the
partridge in protecting her young, the fidelity of the
lory to his mate, or the dog to his master.

Call the muster roll of our virtues, and see how
many of them have their origin outside the human
family. What superiority dare we claim over the
" brutes," the birds, the bees, the ants, in courage, in
perseverance, in affection, in industry, in devotion,
in patient endurance.

The pedigree of two-thirds of our virtues is far
longer than the human race. They are backed by the
inheritance, not merely of our whole human lineage,
but by that of our infinitely longer pre-human ances
try. Their strength is drawn from the life of all the
ages.

Call the roll of our vices, and see how the case
stands with them. Here is the list of Paul, who was a
connoisseur in such matters, judging from the num
ber he has tabulated : " Fornication, uncleanness,

50 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jeal
ousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies, envyings,
drunkenness, revelings."

If for the first of these we read, as was probably
intended, "prostitution," and omit such as are ob
viously repetitions, namely, " strife," " wraths," " di
visions," "envyings," and "revelings," out of the
ten that remain only three can fairly be claimed to
be of animal origin, lasciviousness, enmities, jealous
ies. The others are purely human accomplishments.

No animal has yet been found guilty of prostitution
for hire, of drunkenness, nor, for obvious reasons, of
idolatry, sorcery, heresy (or the burning of the
holders thereof), of factious hate, of gambling, of
lying, of commercial swindling, and only a few of
them have " risen " to the dignity of wife-beating,
of cruelty to children, or of slavery.

Take it altogether, our animal ancestors have quite
as good reason to be ashamed of us as we of them.
Indeed, it would almost seem as if one of the most
common uses that man had made of the elevation he
had attained had been to fall from it. Certainly the
"higher" an impulse is, the more distressing the
perversion of which it is capable. " Lilies that fester
smell far worse than weeds."

The cheering tiling about it is that the pedigree of
two-thirds of our vices is of mushroom length ; that
of our virtues reaches back through all the ages.
Our virtues are older than we are.

What then is the true value of instinct as a guide?
Of the very highest ; popular impression and ecclesi-

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 51

astical teaching to the contrary, notwithstanding.
Instinct is the crystallized experience of thousands
of generations. It is the golden seed-wheat chosen
of a million harvests and a myriad threshing-floors.
It ranks lower than reason because less of individual
volition or judgment enters into it ; but as a guide
it is far safer, as a spring of action far more reliable
and effective, and so far as it goes, has no superior.
Our life-long struggle to form " good habits," as we
say, is merely an effort to change rational preferences
into instincts.

The beauty, the accuracy, and the beneficence of
the instincts of the lower form of life have been the
marvel and the admiration of every observer and
philosopher, even of theologians. Out of a thou
sand instances we need merely suggest the architec
tural instincts of beets and ants, the migratory of
birds and fishes, and the chrysalis-making one of
grubs. But it is calmly assumed that in our own
species alone they have utterly lost their force and
value. Our pride would not permit us to depend
upon or even recognize them, lest we should seem to
admit our kinship to " mere brutes." Fortunately
for us, they still remain with us in spite of our
haughty refusal to officially recognize them, and con
trol two-thirds of our actions; and it would be to
our credit and benefit every way if they controlled
the majority of the remainder. Every time we neglect
them we suffer. It is, of course, hardly necessary to
remind you that the great mass of our most important
vital movements, such as breathing, swallowing, suck-

52 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

ling, eating, drinking, walking, etc., would be im
possible without them, but beyond all this, whenever
we can find an instinct to follow, it is safe to do so
nine times out of ten, even under civilized conditions.

Ask any intelligent physician, and he will tell you
that if civilized man would only follow his instincts
in respect to fresh air, sunlight, exercise, food, water,
bathing, etc., he would be far healthier, happier, yes,
and more moral than he is. Our dyspeptic race
would be better in every way, for a greater indul
gence in " the pleasures of the table " (including at
least twenty-two minutes for dinner), for more cat
like basking in the sun, for a good deal more " bar
baric indolence," for more rebellion against the fiend
ish old Puritanic saw that " Satan finds some mischief
still for idle hands to do," for a more frequent giving
way to the impulse to fling the yard-stick out of the
window, and the ledger under the desk, and away to
the woods, the fields, and the mountains ; if the
grown man would run away and " go swimmiii " as
the boy does.

An excellent illustration is the case of intoxicants
and narcotics. Did any one ever hear of a baby with
an instinct for whisky, or a child who enjoyed the
taste of tobacco or the smell of a cigar ? Tongue,
nose, and stomach unite in their disapproval of all
three, as the comic horrors of a boy s first smoke,
and the racking headache of the freshman s spree
abundantly testify. It is only by systematic and
repeated repression of instinct by " reason " and
" higher intelligence " that either of these habits is

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 53

formed ; yet we have the colossal impudence to say
that a man who is reeling drunk has " made a beast
of himself ! "

And this is by no means an exceptional instance ;
indeed, it would not be too much to say that two-
thirds of the diseases of civilization are due to the
neglect or deliberate repression of some instinct.

However valuable the instincts may be admitted to
be in health, the almost universal impression is in
both popular and professional circles that they are
just the reverse in disease. The sick man is popu
larly supposed to want just those things he ought not
to have, -and to dislike just those things which are
"good for him." And, indeed, altogether too much
of both household and professional medical treat
ment was originally constructed on that very prin
ciple. Its principal reliance was placed upon " bit
ters " of all kinds, the nastier the better, purges,
emetics, assafetida, blisterings, bleeding, starving,
in fact, the more disagreeable a drug or process, the
more violent its effects, the greater its curative power
was supposed to be. Even at this day a " medicine "
must be bitter or it isn t much thought of by the
patient, and a "hygienic dietary" is usually con
structed simply by forbidding everything that the in
valid has any liking for.

The simple truth of the matter is, unflattering as
it may be to our professional pride, that even up to
the middle of the present century the old demon-
theory of disease had far too much influence over
our therapeutics. Disease was still regarded as an

54 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

entity which must be driven out of the body of the
patient by more or less violent or repulsive means.
This distrust of the instincts in disease is not
medical, but priestly. The wonderful " progress of
modern medicine " has consisted very largely in get
ting rid of tli is idea. Wounds, for instance, instead
of being poured full of wine, or oil, or turpentine, or
other irritating substances, or burned with hot irons,
or kept gaping for weeks, " to establish suppuration, *
or dressed with earth, cobwebs, pitch, or even excre
ment, are now simply thoroughly cleansed, closed as
accurately as possible, and protected by the softest
and lightest of dressings. In short, we simply follow
our natural impulses, imitate the lower animals, and
the result is that our mortality rates, after both acci
dents and operations, are reduced fifty, sixty, and
even eighty per cent.

In fevers, for instance, the parched and gasping
patient, instead of being swathed up to his neck in
blankets, kept in carefully heated and darkened
rooms, with doors and windows religiously closed,
forbidden cold water, or indeed cool drinks of any
kind, as if they were deadly poison, and systematic
ally starved upon a " fever regimen " of slops and
washes of every description, is now placed between
the coolest of sheets, and witli the lightest of cover
ing, in cool, breezy, sunshiny rooms, systematically
fed with the most nourishing and digestible of foods,
given all the water and fruit-juice he can possibly
drink, not only bathed, but even put to soak in cold
water.

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 55

Our most modern and most successful treatment of
typhoid fever consists merely of a liberal milk-diet,
encouraging the patient to drink at least a gallon of
water a day, and plunging him into a cool bath
whenever his temperature rises above a certain point.
Again, we simply respond to the demands of poor,
hot, thirsty nature; and by so doing have lowered
the death-rate from thirty per cent, to less than five
per cent.

The value of instinct as a guide in morals is
equally great, although there is here a certain
amount of conflict between the individual or selfish
instincts, and the social or altruistic ones. And, al
though it is true that the intensity of our necessary
vital desires or appetites is ofttimes so great as
to cause us to disregard the rights of others in their
gratification, and thus violate our higher or social in
stincts, to sin, in theological language, yet it is also
true, as beautifully pointed out by Darwin, that
the former are essentially temporary in their dura
tion, and capable of but feeble recollections, while
the latter are absolutely ceaseless in their action and
produce by their violation lasting sensations, such as
shame, remorse, loss of respect, feeling of isolation,
etc., which become more vivid with each successive
recollection. In fact, the higher instincts, though at
the time feebler, are in the long run more than a match
for the lower. It would be strange indeed if these
instincts, which have created morals, were not still to
be trusted in their domain.

What, then, is our final conclusion ? That moral-

56 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

ity is natural, and instinct the holiest impulse that
stirs man s bosom. Truth is mighty, and sweetness
and light are winning qualities (in more senses than
one). Morality has won its pre-eminence by " the
right of the strongest," and has no need of assistance
or protection from revelation, church, priestcraft, or
state. Still less does it owe its origin or continuance
to any of them. And yet almost every religion,
every priestly order arrogates to itself the position of
the true originator and only conservator of morality.
Heaven forbid that it should rest on any such narrow
and shifting foundation. Beautiful and inspiring as
the spirit of worship is, and valuable and powerful
as its influence, morality depends upon no one emo
tion or influence, but upon all the forces and pulses
of nature. All the warmth of man s nature, all the
courage, the beauty, the vigor, of animal life, nay,
even the beauty of the meadows, the sweep of the
rolling tide, and the glory of the dawn, are in it and
behind it.

Cut it off from the influence of any one of these,
and it goes halting at once. Confide it to any one
of these alone, and it withers and all but disappears.
Even the religious instinct, for instance, must be
balanced by the affections, the necessary appetites,
the common sense of the masses, or the most painful
and shocking perversions will occur. Of itself one
of the purest and most exalted of emotions, it has
earned itself as black a record as many of the vices,
simply by having frequently been given unlimited
sway over man s actions. The extremes of hatred,

THE HOLINESS OF INSTINCT. 57

bigotry, and cruelty into which it has been led are,
alas, household words, and in hatef illness, though not
in frequency, equal, if not exceed those prompted by
any of the " fleshly lusts." " Our army swore terribly
in Flanders," but its profanity was not to be com
pared in either profuseness or malignity with the
maledictions of an ordinary "sacrament " of excom
munication.

The wrath of the u natural man " is fully appeased
by killing his enemy, or at most scalping him after
wards, but that of the " holy father " or " shepherd
of the flock cannot rest at merely burning the
heretic, but must damn his soul through all eternity
as well.

The superhuman is sure to become the inhuman
sooner or later. How much of the cruelty, intoler
ance, unscrupulous!) ess, fatuous folly, which have
too often marred the whole record of the Roman
Catholic Church, have been due to her management
solely by a body of professedly sexless clergy, who
by their unnatural vow of celibacy are cut off from
all the softening, humanizing, ennobling, and refining
influences of family life ! What can they really
know of the Great All Father, who are not and can
never hope to be fathers themselves !

Morality is the flower born of all the struggling
impulses of lowly but warm-hearted human nature,
just as the violet is of the leaf-mold, the sunlight,
and the dew. Any of the influences which had a
share in its creation, alone would blight it, did not
the others come to its aid. Gentle as it is, it is irre-

58 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

sistible and will flourish with equal placidity within
our bosoms or among our ashes.

Beautiful, fragrant, and delicate though it be, it
asks only the free air and sunlight of heaven, to defy
alike the storm, the flood, and the tooth of time, and
glorify the woodlands every spring until the sun
grows cold.

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 59

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH.

HUMANITY has a faculty for ignoring and abusing
its benefactors which amounts almost to a genius.
Scarcely an age can be mentioned which has not
starved its Homer, poisoned its Socrates, banished its
Aristides, stoned its Stephen, burned its Savonarola,
or imprisoned its Galileo. Nor is the strange perver
sion of sentiment confined to our fellow-mortals.
The great, calm, stern, yet loving forces of nature
have constantly fallen under the unjust stigma, and
though we have outlived many early misconcep
tions or misrepresentations of most of these, a ghastly,
repulsive, lying mask is still permitted to conceal
the kindly, though stern features of pallida mors
albeit both religion and science are striving hard to
tear it away. Let us endeavor to lift up a tiny corner
long enough to catch a glimpse of what lies behind it

I regard the prevailing conception of death as false
in three important particulars : First, that it is in
some way an enemy of, or opposed to, life ; Second,
that it is a process of dissipation or degeneration in
volving and associated with a fearful waste of energy,
time, and material; Third, that it is a harsh, painful

60 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

ordeal, from which every fibre of organic being shrinks
in terror.

I am aware that my first contention will seem like
a flat contradiction in terms, but a few illustrations
will probably make my meaning plainer. Let us take
those earliest and lowest results of formative tenden
cies in matter, the crystals, " the flowers of the
rocks," as Ruskin beautifully calls them. Here we
have individual units which for beauty, variety, and
definiteness of form, brilliancy of color, and purity of
substance, stand absolutely unrivaled in all the
higher walks of life. Watch them forming, and see
with what certaint}- atom seeks atom, here a diamond,
there a cube, again a prism or rosette, each substance
having its own definite, peculiar shape, with an utter
disregard of all alien materials in the mass. Mark
how crystal seeks crystal and proceeds to weave its
own warp and woof, in column, in truncated cone, in
spire, in lace-like web of slender needles, each accord
ing to its kind. See how the advance columns of the
various ingredients of the mass, cut through, ride
over, or yield to one another, in regular social order
of rank, dependent not upon bulk or hardness, but
upon purity of substance and organizing power, upon
crystal vitality in fact, and suppress if you can the
conviction that these organisms are alive. The only
thing they lack is the inherent faculty of dying.
Drown and dissolve them by fluid, fuse into shape
less masses by volcanic heat, and on the very earliest
opportunity they will promptly and surely resume
their former shape and beauty. Gentler influences

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 61

they defy. So long as they exist they are inde
structible, and their lifetime is that of the everlasting
hills. Here, if anywhere in the universe, is eternal
life, in the popular sense of the term, but it were
better named eternal death.

Crystal life is a bar of adamant to progress. Beau
tiful in itself, it is utterly barren, inhospitable, hope
less as regards future growth. It can neither grow
itself, nor assist anything else to grow, save in one
way, by dying.

The old earth shrinks a little in cooling, and our
mass of crystals is suddenly elevated from cavernous
depths to the top or side of one of those long wrinkles
we call mountain ranges ; the sun heats it, and the
rains pour upon it, the frosts gnaw at its edges, until
at length its vitality becomes impaired, and it suc
cumbs to the elements. The whole structure crumbles
into a shapeless mass of dull, damp, colorless, lifeless
clay. Here, indeed, to all appearances is the desola
tion of death in all its hopeless repulsiveness. But
wait a moment ; here comes a tin} descendant of
some crystal which has stumbled upon the faculty of
dying and improved thereon unto the fifty-thousandth
generation, a lichen spore, drifting along the surface
of the rock. It glances forlornly off from the flinty
faces of the living crystals, but finds a home and a
welcome at once upon the moist surface of the clay.
Filmy rootlets run downward, tiny buds shoot up
ward, the new life has begun. It ensnares the sun
light in its emerald mesh, entangles the life-vapors
of the air in its web, and grows and spreads until the

62 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

valley of crystal death becomes transformed into a
cushion of living green in the lap of the gaunt, gray
granite.

But what as to further progress ? The lichen is
green and beautiful, but as an individual it can never
develop into anything higher. Here again progress
is absolutely barred by life, and must call death to its
aid. The lichen dies, and its dust returns to the
earth, carrying with it the spoils of the sunlight, the
air, and the dew, to enrich the seed-bed. A hundred
generations follow, each one leaving a legacy of fer
tility, until the soil becomes capable of sustaining a
richer, stronger, higher order of plant-life, whose
rootlets push into every crevice and rend the solid
rock ; the living carpet spreads ; grass, flower, and
shrub succeed one another in steady succession, until
the cold gray rock-trough is transformed into the
lovely mountain glen with its myriad life. As the
poet sings, the crystals have risen " on stepping-stones
of their dead selves to nobler things," and of any
link in the chain the inspired dictum would be equally
true that " except to die, it abideth alone."

But, says some one, this is all very true as to the
surface of Mother Earth ; but how about the deeper
structures, her ribs and body bulk ?

Every layer of the earth was part of the surface at
one time, and the more intimately death has entered
into their composition, the more highly organized the
corpses of which they are composed, and the more
useful and important they are.

Come back with me a few hundred years to the

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 63

great tree-fern period, and gaze upon the matted jun
gle of frond and stem, thirty to sixty feet in height,
which covers mile after mile of swamp. Here, in
deed, is life in all its glory, yet it is a living shroud.
No hum is there of insect-life or twitter of birds that
build their nests in the branches ; for there is neither
flower, berry, nor seed to support the tiniest life.
No animal can live on its stringy, indigestible fodder.
The rank growth crushes out any possibility of nobler,
more generous plant-life. The old earth gives a tired
sigh, her bosom heaves and sinks, and the waters rush
in and cover the jungle, drown it, crush it, bury it
with silt, compress and mummify it, and it is numbered
with the " has-beens," until one day man stumbles
upon a fragment of its remains in the face of some
sea-cliff, and coal, the food of the steam-engine, the
motive power of latter-day commerce and civilization,
is discovered. Alive, it was a worthless weed ; dead,
it becomes " black diamonds."

There is another illustration very much in point,
indeed, but so familiar through the medium of Sun
day-school literature, and so nearly worn threadbare
as a text for sermons, that I hesitate to allude to it.
I refer to that exemplary being, the coral " insect."
This sturdy little polyp anchors himself to the sur
face of the sunken reef, and with an industry and
devotion that would do him infinite credit, if we
could for a moment imagine that he was actuated by
any other motive than that of filling his own greedy
little stomach, he swallows and deposits in his tissues
the lime-salts until his whole substance becomes

64 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

literally petrified and forms a stepping-stone of
adamant for the succeeding generation, This process
is repeated a few million times, and the lovely coral
island, with its lofty palms, emerald verdure, silver
sands, and glittering bird and insect life, breaks the
surface of the howling waste of waters. Alive, he is
a flabby, shapeless atom of grayish jell} ; dead, lie is
a rainbow-hued crystal of loveliest outline a thing
of beauty in himself and the rock-ribbed support of
countless other forms of life and beauty above the
surface. Alive, he is an insignificant, slimy little
salt-water slug ; dead, he is a part of the framework
of the universe, and a saintly creature, whose value
as a moral example can hardly be overestimated.

When we turn to the higher forms of being, the
dependence of life upon precedent death is so self-
evident as to have been formulated into a truism.
That the grass must die that sheep may live, and that
sheep must die that man may live, are facts as familiar
as the multiplication-table. If the command, " Thou
shalt not kill," were to be interpreted to extend to
our animal cousins and our vegetable ancestors, it
might as well read at once, " Thou shalt starve."

In this sense death is as important and essential a
vital function as birth, and the highest aim of many
an organism is attained, not by its birth, but by its
death. Literally: "He that loveth his life shall
save it," in the world to come. Without this power
of the lower life to forward the higher life by dying,
progress of any sort would be absolutely impossible.
There be forms which when they are devoured refuse

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 65

to die, but we call them parasites, and should hardly
choose the tape-worm as a symbol of progress.

Even when we reach the human stage where no
such direct digestive transformation into higher forms
is possible, the same necessity is still apparent.

To permit progress in the social, political, or moral
worlds it becomes ultimately just as sternly essential,
cruel as the fact may seem at first sight, that the old
generation should die, as that the new should be
born.

Now let us look for a few moments at the second
prevailing misconception of death as a destroyer and
waster. This is apparently supported by a vast array
of facts, ranging from the tremendous loss of life
among the eggs or young of the lower forms to the
sudden cutting short of existences in which meet the
labor and preparation of generations of the past and
the hopes of the future. What is the use of being
born only to die, of laboriously building up an organ
ism or character only to have it destroyed, annihi
lated, scattered like smoke ?

To the first part of the question the answer almost
suggests itself, viz., that this destruction is only ap
parent. Nothing is really lost at all. Merely the
form is changed, and as it is necessary that life should
be produced in great abundance in order to give
nature, figuratively speaking, a wide field for selec
tion, some method becomes absolutely indispensable
by which the elements of the unfit, incompetent, non-
elect forms can be promptly returned to the great
crucible of nature, there to be available for use in

66 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

new and improved patterns. So far from being a
waster, death is the great economist of nature, en
abling her to conduct her most extensive experiments
with a mere handful of material.

But you will reply, this accounts only, so to speak,
for the materials used. Are not the vantage ground
so hardly won, the wonderful organizing power, the
long years expended, utterly lost and hopelessly
wasted ? I answer, no ; but rather secured thereby.
They become an immutable part of the history of the
race. The upward growth of the race is not an even,
continuous line, but a series of ever-ascending tiny
curves, each the life of an individual, and the tiny
shoot of the curve of the life that is to follow is given
off from near our highest point.

Death is the great embalmer, the casket into which
our loved ones are received in the very flower of their
beauty and the glory of their strength. A sheaf of
corn fully ripe is a beautiful, dignified, inspiring sight
and memory, but it must be reaped to make it so, and
not left on the stem to rot and freeze.

And it should not be forgotten that so long as life
lasts, not only is growth possible, but degeneration
also ; and that the further the zenith of power is
passed, the more probable does the latter become.
Nothing can imperil the good that a man has done
save his own later weakness, treason, or folly ; and
when the mortal dart pierces him it transfixes him
where he stands and secures the vantage-ground he
has won. Death s function here is, as it were, a
ratchet upon the notched wheel of human progress,

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. (J?

to secure every inch gained as a starting-point for
the life to come.

But the crowning beauty and noblest impulse of
the process is that it is intrinsically a burying of the
old life to enrich the new. The parent form falls
with all the scars, the weariness and grime of the
conflict, into the gentle lap of Mother Earth, in order
that the new life may rise, fresh, pure, triumphant.
Old errors are buried, old failures forgotten. The
good of all the past is inherited, the evil falls by its
own weight. The race takes a fresh start every gen
eration. We are all but drops in the grand stream
of life, which flows with ever-widening sweep through
all the ages.

We are immortal, if we but form a true, sturdy
link in the great chain of life. It is this unbroken
continuity of life, ever rising to nobler levels from
the ashes of apparent death that is so beautifully
typified by the Phoenix and similar traditions. We
should cheerfully pay the debt of nature, proudly
confident that she will be able to invest the capital
to better advantage next time, from the interest we
have laboriously added to it.

There need be no shrinking dread of the " pangs
of dissolution," the " final agony/ for such things
have little existence save in disordered imaginations.
Ask any physician whose head is silvered over with
gray, and he will tell you that while disease is often
painful, death itself is gentle, painless, natural, like
the fading of a flower or the falling of a leaf. It is
literally true that there is a time to die as well as to

68 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

live, and when that time comes the event becomes not
only tolerable, but, like all other natural processes,
desirable; every fibre of our tired, worn-out being
demands it.

The overwhelming majority of such records of
authentic " last words " as we possess, re-echo the
saying of Charles II. on his death-bed : " If this be
dying, nothing could be easier."

Even in such an extreme case as death under the
fangs of wild beasts, all those who have gone very
near the Valley of the Shadow from this cause unite
in testifying, incredible as it may seem, that after the
first shock of the attack there is absolutely no sensa
tion of pain.

For instance, Livingstone, upon one occasion, was
pounced upon by a lion, which felled him to the
ground, and, making his teeth meet in his shoulder,
dragged him a considerable distance into the jungle
before his followers could come to his assistance.
Livingstone asserts most positively that he was per
fectly conscious of what was happening when he was
being carried, could hear the cries of his friends, and
wondered how long it would take them to reach him,
but that he felt no pain or fear whatever, nothing but
a strange, drowsy, dreamy sensation. And yet his
shoulder was so severely injured that he never fully
recovered the use of it, and his body was identified
after death by the scars.

Sir Samuel Baker reports a similar experience with
a bear which he had wounded. The great brute felled
him by a stunning blow from its paw, and he was

THE BEAUTY OF DEATH. 69

aroused to consciousness by its crunching the bones
of his hand ; it continued the process up his arm, and
had almost reached the shoulder before the rescuing
party could reach him, and yet Sir Samuel declares
that he felt no pain whatever, and that his only sen
sation was one of intense resentment against the beast
for seeming to enjoy the taste of him so much. Nor
are these by any means exceptional instances, as many
other such reports could be collected, and it is almost
an axiom with surgeons that the severer the injury the
less the pain. Many a man has received his death-
wound and never known it until his strength began
to fail.

But nature is even more merciful than this. Con
trary to popular impression and pulpit pyrotechnics,
the fear of death, which is so vivid in life and health,
absolutely disappears as soon as his hand is laid upon
us. Every physician knows from experience that not
one person in fifty is afraid or even unwilling to die
when the time actually comes, and in the vast major
ity of instances our patients drift into a state of dreamy
indifference to the result as soon as they become seri
ously ill. So universally is this true that we seldom
feel any uneasiness as to the result of a case in which
a lively fear of death is exhibited. The highest sen
sibilities are the first to die; so that both pain and
fear are usually abolished, literally rendered impos
sible, hours, days, or even weeks, before the end
comes. Our dear ones drift gently out into the sea
of rest, on the ebbing tide of life, with a smile upon
their sleeping faces.

70 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

For every minor injury nature provides a remedy ;
for every hopeless one, a narcotic.

In not a few instances this indifference becomes
changed into positive longing for death. Days of suf
fering and nights of sleepless weariness quickly bring
men to stretch out their arms to the great Rest-
bringer. Fever-parched and pain-weary men and
women long for death as tired children long for sleep.
Ask your own family physician and he will tell you
that as a matter of fact he has heard five prayers for
death to one for life, when fate is trembling in the
balance.

Because the thought of Death in the noontide of
life sends a chill through them, people never stop to
think that their feelings may entirely change with
the circumstances, and will not understand, as the
good old Methodist elder shrewdly expressed it, that
they " can t expect to get dying grace to live by."

The ghastly in articulo mortis, or " death-struggle,"
of which we hear so much in dramatic literature, re
ligious or otherwise, does not occur in one case in ten,
and then usually long after consciousness has ceased.
When death comes near enough so that we can see
the eyes behind the mask, his face becomes as wel
come as that of his twin brother, sleep.

LIFE ETERNAL. 71

CHAPTER V.

LIFE ETERNAL.

LIFE is the greatest thing in the world. It is a
pleasure simply to exist, to respond to our environ
ment, to absorb the forces of nature, to grow and to
help others to grow. What wonder, then, that the
darling desire of man s heart, in all ages, is to secure
Life Eternal.

But is it not possible for this instinct, this passion,
like any other, to overleap itself ? May we not, by
unduly exalting its importance, by dwelling upon it
to the neglect of other equally God-given impulses
and desires, develop it into positively abnormal if
not morbid forms? Can we not by cherishing false
ideals in connection with it, fall into serious error,
and even so change its tendency as to make it a
source of more distress, apprehension, and bitterness,
than of joy, confidence, and hope?

It is hardly necessary to answer the question ; it
not only may be, but it has been done in many a
demonology and also in not a few theologies, until at
more than one period of the world s history, men
have been, in the pathetic language of the Great
Apostle, " through fear of death, all their life long,
subject to bondage." Like any other instinct un
balanced by counteracting impulses, given a per-

72 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

manent majority in the parliament of tendencies and
relieved by ecclesiastical sanction from liability to
executive veto, it lias too often brought its own
punishment with it, and has quadrupled the natural
fear of death by the dread of what may follow in the
"life beyond." That tragedy of the ages, " Hamlet,"
is at heart a titanic picture of a noble nature, a cour
ageous soul, a magnificent intellect, palsied, un
balanced, and ultimately all but ruined by too keen
an appreciation of the possibilities of the after-world.
At every turn his " native hue of resolution is sicklied
o er with the pale cast of thought " of this thought
his religious longing for vengeance upon the skulk
ing assassin, his fierce desire to be the instrument of
heaven s retribution, when failing him no other can
be, are sternly suppressed lest lie should " couple
Hell " with his mission of justice. This leaves him
inspired by absolutely no o ermastering passion save
a sense of the horrors of his father s condition and
the utter hopelessness of relieving them by any effort
on his part. What wonder this failed to spur him to
action ? His constant fear is that the ghost " may
be a devil" who " out of my weakness and my melan
choly abuses me to damn me." Contrast his attitude
with that of that commonplace, but hot-blooded young
fellow, Laertes, who bursts into the presence of
royalty itself with the furious declaration,

" To hell allegiance.
To this point I stand

That both the worlds I give to negligence.
Let come what comes, only I ll be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father."

LIFE ETERNAL. 73

Which is the nobler attitude, the " natural " or the
"celestial " one. Hamlet refuses to slay the vile mur
derer of his father, because forsooth he finds him at his
prayers, and dreads that this may bar his punishment
in the future world and send him to heaven, which
would be " hire and salary, not revenge." He utterly
and fatally mistakes the proportion of things in this
life by persistently regarding them in the light of a
future one. And we have most of us, alas, been per
sonally acquainted with a Hamlet.

The earliest and perhaps most commonly accepted
conception of eternal life is, that inasmuch as our
life here is in the main happy and desirable, all that
is needed to insure our eternal happiness is an in
definite continuation of our personal existence. It is
this childish view which is still largely responsible
for the way in which we, even in the nineteenth cen
tury, regard death as the "King of Terrors," the
chief of evils, and the one great blot upon the face
of nature. Theologically it has developed into the
theory that death is a punishment for and result of
sin, and it is generally assumed to have come into
the world at the Fall in the Garden of Eden, although,
strangely enough, there is absolutely no foundation
for such a conception of death in the narrative of that
matchless parable itself, and very little in any other
part of Scripture outside the splendid imagery of
Paul. Indeed the poem itself implies the contrary,
inasmuch as our first parents were turned out of
Eden " lest they eat of the tree of life and live for
ever," cease to be mortal, in fact. In short, this

74 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

view of death is taught neither by science nor by
Scripture, reasonably interpreted. Death is essen
tially a vital process of transcendent importance, a
blessing instead of a curse, a reward, not a punish
ment.

Whence then comes this fear of death of which we
hear so much and which is so continually appealed to
as one of the most overmastering passions of hu
manity. Is it a natural or a manufactured dread?
Mainly, the latter.

There is unquestionably a genuine natural basis for
it in the instinctive shrinking from the pain of
wounds, the weakness and weariness of the sick-bed,
the thickening speech, the darkening eye. A natural
dread of ceasing to live, to enjoy, to feel, of leaving
the sunshine, the music, the loving and fighting be
hind us. But these are comparatively slight and
transient feelings, which shrivel in a moment in the
glow of any powerful emotion, such as love, or am
bition, even hunger, or revenge. As Bacon quaintly
remarks : " It is worth the noting that there is no
passion in the mind of man so weak, but it meets and
masters the fear of death."

There is also the shudder at the pall, the hearse,
Seneca s "array of the death-bed which has more
horrors than death itself," the darkness and cold of
the tomb, the tooth of the worm, the rain and the
storm. But this disappears almost as soon as our at
tention is called to it, for science assures us at once
that the body cannot, and religion that the soul does
not, reck aught of any of these.

LIFE ETERNAL. 75

The main and real bitterness of death is the dread
of a Future Life.

One of the principal " consolations " of religion
consists in allaying the fear which it has itself con
jured up. " Men fear death as children fear to go in
the dark, and as that natural fear in children is
increased with tales, so is the other." (Bacon.)

The simplest and most primitive form in which
this widespread idea of a personal existence after
death is found to exist is in the religious beliefs of
most savage tribes of a low grade of culture, such as
the Tasmanians and Australians.

Here is simply a vague belief that the souls of
men become demons or spirits after their death and
evidently owes its origin to the appearance in dreams
of the images of ancestors or deceased friends, thus
proving to the aboriginal mind that they still exist.
These ancestral ghosts, together with the demons of
the streams and storms receive a fitful sort of wor
ship, to keep them from injuring the living. There
is, of course no idea whatever of reward or punish
ment in this "heaven," and the "immortality " con
ception is not confined to human beings, but extends
also to animals and things such as weapons, utensils,
and ornaments which are seen upon or in the hands
of the dream-visions aforesaid, and are accordingly
buried or burned with the corpse, that their ghosts
may accompany him to the hereafter. A curious
survival of this conception is still found in our
modern and medieval ghost-stories, which invariably
describe the spirit as appearing in the "ghosts " of

76 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

the clothes in which he was buried or murdered, for
instance the apparition of the elder Hamlet was
" arme d at point exactly cap-a-pie," and his son
exclaims at once, "My father in his habit as he
lived!"

As the tribe rises notch by notch in the scale, these
vague and misty fancies assume gradually more and
more definite and orderly forms. A sort of order of
rank is established among the ancestor ghosts and
" forces of nature " demons, and from the chief
among them are selected patron spirits and deities of
the tribe. Thus the gods are born. Corresponding
with this increase of dignity comes the necessity of a
definite place of residence for beings of such exalted
rank and the "hereafter" or "future-world " is as
signed to them whither the spirits of the dead resort
to become their subjects, and Heaven is invented.
This is usually situated on the other side of some
impassable mountain-chain, or across the nearest lake
or ocean, or at the end of some cavern in the bowels
of the earth : anywhere in fact that no member of the
tribe has ever penetrated. This conception is grad
ually developed and embellished until it reaches the
familiar "Happy hunting ground" stage, so well
exemplified in the legends of our North American
Indians. This future life is a frank and obvious
copy of the present one, a gilded and rose-colored re
production and continuation of the joys of earthly
existence.

" Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire,
And Hell the shadow of a soul on fire."

LIFE ETERNAL. 77

It has been held in identical or strikingly similar
forms by almost every tribe or race in the world : in
the upper stages of savagery, the lower and middle of
barbarism, and even on into well-developed stages of
civilization. It is or was the belief, for instance, of
tribes so widely separated in space, in time, and in
culture as the South Sea Islanders, the Tartars of
Siberia, the Apaches, and the Germans of Tacitus s
time, our own ancestors.

Mutatis mutandis the spirits of the dead hunt the
spirits of the buffaloes, which never cease to be
plentiful, over prairies which are green the year
round, upon horses which never tire, and with
weapons and garments that never grow old.

One of the most interesting things about this stage
of the belief is (that as in the former one) the immor
tality is not confined to human beings, but embraces
the animals of the chase, horses, dogs, bows and
arrows, cooking utensils, garments, and even articles
of food. The buffalo which the spirit of the good
Indian pursues over the evergreen prairies are the
spirits of those which he has killed during his life
time. The ghost of his favorite horse while on earth
bears him in the chase, the soul of his faithful dog
keeps him company, the ghost of his former trusty
bow is in his hand, the shade of his treasured neck
lace of bears -claws encircles his phantom neck.
Great pains have been taken and heavy expense in
curred in order to bury all the latter with him ;
horse, dog, weapons, costly furs, wampum, priceless
ornaments, nay, even food and tinder-box so that

78 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

their spirits may accompany his on his distant jour
ney. This originally kind and charitable ceremony
has developed unfortunately into some of the most
hideous and ghastly rites known to history, such as
the killing or burning of wives, soldiers, musicians,
servants and others upon the grave or pyre in order
that the dead man may have the benefit of their
company and services. And an obvious survival of
this idea still exists in the senseless and at times
even ruinous pomp and display of modern funerals
with their long and imposing procession of mourners
and civic, military, or fraternal organizations. In
military funerals a still more obvious remnant is seen
in the custom of leading the dead man s horse directly
behind the coffin to the grave.

As the tribe grows, expands, and advances, ships
are built, wars are waged, voyages and expeditions of
discovery undertaken until geography is born and
the idea of a future world somewhere upon the
earth s surface has to be abandoned. Henceforward
it is relegated either to the region of the sky, whose
name " heaven " is still borne by the most advanced
and modern conception of it, or to the bowels of the
earth as its other classical modern name the " in
fernal ( inferior ) regions " still implies. In most
cases the belief soon comes to include both localities.
The higher as the abode first of the gods and heroes
or princes of the highest rank only, who were thought
worthy to become " immortals " and later by degrees
of the pious and faithful of all ranks. The lower as
the destination first, of all the lesser divinities and

LIFE ETERNAL. 79

all ordinary mortals of whatever degree of moral
merit, and later gradually changing to a place of
exile and punishment for rebellious demons and
criminals, unbelievers, heretics, and offenders of every
description.

A well-known illustration of the early form of tin s
stage of the idea is the Greek Olympus-Hades. The
" upper " world did not even quite reach the sk}% but
was on the summit of Mount Olympus and was ten
anted solely by the gods and a few nymphs and mor
tals of such extraordinary merit, beauty, or direct
blood-relation to the divinities as to render them
worthy of elevation to divine honors. The " lower"
world was a cold, comfortless, shadowy region below
the earth, where the shades of all mortals, save the
brilliant exceptions mentioned, were condemned to
pace out a monotonous existence in the meadows of
asphodel. Even such redoubtable heroes as Achilles,
Agamemnon, and Hector could not escape it. Al
though there was no idea whatever of punishment or
disgrace connected with it and Pluto was merely an
inferior divinity who acted as governor-general of the
region, yet there was nothing cheerful or attractive
about the conception and much that was repulsive.

The shades were represented as being literally
" ghosts of their former selves," still bearing and
showing the wounds that caused their death, mourn
ing the loss of their joyous earth-life, their friends,
their horses and cattle, their wine and gold, their very
voices faded to a gibbering squeak. Achilles longs
to come up to earth again, even though it were as the

80 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN.

m